Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl

by Carolita Blythe

  On the walls are posters with older people smiling and hugging and fishing and eating corn. And these have slogans like “Living a Full and Meaningful Life,” “Now Is the Time of Your Life to Do What You’ve Always Wanted,” “Health in Your Retirement,” and “Make Your Golden Years Truly Golden.”

  I pick up one of the few magazines that doesn’t have “mature” in its title, Time, but I find this pretty ironic, since these people don’t seem to have much of that left. I flip through to an article on rising international music stars, but I really don’t feel like reading about U2 or Billy Idol or Wham! I don’t really want to be looking at all these old people either, but I just can’t help staring. I glance over at the clock, which now reads three-thirty, then back at the front door. The only person to come in is a younger woman who goes to sit with the woman in the wheelchair.

  Another door opens and a nurse in gray scrubs steps out with a folder in her hand.

  “Willows, Brenda Willows,” she calls.

  The younger woman who just came in gets up and maneuvers the woman in the wheelchair over to the door, and they disappear behind it with the nurse.

  It’s three-forty, and the whole scene is getting me down in the dumps. I’d rather be somewhere—anywhere—less gloomy. I stand and go to the front door and look up and down the street. No sign of the old lady. I open my schoolbag and wade through it a bit before my fingertips run across a crumpled piece of paper, which I pull out. It’s the old lady’s phone number. I haven’t looked at it since she gave it to me that day. I wonder if the nurse will let me use her phone or if I’ll have to go find a phone booth somewhere on the street. Only one way to find out.

  I begin my walk toward the reception desk when I hear my name. I turn to find the old lady standing near the door the nurse in the gray scrubs came out from earlier.

  “Let’s go,” she says as she walks over to me.

  “Why’d you ask me to come here? I was stuck sitting with those people,” I say as I follow her out. “Made me want to fling myself off a bridge. I could have waited for you at the museum.”

  “It’s good to have the ability to remove yourself from this, isn’t it?” she asks.

  “You could too. Instead of coming to this place, you could just go down to Kings County Hospital, where not everybody is a thousand. Where it’s not so glum.”

  “Yeah, but I’d still be old. What you saw in there, that’s my existence every day. And if you’re lucky enough to live as long, that will be your existence one day too.”

  What a thought. It makes me shudder.

  “And I go there because it has one of the best geriatric doctors in Brooklyn.”

  “So what’s wrong with you?” I ask.

  “I’m old.”

  “No, I mean, are you sick or something? Are you gonna break some news to me that you only have a week left to live?”

  “At this point in my life, I could have just a day. Who knows. I only wanted the doctor to have a look at my back, which is still very stiff.”

  “So that’s it,” I say. “You wanted to rub it in a little more. I’ve already told you I didn’t mean for all that to happen to you.”

  “I know what you told me, but I just wanted you to be aware of what this part of my life is like.”

  “Depressing?” I say as we near the bus stop at Grand Army Plaza. I’m not so shocked the old lady has a doctor in this area. It’s green. It’s filled with trees, and the buildings are even ritzier than where she lives. Even the bus stop looks upscale. It’s right near the arch that serves as an entrance to Prospect Park and looks like that famous one they have in Paris.

  “You haven’t been around many old folks, have you?” she says.

  “Nah. Mama’s mom lives in Dominica, but they don’t really get along, so we don’t go and visit her anymore. Mama says she’s too judgmental and mean. It’s funny, my mother calling someone else judgmental and mean. Anyway, I knew Mama’s dad. She and my uncle Paul moved here with him when they were teenagers, but he died a few years ago. His ticker gave out. My dad’s father is still alive, but he lives in Texas. I never really knew Daddy’s side of the family too well. So what’s it like being old?” I ask as I help her onto a bench.

  “It just is.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it just is. What’s it like being fourteen?”

  “But being fourteen, I don’t have much else to compare it to. I mean, I can’t compare it to being twenty-one or thirty. But you can.”

  “That’s true. I don’t know. I guess being old is different for everyone. People with reasonably good health probably have a better time of it. People with kids and grandkids to look after might not be as lonely. And I would think that people who still work have something to look forward to each morning when they wake up.”

  “What about you?”

  “Well, I have some rheumatism, and sometimes it’s a chore to get from point A to point B.”

  “And you don’t have contact with your daughter.”

  “So it gets lonely.”

  “And you don’t work any.”

  “No, I don’t. I suppose I’ve become one of the invisible people.” She pauses long enough to watch a man bicycle past. “For me, being old is not so good. I always thought that if I lived long enough, I’d be able to sit back and take it easy and enjoy myself … that I’d have someone to enjoy myself with. That when I looked back on my life, I’d be happy with what I accomplished and with how I affected other people. I guess that just didn’t happen.” The old lady stops talking as a bus approaches.

  * * *

  The old lady is right about being invisible. Here we are on the bus, which is pretty full with kids heading home from school and random people headed to wherever. I don’t expect anyone to give up their seat for me. I’m young. But they don’t even look in Ms. Downer’s direction, and she’s using a cane and holding on to my elbow to keep from falling.

