Читать книгу God Don't Like Ugly - Mary Monroe - Страница 15

Over the years, Mama worked for a lot of rich white people in Richland I never got to meet. Then I met the employer she gave up all her other commitments to work for exclusively; a retired judge name Bill Lawson. Judge Lawson was one of Scary Mary’s most frequent visitors and one of her closest friends. I had overheard her tell Mama that the judge was the main reason she always got out of trouble with just a “talking-to” every time her house got raided.

The judge was a tall, gray-haired, barrel-chested white man with a narrow face and bushy mustache. He reminded me of Jed Clampett on my favorite program at the time, The Beverly Hillbillies. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen and thin lips that were always smiling. He lived in a big blue house on a hill with an enclosed swimming pool, and he owned houses all over town. Every time I saw him he had on an expensive-looking suit.

“How do you like school, Annette? Your mama tells me you get straight A’s,” he said to me one night when he dropped Mama off.

I broke into a grin when he slapped a one-dollar bill into my anxious hand. “Oh I have some real good teachers, and I like to learn,” I told him proudly, walking behind him as he strode like a cowboy across our living-room floor.

Mama and Judge Lawson sat down on our living-room couch and popped open cans of beer. I sat on a chair across from them, caressing my dollar. Mr. Boatwright was in bed.

“Hmmm. Ever consider going into the teaching profession when the time comes?” Judge Lawson asked, taking a long swig from his can.

“Oh no, Judge Lawson. I hope I can get a good secretarial job after I graduate,” I replied excitedly.

“Well if there’s anything I can do to help, all you got to do is let me know and I’ll fix it,” he said firmly. Then he put his hand on Mama’s knee and started rubbing it.

Judge Lawson’s offer impressed and stunned me, but I didn’t take him seriously. I knew he was rich, didn’t have any kids, and was not on good terms with his family. But he had a lot of friends. Mama told me that he entertained a lot. He often had lavish poker parties. Every time he did, Mama had to stay late cooking and running around serving his guests.

Something happened shortly after Judge Lawson’s offer, and Mama was forced to call on him for a favor. An inspector came snooping around our neighborhood, and our house was one of the ones he condemned because the place had extremely bad and dangerous wiring, termites and roaches sliding up and down the walls, plaster falling from the ceiling, and holes everywhere he looked. We had thirty days to find a new place to live.

Mama couldn’t afford to take time off from work, so Mr. Boatwright and I went out looking for a new house. We took buses when we could, but we did most of our searching on foot. With Mr. Boatwright’s leg situation it was a long, exasperating experience. Because of him I couldn’t walk as fast as I normally did. And every ten or fifteen minutes we had to find a bench for him to rest.

The next day we looked at three more places. The ones we could afford looked worse than the one we were in and were located in neighborhoods even rougher and more run-down.

“I don’t know what to do,” Mama moaned one evening. She had just come in from work and still had her coat on. Her eyes appeared to be in pain. They were red and swollen from all the crying she had done over our knotty problem. “We ain’t got but ten more days to vacate these premises.”

“What happens if we don’t move by then?” I asked. I was on the living room couch with Mr. Boatwright. An hour earlier he and I had prayed out loud on our knees asking God to help us find the right house.

With a worried look on his face, Mr. Boatwright replied, “The sheriff will come out with a crew, set our stuff on the ground, and put a lock on the door.”

Time was running out, and we still had not found a suitable house to move to.

“What are we going to do, Mama?” I was getting scared. I was not that crazy about our house, but it was all we had.

“Well, Scary Mary done already told me, I can stretch out on a pallet on her livin’-room floor, you can sleep with Mott, Brother Boatwright can pile up on her livin’-room couch ’til we find a place.”

It was never discussed, but I knew that Mama was tired of having to fall back on Scary Mary so often. I sure was. Scary Mary was the type of person who would eventually call her favors in. Whenever she wanted Mama to come and help entertain her male friends, Mama got kicking and screaming mad, but she went. “Blackmail. Scary Mary blackmailin’ me,” Mama said under her breath to herself one day after getting off the phone with Scary Mary.

“What did you say, Mama?” I had entered the kitchen just in time to hear her.

