God Don’t Like Ugly (34 page)

“Do you realize what you’ve done to me? You’ve burdened me with information that could destroy me,” I said levelly.

“I thought you told me I could tell you anythin’,” she snapped.

“Not about one murder after another. What about all that talk about God? What about your children? What about me and this additional pain?”

“Look, you’re the one who brought up the subject. I didn’t have to tell you about April—”

“But I knew you killed her.”

“Well you wanted to hear it and I…told you. It’s been hard carryin’ all this on my shoulders alone. Just like that mess I got myself into by getting pregnant by my husband’s best friend. It helped ease my mind when I finally told you about him and our affair. I feel better now tellin’ you about…that cop and Granny Goose.”

“Well, I don’t feel better knowing all that. If there’s anything else, from the past or in the future, keep it to yourself.”

“That means I can’t talk to you anymore?” Rhoda leaned back and looked me over critically.

“Is that the way you see it?” I asked.

“That’s the way it’s goin’ to be. After tonight, we won’t talk or see one another again. Ever,” she told me.

“Maybe that’s the best thing for us to do now. We’ve outgrown each other,” I asserted, with hot tears streaming down the sides of my face.

“Tell me, Annette. After you’ve had time to think about this conversation and all we’ve invested in this friendship and the future we won’t have together, will you be sorry then?” she asked. There were tears on her face, too.

I gave Rhoda a quick, halfhearted smile and told her with all the sincerity I could come up with, “I’m sorry now.” I was sorry. I never expected or wanted our friendship to end this way.

“I can let myself out.” She sighed heavily, dismissing me with a wave of her hand. Without another word, Rhoda left my room for the last time. I waited until I heard her slam the front door downstairs before I allowed more tears to spill out of my burning eyes onto my face. From my front window I watched her strut down our walkway and on across the street to her parents’ house. She didn’t turn around to look, and I was glad she didn’t. I didn’t want her to see my face again, and I didn’t want to see hers.

It was a few minutes later before I returned to the living room downstairs to turn off the lights and lock up. Before I did, I lifted the pan of candy she had made for me off the coffee table and took it into the kitchen, where I threw it in the trash.

“I
just seen Rhoda gettin’ in a cab with her suitcase!” Muh’Dear informed me. She had come into my room before leaving for work the next morning. It was so early, it was still dark outside. I had slept well. Not a single dream had interrupted my night. I woke up feeling cleansed and free and strong. The aroma of the grits and bacon Muh’Dear had prepared for breakfast gave me a warm feeling. I couldn’t wait to get up and get dressed and eat. Even though I had been baptized more than once, I had never felt what some people described as a rebirth. Until then.

“Uh, yeah. Her husband called up last night and told her to come home. Her little boy is sick,” I lied. I sat up in bed. “You look nice, Muh’Dear. Is that uniform new?”

“Well, when is she comin’ back? I thought she was goin’ to spend some time with you celebratin’ your return.”

“Uh…I’ll talk to her and find out when she’s coming back. Did you make some coffee?”

“Uh-huh. Oh! Guess what? I even made you some of that cappuccino you and Rhoda like so much. I figured you and her and Pee Wee would want some this mornin’.”

“Thanks, Muh’Dear. I’ll call up Pee Wee, and he can help me drink it.” My mother fanned her face, complained about having to go to work, and then excused herself. I pulled my knees up to my chest and stayed that way until I heard Muh’Dear leave the house.

The first few days were the hardest. Every time our phone rang I jumped, praying that it was not Rhoda. There was nothing she could say that would change my feelings. The burden of knowing her crimes had become too much of a cross for me to bear. As I expected, everybody asked me when she was returning or when I was going to Florida to visit her. My excuses were vague. She’s going to Jamaica for a while to spend some time with her husband’s family, she’s having marital problems and it’s better if I keep my distance, I lied.

“Marital problems? Oh is Rhoda’s husband foolin’ around with another woman?” Muh’Dear asked with wide hungry eyes and a half smile.

“No, Ma’am.”

“Well is Rhoda foolin’ around with another man?”

“No, Ma’am. They’re just having the usual marital problems. How to raise the kids. How to spend the money. Things like that.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Damn.” Muh’Dear sighed. She was visibly disappointed. I could tell she had hoped that Rhoda’s marital problems were something really juicy. Something juicy enough to discuss with her gossipmonger friends. “Well, that’s what she get for marryin’ a foreigner. She should have married one of them Hawkins boys. They let they wives do anythin’ they want.” Muh’Dear paused long enough to catch her breath. “Like I told Mr. King—why you lookin’ so sad, girl?” Muh’Dear felt my forehead and frowned. “I’m goin’ to give you a dose of castor oil in a minute.”

