God Still Don't Like Ugly (24 page)

Then I took his hand and led him upstairs to my bedroom.

CHAPTER 46

In a town as small as Richland, it was hard to avoid Jerome and other members of his family. A few days after our violent breakup, I ran into one of his brothers at the mall. He turned as red as a tomato and looked at me like I had leprosy.

A week later I ran into Jerome’s mother at Miss Rachel’s, the upscale hair salon that catered to Black women. Marlene ignored me completely as I sat there getting my hair rebraided, while she got her hair dyed in the seat right next to mine.

Even Jerome’s sister Nadine shunned me when I saw her shopping for groceries at Kroger’s the following Saturday afternoon. She left the market before I did and when I went out to my car, she was leaning on her car, looking at me and shaking her head.

When I did see Jerome, it was at the movies. I was with Pee Wee, Jerome was with a stout, dark-skinned woman I’d never seen before.

He gave me one of the meanest looks anybody ever gave me.

Ironically, Jerome’s Uncle Willie was not the only one of my former customers I saw. On two separate occasions I ran into other men that I had slept with for money. Either they didn’t recognize me or they didn’t remember me because they ignored me. But it didn’t bother me one bit. I really had nothing else to lose now.

I cheered myself up by spending as much time as I could with Pee Wee. When he developed a cold and didn’t want to leave his house, I 190

Mar y Monroe

went over there. Before we could find a spot with enough room for us to fuck, I had to clean up his living room. He had a couch that let out into a bed, so that was good enough, once I removed all the fast-food containers and dirty clothes.

“And don’t think I’m going to let you kiss me. I don’t want to catch your cold,” I told Pee Wee, glaring at him stretched out on his couch-bed in a sleeping bag, waiting to clamber back on top of me.

“You just better hurry up and get out your clothes before my dick go back to sleep,” he told me in a weak voice. Even sick with a cold, Pee Wee gave me more pleasure than Jerome ever did. I was just as weak as he was by the time we finished. I limped home, feeling like a different woman. And I was. I felt like I had just come back from the dead.

I stuffed all of the clothes, cassette tapes, and other things in my house that belonged to Jerome into old grocery bags. A few days later, when Pee Wee was feeling better, he drove me to Jerome’s apartment.

He waited in his car when I went to knock on Jerome’s door.

“What the hell do you want?” Jerome roared, standing in his doorway in a pair of boxer shorts. “If you thinking about crawling back to me—”

“Don’t flatter yourself, nigger. It’d be a cold day in hell before I crawl for you or any other man,” I snarled.

Jerome gasped and stared at me with a look on his face so harsh my flesh crawled.

“Look, woman—”

“No,
you
look.” I pointed to Pee Wee’s car. “I got the shit you left in my house out here. If you want it, you better bring your sorry yellow ass out here to get it.”

Jerome gasped and stretched his eyes open as wide as he could.

“Woman, who in the hell do you think you are to be bringing that black-ass nigger over here?” Jerome shouted, shaking his finger in my face.

“Do you want your shit or not? And you better hurry up because I got more important things to do with my time—with that black-ass nigger I brought over here with me,” I said, folding my arms.

Jerome gave me a hot look and then he slammed the door in my face. I returned to Pee Wee’s car and told him to drive to the city dump. Whistling and puffing on a joint, Pee Wee helped me toss Jerome’s belongings onto a mountain of other debris.

GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

191

Back in the car, Pee Wee leaned over and kissed me. “You feel better now?” he asked, caressing my chin.

I took a deep breath and let it out before I replied. “Better than I’ve felt in years,” I said. “Take me home so I can call up my daddy.”

Daddy was disappointed about not being able to visit Ohio and see me get married. But he wanted to see me anyway.

“I might go see Daddy again for a few days,” I told Muh’Dear the next day.

“I see.” Muh’Dear sniffed and cleared her throat. “Why don’t you make your daddy come up here? It ain’t fair for you to go down there every time.” Muh’Dear’s suggestion stunned me. Her change of heart startled Daddy so hard, he had to take a pill when I called to tell him.

“You sure your mama ain’t layin’ in wait for me, ready to bounce a fryin’ pan off my head?” He laughed as he chewed on an aspirin.

