God Don’t Like Ugly (28 page)

I told him about my futile job interviews. He told me more about places in Erie I’d probably enjoy, like his favorite bar, the nearest movie theaters, the best soul food restaurants, and his church. “I hope I get a chance to take you out before that soldier boy come home.” He grinned, raising one brow suggestively.

“Maybe,” I mumbled, rising. “Thanks again for the dinner,” I continued, moving toward the door.

“You ain’t got to run you know. I don’t know about you, but this is a lonely night for me, and I am enjoyin’ your company,” he said, leaping up from the bed with his arms outstretched.

“Well…”

“There’s a gospel program comin’ on Channel Seven in a few minutes.” He strode across the floor and turned off the radio, then turned on the small color TV next to it.

I ended up staying another hour, and I am glad I did. He was a nice man. After the program went off I stood up again.

“I really do have to go now. Thanks again for the dinner,” I told him one more time, extending my hand.

“Oh, you welcome.” He got up to shake my hand and walk me to the door. “Anytime you missin’ that soldier boy of yours, my door is always open if you wanna come over and talk. And I wish you’d think about goin’ out with me sometime.”

I went to bed that night still concerned about my employment situation. But I was in a much better mood. I couldn’t believe how close I had come to ending my life. Again, Rhoda had saved me. Rhoda and a strange new man.

I
spent most of Thanksgiving Day in bed. The hotel restaurant was open, so I went to pick up one of their dinners. Before they wrapped it I could tell it was a mess. The turkey looked dry, the dressing looked like mud, and the mashed potatoes had lumps big as marbles. “You sure are a brave soul,” a petite Black woman with red hair and gray eyes laughingly said as we got into the same elevator. “The last time I ate in that restaurant I spent the next two days in the bathroom, throwin’ up from both ends.”

“Yeah, I know the food is deadly,” I said. “But sometimes anything is better than nothing.” The woman I was talking to was one of the ones who had tried to get me to baby-sit. She was just a little older than I, but she had four kids already.

“Ain’t you got no family neither?” she asked.

“No not in Erie,” I told her.

“Well I’m Jan Kirksey in Room 1142 if you ever feel like talkin’ or you just need somebody to lean on.” I thanked the woman and got off. Once I got to my room I felt bad about turning down her many requests for me to baby-sit for her. When she knocked on my door later Thanksgiving Day, accompanied by a rough-looking man wearing a do-rag asking again if I would watch her kids while she went to one of the nearby bars, I still said no. As bad as I wanted and needed friends, I promised myself I would avoid anybody I thought was out to take advantage of me. I lied to her about having a date, but as soon as she left, I crawled into bed and ate my dinner with a relish.

I dozed off, but around ten the phone rang. Muh’Dear told me all about the wonderful Thanksgiving dinner she had enjoyed with Mr. King and a holiday service they’d attended at church. Before she asked I told her that I was certain I’d be working any day now. “I’ve been on several interviews,” I revealed. “That’s why I was not here all those times you called.”

“Well turn it over to God. If you done interviewed all you can interview, it’s up to Him now.” Muh’Dear babbled on for a few minutes more about Judge Lawson’s failing health and what some of the people from the neighborhood were up to. She told me in great detail about Caleb’s recent hip surgery, Florence calling to get my address, and Pee Wee’s picture in the newspaper because of some medal he had earned. She finally hung up after telling me about how she took flowers over to the cemetery to put on Mr. Boatwright’s grave.

I dreamed about Mr. Boatwright that night. He had come into my room wearing a white robe and carrying his Bible. “Don’t you be scared of nothin’, girl. I’m here to comfort you,” he told me. The dream was so real. I woke up around 5
A.M
. in a daze the day after Thanksgiving and could not get back to sleep. I was just lying in bed staring at the ceiling when around 9:30
A.M
. the phone rang. It was the personnel representative at the Erie Manufacturing Company, one of the two factories where I had applied. They had a job for me.

“When do I start,” I yelled. The woman on the other end was silent.

“Are you available to start work a week from Monday?”

“Oh yes. I’m available to start TODAY if you want me to,” I said eagerly.

The woman laughed. “That won’t be necessary. You’ll need to take a physical first, then, of course, there is some paperwork you will need to complete.”

