God Still Don't Like Ugly (3 page)

“What-all is wrong with Daddy? He doesn’t look too well,” I said with concern, tapping my fingers on the naked wooden table situated in the middle of the small kitchen.

“Oh, he’s in pretty good health for a man his age, but he was so lonely livin’ alone. And in a neighborhood that was so rough even the cops got robbed on the streets. I was just as lonely as Daddy was.”

Lillimae paused and leaned down to scratch the side of her foot.

Then she started removing plates from the table.

“I’ll help you clean up,” I offered. I stood up, my legs feeling like lead pipes. I massaged my thighs, frowning at the hole on the knee of my pantyhose that I had ruined crawling out of the cab.

She waved me back to my seat. “You just sit there. You’re company.

It ain’t every day I get to see family.” She paused and continued talking with her back to me. “Uh, some folks wouldn’t want nothin’ to do with a man’s outside woman’s kids. Sharin’ the same blood wouldn’t mean a damn thing to them.”

“Well, I don’t feel that way.” I sniffed and coughed to clear my throat. “Speaking of blood, where is your mother these days?” I asked, returning to my seat with a thud so hard, my tailbone ached.

I had no love for the woman who had ruined my life, but I wanted to know more about her. Muh’Dear had always advised me,
Know
thine enemy, because knowledge is power.
I had to know for myself what it was about the woman who had managed to weaken my daddy and lure him away from his responsibilities.

Lillimae let out a deep sigh and pressed her thin lips together so tight it looked like they had disappeared. Then she started talking in a low, controlled voice. “Oh, she took off when I was ten. I heard that she lived in Key West for a few years. Mama’s family didn’t want nothin’ to do with me and Sondra and Amos, so we couldn’t keep up with Mama’s life. I just found out three years ago that she’s back in Miami with a new husband. I have two other half-sisters that I’ve never GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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even seen or talked to.” Lillimae blinked and smiled sadly. “That’s why it was so important for me to meet you.”

“Oh.” The kitchen window was open and smoke from one of the houses next door streamed in, making my eyes burn and itch. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. “It’s too bad you don’t get to spend time with her,” I managed. Nobody knew as well as I did how painful it was not to have much of a family. My mother and my Aunt Berniece had been the only relatives I had when I was growing up.

Lillimae continued talking as she started washing dishes. “Mama’s baby brother Lester married a woman I went to school with. Roxanne McFinney. How a cracker like him ended up with such a nice lady is beyond me. I talk to Roxanne every now and then. We go to the same dollar-a-load washhouse. She tells me that my Uncle Lester is so racist, he won’t even wear black underwear. Lester would bite Roxanne’s head off if he knew she associated with a mutt like me in public. But Roxanne still sneaks by here every now and then anyway.”

I didn’t know where Lillimae’s bathroom was, but I could hear Daddy still moaning and cussing. He flushed the toilet about every other minute.

“Poor Daddy. I been tryin’ to get him to go to the doctor to get somethin’ for his stomach. But you know how stubborn some of our Black men are when it comes to their health. And they act like they know everything. Daddy had a runnin’ buddy who wouldn’t listen to nobody when he got these growths on the back of his neck. Even when one started oozin’ pus. Well, bein’ so stubborn got Brother Hamilton nowhere but in a hole at the Oak Grove Cemetery over in Alabama.” Lillimae paused and motioned me back to the living room.

I sat down on the dangerously weak couch. She sat down across from me on a wobbly bamboo chair.

“How long can you stay down here?” Lillimae asked, fanning her face with the tail of her bathrobe, revealing puckered fat on her thighs that reminded me of blisters. It was a struggle, but somehow she managed to cross her massive legs. I didn’t even try to do that, because it was too much trouble.

I looked at my watch before answering. “Just a few days. I need to save some vacation days for my honeymoon cruise.”

A broad smile appeared on Lillimae’s face and she shook her head and clicked her teeth. She rubbed the side of her neck and looked at 18

Mar y Monroe

me, blinking hard. “Girl, would you believe I spent my weddin’ night in the emergency ward gettin’ my jaw wired up? My man beat the livin’ daylights out of me for slow dancin’ with his best man.” She chuckled and let out a deep sigh. “My thirtieth birthday at that. Me and Freddie Lee had already been together for ten years and had two babies.”

