Shari PoindexteR

On the morning of the third day that James Henry had been gone, Ree Ree, woke up smiling with Joojoo on her mind. She had gone back and forth from one thought—let him go on about his business, to the next—I can't live in this world without him, and it had taken two whole days for her will to take over her mind and lay it all down. Her body had gotten tired of being tired and had simply closed its eyes. She slept so hard she didn’t dream of anything at all, but awoke with her head filled with a hoodoo potion from the Alabama woods. Ree Ree was sopping wet from the heat and grinning because she had decided that she would have this man and had figured out a way to get him back to boot...

Emanuel Woolfolk was an ass man.
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So when he walked into Curley's Diner, he kept on past the women in the booth closest to the entrance without making eye contact with the one in the middle. And she was a cutie, too,—pecan with narrow eyes that closed as tight as an oyster when she laughed. Unfortunately, her friends had been talking loud and teasing the lady in the middle, and that told Man she didn't have what it took to be on his team.

"No disrespect, Renee, but the outside is a reflection of the inside," the pecan-colored girl had said.

"What's that supposed to mean, Lena?"

"I'm saying, you got all your goodies on display, girl. Of course, the brothers are gonna hound," Lena said.

The other girl, said, "Umm," took a french fry in her mouth and looked the other way.

"I think you’re jealous." Renee said and flashed a tricky grin.

"Sister, please. Of what?" Lena was smiling, too.

Renee ran her hands over her breasts to smooth her fitted top and said, "Because my body is righteous, and you ain't got no ass."

That had been a mighty powerful earful to Man, posterior aficionado that he was, and he had just walked on by...

The story is that all the mess really got started when Roy C died in 1990. The live man kept the women at a distance, but it was the dead man that brought them together. His death caused quite a ruckus down in Gordo, Alabama. A town like that was much too small to have two women love on the same man and be civil to one another. People just weren't accustomed to that type of behavior. No cat fights and scratched-up faces? No name-calling or neck-rolling to send that first slap whipping through the air? And, of course, it didn't matter that they were about sixty when Roy C. died because women fought over men in small towns no matter what their ages just because it was entertainment for the rest of the folk. Not to mention, the notoriety... "Sally, I heard you whupped up on Anna Mae's head last week at the five and dime. You bad, girl, you sho' is bad," or "Anna Mae, Sally didn't have nothing better to do than start some mess over a man that ain't even hers. You strong, girl, you sho' is strong." And so it was every once in a while some young man-crazy girls or old fame-seeking women would get to fighting to give credence to the rumors that could have floated around their too-small towns for years. But never, not in Gordo, anyway, had the women become friends, (or lovers depending on who's telling the story). And it was an interesting story, even beautiful... or disgusting depending again on who was telling the story...