After I got off the phone I actually started dancing around the room. I had to share my news with somebody. Rhoda and Muh’Dear were both out. I put on a blouse and skirt and walked across the hall to tell Levi. Before I could knock, his door opened and he walked out with an attractive woman in her mid-twenties. “I’m sorry. Um…I just wanted to let you know I got a the job I applied for at Erie Manufacturing.”

“Praise the Lord!” he yelled. I didn’t bat an eye when he hugged me. His lady friend rolled her eyes at me and advised him that they had a cab waiting.

Too excited to sit in my room, I went to the hotel’s restaurant and wrestled my way through another one of their fried chicken plates.

I
hated my new job at first. Along with seven other women I sat on an assembly line screwing washers, nuts, and bolts onto various parts of garage-door openers. After only a week, it was a chore I could do in my sleep. Because of the oil and dust, we all dressed very casually, so I’d wasted all the money I’d spent on business suits.

The seven dollars an hour and the medical benefits were the incentive I needed to keep me going. Muh’Dear, Rhoda, and everybody else I’d told were happy for me. Florence even sent me a congratulatory card.

“What are your coworkers like?” Rhoda asked. She had just come home from the hospital with a seven-pound baby boy she had named Julian. I could hear him crying in the background.

“Well, I don’t know yet. They mind their own business and so do I. I am the youngest one and there are only two other Black women. There is another department in another section where they test and paint the garage-door openers, but I haven’t met any of those people.”

“You’ve been sharin’ an assembly line for two weeks now with seven women and you don’t know what any of them are like yet?”

“Well, the white women hang together and keep to themselves on breaks and lunch. They’ve all been working together for almost twenty years. The two Black women, well, they aren’t very friendly. Everybody speaks to me, but none of them have invited me out for break or lunch or anything,” I said sadly. It was true none of the women had tried to establish a friendship with me.

“Have
you
tried to develop a friendship with any of them?”

“Well no—”

“Annette, you don’t have to wait for them to approach you. Why don’t you ask one of them to go to lunch or somethin’? I bet if you made an attempt to get to know them, they’d help you find an apartment,” Rhoda told me, sounding almost angry. “You can’t spend your life waitin’ for things to come to you, Annette. Life’s too short.”

The next day at work I invited the middle-aged white woman next to me on the line to lunch. “There’s a McDonald’s down the street I usually go to,” I told her. Cynthia Costello, a thin, plain-looking bleached blonde smiled at me and shook her head.

“But I’d love to. With six kids I am on a tight budget. I always bring my lunch unless it’s a special occasion.” Cynthia had the worst case of acne I’d ever seen on a woman her age, and her teeth didn’t look too much better. I ate lunch alone that day but later when it was afternoon breaktime, Cynthia invited me to join her and one of the two Black women. Her name was Viola Jenkins, and she appeared to be in her mid-fifties like Muh’Dear.

“You look a little like my niece in Baton Rouge,” Viola informed me. I sat across from her and Cynthia at one of six plastic tables in our lunchroom down the hall from the assembly line. In the lunchroom were several vending machines with chips, sodas, and candy bars. Cynthia opened a thermos filled with coffee that she had brought from home. Viola was even larger than I was. We each had a Diet Pepsi in front of us. She had beautiful bronze skin, small, tired black eyes, and only half of her teeth left. There were at least half a dozen moles on the bottom half of her face, and her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back into a flat ponytail with a red rubber band holding it together. “I hear you ain’t got no family here. What about a church home?” Viola said, giving me an intense look. She had a deep aggressive voice that was almost masculine.

“Well as soon as I get settled into an apartment I’m going to pick a church. A man I met at the Richland Hotel where I rent a room told me about the Church of God in Christ. Have you ever been to it?”

Viola’s eyes got big, and a wide grin appeared on her face. “That’s the only sanctified church in town, and my stepdaddy is the preacher there,” Viola said proudly. “You Pentacostal?”

“Well no. I’m a Baptist, but I’ve been to Pentecostal churches before,” I told her. I felt bad not including Cynthia in the conversation. I turned to her. “Do you go to church, Cynthia?”

She nodded. “I’m Catholic, and you’re welcome to attend our services, too.” I truly enjoyed talking with these two women. After work, walking to the bus stop a block away together, Viola shared some disturbing information with me about Cynthia. “She’s done every drug in the book and drinks like a fish. All on account of that man of hers.”

