Ugly Ways (28 page)

"Annie Ruth." Betty tried to interrupt. But her sister just turned on her with her eyes blazing.

"Betty, you know you just as tired of this crazy shit as I am!" she shouted.

Betty took a last draw on her cigarette and stubbed it out in a pretty flowered ashtray.

"I was just gonna remind you, Annie Ruth, that Mudear is dead. And all that is behind us."

"
Behind
us? Surely, you don't think this all just ends because Mudear's dead, do you? Hell, I got up last night to throw up and I smelled
her, felt
her in the bathroom. Shit, I feel her hanging around me all the time all the way out in that godforsaken L.A.

"I'm so sick of pretending that we had something we didn't that I could just about die myself. But that's just the thing now, 'cause I'm gonna be a mama now and I want to turn loose some of this crazy shit.
She's behind us now?
God, girl, ya'll expect me to go out and have an abortion, get rid of my child because of the kind of mother we had. Does that sound like all this, all of Mudear's shit, is
behind us?
No! I don't want to
not
be a mother because I'm afraid Mudear's gonna jump out of me and ruin my child like she ruined us. I'm tired of her ruining my life. I won't have it anymore. And I won't have her ruining it from the grave."

"See, Betty, I told you!" Emily stormed toward her big sister. "Annie Ruth wants to have this baby, wants to have Mudear's grandchild. I can only
imagine
how screwed up that poor child will be. Look at us!

"Betty, say something! Say you agree with me. Say you haven't lost your mind or forgotten how it is to be Mudear's child or how it feel to be the crazy woman's child. Say something that make some sense. If
you
don't make sense, then what we gon' do?"

Betty just took Emily's arm and sat her down in the nearest chair.

Annie Ruth continued as if no one else had said anything.

"I could think about Mudear sometimes and just think I want to die. I don't want to die anymore and finally, I don't think I am gonna die now. But Lord knows I do want a change.

"Not by delving into it and discussing it and reliving it and being rehurt by it, but forgiving it and turning it loose and moving the hell on with it."

Now, Annie Ruth was pacing back and forth over a deep rich maroon-design rug worn soft and thin with footsteps, dragging the baby-blue blanket behind her.

"It's not like you and me and Emily don't know all the shit that's fucking up our lives. Sure, we know. Good God, Emily, how many thousands of dollars have you spent with your Dr. Axelton to find that out? I certainly know that none of us knows how to appreciate anything, knows how to find or even see joy in life 'cause we didn't never see that when we were growing up.

"'I don't take a vanilla wafer for granted.' That's what she used to say. But it was a lie. She took everything for granted. And didn't give nothing in return. All in the name of her freedom.

"We were never taught to appreciate anything, whether it was a roasted marshmallow on a stick or a ten-course meal. Shit, I've been sunning myself on the deck of a chartered sailboat in the Caribbean with folks running back and forth trying to please me. And in the middle of it I see my reflection in the brass work and my face is all screwed up and you'd think I was out in the hot sun digging ditches or down at the paper plant working like a man. And I have to remind myself, 'Enjoy this, Annie Ruth, enjoy this, girl, this is nice. Take that ugly look off your face. This is great.' But no, I'm sitting there chewing on some evil shit Mudear did to me or to you or to Emily back when, or something she said the last time I called. I'm sick of it."

Annie Ruth kept talking and pacing in her high-heeled black boots. As she did, she also kept getting the blue blanket she trailed behind her caught between her legs and tripping over it. She jerked it free from her legs and threw one corner over her shoulder like a toga.

"Look at you, Betty. You took care of us, all of us, all your life. You didn't get to go to college like Emily and me even though you were probably the smartest one of us. You stayed around here doing right by Poppa and Mudear. Doing better than right by them. And look what you accomplished in the process. You got two thriving beauty shops, everybody knows they the best, classiest places in Mulberry. You even been quoted in
Essence
magazine on hair care.

"Do you ever sit back and appreciate what you've done? Sit back and be proud of yourself, and rightfully so? No!