“You must have had some wedding reception. Are you still married?” I didn’t laugh. There was nothing funny about a man hitting a female. I still had nightmares about the beatings that Mr. Boatwright had showered me with the few times I tried to keep him out of my bed.

Lillimae shook her head and shrugged. “That thing I married took off before the ink dried on our marriage license. Freddie Lee—that’s my husband’s name—was so jealous, he didn’t even allow me to go to male doctors. Every time I left the house and came back, he made me take off my panties so he could sniff ’em to see if he could smell another man’s juice. I broke his black ass up from that real quick, though. One time I went out and ate the biggest bowl of pinto beans and cabbage greens I could find. Then I washed it all down with some home-brewed beer. My panties was nice and ripe by the time I got home for him to sniff ’em. I didn’t have to worry about none of his foolishness after that.” Lillimae paused and laughed so hard, a huge tear rolled down the side of her face like a marble.

“Where is this Freddie Lee now?” I asked.

Lillimae gave me a serious look and groaned. “He’s in Lauderdale, livin’ with his mama. She manages one of them bait shops and he works with her.” Lillimae paused and grimaced. “Freddie Lee can be such a worm hisself sometimes. No wonder he loves sellin’ worms now.” Lillimae sniffed and then a thoughtful look appeared on her face. “But he is a good daddy to our two precious little boys. That’s why I didn’t mind lettin’ him have them for the summer. When I call to talk to the boys, me and Freddie Lee talk, too. We still love each other. I know we’ll eventually work things out and hook back up. If not for us, for our boys. A child needs both parents to feel whole.”

Lillimae gave me a mournful look and quickly glanced over her shoulder in the direction where Daddy was. “I’m sure you know what I mean by that.”

“I do,” I said flatly.

“Besides, I can’t stand bein’ lonely, so I’m just about ready to put GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

19

up with anything if he decides to come back. Even that panty thing he used to do. Daddy is seventy-two years old now. He won’t be around to keep me company too much longer. I’ve been so blessed to have him with me all these years.”

“I wish I could say that,” I muttered grimly.

Lillimae gasped and frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by that,” I said levelly, listening as Daddy flushed the toilet again.

CHAPTER 6

It was another twenty minutes before Daddy returned from the bathroom, mopping his face with a wet towel and straightening his bathrobe.

“Lord, I wish I hadn’t et them peppers. Lillimae, can you run out to the drugstore and get me some more Maalox?” he grunted, a severe grimace on his face. “Carry Annette with you so she can sight-see.”

I waited with Daddy in the living room while Lillimae went to put on some clothes and shoes.

Sitting next to me on the couch, Daddy placed his hand over mine and squeezed, smiling so hard his eyes watered. “Annette, I can’t get over how fine you turned out. But then, good-lookin’ females run in my family.”

I listened with interest.

“Daddy, do you have other family? Aunt Berniece said something about you having a brother somewhere. I’d like to get in touch with your other relatives, if you don’t mind.” I thought that at this stage of my life, it was important for me to know as much as I could about my background. I wanted to have some answers for the questions I expected from the children I planned to have with Jerome.

Daddy sighed and shook his head and then an unbearably sad smile crossed his face. “St. Louis was my only brother. He passed last year. He would have been eighty last week. He had a bunch of kids GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

21

but I don’t know where none of ’em at. Both of my sisters, twins named Collette and Corinna, passed before you was born.” Daddy paused and giggled. “Big-foot gals, both of ’em.” He sniffed and got serious again, massaging his chest. “A car wreck is how they died.

They come into this mean old world together and they left it together.

Comin’ home from a revival one night, a possum jumped in front of the car and they ran off the Yammagoochee Bridge over in Alabama.

Both of ’em died in my arms after me and some boys from the church pulled ’em out of that car. There was a hospital less than five minutes away, but we couldn’t carry them there on account of it was still segregated at the time. Right after Kennedy got in the White House and him and the rest of the decent white folks made new laws, they closed that hospital down to keep from havin’ to doctor on Black folks.”

Daddy’s lips quivered and his jaw twitched, almost as much as mine.

