Please, Baby, Please

Chapter 1

Denise “Neecy” Ballard took the hairclip out of her hair and laid it on the bathroom sink. She licked the remnants of chocolate off her fingers and removed her rings. She laid her earrings beside them and carefully eased on the scale, her eyes squeezed shut. Then Neecy looked down and squinted with one eye at the numbers on the scale.

She gasped and almost hit the floor scrambling off.

Horror filled her as the reality of how much she really weighed dawned. It was far worse than she’d thought. She grabbed her sweatpants and stretched out T-shirt off the floor and pulled them on.

The she tore out of the bathroom, searching for her step stool.
Twenty-five pounds of blubber was her reward for her hard-fought months of self-deprivation. All nail biting, meeting-attending, twelve-stepping, whine-mongering abstinence from shopping had gained her was twenty-five pounds of lard on her already too-generous rear.

Enough was enough.

“Hello, my name is Neecy and I’m a damn fool,” she muttered to herself as she climbed up on the stool and felt frantically on the top of her kitchen cabinet. Where was the box she’d stashed?
Ah, there it was. She reverently opened the box, staring at the contents through the sudden moisture swimming in her eyes. With a trembling hand she removed the forbidden precious plastic objects and spread them on the counter.

Neecy was done with denial that was transforming her into a fat slob. She was through with saying no to her inner desires. She was giving up on doing without what she really wanted.

She swept her credit cards from the counter and headed for the door. She, Neecy Ballard, was going shopping.

“How’re you doing, girl? Long time, no see!” Pearl, called out as Neecy entered the Funky Divas, her favorite clothes boutique. Funky had plenty of designer labels, but it was more about a certain unique style. All their clothes aspired to be one-of-a-kind and suited to women who cultivated their own special style, whether old-school soul or down-and-dirty funk.

Neecy smiled at Pearl who looked like a high-fashion model and at first glance, it seemed like she’d be aloof and rude. But Pearl was genuine and sweet. She always remembered your name too.

“I know I haven’t been in here for a while,” Neecy said. “Honey, I’ve been on a money diet.” Neecy patted her purse.
“I’ve just the cure for that. We’re putting some Stella Sharon originals on sale tomorrow. I don’t have them out yet, but for my best customer . . .”

Stella Sharon! Neecy’s mouth watered.

“Tell you what; I’ll meet you at the dressing room with some selections. I know you’ll love them.” Pearl sailed away.

Neecy drifted towards the dressing room. A display of dresses labeled with a famous movie star’s name diverted her attention. Neecy had a thing for dresses. Sometimes she wished the long gowns of several centuries ago were still de rigueur for everyday wear. She loved laces, velvet, and lush fabrics in long, sweeping cuts. But if she were alive back in the day when that was the style for day-to-day wear, she’d probably be sporting slave muslin. There was good reason why she could never get into historical romances.

Pearl held an armful of dresses at the entrance into the dressing room. “They’re only half price,” she said with a grin.

Neecy drew in her breath and reverently took the dresses from Pearl’s arms. Stella Sharon at half price, she thought as she stroked the rich fabrics. It didn’t get much better than this. She moved into the dressing room feeling as if she were in a happy trance.

A velvet and black lace dress with long fitted sleeves lay on top of the pile. So elegant. Neecy’s jeans and T-shirt dropped to the floor as she pulled the dress over her head. And pulled . . . and pulled . . .

No way was she getting this dress over her rear. Were Stella Sharon clothes running small lately? She peered at the tag. Size ten as usual. The dress size wasn’t running small; the size of her rear was running large.

Neecy wanted to sink down to the floor and wail. But she squared her shoulders and hung the dress back on the hanger, grabbed the armload of clothes and went to find Pearl.

“I need a size twelve. It seems that prolonged shopping deprivation has caused my hips and thighs to expand.”

Pearl bit her lip. “No prob. But the selection isn’t as great in twelve.”
A few minutes later, armed with another load of clothes, Neecy headed back to the dressing room. The dress lying on top was burgundy brocade shot with silver thread number–low cut with a fitted bodice. Luscious.

She dropped her clothes to the floor again and unzipped the zipper. This time she stepped into the dress and pulled it up. She reached behind her to pull up the zipper and gasped. There was no way she was going to zip it up without tearing the zipper completely out from the seams. Lord-a-mercy. Could it be true she was a size fourteen? How humiliating.

She carried the dresses back to Pearl with a heavy step and even heavier heart.

“You didn’t like any of them?” Pearl asked with disbelief in her voice.
“They were too small,” Neecy’s voice was as tiny as she wished her rear would return to being. Size ten apparently was nothing but a faint memory.

“We have two dresses in fourteen. Would you like to try them on?”
Neecy nodded, numb.

The size fourteens had no lace and no shimmer. They were plain and toned down, as if a woman that big had no right to feminine frills and frippery. Neecy tried the navy blue one on first, with some resentment. At least she could zip it up. But when she looked in the mirror, she gasped when she saw how tight it pulled across her hips and her rear, the fabric pulling into ugly horizontal lines.

That was when she panicked. No, no, no, it couldn’t be. She rushed out of Funky Divas, leaving the dresses puddled on the floor.
Neecy slowed down when she hit the street and stared at Big Gal’s, a boutique across the street from Funky Divas that catered to bigger women. Stella Sharon didn’t bother to pretty up her size fourteen dresses, so a dress bigger than a size fourteen would probably resemble an army pup tent and be just as pretty. Was this what she had to look forward to?

