Читать книгу God Don't Like Ugly - Mary Monroe - Страница 14

I was now thirteen, and the only person I had ever had any sexual contact with was Mr. Boatwright. Things had not changed much since our first encounter. Every now and then I got up enough nerve to threaten to tell Mama, and he’d usually say something like, “Ahhhh…and who do you think would believe you with your ugly self? What do you think your mama will say when I tell her how you throwed yourself at me for a nickel?”

One night, a week before I turned twelve, I threatened to tell Mama again. I held my breath as he hobbled out of my room and returned within minutes, waving a gun I had never seen before. “See this here?” He walked right up to me and placed the barrel against my forehead. “Bang.”

My heart was beating so hard I could barely breathe. I was too scared to move. He smiled and took a few steps back. “Don’t think I won’t use it.”

Richland’s population remained around thirty-two thousand with approximately a twenty percent Black population. There were two steel mills, a brickyard, and a few other factories that provided decent employment for a lot of the Black men who couldn’t get good-paying jobs anyplace else in town. There were a lot of farms on the outskirts of town where migrant workers from Florida and the Carolinas worked picking mostly beans, strawberries, apples, potatoes and peaches, from May to November. A lot of the local people, mostly Black, worked on those farms, too.

Downtown Richland was nothing to write home about. There were two five-and-dime stores, Pluto’s and Bailey’s, where most of the Black folks did their shopping. There were a few clothing stores, one wig and hat shop, two furniture stores, two shoe stores, a few businesses, and the police station. The more upscale stores were located in Sheldon Village, a large shopping center right off the freeway.

There was only one Black doctor in town and one Black undertaker. Other than Black churches, the only thing there was an abundance of for Black folks were bars. Mama called bars beer gardens. “Them beer gardens cultivate a alcoholic quicker than fertilizer,” she warned me one day when we passed the Red Rose Tavern on the way home from church.

“Amen.” Mr. Boatwright nodded. I figured he had forgotten about the time he had left me standing outside for twenty minutes while he ran into the Red Rose for a highball one afternoon on the way home from the market.

The people with money lived on the south side of town, near a set of railroad tracks. Most of the low-income people lived in the northern part of Richland. The people with money bought their groceries at Kroger’s and the A&P. We bought ours at a shabby disorganized discount market called the Food Bucket, where the quality of almost everything they sold was enough to make you sick. A few times they had even tried to sell me and Mr. Boatwright spoiled meat. I hated when Mama sent me and Mr. Boatwright there to get groceries. Some of the clerks were rude and no matter which checkout line you got in, most of the people in front of you had welfare orders, coupons, and checks that needed to be verified. It took longer to check out than it took to collect a cartful of groceries.

In addition to the Sampson River there were several lakes in the Richland area where people went to fish and swim. The rich people went swimming at a fancy pool called Sun Tan Acres, with all kinds of concession stands and other services and lifeguards who looked like Troy Donahue and Elvis. The Black folks and the other poor people went to the lakes and Sampson River to swim or to Jason Pool about a mile from the city dump. At Jason Pool they even let dogs jump in the water. The two dumpy lifeguards were not handsome, but they were nice and really looked out for all the swimmers.

I liked Jason Pool, but I’d only gone there to swim a few times. Weighing close to two hundred pounds, I didn’t feel comfortable even though there were a lot of other overweight people flopping around in the water like seals. No matter how hard I tried, I could never find an attractive bathing suit I could afford. I couldn’t figure out what made designers think fat people liked swimwear with big flowers, tutus around the waist, and zippers that got stuck or pinched. Whoever was in charge did not clean the pool regularly, like the people did at Sun Tan Acres. People peed in the water and threw things in it like beer and pop cans that floated around for days.

We had two movie theaters, both on the south side of town. The rich people saw first-run movies at the Mt. Pilot Theater. The Strand, just four blocks from the Mt. Pilot, didn’t get movies until months after they had been released. The ushers at the Strand did nothing when people got loud or brought in their own refreshments and alcohol. Fights often broke out when somebody stepped on somebody’s foot, somebody stole somebody’s seat, or somebody had the nerve to stroll in with somebody else’s lover. People smoked weed, and the ushers ignored them. I loved going to the movies so much, I tolerated all that. Every first of the month, when Mr. Boatwright received his disabilitiy check, he treated me to a movie at the Mt. Pilot Theater, where we could eat fresh popcorn and hot dogs and enjoy a recently released movie in peace. I treasured those outings. No matter what movie was showing I enjoyed the experience, even with Mr. Boatwright next to me sometimes snoring so loud the ushers came over to wake him up.

I still didn’t like having sex with Mr. Boatwright and avoided it every chance I got, but now the sex itself didn’t bother me as much. And I knew him well enough by now to manipulate him to my advantage. I offered to pick up beer for him from Scary Mary, which he would drink right away, get drunk, and give me extra money that I used to go to the movies by myself or buy magazines and paperback books. I had him convinced that my periods lasted ten days when they only lasted four. He was superstitious about touching a female on her period.

“Woman’s curse could ruin a man iffen he got too close,” he told me once with a grimace on his face.

“Oh yes I know. I read all about it,” I agreed, nodding.

He was getting so forgetful he would wake up with a hangover, come to my room, and I’d convince him that we had already had sex. “Did I pay you?” he asked seriously on one occasion.

“Um…no, but that’s OK this time,” I lied. With the exception of the food Mama and I had stolen from her white employers in Florida, I didn’t feel right taking something for nothing too often.

Mama often told me, “What goes around comes around.” Her example was us skipping out owing all those creditors and landlords in Florida. Because of that, Mama couldn’t get credit anywhere in Richland. Our phone bill and our utility bill were in Scary Mary’s name, and Reverend Snipes cosigned for every house we rented in Richland. “You be good, and God’ll be good to you,” Mama assured me, and I believed her.