Ugly Ways

by Tina McElroy Ansa

  She poured them all a drink but made hers mostly ginger ale. She wanted one of her sisters to notice and then again she didn't think she could talk about her pregnancy yet with either of her sisters after what had happened on the plane. She was still working on not throwing her head back and screaming.

  Betty stood in a far corner of the screened porch, her crossed arms tucked under her breasts, her body appearing to lean against air in what her sisters called her "Betty pose" ("You got to learn to lean on just about anything you can in this life, even air," Mudear would say, gazing at her oldest daughter). Her broad shoulders were like her sisters'. Their mother called them "Lovejoy shoulders, like men's." Only on Betty they seemed gargantuan. She had to take the shoulder pads out of all her dresses and jackets before she wore them to keep from looking grotesque.

  She looked out over the field of waning wildflowers at the edges of the garden in back and took deep drags on her cigarette. The Benson & Hedges Menthol Light felt like a cool sprinkler in her throat and she smoked it all the way down to the filter. Then, she started to put it out in the dirt in one of Mudear's many potted ferns but stopped herself and instead slipped upstairs into the bathroom and flushed the butt down the toilet.

  Coming back through the house on her way to the porch, she rubbed her arms through her beige cashmere sweater and decided to collect a thin blanket from an upstairs bedroom and two afghans from the den couch. When she handed an afghan to each of her sisters as they stepped onto the porch, she got a whiff of Mudear's talcum powder rising from the fuzzy yarn. She kept the blanket for herself.

  Emily, absentmindedly drying her already dry hands on the breast pockets of her western shirt, sat on the flowered cushion at the far end of the porch sofa and tucked her legs under her. Betty saw her spread her afghan over her lap so no one could see how big her thighs looked splayed against her calves through her fringed jeans.

  For most of their lives, Emily had been the slimmest of the girls, petite, a size seven since she hit puberty. But now, in her late thirties, she had started to put on some weight which she at first couldn't see. Then, when she did see it, she became embarrassed by the extra pounds and her inability to lose them. For the first time in her life she had to think about what she ate and how she looked in certain styles. She hated it.

  The youthful fashion styles she had always chosen and shown off to perfection now looked a litde ridiculous, a bit jeune fille, on her expanded figure.

  Especially since, as Annie Ruth had pointed out to Betty on the phone one night, she refused to "move her big ass on up one more size and give those skinny clothes to someone who can use 'em before they all go out of style."

  "Someone like you, Annie Ruth?" Betty had suggested with a laugh.

  "Well, at least I can still get my butt comfortably into some size eights."

  "Yeah, the expensive ones, right?" Betty had pointed out.

  "Well, whether she gives those pretty things to me or not, she better start thinking about getting her body snatched before it's too late," Annie Ruth said knowingly.

  "Snatched?" Betty asked with a laugh.

  "Yeah, snatched," her sister said. "You know how you snatch your hair back into a ponytail. Well, that's what our sister girlfriend needs to do with her body—with diet and mostly exercise: snatch it back to the size it was, before her body forgets what it was like to be that size."

  Betty smiled. "Emily said she can't believe she's got to actually go to exercise classes."

  Annie Ruth had chuckled like Mudear and said, "Tell her, 'Keep living, daughter.'"

  Annie Ruth, still weary from the ordeal of her journey across the country, gave Betty her drink, plopped down on the other end of the sofa, curled up there, and just threw her afghan around her shoulders. Annie Ruth acted as if she felt she had nothing to hide with her body.

  All her life she had been called "fine." She had the big legs, ass, and breasts that black men of the sixties and early seventies loved. And they had lavished praise on her for it. When she walked down city streets, even in the North, men felt perfectly justified in shouting at her, "Brick house!" (She assumed that white men felt the same but just didn't have the vocabulary or the nerve to say anything.) Before men's comments on the street had started turning ugly, sometime in the middle seventies, she had enjoyed the attention even though she had resented the implication that she was big and solid enough to be compared to a brick shithouse.

