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here so we can get us some of that lasagna before them greedy tourists eat everything up.”

Chapter 3
LULA HAWKINS
    â€œI feel like a five-dollar streetwalker,” I mumbled, struggling to sit up in the hospital bed I’d been confined to for the past two days. My hair was long, but so tangled and matted, it looked and felt like a skullcap. My lips were dry and my eyes so red and puffy, putting on makeup had been a waste of my time. I frowned at the lipstick and compact on the stand next to my bed. I had never been in a hospital before in my life.
    The grim-faced doctors and stern nurses swishing in and out of the room dressed in white from head to shoes, looked like sheep. I had given birth to a huge baby, almost ten pounds. Delivering him had been rough, almost splitting my crack in two. I’d been stitched up so tight, I felt like a virgin. And a dumb one, at that.
    â€œAnd you look like one of them five-dollar wenches, too.” Agreeing with me was Odessa Hawkins, my best friend for the past six years and my stepsister Verna’s lover. “I told you to leave that lowlife motherfucker alone last year when he disappeared on you for two months. Not to mention all the money he borrowed from you.”
    A lot of people thought that Odessa and I were related, and the way my daddy got around, that was a strong possibility. She and I had the same dark brown skin with a few black freckles across the nose, thin lips, and large slanted brown eyes. Cute, maybe even pretty to some people, but not without a little help from our friends at the cosmetics counter. Every time I looked in Odessa’s face, it was like looking in a mirror.
    â€œLarry always paid me back—”
    â€œGirl, don’t you be defendin’ that cheesy-ass bastard to me, ’less you wanna spend another few days stretched out in this hospital bed. I won’t be as gentle with your black ass as Mrs. Larry was. Me and Verna both tried to tell you that that young-ass punk wasn’t good for nothin’ but a good fuck. And if that’s all he was, you didn’t need him. All the money you loaned him, you could have invested in a good vibrator until you found yourself a real man,” Odessa said, growling, hovering over me like a vulture.
    I sighed and glanced around the long, narrow room, looking from one bed to the other. There were ten beds, ten women—five beds, five women on each side of the room facing each other. It was hard to have a private conversation, but none of the other women seemed to be interested in anything Odessa and I had to say. They were too busy nursing their newborn babies and bragging on the telephone about how happy they were.
    As far as I knew, there was only one other Black woman in the maternity ward, and that was Larry’s wife. That bitch from hell. I found out a few hours after our scuffle in the department store parking lot, that her name was Belinda. Odessa knew her from her old neighborhood and had tangled with one of her older sisters over a man. But that was during Odessa’s teen years before she realized women lovers were more to her liking.
    Belinda Holmes was in a private room across the hall. I think that if we both hadn’t been so weak, we probably would have duked it out some more right in the hospital. I had a feeling that she wanted to kick my ass some more, the way she glared at me every time I ran into her in the hallway. But I was through with that weak drama. Larry was not worth it. He had not even checked to see how I was doing, ask about his son, or even acknowledge my presence when I encountered him in the waiting room. After all I’d gone through with that man, this was my reward.
    â€œA twenty-eight-year-old man ain’t out for nothin’ but a good time. A thirty-three-year-old woman ought to know that,” Odessa said with a smirk, giving me a stern look and adjusting a pillow under my head. She had on a man’s shirt, unbuttoned