“Nothin’!” She then sucked in her breath, and told me, “Go lay me out some clean step-ins that ain’t got no holes or ravels, go to my bureau and dig out my black brassiere, and iron my red dress.”

“That red dress you said was too short and tight?” I gasped, worried about what I had heard her say about Scary Mary blackmailing her.

Mama looked away from me as she spoke. “Uh…it ain’t that short and tight,” she said, her voice cracking.

Scary Mary now lived across the tracks in a huge green-shingled house in a neighborhood with nothing but nice houses. With all the women working for her, and the money the rich dead husband had left her, she could afford to. She had moved there several years earlier. It was the same neighborhood where our only Black undertaker, our only Black doctor, and one of the only two Black barbers lived. The rest of the neighborhood was white. I liked Scary Mary’s house, but I didn’t want to stay there even for a few days. I didn’t want to live in that big nice comfortable place, then have to give it up and go back to living in another falling-down shack like the ones we always rented.

With just five days left for us to vacate, Mama came rushing into the house after Judge Lawson had dropped her off. “Annette, Brother Boatwright, y’all come quick!” I ran from the kitchen to the living room where Mama was, wringing her hands and hopping around like she had to pee.

“What’s wrong, Mama?” I gasped. Her hair was askew, her lipstick was smeared, and her dress was buttoned wrong. It looked like she had just been mauled.

“What’s gwine on?” Mr. Boatwright yelled, hobbling into the room from upstairs.

“Y’all know that big house with the white aluminum sidin’ on Reed Street direct across from that colored undertaker, one block over from Scary Mary?” Mama shouted.

“Yeah. The house with the buckeye tree settin’ in the front yard.” Mr. Boatwright, arms folded, nodded. “What about it?”

“The tenants moved out a few days ago, and it’s up for rent!” Mama said, waving her arms like she was directing a 747. I had never seen Mama this excited before. There was a big smile on her face, and she was sweating.

“The rent must be three or four times what we pay here, Mama,” I said evenly. “We can’t afford to live in a place like that.”

“Oh yes we can afford it! I just found out it’s one of Judge Lawson’s properties! My Judge Lawson. I told him about our predicament and right off he said he wouldn’t stand by and let us get set out on the ground long as he livin’.” Mama paused and scratched her head, then continued. “After all these years, the judge decided he didn’t like the people livin’ there. They was too hard to get along with and was always complainin’ about one thing or another. He say we can move in right away with no deposit, and we can rent it for the same rent we pay here.”

“Praise the Lord!” Mr. Boatwright was so overwhelmed he started shaking and sweating so hard he had to sit down and compose himself. He snatched a handkerchief from his pocket and started fanning and wiping his face.

“Judge Lawson’s got one foot in the grave, Mama. What if he dies next month?” I asked.

“Well, Miss Smarty, that’s already been considered. The judge promised me first thing in the mornin’ he would have his lawyer revise his will sayin’ me and mine can live in the Reed Street house, rent to never increase, for as long as we want!” Mama yelled. She dropped her tattered coat to the floor and started dancing like a tribeswoman around a ceremonial fire.

“Oh,” was all I could say as I rolled this information around in my head. I sat on the couch and started smiling. It sounded too good to be true. “Why would Judge Lawson do all that for us? What’s in it for him?” I wanted to know.

Mama stopped dancing her jig, and a strange, faraway look appeared on her face. “God told him to do it I bet.” She sighed. “It ain’t no wonder with the way we all been prayin’.”

Mr. Boatwright and I agreed with her, but I knew there was more to it than that. I’d seen Judge Lawson look at Mama the same way Mr. Boatwright often looked at me, like he’d just bought me by the pound.

In June of that year, 1963, we moved across town to the house on Reed Street. It was a bigger place and much nicer than any we had ever lived in. The front porch had a glider that came with the house. Not only was there a big buckeye tree in the spacious front yard, but there was also a gigantic weeping willow directly across the cobblestone walkway opposite the buckeye tree. I felt like we’d just moved to Norman Rockwell’s neighborhood. The floors in our new house had nice dark brown shaggy carpets. In the bright yellow kitchen there was a stove we could turn on without using pliers like we had to do with our old one, a refrigerator that defrosted itself, and linoleum that shone like new money on the floor. Our old neighborhood had lots of bars, and I saw drunk people staggering about and peeing on the ground in broad daylight. Our new neighborhood had only one bar, and my new school was only a ten-minute walk from our house.