“Does he beat her?” I asked.

“Like he gettin’ paid for it, girl,” Viola growled, walking with great difficulty. She was breathing hard and lumbering along like a weak turtle, a lot like Mr. Boatwright used to do. “Poor Cynthia. I went to school with her mama.”

“What? How old is Cynthia?” I gasped, whirling around to face Viola.

“How old you think she is,” Viola muttered, slowing down even more.

“Well…with six kids and the way she looks, I’d say she was in her late forties, maybe even early fifties.”

Viola laughed and shook her head, fanning her face with a flat straw purse she had in her hand. “The girl ain’t but thirty-six.” Viola sighed with a groan so long and deep I almost felt it.

Erie Manufacturing was on the opposite side of town from my hotel. There was a bus that stopped a block away that some of the workers who didn’t own cars depended on. Viola had a car, but because parking was such a problem she chose to utilize the bus. In fact most of the other employees did also for the same reason. Cynthia’s brutal husband brought her to and from work because, according to Viola, he was extremely jealous and didn’t trust her in too many public places alone where men were present.

“He beats her, he brings his two kids by his outside woman home for Cynthia to baby-sit while him and the other woman go out and party, and Cynthia can’t talk on the phone without his permission. He’s even been down here drunk as a skunk tryin’ to start some mess. I can’t tell you how many times he done almost got poor Cynthia fired.”

Viola loved to talk. During the bus ride she told me all about her church, her family, her big house on Noble Street across from her church, and her man. She had four grown children that she had kicked out as soon as they each turned eighteen. She even told me about some new apartments in her neighborhood.

A week after I moved into a furnished one-bedroom apartment on Maple Ridge, two blocks from Viola’s house, I got a call from the personnel rep at the newspaper company. It was a job offer. I thanked her profusely, but I turned the job down. I had gotten used to my assembly-line work and Viola and Cynthia. Two clerical job offers came the following week, but I turned them down, too.

Muh’Dear was estactic when I called and told her I had found a church even though it was not of our faith. “God the same no matter which one of His houses you in,” she assured me. She didn’t seem too pleased that my two new friends were so much older than I. “Can’t you find no friends your own age?” she asked, sounding worried. “I will eventually,” I said.

I had a life now. I had a job I had grown to like and new friends I adored. The Church of God in Christ was very much like the other Pentecostal churches I’d visited. Most of the frenzied congregation shouted and fell to the floor speaking in tongues every Sunday. I didn’t shout or speak in tongues, but I enjoyed the services. It was a small church with not enough benches, so I had to stand for the whole sermon almost every time I went. I often saw Levi and his lady friend at church and each time he was friendly, but the woman, whose name was Nettie, rolled her eyes at me.

Viola’s husband, Willie, was a frail brown-skinned man with beady brown eyes and thin lips, whom she controlled completely. Viola did whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, but Willie didn’t make a move without her approval. Unlike Cynthia’s situation, Viola didn’t use violence to control her husband. He seemed to enjoy being told what to do and what not to do. “Vi, do you mind if I go over to the pool room for a while?” he asked one evening when I was visiting Viola at home. “Yeah, you can go,” Viola told him with a smile, kissing him passionately before he left.

Even though Viola was old enough to be my mother, and we didn’t have much in common, I enjoyed being with her. We spent a lot of time shopping and cruising restaurants. One evening I went to dinner with Viola at Percy’s, our favorite soul food restaurant. Her husband, Willie, had come with us to help celebrate Viola and me getting raises at work. On our table were huge servings of black-eyed peas and oxtails threatening to slide off the plates. Viola paused and wiped her lips and chin with a napkin, and then she shook her head. “I can’t believe you ain’t got no man,” she told me, looking at me across the table. Willie sat quietly next to her, speaking only when spoken to.

“Oh, well, I have this man in the army,” I said. It bothered me when anybody commented on my solo status. Whenever it came up, I consistently told the lie about my bogus military lover to keep them from trying to play matchmaker.

When I wasn’t at work, church, or out with Viola, I spent my free time going to movies and bookstores alone. I missed all the people from Richland, but I was glad that the ones I missed the most, Muh’Dear and Rhoda, were just a phone call away. I called them or they called me on a fairly regular basis.

