Ugly Ways

by Tina McElroy Ansa

  Scattered among the pressing and curling tools in the case were photographs, eight-by-ten glossies, of the glamorous black women of the forties and fifties—Dorothy Dandridge, Dinah Washington, Lena Home, Billie Holiday—who had used just these kinds of utensils to keep their coifs in control. The whole shop—though outfitted with every modem convenience—looked like one that these famous women might have stopped in to get their hair done if they had been traveling the "chitlin' circuit" in the South back in another decade.

  Betty had even set up an antique barbershop chair with red leather upholstry and brass studs in the middle of the shop and used it herself when she worked on some old special customer, a former teacher or a friend of Mudear's before the change.

  Lovejoy's 2, on the other hand, looked as if it could have been transplanted from some tony address on West Fifty-seventh Street in New York City and set down at the far end of the Mulberry Mall. While Lovejoy's 1 was all wood and plaster, Lovejoy's 2 was all glass, chrome, and tall wide mirrors reflecting the track lights spotlighting every chair. The floor was Italian marble, a bitch to keep clean, Betty's cleaning crew discovered, but the customers seemed to think it added to the ambience they sought as they got their hair washed, clipped and colored, chemically straightened, waved, frozen and permed. New customers had to make appointments weeks in advance.

  Emily drove down to Mulberry nearly every weekend to get her hair done or perm touched up at Betty's shop. Afterward, she would go see Mudear for a short visit. But even with a new hairdo to buoy Emily's spirits, she always left Mudear's feeling so lonely that the rest of the week she hated herself for going. If Mudear were looking at television or repairing a garden tool on the screen porch, she wouldn't even acknowledge Emily's presence except to ask her to sweep the kitchen floor or to make her a frothy banana—orange juice drink in the blender one of her daughters had bought for her.

  Most Saturdays, Mudear didn't seem to notice when Emily left.

  It wasn't Mudear that she longed for so much as it was Mulberry. In Atlanta, she missed the small-town feeling of knowing people's business and knowing who was related to whom, who had gone to school with whose brother. But she never even considered moving back to her hometown. Not as long as Mudear was living there, and it was hard to think of Mulberry without Mudear. And it was impossible for her to think of Mudear not living. She was grateful for the protection the hundred and fifty or so miles to Atlanta gave her.

  But truly, it was always the loneliness, the wide gap she felt at the pit of her stomach, that made her feel so disconnected. I don't have anyone to care about me, except for my sisters, she would think as she drove back to her empty disheveled apartment each week.

  She was alone and lonely. And that was a terrible way of being. It was and had always been what was driving her crazy. All of her good news, her good fortune seemed to fall flat because there was no one outside her sisters in her life to whom it made any difference. No one to share it with.

  At least, Betty had had Mudear for a few years before the change. And Annie Ruth had always got so babied and was so cute that everything was an easy slide for her. But me, I ain't never had nothing ... nothing but my sisters. Lord, if it hadn't been for them, what would I have done? But she knew what she would have done. She would have actually jumped off the Spring Street bridge over the Ocawatchee River, no matter whether the riverbed was bone dry or flush with running muddy water.

  CHAPTER 9

  I been thinking 'bout Emily or one of them saying, "Mudear, she the kind of 'ho."

  From what them girls been talking about, sleeping with this one and sleeping with that one, having babies for they don't know who, sleeping with teenaged boys, them girls been fucking everything in shoe leather. Seem like every man they meet must have a wart on his thing. So, strictly speaking, I ain't the one who's a 'ho. It seems I'm the only woman who lived in that house in Sherwood Forest who's only been with just one man, my husband, my whole life. Heck, I ain't let Ernest even touch me in years. Come to think of it, he hasn't even tried. I guess for us to be hooking up like that, even for relief, seem kinda foolish, all things considered.

  But then again, you got to ask yourself, what's a 'ho, anyway?

  Whether you stupid enough to sleep with lots of men or whether you sleep with just one is supposed to decide what kind of person you are? If you spread your legs and your mouth, too, it seems from what I see on those X-rated videotapes Ernest bring home sometimes—how any woman could put a man's dick into her mouth I do not know, but then, like I say, I only been with one man in my life, only seen one real dick in my life, so, what do I know about that particular subject? But if you do spread your legs, it don't seem to me to be grounds for calling somebody an ugly name like 'ho. Maybe fool, but not 'ho.

  Now, me myself, I never did sleep around the way these girls seem to be making a career out of, but that don't mean nothing just 'cause I didn't do it. Like I say, everybody ain't me.

  Lots of times when I'm eating a light meal during the afternoon, I switch on the television to BET "Rap City" or "Yo! MTV Raps" and listen to the songs while I'm eating. And I kinda liked that rap, you know, what they call the energy of it. And I'd be sitting there eating and bobbing my head to the music 'til one day I really started paying attention to the words and I started picking out all the "bitches" and the "'hos" mixed in among the lyrics. And it made me right mad.

  Who them young boys think they are talking 'bout us women like that? And then, it got so that some of the little girls singing in them rap groups are saying the same thing. They got us calling our own selves "'hos" and "bitches. "

  I started to send a letter to those young boys in those rap groups—and some of them ain't so young, either—and ask them what they know about a 'ho and what's a 'ho to them anyway. I meant to get Betty or one of them to write it for me.