Scary Mary’s house was right behind ours on the next street over. Our backyards connected. She had a cherry tree, an apple tree, and a buckeye tree in her part of the yard. From my back bedroom window, I counted dozens of grinning, well-dressed (most of them white) men in and out of her back door. Just like when we lived with her.

Our new house had four bedrooms. Mama took the largest one, which was the one downstairs. Mr. Boatwright took the one upstairs across from mine. And the fourth bedroom, right at the end of a long hallway, was to be used to store things, Mama said, like the brand-new sewing machine Judge Lawson had ordered from Sears and Roebuck. I felt warm and secure in my new room even though all I had in it was my lumpy bed, a big old, chipped chifforobe, and a nightstand with a goosenecked lamp on it leaning over my bed like a sentinel.

I livened up my room with colored pictures of stars from my movie magazines and dandelions I picked from our front yard.

It didn’t take me long to get used to our new neighborhood. It was cleaner, quieter, and safer than the one we had just moved from. For weeks, Mr. Boatwright didn’t bother me for sex. I thought that he had gotten tired of me or, because of his age, his sex drive had run its course. I was wrong.

For the upcoming Fourth of July, we planned a trip to a slaughterhouse to get some ribs, pork links, and chicken parts for him to barbecue. Before going to the meat market, he took me to the Mt. Pilot movie theater to see a new Steve McQueen movie. After the movie, we ate at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.

“Hurry up and finish eatin’ so we can get to the market and back home before Perry Mason come on the TV,” Mr. Boatwright urged, chewing so hard he bit his tongue. There was grease on his lips and chin, and bits of chicken were lodged between his front teeth.

“OK. After we watch Perry Mason, I’ll help you marinate the ribs,” I told him. I was halfway through my second three-piece dinner meal. Every time I put on a pound, I recalled Mama’s prediction when I was four about how God was going to curse me with a body the size of a moose. At 210 pounds I didn’t have too far to go. Though he seemed to enjoy it, Mr. Boatwright told me all the time how much he hated my bloated body. I made myself believe that eventually I’d be so fat he wouldn’t touch me anymore. “Mr. Boatwright, can I get some more chicken?”

The slaughterhouse was a big brooding gray building across the road from a truck stop. On a normal day it was a madhouse. With a holiday coming up, one that was close to the first part of the month when all the low-income people got their checks and still had money to spend on meat, the place resembled a crime scene. A mob of boisterous people wearing Bermuda shorts and sandals, who had already completed their shopping, stood in front of the market waiting for a bus to take them back home. The parking lot was completely full, and some of the vehicles belonged to the police.

The men who worked inside were running around with bloodstains on their white smocks. Sweaty, impatient customers were standing at the counters five deep trying to bargain, trying to get credit, or trying to get an extra pound of something for free.

Because of all the chaos and the fact that it took Mr. Boatwright so long to walk from one counter to another, (he had to lean against the wall and rest for ten minutes between each counter we went to) it took us longer than we expected to get our orders filled. By the time we walked out of the market, there were so many people ahead of us boarding the departing bus we had to wait for the next one. It took us another hour to get back to where we had to transfer to the bus that would take us back to our neighborhood. By then it was too late. The last bus for the day on that route had come and gone.

“I guess we’ll have to take a cab from here,” Mr. Boatwright said angrily.

“Let’s walk the rest of the way home,” I suggested. Our house was fifteen blocks away, but I didn’t mind.

“What’s wrong with you, girl? I’m lucky to be alive after all the walkin’ I done did today,” Mr. Boatwright snapped. There were times I forgot about his fake leg and the fact that he was an old man. “All these packages we totin’ too. Let’s get to that pay phone yonder and call a cab.” The nearby pay phone at the corner in front of Thurman’s Pharmacy was out of order. “Maybe that drugstore there got one. Start steppin’, girl.”