“I’m fine, Muh’Dear.”

“Well, you sure don’t look fine. Lookit all them dark circles around your eyes and look how slack your jaws is. I know constipation when I see it.” The dreaded castor oil only made me sicker. I threw it all up as soon as Muh’Dear left for work.

Florence returned the following Thursday.

“I’m so glad to see you again,” I told her as soon as she entered our living room. It was just me and her. “Where are your boys?”

Florence had gained about thirty pounds, and she had more gray hair than me and Pee Wee put together. She had on a pair of dark glasses and walked with a white cane.

“The boys are resting. Larry had to go back to work today,” she told me. I led her to the couch, where we both sat down.

“I hear you’re doing well,” I told her after we hugged.

“I’m blessed. God shuts one door, but He opens another. I don’t have my sight anymore, but I’ve still got so much to be thankful for.”

Florence was completely blind, but she was still smiling.

“I’m sorry about your sight.”

There was an awkward moment of silence.

“Oh, I’ve adjusted to it quite well. I’m getting a seeing-eye dog next week.” Florence grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Did you get my letters? My cards?”

“Oh yeah…I kept meaning to respond. But…”

“It’s not important. I didn’t expect to hear from you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, squeezing her hand. I felt truly bad.

“Oh it’s nothing! You’re not the first person to ignore me.” She sucked in her breath. “How’s Rhoda? Pee Wee told me you communicated with her regularly.” There was not a hint of sarcasm in Florence’s voice.

“Uh…I won’t be communicating with her anymore.”

More awkward silence. Florence nodded and let out a strange chuckle.

“That’s too bad. She had a lot of influence over you.”

“Yeah she did,” I admitted.

“And so did that old Mr. Boatwright…even more so. Now that was one miserable old man! He used to talk about me like a dog. I could hear him in the kitchen talking about me every time I hung clothes on the line in the yard.”

“Yeah he was a mess, that old…goat.” I couldn’t acknowledge the bad Mr. Boatwright had done without acknowleding the good. “He…taught me how to ride a bike and…he was a damn good cook,” I said. “And the extra money he contributed sure did help me and Muh’Dear out a lot…”

“Uh…huh,” Florence said thoughtfully, tapping her cane against the floor.

I never told her, but I was convinced she knew what Mr. Boatwright had done to me.

“That stepdaddy and those two foster fathers I told you about, they were a lot like Mr. Boatwright…”

“What…what do you mean?”

“
Nasty
. I couldn’t see him, but I could sense when somebody was nasty. And he was, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah…” I said slowly. I released Florence’s hand because mine had started to shake. I jumped up from the couch. “Let’s go make some tea.”

As days went by, people asked me more and more about Rhoda. I finally had to tell everybody something more final. I told them that Rhoda’s husband, who never liked me, pressured her into choosing: him or me. Like any good wife, she chose her man. I just prayed that nobody would approach her parents and find out any different. The undertaker and his wife were still as unapproachable as they had always been to the people around me. I had not talked to either of Rhoda’s parents since my return. When I left our house, I usually left through our back door so that I would not risk running into them coming or going.

“Want to go to a boxin’ match in Cleveland this Saturday?” Pee Wee invited the week before Christmas. He continued to come to the house and sit with me in the living room in the evenings and on weekends when he was not working. “It’ll be my Christmas present to you.”

I wanted to spend more time with Florence and her boys, but she was too busy planning her wedding. We talked on the phone every chance we got. Pee Wee and I even double-dated with her and her husband-to-be.

I hated all sports events and would rather get a whupping than sit through one, but I accepted Pee Wee’s invitation. “Yes. I would like to go,” I told him with a smile. It was hard to look across the street at the Nelsons’ house without tears forming in my eyes. I was sorry that I didn’t get a chance to tell Rhoda what Aunt Berneice had told me about my daddy and the rest of my family in Florida. I still had not told Muh’Dear or anybody else and didn’t know when I would.

Pee Wee had made a lot of new friends over the last few years and they soon became my friends. My phone rang off the hook now, when before I moved to Erie, Pee Wee, Florence, and Rhoda were the only ones who ever called me. Most of Pee Wee’s new friends were the same people who had tormented us both in school.

I see Lena Cundiff, my former nemesis, all the time. The first time I bumped into her at the shopping center, she ran up to me and gave me a hug and introduced me to her two sons and daughter. After we chatted for a few moments, I apologized for knocking out her four front teeth at the prom, and we both laughed about it.

