God Don’t Like Ugly by Mary Monroe Page A

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