“No, Daddy. I think she’s ready to see you again anyway.” I laughed, too.

I was glad that I had something to keep me from thinking about Jerome. Daddy’s upcoming visit was like an elixir for my morale.

CHAPTER 47

Alot of people assume that women my size love to go grocery shopping. I was one big woman who would rather get a whupping than shop for groceries. That’s why I ate out as much as I did. I spent a great deal of my paycheck on expensive restaurants—

McDonald’s, Burger King, and every place in between.

My meals at the Buttercup were free, but I had to limit my visits there to two or three times a week because of Muh’Dear. It didn’t matter to her if I’d come in with Pee Wee and Jean in tow; Muh’Dear still took me aside to badger me with a siege of perfunctory questions and comments. “Did you find a new boyfriend yet? I don’t want you to be alone at your age. You keepin’ that house clean? Cleanliness is next to godliness. You payin’ your bills on time? You don’t want to mess up your credit.”

Shopping for groceries brought back too many painful memories.

Throughout my youth, when Mr. Boatwright was still alive, he used to drag me all over town to gather up the foods he enjoyed cooking.

During those days, we’d purchased most of our food at a discount market called The Food Bucket, where the quality of the food was low and the service was even lower. We had to stand in long lines behind people taking their good old time to locate food stamps and checks they couldn’t cash at any other place. The clerks were rude and the other patrons were even ruder. They jumped ahead of other people GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

193

already in a checkout line; they knocked over displays, and shoplifted in plain view. Mr. Hood, a bowlegged, elderly security guard, had been at The Food Bucket ever since I could remember. I had never seen Mr. Hood do anything but hold customers hostage, boring them to exasperation with long-winded updates of his health.

Now that I shopped alone and paid for my purchases with my own money, I bought my groceries at Kroger’s or the A&P, which were both considered upscale compared to The Food Bucket.

I still hated shopping for groceries, even at the nice stores. This particular Saturday evening was no different. I only grabbed what I needed and rushed back to my car and headed for home.

I didn’t like cold weather but I had to admit that I liked the way Ohio looked in the wintertime. A fresh blanket of fluffy snow covered the ground and houses and the city snow trucks had come out earlier and cleared the streets. I took my time driving home, admiring how the trees looked with their branches heavy with thick wands of snow and ice. Almost every yard had a snowman and that brought back some painful memories. Mr. Boatwright used to play with me in the snow when I was a child. Before he had started abusing me, he used to help me build snowmen. After he started putting his hands on me, the snowmen became snow
women
, complete with scarves and aprons.

“I just love me some females,” he told me with a look in his eyes that told me what was coming next: a trip to bed. I was glad that none of the snow people I saw now in the yards along my way were feminine.

The backseat of my car was covered with assorted fresh meat and several bunches of greens. This was part of the food I planned to cook for Daddy and Lillimae. They were due in later that night from Miami.

It was the first week in January. I was glad that Christmas had come and gone. It had been a dark day for me. Instead of marrying Jerome on Christmas Day like I had planned, I had spent the day with Muh’Dear and Pee Wee. Later that night, I had talked on the telephone with Lillimae and Daddy for over an hour, anticipating their first visit to Ohio.

Driving home from Kroger’s, I stopped my car so abruptly at the stop sign across from Jean’s house, my head lurched forward. My neck muscles got so tight I was afraid they’d snap. There was a thin film of snow on my windshield so I had to turn the wipers on to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. At first I thought I was 194

Mar y Monroe

seeing some kind of an illusion. I blinked hard and rubbed my eyes.

Unfortunately, my eyes were not playing tricks on me. Standing in Jean’s front yard, along with her brooding boyfriend Vinnie and her young daughter P., was an older white man I didn’t see in public that often anymore, Carmine Antonosanti. He owned Antonosanti’s, the most expensive restaurant in town. I had first met him when I was thirteen, the same year I met Rhoda Nelson. Mr. Antonosanti had been so close to Rhoda’s family that she called him Uncle Carmine.

Rhoda was the one who had introduced me to him at her house one day after school.

