God Still Don’t Like Ugly Read online

  “That’s not it. I…I’m just feeling really funny right now.” I didn’t want to tell him that Rhoda was the reason I was feeling so uneasy so I let him think what he wanted.

  He sighed and shifted his eyes. “Hey, don’t think this don’t mean somethin’ to me. I been wantin’ to hook up with you again for a long time.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” Now my biggest concern was about Pee Wee and me, where we had been with our relationship and where we were going.

  He shrugged. “I had a good time with you that night in Erie.”

  “So is this going to be like that, too? Are you going to sneak off as soon as I go to sleep? If so, please leave me money for a cab.”

  Pee Wee wouldn’t look at me as he shook his head. “What we done that night wasn’t like us.”

  I pushed him away some more. “Well, what about now? We’re still the same people. The only thing that’s different is we’re a little older.”

  A faint smile crossed his face as he looked at me and winked. “I won’t leave again until you make me.”

  The sex was still good, but it was the distraction it provided that I enjoyed the most.

  I had to get Rhoda off my mind and keep her off.

  CHAPTER 20

  A

  fter the tryst in the motel room, Pee Wee came to my house four nights in a row and each time we had ended up in bed. We developed a loosey-goosey relationship that we maintained in secret. I didn’t know why, but I felt it best to keep it from people like Muh’Dear and Scary Mary. They meddled enough in my life. Pee Wee had always been more like a brother to me and everybody saw us as such. I cared too much about what people would think about Pee Wee and me getting together in such an intimate way.

  Sometimes when I looked at Pee Wee, knowing what we did behind closed doors, I felt like we had committed incest. And if it bothered me, I knew it would bother Muh’Dear. Rhoda was the only person I had told about the night I spent with Pee Wee in my apartment in Pennsylvania. Now that she and I were no longer friends, she had no reason to blab that information to anyone I knew.

  I didn’t like it when Pee Wee went out with other women, especially slim, pretty women. I thought I would die when I heard about him fooling around with Glenda Mitchell. Not just because she was so thin and pretty, but because from a distance she resembled Rhoda. I was glad when I heard a week later that Glenda had run off with some musician from Cleveland.

  Scorned and horny, Pee Wee crawled back to me and we resumed our slipshod affair. I accepted the fact that that was how it was going to be with us. I didn’t like the role of being the woman he slept with between girlfriends, but it seemed to be the best I could do. Since I’d always felt like Mr. Boatwright’s leftovers, getting somebody else’s leftovers myself was all I thought I would ever get. I just didn’t like what went along with it.

  Once I even ironed a shirt for Pee Wee to wear out on a date with another woman, just to keep him happy. But that had happened only once and by accident. I didn’t know at the time that he was dating Gladys Webster. I had called him up one night, hoping he would invite himself over and lure me to bed.

  “Um, I’m gettin’ ready to go to a baptism,” he told me. “Listen, my iron just broke. Can I run over there and use yours?” I eagerly agreed.

  Pee Wee greeted me with a quick peck on my cheek and trotted behind me to the kitchen where I had already set up the ironing board and turned on the iron.

  “From now on, I’m sendin’ all my dress shirts to the dry cleaners,” he complained, wrestling with the iron, burning his fingers on it before it even touched his shirt. I took the iron from him and ironed the shirt myself. “I wanted to wear my turtleneck, but Gladys wants to go to that new club in Akron after we leave the church,” he revealed. With a smug look on his face and a Coke that he had snatched out of my refrigerator in his hand, he leaned against the kitchen wall.

  I gritted my teeth and blinked at him. Hearing that Pee Wee was preparing to go out without another woman had a strange effect on me. I was tempted to scorch his shirt, but I didn’t. I was jealous and angry with myself. However, that didn’t stop me from being available when his relationship with Gladys fell apart. I was being a fool and I knew I was being a fool. But I was a happy fool.

  Pee Wee had made a lot of new friends and some of them became my friends. I occasionally went shopping and to the movies with females I’d met through him. With them, Muh’Dear, Scary Mary, and an infrequent visit to Second Baptist Church, I kept myself busy. I even started working officially as a waitress at the Buttercup. That pleased Muh’Dear and my stepfather, whom I now called “Daddy King.”

