God Don’t Like Ugly (25 page)

W
hat made my life even more miserable was the fact that
another
man had somehow come between Muh’Dear and me, and I didn’t want to have to live around that again. I wanted my mother to be happy, and if she could find happiness with some man, I would force myself to accept it.

“Me and Mr. King thinkin’ about takin’ a little trip ourselves one day soon,” Muh’Dear told me. She had only known him a few weeks!

I was shocked and horrified when Muh’Dear took a day off from her work and went to an amusement park with Mr. King. I was at “work” when they left, so I didn’t see what she had on until she got home. A pair of shorts!

I called Rhoda as soon as Muh’Dear and Mr. King left to go out to dinner. “My mama’s been drinking like a fish!” I yelled into the phone. “Not just beer, but whiskey and brandy.”

“What’s wrong with that? I wish my mama was well enough to get out and enjoy herself.” Rhoda was so calm she made me angrier.

“She’s never done that kind of stuff before that hard and heavy!”

I heard Rhoda let out a loud sigh.

“You better hurry and get yourself to Erie, Pennsylvania. You’re goin’ nowhere fast. Pee Wee is gone, I’m gone. Even Florence is gone. Why are you still hangin’ around Richland?”

“I’m saving money for my ticket.”

“You’ve been workin’ long enough to have saved your fare. Look, you sit down and decide what day you’re leavin’. I’m not goin’ to talk to you again until you call me from Erie.” Rhoda hung up on me. I felt bad because I had not even asked her about her pregnancy, and since she hung up on me, I was too afraid to call her right back to ask.

I cried for a while, then I sat down and figured out how much money I had saved up. Fifteen hundred dollars. The next evening when Muh’Dear got in from the movies and came to my room to tell me what a good time she had had with Mr. King, I told her. I told her, “I’m moving to Erie soon. I don’t know exactly when yet, but it’ll be before Thanksgiving, so I can avoid the holiday crowds.” A sad look appeared on her face. She let out a deep sigh, and then she sat down on the side of my bed. I had already turned in for the night.

She just looked at me for a moment, like she was studying every inch of my face.

“You really leavin’ me?” she rasped. Tears had already formed in her eyes. “You don’t have to go nowhere if you don’t want to. You can live with me the rest of your life if you want to.”

I shook my head. “I can’t, Muh’Dear. It’s time for me to get out in the world and see if I can make it on my own,” I said with a forced smile.

“You just got out of school. Lots of kids don’t leave home ’til they get in their twenties,” she informed me.

“I’m ready now, Muh’Dear. I’ve been ready for a long time.”

Muh’Dear sighed and looked around the room. “This room sure could stand a new paint job. Uh…I’ll get you some new suitcases in the mornin’.” She returned her attention to me and gave me a big smile, though there were still tears in her eyes.

“OK, Muh’Dear.” I smiled and gave her a bear hug.

I packed everything I wanted to take the Sunday night before my departure date, almost four months after my eighteenth birthday. I didn’t really have a plan as far as my future was concerned. I figured a few months or maybe a year or two in a place where I didn’t know anybody would give me the time I needed to get a grip. Besides, turning tricks, even for the short time I had, had worn me out. I felt dirty and cheap. Even though it was all behind me, I still took two baths a day, gargled frequently, and douched before going to bed every night.

Muh’Dear arrived home unexpectedly in a cab from Judge Lawson’s house around 5
P.M
. “Why are you home so early? I haven’t even put dinner on yet,” I said.

For once she didn’t look tired after working most of the day. She gave me one of her biggest smiles and gripped my shoulders. “’Cause I want to send you off with a bang. Get your coat. The cab’s waitin’. We got a reservation at Antonosanti’s.”

Muh’Dear and I didn’t talk much during the cab ride. In fact, I sat up front with the driver on purpose, hoping I could carry on a conversation with him instead. Muh’Dear asked me over and over if I had packed my Bible, my good dress, toothbrush, things like that. In addition to those items, I had also packed things that I would never use again, particularly clothes I’d outgrown, but that reminded me of special events I’d shared with Rhoda. Things Rhoda had given to me, like some stiletto heels her Aunt Lola had given to her that she didn’t want. I had worn the shoes only once, to the prom. I had also packed my prom dress, which I had not had cleaned on purpose. I would never wear it again, so the stain made by Lena Cundiff’s punch didn’t matter. I left it stained because I never wanted to forget what she did to me and what I did to her.