"And I won't even go into Mudear and Poppa," Annie Ruth said, recalling her nighttime kitchen chat with her father. "Mudear got that old man out at the house in Sherwood Forest weeping into his coffee and banging his head on the kitchen table, for God's sake. How the hell were we ever supposed to see how love worked, men and women are supposed to act and love and get along? We sure as hell didn't get any instruction about a loving relationship other than 'A man don't give a damn about you.' We taught our own selves about loving each other 'cause that's all we had.

"Hell, I used to read books just to find out how normal people, families live. That's why Mudear hated to see us reading."

Betty and Emily exchanged glances.

"Oh, no, Miss Things, you're not gonna do that, try to shame me into not saying what we all know is true. You both can give each other all the knowing looks you want. It doesn't change the truth of what I'm saying and you know it.

"Sure, we know all about Mudear, we know all about ourselves, but when we gon' start making a change? Seeing some joy, having some appreciation?

"I'm sick of being a product of Mudear, sick of it.

"'Don't let nobody steal your joy,' indeed! What you think
her
purpose in life was?

"You know what, I want to get big as a house and have this baby and love her and sit and rock her and brag on her and bore people to death talking about her and making them look at pictures. Before she's even born, I want to think about her and worry about her and name her, name her Betty Jean or Emily or even Esther, no, not Esther. But name her something that has some meaning for me and will for her. So when I look into her face I think of something I love, when I call her name I remember tenderness. I don't care if I call her 'Turnip Green,' at least when I say it, I'll remember how good and sweet turnips are when Betty cooks 'em down with a little fatback and a long red hot pepper."

Annie Ruth was out of breath and leaning against the wide doorjamb leading to the hall for support, but she wasn't finished.

"It's the truth. I hear myself thinking while I'm talking sometimes, and I realize I'm still editing myself according to what I think Mudear might think. Sometimes, I don't edit, I translate. And when I open my mouth, Mudear's voice comes out. And I have to cover real quick for something real mean and evil I said. Are we supposed to keep on tiptoeing around Mudear and her mess and the trail of pain she's left everywhere she's been even after she's
dead?
I don't believe so because then that means we ain't never gon' be free of her. And I can't live like that, I refuse to live like that. I put three thousand miles between her and me, went to live in that godforsaken Los Angeles and I still drag her around like a dead stanking corpse tied to my leg, like some cat rubbing up against my leg.

"I'm turning her a-loose. And I'm telling her so. As a matter of fact, I'm going right back down there now and tell that bitch so right to her face."

"Annie Ruth!" Betty jumped up from the sofa, shocked.

"Don't 'Annie Ruth' me. I know I'm the one who had the nervous breakdown, I'm the one who went out. I'm the one who can't make a cross-country flight without seeing cats on the plane——Shit!"

"You seeing cats, Annie Ruth?" Emily asked, more interested than shocked.

"Maybe so," Annie Ruth shot back. "But that don't change nothing. I don't know about you two, but I know I got to tell Mudear this stuff. All the things we've always been too afraid to say to her face. Like Mudear some kind of powerful goddess who can strike us mute or dead for some minor transgression.

"Well, she's not. She's just a woman with no heart and no feeling who cared more about herself, her creature comforts, sleeping late, gardening at night, than she did her own children, her own family.

"But I'm wasting my breath telling you all this. You know it. I'm going down to Parkinson Funeral Home and tell it to the person who should be hearing it. I'm gonna do what
she
always told us to do to men to put them in their place. I'm gonna pull the sheets off that woman." Annie Ruth headed for the back door.

"For God's sake, Annie Ruth, don't be going out of this house shaming us in the street," Betty said, catching her sister by the arm in the kitchen and pulling her back into the hall.

Annie Ruth snatched her arm away.

"Betty, you the smartest one of us. Don't you get it? We ain't never done nothing to shame us in this town. Hell, we ought to be proud we still alive and just
slightly
crazy.

"And this town ain't done a thing to us. It couldn't touch us. Don't you know who made us feel shamed?"

