Ugly Ways (21 page)

"She so mean and low-down," Emily said first.

"Yeah," Betty agreed. "She don't care nothing 'bout nothing but her own self. Now, she upstairs in that house just looking at herself in the mirror with nice clean hair."

"She think she so cute," Annie Ruth offered and was gratified that her little input was greeted with amens from her older sisters. It emboldened her.

"Wearing those old funny-looking flowered pastel robes all the time," she added.

"Yeah, like she sick all the time," Emily said. "She make
me
sick."

And they all giggled at Emily's little joke.

They were just getting revved up. There in Mudear's garden, next to the marigolds and tomato plants, they talked about her lovelessness, her heartlessness, her lack of motherliness.

"Yeah," Emily said. "She's the reason we don't get invited anywhere hardly as it is. They think we as funny acting as she is. And nobody want to come visit us if they can't even go to the bathroom."

All of a sudden they knew something was amiss. It seemed that the very breeze had suddenly stopped blowing in the yard. They all looked up to the house's back porch at the same instant and saw her standing at the screen door dressed in a fresh flowered pastel housecoat, listening.

They nearly fell to their knees right on the spot, waiting for the bolt of lightning called up by their mother to strike them all dead. Emily even brought her hands together in a plaintive gesture of supplication. And Annie Ruth started whimpering in fear.

But Mudear just looked out at the girls and her garden around them and went on back in the house. Neither Betty nor Emily could remember vividly the last time Mudear had switched their legs with a stripped branch of a forsythia bush from outside. And Annie Ruth had never been stung with the switch. But they began to prepare themselves for the beating of their lives.

"Oh, God," Betty whispered. "She going to get a strap!"

She wished with all her heart that she had not encouraged her sisters to do so much reading. Now, all the scenes of punishment they had ever read or heard about came back to them in vivid Technicolor pictures.

And all three of them did actually fall to their knees together and start praying. They just knew that anyone as powerful as Mudear, a woman able to re-create herself overnight, able to change the patterns of her household without a fight, able to boss their big strong father around without even lifting her voice, would mete out the kind of punishment they only had read about in the Bible at Sunday school. So, they prayed to God, the towering white-bearded God they had seen in pictures, to help them, to protect them, to save them from their mother.

They must have stayed that way, with their knees to the ground, their hands clasped, their eyes closed in prayer, for some time. When they next heard Mudear's voice, they opened their eyes to find that the sun was setting and a summer dusk had fallen on the backyard of their house.

"It's nearly dark out there, daughters," Mudear yelled from the window over the kitchen sink. "Don't be stepping on none of my plants in the dark."

It was all she said. Then, she dropped the pink and white checkered curtains back over the window.

When the girls tried to get to their feet, they found they could barely stand, their knees were dirty and achy, their legs wobbly and cramped, their nerves raw and frayed. They held onto each other as they made their unsteady way to the house. Bolstered by prayer and the support of each other, they were ready to meet their fate. But Mudear didn't say a word to them about their overheard conversation discussing her.

"Ya'll didn't notice any worms on my collard greens, did you?" Mudear asked from her tall wooden stool by the sink as Betty automatically started taking out pots from the refrigerator and began warming up food for their dinner.

Emily stopped taking the plates down from the cabinet and looked to Betty. Annie Ruth, brushing crumbs from the checkered kitchen tablecloth, looking to Betty, too. All three were sure Mudear must be hearing their hearts pounding.

"I—I didn't see any, Mudear," was all Betty could manage to sputter as she put on water to boil to make a fresh pitcher of iced tea for dinner.

The girls felt as if they were merely going through the motions. But they accomplished a table set for dinner as well as eating the prepared meal. After dinner, Poppa went upstairs and lay across the bed with his clothes on. Mudear tied up her fresh hairdo with a flowered chiffon scarf and stretched out on the sofa to look at television.

The girls washed up the dishes in silence. But they hurried through the chore. They couldn't wait to get up to their room to talk. But when they finally closed the door to their bedroom, no one wanted to say it first. They sat on their beds facing each other.

Finally, Betty spoke. "I don't think Mudear care whether we talk about her or not."

