God Still Don't Like Ugly (34 page)

I had a lot to offer a child now and when Muh’Dear passed on, the Buttercup and the house she lived in would be mine, too. I looked forward to the experience of raising a child. With all the knowledge I had gained, and based on my own experiences, I was certain I’d be the best mother any child could have.

With renewed strength, I leaped out of bed and prepared myself for work. I called Muh’Dear during my morning break and told her that I was coming to the Buttercup for lunch and for her to have a plate of chicken wings and waffles ready for me.

“When was you goin’ to tell me about that baby you carryin’?”

Muh’Dear asked, pulling me into the kitchen as soon as I entered the restaurant.

“Rhoda told you?” I mouthed, looking around the hot kitchen.

The cook who assisted Muh’Dear and several other workers scur-ried about, almost knocking Muh’Dear and me into the wall.

Muh’Dear cleared her throat, gave a stern look to her employees, and pulled me into a corner.

“If you lookin’ around for them chicken and waffles, don’t worry.

You’ll get ’em. But first you goin’ to talk to me about that baby.”

“Rhoda told you?” I repeated. I had to remove the scarf I had tied around my throat that morning. As good as it looked with my new green sweater, it had begun to feel like a noose.

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“Rhoda ain’t had to tell me nothin’. I ain’t blind.” Muh’Dear let out a deep sigh and dropped her head. “Well, I ain’t
that
blind.” She gave me a sharp look before she caressed my face. “Now that I know about Brother Boatwright’s wicked ways, you done opened my eyes to a lot of things. I don’t miss nothin’ no more when it comes to you.

You are my only child and I love the ground you walk on, girl. I was with you and for you long before you took up with Rhoda and I’ll be with you long after she gone. Friends come and go, but I’m the only mama you’ll ever have. Why did you tell Rhoda about the baby before you told me? It was bad enough you told her about all that other mess first.”

“I didn’t tell Rhoda I was pregnant. She’s not blind, either.”

While I was standing there, Muh’Dear picked up the telephone on the wall by the door and started dialing.

“Frank, did you know that this gal up here walkin’ around pregnant? Uh-huh. I didn’t think so. No, Frank, I ain’t noticed nothin’ ’til recently. The girl’s been big as a bread truck all her life—why would I notice her puttin’ on a few more pounds?” Muh’Dear paused and nodded, holding the telephone away from her face. “All right, then.

Tell Lillimae I said hi. ’Bye, Frank.” She hung up and turned to me. “I declare, your daddy is tickled to death. This’ll be his first grandchild, too.”

I gave my mother an exasperated look. “My half-sister Lillimae already has two little boys.”

Muh’Dear shot me a hot look, stomped her foot, and placed a hand on her hip. “Well, this will be Frank’s first
all-black
grandbaby,”

she said firmly. Then her voice softened. “Frank and Lillimae said they comin’ up here later this year.”

I sighed. “I wanted to be the one to tell Daddy and Lillimae about my baby, Muh’Dear.”

“Well, do say.” Muh’Dear paused and took a long, deep breath, staring at me through narrowed eyes. “It seem like you have a problem tellin’ everybody but Rhoda stuff ’til it’s too late. I know Pee Wee’ll be a good daddy to that child. He was raised right. Hand me that bowl off the counter.”

I gasped. “You told Pee Wee?” I snatched a bowl off a counter and handed it to Muh’Dear. “How in the world did you know that . . . uh . . .

Pee Wee and I—”

“Everybody in town know you and Pee Wee more than just friends,”

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Muh’Dear said smugly. She laughed, rolled her eyes, and patted my shoulder.

I was baffled. “That Pee Wee was a blabbermouth when I met him, he’s a blabbermouth now!” I hissed.

“Pee Wee ain’t told nobody nothin’. But y’all wasn’t foolin’ nobody in this town but yourselves. And I don’t know why you havin’ such a hissy fit. Pee Wee is a fine young man. You outdone yourself. You caught a real prize. He’s a much bigger fish than that Jerome.”

“We didn’t think you would like us being together. I mean, Pee Wee was always more like a family member.”

Muh’Dear nodded and shook her finger in my face. “He still is and I hope he always will be.”

I gasped. “You told Pee Wee about the baby?”

