God Still Don't Like Ugly (36 page)

I knew that if he had known that I was in the hospital having a baby, wild horses couldn’t have kept him away. As long as I had known Pee Wee and as close as we were, I wasn’t sure where I stood with him. I didn’t know what this new development in my life was going to mean to my friendship with Pee Wee.

Because of my age and weight, delivering a baby was not easy for me. After my daughter had decided it was time for her to make her debut, she also decided to change her position in my body, turning herself almost upside down. I had to be cut open. My doctor insisted that I spend another few days in the hospital.

The day after I’d given birth, I opened my eyes to see Lillimae standing over my hospital bed, smoothing my hair back off my face with a damp facecloth. “Don’t you worry about havin’ a scar on your belly, Annette. The doctor had to cut me open for both my babies.”

Lillimae stood up straight, patted her belly, and sighed. “My husband says my scar is the biggest ‘smile’ he ever seen on me. I hope you’ll look at your scar the same way and I hope you don’t wait too long to share this blessed event with that baby’s daddy.”

Two days after I delivered my daughter, Pee Wee walked quietly into my room with a huge potted plant. I was propped up in bed, trying to season a baked potato. Daddy, Muh’Dear, Lillimae, Scary Mary, GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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and all five of her prostitutes had just left and I was so exhausted I couldn’t even see straight. It took me a moment to realize that it was Pee Wee I was looking at.
The Price Is Right
was on the television facing my bed. Pee Wee turned the television off and gave me a stern look.

“Girl, why didn’t you tell me you was pregnant?” he asked in a hoarse voice, setting the plant on the windowsill. Then he slid his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a get-well card and dropped it on the nightstand. “I call your house lookin’ for you and your daddy tells me you at the hospital
havin’ a baby
.”

“I’ve been meaning to . . .” I set the tray with what was left of my lunch on the table next to the bed. “Uh . . . all this medication got me all doped up . . . I thought I called you yesterday to tell you.”

Pee Wee walked up close to the bed and for a moment he just stared at me as my face burned. In the clumsiest move I ever saw him make, he leaned over the bed and kissed me on my forehead with ho-mosexual indifference. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who spent almost as much time in my bed as I did. The father of my child.

“To tell me what?”

“About the baby,” I whimpered.

He nodded and pursed his lips. “Did you just find out you was pregnant yesterday?”

I didn’t answer. I just blinked.

“I called you yesterday, girl. Like I said, your daddy picks up the telephone and tells me you at the hospital havin’ a baby.”

With a look on his face I could not interpret, Pee Wee moved until his back hit the wall. With a deep sigh, he turned and moved to the side so that he was now in front of the window.

“So do this mean you and Jerome goin’ to try and make a go of it after all?” he asked, talking with his back me.

“Uh . . . I don’t think so.” I was stunned. Pee Wee thought that Jerome had fathered my baby! Rhoda, Lillimae, and Muh’Dear were the only ones who knew the truth and I had not decided on what I was going to tell everybody else. But I knew I couldn’t pass my daughter off on Jerome. Once the news got to him, he would have denied it anyway, so I’d be right back where I started. Pee Wee had been the only man I’d slept with since Jerome. It sounded like he didn’t think that, though. If he had asked, I would have told him right then and there that he was my baby’s father.

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“Pee Wee, you should leave now. They’ll be bringing the baby in for me to feed in a few minutes.” My breasts felt like bricks as I struggled to rearrange my bloated body. I looked like I was still pregnant.

Pee Wee sighed as he moved toward me. “I can’t wait to see your little girl,” he said dryly, patting my shoulder. “Uncle Pee Wee is goin’ to spoil her rotten.”

“I already know that,” I said sadly.

“And I know she is goin’ to be a heart-breaker. Just like her mama.”

He bit his bottom lip and blinked. “I can’t wait to see what she looks like,” he said on his way out.

I was grateful that Charlotte looked just like me. I believed that I could keep the identity of her father a secret for the rest of my life, if I had to.

Muh’Dear was the proudest new grandmother in town. “And I just love the name Charlotte. That was my mama’s name, you know. She didn’t live long enough to enjoy a grandchild,” Muh’Dear told me.

Recalling that mysterious dream I’d had made me feel even better.

