The Ugly Side of Me

by Nikita Lynnette Nichols

  “Now, that’s what I like to see.”

  Lucille turned and rolled away from the stove. She sat a plate of fried honey-flavored country bacon on the kitchen table. She looked at her son, who was standing in the doorway. “What are you talkin’ about, Malcolm?”

  “I’m talkin’ about waking up to see a woman do what she’s supposed to be doing.”

  “Is that right?” she asked.

  “Please believe me.”

  “Come on over here, boy, and give your mama some sugar.”

  Malcolm strolled over to Lucille and knelt to kiss her right cheek, but before his lips could touch her face, Lucille smacked them with the back of her hand.

  He frowned. “Ow, Mama. What was that for?”

  “That was for talkin’ crap,” Lucille fussed. “And it’s lucky for you that I can’t move my legs, ’cause if I could, I’d put my foot deep in your behind.”

  “You would, huh?”

  Lucille mocked her son’s famous last words. “Please believe me.”

  Malcolm got a plate from the dish rack, then sat at the table and filled it with bacon, scrambled eggs, and waffles. “So, I guess you got a thing about women serving men.”

  “I ain’t got nothin’ against a woman serving her man, but you ain’t my man. I am your woman, though.”

  “How do you figure that?” Malcolm asked.

  “Get me the butter out of the refrigerator.”

  Malcolm did as he was told, then sat down at the table.

  “Get me the maple syrup out of the cabinet and pour me a glass of milk.”

  Without hesitation, Malcolm obeyed. He sat down at the table again. “Is there anything else you want?”

  “Uh-uh. But you see how you just served me and asked if I wanted anything else?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So that’s how I figure that I’m your woman.”

  Malcolm scowled at his mother. “You think you’re all that, don’t you?”

  “Let me tell you something, boy, and don’t you ever forget it. Lucille Ella-Jean Washington is all that and then some.”

  “You sure about that?” Malcolm asked.

  “Please believe me,” she replied, mocking him again.

  They were laughing, talking, and enjoying breakfast when they heard Malcolm’s cellular phone beeping in his bedroom, indicating there was a message on his voice mail.

  “Malcolm, that phone has been beeping for the past hour,” Lucille complained. “Why don’t you check the message?”

  “Because I know who it is and I don’t feel like being bothered by that chick right now.”

  “What chick?”

  “This girl I met yesterday. She’s calling so we can hook up, but I ain’t feelin’ her.” Earlier Malcolm had seen Rhapsody’s number flash across his cellular phone screen but had let the call go to his voice mail. He wouldn’t dare confess to Lucille that he had already hooked up with Rhapsody.

  “Well, if you’re not feelin’ her, why did you give her your number?” Lucille had forbidden Malcolm from giving the home telephone number out to women. They showed no respect when they called in the wee hours of the morning and woke her up. She had told Malcolm that he could do whatever he wanted to do with his cellular number, but that had also rung at the midnight hour.

  “It’s a guy thing, Ma. I like to keep my options open.”

  “Every month it’s a different girl and always the same bull crap. You better not come around here with no babies, Malcolm.”

  “You ain’t gotta worry about that, Lucy. I’m a pro at what I do.”

  Malcolm knew that a sure way to get under his mother’s skin was to call her Lucy.

  “You know what, Malcolm? One of these days God is gonna put just the right amount of strength in my legs long enough for me stomp a hole in your back big enough for me to walk through. I miss kickin’ your behind. You know that? But one of these days I’m gonna be like a storm up in here.”

  Malcolm finished his glass of orange juice, then leaned back in his chair and belched loudly. “Like Hurricane Lucy?” He laughed.

  The front door opened, then closed. Malcolm looked over his shoulder to see his sister, Cherise, coming toward them. Every morning before work, Cherise stopped by to help their mother with her bath.

  When Cherise got to the archway of the kitchen, Malcolm began making wind noises with his lips. “Watch out, Cherise. Take cover. Hurricane Lucy is in here.”

  Lucille looked at him and rolled her eyes.

  “What are you doing, Malcolm?” Cherise asked. She smacked the side of his face softly with the back of her hand.

