God Still Don't Like Ugly (37 page)

“Ain’t we, Annette? I didn’t think we’d get this far.”

“I didn’t, either,” I replied.

CHAPTER 72

Rhoda had come to Muh’Dear’s house with Scary Mary. Prancing behind them had been Carlene with a healthy grin on her face.

She’d had to take a few days off from work because of another physical setback caused by a tricky dick. Again. This time it was a sore pussy caused by a man with a severely curved penis. What Carlene did with her life was her business, but it saddened me to see what she had settled for. But she seemed happy. Even though she was
just
a prostitute.

I was in no position to judge her so when she and Scary Mary regaled me with this latest comic confession, all I did was laugh.

Rhoda’s parents had left New Orleans that morning with their church group to go to Kenya. Going on an African safari had always been a lifelong dream of theirs. It was the first time that so many miles separated Rhoda from her parents and it saddened her. She had been unusually quiet for most of the evening.

When Scary Mary invited herself and Carlene to spend the night with Muh’Dear, Rhoda decided to get a ride home with Pee Wee and me.

“I don’t feel too well,” Rhoda announced in a mumble that I could barely hear.

“We’ll take you straight home,” I said.

Rhoda had never been much of a drinker. A few beers or a couple of glasses of wine usually made her either slaphappy or lethargic. The GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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odd thing was, she had only consumed half a glass of wine with her dinner, yet she was staggering across the floor and slurring her words.

In fact, she had been doing that even before drinking the wine. I assumed she had enjoyed a few drinks before her arrival or she was missing her parents, especially since they would be unreachable until they returned from their ten-day safari. Rhoda had told me that from the time she got married and moved away from her parents, she called her mother twice a week. I couldn’t imagine not being able to talk to Muh’Dear for more than a few days.

“Boy, you drive careful out there with all that snow and ice,” Daddy told Pee Wee, giving him a hard look. “I don’t want nothin’ to happen to my girl and her baby.”

Pee Wee had to hold Rhoda up to keep her from falling as we made our way to the new Chevy he had purchased a few days earlier. Even though it was dark, and not a single other person was on the street, the neighbors on both sides of Muh’Dear’s house peeped out of their windows. I was used to that by now. And unlike Jerome, who used to give fingers to those nosy neighbors when he and I visited Muh’Dear, Pee Wee ignored them.

Before Pee Wee could start the car, Rhoda stretched out on the backseat, belly-up.

“That little sister ain’t goin’ to be makin’ too much noise,” Pee Wee laughed, glancing at Rhoda through his rearview mirror.

“This little sister won’t, either,” I said, hugging Charlotte, who had been sleeping like a log for the past two hours. I sniffed, staring at my daughter’s plump, beautiful dark face. She looked like an angel dressed in yellow from head to toe. Even the blanket that Rhoda had given her was yellow.

“So, you really want to do this thing? Get married and shit,” Pee Wee said, pulling out onto Cherry Street, narrowly missing a slow-moving station wagon crawling backward out of the driveway next door.

“What the hell. Why not?” I grinned. “Seems like I’m going to be stuck with you for the rest of my life anyway. Let’s do it before you change your mind. I don’t want a lot of fanfare or anything. Let’s go down to the courthouse this coming Saturday.”

Pee Wee nodded. “That’s cool. My old man is too sick to be comin’

over here from Pennsylvania for a weddin’ anyway. And I ain’t for traipsin’ down no church aisle with a use-to-be prostitute like you no-298

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how. . . .” Pee Wee glanced at me with a serious look and sniffed. “But I ain’t no Jerome Cunningham. I’m takin’ your black ass as is,” he teased. “By the way, you got any more secrets you wanna share?”

“No, I don’t. And keep your eyes on the road.” I sighed and gave Pee Wee a pensive look. “It just seems so strange. Us getting married.”

“What’s so strange about it?”

“For one thing, I never thought I’d marry somebody like you, Pee Wee.”

He gasped and glanced at me again. “What’s that ’spose to mean?”

“It’s just that, well, you’re the boy next door.”

“Well, you the girl next door. So what? What’s your point?”

“Just shut up and drive before one of us says something we’ll regret,” I snapped with a grin.

“One more thing.”

I gave Pee Wee a sharp look. “What? Please don’t tell me you got some deep, dark secrets you want to share.” I was alarmed and I couldn’t hide it.

