God Still Don't Like Ugly (13 page)

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meet Him part of the way. Don’t expect the Lord to do all the work like he been doin’ so far. He outdid hisself when he blessed us with Brother Boatwright and then Mr. King. Why don’t you go in the re-stroom and put some rouge on your jaws before the Brewsters get here.”

CHAPTER 25

Iwaited two more days before I called Daddy back. He was happy to hear from me again, but disappointed that I hadn’t called sooner.

“I wanted to call you, but I misplaced your telephone number. Hold on. Let me find a pencil so I can get it again.” He returned in less than a minute. “This time I’m gwine to scribble it on my Medicaid card. I ain’t about to misplace that.” I gave him my telephone number again.

“You get that money I sent?”

“Yeah . . . ”

“When you comin’? You better hurry up if you want some of that hog we slaughtered. Them pork chops we cut up and stuck in the freezer is screamin’.”

“I can’t come down there right now, Daddy. Uh, Muh’Dear’s not doing too well and she needs me here to take care of her.” I didn’t like lying, but I didn’t see any other way out of this mess.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Oh, nothing serious.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Just female problems.”

“Well, I’ll be here whenever you do decide to come. I ain’t gwine nowhere.”

“You still have my address?”

“It was on the same scrap of paper I wrote your phone number on GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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that last time that you gave it to me. The same scrap of paper I lost.

Give me your address again, too.”

I received a letter from Daddy the following Friday. And another one a week later. Not a week went by without a letter from Daddy.

Every time I opened my mailbox and spotted an envelope with his spi-dery handwriting, I got excited. Each time I heard from him, he wanted to know when I was coming to visit him.

The same day John Lennon was murdered, December 8, 1980, Daddy stopped asking when I was coming to visit him. When we did communicate, we discussed everything but that.

The telephone company had hired me back. After a while, it seemed like I had never left my job as a switchboard operator in the first place. I was determined to keep myself busy.

I even volunteered to do things that Muh’Dear used to have to beg me to do. Once a month, she and Daddy King and Scary Mary cooked food and donated it to a homeless shelter. Then they not only served it, but also after everybody had eaten, they cleaned up the mess. I had always gone out of my way to avoid spending an entire day at the shelter. Now I looked forward to it. I even started going around with Muh’Dear and Scary Mary to visit sick people from the church, cooking and cleaning for the ones who lived alone. These were things I should have been proud to do and I was. Muh’Dear and I had so much to be thankful for now. Just like Scary Mary and Daddy King had shared their good fortune with us, we shared ours with people not as fortunate. “Baby, one day God is goin’ to bless you with even more. A husband, children, good friends. Just be patient,” Muh’Dear told me. I didn’t want to seem greedy, but even with as much as I already had, I did want the things that Muh’Dear believed God had in store for me.

Pee Wee was still making his regular trips to my bed but I continued to go out with somebody’s unattached male relative just to keep Muh’Dear off my back.

I even went to a Christmas party with Deacon Brewster’s nephew at one of his white co-worker’s sparsely furnished tract house near the trailer camp on the outskirts of town. I hadn’t been in this shabby neighborhood since we’d lived in it, before we moved to the house on Reed Street. It was a place I did not miss. Old cars and motorcycles lined the unpaved streets. Somebody had parked an old school bus 100

Mar y Monroe

on the side of one of the streets and was living in it. Dog shit littered the ground like works of art. A three-legged dog yipped at my legs as we made our way up onto a porch with two steps missing.

“Don’t step in none of that dog dooky. I don’t want you to embarrass me by trackin’ up Mark’s floor,” Jacob advised me, leading me by my arm.

I felt like I was being led to a slaughter. I prayed that they would have plenty of alcohol available. That was the only way I could see myself surviving this night.

Jacob Brewster was the kind of man every Black woman wanted her daughter to hook up with. He had a good job working at one of Richland’s steel mills, he drove a big, new car, he liked to spend money on his women, he was devoted to his mama, and he went to church every Sunday. But he still lived with his domineering mama and he had the face of a mule and the breath of an ox.