He sniffed and continued. “Corinna left a little girl behind that her man took off somewhere right after the funeral. He was one of them Geechees so I suspect he took that child off somewhere to one of them islands where I think he came from.” His jaw still twitching, Daddy paused and blinked fast and hard. But a single tear still managed to slide out of his eye. “I declare, I loved that little gal as much as I love my own.” He paused again and grinned, wiping the tear off his cheek with the back of his hand. “You ever gwine to be
my girl
again?”

He sniffed hard and downgraded his grin to a weak smile.

“I’ve always been your girl, Daddy. And I always will be.” I patted Daddy’s shoulder and looked away, sucking in air so hard a sharp pain rolled through my chest. “How come you didn’t tell me Lillimae looked like
that
?” I asked in a whisper, leaning my head close Daddy’s.

He looked at me with genuine surprise. “Look like what?” He glanced toward the back room, where Lillimae was slamming closet doors and banging dresser drawers shut.

My face was flaming as I caressed my cheek and cocked my head to the side. Talking out of the side of my mouth, I said in a controlled voice, “She can pass for white.”

Daddy shrugged. “I can sure enough understand you havin’ a beef with white women . . .”

I gave Daddy a thoughtful look and a smile. “My closest female friend back in Ohio is white. I don’t have a problem with white women. But it was a real shock to find out that my own sister looks like one.”

22

Mar y Monroe

“Well, Lillimae ain’t white. At least not by these rules the white folks done laid down. And while we on the subject, every nigger I know claim to be part Indian. Even me! Only ones ain’t braggin’

about havin’ Indian blood is the Indians. Shoot. White blood, Indian blood, don’t matter how much of it you got. If you got any Black blood at all, you Black in this white man’s country. Case closed.

Lillimae is a Black woman and she proud of it.” Daddy paused and gave me a thoughtful look. “And I hope you proud of your color, too.”

“I am, Daddy. I wouldn’t want to be anything else.”

I could not believe that I had only been in Florida for a few hours.

It seemed more like a few days. Daylight was coming to a dramatic close. Lightning bugs and dim streetlights lit up the night as Lillimae and I made our way from the living room to her old Chrysler. She kept it parked in a narrow driveway by the side of her house. The full moon, shining like a huge silver ball, looked like it was about to drop right out of the darkening sky. It gave me an eerie feeling.

It was still just as hot as it had been when I’d arrived that afternoon.

All of the doors to the neighboring houses were standing open.

People in their nightclothes had gathered on their front porches.

They were fanning, drinking, and listening to radios playing everything from Gospel to the Blues.

After the visit to the drugstore, Lillimae and I stopped at a vegetable stand. She wanted to pick up more turnip greens and a bag of red-skinned potatoes. The place was crawling with sweaty people pushing shopping carts, loaded with everything from watermelons to ten-pound plastic bags of raw peanuts.

There was a long line of customers at three of the four checkout aisles. Since Lillimae had only two items, she rushed to the express lane. I stumbled along behind her, chewing on a handful of grapes that I had snatched off a counter next to the greens.

The cashier, a middle-aged blonde who would have been pretty without the dark circles and heavy bags under her large blue eyes, smiled as we approached her counter. She had chatted with the white man ahead of us, telling him how sorry she was about his sick wife and telling him she was going to pray for him and his whole family.

Naturally, I assumed she’d show us some level of courtesy, too.

Just as Lillimae placed her greens and the sack of potatoes on the counter, a sharp-featured white man wearing a manager’s identifica-GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

23

tion tag appeared out of nowhere. He stood rooted in a spot near our cashier, with his hairy, sunburned arms folded and a grim expression on his face. The cashier’s face immediately went from a smile to a scowl. She roughly stuffed Lillimae’s greens into the same bag with the potatoes, even though the bag was clearly too small. Then, she practically threw Lillimae’s change at her, ignoring her request to have the greens put in a separate bag. Instead, the rude cashier waved us through her line and snapped her fingers at the customer behind us and yelled, “Next!”

I had to remember where I was, because I was tempted to say something. By the grace of God, I was able to restrain myself. But I still glared at the cashier. Somehow, Lillimae managed to remain pleasant, even telling the woman, “Have a nice day.”