“Naw, it ain’t nothin’ like that. You know everything there is to know about me.” Pee Wee paused and sucked in his breath. His window was rolled down a few inches. The cool night air felt good on my face, but I covered Charlotte’s protectively when she sneezed in her sleep. “I do love you, girl. I always did. Even when you and Rhoda was callin’ me a fag behind my back when we was growin’ up. I used to fantasize about you . . . when . . . when I jacked off.”

I gasped, then giggled. “I love you, too, you nasty thing, you.” We were silent the rest of the way to Rhoda’s house.

Rhoda was still passed out on the backseat when we stopped in her driveway. As soon as Pee Wee turned off the motor, her porch light came on and Otis rushed out in a housecoat, grinning and waving.

Pee Wee leaped out of the car and shook Otis’s hand. “Hey, brother.

Rhoda needs some help. She had too good a time.”

Otis groaned and lifted his hands high above his head and clapped them. “De woman is such a hard-headed one. How many times do I tell her not to drink too much? But do de woman listen to me? No.

Every time she dig a hole, she dig it deep. Oh—
Americans
!”

Otis snatched open the back door of Pee Wee’s car and dragged Rhoda out like she was a sack of flour. He cradled her in his arms, struggling on the icy sidewalk to keep from falling.

I cracked open my window. “Otis, you tell Rhoda I’ll talk to her GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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when I drop Charlotte off on my way to work tomorrow,” I yelled before we drove off.

Pee Wee made a U-turn and headed back across town to my house.

As we walked in my front door, my living room telephone rang. I handed Charlotte to Pee Wee and sprinted across the floor to answer it, cursing at whoever it was calling my house so late at night. It was Daddy.

“Annette, that foreigner that Rhoda married just called. Ain’t he one of them Geechees?”

“The man’s Jamaican, Daddy. What did Otis say? We just left his house,” I said.

“He said he tried to call you at home and got your answerin’ machine. He called here to see if y’all had come back over here.” Daddy sounded so tired. “At least that’s what I think he said. I thought he was babblin’ gibberish. You know I ain’t good with them accents.”

I saw that my answering machine was blinking. “I just got in. What did he want?”

“Well, with that foreign accent of his I couldn’t hardly tell for sure.

Somethin’ about Rhoda.”

“I’ll call him right now.”

“He said to tell y’all to come out to the hospital. At least I think that’s what he said. I swear to God, that man harder on my ears than Donald Duck. How Rhoda and y’all can understand a word he say is beyond me.”

“Hospital? What—” I paused and turned to Pee Wee standing right next to me. “It’s Daddy. Otis wants us to come to the hospital.” Pee Wee blinked and looked at the telephone. “Daddy, did Otis say anything else?” I asked, grabbing Pee Wee’s hand. He placed Charlotte on the couch and rushed back to stand next to me with his ear cocked against the telephone.

“Yeah. With that accent he got, I ain’t sure. But it sure sounded like he said Rhoda done had a stroke.”

CHAPTER 73

Otis met Pee Wee and me in the waiting room at Richland City Hospital. He ran toward us with his arms stretched open and a desperate look on his face. His lips were moving but no words were coming out. I grabbed his shoulders and shook him.

“What happened?” I shouted, ignoring the indifferent stares that we received from nurses swishing around us. “I have to see her and I have to see her now!” I roared. One huge nurse standing a few feet away from us folded her arms and shot me a hot look. Every nurse on duty that night had a big bosom and a stern face. I didn’t care how big and stern they looked; I was ready to challenge every single one if I had to. For once in my life I was glad that I was big, too. And I could look just as stern as anybody else.

“She’s bad. She is really bad,” Otis choked. “De doctor say she had a stroke. A
stroke
!” Otis paused and rubbed his head, his eyes rolling back and forth like marbles. “Her mum and daddy can’t be reached so I call for you to come.”

I could barely talk but somehow the words popped out of my mouth. “A stroke? No way!” Everything around me went black.

Suddenly, for a moment, all I could see in that darkness was Otis’s ter-rified face. I took a step back. “Rhoda’s thirty-six years old. What’s she doing having a stroke? Old people have strokes,” I yelled, looking GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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around the room, frowning at the cold-looking vinyl couches lined up along the walls. “Are you sure? We thought she was just drunk.”

