God Don’t Like Ugly (16 page)

I
t had been an hour since I pulled a knife on Jock in the kitchen. I was still in a foul mood when Scary Mary barged in without knocking. With her was a tall, reddish brown–skinned girl with curly brown, shoulder-length hair, a crooked smile, and the strangest-looking eyes I’d ever seen. Her clothes were stylish and cute, but cheap. Scary Mary’s seventeen-year-old foster daughter couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.

“Y’all, this here is Florence Belle. My gal,” Scary Mary said proudly, brushing the girl’s hair off her face. “Florence, this here is Annette and Brother Boatwright. Now you better mind Brother Boatwright just like you would me. Don’t sass him, and do everythin’ he tell you to do. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” the girl said in a low voice. I could tell from the look on her face, she didn’t like hearing that.

“Johnny just left my place. I told this girl here to call him
Uncle
Johnny like all the rest of the young’ns around here do,” Scary Mary said, looking at me. “It makes him feel good.”

Mr. Boatwright was on one end of the couch with a can of Strohs beer in his hand and a scowl on his face that had increasingly become the demeanor he presented. I was on the other end wringing my sweaty hands because I had just argued with him long and hard enough for him to lose interest in fucking me a second time that night.

“Hi,” I managed, barely opening my mouth. I was too flustered to offer the girl a smile. I noticed Scary Mary’s eyebrow rise, and she gave me an exasperated look.

“God sure is good,” Mr. Boatwright stated, bobbing his head, jumping up from the couch. He strolled over to the girl and hugged her so hard she frowned. I just sat there glaring at him. “You ’bout our gal’s age, ain’t you?!”

“I’ll be eighteen in November.” Florence smiled shyly. Then she looked at me just sitting there like I was paralyzed. “I hope we can be friends.”

“Me too,” I muttered, still unable to smile. My peculiar behavior puzzled Scary Mary.

“Annette, you all right? You constipated?” she asked with concern. She was looking at me so hard I could feel it.

“I’m gwine to spoon her a dose of castor oil before she go to bed,” Mr. Boatwright croaked. “I bet it’s all them crunch bars she gobble up that that busy Rhoda be cookin’ up all the time.”

“I am not constipated,” I insisted, rising. “I’m just a little tired.”

“If she spent less time runnin’ amok, she wouldn’t be so tired—”

“I don’t run amok, and you know it, Mr. Boatwright!” I snapped. I had never behaved so badly in front of a stranger before, and I was ashamed of myself. I gave Florence a pleading look, and she nodded knowingly.

“Now that’s the very thing I done just warned you about,” Scary Mary told Florence, shaking her finger in Florence’s face. “Don’t you never sass Brother Boatwright like this girl just done. Annette, shame on you for showin’ out in front of my gal here first time you meet her! I feel like a fraud after all the brags I done on you to Florence!”

“I’m sorry.” I finally smiled. I looked at Florence again. For a brief moment our eyes locked. A sad look appeared on her face. “Where are you from, Florence?”

“She from Cleveland, but she been shuffled all over the state, one home after another. Lord, when I think about all the abuse this girl done endured with them foster daddies, I go crazy. One thing about it—ain’t no man goin’ to molest this girl long as she livin’ in my house!” Scary Mary exclaimed, raising her fist over her head and shaking it “I’ll put somethin’ on him a doctor can’t take off.”

I looked at Florence again. There was a faint smile on her face, but her eyes were staring at the floor.

“Oh, we one big family ’round here. I’m gwine to do all I can to make Florence feel right at home.” Mr. Boatwright grinned bobbing that head again.

“Excuse me,” I mumbled. “Um…Florence, it was nice meeting you.” I rushed to my room before any of them could say anything else. As soon as I got there, I regretted being back in it so soon. My bed was still messed up from my latest romp with Mr. Boatwright. The sheet was damp, and grease from his hair was all over my pillow.

