Ugly Ways (17 page)

Yeah, I'm supposed to keep every litde scrap of junk those girls send me 'bout their lives—what they did and what they bought and who they interviewed—but they don't even have the decency to keep my bathroom as a shrine.

I cannot believe those little women. Bitch, bitch, bitch. "Mudear didn't do this, Mudear didn't do that." At first, I thought it might have been a reaction to my passing and all. But now, I'm beginning to think these litde witches really believe some of this stuff. I certainly never taught 'em to whine like that about their circumstances.

Good God! "Mudear didn't do this. Mudear didn't do that." Whine, whine, whine.

Those ungrateful, trifling women! Hell, I coulda just walked out and left them orphan girls. But no, I stayed so they could have the benefits of a mama.

Well, of course, that's not the whole reason I stayed. I'm a person, too, and I had my own needs and likes and dislikes. And anyway I thought, Shoot, I got this house here with my garden growing in back, a man who keep food on the table and usually keep our butts from freezing, three girls—two of them already able to do things around the house. Hell, I had stayed for the hard times, why should I have left just when I saw things getting a little better? Why should I go out in the world and try to make my own way when I didn't have to? But I stayed. Ungrateful hussies!

It's a damn shame you got to die first before you see how your children really feel about you.

God! Those girls got ugly ways about 'em sometimes. It's hard to believe they are my children. They didn't seem to take anything from me ... but my sense of style. And unfortunately, my bad choice in men. But then, I guess as far as choices go, it don't much matter which one you make in a man. They all alike, none of them worth the hard-on they think they got to offer you.

Now, Ernest is just as good ... or worthless as the next one, I guess. Sure, he made a passable living ... except for that one time ... and we didn't go hungry or anything. But what did he have to offer really? What did he do to make this world a better place than when he entered it? Like the person who invented the remote control. Now, that meant something. Heck, people gonna be smelling and marveling at my flowers growing in the back field long after I'm dead and gone.

Yeah, Ernest did do a few little things like going to get my cow manure from the country and picking up some few little bedding plants and supplies at the garden center. But I got most of my plants and seeds from ads in the
Georgia Market Bulletin
from people, other gardeners like me in Georgia who would sell and exchange seeds and cuttings and plants. Sure, sometimes he would ride out U.S. 331 or one of them roads in one of his no-account peeing-on-the-floor friends' truck and pick up a stone bench or a trellis or a tree he knew I wanted. But I'm the one who arranged that garden. Told him just where to dig that lily pond. I designed that, too.

I have to give it to him, he could double-dig a garden lot 'bout as good as anybody I ever met. He'd have that soil so loose and friable that I could stick my hands down in it up to my elbows.

Sometimes, I'd have flowers blooming past first and second frost. And that's something. To say nothing of the fact that people in Mulberry gonna probably be talking about me for even longer than they talk about my garden.

And, of course, my girls.

Having them
wasn't
no big thing. Even a cat can do that. That don't make you a mother, just having them. But I raised my girls. Better than most, in my opinion. They know things ... about life. I guess now they gonna have to
learn
something about death.

Yeah, now that old Mudear is dead and gone, they starting to pretend that I wasn't nothing to them. My goodness, people forget so soon.

But I guess I can't complain too much. 'Cause even though I never forgot one single thing that Ernest did to me, I did try to act like I had and that it didn't matter to me one bit. But you know it did. Sometimes anyway.

Well, if those wenches start messing up their lives again, it won't be my fault. I certainly went out of my way to teach 'em a thing or two. I remember when the girls weren't all even teenagers yet, I sat 'em down and told 'em how to make it
in
this world.

"
Now, a man, they like to call theyselves the strongest things in the universe, but let me tell you, listen to me now, if you get a man at the right time. At that point when he all exposed and open and down, that's when you can get him.
"

"
You mean like get him to marry you, Mudear?" one of 'em, I think it was Emily, said. She always was a fool for getting married.