  It wasn't that she was hefty, she just had curves that made folks want to run their hands along them the way a farmer in the field fondles a huge ripe warm watermelon.

  If she didn't watch it, she felt her rounded butt and big firm breasts could have overtaken her hourglass figure and made her chunky. But there was little chance of that. She was always on some diet or another. Even if television didn't put ten extra pounds on your ass. And she had been known to stick her finger down her throat after she had slipped and enjoyed too much bread and olive oil with her lobster ravioli, salad, and blue cheese dressing.

  Now that men seemed to be more influenced by magazine ads and music videos rather than by their own instincts and chose skinnier and skinnier women over their more voluptuous sisters, Annie Ruth watched her diet even more and worked out at her gym at Marina del Rey five days a week instead of her former three, making sure her body stayed "snatched."

  Betty looked at her younger sisters wrapped up in their afghans and smiled as she settled in a rocking chair catercorner to them by a stretch of screening, with the blanket thrown over her knees. It comforted her that whenever they all went somewhere together people always commented, "Ya'll must be sisters." Even though their coloring and sizes varied, from Annie Ruth's light brown to Emily's dark, they did look like different versions of the same woman at different stages of her life.

  All her life, Mudear had called Betty "big-boned"—"Betty is big-boned, let her pick that box up"—but she wasn't really big-boned. She was just about Emily's size only taller than the other two girls. But as with most things, she couldn't shake Mudear's image of her. In high school, Betty would scrutinize the wrists and hands of her female classmates to compare hers with theirs. Once, she had even unconsciously slipped her fingers around her own wrist and then around the wrist of the girl sitting next to her in the biology lab. The gesture had startled her lab mate so that she dropped the whole frog, the pins, and the wax-filled pan to the floor, splattering both girls with formaldehyde. It seemed that Betty had no hope of attaining the ability to see herself objectively. Mudear's image of her always overwhelmed her own self-image.

  Seeing her sisters sitting on the porch snuggled in their afghans made her want to pull them both into her lap and hold them there.

  Even the birthday cards that Betty bought for her sisters let them know that under it all she still saw them as little girls. Along with the cards that featured flowers—grown-up flowers like birds of paradise and calla lilies and pale fringed tulips—on the front, she couldn't help sending them a few "For my sis" cards that had drawings of teddy bears and bunnies and little black dolls holding hands, too. She knew her strongest feelings for them were maternal and her sisterly feelings ran a good strong second.

  They looked the way they had some thirty years before when they would all huddle on the floor beside their beds wrapped in their blankets and wait for the fight to be over. Or later, when they squatted in the same spot at the old house and listened to Betty's stories of how it had been before the change.

  I'm the only one of us who knows what it's like to really have a mother. To play outside with the other children in the neighborhood 'til we got motley with grit and dirt and mud and to be called in by our mother to take a bath at dusk, a mother who allowed us to walk barefoot all evening so we had to wash our feet again before bedtime. Betty would remind herself of this each evening before settling down to telling her sisters how it was before Mudear changed. She felt like Ishmael, the last one left to tell the story. She took her responsibility seriously.

&nbs
p; There was no ashtray in the house, Betty knew that, so she had brought a piece of aluminum foil out from the kitchen. And while Annie Ruth and Emily snuggled down in their seats, getting closer and closer, rubbing their arms and cheeks against the wool and yarn of their wraps smelling faintly of talc, she fashioned a little ashtray out of the foil. It looked like the handiwork of a child's summer crafts class. She even molded little indentations in the side like a real ashtray to rest the butt.

  "You don't get extra points for neatness," Annie Ruth said finally with a smile.

  They all three laughed softly. It was the first thing Annie Ruth had said since she landed in Mulberry that sounded like her old self. She could always make her sisters laugh. When the three of them usually got together or talked on the phone, they laughed as much as they gossiped, using a familiar verbal shorthand to cut to the laugh. But this time they just chuckled and settled back into solemnity. Betty continued to fiddle with the thing absentmindedly after lighting up her cigarette.

  "God, I wish I had a joint," Emily said as she watched Betty flick cigarette ashes into the foil tray.

