Desperate hoodwives: an urban tale by Meesha Mink & De'nesha Diamond

Author:Meesha Mink & De'nesha Diamond [Mink, Meesha & Diamond, De'nesha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, General, Romance: Modern, Fiction - Romance, Contemporary, Romance - Contemporary, Modern fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), General & Literary Fiction, African American Novel And Short Story, African American women, Adult, African American, Erotic fiction, Romance - Adult, Inner cities, Atlanta (Ga.), Urban Life
ISBN: 9781416537526
Publisher: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2008.
Published: 2008-01-08T06:00:00+00:00

Lexi

April in Atlanta is almost like summer anywhere else. The weather’s nice. Hot but not too hot. Mid-seventies. But it’s enough to draw people out their houses like they’re thawing out from winter.

And Bentley Manor is no exception.

You never really know how many people live in the complex until it gets warm outside. And what a sight some of my neighbors make.

After work, I make baked spaghetti for dinner and change into a pair of jean capris and a tank top. WooWoo didn’t get off work until five so I take myself right out there with Miz Cleo and Miz Osceola.

I like hanging out with the ladies. They know any and everything that goes on in Bentley Manor. Plus they’re funny and wise. They remind me of my nana.

“This place sure has changed over the years, ain’t it, Cleo?” Osceola asks, her light-complexion skin speckled with flat moles and freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her t-shirt reads: BUSH — No More Years, and she smokes a Marlboro cigarette with one hand and cracks the shells of boiled peanuts with the other.

“You ain’t never lied, Osceola.” Cleo’s skin is smooth, dark, and tight like she’s straight from the motherland.

“And these men. I ain’t never seen so many during the day. In between nine to five I don’t want to look in no man face ’cause that mean he ain’t working.” Osceola pitches the emptied shells into a plastic bag by her feet before tossing a few peanuts into her mouth on that one.

I wince from the sun as I look around at the parking lot. There are a lot of men loitering about to say it’s just after three in the afternoon. I didn’t say anything, though. When you sat with these ladies you usually didn’t have to. They have enough conversation for anybody.

I reach down beside me for the big glass of sweet tea I brought downstairs with me.

“Especially all these men running ’round here hooked on that stuff,” Osceola adds. “That dang-on Smokey make me sick, always ’round here begging people for money.”

Cleo shifts in her seat. “Yeah, and looking like he’ll snatch your bag in a hot second.”

Osceola drops her bag of peanuts into her lap and reaches down beside her to pick up her bat. “I triple dog-dare him to snatch mine.”

Cleo laughs as she holds up her own bat. “I think he got enough of these,” she jokes.

The ladies tap their bats together and it reminds me of the Wonder Twins’ powers activating. We all just laugh and laugh.

“A lot of these no good men ’round here could use a good whack in the head and on the behind.” The ice in Osceola’s jelly jar of water rattles as she takes a deep drink of it.

These women sat in these chairs at the end of the U-shaped complex from early morning until just before the sun starts to set. It’s the best position to see every car that turns into the lot, everybody coming and going from building to building, every dang-on thing going down in Bentley Manor.

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