The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel Read Free

“heckfiring,” or even “shooting,” she was using the granddaddy of all curse words. (The one we solemnly referred to as the “fire truck” word because it started and ended with the same letters.)
    Even a potty-mouth like myself respected the F-word as cussing’s fine china: I only drug it out for very special occasions. But Little Miss Redhead was saying it over and over. Maybe she wasn’t quite the rich-girl-china-doll she appeared to be at first glance.
    As I got closer, I also noticed her clothes were completely wrong. She wore the snob-city uniform of a twin set and skirt, but her sweater was a bit too tight and there were picks and pulls—signs of repeated wearings—in the Banlon knit. The silver-spooners wore perfectly smooth Breck girl flips and pageboys, but her hair was big—too big, and teased up like a red space helmet—and her blush and powder was a half inch thick.
    â€œYou new here?” I asked her. “Seems like you’re having some trouble.”
    â€œI can’t get in my fuckin’ locker,” she said with a sigh when she saw it was just big ol’ me. “I tried, and now I’m fucking late for home ec.”
    â€œWhy don’t you let me give it a spin?” I offered, marveling at the fire trucks flying out of her lacquered lips.
    She gratefully handed me her combination, and I took to twirling the dial until the locker popped open. Inside was a photo of the Beatles, a smiley-face sticker, and a textbook called Adventures in Home Living.
    â€œThank you so much!” she said. “My name’s Tammy.”
    â€œI’m Jill.”
    â€œNice to meet you, Jill. I just moved here from Killeen, Texas, and don’t know a fuckin’ soul.” She pointed to a poster on the wall that read “Key Club Information Meeting at 2 p.m. today in the gym. Open to All Interested High School Girls.” “I was thinking I’d join this. Are you going?” she asked with what would have been a beautifully executed hair toss except that not a single one of her heavily Aqua-Netted hairs moved from its appointed spot in her coiffure.
    â€œNo,” I said, quickly.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI wouldn’t fit in. It’s mostly for girls who live north of Yazoo Road,” I said, hoping she’d take the hint.
    â€œIt says it’s ‘open to all high school girls,’” Tammy said.
    â€œThey have to say that ’cause the first meeting is held on school property, but they’re very particular in their membership. Their favorite activity is listing all the people who they WON’T let join.”
    â€œWell, lucky for me I do live north of Yazoo Road,” she said with a smile. “Guess I better get to class. Thanks so much for helping me, Jill.”
    I’d heard they had some mighty big hair out in Texas, but a style like Tammy’s wouldn’t get her into the Key Club. And the first time she let fly with a fire truck, they’d fall over in a faint—or pretend to, anyway.
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    Our lunch group was no Key Club. We ate outside on the steps of the vocational building. I settled beside Mary Bennett, who had a pronounced Southern accent. Where one syllable would do, she used three, saying my name so it came out like “Ji-ay-all.” Bennett wasn’t Mary’s last name. It was part of her first name, kinda like Billie Sue or Betty Lou.
    Unlike the rest of our lunchmates, Mary Bennett lived north of Yazoo Road in a sprawling English Tudor, and if it weren’t for a tiny little problem of hers, she’d be having her pimento cheese sandwich (or “sammich,” as we say in the South) and bottle of grape Nehi under the cool shade of a large magnolia tree with the other silver-spooners instead of shuffling around in the red dirt with us.
    Back then, when people talked about Mary Bennett—and Lord knows they did—they would say (with an