  "A joint? It's bad enough I'm smoking a cigarette in Mudear's house." Betty stopped herself just before saying, "She'd probably turn over in her grave if she knew...." But her pause left a space in their talk hanging on the chill night air as if she had actually voiced it.

  They sat enjoying the silence for a while until the sound of a male katydid pierced the night air and they all looked in the direction of Mudear's garden. They almost expected to see Mudear roaming around her garden in the near darkness as she had done nearly every fair night during the spring, summer, fall, and part of the mild winter almost their entire lives.

  Her late-night gardening had produced prodigious results. The last of the late profusion of white blooms danced a bit throughout the garden in the wind like spirits. In the falling darkness, the girls could still make out the white trumpet blossoms on the old-fashioned petunia bushes that came up year after year and lasted way into the fall. Even the delicate sprays of alyssum and the fragile blossom of the ginger lily wafted fragrance onto the porch.

  When Emily sneezed two times, her sisters automatically looked out the screen porch in search of the hummingbird. For as long as any of them could remember, Emily had been allergic to hummingbirds, sneezing uncontrollably when one or more of the tiny birds were hovering nearby. Mudear always said she was just putting on. But her sisters knew the allergy was real. And though they felt sorry for Emily's allergic affliction, they couldn't help but become excited at the idea of seeing the usually shy creatures flutter around their sister as if she were a red hummingbird feeder.

  But Emily set them straight. "Just the end of a cold," she said with a sniff. And they all settled back in their seats disappointed, even though they knew it was too late in the season for a ruby-throated hummingbird to be still flying around middle Georgia. They wrapped themselves in their blankets again and in the silence surrounding them. When another breeze stirred up the smell of cinnamon balls in a cut-glass dish on the table, they gave in to their feelings.

  "She could be so mean," Emily said.

  "God, Em-Em, not now," Betty said as she began rocking wearily.

  "She could be so goddamn mean and heartless." Emily had wanted to say it coldly and matter-of-factly. But her voice broke a bit at the end. And the sound broke the hearts of the other women.

  Annie Ruth, who had been waiting for somebody to open the way down that familiar road, jumped in eagerly.

  "Mudear, now, she the kinda 'ho that would sit and help you make the most beautiful white strapless gown for the prom."

  "Annie Ruth, don't start," Betty almost pleaded.

  "You remember, Betty, that pretty white raw silk sheath with the killer split up the back that you made for me," Annie Ruth continued.

  Emily took over then.

  "And then she help you get dressed for the big night. Zip you up and let you borrow her pearls, her own personal pearls, and you know how she feel 'bout her 'pursnel' things." Annie Ruth took over again. "Tell one of us to dust your shoulders with powder with glitter in it."

  "Shit, Annie Ruth, she dead. Let it go."

  "Then, she pat you on the back and gently..."

  "Annie Ruth, dammit, don't nobody feel like doing this tonight."

  "Why should tonight be any different?" Emily put in.

  "Then, she pat you lightly on the shoulder with those beautiful slender hands of hers, hands that ain't seen the bottom of a sink of dishes in years, and then usher you downstairs to your date. And whisper in your ear, 'Now, don't come on your period in that pretty white dress.'"

  They were silent—Betty with her head thrown back, rocking, Annie Ruth and Emily with their chins resting on their knees—remembering that night and others.

  "She's all we ever talk about really. Do you realize that?" Annie Ruth asked the darkened porch. "We start out with our jobs and then men and then clothes and then books we've read, then bills, but we always end up talking about Mudear."

  She felt better just saying it out loud.

  The other sisters knew they couldn't dispute that. It was the truth. And the porch fell silent again.

  "Anybody want a refill?" Annie Ruth jumped up too quickly and the light-headedness made her sway a bit before she caught hold of the back of a chair.

  "What for? You haven't finished your first drink yet," Betty pointed out, narrowing her eyes to see Annie Ruth better. She thought she saw her sway.

  "I'm not really drinking tonight," Annie Ruth said and made her eyes scan the darkness outside over her sister's head.