  The bus lurches ahead before I can get hold of one of the poles or overhead bars, and as I jerk forward, the old lady kind of falls into me. Though I’m standing in front of one of those seats with a sign saying PLEASE GIVE THIS SEAT TO THE ELDERLY OR HANDICAPPED, and the old lady is obviously elderly and, with her cane, darn near handicapped, no one moves. One guy just stares straight ahead, as if Ms. Downer’s a ghost and he’s looking right through her. And this dude is a pretty solid chunk of man. It wouldn’t hurt him any to volunteer his seat. I stare at him for a while, but he continues to look through Ms. Downer. When the driver slams on the brakes on account of a car in front of us braking, Ms. Downer loses her balance once more.

  “Why don’t you get up and give this lady a seat?” I yell at the guy.

  He barely even glances my way.

  “You’re sitting in one of those seats you’re supposed to give up if someone old is standing.”

  For the first time, he actually looks Ms. Downer in the eye, but then he looks back at me.

  “Dis ain’t de fifties in Mississippi,” he says in a thick West Indian accent. “I don’t have to get to de back of de bus ’cause some white lady wants to sit down.”

  “No, this is the eighties, and she’s in her eighties, and you’re a big strong man, but you’re acting like a little punk whose mama didn’t raise him with any manners.…”

  “Faye,” the old lady says softly. I turn to her.

  “There’s no rule that anyone has to give up those seats for anyone else. It’s just a suggestion. Maybe he worked a long day. Maybe he’s tired. If he doesn’t want to get up, that’s his prerogative.”

  But before I can say anything else, one of the kids two rows back offers up his seat.

  As the old lady settles in, I continue to shoot the man the death glare, but then I realize something: I’ve never given my seat up for any old person either.

  “Faye, once you change out of your school uniform, I want you to stew up some chicken. And don’t add too much salt the way you usually do. Make some peas and
rice along with it, and a nice salad. And if we got any more of those dinner rolls, make those too.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Oh, and there should be a box of Duncan Hines yellow cake mix in the cupboard. You bake that up for me, but add about half a cup of rum to the batter. This is grown folks’ dessert, okay?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “All right. I need it ready for eight-thirty, so you got an hour and a half, which should be plenty. But don’t go dillydallying about and cause the food to not be ready. And don’t rush through it either and have the food cold, so you manage your time.”

  “Why does it have to be exactly eight-thirty?” I ask. “When did we start being so precise?”

  “Not your job to question me, child. Your job is to do what I tell you.”

  I just sigh.

  “I’m gonna go catch a little catnap. Maybe see what the weekend cliffhanger on Edge of Night is. If I’m not out by eight, you make sure to wake me up. You hear?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Grown folks’ dessert? If I didn’t know better, I’d think maybe Daddy was coming over again, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. If it was, Mama would be cutting and seasoning the chicken herself and making a cake from scratch. And she wouldn’t be watching soap operas and napping. She’d probably be going through her closet trying to pick out some ridiculous, overly fussy gown she hasn’t worn in a decade. She’d be washing her hair in her special lavender shampoo and sitting under that professional-style dryer Aunt Nola gave her three Christmases ago, worrying about everything being just right. She wouldn’t trust me to not oversalt the chicken or undercook the rice.

  Since I can’t figure out who Mama’s mystery guest could be, I’ll just have to wait and be surprised.

  * * *

  At exactly 8:22, the downstairs bell sounds.

  “Goddamn it!” I hear Mama shout from the bathroom. “Why can’t people get it through their heads that eight-thirty means eight-thirty? Not twenty-five after. Not quarter till.”

  “I’ll get it!” I yell.

  “No, let him wait. At least till I get out the bath,” she yells back.

  So, it’s a “him.”

  The bell sounds again, and again. A couple of minutes later, the bathroom door opens and Mama stomps out.

  “Set the table, Faye … for three.”

  “I’m eating with you?”

  Mama nods.

  “Should I use the good plates?”

  “No. Use the everyday plates.”

  “You want me to change into a dress or something?”

  “What for?” The downstairs bell sounds again. “You should probably get that now. Just let him know he’s early. Be sure to say that. And that I’m still getting ready. Then seat him in the living room and make him a drink.”

  As I walk down the hallway, I get an idea of who it could be, but I’m not quite certain. I press the intercom, but there’s no answer. Maybe he left, thinking no one was home. I would have. I wait for a moment, then turn to head back down the hall. That’s when the front door buzzes. When I open the peephole, all I see is a shock of wet, drippy black hair. Jheri curl Jerry.

  Once we’re in the living room, I sit Jerry down on Mama’s ugly plastic-covered flower couch and offer him a drink. He asks for whiskey. I tell him we only have rum and beer. He says rum with a little soda is fine. Mama has two kinds: Myers’s Original Dark, for special people and special occasions—needless to say, it’s hardly been touched—and a no-name brand that just has a stalk of sugar cane and the word RUM on the label. I don’t really know which to give Jerry, but since Mama didn’t seem that excited about him, I pour some of the no-name brand into a glass. Then I walk through the wooden beads that hang from the living room archway and into the kitchen, where I fill his glass with ice and Pepsi before bringing it back to him.