I changed the bedding, then crawled into bed, canceling my plan to eat dinner with Judge Lawson and Muh’Dear at the kitchen table like I’d planned to do. Oddly, I dreamed about Florence and what Scary Mary had said about her foster daddies abusing her. I felt bad about the way I had acted toward her. I made a promise to myself that I would get to know her as soon as I could. The more I thought about it, the more I decided it was important for me to hear about her abuse and how she had handled it.

Scary Mary was surprised to see me at her front door early the next morning. “What the hell you doin bangin’ on my door this time of mornin’, girl?” she hollered, then yawned in my face. She was in her housecoat, a yellow-silk one like one I’d seen Rhoda’s mother wear. “I don’t allow nobody but our tricks to be comin’ here this early.”

“Well…I just came by to see if Florence wanted to walk to school with me and Rhoda,” I babbled. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a white man in a gray business suit walking fast toward Scary Mary’s house.

“My gal done already got her diploma. She smart,” Scary Mary announced proudly.

“Oh? She’s graduated already?”

“If you had kept your tail downstairs last night, you’d know that.”

I moved so the man could get in the door. Scary Mary smiled at him, slapped him on the back, and motioned him down a hallway. Over her shoulder I noticed a half-naked woman grab the man as soon as he got close enough. Then Florence appeared. She was fully dressed but also had on an apron. She had that same strange look in her eyes that I had noticed the night before. She stumbled a few times walking toward the door.

“Hi, Florence.” I smiled broadly. “I was going to invite you to walk to school with me and my best friend Rhoda, but Scary Mary just told me you’ve already graduated.”

“Yes. I studied at home,” Florence told me gently. I was impressed because she spoke so properly. She was not ugly or fat, but she wasn’t really pretty either. I guess she was about as average as a girl could be. She just seemed unusually reserved for a girl of seventeen. She looked young, but she seemed a lot older.

“Oh. Well…uh…maybe you can go to the movies with me and Rhoda sometime,” I told her.

“This girl don’t go to no movies,” Scary Mary snapped.

“I’d like to, but I’m legally blind. I wouldn’t enjoy a movie much,” Florence said softly.

“Blind? Oh.” I felt so awkward. “I never would have guessed it.” That explained the strange look in her eyes. “Well, I better be going so I won’t be late.” I started backing off the porch. I bumped into another man, this one a Black man in a black suit, rushing toward Scary Mary’s house with a grin on his face.

“Maybe you can come over and listen to records some time,” Florence hollered.

“OK,” I replied. I let out a groan and trotted across the yard that led to the back of our house. Mr. Boatwright was peeping out our kitchen window, so I didn’t go back in. Instead, I went to pick up Rhoda.

“You’re late,” Rhoda complained. She was already on her front porch fussing with the ribbons in her hair.

“Scary Mary’s foster daughter arrived last night. I went to Scary Mary’s house to see if the girl wanted to walk to school with us this morning.”

“Oh forget it.” Rhoda laughed as we headed down the street. “Scary Mary brought her to our house last night, too.”

I glanced over my shoulder toward my house. Just as I suspected, Mr. Boatwright was peeping out the front window now.

“Well, did you like her? She seems nice. I was in a lousy mood when I met her because Mr. Boatwright had just jumped me again. I was rude to the girl when I met her. That’s why I went to Scary Mary’s this morning.”

“Yeah, she seems OK, but not the kind of girl I want hangin’ around me.”

“Why not?” I gasped, looking at Rhoda with wide eyes. “What’s wrong with her?”

“The girl’s half-blind. I don’t have time to be draggin’ around with a handicapped girl. I don’t have that kind of patience. I’d go crazy.”

I was surprised at Rhoda. In some ways I felt handicapped, but she had patience with me.

“She’ll just slow us down,” Rhoda added. “Let Scary Mary dump her on Pee Wee. Then maybe he won’t crowd us so much anymore.”

“OK,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to jeopardize my relationship with Rhoda. I couldn’t afford to lose her. Especially for an abused, orphaned, legally blind girl.