  "Oh, shit, Annie Ruth," Betty said as she swung her legs down from her seat and planted her wide feet soundly on the porch floor. "How late are you?"

  "Late? What you talking 'bout, Betty?"

  Betty took a deep drag, put out the cigarette, and lit up another. "Em-Em, are we going to have to spend our entire lives explaining things to you?"

  Betty sounded a bit exasperated at her sister's innocence, but she had long ago accepted the fact that Emily had a harder time than the other two accepting things. Emily understood how things were in life, Mudear had seen to that, but she just sometimes refused to accept them. Even more than Annie Ruth, the baby, who hadn't seen as much as Emily had.

  Annie Ruth just got up, collected everyone's glasses, and went back in toward the kitchen.

  As she made her way through the rec room, she heard Emily saying, "All of us got this far without having no babies. She can't be pregnant now. Now that Mudear's dead and all."

  Annie Ruth spun around in the rec room and came back to the porch door.

  "Mudear didn't have nothing to do with this," Annie Ruth said tightly. "For once, this is something that Mudear didn't have no hand in."

  She turned and went back toward the kitchen to fill the glasses with ice.

  "That's a matter of opinion," Betty said. Although Emily couldn't see her in the dark, she knew that her sister's eyes were low and hooded like Mudear's when she was making a point.

  CHAPTER 4

  Look at them, stretched out there on my screened porch smoking cigarettes and drinking my husband's liquor. Even talking about smoking that marijuana like some kind of damn black girl hippies. And me laying up here in Parkinson Funeral Home with this ugly-assed navy-blue dress on. Talking about me like I ain't in my grave yet. Hell, I ain't in my grave yet. It just goes to show you what they gonna be like when I really am buried and gone.

  Trifling! Trifling women! After all I did to raise them right. Well, alright. Maybe I didn't do a lot to raise them, not after the baby was five or so, but I did raise them. I did see to it that they were raised. And raised right. Even if they did have to half raise themselves.

  Taught them how to carry themselves. How to keep that part of themselves that was just for themselves to themselves so nobody could take it and walk on it. Tried my best to make them free. As free as I could teach them to be and still be free myself.

/>   How many times did I tell Emily, my middle girl, to pull up that chin, tie up that chin. Look to the stars, I would tell them. Look to the stars. Don't let the whole town see you walking with your head down, like you got something to be ashamed of.

  Lord knows this damn little-assed town did try to make them think that. That they had something to be ashamed of. Me mostly. Umph. It's funny really. The one thing in life that they could always look to with pride, a mother who set an example of being her own woman, was the thing that everyone wanted them to be ashamed of.

  Well, one thing I can say for them, I don't think they were ever ashamed of me, or embarrassed by me. Never once.

  It sure is nice and quiet in here. The Parkinsons always did run a nice establishment. I had forgotten how lovely this old building is. Nice and quiet Just the way the house used to be at night when I liked it best. Course, 'cause I got my beauty sleep much of the day, I could enjoy the night the way most people couldn't.

  In the summer, it was too hot during the day to even think about stirring before four or five o'clock in the afternoon. By the time it got dark, I would have had a good long bath and taken care of myself, hair and stuff. And I would have gotten myself something to eat and looked at a little television. The girls or Ernest would have come home by dark and done whatever I needed doing. And I would have had a little company if I felt like it.

  Usually, there would be enough time for a little nap in the evening before I went out to do my gardening. That way I'd be nice and refreshed for my work. What with taking my own time and stopping to rest and admire my work and coming into the house for coffee and to eat something, before you know it, there'd be streaks of color in the sky. And I'd come in and look at movies on videocassettes or early-morning television. Then, lay back down before the girls get up for school.

  And in the winter, it was too depressing getting up earlier than afternoon. Seeing the sunlight outside and knowing it wouldn't even be strong enough to warm you if you was to walk out in it. Then, before you know it, the day would start to fade and it would be nighttime. But that didn't do any good because it would be too cold to do any gardening.