God Still Don't Like Ugly (8 page)

However, I didn’t see it as something evil at the time. There were too many other things obscuring my vision.

Even though Pee Wee and I became quite close, I never confided in him the way I did with Rhoda. When she was a child she had wit-GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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nessed a policeman shoot and kill her eldest brother, David, so she was particularly sensitive when it came to traumatic situations. She was appalled when I told her about Mr. Boatwright. On a regular basis, she tried to make me expose him. But that old sucker’s threats carried far more weight than Rhoda’s anger.

“I’ve had it with you and that nasty old man. If you don’t hurry up and do somethin’ about him, I will,” Rhoda told me after she had helped me abort the baby that Mr. Boatwright had impregnated me with. I ended up in the hospital. Instead of telling Muh’Dear the truth then, I let her think that some boy I refused to name had se-duced me. The pain that that episode caused my mother almost destroyed me. But I loved her too much to burden her with the truth.

“Mr. Boatwright’s old and always sick,” I reminded Rhoda. “God’ll take care of him soon. He won’t live too much longer,” I insisted.

I was right; Mr. Boatwright died a few months before Rhoda and I graduated from high school. But it wasn’t God that took him out, it was Rhoda. One night while Muh’Dear was still at work, Rhoda slipped into Mr. Boatwright’s bedroom and held a pillow on his face until he stopped breathing. It was the same year that we also lost Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.

“Buttwright’s in good company,” Rhoda told me as I stood behind her in her pink-and-white bathroom waiting for her to finish her egg facial. It wasn’t enough that Rhoda’s family pampered her; she treated herself like a princess. Maintaining beauty was a full-time job for Rhoda. She spent more on beauty products than I spent on clothes.

“Yeah, he sure is,” I mumbled. “It’s just a shame that after all he went through when he was a little boy, he had to turn out so bad.

Look where it got him.”

After Mr. Boatwright’s funeral, when Rhoda had helped me pack up his things for Muh’Dear to donate to the Salvation Army, she and I had come across some old, faded, dog-eared newspaper clippings from a southern newspaper. We had read about how Mr. Boatwright had been abandoned as a child and shuffled from one bad environment to another. He had also suffered abuse so severe it had cost him a leg.

Rhoda gasped and whirled around so fast to face me, her egg facial cracked before it was supposed to.

“Millions of people get abused when they are little! They don’t go 58

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around rapin’ people! Don’t you be standin’ up in here feelin’ sorry for that old goat!” Rhoda roared. She sucked in her breath and lowered her voice. “Get me a towel.” Rhoda’s family had moved to Ohio from Alabama a few years after we’d moved from Florida. While I had worked hard to rid myself of my southern accent by imitating white girls on television so that I would seem less “country,” Rhoda spoke with a definite drawl. But it sounded cute coming from her. In fact, the accent made her even more charming to me. She sighed.
“Great
balls of fire.”

“You’re right,” I muttered, holding her in place by her shoulder while I wiped her face with a fluffy white towel that I had snatched from the back of the bathroom door.

“You are finally free,” Rhoda reminded, patting her face then inspecting it in the mirror above the sink.

I declined her offer to give me a facial. I always did. I knew that there was only so much I could do to improve my face. Since I cried so often, I had started wearing a lot of makeup to hide the dark circles around my eyes and the puffiness underneath. I left Rhoda’s house and went home to cry some more.

I had to agree with what she had just said about Mr. Boatwright, but I still didn’t feel right about how he died and I knew then that I never would.

Right after graduation, with Mr. Boatwright’s blood still fresh on her hands, Rhoda married a handsome Jamaican and moved to Florida to help him run his family’s orange groves. Pee Wee joined the army a few weeks later. At first, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Since Mr. Boatwright was no longer standing in my way, I decided that it was time for me to move on, too.

Rhoda called me up a lot, regaling me with details of her new life and how happy she was with her first child on the way. She ended each phone call by telling me, “Put all of that Buttwright mess out of your mind and get on with your life, girl.” Knowing that I was the only person who knew about her killing Mr. Boatwright, I now felt like I was in a different type of bondage and Rhoda was calling all the shots.