“Annette, since you don’t want to dance with me, do you mind if I dance with Ingrid Dobbs? She been eyeballin’ me all night,” Jacob whispered in my ear, spraying the side of my face with his sour spit.

He had been drinking heavily and could barely stand up straight. But he was so clumsy anyway, I didn’t want to take a chance on him grinding his thick-soled running shoes into my feet. The fly on his wrinkled gabardine pants was open. His wiry black hair had been plastered to his head with the same foul-smelling pomade Mr. Boatwright used to wear.

“Go ahead. I don’t know any of these new dances anyway.” I waved him to the dance floor, looking at my watch instead of him.

As soon as Jacob weaved his way across the floor, a man I had never seen before stepped from behind the couch I was sitting on and plopped down next to me. Other than me, he was the only person on the premises dressed nicely. He had on a dark blue suit, a light blue shirt, and black shoes that shone like new money. Ironically, I had on a dark blue silk dress with light blue cuffs and collar and a pair of black pumps. Being somewhat superstitious, I took these coinci-dences as a sign.

A good sign.

CHAPTER 26

Inever thought I would see the day that I’d be glad I’d accepted a date with Jacob Brewster. But Jacob wasn’t the reason I was feeling so frisky now.

The stranger who had come over to me seemed to glow more than the lights on a lopsided Christmas tree propped up in a corner, obscuring a poster of Ronald Reagan on the wall.

“I don’t know any of these new dances, either,” he told me, flashing some of the whitest, straightest teeth I’d ever seen in my life. “I’m Jerome Cunningham. And you are?” He was so polite, it startled me.

My eyes got wide and I held my breath as I looked around to make sure he was talking to me. He grabbed my limp hand and shook it.

“Hi, Jerome. I’m Annette,” I said, coughing to clear my throat.

Handsome men rarely approached me. Well, they
never
approached me. And this one was breathtaking. He was tall and even in his smart suit, I could see that he was nicely built. He had light brown skin and a helmet of curly, dark brown hair. His lips were a little too thin for my tastes but his small, slanted eyes were dazzling. I couldn’t believe he was addressing me. I quickly scanned the room. Since I was the only Black woman present, I assumed he had either come with one of the attractive white women or alone.

“You want another drink?” he asked, frowning at the empty glass sitting on the coffee table in front of me.

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Mar y Monroe

“Oh, no. I’ve had enough,” I said quickly, holding up my hand. The last thing I wanted to do was get drunk. Pee Wee had not visited me in a while and I was righteously horny that night. Jacob didn’t appeal to me that way, but I still didn’t trust myself alone with him without a clear head. He had already goosed my butt a few times, telling me he couldn’t wait to get me back to my house because he had a big surprise for me. He had put a lot of emphasis on the word
big.
I had a big surprise for him, too: he wasn’t getting into my house or me this particular night or any other night. I wasn’t that desperate as long as I remained sober.

“Then how about something to eat? Have you tried that pasta salad?” Jerome looked me up and down, smiling with approval. His knee was dangerously close to mine. I didn’t even try to imagine what was going through his mind. I placed a throw pillow on my lap because I didn’t want him to see that my thighs were taking up twice as much room on the couch as his.

“As you can see, I haven’t missed too many meals,” I laughed.

Sometimes, joking about my weight myself made it easier for me to deal with. “I’m the last one in here that needs to be eating.”

“In some countries, large women are revered. They even have ceremonies in some of the villages in Africa to fatten the skinny women up before they marry them off.” Jerome sniffed and looked me over some more. “Every woman in my family is stout. My grandmother was so big, she couldn’t even get out of the bed the last year of her life. My daddy, may he rest in peace, loved my big-legged, big-hipped mama.

Me, I feel like he did: the more there is of the woman, the more there is to love.”

I was
really
feeling frisky now. “I’ve already tried that pasta salad and it’s nothing to write home about.” I leaned toward him and whispered conspiratorially, “White folks don’t know the first thing about cooking. I don’t even know what that green stuff in that black bowl is.”

“Turkey dressing,” Jerome whispered back, wiggling his nose.

We both laughed.