  “She’s still getting ready,” I say. “Says you’re too early.”

  “That’s ’cause I couldn’t wait to see her again.”

  “Really?” I don’t even try to hide my disbelief. “So what exactly is it you like so much about her?”

  “What’s there not to like? She’s sassy. She’s strong. She’s a good woman. She’s beautiful.”

  And there you have it. He might as well have listed the beautiful part first. I mean, I understand that men are drawn to beauty, but Mama is as mean as a snake. And she was downright awful to Jerry over at Uncle Paul’s. But I guess that’s the thing with pretty women. When they act up, people just excuse it as them being spirited. I say something not half as harsh as Mama and everyone gets all up in arms.

  Mama finally comes out, but there’s no gown in sight. She’s wearing her blue pantsuit, which isn’t as atrocious as it sounds. It’s pretty fitted, so it shows off her curves and makes her long legs look even longer.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Jerry, but you were early.”

  “My apologies,” he says. “I gotta remember you women need your time to get pretty. And boy, did you ever do a good job of it. Guess I was just a little eager to see you. Can’t fault a man for that.”

  “Faye, why don’t you make Mama a drink, then join me and Jerry at the table.”

  “Yes, Mama,” I say, and I hang back to make her drink.

  “Mmm-hmm, you sure do look nice in that suit,” Jerry says as he follows Mama through the wooden beads and into the kitchen, his eyes never once leaving her behind.

  I also use the cheap rum for Mama’s drink. Once I’m done, I take a big swig, then refill it before heading into the kitchen. When I get to the table, Jerry’s looking all anxious and hungry, like a little mutt waiting for feeding time. And he’s still telling Mama how pretty she looks and how pretty she smells. Mama just takes the drink from me, gulps it, and keeps this tight-lipped smile on her face.

  “Look at this silverware,” Jerry says. “I gotta say, Jeanne, you got some beautiful taste. And the plates, whoo-hoo. And I love the way you decorate. I mean, even the place mats are tasteful.”

  And I’m thinking, is this guy for real? It’s our chipped, scratched-up everyday plates. And the place mats are plastic, with pictures of the natural wonders of the world on them. And they say it in big, garish letters—SEVEN NATURAL WONDERS OF THE WORLD. Actually, we’re down to five wonders, since two of the place mats have turned up missing.

  “Look at this. Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, Victoria Falls. You ever been to any of these places?” he asks Mama. She shakes her head as she lights up and puffs on a cigarette.

  “Pretty woman like you. If you were mine, I’d take you around the world in style.”

  When Mama puts the food on the table, the man acts as if he has never seen chicken before. I don’t think he could be any more impressed if Mama roasted up a pterodactyl.

  “Ooooooh-weee, Jeanne. Mmm, look at that. You know I like my chicken just the way I like my women. Spicy, hot, and brown. Can’t wait to have a taste. Ooooooh-weee.”

  Same thing with the Pillsbury crescent rolls I popped into the oven.

  “Woman, you baked some bread? Smells like a little slice of heaven.”

  “It’s out of a can,” Mama says.

  “Well then, you opened that can just right, ’cause these the prettiest buns I’ve ever seen.” Then he puts his hand over his mouth as he directs his next few words at Mama. “And I’m not just talking about the ones on the table.”

  I’m about three seconds from choking on my own very limited supply of saliva. I can’t stop staring at him. I’ve never seen somebody’s lips that glued to somebody else’s ass before. Not even Sylvester Young in class. And Sylvester compliments Sister Margaret Theresa Patricia Bernadette on how nice she looks every day, which is ridiculous since all she ever wears is the same oversized gray sweater, which makes her look like an enormous possum.

  Anyway, Jerry cleans his plate. Every grain of rice is gone. And a chicken leg and wing and thigh and neck bone. He eats all the meat clean off. And the grease around his mouth is now abo
ut as thick as the grease surrounding his hairline. It’s all pretty disgusting, really. And when Mama gives him the cake, from the box, he acts as if he’s being fed manna from God.

  I’m figuring all that complimenting and sweet-talking is going to get on Mama’s last nerve, but she just sits there twirling her hair and smiling. And she talks to him a little, not mean-like, but kind of civil, almost. She even asks him if he wants something a little smoother to drink. He says yes and they move on into the living room, where she breaks out her good bottle of Myers’s Original Dark.

  I start cleaning up the dishes, still not able to grasp what’s going on before me. When I finally make it back to my room, I close the door and try watching a little TV, but every five minutes, I hear a loud “Hey, hey, huh, hey, hey, huh” come from Jerry. And he’s still laughing and carrying on as I climb into bed.

  * * *

  I wake up really early, probably on account of my brain short-circuiting all through the night as it tried to make sense of all the craziness. I notice the ice bucket and glasses and almost-empty rum bottle as I walk past the living room on my way to the bathroom. Wonder what time Jerry finally removed his lips from Mama’s butt and crawled out of here. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t of his own accord. Mama probably had to physically remove him.