Careful of the Company You Keep. Angie Daniels

you like to get married?”

      Kayla shrugged.

      “How about a June wedding?” Danielle asked as she tapped an acrylic nail on the table.

      She frowned. “No, my cousin’s getting married then.”

      “Okay, how about July?” Nadine suggested.

      I nodded. “July is nice. It’s also one of the busiest times of the year. If you’re going to do a July wedding, then we’re going to have to start planning right away because March is right around the corner.”

      Danielle agreed. “Yep, that’s five months away.”

      “I’ll help.” Nadine was so excited you would have thought it was her gay ass getting married.

      “Hopefully all of you will help me,” Kayla replied, then glanced around the table. “I can’t do this without my three best friends.”

      We all nodded in agreement.

      Here it was, one of my best friends was getting married while my ass was one step away from divorce. I guess I could be a party pooper and say marriage is for the birds, but I know that isn’t true. I just haven’t found the right man yet. But damn, how long is it going to take? My ass has already been married three times.

      4

      Renee

       We ate, drank, then made plans to meet over the weekend to start planning the wedding. I headed home and glanced down at my phone, and John’s number flashed on the screen. “Die, bitch!” I screamed. What the hell did he want? As usual, I let it go to voice mail.

      I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being scared. Hell, after years of fucking around on my husband, then wondering what the hell I was thinking when I agreed to marry him in the first place, here I was finally free and I was scared shitless. Now don’t get me wrong. The last thing I needed was to be married to a booty bandit. Nevertheless, here I was at thirty-eight, starting over and nervous about failing my children. I’m a failure at love. After three husbands, I just wasn’t in a rush to go down that road again. Mario was my high school sweetheart; we lasted long enough to conceive two kids. The second one was military. I was married to Troy six months before I discovered his stupid ass was also married to someone else. And then there’s John. Other than the legal formalities, as far as I was concerned, he and I were through. But his calling me was just making matters worse. I wanted to move on and start a new life, but his punk ass just wasn’t willing to let me do that.

      After I caught John and Shemar together, he moved into an apartment while I stayed in the house long enough to sell it. John tried to reconcile, but my attitude was we didn’t have shit to talk about except how to split the money.

      When I moved back to Missouri, I purchased a three-bedroom house on the north side of town. Smaller than I was used to, but it was all mine and I didn’t have to share it with some booty-bandit mothafucka. Hell, my ass is even working a part-time administrative job on campus. Having a job took some getting used to, but at least I have the flexibility to work on my erotic novels when there isn’t shit else to do in the office, and I like that. Which reminds me, I have a book due in three months and need to put some fire under my butt if I’m going to meet my deadline.

      I turned onto my street and noticed a black woman was standing off to the side waving her hands frantically in the air. I pulled up beside her and rolled down my window.

      “Sistah, can you help me?”

      I took in her Goodwill wardrobe and the slobber running down the side of her mouth. Her eyes were as yellow as her teeth. Ugh! I leaned back in the seat. That bitch better not slobber on my Lexus. “Help you with what?” I tried to focus on her eyes and not her mouth, but that wasn’t easy to do.

      “I don’t get my food stamps until Friday and need some money to get some vegetables.”

      She looked like she was ready for her next crack fix. “Sorry, I don’t have any money. I’m trying to hang on until payday.”

      “Okay.”

      I was amazed at how easily she gave up. Anyone on drugs would have kept begging and pleading until I either cussed their ass out or gave in. Instead, she turned and walked up the gravel driveway to a raggedy duplex that looked like it had seen better days. I drove off feeling guilty because I had almost fifty dollars in my purse and enough in my checking account that I could have spared five dollars. But I knew that she would be like a stray dog. Once you gave her something, her ass would keep coming back.

      Even though I drove off, she was heavy on my mind. I don’t know, but something in her eyes reminded me of my mother. Bernice Brown was bipolar with a crack habit. I haven’t seen her since Tamara was five. We were all at Big Mama’s house having Christmas dinner when my mother came waltzing in drunk and smelling like a skunk. Mom had been MIA for the last six months. My aunts and uncles all acted like it was every day she came in carrying a half-eaten sweet potato pie. My older sister Lisa and I stopped eating and glanced at one another. Mama was in rare form that day. Singing, laughing, talking loud, obviously she had stopped taking her meds. Big Mama refused to believe anything was wrong with her daughter and moved to the kitchen to fix her a plate. After dinner, Mama disappeared again.

      It had been a pattern since we were teenagers. One day we came home from school and found a note on the door that said she went to Washington, DC, to find work. It was two months before she returned, and by then my stepfather had come down to take Lisa and my younger brother Andre back to Chicago to live with him. Paul never liked me, so I wasn’t invited to go. I stayed in the house until all the utilities were turned off, then moved in with my kids’ daddy, who was jealous and possessive. I put up with him for four years. Then when he started trying to beat me upside my head, I decided it was time to go before I spent the next twenty years behind bars for murdering his ass. That was a lonely time in my life. My mama gone, Lisa and Andre far away. My stepfather never cared for me and rarely let me see my brother and sister and screened my calls. I heard him once say he didn’t like me because “she acts like her damn daddy.” I found that ironic since I didn’t even know my real daddy. He had been murdered when I was too young to remember.

      Our relationship has been strained ever since, and while Lisa was alive she did everything she could to try to bring me and my stepfather together. Even when she was struggling with ovarian cancer, she made me promise to reach out to Paul and I tried, for Lisa, but now that she’s gone, I wrote him off like a bad debt. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t care less if I ever saw either of my parents again. Although it would be nice to at least know that my mother was okay.

      I pulled into the garage then stepped into the house where my kids were sitting at the dining room table playing a game of Monopoly.

      My sixteen-year-old daughter, Tamara, sprung from the chair. “Mama, you ready to go driving?”

      I rolled my eyes. I’ve been slowly teaching Tamara how to drive, but after she ran my car through the garage door two weeks ago, I don’t think my nerves could take it. “Tomorrow. I’ve been out drinking.”

      She turned her nose up at me. “You’re always getting drunk.”

      “Girl, be quiet. I ain’t had a drink all week.” I’ll admit I’ve been drinking a lot more lately. Shit, I’m stressed. But what the fuck? I’m married to a fag.

      I looked over at my tall eighteen-year-old son, who was probably stealing money from the bank while Tamara’s back was turned. “Quinton, I thought you were working tonight.”

      “I was, but it was slow so they sent some of us home.” He worked at Popeyes Chicken.

      I shrugged, grabbed my mail from the table, and let them get back to their game.

      “Mama, John called my cell phone looking for you!” Tamara called after me.

      Ugh! I wish that booty bandit would leave me alone. I fell back on my bed with a scowl and stared up at the ceiling fan above me. What I needed