God Still Don't Like Ugly. Mary Monroe

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СКАЧАТЬ is this Freddie Lee now?” I asked.

      Lillimae gave me a serious look and groaned. “He’s in Lauderdale, livin’ with his mama. She manages one of them bait shops and he works with her.” Lillimae paused and grimaced. “Freddie Lee can be such a worm hisself sometimes. No wonder he loves sellin’ worms now.” Lillimae sniffed and then a thoughtful look appeared on her face. “But he is a good daddy to our two precious little boys. That’s why I didn’t mind lettin’ him have them for the summer. When I call to talk to the boys, me and Freddie Lee talk, too. We still love each other. I know we’ll eventually work things out and hook back up. If not for us, for our boys. A child needs both parents to feel whole.” Lillimae gave me a mournful look and quickly glanced over her shoulder in the direction where Daddy was. “I’m sure you know what I mean by that.”

      “I do,” I said flatly.

      “Besides, I can’t stand bein’ lonely, so I’m just about ready to put up with anything if he decides to come back. Even that panty thing he used to do. Daddy is seventy-two years old now. He won’t be around to keep me company too much longer. I’ve been so blessed to have him with me all these years.”

      “I wish I could say that,” I muttered grimly.

      Lillimae gasped and frowned. “Excuse me?”

      “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by that,” I said levelly, listening as Daddy flushed the toilet again.

      CHAPTER 6

      It was another twenty minutes before Daddy returned from the bathroom, mopping his face with a wet towel and straightening his bathrobe.

      “Lord, I wish I hadn’t et them peppers. Lillimae, can you run out to the drugstore and get me some more Maalox?” he grunted, a severe grimace on his face. “Carry Annette with you so she can sight-see.”

      I waited with Daddy in the living room while Lillimae went to put on some clothes and shoes.

      Sitting next to me on the couch, Daddy placed his hand over mine and squeezed, smiling so hard his eyes watered. “Annette, I can’t get over how fine you turned out. But then, good-lookin’ females run in my family.”

      I listened with interest.

      “Daddy, do you have other family? Aunt Berniece said something about you having a brother somewhere. I’d like to get in touch with your other relatives, if you don’t mind.” I thought that at this stage of my life, it was important for me to know as much as I could about my background. I wanted to have some answers for the questions I expected from the children I planned to have with Jerome.

      Daddy sighed and shook his head and then an unbearably sad smile crossed his face. “St. Louis was my only brother. He passed last year. He would have been eighty last week. He had a bunch of kids but I don’t know where none of ’em at. Both of my sisters, twins named Collette and Corinna, passed before you was born.” Daddy paused and giggled. “Big-foot gals, both of ’em.” He sniffed and got serious again, massaging his chest. “A car wreck is how they died. They come into this mean old world together and they left it together. Comin’ home from a revival one night, a possum jumped in front of the car and they ran off the Yammagoochee Bridge over in Alabama. Both of ’em died in my arms after me and some boys from the church pulled ’em out of that car. There was a hospital less than five minutes away, but we couldn’t carry them there on account of it was still segregated at the time. Right after Kennedy got in the White House and him and the rest of the decent white folks made new laws, they closed that hospital down to keep from havin’ to doctor on Black folks.” Daddy’s lips quivered and his jaw twitched, almost as much as mine. He sniffed and continued. “Corinna left a little girl behind that her man took off somewhere right after the funeral. He was one of them Geechees so I suspect he took that child off somewhere to one of them islands where I think he came from.” His jaw still twitching, Daddy paused and blinked fast and hard. But a single tear still managed to slide out of his eye. “I declare, I loved that little gal as much as I love my own.” He paused again and grinned, wiping the tear off his cheek with the back of his hand. “You ever gwine to be my girl again?” He sniffed hard and downgraded his grin to a weak smile.

      “I’ve always been your girl, Daddy. And I always will be.” I patted Daddy’s shoulder and looked away, sucking in air so hard a sharp pain rolled through my chest. “How come you didn’t tell me Lillimae looked like that?” I asked in a whisper, leaning my head close Daddy’s.

      He looked at me with genuine surprise. “Look like what?” He glanced toward the back room, where Lillimae was slamming closet doors and banging dresser drawers shut.

      My face was flaming as I caressed my cheek and cocked my head to the side. Talking out of the side of my mouth, I said in a controlled voice, “She can pass for white.”

      Daddy shrugged. “I can sure enough understand you havin’ a beef with white women…”

      I gave Daddy a thoughtful look and a smile. “My closest female friend back in Ohio is white. I don’t have a problem with white women. But it was a real shock to find out that my own sister looks like one.”

      “Well, Lillimae ain’t white. At least not by these rules the white folks done laid down. And while we on the subject, every nigger I know claim to be part Indian. Even me! Only ones ain’t braggin’ about havin’ Indian blood is the Indians. Shoot. White blood, Indian blood, don’t matter how much of it you got. If you got any Black blood at all, you Black in this white man’s country. Case closed. Lillimae is a Black woman and she proud of it.” Daddy paused and gave me a thoughtful look. “And I hope you proud of your color, too.”

      “I am, Daddy. I wouldn’t want to be anything else.”

      I could not believe that I had only been in Florida for a few hours. It seemed more like a few days. Daylight was coming to a dramatic close. Lightning bugs and dim streetlights lit up the night as Lillimae and I made our way from the living room to her old Chrysler. She kept it parked in a narrow driveway by the side of her house. The full moon, shining like a huge silver ball, looked like it was about to drop right out of the darkening sky. It gave me an eerie feeling.

      It was still just as hot as it had been when I’d arrived that afternoon. All of the doors to the neighboring houses were standing open. People in their nightclothes had gathered on their front porches. They were fanning, drinking, and listening to radios playing everything from Gospel to the Blues.

      After the visit to the drugstore, Lillimae and I stopped at a vegetable stand. She wanted to pick up more turnip greens and a bag of red-skinned potatoes. The place was crawling with sweaty people pushing shopping carts, loaded with everything from watermelons to ten-pound plastic bags of raw peanuts.

      There was a long line of customers at three of the four checkout aisles. Since Lillimae had only two items, she rushed to the express lane. I stumbled along behind her, chewing on a handful of grapes that I had snatched off a counter next to the greens.

      The cashier, a middle-aged blonde who would have been pretty without the dark circles and heavy bags under her large blue eyes, smiled as we approached her counter. She had chatted with the white man ahead of us, telling him how sorry she was about his sick wife and telling him she was going to pray for him and his whole family. Naturally, I assumed she’d show us some level of courtesy, too.

      Just as Lillimae placed her greens and the sack of potatoes on the counter, a sharp-featured white man wearing a manager’s identification tag appeared out of nowhere. He stood rooted in a spot near our cashier, with СКАЧАТЬ