"
Good God, daughter, no! Why in the world would you want a man to marry you? I mean get him right where you want him. You know, get the upper hand. Don't be acting like you don't understand just 'cause you a little girl," I told 'em.

I remember Annie Ruth looked kinda confused, she wasn't no more than eight or nine. And Emily, Lord help her and look out for fools and babies, always did have that quizzical expression on her face. "But, Mudear," she said. "I want to meet a man and get married." I told her, "Keep living, daughter.
"

Nobody can't say I didn't do my best to tell 'em how men are. I know it sunk in with the oldest girl who I guess was a teenager then and already starting to attract the boys. Betty ain't never had time for nothing but business. And where she think she get that from?

Didn't do anything for them? What do you call my planting a whole white garden just for them to see at night, I certainly didn't need it. But one of the girls said, "Mudear, can you really see your garden at night? That's hard to believe.
"

And what did I do? I went right out there and started a garden with nothing but white blossoms and whitish leaves so my family could see the garden at night the way I did. Did I have to do that? Tell me, did I? No.

Didn't do anything for them!

And as if making them the women that they are ain't something.

Yeah, to let them girls tell it now, I didn't do shit to raise 'em, to help 'em out the way a mother should. Yeah, all that time when I kept an eye on 'em when they was at those "vulnerable" stages when I didn't really haf to. You know? Lots of women who turn they households over to another woman, even if it is her eleven-year-old daughter, they don't pay attention to other changes in the household But I did. Do you think for one minute I wouldn't keep an eye on that man who slept in my bed and make sure he wasn't turning my child into his wife substitute?

Yeah, yeah, I know most folks don't want to think about, let alone talk about, something like a grown man forcing himself on a child and especially when it's her own father. Hey, I may be crazy, but I ain't stupid. If Ernest knew one thing, it was I woulda killed him dead and gladly gone to serve my time in jail for it if he touched one of my girls. 'Sides, the girls wouldn'a let me go to jail.

Oh, yes, I know the kinds of things that go on in this world. I ain't lived "out" much, but I know what I know. It seems I was born knowing some things. I think I tried to pretend I didn't know 'em or forget what I knew I knew. I think I tried to do that for years. But I learned you can't do that and not go crazy.

Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.

I can't help it, I got to laugh when I think of how I coulda gone on for years and years like I was if it hadn't gotten so cold that winter. And the baby hadn't had whooping cough and Emily had meningitis so bad.

It was almost like it was planned by some holy power or something. What was that show Eartha Kitt was in?
Kismet.
Yeah, like it was kismet. But then, I always knew I was meant for something big in this life. I really did. Even as a child, I couldn't wait for the next morning to come to see what it would bring. My Mudear told me that when I was just a little thing, no more than five or six, I said to her, "Come on, Mudear, put me to bed early tonight so I can hurry up and wake up and see what's gonna happen tomorrow.
"

That's the kind of child I was.

Ernest tried to stretch out in the bed again and go to sleep, but whenever he closed his eyes he saw Mudear as she had looked the last time, dead in her hospital bed. Her face in deadly repose was as untroubled as it had always been in life. Somehow, he had always thought that Mudear would die screaming and crying, clawing at her sheets and slobbering at the mouth, in pain for all the pain she had caused in her life. But it wasn't like that.

She had been a little weak from the pneumonia infection and a litde short of breath, but otherwise she had looked as she usually did: sleeping undisturbed, no lines at the corners of her wide mouth, no slashlike wrinkles under her eyes, her fluffy hair pressed flat and comical by sleep, thick curly black eyelashes like a child's resting on her lids like two sleeping butterflies. He had been there when she breathed her last. She had opened her eyes, looked over at him sitting by the side of her hospital bed, and pointed to the glass of water on the bedside table. Poppa had gotten up, poured a fresh glass of water from the plastic pitcher on the tray, and held the straw to his wife's lips. When he had looked down into her face, their eyes met a moment and she laughed that sardonic Mudear chuckle.