  Unlike some of the crude women they had hired and fired, they knew they could count on me to do a good job and help the restaurant maintain its honorable reputation. Some weeks I worked overtime, simply because I had nothing better to do with myself. I watched a lot of television and I read a lot of books, but I still had a lot of time of my hands.

  I knew that I could never open up with the other women I’d started socializing with like I did with Rhoda so I was a dull person to have around. Especially to the women I’d met who liked to gossip and compare their sexual escapades. I didn’t want to share my most personal secrets anymore. I’d done that with Rhoda and she had ended up killing for me. It didn’t bother me when my new women friends drifted away from me, one by one. It wasn’t long before Pee Wee was the only close friend I had. Again.

  I had a few pig-in-the-poke dates with men I met around town, but nothing ever panned out. So I was still lonely. I looked forward to my steamy encounters with Pee Wee because he was my only other option.

  Muh’Dear had married Mr. King and moved in with him, so I had the house on Reed Street to myself. I was happy about that for a lot of reasons. Now I didn’t have to worry about Muh’Dear’s beer-drinking friends popping in three to four times a week. But Scary Mary still made her regular visits when she was in a meddling mood, which was often.

  CHAPTER 21

  O

  ne cold December morning, right after I got out of bed, Scary Mary snatched open my front door without knocking and entered my living room wearing black boots and a white sweat suit. She wore red wigs all the time. This particular morning she also had a scarf tied around her head and was not wearing the heavy makeup she usually wore to help hide a cruel scar on her face that she had sustained in a fight when she was young. I didn’t know any other woman Scary Mary’s age that got around the way she did. The woman spent most of her time tooling around town in her blue Chevy van, looking for something to stir up. A few times I had even seen her van parked in front of the houses of other people on my street that I didn’t even know. She owned a huge house on the outskirts of town now, but she was rarely in it. I couldn’t figure out how she managed to supervise the five prostitutes who worked for her in that house.

  Like Rhoda used to do, Scary Mary barged into my house and made herself at home. Before I could even close the door, she had plopped down on my couch and crossed her spindly legs and started babbling about one thing after another. First it was her health and Florence, the foster daughter she had taken in who now lived in Toledo and rarely called or visited. Then she began talking about how she had signed her retarded daughter Mott into a group home. After that she moved on to my personal life.

  “What was Pee Wee doin’ sneakin’ out of here the other mornin’? I seen him with my own eyes when I was on my way to that early-bird sale at J.C. Penney’s,” she sneered, looking at me with her eyes narrowed.

  “Uh…he came to borrow some sugar,” I lied.

  “I bet he did,” she chided, looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

  “And to bring me my Christmas present, too,” I blurted, waving toward the huge Christmas tree I had in front of my living room window. Christmas was just three days away.

  Scary Mary turned her head to the side so fast her wig almost slid off. “This early in the mornin’?”

  “He’s got a real busy da
y planned and this was the only time he’d have to come by,” I explained.

  “Oh. Well, I didn’t bring you no Christmas present. You want it, you got to come by my house to get it.”

  “I will,” I said sheepishly. “And I’ll bring yours with me, too.”

  “I’ll be expectin’ it. And I hope it’s somethin’ I can use!” Scary Mary grunted, shook her head, and sighed. “I don’t need no more fruitcakes, no mixers, no socks, and no more perfume. I need somethin’ I can spend.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied, my head bowed submissively. That made her smile.

  “Too bad you ain’t Pee Wee’s type,” she decided, picking lint off the legs of her pants. “I tried to hook him up with my foster girl Florence before she up and got married, but he didn’t want her. If my illformed daughter Mott wasn’t so limited, I’d fix him up with her. Once that medication they givin’ Mott in that home tames her, I just might do that. It’d be a blessin’ to keep a man like Pee Wee to ourselves. It don’t matter to me which one of y’all snatch him up. Florence—if she ever divorces that nut she married, Mott…or even you.” Scary Mary gave me a critical look. “Look like you ain’t got enough sugar left in your bowl to catch any other fly.” Scary Mary sniffed and smiled. “Pee Wee’s gwine to make some girl a good husband. Ain’t he?”

