Who Asked You? Read Free Page B

you still there?” (She’s called me this since she was two years old. I like it.)
    “I’m here, but I hear Lee David calling me, so can I call you back a little later on?”
    “Absolutely. I’ll be here. Love you.”
    Talk about raising kids by the book? Venetia gets an A+. She’s thirteen months younger than I am but people often think she’s the older one when we’re together. Her husband was rich when she met him, and I think that had something to do with his appeal because he’s still a long drive away from being cute. They live in Encino, not far from the Jacksons. Venetia wasted six years going to college and getting an MBA because she chose to be a stay-at-home mom. She spends Rodney’s money for a living, which is unfortunate because she doesn’t have great taste and she’s cheap, which is why she has a giant house full of corny stuff that doesn’t go together. It’s not too late to hire a decorator, but I have not figured out how to drop the hint.
    She has been a slave to two spoiled-rotten brats who grew up and turned out to be as nice as they can be: Lauren and Zachary. They both played soccer. Both play the frigging piano. Lauren speaks French. Zach chose Mandarin. I guess that’s like Chinese. It goes without saying, they’re both honor students. Three million carpooling miles later, Zach and Lauren will be graduating in less than two years but Venetia still drops them off and picks them up. I cannot imagine what she’s going to do when those kids go off to college and their elderly dog, Pepper, dies. And what does she do with so much free time on her hands, since her husband lives on airplanes and in hotel rooms? Cleans all day. Every day. Things that aren’t even dirty. I think she has orgasms doing laundry. She folds and irons everything. Even sheets. With spray starch! Of course she can afford a housekeeper, but claims she doesn’t trust them.
    No sooner do I cover the potato salad with a plastic lid and put it in the fridge than here comes Arlene calling. But I’m not falling for this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Venetia had called Arlene and told her to call me just to see if I would pick up the phone and have a long-drawn-out conversation with her so then Arlene would call Venetia back and tell her and Venetia would know that I was just blowing her off. So I don’t answer it.
    Sometimes I think they both think they know more about me than I know about myself. Arlene is my least favorite out of the whole clan but I tolerate her because she’s my sister. She is the one person who can get on all of my nerves at once. Why? Because she thinks she’s smarter than everybody since she got a master’s in psychology from Pepperdine. Venetia went to a state college and Arlene thinks Venetia’s credentials are inferior, but of course Arlene has only shared her true sentiments with me and not Venetia because she is two-faced. Arlene also loves to tell people how to live their lives based on her standards, which is why I try to keep as much of my personal life as is humanly possible from her. I do share some things with Venetia because she’s been saved and doesn’t believe in gossip. It’s too bad Arlene hasn’t used any of the stuff she learned at Pepperdine on herself, which is probably why she now sells real estate. She was a therapist for years but in the black community you can go broke giving bad advice. Thanks to Arlene and Venetia, it has become obvious to me that getting a college degree doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart. Or stable.
    I’m not one to hold grudges, but some people who are mean-spirited as children grow up to be mean-spirited adults. Arlene is one of them. Forty-five years ago she looked at me and said, “That hairstyle was not meant for you, Betty Jean. I think you’d look much better with short hair,” and that little bitch took a pair of pinking shears and cut off seven inches of my hair. “Maybe not,” she said after looking at her handiwork.
    I