God Still Don't Like Ugly. Mary Monroe

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СКАЧАТЬ do better goin’ to school with white kids. My babies would come home cryin’ every day because the white kids called them coons and niggers and spit on ’em.” At this point, Lillimae reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You are so fortunate, Annette. People know what you are when they look at you and they treat you as such. You don’t give out no surprises.”

      “I’ve had my share of abuse because of the way I look, too,” I said thoughtfully.

      “But if you could change the way you look, knowin’ what you know now, would you?”

      I smiled. “I don’t think so. Every person I’ve ever known has experienced some pain about one thing or another.”

      Lillimae nodded and shrugged. We remained silent for a moment, but the crickets and other night creatures sounded like they had a symphony going on outside. The small window above the kitchen sink was open by a few inches. A moth that couldn’t make up its mind repeatedly flew in and out. I heard an old car rattle past the house before it backfired. The loud bang made us both jump.

      Lillimae shut the window and returned to her seat with a groan. She had braided her hair and pinned it up on her head. Traces of face cream made her look even whiter under the glow of the weak lightbulb in the kitchen.

      “Annette, I know you missed your daddy when you was growin’ up, but it sounds like you still managed to enjoy life. Didn’t your mama ever have any men friends livin’ in the house with y’all before she married your stepdaddy?”

      It took me a moment to respond. “Just one,” I said stiffly, my eyes on the floor.

      “Well, I hope he took up the slack that Daddy left behind.” Lillimae sniffed. “Was that man in the Church?”

      “Uh-huh.” I cleared my throat and rubbed both my eyes. “But he wasn’t the kind of man I wanted to replace Daddy.”

      “Regardless, a man was there to keep y’all company. My mother-in-law always tellin’ me that a piece of a man is better than no man at all. She can’t wait for me to take that half-ass son of hers back so he can stop crampin’ her style. Every time I turn over in that big bed by myself, I know what she means. Bein’ alone ought to be a sin. If that man was willin’ to stay in the house with your mama, especially you bein’ by another man, that was a double blessin’. Wasn’t it?”

      It took me a moment to respond. “Something like that,” I said vaguely. Yawning and stretching my arms, I rose and headed out of the kitchen.

      I didn’t sleep much that night and when I did, Mr. Boatwright’s face dominated my dreams.

      It was like he was still raping me.

      CHAPTER 9

      I was glad Daddy got up early the next morning to go fishing. It was a ritual that he had started before I was born. I was surprised that he didn’t want to spend as much time with me as possible. But in a way, I was glad to have the space I needed to sort out my feelings. As happy as I was to be in the same house with him, I was still uncomfortable.

      Surprisingly, I felt particularly at ease alone with Lillimae. Her looking so much like me helped.

      Lillimae and I ate a huge breakfast of grits and bacon before we retreated to the front porch glider. Still in our bathrobes, we sat fanning our faces with old magazines as we watched one noisy, beat-up old car after another crawl down the street.

      The sun had already started its assault. The people in the houses on both sides of us had come out on their porches trying to cool off. The same old man I had seen watering his lawn when I’d arrived was watering that same lawn again.

      I was glad that my half-sister was the type who liked to talk. She seemed to enjoy telling me about how proud she was of Daddy and how he had raised her and her two siblings alone.

      “We didn’t give Daddy half the trouble a lot of kids give their folks. Oh, our baby sister Sondra was a little on the wild side durin’ her teen years. She got pregnant when she was fourteen, but she couldn’t stop dancin’ up in the clubs long enough to carry the baby to full term. She settled down after her miscarriage long enough to finish school and join the army. Our brother Amos, he fooled around with some of them drug dealers and gangs, but he came to his senses after somebody shot at him on the street one night. I was glad when he joined the army, too.”

      “Do you miss not having a relationship with your mama’s family?” I asked.

      A weak smile crossed Lillimae’s face. She sniffed and nodded.

      “Somebody pointed out my mama’s mama to me one day when I was eleven. She was workin’ the cotton-candy stand at a carnival. I went up to her and introduced myself.”

      “What did she say?”

      “She didn’t have to say anything for me to know where I stood with her. She hawked a wad of spit as big as a walnut in my face. Me, her first granddaughter. I heard she treats the other two daughters my mama had with her white husband like queens.”

      Just then, a noisy, dusty blue Chevy, dented in the front, a red door on the driver’s side, crawled around the corner and stopped in front of Lillimae’s house. A young white woman, glancing around nervously, kept the motor running as she rolled down her window.

      Lillimae gasped. “That’s my uncle’s wife. That’s Roxanne. The one I told you about.” She clutched my arm. Her knee started shaking against mine as she rose from her seat, pulling me up with her. Lillimae started waving with both hands to the woman in the car.

      But the woman shook her head and yelled, “Lillimae, your mama died!” Then she rolled her window back up and drove off, leaving Lillimae and me on the porch staring in slack-jawed amazement until the car turned the corner.

      Lillimae and I sat on the front porch in silence for about five minutes after the woman had delivered the news about Lillimae’s mother’s death. Finally, she turned to me and spoke through trembling lips that suddenly looked so dry I thought they’d crack. “What do you want to eat for dinner?” She sniffed and scratched the side of her neck, her eyes blinking hard. I noticed that when Lillimae was upset or angry, her eyes looked darker. Right now they looked as dark as mine.

      “I’m not that hungry. Anything you fix is fine with me. Uh…I’m sorry about your mama.”

      Instead of speaking again, Lillimae sighed and gently rubbed my thigh. The glider squeaked like it was in pain as we wobbled up to our feet at the same time and shuffled into the living room. I followed Lillimae into the kitchen where she grabbed a dish towel off of the table and started wiping her face.

      Standing next to her, reared back on my legs, I asked, “Is there anybody you can call?”

      She whirled around to face me. Her eyes were now red with dark shadows already forming beneath them. “For what?”

      “About your mama. Don’t you want to know how she died?”

      Lillimae shrugged, sucked in her breath, and shook her head. “I’ll find out soon enough,” she told me, narrowing her eyes.

      CHAPTER 10

      Lillimae and I spent the afternoon in front of the television watching game shows and The Phil Donahue СКАЧАТЬ