  “He sure will,” I mumbled.

  Scary Mary could always be counted on to give me something to think about. I was glad that a busybody like her didn’t know about Pee Wee and me. It was bad enough that she knew about me stealing some of her tricks before I moved to Pennsylvania. I still felt that she held a grudge against me for doing that. I didn’t want to take a chance on her meddling to sabotage my relationship with Pee Wee. I knew it was in my best interest to keep this information from her. I felt the same way about other people Scary Mary knew knowing. Because Scary Mary could badger her friends so hard with her sharp tongue, sooner or later she had them revealing all kinds of secrets. Not that she was a bitter, lonely old woman; she was living the life of Riley. Once when Mr. King took Muh’Dear to the Bahamas, Scary Mary followed them and had a fling with a young island man she had met on a beach! “God ain’t through with you yet, girl,” Scary Mary told me with a wink.

  “I hope not.” I smiled.

  A few mornings later, on New Year’s Day, 1980, I was lying on my back in my bed with Pee Wee next to me, leaning on his arm, looking down at my face. I had already been awake for a couple of hours. There was an ashtray on my nightstand, completely filled with marijuana roaches and chewed-up wads of breath gum. Empty wine bottles decorated the floor like a gallery. Next to the wine bottles were plates overflowing with bones and bread crumbs.

  “Did you ever think that you and I would end up like this?” Pee Wee asked, belching and rubbing his head. “This close, this often, I mean.”

  Earlier, while Pee Wee was still passed out from the night before, I had called up my Aunt Berniece in New Jersey and asked her for my daddy’s telephone number. I was excited about it and couldn’t wait to call him. I had dialed my daddy’s number, but I hung up when a man I assumed was Daddy answered. Just hearing his voice had lifted my spirits. I couldn’t wait to dial the number again. The thought made me smile. Pee Wee assumed he’d put the smile on my face. We had just spent one of our most passionate nights together. He tickled my neck.

  “Come on, girl. Talk to me.” Pee Wee grabbed my hand and guided it to his crotch. He was already hard, so he didn’t need any assistance from me.

  “No. I never thought we’d end up this close, this often,” I told him, stroking his dick anyway. “I really enjoy being with you…like this.”

  Suddenly, he let out a deep breath and roughly pushed my hand away. “Good. Then I know you won’t mind me leavin’ before eatin’ the breakfast I know you probably planned to fix for me,” he continued, sliding out of my bed. He snatched his clothes off the floor. “I gotta haul ass.”

  “Are you tryin’ to tell me something?” I asked firmly, trying to keep the anger out of my voice.

  “Yeah, I’m tryin’ to tell you somethin’.” He sniffed and sat down on the bed to put on his socks and shoes. “My daddy’s movin’ to Erie to live with his sister and I need to help get things situated. I got a real important long distance phone call to make. I’ll be back this evenin’. I want to take you out to dinner before too much snow get on the ground. Dress warm.”

  Relieved, I sat up and reached for my robe at the foot of the bed, rubbing Pee Wee’s back with my other hand. He turned to me and smiled. “I would stay longer if I could, but I really do have to make that important phone call.”

  I nodded. “I got a real important phone call to make myself,” I said.

  CHAPTER 22

  A

  s soon as I closed the front door behind Pee Wee, I dialed my daddy’s phone number again. He answered on the fifth ring.

  “Hello.” His voice was low and weak, like an old man. He was in his seventies now so he was an old man. But in my mind, I still pictured him as the proud, robust young man he’d been the last time I’d seen him. I could still see him strutting down the hill toward that old shack we used to live in. When I saw my first Sidney Poitier movie, it brought tears to my eyes because he looked a lot like my daddy.

  “Daddy, it’s me,” I said, stumbling over each word. I had to clear my throat and massage it to keep from choking. A miserably long pause followed.

  “Daddy, are you still there? It’s me.”