  Lucille quickly responded, “What he does best. Acting like a fool.”

  Cherise walked over to her mother and kissed her cheek. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning. How’s my favorite son-in-law?”

  “Sean is your only son-in-law. He’s fine, and he sends his love.”

  “Are you pregnant yet?” Lucille asked Cherise.

  “Mama, must you ask me that every day?”

  “Yep. I’m hoping you’d get tired of me asking and go ahead and make me a grandma.”

  “You don’t need me for that. Malcolm can handle that.”

  “I sho can. What do you want? A boy or a girl?” Malcolm asked with a mouth full of food.

  “I want an angel. All I would get from you are demons. And I taught you to swallow your food before you speak,” Lucille fussed at her son.

  Malcolm swallowed, then looked at his sister. “You see how she treats me?”

  “Better you than me.” Cherise adjusted the brakes on Lucille’s wheelchair. “Are you ready for your bath?”

  “It’s almost nine o’clock. Aren’t you gonna be late for work?” Lucille asked Cherise.

  “I have a late meeting this morning. What time is your therapy session?”

  “Not until ten thirty.”

  As Cherise rolled her mother toward the bathroom, she paused. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Lucille asked.

  “That beeping sound.”

  Lucille yelled over her shoulder. “Malcolm, please do something about that darn phone. And if you don’t want the heifers to call, then don’t give them the number.”

  Malcolm stood from the table, placed his empty plate in the sink, then went into his bedroom and closed his door. He picked up his telephone and lay on the bed, then listened to his voice mail.

  “Malcolm, this is Rhapsody. Remember me? I’m the one you screwed for three hours last night.”

  Malcolm’s eyes bucked out of his head.

  “Guess where I am right now. I’m at Burger World, and I just found out that you’re scheduled to be off today.”

  Malcolm sat up on the bed. “What are you doing there?” he asked out loud.

  “Let me tell you something. You ain’t gotta lie to me, okay? As far as I’m concerned, last night was just a one-time thang. You don’t owe me squat, and I don’t owe you squat. So, you can just lose my number, you trifling jerk.”

  Later that morning, at Bethany Hospital, Malcolm sat in the waiting room on the fifth floor while Lucille attended her therapy session. He couldn’t get Rhapsody’s phone call out of his mind. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out she was pissed beyond words, but for the life of Malcolm, he couldn’t understand why. He’d met her only yesterday, and maybe it was too soon for them to have slept together, but why the attitude? All because he said he had to work and really didn’t?

  Truth be told, Malcolm never stayed the whole night with a girl. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to, but because Lucille had made it a rule that before she woke up in the morning, Malcolm had best have his behind in the house. She depended on him to help her out of bed and into the bathroom every morning. If there ever came a time when Malcolm wasn’t there to assist her to the bathroom, he would have hell to pay.

  Due to the fact that Lucille could no longer drive, she had given her Toyota Camry to Malcolm. She had aske
d only that he agree to take her to therapy twice a week and become her chauffeur whenever she needed to go anywhere.

  Eight months ago, on a Saturday morning, Lucille had woken up at 7:00 a.m. with a full bladder, only to find that Malcolm had yet to return home from one of his wild nights out. She wore adult diapers daily, and it wasn’t unusual for Lucille to relieve herself while still in bed. Her frustration that morning had stemmed from the fact that she had to lie in a soiled diaper for an hour and a half. Lucille had got angry that Malcolm had forfeited their agreement. She had reached for the telephone on her nightstand, then had called the police to report her car stolen. With the help of the tracking device, her car was found within twenty minutes. It was three miles away, in the parking lot of the apartment complex of Deidra Jackson, a twenty-three-year-old bombshell. Deidra was one of Malcolm’s latest conquests, one whom Lucille didn’t particularly like.

  Lucille had told Malcolm that Deidra was so dumb that if he asked her to make him a bowl of Frosted Flakes, she would look through a cookbook for the recipe first. The first time Malcolm brought Deidra home to his mother had been the last. From the moment he walked through the front door with his trophy on his arm, Lucille had sensed something was different about Deidra. She hadn’t quite been able to put her finger on what it was, but she had known that time would tell. And when time did tell, it told it all.