I followed Mr. Boatwright inside the drugstore. While he went to the back to use the phone, I waited on a stool at the soda counter with our packages, enjoying the air-conditioning and a strawberry milk shake.

A well-dressed Black man in his mid-forties entered. With his head held high and his shoulders back, he strutted like a king, greeting some of the other customers with a nod and a smile. He was tall like my daddy, but much more handsome. He looked a lot like Mama’s favorite entertainer, Harry Belafonte. He had dark brown skin, full lips, wavy black hair, and, of all things, green eyes. He nodded and smiled at me, revealing a set of dazzling white teeth. I smiled back and watched him stop at the counter in back of the drugstore where they filled prescriptions. Mr. Boatwright returned with a tortured look on his face.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“We ain’t got enough to cover no cab from here to the house. Damn that bus!” he hissed. “I guess—” he stopped and shaded his eyes. He was looking at the Black man with the movie-star looks. “Ain’t that Brother Nelson yonder there?”

“Who?”

“The undertaker that own that big white house directly across the street from us. He come up to me when I was in the yard the other day and introduced hisself,” Mr. Boatwright explained. We watched the man walk toward us, still smiling. He reached out and shook Mr. Boatwright’s hand so hard I thought Mr. Boatwright was going to fall.

“How’re you feelin’, Boatwright?” the man drawled in a deep, husky, slightly Southern accent. “It’s good to see you again.”

I pushed my milk shake aside and leaped up off my seat, smoothing the sides of my cheap corduroy jumper.

“Oh I’m fair to middlin’. The Lord’s good to me, Brother Nelson.” Mr. Boatwright nodded in my direction. “This the young’n live in the same house with me and her mama. I know you done seen her up and down that tree shuckin’ it for them buckeye nuts. Annette, this Brother Nelson.”

“Hi, Mr. Nelson,” I said shyly.

He shook my trembling hand. “I got a girl around your age. She’s spendin’ her summer vacation with her aunt down South,” Mr. Nelson told me. “Uh…look like you folks got a lot of shoppin’ done there.”

“Yep. We been to the slaughterhouse out on Highway 80. We can’t afford them high-and-mighty prices at Kroger’s and the A&P like you. Me and this girl here go to the slaughterhouse two, three times a month. Even Kroger’s can’t beat them screamin’, meaty pork ribs the slaughterhouse sell, praise the Lord.” Mr. Boatwright laughed, shaking his head.

“Well I wouldn’t know. We don’t eat pork,” Mr. Nelson informed us with a serious look on his face. “You know, Black folks would be a whole lot healthier if they’d give up certain things, especially pork.”

I bobbed my head up and down in agreement. “I read about it in that Black Muslim newspaper they go around selling. They say too much pork can kill you,” I offered.

Mr. Boatwright rolled his eyes at me and sighed with exasperation. “Well mighty funny you wanted to stand in that long line just to get them pork link sausages,” he teased. “That’s why we missed the last bus, and now we ain’t got no way to get home lest we call the po’lice,” Mr. Boatwright complained. He immediately turned to Mr. Nelson and looked at him with pleading eyes.

“I’m goin’ in your direction. Y’all welcome to ride along with me,” Mr. Nelson told us, opening his arms like he was going to hug somebody.

Mr. Boatwright couldn’t gather our packages fast enough. There was a shiny black Cadillac parked in front of the drugstore. The same car I’d seen in front of the undertaker’s house. Mr. Boatwright jumped in the front, all the while complaining about his leg, and I got in the back.

“How your family doin’? Scary Mary tells me you got your hands full,” Mr. Boatwright boomed, drowning out Miles Davis coming from the tape deck.

“Well, that woman of mine is goin’ to force me into the poorhouse. That hardheaded boy of mine is drivin’ me crazy. He and his sister fight like a cat and dog. That’s why we shipped her to her auntie this summer.”

“How your mama? I hear she’s havin’ some health difficulties,” Mr. Boatwright grunted, looking with envy at the undertaker’s well-groomed hair.

