Читать книгу God Still Don't Like Ugly - Mary Monroe - Страница 7

The cloudless sky looked like a blue blanket. I welcomed the cool breeze that suddenly caressed my face. From the corners of my eyes, I could see streams of hazy, black smoke floating from several different directions. It smelled like everybody on the block was barbecuing. I couldn’t have picked a better day to return to Florida.

“Hurry up and come on up here on this porch right now. I been waitin’ long enough.” The woman stomped her foot and anxiously opened her arms. The sun made the rings on her fingers glisten as she beckoned me to join her.

“So have I,” I managed, my voice cracking. My suitcase and feet felt like they weighed a ton as I dragged myself toward the house. The narrow walkway was lined with bright yellow dandelion flowers and neatly trimmed grass. I almost tripped over a discarded bicycle wheel.

I made my way up the porch steps and set my suitcase down, not taking my eyes off the woman’s round, sweaty face. Now that I was closer, I could see that her eyes were blue. But they seemed cold and empty. I didn’t feel good about having such a morbid thought about a woman I didn’t even know. “You have beautiful eyes,” I said. I swallowed hard and slid my tongue across my lips.

“And so do you,” she replied with a wide smile, blinking her eyes like she was showing them off. Now those same eyes seemed full of warmth and life. Her plump cheeks were smeared with chocolate and bread crumbs. She started fanning herself with a newspaper and balancing her weight from one foot to the other. Out of nowhere, a huge, dusty-gray cat, its belly almost dragging the ground, waddled up the porch steps and started rubbing its side against the woman’s leg. “Go on back home, Clyde,” she hollered, gently kicking the cat away. The woman sniffed, folded her arms, and leaned her head back to look at my face some more. She had a deep, down-home drawl, but the tone of her voice was the same as mine. “Girl, I am so happy to finally meet you! You are just as pretty as Daddy said you were,” she squealed, fanning my face with her newspaper, too.

Pretty was one of many words that I had never associated with myself and when other people did, it made me even more nervous and self-conscious. My moon face, three chins, small black eyes, and dark brown skin were features I had always avoided looking at. Even though I stood in front of my mirror every day applying makeup, I only focused on my features one at a time, closing my eyes when I could.

“You…you must be Lillimae,” I stammered, as I rushed into my half-sister’s arms. The bear hugs we gave one another must have made us look like two huge grizzlies to the man next door, still watering his grass. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him staring at us, scratching the top of his head.

“Come on in this house, girl.” Lillimae draped her heavy arm around my shoulder, rubbing it so hard it started throbbing.

I picked up my suitcase and followed Lillimae into a living room congested with too many chairs, two well-worn, brown vinyl couches facing one another, and a large TV with a wire coat hanger for antennae. An air conditioner whirred from a side window, forcing the leaves on a nearby rubber plant to flap.

I could smell the familiar aroma of turnip greens and other favorites that I could only describe as exotic. Smothered pork chops, cornbread, and macaroni and cheese were just part of a feast already decorating a table I couldn’t see.

“Lordy, Annette, you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to meet you! All my life I wanted a big sister to look up to.” Lillimae wiped a tear from her eye and sniffed.

“And I’ve always wanted a sister, too,” I replied dryly. “When I was little, the only reason I wanted a sibling was so I could have somebody to boss around.” I laughed but I wished I hadn’t. It made my throat hurt.

“Well, I bossed around my baby sister and brother when we was kids. Now I wish I could take all that back.” Lillimae paused and dabbed sweat off my chin with her thumb. She patted my arm and gave me a thoughtful look. “Because ain’t nobody supposed to torment the ones they love. There’s enough others goin’ to do that.”

I blinked and nodded in agreement. The people that I had loved had been the ones who had hurt me the most. I had come to Florida, hoping to heal my heart. Daddy had helped break it in two.

I set my suitcase on the freshly waxed linoleum floor and followed Lillimae to one of the couches. When we sat down, the couch squished and squeaked and almost flattened to the floor from the strain of our combined weight. And that had to be at least five hundred pounds.

“It’s so nice to finally get you down here!” Lillimae grinned, squeezing my hand. I flinched as the rings on her fingers dug into my flesh. “All that prayin’ I done has finally paid off. Praise the Lord.”

“Is…is Daddy here?” I asked, looking around the room. Daddy’s blood was all over the place. Two of the peach-colored walls in the living room were practically covered with pictures of other young faces that also resembled mine, down to the same flat, sad eyes and bloated cheeks.

Before Lillimae could respond, my daddy, also wearing a long, drab bathrobe, shuffled into the room, sliding a limp, wet towel across his face. I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand to keep from screaming. The once-handsome man who had fathered me looked like he had just stumbled out of a mummy’s tomb. The healthy head of thick, black hair I remembered had been replaced with a receding halo of thin white cotton. The proud, inky-black eyes I had admired so much as a child now looked gray and tortured. Deep lines crisscrossed his face like a road map. Lips that looked like raw liver couldn’t hide his snaggle-toothed grin. The few teeth he had left would have looked better on a serpent. His broad shoulders had shrunk and now drooped like the shoulders of a man who had yoked a heavy load far longer than he should have. He had never had much of a butt. But now his backside was as flat as a board, making it look like he had a very long back supported by a pair of frail, slightly bowed legs. His belly resembled a huge cummerbund.

“It took you long enough to get here,” Daddy snapped, weaving toward me, his bathrobe dragging the floor. The booming voice I remembered had been replaced by a weak, scratchy growl. “I sent you your airplane fare five years ago!” His eyes watered as he stared at me like he was seeing me for the first time.

“I’m sorry, Daddy. I had a lot of things to take care of first,” I explained, rising. “Muh’Dear…she didn’t want me to come back down here.”

At the mention of my mother, Daddy stopped and turned away, tossing the towel on top of a goosenecked lamp in a corner behind him.

“I figured that,” he mumbled, shaking his head. His exasperation was obvious, but that didn’t faze me one bit. I was just as exasperated as he was. Maybe even more so. “Ain’t you around forty-somethin’ now, girl?” Daddy asked, facing me with one eyebrow raised.

“Me? Oh—well, I’m thirty-five. My birthday was last week,” I stammered. My words hung in midair while I groped for more. I pressed my lips together and blinked stupidly.

Daddy grunted and made a sweeping gesture with a hand so gnarled, it looked like it had never been straight. “Oh yeah, that’s right. You was born durin’ dog days. Well, that’s old enough for you to be doin’ what you want to do. I was beginnin’ to think that I wouldn’t get to see you again ’til the Rapture. Ain’t that right, Lillimae?”

Lillimae chuckled. “Daddy got a notion in his head that the world’s goin’ to end any day now. He won’t even buy nothin’ on credit no more.”

I was too nervous and confused to go to my daddy. I wanted to hug him and slap him at the same time. More than thirty years was a long time to be separated from somebody you loved. He had a reason to be angry with me for taking so long to come see him, but I had even more of a reason to be angry with him. He was the one who had run out on my mother and me at a time when we needed him the most. It was time for him to answer for what he had done.