They sat there awhile, sly smiles on their faces, considering the possibility of their luck. Looking at the windup clock on their chest of drawers, Betty said, "Time to get ready for bed." Then, Betty got up and started running water for their baths. The other girls laid out their underwear and socks for Sunday school the next morning and got in the tub. While Emily and Annie Ruth bathed, Betty ironed their new matching dresses she had bought at Davison's downtown.

But when they got into their beds, they didn't sleep. The girls stayed up all night talking about Mudear.

Betty was still sitting up watching CNN on the small red portable television in the kitchen and sipping hot tea in her thick cotton sweat suit and slippers when Emily finally let herself in the back door with the key from under the heavy straw doormat.

"Mulberry must be the only place left on the face of the earth where people still feel they can leave their own house key under the doormat," Emily muttered to herself as she walked into the kitchen and threw her wet suede coat across a chair. "You got three hundred thousand dollars' worth of stuff in here and you still leave your back door unlocked for all practical purposes. Humph, and Mudear say I'm supposed to be the crazy one."

Betty pretended not to notice drops of muddy water dripping off the sleeve of the coat onto the heavy oak antique table she used in the kitchen. She knew Emily hated for any of her sisters to imply that they disapproved of something she had done.

She must be hanging out down by the riverbed again, Betty thought, and said a silent prayer that they would never find her dismembered, decomposed body rotting down there. She may still leave her own house key under the doormat, but she knew that a woman alone wasn't safe walking down by the river after dark.

"Want some tea, Em-Em?"

"Betty, you know as well as I do what a disaster it would be if Annie Ruth actually had a child to raise!" Emily didn't even bother to sit down. "You saw what kind of shape she was in when she got off that plane. That's a mother?"

Betty thought that they would at least have a decent period of chitchat first, but Emily wanted to get right to it.

Emily never did know how to make small talk, Betty thought as Emily plunged into all the reasons Annie Ruth shouldn't even think about having the child she was pregnant with. Emily's inability to chitchat when she had something burning on her mind made people uncomfortable, always had, but then, Betty thought, most of what Emily did made people uncomfortable. She gets that from Mudear.

"Now, Betty, you know as well as I do that Annie Ruth don't have no business with a baby," Emily was saying over and over as she began to take off her wet boots.

"You remember how she used to just throw her old dolls away when she got bored with them," she continued. "Hell, that's how she treats people sometimes. Look at all the men—good men, men other women would have died for—she's just had and thrown away. Good God, Betty, Annie Ruth use men like she uses new improved maxi pads. She even rates 'em like that. Are they comfortable? Are they dependable? Are they easily disposed of? When you're with one, can your mind be free to think of other things? What are they worth?

"Just what do you think she's gonna do with a child, an infant completely dependent on her? Just throw it away when she's tired of it? A child ain't a maxi pad."

Betty started to respond, but she didn't feel like this conversation now. She knew she was tired and the hour was late because she could feel giddiness sneaking up on her. Everything Emily was saying was starting to make her giggle.

"Remember that real nice guy named Tommy, the editor at the newspaper in Washington we met when we visited Annie Ruth that weekend? You notice how he disappeared all of a sudden?"

"Oh, yeah, Tommy, he was nice. I forgot about him," Betty said, remembering the husky young country man who had moved to the big-city newspaper from a small North Carolina town. "What did happen to him?"

"Annie Ruth told me it was over giving head," Emily said with a didn't-I-tell-you smirk. "Annie Ruth told me he was sort of fumbling and hesitant about it. So, she asked him if he had ever done this before and he said, noooo, but he'd
try
to see what he could do.

"Then, Annie Ruth told him, 'Well, don't be coming up in through here if
try
is the best you can do.'"

"And that's why he disappeared so suddenly?" Betty asked, laughing. She laughed so hard she got choked on her tea and had to bring her feet off the table and sit up. "She actually told him, 'Don't be coming up in through here'?"

"And you think this is funny, Betty?" Emily was indignant and hurt. "I was just telling you that to show how she is."