“My new bridgework looks a lot better than my real teeth ever did anyway,” she told me.

I was disappointed that she didn’t apologize for all the torment she had caused me for so many years in school, but in my heart I knew she was sorry. I think that we all came to realize that life was too short. I missed Rhoda enormously, and I knew I would, but she and Mr. Boatwright were the two chapters in my story I would never read again.

One night, two months after my return, after Pee Wee had made love to me in my new bed, we got up and went to the front window in my bedroom and saw a big moving van in front of the Nelsons’ house. Movers were hauling boxes and furniture out left and right. Nobody knew why or where Rhoda’s parents, Lola, and Uncle Johnny had moved to.

A month later, we had the worst snowstorm we had had in thirty years. Some businesses and all the schools had to close. Muh’Dear was unable to leave Mr. King’s house because the roads were too bad. She stayed over with him often, so her staying over this night was not unusual. Pee Wee was with me, and, for the first time, he spent the whole night. Sirens woke us up in the middle of the night, but we were too exhausted from hours of lovemaking to get up to investigate. We found out the next morning that the Nelsons’ house had mysteriously burned to the ground.

“I heard that Antonosanti had somethin’ to do with that fire. He was so angry with Brother Nelson for not payin’ off all that money Johnny borrowed,” Scary Mary told me and Pee Wee the next morning. Knee-high snow had not prevented her from leaving her house and coming over for coffee. “Another story I heard from Caleb is that Brother Nelson paid somebody to set that house ablaze so he could collect the insurance money.”

We never found out what really happened, and whatever it was I didn’t really want to know. To me, the fire destroying the Nelsons’ house was symbolic. It was the last connection I had to Rhoda. For reasons I can’t explain, one beer-filled night a week after the fire, I dialed her number in Florida. A recorded message informed me that the number had been changed and was now unlisted. Just like Mr. Boatwright, there was nothing left to indicate that she had ever existed.

I was living on the rest of Mr. Boatwright’s insurance money and money I have saved up from my job in Erie, but Mr. King promised I could start working as a hostess or a waitress at the Buttercup whenever I was ready. It was a long way from the corporate environment I used to believe I wanted when I was younger.

Like Muh’Dear taught me, God’ll come through when the time is right. He did for her. After so many years, Muh’Dear felt it was the “right time” for her to take her dream trip. She
finally
made it to the Bahamas, and, in a roundabout way, she got her own restaurant; Mr. King married her. He took her to the Bahamas for a two-week honeymoon.

Even though she didn’t have to work anymore unless she wanted to, she continued to cook and clean for Judge Lawson because he wanted her to.

“You can rest now, Muh’Dear. You’ve worked long and hard enough,” I told her. Just thinking about the fact that she had been breaking her back to cater to other people even before I was born reduced me to tears.

“I ain’t about to go back on my word to old Judge Lawson. He been good to us, and the least I can do is stay on with him in his last days,” Muh’Dear told me adding, “I got a feelin’ Judge Lawson goin to outlive all of us.” She laughed.

I wanted her to retire, but I also wanted her to honor the judge’s request. I don’t know what would have become of us without him and people like Scary Mary, who were forever pulling us out of a hole. Mr. Boatwright’s abuse was by then nothing more than a memory to me and one of several ugly secrets I’d carry with me to my grave.

I have the house on Reed Street all to myself now and Judge Lawson said I can stay in it for the rest of my life if I want to. He even encouraged me to rent out two of the three bedrooms and to keep the money for myself. But I’d had enough of boarders a long time ago with Mr. Boatwright and his mess.

I moved into the room that used to be Muh’Dear’s, and I turned mine into a guestroom. I had not been inside Mr. Boatwright’s old room since the day I returned from Erie and every time I passed it, I shuddered. As far as I was concerned, that room no longer existed.

A week after Muh’Dear and Mr. King returned from their honeymoon, the day after Easter, I started waiting tables at the Buttercup. In mid-December, Mr. King decided to have the inside of the restaurant painted so he closed it for two weeks. It couldn’t have happened at a better time. I had a lot of Christmas shopping to do and several parties to attend. Even with all that on my plate, I constantly thought about all the things that had happened to me. Having Mr. King as my new daddy made me think about my real daddy every day and what my aunt in New Jersey had told me about him. It had been a while since my last conversation with Aunt Berneice. New Year’s Day seemed like a good time to give her a call.

“Happy New Year, Aunt Berneice,” I hollered.

“Girl, I’m gwine to pray that 1980 be better to you than all the rest of your years been,” she cried as soon as she heard my voice.

“It will be,” I assured her. “Now, give me my daddy’s phone number, please.”