Читать книгу God Still Don't Like Ugly - Mary Monroe - Страница 13

Long after Clyde the cat had disappeared from the kitchen, I stood in the doorway looking out into the night. Even with the back porch light on, I couldn’t see much. Green vines crawled up the sides of the porch walls. There wasn’t much of a backyard. But it had a clothesline, an old picnic table with three mismatched chairs, and what appeared to be an orange tree. In the yard of almost every one of the sorry shacks I had shared with Muh’Dear and Daddy during my childhood, we’d had an orange tree. I felt like I had come home. In a way, I had.

I was surprised to turn around and find Lillimae standing by the table in a muslin nightgown that barely covered her body.

“I hope you don’t think I was eavesdroppin’ on your conversation with your mama,” Lillimae said, removing a pitcher from the refrigerator. She poured us both a glass of water and waved me to a chair at the table as she sat down across from me.

“That’s okay. I don’t really have anything to hide from you,” I said, plopping down with a groan, drinking water I didn’t want. “Uh, that reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about all evening.” I drank some more water, wishing that it was something stronger sliding down my throat.

There was a blank look on Lillimae’s face. “What’s that?”

“I know you must be hurting right now about your mother.”

Lillimae sighed and clutched her glass with both hands. “And you’re probably wonderin’ why I care about a woman who don’t care about me.”

“She does care about you,” I said firmly.

Lillimae gasped and gave me a dry look. “How would you know that? You didn’t know her. And what about the way she behaved at the vegetable stand this evenin’?”

“I didn’t want to tell you,” I paused because I could barely form my sentences. “Your mother came outside as we were getting back into your car. She had a smile on her face, but she looked like she wanted to cry when we drove off. I bet if her boss hadn’t been around, she would have run out to the car and said something to you.”

Lillimae started blinking hard and biting her bottom lip. “Sure enough?”

I nodded. “I would have told you sooner or later. I guess the sooner you know she cares, the better.”

Lillimae folded her arms and glanced around the kitchen. “Now that I know where my mama works, maybe I’ll go back over there and slip her a note, tellin’ her to meet me somewhere where we can talk. Would you go with me? I don’t think I can do it otherwise. I am not as bold as you.”

I nodded. “I’m sure your mother would appreciate you taking that step.” I heard the toilet flush, so I glanced toward the doorway. Every time Daddy was out of my sight, I got nervous. It was like I couldn’t look at his face enough. Because my beloved stepfather had recently died, I had been afraid that Daddy would die before I could see him again. I blinked even harder and returned my attention to Lillimae.

“That day Mama left us, she took me aside and told me that I had to be stronger than Amos and Sondra because of the way I look.” A faraway look appeared on Lillimae’s face. “She was right.”

“You mean your color?”

“My lack of color would be more like it. I didn’t know what she meant, but it didn’t take me long to find out. Bein’ a Black girl in a white body ain’t no picnic. I’d give anything in this world to be as dark as you.”

“But don’t you have some advantages over the rest of us? When you go out alone, don’t white people treat you like one of their own?”

She nodded. “The ones that don’t know me do. But you don’t know how hard it is to be around Black folks and have them make jokes about me lookin’ white. You don’t know what it feels like when white folks on my job find out I’m Black. I can’t go around announcin’ to the world that I’m Black, but when they find out, it’s a whole different ball game. My first boyfriend’s mama was into that Black Panther stuff. The first time she got a look at me, she told me to my face that she wasn’t goin’ to be ‘eatin’ with the enemy’ or some shit like that.”

I pursed my lips and shrugged. “You can’t do anything about the way you look.”

“And don’t think I haven’t tried. I used to wear Afro wigs and dark makeup. When I got tired of that, I started wearin’ braids and all the things I saw the other Black girls wearin’. But that wasn’t me. I can’t be happy tryin’ to be somethin’ I’m not. Now my old man, Freddie Lee, ain’t too fond of white folks. But even before me, all his other girls was high yellow. That confused me. And it confused our boys when Freddie Lee put ’em in a all-white school tellin’ ’em he thought they’d 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.