“Well, Alzheimer’s is pretty serious, but we manage to live with it. She’s a handful though. We can’t keep a nurse more than a few weeks. That’s why I let that crazy half brother of mine move in, so he can help look after her. And, as you probably heard, my wife is not well, or at least she doesn’t think she is. Every other day I drop off a new prescription.”

“Well, I be seein’ your wife in the yard wrestlin’ with them rosebushes y’all got, and comin’ and goin’ with shoppin’ bags from every store in town every day. She look mighty healthy to me,” Mr. Boatwright said seriously, still staring at the undertaker’s hair, blinking fast and hard.

“She cut her finger on a steak knife the other day and took to her bed, certain she was goin’ to get infected. Today it’s a cramp in her foot.” Mr. Nelson laughed.

I sat in silence while Mr. Boatwright and Mr. Nelson talked. As soon as we got home, Mr. Boatwright started badmouthing Mr. Nelson.

“We don’t eat pork,” he mimicked. “Hmmmph! I bet he’d eat pork iffen he didn’t have nothin’ else to eat. And what he need with a car that big? Iffen I had a wife like his’n, always whinin’ about a cut or a scratch or cramps, I’d slap her!”

“Mr. Nelson seems like a real nice man,” I said casually. We were putting the meat away. I kept the pork links out so that I could eat a snack before dinner. “He doesn’t look like an undertaker,” I added thoughtfully.

“And just what is a undertaker supposed to look like?” Mr. Boatwright sniffed, shaking a pack of chicken wings in my direction, his other hand on his hip.

“Well…you know…grim, heavyset, spooky. The way you—” I covered my mouth with my hand. Mr. Boatwright looked at me like he wanted to slap me, but he didn’t.

“I bet he ain’t half the man I am, iffen you know what I mean. Scary Mary say he got a balled-up sock stuffed in his crotch.” Mr. Boatwright laughed.

“And she should know,” I said sarcastically.

He lifted one of the links, shook it at me, and grinned. “You won’t find no balled-up sock in my shorts.” I pretended not to hear him. “Hurry up and eat your links. Then I’ll give you the real thing.”

“Mama’ll be home soon!” I snapped, slamming the refrigerator door so hard it shook.

“Not tonight. The judge givin’ his poker party tonight. We got plenty of time to have a good time.”

“You mean you have a good time. I thought—” Before I could finish my sentence, Mr. Boatwright slid his knuckles along the side of my face.

“You sassin’ me over a little poontang?”

“I’m not sassing you. I’m sick of doing…what we do. You know it’s not right. Why can’t you get a girlfriend your own age. Somebody who wants to do it with you.”

Mr. Boatwright looked confused. He leaned back on his legs and put his hands on his hips. “Like I said, I could get any woman I want.”

“Then why don’t you?” I had lost my appetite. I wrapped the links back up and put the package in the refrigerator.

A long uncomfortable moment of silence passed. “You know I could make your life a livin’ hell, girl.”

“You already have,” I assured him.

Mr. Boatwright gave me one of his meanest looks. One that took so much effort, his nostrils started flaring. “I’ll remember that the next time you need money for the movies or books or somethin’.” With that, he hobbled out of the kitchen and went to the living room.

I went to my room and lay down on my bed, proud that I had stood up to him. I just had to do it more often. Minutes later, he entered my room. “What do you want?” I barked.

“You can’t tease me like you been doin’ all day and get away with it,” he said hoarsely. He rushed over to the bed and grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me. “Come on now, girl. This ain’t gwine to take but a minute. Look on the bright side.” That was the bright side. It took only a minute to satisfy him. As long as he was happy, he was good to me, and being alone with him so much, that was important.

On one side of our house was an empty lot. On the other side lived a widower named Caleb Davis and his thirteen-year-old son, Jerry. Caleb was a barber, and he had his shop in his house.

He and Scary Mary came to the house almost every day. Sometimes three to five times all in the same day, even when Mama was not at home. They would sit and drink beer with Mr. Boatwright and complain about almost everything. Mostly, they trashed other people, and it seemed like every time they got together one of them had some mind-boggling physical ailment that they liked to discuss in great detail. They tried to outdo one another. Scary Mary had high blood pressure and various female problems. Caleb complained about high blood pressure and ulcers, but the thing Caleb had, which ranked him way up there with Mr. Boatwright’s fake leg, was a bullet lodged in his head from a war injury.