Betty couldn't catch her breath from laughing to reply. She just held up one hand and rested her face in the other. When she was able to speak, she asked, "And that was the end of his cute husky country ass?"

This time Emily had to laugh, too. "You know it," she said and chuckled with Betty over their baby sister. "Sister girl made him get up, put on his clothes, and get his no-pussy-eating self out of her apartment immediately."

The sisters laughed together so comfortably it sounded as if they were singing in harmony. They all three had felt at one time or another that the sound of them laughing together was their only line to sanity and safety. When all three of them laughed, in a department store or restaurant, the entire room turned to look for the source of the melodic merriment.

Betty decided to take advantage of the lull in the afterglow of their laughter.

"Oh, I didn't even check my answering machine," she said, pretending to remember with a glance over at the flashing red light. She got up, turned her back to Emily, who continued to take off her wet clothes, and pressed the blinking button. Even though she knew it was inevitable that Emily would return to Annie Ruth's situation, she thought she could at least postpone it for a while.

"Hey, baby," the first message went. "It's me, Stan. I heard about your mama. I shore am sorry. Am I gonna see you tonight? Call me at school. Bye."

"Betty, it's Helen. I need your okay on the latest changes for the show. And I need to know the new regulation heights for hair styles. Please call me when you get a chance. Bye."

"Miss Lovejoy, you told me to call and remind you that tomorrow is the day the health inspectors come to the shops."

"Hey, baby, it's me again. You want me to pick up some fish for you to fry tonight?"

Betty hit the stop button with her fist and turned back to Emily.

"Good God," she said, shaking her head. "Mudear laying up there on a cooling board in Parkinson Funeral Home and this man expected me to fry fish for him. Mudear was right, a man don't give a damn about you."

"Hello, Miss Love—I mean Betty. It's Cinque. I went by the shop to fix the light in the reception area and they told me about your mother. I'm sorry.... I'm sorry I missed you, too." There was a long pause, then, "If you feel like it, give me a call."

Emily looked up at Betty smiling down at the tape machine. "If you feel like what?" Emily asked her sister and laughed, too.

Betty hit the stop button again.

"Em-Em, I know I don't have any business with this child. But, God, he's so gorgeous—how come boys we went to school with didn't know nothing 'bout lifting weights?—Lord knows he's at his sexual peak and since I tied him to my bed like Annie Ruth said—he nearly tore my brass bed down, too—he thinks I hung the moon."

"Don't sound bad to me," Emily said, not even trying to hide her envy.

"Hell, it's better than that. He told me the other day I was the smartest woman he ever met. Then, he thought awhile and said, 'No, you the smartest person I ever met.' This boy even think the few little gray pubic hairs I'm starting to get are cute and sexy. He calls my pussy 'slamming'!"

Emily chuckled. "I guess the irony was lost on him?"

"Irony!" Betty hooted. "Shoot, nineteen-year-old boys don't know nothing about no irony. And his music does give me a headache."

"But he has other attributes, huh?" Emily said.

"You got that right. But really I guess I know this is just a passing thing. I'm trying to help the boy get into some kind of school somewhere."

"Uh-huh," Emily said with the emphasis on the second syllable heavy with sarcasm, like a character in a television sitcom.

"No, really I am, and once that's done, I know that'll be it."

"Why you say that?"

"Oh, Emily, he's a sweet kid and fun, too, but I know he ain't nothing but a baby. Sometimes when I see him slumped down in a chair, his leg flung over the chair's arm, I want to reprimand him, 'Sit up, baby, sit up straight, you gonna ruin your back.' I have to stop myself from sounding like his mother.

"I guess I'll probably end up with Stan or somebody like him. He's more my speed, I guess, my age and everything. You know...."

She hit the message button again.

"Hey, baby, it's me again. Never mind about the fish, I'm going to a game in Atlanta tonight. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye."

Emily didn't even have to say anything. The look she gave Betty said, "Keep living, daughter."

Shoot, this ain't no better than trying to cool Emily down about Annie Ruth and her baby, Betty thought as she hit the button to save the rest of the messages and turned back to face her sister. She was missing that evening glass of wine more and more.