God Still Don't Like Ugly (26 page)

“Like how? The old dude could barely get around on that one leg of his. Hell. He was even more harmless than Rhoda. His head was always up in the Bible and shit.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” I pouted. “I’ve wasted my time and yours by sharing this with you.”

“Oh, I believe you, all right. I believe Rhoda told you some crazy shit and you believed her. But I don’t believe what Rhoda told you.

What I do believe is what I just said—the girl was a pathological liar and still could be. Is all that shit she told you the real reason you cut her loose?”

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I didn’t realize I was still trembling until I looked at my hands. The can of beer in my hand was shaking so hard, beer spilled out. Suds covered my hand like a glove.

I shook my head. “I was scared. I thought that if Rhoda got caught, I’d go down with her.”

“Well, if what she told you is true, and she gets caught, you goin’

down with her anyway.” Pee Wee ran into the kitchen and returned with a paper towel, mopping sweat off his face.

“Pee Wee, you have to promise me you won’t tell anybody what I just told you.”

Laughing, he sat back down, dropping the paper towel to the floor.

“Oh, you ain’t got to worry about that. What you need to be worried about is why Rhoda told you that pack of lies in the first place. Did you ever sit her down and try to figure her out?” Pee Wee shook his head and gave me a pitying look. “I always thought that out of the three of us, you was the one with the most common sense.” He laughed again and drank some more. He stopped laughing when he saw how hard I was staring at him. He let out a gasp that resembled a croak.

“You really believed that woman. Didn’t you?”

I nodded. “Why would a smart girl like Rhoda tell lies like that? She wasn’t crazy. You know her daddy would have taken her to the best shrink money could buy if he thought she had a problem.”

“And how do you know she wasn’t cracked? If you’d have seen a cop shoot your brother dead like she done, you’d be havin’ some serious problems, too, I bet.” Pee Wee took a quiet, quick sip from his beer can, and then let out a loud belch. He slapped his chest before letting out another belch, frowning, and shaking his head. “Now, Rhoda was my girl way before I met you. She wasn’t like the other girls I knew. She seemed too perfect. Even when we was kids, I knew she was carryin’ around some heavy shit from seein’ her brother get killed. Why her folks didn’t take her to a shrink, I don’t know. But I never said nothin’ to her about how strange she was. She was always cool with me.”

“She gave me the coldest look today when I saw her,” I said, staring at the wall behind Pee Wee.

“I would have, too. You was the only girlfriend she had and you was good for her. She used to tell me all the time how she didn’t know how she’d make it without you to talk to.”

“Rhoda told you that?”

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Pee Wee nodded. “All the time. You was a lifeline to her. Then you up and dropped her like a bad habit without tryin’ to get to the root of her problem? Hell, no wonder she gave you the evil eye today.”

I gasped and felt a tug at the bottom of my heart. Then I felt a twinge of sadness and regret. I had to wonder what Rhoda would say if she knew I had just blabbed on her. I also wondered what she would do to me. Fear gripped me so hard, my neck suddenly felt like a noose had been placed around it. I had to loosen the top buttons on my blouse so I could breathe. “Pee Wee, promise me you won’t tell Rhoda what I told you. Or anybody else.”

“Oh, you ain’t got to worry about me spreadin’ them bare-butt lies.

I ain’t that crazy. If the girl really was bold enough to put somebody’s lights out, I wouldn’t want to be on her shit list. Now you promise me somethin’, Annette.”

“What?”

“Promise me that if you and Rhoda do get back together, you try to talk her into gettin’ some therapy.” Pee Wee drained his beer can and started moving toward the door, shaking his head and laughing and humming that ominous theme music from
The Twilight Zone
.

CHAPTER 51

It saddened me to know that Pee Wee had taken the news I’d shared with him so lightly. But I was glad that I’d finally told him. As off-the-wall as it was, his reaction had given me something else to consider. His theory about Rhoda’s behavior made as much sense as anything else. It was possible that Rhoda was not the ghoul I thought she was. I had to ask myself: What if Rhoda had lied to me about smothering Mr. Boatwright and killing those other three people?

What if she had a medical problem that interfered with her telling the truth? Hadn’t I read about people telling lies to get attention?

Good God! I had a hard time concentrating on the drive to the airport to pick up Daddy and Lillimae.

