God Don’t Like Ugly by Mary Monroe Page B

we had a vague relationship, he was a male, and I didn’t trust him.
    “Girl, what’s wrong with you?” he exclaimed. He snatched open our refrigerator and drank from a carton of milk. Pee Wee was not bad-looking for a boy. He was medium brown, with more than a few zits on his square face screaming to be popped. His eyes were too small and too close together, but his pleasant smile made up for it. Like so many Black boys in the early sixties, he wore his hair cut close to the head. One reason I tolerated him was that he baked cookies for me.
    “You can’t just walk in this house without knocking. Burglars do that,” I told him.
    He gave me an incredulous look. Then he let out a short, sharp laugh. “Girl, what burglar would risk goin’ to jail to bust in here with all this junk y’all got?” He made a long, low, sweeping gesture with his hand. “Ain’t nothin’ in here nobody would want, specially me. Now, y’all got any more of that cake bread from yesterday? Hi, Brother Boatwright.” Pee Wee rushed across the room to pat Mr. Boatwright’s shoulder.
    I didn’t even know Mr. Boatwright was in. A lot of days I came home to an empty house. Mr. Boatwright spent a lot of time at Scary Mary’s claiming to give Bible lessons to the prostitutes. A minute didn’t pass before Caleb and Scary Mary marched in and planted themselves at the kitchen table with Pee Wee and Mr. Boatwright. I was pleasantly surprised when Mama walked in shortly after they did. She dropped a bag that was full of beer onto the table. Her faded, ripped scarf was tied in such a messy knot, she had to struggle to get it loose.
    “You off mighty early today, Sister Goode,” Caleb said. He rubbed his head on the spot where the bullet was lodged.
    Mama dropped her scarf and coat on the kitchen counter and let out a long sigh. Her cheap, ill-fitting stockings had rolled almost all the way down her legs. “Judge Lawson is goin’ to visit some ex-colleagues in Cleveland. He wanted to get a early start, so he sent me home early with pay, bless his heart,” Mama explained. I stood back against the wall as she dragged a chair from the dining room into the kitchen and sat near the rest of the crowd. When Mama crossed her legs, I noticed quarter-sized holes in her secondhand shoes. Everybody’s hands were spread out on the table like at a séance.
    “Anybody got any juicy news today?” Mr. Boatwright began. He looked directly at Pee Wee. By then everybody had a beer on the table. All the adults that is. I could see Pee Wee’s mouth watering for one of the beers. But he knew better than to drink in front of that many grown folks that included his own daddy.
    “Well, that uppity undertaker’s brother done finally outdone hisself,” Pee Wee started. All eyes turned to him.
    “Let me tell this one here,” Caleb interrupted, holding up his thick hand in his son’s face. I never noticed before, but Caleb had two gold-plated teeth.
    “But Daddy—” Pee Wee pouted.
    “Young’n, don’t you sass your daddy,” Mama advised Pee Wee. She turned to Caleb with a large smile. “Go on, Brother Davis.”
    Caleb sucked in his breath first, took a long swallow of his beer, then folded his arms, but not before rubbing his head again. “That uppity undertaker, Brother Nelson, from across the street, had me trim his hair last night. Hmph! I bet Nelson ain’t even his real last name. He took it on tryin’ to put hisself up there on that same pedestal with Ozzie Nelson on the TV and he sure tries to behave like the real Nelsons. They is classic white folks. Since when is Nelson a colored name.”
    “You think he uppity, that woman of his’n call herself Michelle Jacquelyn !” Mr. Boatwright roared.
    “Go on, Brother Davis,” Mama said to Caleb.
    Caleb frowned and squirmed around in his chair. With the exception of a shiny black suit he wore to church every Sunday, the only clothes I ever saw him wear were stiff overalls and cheap plaid shirts with