According to Rhoda, this old Italian man and her daddy had served in the army together. Rhoda’s daddy had saved Mr. Antonosanti’s life on a battlefield somewhere in Germany and because of that, Mr.

Antonosanti had become one of Rhoda’s family’s most important friends. Standing between Jean and Mr. Antonosanti—a walking cane in each of his gnarled hands—was Rhoda Nelson. Even though Rhoda had married Otis O’Toole, I still thought of her by her maiden name.

I kept thinking her name over and over in my mind as I blinked my eyes so hard they started to ache.

Seeing Rhoda at the mall and the Red Rose nightclub had trauma-tized me enough. Seeing her this close to my own house with my friend Jean was excruciating. I could no longer ignore the fact that Rhoda was back in Richland, Ohio, and I had to find out why and what she was up to. But the most important thing about her return was how it would involve me.

Rhoda was living proof that Mother Nature had her favorites. My former friend was as breathtakingly beautiful as ever. At thirty-five, she still had the face of a cover girl. Her long black hair hung down her back like a silk scarf. After having three children, she was still a size four, a size I couldn’t even fathom. As hard as it was to believe, there actually were women who looked like Barbie dolls and Rhoda was one of them.

I had not talked to Rhoda since the week of Thanksgiving in 1978, the night she had confessed to me that in addition to murdering Mr.

Boatwright, she had murdered three other people. That was the night I had told her I could no longer be friends with her. Not long after that night, the rest of Rhoda’s family moved away. Their empty house, which included the mortuary her father had owned and Rhoda’s life-size dollhouse, had all mysteriously burned to the ground.

GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

195

I had often wondered about what had happened to Rhoda’s handsome father and her beautiful mother. I had even asked Scary Mary, but even she didn’t know. After a while, I stopped asking. Seeing Rhoda now was like seeing a ghost and, in a way, it was.

Standing next to Rhoda was a little Black girl around P.’s age. This little girl, who was the image of Rhoda, had to be Rhoda’s daughter, the child she had been carrying in her belly the last time I saw her. I didn’t torture myself by looking at Rhoda’s daughter for more than a moment. I had seen enough. The child was just as dazzling as her mother.

The small crowd was very animated—talking, laughing, and waving their arms. But P., sullen and mute, was standing a few feet away from the boisterous group, sucking her thumb. She was the only one who noticed me sitting in my car staring with my hand shading my eyes. A faint smile crossed P.’s face and she waved at me. Knowing P. as well as I did, I was certain that she missed coming to my house as much as I missed her coming.

I slid down in my seat as far as I could as my car shot across the street like a guided missile.

CHAPTER 48

After I parked in front of my house, I had to sit still for about five minutes with my window rolled down. I needed to feel the cool air on my face so I could focus on what I was doing. Breathing with my mouth open, I felt as clumsy as a seal trying to undo my seat belt and maneuver myself out of my car. My big legs felt as heavy as tree trunks as I lifted them. I finally tumbled out, my shoes sliding, even though there was no ice on the ground. I looked across the street at the empty spot where the Nelsons’ house had stood before a mysterious fire consumed it a few years earlier. Then I looked down the street toward Jean’s house. The crowd was still there. Since I’d had the conversation with Jean about Vinnie taking P. out of my wedding, Jean and I didn’t get together as often outside of work. And even then, we talked about everything but Vinnie and P.

I watched P. tug on the tail of Rhoda’s coat, then point in my direction. I cringed when Rhoda looked in my direction for a brief moment, giving me the same blank stare she would have given a stranger.

Without acknowledging me, Rhoda returned her attention to Vinnie Gambiano, who was standing so close to her, skinning and grinning, you would have thought that they were lovers.

I dumped my packages on my porch and sprinted across my yard to Pee Wee’s house. I knocked for several minutes before he came to the door.

GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

197

“What’s up?” he drawled, a toothpick dangling from his lip, a damp towel draped around his shoulders. I looked over his shoulder and I could see that his living room was once again a huge mess. Hand weights and a barbell were on the floor next to a pizza container and a beer can. A dirty T-shirt was on top of a lamp, the sleeves dangling like snakes. I was more than willing to clean house for Pee Wee again, if that’s what I had to do to get him alone.