Desperate to move out on my own so that Muh’Dear would never know just how miserable I was, I took advantage of my relationship with Scary Mary. For a few weeks I stole a few of her customers to raise the money I needed to leave home with. As much as I hated what I had become, a prostitute, my biggest fear was somebody finding out GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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and telling my mother. I knew that my own mother had done “what she had to do” with a few of Scary Mary’s customers during some trying times to keep us off the streets. But I didn’t want her to know that I, too, had stooped that low. However, I didn’t think about all that until after I had turned my first trick.

“Ooh, girl. You such a nice, juicy, young thing.” The trick paused long enough to lick his lips. “I wouldn’t mind seein’ you again,” he added with a wink. I cringed and couldn’t wait to get away from the man who had just paid for my body. He was one of the most disgusting men I submitted to. His vile body had slid on me, in me, and off of me, all within a matter of minutes. One date with the same man was all I would allow myself. Giving up my body in hellish places like cheap motels, up against brick walls in dim alleys next to garbage bins, and on the backseats of cars was bad enough. But one time I even went to one man’s job with him and allowed him to fuck me from behind while I leaned over his desk. He was a short, squat man with light skin and moles all over his chin. He worked as a night watchman at a downtown office building, but he claimed to have all kinds of money in the bank from selling some property somewhere.

Afterward, while he was peeing in an empty Styrofoam coffee cup, he asked, “You would do anything for money, huh?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, rearranging my clothes. He had ripped my panties to shreds trying to remove them so fast. It didn’t make any sense for me to put them back on. I slid the panties into my purse along with the fifty dollars he had just handed me.

The trick slapped his hairy hands on his hips and gave me a critical look, screwing up his face like he didn’t like what he saw. “I can’t get none of them other gals to come to me, I have to go to them. And they particular about what motels I carry them to. I got a heap of money in the bank and a wife that won’t let me touch her with a stick.

I thought I was gwine to have to beat my meat. I guess you’ll have to do for tonight. You just don’t care about nothin’,” he remarked.

Waving his hand dramatically, he looked me up and down with a fierce scowl on his plain face. “No shame, no rules, no nothin’ long as you get paid. Like a Gypsy. I guess you ain’t got them highfalutin stan-dards, huh?”

“I guess not,” I said sadly. I promised myself right then and there that he would be the last one. I couldn’t stand to degrade myself any longer for any amount of money. It was already difficult for me to 60

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look at myself in the mirror; this had just made it that much harder.

Especially after the verbal beating I had just received.

With the money I had saved from a brief job working as a switchboard operator for the telephone company and the money from the men, I made plans to relocate to Erie, Pennsylvania. I had never been to Erie and I didn’t know anybody there, but Pee Wee was from Erie.

He had me convinced that it was a small city filled with “good peoples.”

It sounded like the perfect place to start a new life.

CHAPTER 16

Iwas apprehensive about leaving Muh’Dear alone after all we had been through together. Even though she had a lot of friends now, there was no special man in her life. And there hadn’t been since Daddy’s departure, fourteen years earlier.

Before I could finalize my plans to flee Richland, Muh’Dear got involved with a new man, a lonely old widower named Albert King. Not one of the horny old geezers that Scary Mary had tried to dump off on her, but a dignified man that everybody loved and respected.

However, a big red flag went up in my mind right away, because Mr.

Boatwright had been the same way at first. As pessimistic as I was, I didn’t believe that lightning could strike twice in the same place.

However, I still approached Muh’Dear’s new man with extreme caution. Especially since she had met Mr. King through Reverend Snipes, the same meddlesome old preacher who had cursed us with Mr. Boatwright! That alone was enough to make me keep my distance.

Mr. King was nothing like Mr. Boatwright. He wasn’t some one-legged old man with nowhere to go, like Mr. Boatwright. Mr. King was the owner of the Buttercup restaurant and he had enough money to live a comfortable life. He owned his own home, so I didn’t have to worry about him moving in with us. He didn’t have any family left, but he had a lot of friends. He had severed a two-year relationship with an-62

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other woman so he could be with my mother. I avoided being alone with Mr. King. When he came to the house while Muh’Dear was out, I hid behind the curtains and refused to open the door. When I couldn’t avoid being alone with him, I remained distant and suspicious.