I often ran into Levi at Kroger’s, where I bought my groceries. Whenever he was alone he asked me out, and each time I told him I had something to do, which I usually did. He always seemed to invite me to go somewhere on a night I had plans to go out with Viola.

The weeks turned into months, and before I realized it, five years had slipped by and not once had I attempted to visit Richland. I was still working on the same assembly line sitting on the same stool next to Cynthia Costello doing the same job. It was comfortable, I got regular raises, and I enjoyed it. The rest of the women were a lot more friendly toward me now, so I always had somebody to go to lunch with or for drinks after work.

On November 14, 1973, Rhoda gave birth to another little boy. This one she named David after her dead brother and her father. She continually invited me to come for a visit, but each time I made up some wild job-related excuse. I wanted to see her and meet her children but I knew that seeing her in person enjoying life without my presence would depress me severely. She had just as many excuses not to come visit me.

I wrote a few letters to Pee Wee because he sent me so many and, unlike Florence, who didn’t complain when I took my time writing back to her, kept telling me I’d
better
write back to him more often or he was going to talk about me like a dog. I did, looking at it as one way to wean myself off Rhoda. Pee Wee was always prompt about responding. In his last letter he told me that he planned to visit some relatives in Erie soon and that if he did, he would visit me as well. So much time went by I forgot about it so I was surprised when he called me on a Saturday morning in the middle of June, seven months after the birth of Rhoda’s son.

“Hello, Annette, this is Jerry,” an unfamiliar, very masculine and sexy man’s voice said.

“Jerry who?”

“Pee Wee from Richland, Ohio.”

“How are you, Pee Wee?” I had never called him Jerry and had almost forgotten that was his real name.

“I got your phone number from your mother.”

“Where are you?” I asked, so happy to hear his voice.

“Well, I’m in Erie visitin’ some of the old neighborhood gang and some kinfolks for a few days. Did you get my last letter? I told you I’d look you up if I made it here.”

He sounded so different. I had not heard his voice since the summer after graduation. He finally sounded like a man.

“Yeah, I got your letter. Please do come by!” I didn’t have to give him directions. He was as familiar with Erie as he was with Richland.

I didn’t know what to expect, but when I opened my front door that Saturday evening around five, I was shocked speechless. Gone was that thin, homely boy and standing before me was a tall, well-built man handsome beyond my imagination. His uniform made him even more breathtaking. He was holding his hat in his hand.

“Pee Wee?
Is that you?
” It was hard to believe that a man could change so much in less than six years.

“In the flesh.” He grinned. He had even grown a mustache.

I motioned him to a seat on my living-room couch, where he eased down and placed his hand on his knee.

“You’ve got a nice place,” he said, looking around, nodding at my entertainment center, the first thing I had purchased with my first paycheck.

The furniture that came with the apartment was nice. I had a black-leather couch and matching love seat, two large beige lamps on smoked-glass end tables and a glass coffee table in front of the couch. I had purchased the imitation Monet paintings on the beige walls myself.

“Uh…you’ve changed” I muttered and shrugged. “My God—you’ve
changed
.”

“I sure hope so. The military can make you or break you. In my case, the military
remade
me.” He smiled. “And I’ve been into weight trainin’ for about four years now.”

He told me about his Vietnam experience and his plans for the future. He was going to finish his commitment, go move back to Richland, go to barber school, and work with his father. “Daddy’s plannin’ to add two more chairs and will need my help.”

I told him about my job and my new friends, but I was reluctant to talk about my future; everything still seemed uncertain at this point.

We drank a few glasses of wine and laughed and talked about some of the people from our old neighborhood. Around eleven, he looked at his watch.

“What time do you have to leave?” I asked.

“Well, the last plane back to the base tonight leaves in a couple of hours. If I miss it, the next one leaves in the mornin’ at eight.”

“When do you have to be back on the base?”

“Oh I don’t have to be back for another two days.”

“Why don’t you just stay the night then. I would love to have your company,” I told him, making a sweeping gesture with my hand.

He stayed and we enjoyed more wine and a late fried chicken dinner I had delivered from Percy’s. I made up the couch and around midnight, I went to bed, leaving him up watching TV. I don’t know what time it was, but during the night I woke up and found him standing at the foot of my bed. I don’t know if it was the wine or if this was something that was bound to happen sooner or later. No words were needed. He smiled. I returned the smile, and then I threw back the covers.