The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel by Jill Conner Browne

dollars, and I still haven’t opened the cards from the Goldbergs or my Aunt Bernice and Uncle Irving.”
    â€œWhat’s in here?” Mary Bennett said, picking up a package and shaking it next to her ear.
    â€œI don’t know. My pop handed it to me after the graduation ceremony,” Gerald said. “You can open it if you want.”
    â€œOh, goody!” Mary Bennett said. She stared at the object in her hands. “Well, this is interesting.”
    It was a book called How to Flirt with Chicks .
    Gerald blushed. “My father’s worried that I never have any girlfriends.”
    â€œWho does he think we are?” Mary Bennett asked.
    â€œHe means a serious girlfriend,” Gerald said. “My father’s old-fashioned, and wants me to date a ‘nice Jewish girl.’ He’s been trying to push me toward one of my former Hebrew school classmates, Roseanne Cohen. She has a mustache.”
    â€œI wouldn’t discount a mustache so quickly,” Mary Bennett said. “Just means the girl has plenty of testosterone coursing through her veins. She’s prolly a wildcat between the sheets.”
    â€œRoseanne’s not my type,” Gerald said dismissively. “What did you get for graduation, Patsy?”
    Mary Bennett raised an eyebrow at Gerald’s abrupt change of subject.
    â€œI got a new easel, a book about portrait painting, and French-language tapes. Oh, I’d love to go to Paris one day,” Patsy said. “Book” sounded like it rhymed with “spook.”
    â€œDon’t know how you’re going to parlez-vous français when ya still haven’t gotten the hang of plain ol’ Mississippi American,” Mary Bennett said.
    â€œToast time! I ‘borrowed’ this from home,” I said, unscrewing the top of a mason jar and pouring a small portion of liquid gold into each of our glasses. “Gen-u-wine moonshine, kids. Daddy knows a guy across the river who still cooks up a batch every now and then. It goes down smooth as silk, cured with a peeled apple, but it will kick your ass all over town if you’re not careful.”
    â€œWhere’d Tammy go?” Gerald asked, looking about Mary Bennett’s spacious kitchen.
    â€œMaybe she wandered off because we were talking about our graduation gifts,” I said. “That was kinda insensitive. Her mama probably couldn’t afford to get her anything.”
    â€œOh, she got plenty of graduation presents,” Gerald said. “Isn’t that right, Mary Bennett?”
    Mary Bennett shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    â€œYes. I guess she probably did,” I said with a smile. I’d forgotten about Tammy’s “gift elf.” When Tammy first joined our club she’d confessed that the main reason she hadn’t come to school the day after the Key Club incident was because she’d run out of Marcy’s house wearing a maid’s uniform, and had left her only skirt behind. She owned some slacks and blue jeans, but the school’s dress code prohibited girls from wearing pants. The next day “someone” left a basket on her doorstep brimming with brand-new skirts and dresses from The Tog Shoppe. The only person who could afford such an extravagance was Mary Bennett, but she never ’fessed up to it.
    â€œWe can’t have a toast without Tammy,” I said, plunking my glass down on the table. “I’ll get her. I know where she is.”
    â€œTell her to get her cute little ass in here so we can raise some hell,” Mary Bennett said, sitting in a cane-backed chair, swinging her long, tanned legs. “I can’t believe we’re shed of that shitty high school, forever.”
    I went out back into the impeccably groomed yard. St. Augustine grass thick as a carpet was tickling my bare feet, and the air was perfumed with Confederate jasmine. A kidney-shaped pool