E
ven though I had told Florence I’d spend some time with her, it seemed like every time she called on me, I had something to do. Housework, homework, or I just wanted to be in my room by myself reading. I had just finished
Love Story
and was anxious to start
Valley of the Dolls
.

No matter how many times I was not available, she didn’t stop asking me to come over.

One day, a Sunday after church, I wanted to talk to Rhoda. I had not seen or heard from her in four days. I was surprised when she didn’t come to church with her parents. Like with me and most of the other Black kids I knew, we attended church whether we wanted to or not. Since Mr. Boatwright only sang a solo on holidays now, church was not as much fun. I was home alone; Muh’Dear and Mr. Boatwright were visiting the family of a recently deceased church member. I dialed Rhoda’s number.

“Hello?” Granny Goose answered in a voice that was more like a croak.

“May I speak to Rhoda, please?” I didn’t know if the old woman was hard of hearing or not, but I spoke in a real loud voice anyway.

“Hello!” she shouted again.

“MAY I SPEAK TO RHODA, PLEASE?” I yelled louder. She slammed the phone down so hard in my ear I heard ringing for the next five minutes.

I called Pee Wee’s house next, and Caleb told me he was at the shopping center. Out of sheer boredom I invited Florence over.

“You get around real good for a blind girl,” I told her. She had pushed my hand away when I attempted to lead her to my room. Once we got there we sat on the bed.

“Oh I’m not completely blind. I just have cataracts on both eyes. But as I get older, my vision gets worse. I’m sure I’ll be completely blind by the time I’m thirty,” Florence said seriously. “When a person loses one of their senses, another one gets stronger. I can’t see as well as you, but I can hear better than most people.”

“Uh-huh,” I replied.

“Like one night when I was in your living room and you and Rhoda were in the kitchen, I heard her tell you I was no fun.” Florence laughed.

“Oh you did. Well I didn’t say anything bad about you—”

“I know you didn’t. I heard you defend me.” She laughed.

We got silent for a moment. I could hear Mr. Boatwright roaming around outside in the hallway. I thought I would die when I spotted his eyeball peeping through my keyhole! I was glad Florence couldn’t see that or the burning shame on my face. I waited until I saw him leave. I moved closer to Florence and started talking again, in a lower voice. Even though Mr. Boatwright’s eye was gone from the keyhole, I knew he was probably still outside my room with his ear against the door.

“So…uh…you were abused, too?” I was whispering, but Florence had no trouble hearing me.

“Too?”

“I mean…somebody…molested you.”

“Oh yeah. But it was a long time ago, and I’m completely over it.” Florence waved her hand and shrugged.

“Who?” I asked gently, anxious to hear the details.

“I was twelve the first time and had just started losing my vision. As if that wasn’t enough of a burden to me then, my stepfather held me down on my bed and raped me. That’s why they took me away from my mama.”

“You told on him?” I gasped.

“Of course I did? Who wouldn’t? The same day, right after he did it, I told Mama. When she didn’t do anything about it, I went to the police.”

“Weren’t you scared he’d do something to you? I know he must have threatened you? They usually do—I mean, I bet they do.”

“Oh he threatened me all right. He said if I told on him he would kill me. Ha! As soon as I got my panties back on I went to my mama’s work and told her. She said we couldn’t afford to lose ‘a good man like Harry.’ We needed his paycheck, and she needed his attention. She just told me to make out like it never happened. He cried like a baby when she casually mentioned it to him. That son of a bitch stood there in front of me and claimed because he’d been drunk, he didn’t remember doing it and asked me to prove it was him that took my cherry and not some boy I was probably sneaking around with. At that time, I had about as much interest in a boy as I had in a goat.”

“Damn,” I muttered.

“Mama told me if I brought it up again, I’d get a whupping. That same night is when I went to the police. A doctor examined me, a shrink talked to me, and the next thing I knew I was on my way to my first foster home.”

“And what was that like?”

Florence let out a great sigh before responding.