I now knew that both my children were in good hands, the dead one and the one I held in my arms.

Two days after I returned to my house, Lillimae had to leave Ohio to go back to work and look after her own children. But Daddy decided to stay on in Ohio indefinitely. Muh’Dear had insisted that he stay with her in the house that she had shared with Daddy King—

sleeping in a separate room, though. It was a blessing to see them on friendly terms. It was one of the many things I had prayed for.

Rhoda spent a lot of her free time at my house, fussing over Charlotte.

“We’ve been tryin’ for another child before Otis and I get too old,”

she told me. “Otis has always wanted another boy to replace David.

He took our son’s death harder than I did and still hasn’t got over it.”

“You think about your little boy a lot, don’t you?”

“I think about a lot of things, but my children are the most important things in my life. I would die for them. Poor Jade hasn’t been the same since P. died. She doesn’t want to sleep over with any of her other little friends and I don’t want her to. Just thinkin’ about my daughter bein’ in Jean’s house with that Vinnie just makes my blood boil.”

“Well, at least that’s one more child molester nobody won’t ever GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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have to worry about again,” I said thoughtfully, holding my own child closer to me so tight she squirmed and moaned.

“That’s for sure. Vinnie’ll get along just fine down in that inferno with old Buttwright,” Rhoda hissed.

I had often wondered what child molesters thought of one another. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter anymore. They would all end up in the same fiery hell and that’s all that mattered.

“Nobody’s sorry that old Mr. Antonosanti killed him.” I sighed. It was the look on Rhoda’s face that sent my mind into a whirl of confusion. I had to wonder just what really happened to Vinnie. It had appeared to be an open-and-shut case. They’d found Vinnie dead and Mr. Antonosanti had promptly confessed to killing him. It all seemed too neat and convenient. If Rhoda was involved, I didn’t want to know. But if her confessions about her killing Mr. Boatwright, her grandmother, that cop, and that white girl were true, and if Rhoda thought for one minute that Vinnie had also touched her daughter, it all made sense.

“Annette, why are you suddenly lookin’ so serious?” Rhoda asked, hugging her chest. She had on a baggy sweater. Even if she’d still had breasts, that sweater would have concealed them. It occurred to me that most of the tops Rhoda wore since her return to Ohio were baggy. I had wondered why. I wouldn’t have to wonder about that anymore.

“Uh . . . I was just thinking about how happy having Charlotte has made me. I guess it’s not fair for me to keep all this happiness to myself. I have to tell Pee Wee that Charlotte is his daughter,” I said. With a laugh I added, “He worked hard for her.”

“I’ve been tellin’ you that all along. Haven’t I?”

I put all the other thoughts I had just had out of my mind. None of it seemed to matter anymore now.

CHAPTER 71

As soon as Rhoda left my house, I called up Pee Wee. He had been to the house several times since I’d come from the hospital. Like a typical man, he had purchased a lot of things that Charlotte couldn’t appreciate for years. In addition to rattles, bibs, and pacifiers, he had spent a fortune on huge dolls that could walk and talk, a tea set, roller skates, and a play station. Like everybody else, he agreed that Charlotte looked a lot like me. So far, nobody but me had noticed that she had Pee Wee’s eyes.

“I need you to get over here right now,” I said sternly.

I heard him take a deep breath before he responded. “Uh-oh. Uh, shit. Ain’t no tellin’ what you goin’ to confess this time. I think I should have me a few drinks before I come over there. Girl, you be comin’ up with some deep shit.”

“I don’t want you drunk when I tell you . . . what I have to tell you.”

“Please don’t tell me you got a fatal disease—”

“Charlotte is your daughter.”

There was a moment of silence that seemed to go on forever.

I heard Pee Wee suck in his breath and cough to clear his throat, choking on air. “What did you say?” he wheezed.

“You heard me.”

Pee Wee laughed. “I—you, why in the world do you keep so many GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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things a secret? Do you like fuckin’ with my blood pressure? How do I know you ain’t just clownin’ me?”

“I know you didn’t believe that stuff I told you about Rhoda killing all those people. And I don’t know if you believed all that stuff I told you and everybody else about Mr. Boatwright. If you don’t want to believe me this time, well, there’s nothing more for me to say to you tonight. What I told you about Rhoda killing those people, what I said about Mr. Boatwright raping me, and what I am telling you now about Charlotte, is all true.”