  “Me who?” he finally responded. Surprisingly, he sounded much stronger now.

  “Daddy, it’s Annette.”

  My daddy gasped and coughed a few times before speaking again. “Say what?”

  “Daddy, I called up Aunt Berniece in New Jersey and she gave me your telephone number.”

  I heard him suck in his breath and mumble words that sounded like a fragmented prayer. “Hold on. Let me get myself in a chair before I fall out.” I heard some shuffling around and some muffled voices on his end before he continued. “Annette? Great day in the mornin’—I thought you was dead!”

  “No, I’m alive and kicking.” I laughed dryly.

  “Lord have mercy, girl. Where you at?” He coughed some more.

  “I’m in Ohio. In a little town called Richland.” I had to pause to clear my throat again. My heart was beating so fast, I had to rub my chest. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot, Daddy. I’ve been thinking about you for a long, long time. And if I had had your number I would have called a lot sooner.”

  “My Lord!”

  “How are you, Daddy? I want to see you.”

  “I wanna see you, too! Where your mama at?”

  “Huh? Uh…she lives a few blocks away from me with her new husband.” Another long pause.

  “Oh.” Daddy sighed. “Lord, I can’t believe my ears I sittin’ here talkin’ to my girl. I hope I ain’t dreamin’.” Daddy’s persistent cough concerned me.

  “You’re not dreaming, Daddy. It’s really me.”

  “Well, listen—when you comin’ to see me? We just painted the kitchen and we just slaughtered a hog. I’ll send you your fare!”

  “I’ll come as soon as I can, Daddy. Uh…I’ve really missed you a lot, Daddy.”

  “I thought y’all had forgot all about me.” His voice had become weak and old again.

  “I’ll never forget about you, Daddy.”

  “What you been up to all these years? You got any kids?”

  I laughed. “Not yet, Daddy. Get a pencil so I can give you my phone number.”

  “All right, baby. You hold on now. This house look like a train wreck, so it’ll take me a few minutes to find a pencil. You hold on now.”

  During the five minutes I waited for Daddy to return to the telephone, I cried so hard my eyes burned. I was still sniffling when he returned.

  “You still there, baby? What’s the number and your address? I’m gwine to send you your fare as soon as I can draw the money out the bank. Hear?”

 
“Daddy, I can pay my own way—”

  “I’m payin’ for this. That’s the least I can do.”

  “All right, Daddy.” I gave him my phone number and address. “Well, I don’t want to keep you too long.”

  “Sugar, you can keep me as long as you want to. I ain’t got nowhere to go nohow.”

  “I have a few things to take care of, so I can’t talk too long anyway.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, your ticket is on the way. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “And listen. You tell your mama she can come with you if she want to. I’ll pay her way, too. Bygones is bygones. We got plenty of room and plenty to eat. That was a mighty big hog we slaughtered. Just sittin’ here thinkin’ about them ribs brings tears to my eyes.”

  I laughed. “You take care of yourself now until I get there.”

  I sat staring at the telephone long after I had hung it up. As emotional as I was, I didn’t cry anymore. Instead, I smiled.

  I couldn’t think of a better way to start the New Year.

  CHAPTER 23

  N

  ow that I had talked to Daddy, I thought about him even more. He was a hard man to forget. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see his face and that made me smile. He had been so handsome and so proud back in the day. And he’d been way ahead of his time. He was the first person I’d ever heard say, “Black is beautiful.” But since he hadn’t stayed around long enough to make me believe that, my color had always been an obstacle to me.

  I was proud of the fact that Daddy had helped integrate the South and he had the battle scars to prove it. He had endured numerous beatings from ferocious white policemen right before my eyes and bites from the dogs they had turned loose on him. But even all that had not stopped him from standing up for what he believed in.

  The only snapshot I ever had of Daddy was of him drinking from a public water fountain that had a WHITES ONLY sign above it, tacked to a pecan tree. I had carried that picture around with me, transferring it from one tacky wallet to another, until it fell apart when I was fifteen. Being the man that he was, it stunned me when he left us for a white woman. But that was all in the past and I still wanted to see him again.