“Like jumping from a frying pan into a fire,” she groaned. “A month after I got to that first foster home, my foster father raped me. There were three other girls in the house that he had already raped. None of them had told at that point, but I sure did. They took all of us girls out of that home and that son of a bitch went to jail. My next foster father was all over me a week after I moved in with him and his wife. I was all right for the next few years. My last foster father was an honorable, decent man. Then he and his wife died in a car crash. Now I’m with Scary Mary.” Florence let out her breath so hard I saw her chest rise higher than it should have.

“Do you…hate men now?”

“No. Why should I? I can’t give up on the rest of the male population because of something three of them did to me. I loved my last foster father, and I’ll never forget him.”

“But aren’t you mad like I…um…raped girls must be?”

Florence shook her head and smiled, “Life is too short. I don’t want to waste any more energy thinking about what happened to me. It’s a done deal. I’ve moved on with my life, and I want to enjoy what’s left of it. I’m looking forward to attending trade school this fall.”

“Trade school? For what? I mean, being legally blind and all—what can you study?”

“Anything you or Rhoda can study,” she told me, leaning back, an amused look on her face. “The only difference is, I’ll have to work harder and I will have to learn by using alternative methods, like braille.”

I was disappointed when Florence excused herself. Scary Mary called to remind her she had to give Mott a bath.

After she left, Mr. Boatwright knocked on my door so hard it shook. It was locked, and I didn’t let him in. When Muh’Dear got home, I went back to the living room. Rhoda and Pee Wee had just arrived. Rhoda was scowling and already sprawled across the couch next to Muh’Dear. Mr. Boatwright was on the love seat, also scowling and fanning his face with the
TV Guide
. Pee Wee was sitting on the arm of the couch next to Rhoda.

“Where’ve you been?” Rhoda pouted. “I thought you were comin’ to my house to help me give Granny Goose a bath.”

“Oh, she been upstairs shot up in her room borin’ that poor little old blind gal to death.” Mr. Boatwright laughed. “That blind gal left here runnin’ like somebody ablaze.” Mr. Boatwright hadn’t said it, but I knew he didn’t like Florence. He rolled his eyes at her when she came to the house, and he trashed her just as often as he did everybody else.

“I’ve told you that blind girl is too much trouble to be gettin’ too friendly with,” Rhoda reminded me, waving her finger in my face.

“Oh you just jealous, Rhoda,” Pee Wee teased. “Sister Goode, can I have a bottle of pop?”

Muh’Dear waved Pee Wee to the kitchen with a tired hand. I never would have thought Rhoda was jealous of my relationship with Florence if he hadn’t brought it up. But it made sense. Even though she had Otis, I realized now that Rhoda needed me but probably not as much as I needed her. Other than her boyfriend and Pee Wee, the other kids still didn’t want to be her friend, which is the way it still was in my case. In almost every class, I watched invitations to all the junior parties get passed around, and there was never one with my name on it. I often wondered what I would have done if I had not met Rhoda. I didn’t waste too much time thinking about that because I would never know.

I wanted to remind Rhoda that she was with her boyfriend all evening when I tried to reach her, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to make her any angrier with me than she already was. I liked Florence but not enough to risk losing Rhoda. I decided then not to encourage Florence to incorporate herself into my life any more than she already was.

“Do you still want me to come over and help you give Granny Goose a bath, Rhoda?” I asked, looking at Muh’Dear for approval.

“Uncle Johnny’s already done it, but you can come help me do it tomorrow,” she answered, rising. I walked Rhoda to the porch.

She looked over my shoulder back into the house first to make sure nobody could hear us talking. “Now don’t you let that blind girl ruin everythin’ between us. Do you hear me?” Rhoda shook her finger in my face. She was grinning, but I knew she was serious. This was the first time since we had begun our friendship that another girl had entered our lives the way Florence had.

“Nobody can come between us, Rhoda. Not Florence or anybody else,” I mumbled with my head bowed submissively.

“You see that she doesn’t. I’d hate to think that I’ve wasted all these years developing our friendship for nothin’,” Rhoda told me. I was confused, wondering what she considered Otis O’Toole’s position in our lives.