Richland didn’t have an airport. The closest one was in Akron, about thirty-five miles away. Pee Wee had offered to ride along with me, but I had declined his offer. His reaction to what I’d told him about Rhoda also had me wondering how it was going to affect my relationship with him. Pee Wee was the most levelheaded person I knew. The last thing I wanted to lose him over was him thinking that I was crazy or worse. Even so, I was anxious for him to meet the rest of my family. I had invited him to join us for the Sunday dinner I planned to prepare.

Muh’Dear had already made it clear that she had no desire to come to the house to see Daddy. That saddened me. “Frank Goode GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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will never get another chance to hurt my feelin’s,” she had assured me. However, just her agreeing to let Daddy and Lillimae stay with me in the house on Reed Street told me I was making progress. I was comforted even more when she told me, “I hope Frank don’t get in my face and clown me when I do decide to see him. I’ll bounce somethin’ hard off his head so quick he’ll be listenin’ through his nose.”

Her laugh that had followed the comment gave me even more hope that one day my parents would be friends again.

Scary Mary invited herself to the Sunday dinner I planned to host, but I would have invited her anyway. Jean couldn’t join us. However, she did agree to come over to meet Daddy and Lillimae later that night. That is, if she could get away from Vinnie long enough. Vinnie liked to keep a short leash on Jean these days. Work was the only place she was allowed to go to without his permission or without him nipping at her heels. After Vinnie had pulled P. out of my wedding, I had lost what little respect I had for him. I shouldn’t have, but I talked about him like a dog to Jean every chance I got. I knew she didn’t appreciate it and she made that clear.

“Annette, if you don’t like Vinnie, that’s your business, but I do love him. You trashing him is not going to change that. You really need to get over what Jerome did to you and get a life,” Jean told me.

The last thing I wanted anybody to think was that I was still reacting over my breakup with Jerome. I still loved Jerome and I wanted him to be happy, even if it was without me. But Jerome had nothing to do with the way I behaved regarding Vinnie Gambiano or anybody else.

I still didn’t know if the Child Protective Services investigators had approached Vinnie and Jean to follow up on that anonymous telephone call I had made about P. But something had happened in Jean’s house. Now the curtains stayed closed all day, every day. And I rarely saw P. outside in her front yard playing like I used to. Jean had stopped calling and visiting my house two or three times a week and I had stopped calling and going to visit her. It was a shame that another man had brought some more unhappiness into my life.

Things would never be the same again for Jean or me.

CHAPTER 52

Ihad assigned Daddy to Muh’Dear’s old room. I insisted that Lillimae sleep in my room. I planned to sleep downstairs on the living room couch during their visit.

Even though I had clean sheets, I had bought new ones for the beds. The last thing I wanted was for my daddy and my sister to wallow on sheets that I had fucked Jerome and Pee Wee on.

Daddy gasped as I helped him unpack the rest of his things the following Saturday evening. “With all this frilly she-stuff in here, I’m liable to forget my true nature up in here.” He laughed, waving his hand around the room, frowning at the yellow curtains and white bedspread. “Girl, why you gwine to sleep on a couch when you got that other big, empty bedroom across that hall yonder?” He nodded toward the door with a puzzled look on his face. Mr. Boatwright’s old room represented a lot of unresolved pain for me. I only went into that room when I had to. Like, to store old clothes and other things I wasn’t ready to part with. The last time I had entered the room, two years ago, I discovered spider webs in every corner. I left them there and had not been in the room since.

“Uh, somebody died in that room,” I explained, sitting down on the new four-poster I had installed to replace the one Muh’Dear had slept in for more than twenty years. The mattress and springs were so firm they didn’t even creak under my hefty behind. It was the bed GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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that I had hoped to share with Jerome and conceive my children.

When Pee Wee paid me a visit, we sometimes ended up wallowing around in it, just to add some variety to our clumsy routine. I had put new sheets on it, too. Pee Wee and I did other things to keep our relationship from getting boring. After a few too many beers and maybe a strong joint, we rolled around on a pallet on the living room floor. I was thinking about my romps with Pee Wee so there was a smile on my face when I cleared my throat and said, “Death makes me nervous, Daddy.”