The question, asked right out, stopped her sisters where they stood, about to pounce on her as if they wore white jackets and had a straitjacket ready to take her to the crazy house in Milledge-ville. Their pause gave Annie Ruth enough time to snatch up Emily's car keys slung over her purse in the hall, dash through the kitchen, and bolt out the door to her sister's red Datsun in the driveway. She jumped in, locked the car door, and screeched out into the street before her sisters were down the steps. Bumping a yellow light at the comer, she raced through the intersection, shifting the gears like a race-car driver, speeding toward the funeral home.

Even though she didn't see them in her rearview mirror, Annie Ruth knew her sisters would be following close behind.

Would you look at that child driving like a bat out of hell.

Surely, she don't plan to actually come down here and get in my dead face with all that crazy talk about wanting to let me go.

I wonder if they been smoking that marijuana again.

When Annie Ruth burst into the wide carved wooden front door of Parkinson Funeral Home, she looked like a well-dressed wild woman. On the crazy drive over, she had let her window down to yell at some woman to get herself and her three kids in a minivan out of her way, she was coming through. Now, her thin windblown red curls stood up all over her head. But her close-fitting cat suit, more snug than usual, still looked stunning on her and the African beaded jewelry she wore with it stood up to her drama. One of the funeral director's assistants, a sturdy round-shaped young man with a bounce to his step and a large white apron on, watched her with admiration from a small window in the back of the establishment. The drive from Betty's house and her fury had given new, unexpected color to her face. The man thought she looked like an avenging angel would look if angels were to wear skintight black jumpsuits.

And that's how she felt, like an avenging angel striding through the halls of the funeral home in her high-heeled black boots looking for the deceased.

She hadn't even noticed if the gang of cats that had been hanging around the entrance to the funeral home earlier was still there when she entered. She couldn't even tell anybody where she had parked Emily's car or if she had turned the engine off.

And she didn't even think about trying to find one of the Parkinson family to direct her to Mudear's body. She just went tearing from memorial room to memorial room of the elegant old building, her heels clicking on the parquet floor. Yanking open single and double doors, Annie Ruth went in search of Mudear. In the first two chapels, she came upon funeral services in progress. People were crying and moaning. And to both crowded rooms, Annie Ruth said the same thing. "Mudear? Mudear? Excuse me, I'm looking for my mother."

Then, she backed out of the rooms and slammed the doors shut, leaving two sets of mourners puzzled and irritated by the disruption. Annie Ruth moved across the hall to the next door. The room was empty.

By the time she reached the fourth door, she was nearly running, muttering, "I'm looking for Mudear." She pulled the door open and ran straight into the chest of a man coming out of the last chapel. The chest of his dark suit smelled deeply of carnations.

"Why, Annie Ruth!" Billy Parkinson took her into his arms so adeptly that she was enveloped in his flowery embrace before she realized it. "I wasn't expecting to see you this afternoon. But you know it's always a pleasure. Except under these circumstances." He still had not let her go.

She was having trouble breathing and she could tell she was on the verge of an anxiety attack. All the time Billy talked, Annie Ruth squirmed and struggled to free herself from his grasp. But he just pulled her closer to him.

"I saw your pretty sister Betty this morning, and she told me what she needed, so your mother is all set up in the Light and Shadow Memorial Chapel right here. I thought this might be a litde more comfortable for you girls than being in the back with all the ... ah, others."

Annie Ruth still struggled like a kitten in a wet croaker sack to get away from the mortician, but he seemed to anticipate her moves and outmaneuver her.

"I have your mother in her casket and this room isn't scheduled to be used for a few hours, until eight tonight. So, you and your sisters—By the way, where is that fine Emily? Will she be here today? She's put on a few pounds lately, huh? but she
still
look good.—you and your sisters can take care of your mother undisturbed. Okay?"

Annie Ruth was about ready to scream. Instead, she just reached up with the one hand she was able to wiggle free and clawed at the man holding her in his clutches. Three of her bright crimson fingernails caught him at his throat and drew blood.

He let out a little yelp of surprise and let go of Annie Ruth to clasp his hand to his throat.