God Still Don't Like Ugly (9 page)

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kids especially. Now the Lord done blessed me. I got a few bucks in the bank and I can’t take none of it with me when I lay my burdens down and go to meet my Maker. I want to enjoy life while I still can.

All I want to do is make somebody happy. Right now that somebody is your mama . . . and you. If I ever say or do somethin’ you don’t like, you seem like the kind of gal would put me in my place. Your mama didn’t raise no fool. Am I right?”

“You’re right,” I said contritely. My head felt heavy as I bowed it.

While I was between thoughts, I noticed some faint, inch-long, slightly crooked black lines on the kitchen wall I was facing. I rubbed my fingers across the lines until I realized they were the markings that Mr.

Boatwright had made with a pencil to measure my height over the years. I snatched my hand back like I’d been burned. With my heart pounding against the inside of my chest, I realized Mr. Boatwright still had some control over me.

Even from his grave.

Before I could speak again, Mr. King did and I was glad. I wasn’t sure what was going to come out of my mouth anyway. Especially with additional thoughts of Mr. Boatwright, even more potent than the ones I’d had a few moments earlier, dancing around in the front of my mind.

“And you got too nice a voice to be soundin’ all grumpy anyway.”

He laughed. “You ought to be singin’ in the choir. I’ll mention that to Pastor Jenkins.”

I was glad to know that Mr. King and I were on the same page. I knew that I was not the only girl in Richland to have had the kind of trouble I’d had with one of Muh’Dear’s men friends. Thank God Mr.

King was bold enough to stand his ground.

That conversation broke the ice enough for me to accept Mr. King in my life. I regretted my behavior and wanted to retract my remarks but it was too late. However, it was not too late for me to change my attitude toward him. So I did, right then and there.

“Uh . . . I’ll tell Muh’Dear you called. And . . . Mr. King, you have a nice evening.”

Now that I was comfortable with Mr. King, I encouraged Muh’Dear to secure her relationship with him. It eased my mind to know that she would not be lonely when I did move away. Even though I didn’t know a soul in Pennsylvania, she surprised me by encouraging me to go.

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I was bowled over when she surprised me with a ten-thousand-dollar cash gift from an insurance policy that Mr. Boatwright, of all people, had left for us. Now I felt even worse about selling my body. The money I had collected from all those horny men was pocket change compared to the ten thousand dollars. I was even more anxious to get away from the scene of my crimes now. I
had
to leave Ohio. Even if I had to flee on foot.

I left on a Greyhound bus, crying and waving to Muh’Dear until the bus turned the corner.

CHAPTER 17

So much happened to me during the years I lived in Erie, Pennsylvania. It was hard for me to keep the events in order when I allowed myself to think about them. I slid in and out of meaningless relationships with meaningless men and had a fairly active social life, but I continued to have nightmares about Mr. Boatwright. Some mornings I woke up on the floor, tangled up in my bedcovers from trying to hide from Mr. Boatwright’s ghost.

I joined a church and I got a job working on an assembly line in a factory, but I was not happy. I still missed Rhoda and Pee Wee. They had saved me in so many ways, so many times. In fact, it was a telephone call from Rhoda that had stopped me from throwing myself out of the window of a dingy hotel, during one of my many moments of despair.

Pee Wee was special in other ways. He had been the only boy that Mr. Boatwright had felt was sexless and harmless enough to be around me, not that any other boys had tried to get into my pants.

The nights that Pee Wee had been allowed to sleep over at my house during our early teens, volunteering to sleep on our living room floor in his sleeping bag, Mr. Boatwright had insisted that Pee Wee sleep on a pallet on my bedroom floor instead.

Unlike some of the other boys from Richland who had been snatched up by Uncle Sam and dispatched to go fight a senseless war GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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in a place a lot of us had never even heard of before, Pee Wee returned from Vietnam intact. I was pleasantly surprised when he paid me a surprise visit one night when he came to Pennsylvania to visit relatives.

I had several reasons for climbing into my bed with Pee Wee. His appearance was one. The army had recycled him. He was no longer the skinny, loud-mouthed, sissified little boy I had grown up with. He was at least four inches taller and had packed on more than sixty pounds.

His long, narrow face had filled out and he had a sexy mustache. A pair of slightly slanted black eyes that I had never paid much attention to before now sparkled like diamonds. He was gorgeous. Especially naked.