"I always told the girls that you don't never know who's gonna be around to give you that last drink of water," she had said softly. She had chuckled again, then she closed her eyes, breathed heavily, and died.

Poppa knew she was gone because the machine hooked up to her arm stopped beeping and emitted a long flat whine, just like he had seen on hospital TV dramas.

After he had wearily settled up his bill and signed all the papers that the woman at the hospital desk pushed before him, he had walked out the wide visitors' entrance and into the night. Even the hospital clerk, whose job it was to see that bills were taken care of in the midst of grief, was surprised at the amount of insurance the tall thin graying black man seemed to have. He had tried to get in touch with Betty, but no one picked up, and he just left a message on her machine.

Once outside, it took him awhile to find his car. At first, he wandered around the hospital parking lot trying to remember what color his car was. He had to go through all the cars he had ever owned in his life to come to his present one.

Let's see, there was that old raggedy black heap not too long after we got married. Then, we had the tan Chevrolet that we drove to New York in. Esther always did especially hate that car.
Then, the green sedan when I got my first promotion and raise, God, I was proud of that car. Then, the Toyota, first foreign car I ever bought.

When he finally remembered what his current car looked like, he couldn't recall in what lot he had left the brown Ford Tempo. His wandering around the parking lot seemed to do him some good and relieved his pounding head a bit. But he was so weary and sweaty when he finally pinpointed his automobile, he had to lean against the side of the car for a while to catch his breath and get back some strength before going on.

Once he was safely behind the wheel of his car, his first instinct was to head back toward Sherwood Forest and home. But the blood had begun to rush so furiously through the back of his neck and up to the top of his skull when he even thought about walking back into his house now, Mudear's house, seeing her flowers in the back, smelling her smell all through the house—cinnamon candy mixed up with her herbal and flowery potpourris—that he could barely hold his head up.

He started to reach under the driver's seat of the car for the half-pint of Old Forester that he always tried to keep there, but he felt he needed some company as much as he needed a drink. Besides, he could hear his wife's voice saying, when she came upon him on the porch or in the rec room having a little taste, "You know, I heard on TV that it's a sign of an alcoholic to drink alone."

So instead, he pointed the car in the direction of the old downtown district of Mulberry to the comer of Broadway and Cherry. Just driving up toward The Place made him ease up a bit on the grip he had on the steering wheel. He looked over at the car clock and saw that it was only 10:10. He knew that there would have to be some of his friends in there to talk with. But even if there wasn't anyone he knew real well, at least there would be someone there to sit next to and drink a beer or two with. Even if they didn't know they were drinking with him.

The Place was the kind of joint that folks came to when they needed something and couldn't stand to be let down one more time that day. It didn't usually disappoint them. Its real name was the Bluebird Liquor Store, Bar and Grill, but everybody called it The Place. People just felt good in The Place, always had as far as he knew and he had been coming there for twenty or thirty years. More than that, he thought.

The Place must have been standing in the same spot for nearly fifty years, Ernest thought. Thank God that McPherson girl had refused to sell out, to buckle under, and not let them wrecking crews come down through her place the way they did with all the others.

It looked right lonesome to Ernest sitting there in the middle of what had been downtown Mulberry at night surrounded by the flat painted lines and high-intensity lights of a parking lot on one side and the back of a rambling hardware store on the other. At one time, The Place was surrounded by a thriving all-black business district nestled against the general white downtown stores. Three decades earlier on Broadway and Cherry streets, there had been a candy and peanut store, a movie house ("The Burghart Theatre shoulda been put on the National Register, not torn down," Mudear had said, but she hadn't seen the place in nearly thirty years), restaurants, a barbershop, a beauty shop, a grocery store, a fish market, and a record store with a big shiny black forty-five hanging in the window.