After we entered the restaurant, Mr. Nelson was the first person I spotted, sitting at the bar. He had an unlit cigar in one hand and a shot glass full of whatever he was drinking in the other. Sitting next to him was Mr. Antonosanti. He was smoking his cigar, and there was a full shot glass in his hand, too. I would have gone over to speak to them if Uncle Johnny had not appeared, staggering from a side entrance near the men’s room. Antonosanti’s was the nicest restaurant in Richland, but it was too expensive for average people. It was a large, dimly lit place with live plants leaping out from big vases on the floor. On the walls were paintings of Roman soldiers in uniforms hugging thick-bodied women. Music, women wailing in Italian, filled the main dining area.

The place was crowded with well-dressed white patrons stretching their necks and shading their eyes with their hands to look at me and Muh’Dear as we strutted proudly across the floor. I was glad Muh’Dear requested a booth near the back for privacy. “Let us try to stroll into a place like this in Florida. Them white folks would set the dogs on us so fast,” Muh’Dear said under her breath.

The only thing I felt a little uneasy about was the fact that we were so casually dressed. Under my trench coat I had on blue jeans and a gray smock. Muh’Dear had on her black-and-white maid’s uniform. We didn’t check our coats at the front. We didn’t remove them and place them on the other side of the booth until we had ordered. “Add a bottle of your best champagne,” Muh’Dear told the waiter. The friendly young man hesitated, then looked at me with his eyebrows raised. “Don’t worry, she’s twenty-one. You can ask your boss, Mr. Antonosanti…good friend of my boss, Judge Lawson,” Muh’Dear told him, speaking out of the side of her mouth. The waiter nodded and winked before he left. “They better not give me no stuff in here. I’ll sic Judge Lawson on ’em and make ’em lose their liquor license. Straighten your collar, girl.”

I straightened my collar and brushed off my dingy smock. “I guess we could have dressed up a little,” I said with a sigh.

“We didn’t have time. I wasn’t sure I could get away from the judge, so that’s why I didn’t call you at the house earlier to tell you we was goin’ out.” Muh’Dear smiled as our waiter returned pushing a cart with a bucket on top of it. I didn’t know one bottle of champange from another. But since Muh’Dear had requested the best, I was sure this would be something good.

“Compliments of Mr. Nelson,” the waiter told us.

I gasped and turned to look toward the bar. Mr. Nelson had left, but Mr. Antonosanti and Uncle Johnny were still nursing their drinks.

After the waiter popped open the champagne, poured it into our glasses and left, Muh’Dear took a long swallow and let out a great belch. “It’s too late for me, but I hope you marry a man like Brother Nelson someday.”

I took a long swallow before I answered, frowning at the way the liquid burned my throat “I hope I do, too,” I replied, covering my mouth with my hand to silence a burp I felt coming on.

Muh’Dear refilled our glasses. “We forgot to toast.” she laughed excitedly, waving the bottle in the air. After we toasted to “nothin’ but good times in our future,” Muh’Dear set her glass on the table and fished a handkerchief out of her purse, blew her nose, and dabbed both eyes. “I guess now is the time for me to let you know just how good a man Brother Boatwright was.”

“What?” I had to finish my drink to handle whatever was coming. Muh’Dear put her handkerchief back in her purse, then pulled out a long white envelope.

She cleared her throat and blinked real hard a few times first. “This is for you from Brother Boatwright.” She opened the envelope and pulled out what I thought was a money order and slid it across the table to me.

I didn’t say anything right away because I didn’t know what to say. It was a ten-thousand-dollar cashier’s check made out to me.

“He had told me, bless his heart, if he died before me, I was to use his life insurance money to pay for his funeral and split the change fifty-fifty with you. But he told me not to give yours to you until I felt it was the time you needed it the most.”

“I…I don’t…know…know what to say,” I stuttered. I didn’t know what to say. If Muh’Dear could have read my mind, she probably would have fainted. I was thinking about all the whoring I’d done to scrape up the money I needed to finance my relocation. My hand started shaking so hard Muh’Dear got a worried look on her face and filled our glasses again.