Muh’Dear clicked her teeth and shook her head. “I ain’t told that boy nothin’. But like I said, I ain’t blind no more.”

“Well, I hope you don’t tell him. That’s my responsibility.” I paused and looked around the kitchen again. Some of Muh’Dear’s employees had some mighty big ears. Pee Wee hearing about my pregnancy from one of those busybodies was one thing I would not allow to happen. “Uh, we’ll talk more about this when you get home. Call me.

Where are my chicken wings and waffles?” I had my food wrapped to go.

There was a message from Rhoda waiting for me when I got back to work. I called her immediately.

“Otis just told me that Pee Wee and that Mitchell woman broke up,” Rhoda said breathlessly. “She went back to her husband and they are plannin’ to move to Cincinnati.” Rhoda sighed. “Poor Pee Wee was such a fool for that woman. I bet if she ever leaves her husband again, she could have Pee Wee back in a split second if she wanted him . . . and if he’s still available.”

“So?”

“So you need to hook him back up before he latch onto somebody else. How would you feel if the Mitchell woman changes her mind tomorrow and decides she wants to stay with Pee Wee after all? Let me tell you somethin’, sister-girl, the older you get, the shorter that line of men waitin’ on you gets.”

“Men never lined up for me in the first place so I don’t have anything to worry about,” I said dryly. The men that I had turned tricks GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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with had been the closest I ever got to having men standing in line to get to me.

“You know what I mean.” I could hear Rhoda blowing her nose on her end. “Sorry. This cold is really gettin’ on my nerves. My honey wouldn’t even sleep in the bed with me last night. Lyin’ there by myself, I thought about you and I wondered how you could sleep alone day after day, week after week, year after year. I mean, Pee Wee is as buffed and fine and raw—finally—as my husband is. So I know he can work that body—”

“Please let me worry about my own sex life. Besides, there are other single men besides Pee Wee.”

Rhoda was quiet for an uncomfortably long time. “Jerome bowls on the same night as Otis and me. Uh, he and I talked for a few times and he knows you’re my best friend. He was at the bowlin’ alley last night and he asked how you were doin’.” Rhoda paused and gasped.

“Is he the one you hope to snuggle up with again?”

“I’d rather donate my body to science,” I said emphatically. “Rhoda, I don’t have to encourage Pee Wee to be with me. If and when he’s ready to come back to me, he’ll do so on his own.”

I was right. Like he was following a script, Pee Wee returned to my bed and me the very next day.

To this day, I don’t know why I didn’t tell Pee Wee that I was pregnant with his baby then. I guess it was because we had always had such an odd relationship. He seemed to enjoy seeing other women when he felt like it. The last thing I wanted was for him to feel that I had trapped him with a baby.

As crazy as it sounded, even to me, I decided that I would just keep sleeping with Pee Wee for as long as I could. If and when he ever decided to see
only
me, I’d tell him about the baby.

Maybe.

CHAPTER 68

Being obese hides a lot of things, including pregnancy, on large women like me. Even when I was naked and flopping around with Pee Wee in my bed, he couldn’t tell I was pregnant. He knew how sensitive I was about my weight. Even if he did notice that my belly was rounder than normal, he didn’t mention it.

It was the same with other people I knew. I felt confident that other than Muh’Dear and Rhoda, nobody else knew I was pregnant. Like the folks who worked at the Buttercup, the people I saw at church (when I went), and Scary Mary. Carlene, Scary Mary’s most useless prostitute, bragged about having a supernatural ability that allowed her to know when somebody she knew was pregnant.

“Every time I dream about fish, I find out somebody is pregnant.”

Carlene had made this claim so many times in my presence that I had no doubt in my mind that if she thought I was pregnant, she would bring it up. There were three other women that we all knew were pregnant. Carlene discussed them at great length every chance she got. She talked about the fact that one of the pregnant women was involved with three different men and didn’t know which one was the father of her child. Another one of the three women was in her late forties, morbidly obese, and alcoholic. “With all that against her, she’ll give birth to a Cyclops for sure,” Carlene predicted. “The fish I dreamed about this time didn’t have but one eye.” The third woman, GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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who was neither promiscuous nor experiencing a midlife snafu, was discussed just as much as the other two, though not as often but just as harshly. “She’s so quiet and sneaky about her baby, she must be hidin’ somethin’,” Carlene reported. I was convinced that my secret was safe. Except from Rhoda.