“Is she goin’ to be all right?” Pee Wee asked, draping his arm around my shoulders. We had dropped Charlotte off with Muh’Dear.

Otis shrugged. “I don’t know. Let us pray she will. I need her. I’m fin to go crazy.” Otis massaged the back of his head and then shook it so hard, he had to close his eyes. I held his hand until he composed himself. “I’m fin to lose everything.”

“That’s not true,” I insisted. “Everything is going to be all right.

One of the mean-looking nurses tried to block my way, telling me only family could see Rhoda. I was more than family, as far as I was concerned. With one hand, I shoved that heifer to the side like she was as light as a feather and I galloped toward the elevator along with Otis. Pee Wee was close behind. Nobody was going to stop me from seeing Rhoda. I wish somebody had.

I was horrified. It was the most haunting sight I’d ever seen before in my life. Rhoda’s face was so contorted, her mouth was on the side.

It was open in a frozen yawn and she was drooling. She was conscious, but she could not move a single part of her body, except her eyes.

When she saw me hovering over her, she blinked. And then a large tear rolled down the side of her face. Dried spit and snot covered her lips and chin. This was the first time I’d seen Rhoda without makeup since we were teenagers.

“Rhoda, honey, it’s going to be all right. You’re going to be just fine. I promise.” I had a lot of nerve making her another promise. I turned to Otis. “Where’s Jade?”

“With de nice white lady next door to my house,” he managed, not taking his eyes off of his wife. “De nice lady next door, she say Rhoda told to her this morning she was feeling mighty funny.”

“I should have paid more attention to her at Muh’Dear’s house,” I muttered, recalling how Rhoda had slurred her words and stumbled around, even before drinking that wine. “I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t make it,” I said, looking at Pee Wee.

“She in God’s hands now. The rest is up to Him,” Pee Wee said, embracing me from behind.

I turned sharply to Pee Wee and said, “We’re getting rid of that car.” He pulled away from me and stared at me with his mouth hanging open.

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“I just bought that car,” he wailed, hands on his hips, his brow fur-rowed.

“Like I said, we’re getting rid of that car. Even if I have to burn it up with my own hands.” I meant every word I said. Even if Rhoda lived, I knew that I would never ride in Pee Wee’s new car again. I already felt the same way about that car as I did about the bedroom that Mr.

Boatwright had committed his crimes against me and died in. I thought of it as a tomb.

I left Charlotte with Muh’Dear that night. I didn’t sleep that night and I didn’t go to work the next morning. I was disappointed with Pee Wee at first for not taking the day off to stay with me. But in the long run, I was glad he didn’t. Being alone gave me the opportunity to focus on Rhoda’s condition, which had changed considerably by the time Pee Wee left his barbershop and came to my house around noon, still wearing his smock.

“The guy at the dealership is an old army buddy of mine,” Pee Wee began, clearly disappointed about having to get rid of his new car.

“He let me bring the car back and trade it for another one. Same make and model, but in navy blue. And it cost us a few dollars.” He paused and smiled vaguely. “And you can forget about a honeymoon cruise on
The Love Boat
.”

I waved my hand impatiently. “Otis called and said Rhoda’s able to talk now,” I told Pee Wee. “I have to get out to that hospital immediately.”

“Where’s Charlotte?” Pee Wee asked, looking around the living room.

“Don’t worry about her. She’s with my daddy.” I didn’t even give Pee Wee the chance to take off his coat. I ushered him back out the door, stepping on the backs of his heels. “Why don’t you go get the baby in your car. I’ll call you from the hospital.” I didn’t even stop to look at the brand-new car, its sticker still in the window, parked in Pee Wee’s driveway. I just jumped into my car.

Rhoda was sitting up in bed when I arrived at the hospital. Otis and Jade had just left. I was glad I could be alone with her. She smiled as I rushed to the bed and grabbed her limp hand.

“Rhoda, you’re going to be fine.” It was more of a question than a statement. Her mouth was still not where it was supposed to be. For somebody as vain as Rhoda, I knew that that had to be the ultimate nightmare.

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“I . . . I . . . don’t think I’m goin’ to let a little stroke get me down,”

she managed. Her mouth remained open after she finished speaking with her enlarged tongue hanging out, resting on her quivering lip.