God Still Don't Like Ugly (40 page)

Authors: Mary Monroe

Tags: #Fiction, #African American, #General, #Contemporary Women, #Romance

BOOK: God Still Don't Like Ugly

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Blood squirted, her eyes widened, and she started kicking at my legs.

Within seconds, my calves and ankles felt like they’d been run through a wringer. Just as both women tried to pin my arms behind me, a hefty security guard came running out of nowhere and pulled us apart.

I was too angry to feel any more pain. Even with all that was going on, I realized the truth. But I still needed to hear it. And I heard it loud and clear. “This bitch has been fuckin’ my man!” the pregnant woman hollered, spit flying out of her mouth like fireworks.

“Look, I didn’t know the man was married,” I managed, my fist still balled and ready to strike again. “If you knew about him and me, his ass is the one you need to be kickin,” I snarled. I think I was more upset with Larry than I was with his wife because for the first time I realized what a pig in a poke he really was.

“Oh, don’t you worry none about my husband, bitch. His butt is mine. You better worry about yourself and that bastard you carryin’!”

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Mar y Monroe

Mrs. Holmes yelled. She rubbed the spot on her face where I’d hit her.

The way my baby was kicking, it seemed like he had joined the fight. But I was not interested in continuing something I’d already lost. All I wanted to do was get home, compose myself, and maybe pay an emergency visit to Dr. White’s office to make sure my son was still okay. But every time I tried to get in my car, the two women blocked my way, still cussing at me and trying to hit me in my stomach again.

The security guard was practically useless. He got scratched, punched, knocked down, and kicked by all three of us. The crowd roared with laughter. Some instigating teenagers chanted, “fight, fight, fight.” Then, while Mrs. Holmes and her ferocious friend stood there entertaining the crowd, cussing and calling me out of my name, a beefy-faced policeman showed up to sort out the mess.

To add insult to injury, Larry’s vicious wife attempted to have
me
ar-rested for assault! But the nosy sister from my church was the first of several people to speak up in my defense. They told the sweaty cop who had really started the fight.

“Ma’am, do you want to press charges?” the cop asked me, wiping sweat off his face with his cap. The battered and bruised security guard was peeping from behind the cop.

For a moment I considered this option. I would have been getting back at Larry’s wife and Larry, but after thinking about it for a minute, I decided it wasn’t worth it. I was better off just getting Larry out of my system for good. This was the last straw.

I shook my head, limped back to my car, and drove like a bat out of hell. As soon as I got home, I started pacing my living room floor like a tiger, waiting to get my hands on Larry. I called his job; he was “un-available.” I called his cell phone, he didn’t answer. And he didn’t call me or come to see me that day, or any other day.

The next time I saw Larry was at the hospital when I gave birth to his son. When he came to see his wife in the room across the hall from mine, he glanced in my room with a blank stare, like I was a stranger. It was hard for me to accept the fact that he was the same man who had told me over and over that he loved me.

Words could not describe the pain I was in. Physically, I felt fine.

But my mind felt like it was on fire. I had never been so betrayed and used before in my life. The rage I felt was so severe, every man in that hospital looked like Larry to me. I glared at the husbands of all the RED LIGHT WIVES

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other women sharing the room with me. Even old gray-haired Dr.

White’s presence upset me. I almost bit his head off when he came to see how I was doing.

“Lula, you seem awfully tense,” the kind old man said, backing away from my bed.

“And I’ll be this way from now on,” I hissed.

A R E A D I N G G R O U P G U I D E

GOD STILL DON’T

LIKE UGLY

MARY MONROE

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The following questions are intended to enhance your group’s reading of Mary Monroe’s

GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY.

This is the book fans of GOD DON’T LIKE UGLY

have been waiting for—is it possible for people to literally get away with murder?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Annette was angry with her father for years because he had deserted her. Did she make it too easy for him to return to her life?

2. Annette accepted her father’s bi-racial children with open arms. Would you?

3. Everybody but Pee Wee thought that Jerome was such a good catch for Annette. Did Annette really love Jerome for the right reasons or because she wanted to make everyone else happy?

4. Annette suspected Jean’s boyfriend, Vinnie, of sexually abusing Jean’s daughter. She tried to intervene by making an anonymous telephone call to the Child Protective Services.

What would you do in a similar situation?

5. Should Annette have told Jerome about her brief role as a prostitute before they started talking about marriage?

6. When Jerome stormed into Annette’s house to confront her after his uncle exposed her past, she surprised Jerome by beating him to a pulp. Did she surprise you?

7. Rhoda had been back in town for awhile before she and Annette resumed their friendship. Because of the many dark secrets they shared, the funeral of Jean’s murdered daughter was a grim but appropriate way to symbolize the reunion between these two women. Do you agree?

8. Even after a painful, thirty-year separation, Annette’s mother, Gussie Mae, took Annette’s father back. Gussie Mae had her own successful business and other men still found her attractive, but like Annette, Gussie Mae took Frank back because she IT’S A THIN LINE

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focused on the good times she had had with him. Was Gussie Mae a fool for taking Frank back?

9. When Annette finally told her mother and the rest of her friends that Mr. Boatwright had sexually abused her for years during her childhood, their reactions surprised Annette. Do you think Annette regretted not exposing Mr. Boatwright sooner?

10. Rhoda was convinced that God had punished her with breast cancer for the murders she had committed, but that didn’t stop her from killing Jean’s boyfriend for raping and killing Jean’s daughter. Do you think that somebody as extreme as Rhoda could ever experience remorse?

11. Pee Wee was always there for Annette. She could tell him anything and she did. When she told him that she had once worked as a prostitute, his reaction stunned her. Her confession didn’t even faze him. If anything, he was amused and immediately started making jokes about it. When Annette told Pee Wee that Rhoda had murdered several people, he didn’t believe her. Do you think that these were really the reasons Annette didn’t tell Pee Wee right away that he was the father of her baby?

12. Rhoda was always so proud of her trim body, her beautiful face, and her handsome husband. When breast cancer and a stroke altered her appearance, and a homely woman slept with her husband, did you feel she got what she deserved?

13. When Pee Wee and Annette finally got married, were you surprised or did you think that this story couldn’t end any other way?

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