“What about Jerome?”

“What about Jerome?” I hissed.

“Every time he slid out of your house, I seen him. And I know y’all wasn’t in your bedroom playin’ cards.”

“I broke up with Jerome more than a year ago. I don’t know about your mama, but mine didn’t carry me in her belly but nine months.

Why don’t you do the math?”

I heard Pee Wee mumbling under his breath, then I heard a loud gasp. “Holy shit.”

“I’m getting off this phone now. If you decide this is too much for you, that’s fine. I can raise my child alone. And we sure don’t need your money, so you don’t even have to worry about me putting the Man on you.”

“Let me get in some clothes and come over there,” he said evenly.

“I don’t like your tone of voice and if you come over here and clown me, you . . . you are going to get what Jerome got.”

“Now you gettin’ all mad and I ain’t even there yet. I’m comin’ over there so you can tell me this to my face.”

Pee Wee didn’t come over right away like I expected him to. It was an hour before he pounded on my door. In his hand was the biggest bouquet of roses I had ever seen.

“Ain’t you never seen a proud new father before?” he asked.

Pee Wee looked in my eyes the way no man had ever done before. I could feel his love for me. I broke down and cried like a baby.

It was all clear to me now. After all I’d been through with other men, the best one for me had been right up under my nose all along.

I wasn’t prepared for what Pee Wee did a few minutes later. He spirited Charlotte and me to Muh’Dear’s house.

Over dinner in front of my daddy, my mother, Rhoda, and the ever-294

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present Scary Mary, with Charlotte on his lap, Pee Wee turned to me with a broad smile and tears in his eyes. “Girl, if we don’t hurry up and get married, we goin’ to have to find a church that’s wheelchair accessible. I found another gray hair on my head this mornin’,” he said petulantly.

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said, grinning from ear to ear. I meant every word I said. Because I was ready now myself.

It was so ironic that both Jerome and Pee Wee had proposed to me over dinner with Muh’Dear as a witness. It had to mean something.

“And if you run off and leave this girl, I’m goin’ to hunt you down myself,” Muh’Dear said sternly. “Some men have to go through hell before they figure out how good they already had it.” Muh’Dear looked at Daddy.

Daddy’s eyes got wide and he said quickly, “I ain’t gwine nowhere.

I’m stayin’ rightcheer . . . where I belong.”

Scary Mary gasped so hard she started coughing. Her mouth dropped open and she looked around the table. “Frank ain’t got no choice. How far do y’all think a old fossil like him would get? And who would want this black-ass nigger now anyway?” Scary Mary snarled. She finished clearing her throat by taking a long drink from a glass of Jack Daniels. Turning to Daddy, she added, “Frank, this is your last chance. You ain’t got nothin’ no other woman, Black or white, would want no more so you may as well stay on with Gussie Mae for good this time. And don’t think you gwine to get your name added to none of Gussie Mae’s property. Gussie Mae ain’t nobody’s fool so if you leave her again, you ain’t takin’ nothin’ with you but what you brought.” Daddy bowed his head as Scary Mary turned to Muh’Dear, who was sitting there with her mouth open now. Even after all of these years, Scary Mary’s behavior still stunned some of us.

“See how easy it was for me to straighten things out, y’all? You just got to be firm with men like you do with young’uns. Whup the shit out of

’em if you have to, to make ’em behave. Shit.”

“Me and Gussie Mae can take care of our own business,” Daddy mumbled, his head still bowed contritely, his eyes staring at the floor.

“And you, Pee Wee, you surprised me,” Scary Mary said seriously.

“You sure done come a long way from that little sissified bag of bones runnin’ around the neighborhood wearin’ that Beatle wig.” Scary Mary bit off a huge piece of fried chicken and turned to me with a severe scowl on her face, chewing hard as she spoke. “Girl, if I was sixty GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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years younger, you’d have to fight me over Pee Wee. You let him get away, I’m gwine to whup your ass anyway.”

Everybody laughed.

“And I’ll help,” Rhoda said seriously. Then she grinned and gave me a proud look. “Annette, you’ve come a long way, girl.”

“We done all come a long way.” Pee Wee covered my hand with his.