Standing in the middle of the floor, Daddy looked at me with a confused expression on his face. “Oh? Well, do say.” He shook his head and dragged his fingers through his wiry hair. “Now, I don’t blame you for that. My dead grandpa’s haint floated above my bed one night when I was a young’un and scared me so bad I busted the bedroom door down tryin’ to get out that room so fast. Who was it that died in that room, anyway?”

“Uh, that boarder we had living with us for a few years. An elderly, sickly old man. He died in his sleep.” I paused and caressed my chin, my eyes looking around the room. “I hope you and Lillimae are hungry. I’ve been cooking all evening.” I rose from the bed with a grin.

“Elderly and sick, huh? I bet it was a stroke.”

“Something like that,” I said quietly.

“I know that old brother had to be good to y’all. Your mama don’t take no mess off nobody.”

“He was, Daddy. And you’re right about Muh’Dear. She wouldn’t take mess off any man.”

Daddy sighed sadly and shook his head. “Not even me. When I come home from servin’ for Uncle Sam overseas, I had a little, uh, social ailment I caught from one of them French gals over yonder. Your mama batted my head with a plank.”

I gasped. “I never knew you were in the service.”

“Oh, there’s a whole lot you don’t know about me, girl. We’ll get reacquainted, don’t worry. I ain’t never turnin’ my back on you no more.”

I cleared my throat and looked away. “I know you won’t, Daddy,” I said, my eyes getting misty. “Now, hurry up. Come get acquainted with a couple of my friends. There will be plenty of time for us to talk later.”

After an extended visit to the bathroom, Daddy joined Lillimae, 212

Mar y Monroe

Scary Mary, Pee Wee, and me at the dinner table. Steam was still rising from the huge bowl of collard greens I had dumped from a CrockPot. I had fried two whole chickens and made a huge pan of cornbread from scratch. Okra and corn were swimming around in a bowl of tomato sauce. I had bought a gallon of vanilla ice cream to go with the peach cobbler that Scary Mary said was “screaming loud and clear” from a plate next to the cornbread.

As soon as Scary Mary got me alone in the kitchen after the elaborate dinner, she started whispering. “How come you didn’t tell me your sister was walkin’ around lookin’ like a white woman? And how come y’all didn’t tell me Frank Goode was such a good-lookin’ man?

No wonder that white woman snatched him from your mama and ran. He’d have opened up my nose, too.” Scary Mary’s wrinkled old eyes sparkled like I had never seen before. Other than for money, I had never seen her show any interest in men. Even though she had been married several times.

“Thanks for helping me do the dishes.” I deliberately avoided responding to Scary Mary’s shallow questions and comments. I had something more important on my mind. Muh’Dear’s conspicuous absence had made me more than a little uneasy. Since she had softened enough to allow Daddy and Lillimae to stay at our house, I thought that by the time they arrived, Muh’Dear would agree to join us for dinner. I was wrong. I was pleased that so far, Daddy and Lillimae had refrained from asking about Muh’Dear in front of two busybodies like Scary Mary and Pee Wee.

I was glad when the telephone in the kitchen rang. Hoping it was Muh’Dear, I didn’t take the time to dry my hands. I sprinted across the kitchen floor and grabbed the phone, dropping it twice from my wet hand before I could even say hello. It was Jean. I waved Scary Mary back to the living room where Pee Wee, Daddy, and Lillimae were.

“Annette, I don’t think I can make it over there this evening. We got a little problem on our hands,” Jean told me. She could not hide the terror in her voice.

I gripped the telephone with both hands. “What’s the matter?” I didn’t want to ask, but I had a feeling her little problem had something to do with Vinnie. I had seen him earlier in the day, lurking around the side of Jean’s house, looking on the ground under a window like he had lost something.

“P.’s gone,” Jean announced in a shaky voice.

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“Gone where?”

“I don’t know!” Jean cried. “Somebody took her.”

“Jean, the only person who would want to take P. is her daddy. Why don’t you call him?”

“Tony? He’s the last person who’d take P. Didn’t I tell you he hasn’t been to see her in three years?”

“Why don’t you call him anyway? You and I both know how unpredictable men are.”

“I . . . I tried to reach him. His wife told me he’s been locked up in county jail for the past two weeks for beating up his landlord.”