When she moved out the bedroom last year, that was the last straw for me. Sex was like some kind of reward anyway. I had to earn it, then beg for it. Sometimes I have trouble in that department, but sometimes I don’t. And I can’t lie, Viola still got some of the best stuff I’ve ever had, but after living like you been sentenced to solitary confinement for so many years, good pussy ain’t enough no more. Plus. I found out it’s plenty of good pussy in Vegas, and most of it is cheap. You ain’t gotta look her in the face, don’t need to know no last names or how-comes and where-you-beens or what-time-you-coming-backs. They don’t care if all you good for is five or ten minutes. Just get it, leave your money where they can see it, and ease on down the road.

Viola used to be my friend. I could trust her. Tell her anythang. But here lately, you can’t be too sure what she gon’ do with the information you give her. Mostly she hoist it right back at you like some kind of weapon. She got a big mouth and she makes me feel bad about myself. She used to thank I was everythang: Handsome. Sexy. Smart. Strong. Now all she do is criticize me. Hell, I know I’m country, and I don’t mind it. She knew how I was when I married her. People don’t change they ways just ’cause they get married. When you been brought up a certain way, you that way. Unless you go to one of them head doctors who can talk you into being somebody else. Viola stayed on me anyway. “When you gon’ get rid of that Jheri Curl, Cecil?” Or: “You need to do some situps, your gut is growing by the minute.” And if I forgot something, anythang: “Where’s your mind going, Cecil? Is Alzheimer’s creeping up on you already?” We’d be ready to go somewhere: “You ain’t going nowhere with me in that getup.” It mighta been a old suit, but she the one who picked it out in the first place. And we always watched what she wanted to see on TV, ’cause she held the remote in our house. But the worse one of all was: “You finished already?”

She don’t take nobody’s feelings into account except her own. Say the first thang that come out her mouth, which is why she ain’t got but a roomful of friends. Loretta ain’t no threat, that’s why she’s so nice to her. Plus she white. I thank Viola is either scared of white people or feel like she gotta prove she just as good as they are. But Loretta don’t want nothing. She just downright friendly. Decent. She came with offerings, her palms turned up. Viola loved that. Somebody doing something for her.

If you was to count her sisters, them being the only family she got left, it’s a doggone shame, ’cause both of ’em is dizzy as all hell. Priscilla is a fifty-year-old gangster. Been in and out of the penitentiary for the last twenty-some-odd years for petty crimes. I thank she out now. But you never know. Blink and she locked up again. She even had one of those thangs they stick in your ankle and she still messed up. Plus, she a drug addict, which is probably why it’s hard for her to stop robbing folks and business establishments and what have you. Everybody in the family call her Bonnie.