  When Lucille had pointed to the sofa and had said to Deidra, “Have a seat,” Deidra had looked at the sofa and replied, “No, thank you. I already have one of these at home.”

  The look on Lucille’s face as she turned to her son was priceless. Malcolm read her question in her eyes. “What the devil’s hell did you bring in my house?”

  Malcolm quickly grabbed Deidra’s hand and guided her to the sofa. Lucille sat in her wheelchair across the living room and tried to figure Deidra out. She had beautiful long black hair; Pocahontas had nothing on the girl. Deidra’s face was round and full. With her eye make-up done to perfection and shiny bronze lip gloss, her mocha-colored skin was flawless. Just like all the other trophies Malcolm had brought home to his mother, Deidra was curved in all the right places. Lucille thought it was such a waste of life to have all that beauty and a bag of rocks for a brain. She could only hope that somewhere behind those long eyelashes and sultry lips was an ounce of sense.

  “Ma, Deidra can’t stay long. She’s on her way to choir rehearsal.”

  A church girl. There’s hope, after all, Lucille thought. “Really? What church do you attend, Deidra?”

  “I belong to the Church over the Tavern.”

  Lucille knew there was no way she could have heard her right. Her eyebrows shot up in the air. “Excuse me?”

  Deidra leaned back on the sofa and crossed her legs. “I’m a member of the Church over the Tavern, located at sixteen-sixteen West Sixteenth Street, where Reverend Jack Daniels is my pastor.”

  Lucille made a mental note in her head to curse Malcolm from A to Z as soon as that whatchamacallit left her house. She wondered who Deidra’s parents were. “Uh-huh, that’s nice. Uh, what’s your last name?” Lucille asked.

  “It’s Jackson, but you can call me Deidra Jackass.”

  “Excuse me?” Lucille said in a high-pitched tone and frowned. She couldn’t believe her ears.

  “My father gave me the nickname Jackass, and that’s what everybody calls me.”

  Lucille’s frown got deeper. The lines across her forehead were evident. “That’s horrible, Deidra. Why would a father nickname his daughter Jackass? Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Uh-uh. I’m used to it,” Deidra said nonchalantly. “Hee hawl, hee hawl, hee hawlways calls me Jackass.”

  Lucille’s mouth fell wide open when she heard a chuckle come from Malcolm’s throat. Refusing to waste another fraction of a second of her life on this hopeless cause, Lucille didn’t say another word as she rolled her wheelchair into her bedroom and slammed the door shut.

  “I don’t think your mother likes me,” Deidra said to Malcolm.

  Of course she didn’t. Malcolm had picked up on it the moment he and Deidra had walked in the front door. He also knew Lucille was in her bedroom, sharpening up her personal vocabulary for him later.

  “Why do you think that?” he asked.

  “I can tell. I’ve been reading people’s minds since I was a little girl. I’m a psycho.”

  Malcolm knew Deidra meant to say that she’s a psychic, not a psycho, but he didn’t correct her. He decided that if he simply asked Deidra to keep her mouth shut when they were out in public, no one would know that she was dumb all day long.

  Deidra asked Malcolm’s permission to use the bathroom before she left for choir rehearsal. Ten minutes later she exited the bathroom and asked for a toilet plunger. After Deidra left, Lucille opened her bedroom door and rolled her wheelchair to the bathroom door and saw Malcolm working the plunger. One look at her face and Malcolm knew he was in trouble.

  “Go ahead and cuss me out. I know it’s coming.” He chuckled.

  “I ain’t gonna cuss, and I don’t think anything is funny. It’s really sad, to be honest with you. You can’t do any better than that, Malcolm?”

  “Can I be honest?”

  “Of course,” Lucille answered.

  “It ain’t about Deidra’s brain.”

  Lucille knew where her son was headed. Malcolm had been chasing girls since he could walk. “Humph. Then it must be the booty.”

  Malcolm smiled, then nodded his head and continued plunging.

  “I believe sex is gonna be your death, Malcolm. You best be careful.”

