Even still, Janelle is as sweet as she wants to be, a little dense, but the most affectionate child of the whole bunch. She even go to psychics and palm readers and the people that read them big cards. I don’t know what lies they telling her, but she believe in that mess. And she say some of the dumbest shit sometime that you can’t even twist your mouth to say nothing. The chile live from one holiday to the next. If you don’t know which one is coming up, just drive by her house. For Groundhog Day, you can bet a groundhog’ll be peeking up from somewhere in her front yard. On St. Patrick’s Day: four-leaf clovers everywhere. On Valentine’s Day: red and pink hearts plastered on everything. She had seven Christmas trees one Christmas, in every room in the damn house, and a giant one in the front yard! And now here come Easter.

Ever since Jimmy got killed back in ’85, Janelle been a little off. He was her second husband. She wasn’t married but twenty-two days the first time. He beat her up once and that was enough. But Jimmy is Shanice’s daddy. Once Janelle finally got back into the dating game—the last few men she dealt with was all married. I told her it was wrong, but she said this way she didn’t have to worry about getting too serious.

Well, guess what? She married this last one. He left his wife of a million years for her. His name is George. He’s ugly and old enough to be her daddy. But his money is long and green and he don’t mind spending it on Janelle. That’s her whole problem: she always want somebody to take care of her. Ain’t this the nineties? Even I know this kind of attitude is ridiculous in this day and age and I’m almost a senior citizen. This is the reason so many of us became slaves to our husbands in the first place, and why so many women don’t have no marketable skills to speak of now. Can’t no man take better care of you than you can take of yourself. Janelle is thirty-five years old and still ain’t figured this out yet.