“As soon as you get to that Erie, put it in a bank. And whatever you do, don’t go around blabbin’ to
nobody
about it. Folks get crazy when they know you settin’ on a gold mine. It would be just like some smooth-talkin’ con man like that Johnny yonder there at the bar to try to take it from you to drink and gamble away and spend on some other woman. Some men is like that. I know ’cause I seen ’em do it. Don’t slouch in your seat, girl. You’ll get a humpback.”

I was glad the waiter arrived with our steak and spaghetti dinners. The distraction allowed me enough time to catch my breath. I looked at the check for a full minute to make sure I was seeing right. “Ten thousand dollars?” I mouthed. “This is for ten thousand dollars!”

“I know how much it’s for. I’m the one that went to the bank to get it. Don’t buck your eyes out like that with all these white folks lookin’ at us, girl.”

“Oh what am I going to do with all this money?” I asked, waving the check in the air.

“You’re goin’ to carry it with you and save it for when you really need it. Now put it in your pocketbook before somebody come snatch it.”

Mr. King drove Muh’Dear and me to the bus station the next morning. “I’ll wait in the car,” he told us, after giving me a big hug. Muh’Dear insisted on waiting inside with me until I got checked in. He started to leave, then turned back with a silly grin on his face. “Go with God, Annette.” I just smiled and waved to him.

“I have a feelin’ I won’t see you again for a long, long time,” Muh’Dear said. She looked so tired and old, even with the makeup. Working for so many years and such long hours had taken its toll. It was only at this moment that I was truly glad she had Mr. King. “At least, not the little gal that’s gettin’ on that bus today. You ain’t goin’ to never be the same.”

“You’re right, Muh’Dear. I’ll never be the same again,” I said sadly. I promised myself that the old Annette Goode was dead. My rebirth had been a long time coming. I was leaving behind all the ugliness I had known for eighteen years.

We stood in line behind seven other travelers, and the line was moving so slow Muh’Dear and I got a chance to talk a lot.

“I knowed it. You ain’t never goin’ to be the same no more after you leave here today.”

“How did you know?”

“Oh, just a feelin’. You’ll get a fancy job workin’ for the major or a politician and eventually forget all about us little people. It happens all the time. Your Aunt Berneice’s latest old man called me the other day from New Jersey, where him and Berneice moved to work for the Piaz family and told me you’ll be home in a month beggin’ for a piece of toast, standin’ in the welfare line, or holdin’ a tin cup. Like he would know. He ain’t never even met you. What he don’t know is Berneice is on the verge of gettin’ a divorce from his sorry ass. I know you was too young then to remember, but the Piaz family the ones what had the old granny you used to set with on the porch.”

“I remember that old lady,” I said, smiling sadly. I recalled the many times the old woman and I sat on the porch throwing rocks at cars and chasing kids with switches.

“You remember old lady Piaz? You wasn’t but three,” Muh’Dear said, a surprised, amused look on her face. “You can’t remember back that far.”

“I remember a lot that happened when I was three and four years old. All that walking to get to your work, my squirrel with the white paw, that old woman that hit you with her cane, that tornado, and most of all those dreadful clodhoppers we found in a trash can that you made me wear.”

Muh’Dear gave me a strange look, and said, “You don’t remember your daddy, do you?”

“Oh yes I do. He left the morning after that tornado with a white woman in a green car. You told me a long time ago he moved to Texas and that we would never see him again,” I said, my eyes staring off to the side.

“And we won’t, I hope!” Muh’Dear snarled. “Anyway, I know you’ll do good in that Erie, Pennsylvania. Me and you, we natural-born survivors. Brother Boatwright comin’ into our lives was just the beginnin’. God ain’t though with us yet. Look what He done for us—He got Brother Boatwright still lookin’ out for us from beyond the grave…leavin’ us all that insurance money.”

“I know. I know,” I said with great sadness and my head lowered. “And I’ll show Aunt Berneice and her old man, whoever he is. Them and everybody else,” I said firmly. And I would. I just didn’t know what I was going to show people.

“You ain’t got to show me nothin’. I’m your mama. I don’t care if you make a fool out of yourself or what. I just want you to be happy. I’ll tell you one thin’. Mr. Parker at the hardware store, you remember I cleaned for his mama before Judge Lawson hired me. He told me to tell you if things don’t work out for you in that new city, he’ll give you a job behind the counter at his hardware store.”

“Tell him thanks.” We both had tears in our eyes, but somehow we both managed a smile.