God Don't Like Ugly. Mary Monroe

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      “Well, I got a lot of other juicy stuff to tell you,” Pee Wee continued.

      “I figured that.” Rhoda grinned. I was just standing there, glued to my spot. She then gave me a serious look. “It was nice meetin’ you, Nannette.”

      “Annette,” I corrected. She excused herself and started walking toward her house. Mr. Nelson came out on the front porch with his arms stretched out to greet Rhoda. He noticed Pee Wee and me and waved to us.

      Pee Wee and I returned to my porch steps, where he spent the next two hours giving me all the details on Rhoda. That gorgeous mane on her head was her real hair. Other than Pee Wee, she had no close friends. She and her family belonged to the same church Mama, Mr. Boatwright, and I had joined since our move. We still attended Reverend Snipes’s church occasionally so Mr. Boatwright could continue singing his solos, but we were now members of the Second Baptist Church. Only because it was so much closer Mama told Reverend Snipes. I was convinced it was a prestige thing. All the Black folks with money attended Second Baptist Church on Patterson Street.

      Other than Pee Wee, she had very little to do with the rest of the kids.

      I had never seen anybody as fascinating as Rhoda Nelson. Not even on TV. She was so intriguing I found myself thinking about her the next day while Mr. Boatwright was on top of me. Pretending that I was her made it a little easier for me to tolerate this beast without going crazy.

      I couldn’t understand why any man would want to take advantage of me with beauties like Rhoda roaming around. I believed that part of a pretty girl’s burden was to have to put up with a lot of unwanted attention. All my life I’d watch men smile and wink at my pretty mother. Judge Lawson was spending more time than ever with Mama in our living room, with his hand rubbing her knee, saying things like, “The house all right, Gussie Mae? You need anything? I’ll send my man over to cut the grass. Anything else you need done, let me know and I’ll fix it.” I couldn’t tell if Mama really liked spending so much of her free time entertaining the judge. But she never discussed her actions with me, and I didn’t ask.

      School started a week after Rhoda’s return. I had not talked to her since we had met, but I’d seen her climbing out of cabs with big shopping bags almost every day. I spied on her from the largest window in my bedroom, my front window. When I could avoid that irritating Pee Wee, I waited until I saw Rhoda leave for school so that I could trail behind her. Her beauty was so overwhelming, I actually felt beautiful just being near her.

      “Oink, oink. Mornin’, Pig Face,” Mr. Boatwright greeted me one schoolday morning as I passed him on my way out the door.

      “Same to you, butt breath,” I yelled back. I sassed him from time to time when Mama or no other grown person was around. It usually got me a whupping from him, but it was worth it. He ran after me and grabbed me by my coat collar.

      “Who you sassin’?” He released me, then stood up straight and looked me over critically, long and hard. He screwed up his face like he was in pain. “Get on out my sight!” he said tiredly. “You more trouble than you worth.” He dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

      I had started wearing ribbons in my hair like Rhoda and a little makeup. This particular day I had even put on some pierced earrings that one of Scary Mary’s women had given to me. Mr. Boatwright looked at my hair, my face, and my ears, and shook his head with pity.

      “What?” I groaned.

      “According to the Scriptures—oh never mind.” I thought he was done talking, so I started to walk away. “Makeup, earbobs, and all them hair frills. Don’t you know by now, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, let alone the whole sow. I don’t know what I see in you.” He sighed. “You look so much better without that makeup and them ribbons,” he said seriously.

      “You think so?” I said sadly, crushed and confused.

      “I know so. You go to that schoolhouse tryin’ to be somethin’ you ain’t, them kids really goin’ to let you have it. You follow the Scriptures, you’ll be all right. You know the Bible almost well as I do by now, so I know you ain’t forgot that lesson on Lot’s wife.” He gave me an affectionate pat on my head and turned and walked away.

      I dragged myself back to my room and snatched the ribbons from my hair and kicked them halfway across the room. Before I could remove the makeup, Mr. Boatwright was in my room with a familiar look on his face.

      “That’s much better.” He grinned, as he unzipped his pants.

      “Mr. Boatwright, I’m on my period,” I lied.

      He rushed out of the room, cussing under his breath.

      It took me a while to get my hair under control again. Rhoda was long gone by then, and it ruined my day. I was late for class and had to do detention after school. When I got home, Mr. Boatwright gave me a whupping for getting detention.

      Once my whupping wore off, I went to sit on the front porch. Rhoda was on hers reading. She looked up and waved, then returned her attention to her reading material. Pee Wee had told me that she was one of the smartest girls in the whole school. She had taught herself how to speak Spanish. She played the piano and knew a lot of grown-up card games that her aunt Lola had taught her. Pee Wee told me that a lot of the kids were afraid of Rhoda, as petite as she was. There were several reasons. She had a ferocious big brother named Jock, who was the leader of a street gang. Terrorizing other kids was a way of life for him. He had even beaten up Pee Wee a few times.

      Another reason a lot of kids feared Rhoda was because she had a crazy grandmother living in the house. A white woman. I hadn’t seen her yet, but I had heard that she chased cars up and down the street and threw rocks at people and called Black folks niggers. Still another reason kids were afraid of Rhoda was, a policeman had shot and killed her other brother while Rhoda was in his bedroom one night when she was six, and she had never gotten over it. Everybody said it made her act crazy sometimes. And finally, her daddy was an undertaker. To a lot of kids, undertakers and boogiemen were interchangeable. Nobody wanted the boogieman’s daughter as a friend.

      CHAPTER 10

      History was my worst subject. But it was the only class I had with Rhoda, so I didn’t mind going to it. Since she was everything I wanted to be and more, I even looked forward to it each day. I flunked most of the tests and arrived late two or three times a week because this was my first class after lunch. I was always one of the last ones to leave the cafeteria because I usually went back in line to get additional helpings of whatever was on the menu.

      I had been in the new school for several days before I got up enough nerve to approach Rhoda without her inviting me. The cafeteria was crowded for lunch that day. Sadly, it was divided by race. Our local news covered all the racial problems Black people were having down South, especially the violence. There was an occasional fight in our school between somebody Black and somebody white. Sometimes it was over something as innocent as a comment made about somebody’s mother. The words “nigger” and “honky” eventually came up during the confrontation, and that made it a race incident. I think all that had a lot to do with people making such a big deal out of somebody’s color even in Ohio. It wasn’t a rule like down South, but we still had to deal with segregation. Property managers found ways not to rent to Blacks, jobs advertised in the paper were suddenly “filled” when a Black person attempted to apply, and the service Black folks received in some restaurants was so bad, it was better not to go there in the first place. Most of the time when I attempted to sit with white kids in the cafeteria, СКАЧАТЬ