Caleb was nice, but I didn’t trust him or feel comfortable around him. In fact, I didn’t trust or feel comfortable around any male. Not even a preacher or an undertaker. I was convinced that they were all boogiemen. All because of what Mr. Boatwright had done to me.

Yet, I liked Caleb as much as I could like any male. He brought me candy and rib sandwiches and other tasty stuff and always said something nice to me. “That’s a mighty pretty frock you got on, possum. Them some nice T-strap shoes you wore to church today.”

Caleb was much taller and thinner than Mr. Boatwright, but they looked enough alike to be brothers. They were almost the same shade of brown, and each had a wide flat face.

I didn’t let Caleb in when I was home alone. I didn’t want to find out if he was a rapist, too.

Caleb’s son Jerry was called Pee Wee because he was short and puny. With no encouragement from me, this boy eased himself into my life and became in many ways my shadow. Mr. Boatwright and a lot of people were convinced that he liked boys. He was what we called “funny,” and it was no wonder. He was swishy, and he didn’t play sports. He cooked, made most of his own clothes, and hung around with girls and old folks.

Even though Mr. Boatwright thought that Pee Wee was funny, he liked him, as did Mama. Pee Wee was a major gossip and never ran out of scandalous things to tell them.

He wandered into our house without knocking almost every day.

“You seen my cat?” he asked one evening.

I had just come home from returning some books to the library and had left the front door unlocked. I didn’t hear him come in. I was in the kitchen when I whirled around and saw him standing in the kitchen doorway. I gave him one of my meanest looks. Down South people entered a house without knocking. It was not just a Black thing—even the white folks did it. It was a country thing. I didn’t like it there, and I didn’t like it in Ohio. To me, it was the height of arrogance. What if I had been naked?

“You look here, boy. From now on, you knock before you come in this house. You don’t live here.” Funny or not, and even though we had a vague relationship, he was a male, and I didn’t trust him.

“Girl, what’s wrong with you?” he exclaimed. He snatched open our refrigerator and drank from a carton of milk. Pee Wee was not bad-looking for a boy. He was medium brown, with more than a few zits on his square face screaming to be popped. His eyes were too small and too close together, but his pleasant smile made up for it. Like so many Black boys in the early sixties, he wore his hair cut close to the head. One reason I tolerated him was that he baked cookies for me.

“You can’t just walk in this house without knocking. Burglars do that,” I told him.

He gave me an incredulous look. Then he let out a short, sharp laugh. “Girl, what burglar would risk goin’ to jail to bust in here with all this junk y’all got?” He made a long, low, sweeping gesture with his hand. “Ain’t nothin’ in here nobody would want, specially me. Now, y’all got any more of that cake bread from yesterday? Hi, Brother Boatwright.” Pee Wee rushed across the room to pat Mr. Boatwright’s shoulder.

I didn’t even know Mr. Boatwright was in. A lot of days I came home to an empty house. Mr. Boatwright spent a lot of time at Scary Mary’s claiming to give Bible lessons to the prostitutes. A minute didn’t pass before Caleb and Scary Mary marched in and planted themselves at the kitchen table with Pee Wee and Mr. Boatwright. I was pleasantly surprised when Mama walked in shortly after they did. She dropped a bag that was full of beer onto the table. Her faded, ripped scarf was tied in such a messy knot, she had to struggle to get it loose.

“You off mighty early today, Sister Goode,” Caleb said. He rubbed his head on the spot where the bullet was lodged.

Mama dropped her scarf and coat on the kitchen counter and let out a long sigh. Her cheap, ill-fitting stockings had rolled almost all the way down her legs. “Judge Lawson is goin’ to visit some ex-colleagues in Cleveland. He wanted to get a early start, so he sent me home early with pay, bless his heart,” Mama explained. I stood back against the wall as she dragged a chair from the dining room into the kitchen and sat near the rest of the crowd. When Mama crossed her legs, I noticed quarter-sized holes in her secondhand shoes. Everybody’s hands were spread out on the table like at a séance.