He stood over me as I lay on my bed, naked, too, feeling as big as a banana boat. But my size didn’t bother him, so I didn’t care what I looked like as long as he liked what he saw.

I didn’t jump up and shout like I wanted to, though. I just gasped.

When Pee Wee gave me an amused look, I pretended like I was reacting to the scorpion tattoo on his chest. I was already weak, so even without that bottle of wine we consumed, I couldn’t help myself.

After all the unfulfilling sex I had had with Mr. Boatwright and the other men, I never expected to know any physical pleasure, other than feeding my face. But Pee Wee was a wonderful lover. He even taught me a few tricks that he had picked up from the whores he had spent time with in Vietnamese brothels that he claimed he’d been “dragged”

to.

Sex was such a mystery to me. It seemed strange that something that good could also be bad if done with the wrong person. Despite old Mr. Boatwright’s belief that I enjoyed his lovemaking, it had felt like hell to me. Here I was doing the same thing with Pee Wee, but it felt like heaven. Especially when I had an orgasm. It was the first one in my life and that made Pee Wee even more special to me. It was almost as sacred as sharing my virginity, a prize that Mr. Boatwright had helped himself to.

I felt like a big fool doing some of the things I did with Pee Wee that night. And I knew I probably looked like a big ox in some of the positions I let myself get coaxed into. I was like a dope fiend, devour-ing Pee Wee for the next few hours like he was a drug. I licked and humped like I was getting paid to do it. He laughed when I humped him with so much vigor he fell off the bed.

“Just relax, girl,” he told me, jumping back on top of me, stabbing 68

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deep inside of me with his finger. We spent a whole night wallowing in each other’s arms.

By the time Pee Wee rolled off me, I was practically delirious. But my rapture was temporary. He left the next morning before I even woke up. I was alone again, except for the bruises on my body and the fear of Mr. Boatwright’s ghost coming back to haunt me some more.

Not long after my passionate rendezvous with Pee Wee, another man eased his way into my bed, one I thought was just as ready to get married and settle down as I was. I was half right. Levi Hardy up and married another woman while he was still involved with me. I was devastated. I felt like the woman men avoided in public, but could tolerate enough to use for their own selfish needs. I felt like a urinal, just another place for men to dangle their dicks. I didn’t know what was so wrong with me that only Rhoda could see the beauty in me on an ongoing basis. That’s why it had always been so easy for her to control me.

During a visit to Florida to comfort Rhoda when the younger of her two sons died, I found myself missing my father more than ever before. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was in Florida, just a few miles away from Rhoda’s house. If I had reunited with him then, I know now that I would have avoided some of the other pain that was waiting to consume me.

I cried until I almost lost my voice during the very next telephone conversation with Rhoda. Not over Pee Wee running out on me or that other man dumping me for another woman, but over a royal mess that Rhoda’s older brother Jock had slid into.

Jock Nelson, his mind half gone after injuries he had sustained in Vietnam, had impregnated the teenage daughter of a Klansman. The girl wanted Jock to marry her and she wanted money for her and Jock to run away with. If she didn’t get her way, she threatened to go to her daddy and claim that Jock had raped her.

Rhoda was on fire and predicted what she called a “bloodbath” if the girl carried out her threat. I had not witnessed that level of anger from Rhoda since I told her about Mr. Boatwright. That anger didn’t last long because a few weeks later that white girl died in a freak bathtub accident and Rhoda was her old self again.

“See, God really don’t like ugly,” Rhoda told me in an unusually calm voice. “That white bitch got what she had comin’.”

I didn’t know why, but I sat looking at the telephone, long after GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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Rhoda had hung up. I suddenly became profoundly uneasy. Something that I could not even bring myself to think about kept trying to creep into my mind, but I wouldn’t let it. I knew in my heart that there was more to the story involving that white girl than Rhoda had told me. I told myself that if it was meant for me to hear the whole story, someday I would.

With the news of the white girl’s death, the stunt that Pee Wee had pulled on me, and the fact that I had not gotten over Levi dumping me to marry another woman, I decided it was time to run away from my problems again.

During a brief visit to my aunt Berniece in New Jersey, I learned from her that my father was in Miami and that I had two half-sisters and a half-brother. At that point, my desire to “find” myself took on a new meaning.

