Which brings me to Janelle. She lives in a dream world. Like she on some Fantasy Island kinda trip. She simple, really, and don’t understand that life is like a jigsaw puzzle. That you have to see the whole picture and then put it together piece by piece. Janelle want it all in one lump. That’s why she’s always trying to latch on to somebody to give it to her. Her husband that died spoiled her, gave her too much of everything. I liked him, though. I ain’t so sure if this dude George is the answer.

My other sister Charlotte don’t do nothing unless she positive she can get something out of it. She don’t like to make no big investments, just little ones, but she want big returns. Them Laundromats is in shambles, but she too cheap to fix ’em up. I can’t count how many businesses she done tried but quit because the money wasn’t coming fast enough. Plus, she thinks the whole world is suppose to revolve around her. She was the same way when she was little. She missing the point like a motherfucker.

All of ’em remind me year in and year out that if I had acted like a real man I’d probably still be married to Donnetta, probably be wearing a suit and tie (which to this day I do not own), working nine to five, picking Jamil up after school and taking him to soccer and Little League practice. But that ain’t the way the shit worked out. I’m divorced. And I’m glad. That girl had problems much deeper than mine, but my family made me feel like she was the one who got the booby prize. Donnetta put on a nice innocent act, which was how I fell for her in the first place. There was a softness to her I hadn’t seen in none of the black women I’d been out with. She pretended to have ambition just like she pretended to believe in me. But she was lazy. Didn’t know what she wanted. Just what she didn’t want. Our marriage ended up being a process of elimination, and then the shit just changed up completely after she found God. She wasn’t never all that crazy about sex, but after she got saved, if we did it once or twice a month, that was almost too much. To this day I don’t know if Donnetta ever even had an orgasm or not. She claimed she did, but for some reason I just never believed her. Patience is what I mostly got outta this marriage, ’cause I was hoping to have a few more kids, but after nine years and nothing never happened, she just said maybe she was finished, and that one was enough. I went through all them years of hell for nothing. But, then again, it was only because I ended up loving my son more than I did her.

Jamil: I wish I was in a better position to do for him, but since I’m not—at least for the time being—I just pretend like I don’t have a kid, otherwise I’d be eaten alive inside every day, which I already am, and it’s probably why I drink the way I do. If it wasn’t for Donnetta, I’d be in much better shape financially. She’s the reason I have to work under the table half the time, because right after we split up she insisted on taking me to court, knowing I wasn’t making nothing but two dollars over minimum wage. She didn’t care. She wanted that. And she got it.