“Anybody got any juicy news today?” Mr. Boatwright began. He looked directly at Pee Wee. By then everybody had a beer on the table. All the adults that is. I could see Pee Wee’s mouth watering for one of the beers. But he knew better than to drink in front of that many grown folks that included his own daddy.

“Well, that uppity undertaker’s brother done finally outdone hisself,” Pee Wee started. All eyes turned to him.

“Let me tell this one here,” Caleb interrupted, holding up his thick hand in his son’s face. I never noticed before, but Caleb had two gold-plated teeth.

“But Daddy—” Pee Wee pouted.

“Young’n, don’t you sass your daddy,” Mama advised Pee Wee. She turned to Caleb with a large smile. “Go on, Brother Davis.”

Caleb sucked in his breath first, took a long swallow of his beer, then folded his arms, but not before rubbing his head again. “That uppity undertaker, Brother Nelson, from across the street, had me trim his hair last night. Hmph! I bet Nelson ain’t even his real last name. He took it on tryin’ to put hisself up there on that same pedestal with Ozzie Nelson on the TV and he sure tries to behave like the real Nelsons. They is classic white folks. Since when is Nelson a colored name.”

“You think he uppity, that woman of his’n call herself Michelle Jacquelyn!” Mr. Boatwright roared.

“Go on, Brother Davis,” Mama said to Caleb.

Caleb frowned and squirmed around in his chair. With the exception of a shiny black suit he wore to church every Sunday, the only clothes I ever saw him wear were stiff overalls and cheap plaid shirts with patches on his elbows. “I know he conks his hair like all the rest of us, but he won’t admit it…all them naps along the side of his neck.”

Caleb paused just long enough to take another long swallow from his beer. Then he rolled up his sleeves. “We all know the undertaker’s white half brother Johnny, is a Bluebeard. I heard he had somethin’ to do with them two wives of his’n dyin’ early. I bet he done away with ’em to collect insurance. Huh, y’all?”

Everybody nodded and urged Caleb to continue. “He told me once upon a time he wanted to preach. But white folks don’t know the Bible like we do.” Caleb paused and waved his hand angrily. “Two things white folks need to leave to us is the gospel and cookin’. Anyway, one of Scary Mary’s gals got herself stabbed to death the other night comin’ out of that Red Rose beer garden on Canal Street. Ain’t that right?” He nodded at Scary Mary, and she nodded back. She reached over to help him massage his head.

“I had told that heifer to stay away from them beer gardens with all them hot-natured, just-released parolee men runnin’ amok,” Scary Mary said sadly.

“So the undertaker is settin’ in my chair and tellin’ all me this. In secret now, so don’t none of y’all go around town and blab this news. He got the body before it was even cold. And had her stretched out on a slab in his dead room like he was supposed to. That lustin’, white half brother of his’n snuck in that dead room after everybody was in the bed and…ravaged that dead woman. Pestered her right there in Brother Nelson’s dead room.” Nobody said a word for several moments, but they all gasped.

Scary Mary waved her hands and shook her head, “Poor Rosalee,” she sobbed. “One of my best girls.”

“This here white man, when he tried to get up from his dirty deed…he couldn’t,” Caleb announced. His thick fist hit the top of the table so hard, the beer bottles rattled. Now the story really had my attention. “Rigor mortis had set in. Y’all, Brother Nelson was fit to be tied! He had a mess on his hands. Anyway, this nasty dog Johnny’s instrument was locked up inside the woman’s female area! What a mess, what a mess. It took the undertaker and that big old strappin’ teenage boy of his quite a while to pull him aloose.”

Again, Mr. Boatwright amazed me with another comment. “That nasty buzzard. I swear to God, white folks is so unnatural. Ravagin’ a dead woman. I seen a white man ravage a sheep one day when I was a young’n!” he roared. I glared at him so hard, he flinched.

“I bet a man would ravage a snake if he could find the—” I blurted. A long, threatening look from Mama shut me up.

“Go mop that bathroom floor, girl,” she ordered.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mr. Boatwright giving me a threatening look. “And you better not miss a spot!” he yelled.