“I never would have guessed that. I can’t wait to get my hands on some decent food again,” I said, feeling so at ease I felt I could say anything to this man.

“Well, in that case, you have to let me fix dinner for you one evening soon. My mama’s folks come from Louisiana so you know we all know how to burn. Would you let me do that, Annette?”

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“Okay,” I said meekly.

My head started spinning when it dawned on me that this handsome man had asked me for a date. I thought I’d lose my mind when he slid his arm around my shoulder. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I managed to remain composed. I removed the pillow from my lap and smoothed my dress, resting my hand on my knee. I froze when Jerome took my hand in his and squeezed it. No man had ever done that to me before in my life. Not even Mr. Boatwright or Pee Wee. I was certain that Jerome noticed the sweat on my palm, but he was too nice to acknowledge it.

“Looks like you and I are not the only ones here who don’t know the new dances, Annette.” He motioned toward two women dancing together, practically knocking everybody else off the floor. “I love to watch white folks dance, don’t you? They hop around the dance floor like blind rabbits.”

I laughed again. I was proud of the fact that I was laughing for the first time in weeks.

“These are some nice people, though. But they are fun to watch.

You haven’t seen anything ’til you’ve seen them do the bump.” We laughed again. My hand was still in Jerome’s and he was squeezing it even harder. I wondered what he was up to. I knew from experience that most men would fuck a goat. If sex was what he was after, he had come to the right place. He could have slid me down on that couch and had his way with me right in front of that whole room full of people.

And I would have enjoyed it.

CHAPTER 27

“Lord have mercy! I have seen these white folks try to do the bump but
that’s
what they always do, no matter whatever else they call themselves doing when they get on a dance floor.” Jerome shook his head and laughed. “One night I was watching
The Dinah
Shore Show
and she got loose. I thought my television set was going to fall off the stand. Now, I can do a mean bump, but I don’t want to get up there and make a fool of myself doing a dance that goes back that far.”

Just then, a tall, blond woman bumped into the coffee table, knocking several drinks to the floor. “See what I mean?” We laughed again.

By now I had laughed so much my chest was aching. “You’re Albert King’s daughter, aren’t you?”

“Stepdaughter. He married my mama not too long ago. My real daddy lives in Florida.” I couldn’t believe how comfortable I felt talking to Jerome. I cleared my throat and crossed my ankles, hoping I looked as dainty as some of the pretty white women prancing around the room. I knew that I didn’t and never would, but the way Jerome was looking at me, I felt like I did. “You must be new in town. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”

“Well, I was born here but when my daddy died when I was fifteen, Mama remarried and we moved to Buffalo. After my stepdaddy GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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passed away, my mama and the rest of the family moved back down here. I came back for my brother’s wedding last month and decided to stay when I heard they had an opening for a guidance counselor at Richland High. They hired me on the spot. I was pretty lonesome up there in Buffalo by myself, anyway.” I almost wet my control-top panties when Jerome looked in my eyes and told me, “I’m glad I came back to Richland now. Buffalo didn’t have women as fine as you up there.” I slid my free hand to my side and pinched myself to make sure I was not dreaming.

“That’s nice,” I muttered.

Still holding my other hand, Jerome looked around the room. He groaned when he looked over at Jacob, who was glaring at us from a corner with one hand on his hip, the other hand clutching yet another drink. Jerome scratched his finely chiseled chin before returning his attention to me. “Is Jacob your man?”

I gasped and almost fell off the couch, I was so taken aback. “Good God, no!” I said quickly. “His wife from the Philippines left him and he was depressed. My mama kept at me to go out with him, so I finally did.” I rolled my eyes and groaned.

“So I don’t have to worry about some jealous boyfriend jumping on me if I visit you?” There was a pleading look in his eyes and that confused me. I had to wonder why such a good-looking man was trying so hard to get in good with me. Men that looked like him usually had women fighting over him. I froze when a wicked thought crossed my mind: maybe he looked at me as a meal ticket now that he knew that my mother and stepfather owned a big restaurant. Jerome had a good job and it sounded like he was from a good family. I dismissed that wicked thought and scolded myself for being so suspicious.