When I returned to Pennsylvania I was too restless to remain there much longer. Even though Ohio had once repelled me like a snakepit, without giving it much thought, I decided it was time for me go back there to deal with the demons that had tormented me throughout my youth.

CHAPTER 18

My return to Ohio was a major event for me. In some ways I felt like I was just about to begin my life all over again. Even though, at twenty-eight, I felt like an old woman. My anger toward Mr.

Boatwright was still as potent as ever. Some days I even made myself sick just by thinking about him. Being older and wiser now, I was determined to deal with my anger in a more positive way.

One thing I promised myself was, I would never let another person, male or female, abuse me and get away with it. Rhoda was too volatile and extreme when I turned to her for help. Besides, she could only do so much to support me from where she was now. The only person I had to really count on now was myself. And it was high time. I owed it to myself to increase my level of dignity if I wanted to get something out of life.

Mr. Boatwright had been the biggest personal indignation I had encountered so far. Levi Hardy marrying another woman while he was still involved with me was right behind that. I had pretty much gotten over that little stunt Pee Wee had pulled, fucking me and leaving me high and dry, but I wasn’t going to forget it.

In one of his infrequent letters, Pee Wee had told me that he had attended barber’s school and had opened “Pee Wee’s Barbershop” in the same strip mall where the Buttercup, the restaurant my stepdaddy GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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owned, was located. He had two chairs. His cousin Steve worked for him, cutting and styling hair. Steve’s wife Helen worked in the shop also, doing manicures.

Pee Wee had a lot of customers for someone just starting out. His father, Caleb, had been one of Richland’s two Black barbers. He had retired and Pee Wee acquired most of his regular customers. Even though I was still mildly mad at Pee Wee, I was glad to hear that he was doing so well.

Pee Wee and a few other people had already been in the house with Muh’Dear for a few hours when I arrived by Greyhound from Pennsylvania. They had already guzzled beer and feasted on a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.

I was glad to see that during my ten-year absence, Muh’Dear had redecorated the house with new furniture. I didn’t care too much for the plaid couch and matching love seat in the living room, but the smoked-glass coffee and end tables added a nice touch. She had also painted every room the same warm shade of beige. The house looked a lot more modern than it had looked during my youth. Plush green carpets and huge live plants filled every room but the kitchen. There was a new stove and refrigerator in the kitchen. And for the first time, we had a breakfast table with chairs that matched.

With the brotherly hug and peck on the cheek I got from Pee Wee, I had a hard time believing that during his visit to Erie, we had made passionate love. I went limp in his arms, just recalling that night. For a moment, I felt like I’d left ever y bone in my body back in Erie. Pee Wee had to hold on to me to keep me from crumbling to the floor.

“Girl, we better get you somethin’ to eat. You feel like you goin’ to melt,” Pee Wee noticed, clutching me by my shoulders. As hefty as I was, it was easy for him to hold me up, now that he had rebuilt his own body. Even in his thick turtleneck sweater, I could feel the bulging muscles in his arms. “Welcome home, sister. I’m so glad you came to your senses and brought your butt on back here. We got a lot of things to catch up on,” Pee Wee told me eagerly. I didn’t know how to interpret the wink he gave me, but I was hopeful.

The few times that Pee Wee and I had communicated, by letter and telephone, he had not mentioned the passionate night we had spent in my apartment in Erie. And that hurt. I hated myself. I wanted to 72

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hate him but I couldn’t afford to lose the only close friend I had left.

However, I deeply regretted the fact that I had let another man use my body. Not only with my consent, but for free.

Some grim thoughts crossed my mind and made me grimace. What if Pee Wee had not enjoyed that night with me in Erie? Had all that thrashing around and moaning he’d done in my bed been an act just to keep from hurting my feelings? Most of the men I had been with had not been that demonstrative. In fact, all one of my other former lovers had ever done was flop around on top of me, telling me in graphic terms what he was going to do to me. Then, he’d fallen asleep before doing any of it. I’d put up with that frustrating relationship for only one night. Just like Pee Wee had done with me. Had I frustrated Pee Wee? That would explain him sneaking out and not talking about that night with me. With a muffled sigh, I removed Pee Wee’s arms from around me and went around the room hugging everybody else.