Weight Watchers loomed large in her future, but right now Neecy needed to shop like a junkie needed a fix. She wasn’t ready to go into Big Gal’s, and her ego was too frail to face the size tens clodhoppers her big feet needed. She’d have to hit the jewelry and accessories. Accessories were like money– used wisely, there was no such thing as too much.

She headed across the street to Bon Bon’s. She didn’t have a diamond-sized wallet, but Bon’s specialized in fine replicas, expensive costume jewelry really. Their hats, scarves and purses were kicking too. She’d spent many a contented time there. Maybe a few pairs of earrings or a hat would cheer her up.

Neecy been at Bon Bon’s a good hour before she finally felt like she’d achieved shopping nirvana. It was exactly what she needed. She tied a huge floppy straw hat with purple silk flowers and a purple scarf under her chin. She’d never worn exactly that sort of hat before. Tying the large purple bow under her chin, she peered into the mirror. It wasn’t bad really, with a sundress it would be– Her thought was interrupted by the beep-beep of a truck backing up. She glanced through the plate glass window and saw a tow truck backing up to her car.

Neecy felt as if somebody dumped cold ice water down the back of her T-shirt as she recognized one of the two men who climbed out of the truck. She ran out of the store, the hat flopping in the wind.

“Hey, what are you doing to my car?” she yelled. Neecy had a good idea of what was up, but she wanted the rat to say the words.

The man pushed the baseball cap back on his head and squinted down at her. He was easily six-two with nut-brown skin and one of those lean, yet muscled, bodies. When Neecy first went in to his small used auto dealership and met Joseph Vaughn, he’d almost given her a heart attack. The man was so fine, her jaw had flopped to the ground and she had to remember to pick it up. She’d known right then that she was going to buy a car from him. If most of his customers were female, he was probably a millionaire, she decided.

“I’m repossessing my car,” he said.

Those words made Neecy so mad, that his overall gorgeousness almost stopped registering.

“Re-repossessing your car!” Neecy sputtered. Joe Vaughn might be the handsomest man she’d ever laid eyes on in her natural life, but he couldn’t get away with this. “I bought and paid for that car!”

“Maybe you bought it, but paid for it? Nope, don’t think so,” he drawled. “That’s the problem.”

“Lady, lady!” A plump saleswoman emerged from Bon Bons. “You didn’t pay for our hat.”

Neecy gritted her teeth. “Can’t you see that I’m having an emergency?” she said to the saleslady.

“So not paying is something of a habit for you, huh?” the man asked with a hint of humor in his voice.

She shot him a glance that she hoped would strike him dead where he stood, and dug around her purse. She found a ten-dollar bill and proffered it to the woman.

The woman looked at it as if Neecy had tried to hand her a dead rodent. “The hat is fifty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents,” she said with a sniff. “Plus tax,” she added.

Sixty dollars! They got to be kidding. “Tell you what, you can have the hat back,” Neecy said, giving the bow under her chin a tug.

“The hat is clearly bent and you’re sweating. It’s damaged. I’m sorry, but we have a policy of not accepting damaged goods as returns.”

“Returns? I haven’t even bought the darned thing.”

Then she noticed that a hulking security guard had emerged from the store and was staring at her with ill disguised anticipation. Was he trembling from the effort of suppressing his desire to engage her in a choke hold and throw her to the ground? Neecy wondered. And Joe the hunk and his buddy had commenced hooking up her car to the truck.

“Here take my credit card and charge it,” Neecy said, thoroughly outdone.

The lady took the card and disappeared into the store without a backward glance.

“Stop it! Stop it right now. I’m not allowing you to take my car!” Neecy turned her attention back to the urgent matter of getting her car snatched away from right under her nose.

“Listen lady, you disappeared without a forwarding address and you missed the second month’s payment. If you needed the car that badly, you should have paid for it like we agreed.”

“Can’t we work something out?” Neecy pleaded. How would she function without her car in suburban Atlanta? Folk’s feet barely touched the ground around here. Heavens, there weren’t even any sidewalks.

“I have to have a car. What can I do?”

Joe pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket. “You can pay me seven-hundred and thirty-nine dollars and forty cents,” he said.

Then the store lady and the security guard came charging toward her. “This credit card was declined,” she said. “We’re calling the police if you don’t pay immediately!”

Neecy’s mouth trembled. “I must have given you the wrong card. Sorry.” She dug in her handbag for her wallet grateful for the opportunity to hide the shame she suddenly felt.

“Try this one,” she said, holding out another card to the lady. “And if that one doesn’t work, try this one.”

“Stay here and keep an eye on her,” the saleslady told the security guard and stalked back into the store, mumbling under her breath.
Neecy sank to the curb and sat there in defeat as she watched the two men hook up her car to the tow truck. She was not normally a crier, but this day had simply been too much for her. She rummaged in her oversize purse for a tissue.

“Here.” Joe stuffed a tissue in her hand. Neecy gratefully took it and wiped her eyes.

“Tell you what. Why don’t you ride down to the shop with us and we’ll sit down and see what we can work out,” Joe said.

Neecy glanced up at him surprised. The she blew her nose. “Okay,” she said, feeling quite overcome.

The saleslady came out with her credit cards and a slip for her to sign. Joe held out his hand and helped her to her feet. It was with a sense of resignation and familiar shame that she slid in the tow truck to sit sandwiched between the two men, her new hat thoroughly squashed like her spirits. How had she let things get so bad, Neecy wondered for the millionth time?