  He stopped plunging and looked at his mother. “Well, if I’m gonna die, can’t I die with a smile on my face?”

  Lucille shook her head from side to side and rolled toward the kitchen. “I see it’s useless tryin’ to talk some sense into you. When you finish, pour bleach in that toilet and let it sit for a half hour. And the next time that heifer gotta poop, take her down the street to the gas station.”

  At 1:15 p.m. a nurse rolled Lucille into the waiting area.

  “How did your therapy go?” Malcolm asked his mother.

  “The same as it always go. It was strenuous and a total waste of my time.”

  “Ma, you say that every week, but every week you look forward to coming.”

  “That’s because I’m trying to build enough strength in my legs to stomp a hole in your back.”

  The nurse standing behind Lucille’s wheelchair laughed out loud. She looked at Malcolm. “That’s exactly what she said she was gonna do to the fitness instructor when he told her he wanted to try acupuncture during her next therapy session.”

  Standing six feet, two inches tall, Ivan McGee weighed 265 pounds easily. Solid muscle protruded through his sweaty tank top as he bench-pressed 185 pounds of steel early Tuesday afternoon at the Cardio Palace Gym. A spotter stood at the head of Ivan’s workbench, looking down at him as Ivan strained to push the heavy plates away from his chest. Ivan was close to the end of his fifth set of eight repetitions each. The spotter witnessed various veins bulging from Ivan’s forehead and neck.

  “That’s it, man. Just three more. Come on, dude. You can make it,” the spotter said, encouraging him.

  With every fiber of his being, Ivan let out a loud roar and forced the heavy weights away from his chest, then locked his elbows in place. “Grab it. Grab it,” he strained to say.

  The spotter grabbed ahold of the bar and helped place it on the stand above Ivan’s head. Out of breath, Ivan looked up at his helper, whose name he didn’t know.

  “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

  The spotter bumped his fist against Ivan’s. “It’s all good.”

  When he walked away, Ivan lay, spent, on the bench, breathing heavily. Suddenly, his cellular telephone, which was lying next to his keys beneath the bench, began to ring.

  “What up? This is Ivan,” he said, giving his standard greeting.

  “Where you at, fool?” Malcolm a
sked.

  “At the gym, gettin’ my sweat on. Something you need to be doing. Why?”

  “You know that chick I told you about yesterday?”

  Ivan chuckled. “Malcolm, you told me about three chicks yesterday.”

  “I’m talkin’ about the older broad. The one driving the Benz.”

  “Oh, yeah. What about her?”

  “She summoned me to her house last night, man.”

  Ivan sat up on the bench and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Yeah. And?”

  “And I went, fool.”

  “So let me guess. You tapped that, didn’t you?”

  “Ivan, I waxed it. Twice.”

  Ivan pumped his fist into the air, as if he was congratulating Malcolm. “Oh, snap. For real, dude? So you feelin’ her or what?”

  “I don’t know. She’s trippin’.”

  “Trippin’? How?”

  “Let’s meet at Betty’s Soul Shack, and I’ll let you hear what she left on my cell.”

  Chapter 6

  At lunchtime I stood at the salad bar at Pete’s Grocery Store on Wabash Avenue and placed huge chunks of fresh fruit, including watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, honeydew melon, and strawberries, in a plastic container. Then I took it to the checkout lane, along with a sixteen-ounce bottle of Evian water. My total came to $12.16.

  “Cash, debit, or credit?” the elderly Caucasian lady asked me.

  I gave her my brand-new plastic friend with the MasterCard logo. It had arrived in the mail two weeks ago, and I had yet to use it. “Credit.”

  The cashier swiped the card, waited a moment, and gave me my card back to me. “Your purchase was declined.” She had an attitude and couldn’t have said it any louder.

  Another Caucasian lady, who was much younger than the cashier, stood in line behind me. She heard what the cashier said and giggled. I became furious at the thought of these siddity women having a field day at my expense.

  I looked at the cashier. “Not that it’s any of your business, but this is a new card, and I activated it yesterday.”

  “Oh, sure,” the cashier responded sarcastically.