“Yes you do.”

“You calling me a lie?”

“No.”

“I’m telling you. All my money is spent.”

“Where’s Daddy?”

“Barbecuing. Where you think?” I say, lying my butt off.

“Could you ask him? And tell him it’s for you?”

I just started laughing. First of all, I ain’t seen Cecil in over a month, but I didn’t feel like getting into it right then.

He groaned. “How about two hundred dollars, then?”

That’s when I slammed the receiver down, because I couldn’t stand hearing him beg. My hands was shaking so bad and my heart was beating a mile a minute, so I reached in the kitchen drawer, grabbed my spray, and took two or three quick puffs. Seem like he ain’t gon’ be satisfied till he use me up. That thought alone made me start crying, and I don’t like to cry, ’cause it always do me right in. I couldn’t get no air to come through my nose or mouth, and I clenched my fist and said in my head, “God give me strength,” as I made my way to my room and sat on the edge of the bed, turned on my machine, grabbed that plastic tube, and sucked and sucked until my palms got slippery and my forehead was so full of sweat that I snatched my wig off and threw it on the floor.

I love Lewis. Would give him my last breath. Lord knows I don’t want nothing bad to happen to him, but Lewis got problems I can’t solve. It’s some things love can do. And it’s some things it can’t do. I can’t save him. Hell, I’m trying to figure out how to save myself.

Now, Charlotte. She a bull, all right. And I wish I didn’t feel like this but I do: half the time I can’t stand her. I don’t know how her husband can tolerate her ass either. I feel sorry for Al, really. He’s one of them pussy-whipped, henpecked kinda husbands but try to pretend like he Superman in front of company. Everybody know Charlotte is a bossy wench from the word go. We ain’t spoke this time going on four months. I think the record is five or six. I can’t remember. But, hell, all I did was tell her she need to spend more time at home with them kids and she went off.

“When was the last time you worked full-time, took care of three kids and a husband, ran a household and three Laundromats, Mama, huh?”

“Never,” I said.

“So how can you sit there on your high horse telling me what you think I should be doing?”

“Get some help and stop trying to do it all yourself.”

“Do you know how expensive housekeepers is these days?”

“Oh, stop being so damn cheap, Charlotte. You don’t have no trouble spending it.”

“Cheap? Let me . . .”

“I heard Tiffany got expelled and Monique is running her mouth so much in class that she might be next.”