Mr. King had called the house for Muh’Dear one day and I’d been sharp with him. I had hollered at him the way I did those annoying people who called up on the telephone trying to sell something or asking nosy questions for a survey.

“Annette, you don’t like me, do you?” he asked in a whiny voice. He was breathing through his mouth, groaning, hissing and making low whistling noises that I knew he couldn’t help. As annoyed as I was, I felt sorry for this old man.

I waited for Mr. King’s breathing to return to normal. Then I sucked in my breath, hoping I didn’t sound like I belonged in a barnyard myself like he sounded. “I don’t know you well enough to hate you,” I told him coldly. “I’ll tell Muh’Dear you called,” I added with impatience. I wondered what made Muh’Dear take up with a man who had obviously started falling apart. With all his wheezing and breathing difficulties, it seemed like he was one step away from his grave.

With a low, weak voice he said, “Well, I hope you do get to know me soon. I love your mama and I think she loves me. Me and Gussie Mae get along real good, so I’m gwine to be comin’ around yonder to see your mama whether you like it or not. So you can stop all your foolishness right now!” Mr. King stunned me by being so direct.

But I didn’t back down. “What you and my mother do is none of my business,” I snapped. “If my mama wants to make a fool of herself, I can’t stop her.”

I heard him gasp and suck on his teeth. “One thing your mama ain’t, is a fool.”

“Well, I’m not, either. Now if you don’t mind, I’m watching
American Bandstand
right now.”

He sighed and mumbled something unintelligible before he spoke again. “Look, girl. I would never do nothin’ to harm you.” He paused and steadied his voice. “I cut my teeth on God.”

“So did Satan,” I reminded.

“What you say?”

“Nothing,” I muttered. I rarely sassed old people and I wasn’t GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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proud of myself for doing it now. I cleared my throat and softened my voice. “Uh . . . I’ll tell Muh’Dear you called,” I said sheepishly.

Mr. King let out another sigh, this one longer and deeper. “Child, I know you was real fond of Brother Boatwright. Everybody was. Even me.” He paused and laughed. “Even though he departed here owin’

me several hundred dollars. Bless his heart.” Mr. King paused again and cleared his throat. “Anyway, your mama done told me all about the special joy he brought to your life.” His last comment almost made me choke on my own tongue. “But I ain’t the type to get too close to young people. It breeds contempt. Matter of fact, I don’t really like to keep company with women that still got kids livin’ at home.

Especially gals. They can get a man in a heap of trouble.”

I absorbed this information and listened with interest now. Clutching the telephone with both hands, I cleared my throat and asked, “What

. . . what do you mean by that?”

“Well, the reason I broke up with Sadie Watson was because of her teenager daughters. Them some fast girls and they out to cause trouble. Both of ’em got babies and not a man in sight to help raise them kids. Naturally, they ripe to start up some devilment so they won’t be the only ones miserable. That Betty Jean was always tryin’ to provoke me. Sittin’ on my lap, huggin’ on me, beggin’ me for money. That youngest one, Sarah Louise, was even worse. Kissin’ me on my jaw every chance she got.” He sighed again. “I’m too old to be gettin’

caught up in somethin’ . . . uh . . . unholy. I got too much to lose.”

I suddenly felt more at ease. “Well, I’m too old to let one of my mother’s men get caught up in something unholy with me,” I said stiffly, scratching myself between my thighs. It had been weeks since I’d turned my last trick, but I still felt unclean, no matter how much I bathed and scrubbed myself. After each bath, I sprayed my crotch with whatever smell-goods were available. Now I had to deal with an irritating inflammation that my excessive use of the sprays had caused.

“Look, girl. I ain’t got no kids of my own. I ain’t a young man no more, so I doubt if I ever will have any. But I still love kids. I helped my use-to-be business partner raise all five of his young’uns. Then, after he passed, I helped send all of ’em to college. Even though they don’t even call me or send me a card, unless they wantin’ money, I still care about them kids. I want to see all kids succeed in life. Black 64