Rhoda was the first to notice when I started showing. “Since you’re already big, you probably won’t get stretch marks,” she told me.

“Well, thanks a lot,” I said.

She chuckled. “Now, you know I didn’t mean anything by that.

There’s nothin’ wrong with you bein’ a big woman. I would never make fun of you. You know me better than that, anyway. Besides, nobody’s body is perfect,” Rhoda said with a faraway look on her face.

I had been ashamed of my body most of my life, but I didn’t think that Rhoda was ashamed of hers. She certainly had no reason to be.

That’s why I was surprised when we went shopping she never let me join her in dressing rooms when she tried on clothes. This particular day, she decided to bring home a new blouse without trying it on in the boutique at the mall where she had purchased it.

While I was in Rhoda’s kitchen, making milkshakes with Jade, Rhoda went into her bedroom to try on the new blouse. She was taking longer than she should have, so I went to find out why. I had been to Rhoda’s house several times since our reunion. I was still not used to seeing such a showcase. The off-white carpets on every floor were so plush and thick, it felt like walking on air.
White
carpets. People talked about Rhoda having white carpets on her floor like it was the height of arrogance. The thing that baffled them the most was trying to figure out how she kept white carpets clean. What they didn’t know was that as soon as you entered Rhoda’s front door, you were required to remove your shoes. A huge chandelier bathed her living room with golden light at night, and every piece of furniture in her living room was some shade of white.

Above a fireplace in Rhoda’s sitting room was a huge oil painting of her, her husband, and both of her children. On the mantel and on the walls were additional pictures of her family. Oddly, there were no pictures of Rhoda’s deceased son and her deceased brother. But I knew that Rhoda carried snapshots of them both in her wallet, the same way I had carried around a snapshot of my daddy for so many years.

I paused briefly in Rhoda’s den, the room she used for her child-280

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care purposes. This floor had linoleum and cheaper furniture, as well as the usual childproof items. We hadn’t discussed it yet, but I knew that when my child came, I would leave him or her with Rhoda once I returned to work.

Rhoda’s bedroom door was closed. As soon as I started to open it, she screamed, “Don’t come in here!” But it was too late. “I don’t want you to see me like this,” she sobbed as I entered the room.

“Rhoda, you know it’s—” I stopped in the middle of my sentence. I was horrified by what I saw, but I managed to remain calm. Rhoda was naked from the waist up. Gone were the two healthy, firm breasts she had always been so proud of. All she had now were two cruel scars.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Taking quick, tiny steps, I marched across the floor and stopped in front of Rhoda. I stared at her disfigurement in slack-jawed amazement. “I had no idea!” I shrieked.

With her head hanging low, she wrapped her arms around her chest. “It happened right after I had Jade,” Rhoda said in a distant, almost unrecognizable voice.

“What the hell happened?” I asked, my arms waving, my eyes on her flat chest.

Rhoda took a deep breath before she started. “One mornin’ while I was takin’ a shower, I felt a lump in my left breast. I didn’t think it was anything serious so I ignored it. I checked the lump every day for a few weeks, hopin’ it would go away. One day I looked in my medical book and I read about calcium deposits and things like that. I told myself that’s all it was. I didn’t feel my breast again for six months, but by then it was too late.” At this point, Rhoda lowered her voice to a whisper. “Not only was that same lump still there, there . . . there was another one in my other breast.”

“Can . . . cancer?” I could hardly get the word out. With all the women I had known, I had never known one with breast cancer.

Accidents were one thing. They could have been avoided. So could crimes. But an assault from nature had to be the ultimate crisis.

Rhoda nodded. “Otis made me go to the doctor. But like I said, it was too late. They had to remove both . . . both of . . . my breasts.”

I hugged my enigmatic friend. “I am so sorry, Rhoda. I had no idea.

Well, did they get all of the, uh, cancer?” The evil word burned my lips like a flame. I had always felt sorry for people who had lost a body part. The fact that Mr. Boatwright had come to us with only one leg GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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had played a huge role in my devotion to him. The pity that I had felt for him had made it that much easier for him to lead me to his bed, like a lamb being led to slaughter.