  To let those rapper boys tell it, they be the kind of woman my generation called a "whore." But then, "whore" is just some word made up by men to put women in their place. And ain't it just like a man to put you in your place about something that he wanted from you in the first place.

  Now that I think about it, it's what Ernest used to have the nerve to call me when he used to come home 'bout drunk and put us out. He'd call me those names, not because he thought I was actually screwing around on him but because for him that was the worst thing he could think of to say to me. He thought it was the most hurtful thing a man could say to a woman. Call her a whore or a slut.

  It's like all the other names men have given what they call "bad" women. Names like "skank" and "cunt"—calling us by our female parts, calling us out of our names for being women. Ugly-sounding names, names that make us sound like we smell. And they all do it. Just the other night, I saw that actor I like so much, Robert De Niro, in one of those Martin Scorchy or whatever his name is movies, call some woman a "skank." Real offhandedly, like it didn't matter to call somebody that. Just hearing it gave me the all-overs. Like he or any man got the right to just offhandedly label somebody with something as ugly-sounding as "skank" or "'ho."

  Even Arsenio said the other night in his monologue "skank 'ho" right there on television. I was shocked. They didn't even bleep it.

  It's just like with those young boys who rap, they 'un put it to music, for God's sake. Now, not all of them rapper boys be calling women 'hos and bitches. But I figure if one is doing it, it's one too many.

  And if these rapper boys want to "express" their lives like they say they do in their music, then, why don't they talk about men like they talk about women? But then it dawned on me that there ain't no male word for 'ho. So, I guess they wouldn't appreciate being called a 'ho, either.

  How those black boys feel if we started calling them "dick"?

  Like:

  Dick walks in the room and goes for my money.

  This kinda thing make me feel kinda funny.

  Or what if we always refer to them as those "gold-digging dicks"?

  I never did use the wor
d "whore" that much anyway, but it made me want to stop using it altogether.

  But I have to admit I still looked at those rap videos on television.

  I guess, besides my garden, I'm gonna miss my cable television the most. I never was much of a reader. Ernest and the girls always had their heads in some book or another. I never much cared for reading. But I did love television.

  Course, before, Ernest wouldn't buy no television. Had us cooped up in that house just entertaining ourselves. But then I threatened to buy a television myself with my own money—course I was lying. I didn't have no money, but he didn't know that. But after I put him in his place by paying that electric and gas bill that time, he couldn't chance it. So, he shot out of there and got us a television right quick. Hee-hee.

  Back then, we could only get that one Mulberry channel that went off the air around dark and on cloudy days sometimes we could get a fuzzy picture of one Atlanta station. It had so much snow on the screen you couldn't hardly make out whether it was a man, woman, or animal moving around in the picture. Sometimes, I'd make Ernest go up on the roof and fiddle with the antenna. But it was better than listening to Ernest and the radio.

  After I told him that about buying the television myself, I'd hear him in another part of the house all the time sneaking 'round looking for my money. He just knew I had a stash somewhere in that house and he was determined to find it. Hee-hee-hee. I'd just lay in my comfortable bed, I think it was the double bed then, and listen to him rummage through drawers and closets and cabinets pretending he was looking for a clean shirt or a can of milk or something. He just knew I had money somewhere.

  But he just didn't understand that after I got his ass that one time when I did have a few dollars—thank you, Lord Jesus—and he didn't, that I didn't have no use for no money no more. After that I got everything I wanted without having to spend a dime. Hee-hee.

  Come to think of it, I don't know when I have had any actual money in my hands. Right now I can't even remember whose picture is on a twenty-dollar bill.

  Lord, can't things change? Like I tell my girls, "Keep living, daughters."

  I can remember when I felt like running away to another country if I could scrape together twenty dollars or more. Now, I spend that much on a special trowel for the garden from one of those fancy mail-order places that Betty and 'em send me catalogs for. At least, I did before I died. Well, Lord.

  Ernest just didn't understand that I was the type of person who knew both how to abound and how to abase.

  CHAPTER 10

  Back alone in her old bedroom down the hall from Mudear and Poppa's room, Annie Ruth unfolded and unpacked her large carry-on travel bag, the lightweight leather one Delbert had given her the previous Christmas. The card had been signed, "For my little globetrotter." She had not recognized the handwriting. She had figured it wasn't his secretary's at the record company because she didn't like Annie Ruth and the woman would never have picked the expensive gift wrapping that the bag came in. Probably a clerk in a store, which meant that Delbert had bought the gift over the phone and had it gift wrapped and sent to him. Annie Ruth had just shrugged. Just shows you how little Delbert knows me, she had thought. I hate to travel. Mudear had made it impossible for any of her girls to truly float through life acting as if they didn't understand what was really going on in just about any situation. "Like a white girl," Annie Ruth said. Mudear had trained them specifically to understand all the signs of any situation: the half-spoken word, the gesture, the cough, the dropped gaze, the shaky voice, the unfamiliar handwriting.

  On a regular visit back home, both of her sisters would have been lying across the single bed watching her take new clothes out of her bag. "What ya got pretty?" they'd ask her, eyeing the closed bags greedily. Normally, they enjoyed this clothes-showing ritual as much as they loved getting something from a sister's wardrobe to keep. It was usually like a small free-for-all fashion show whenever the girls got together. Seldom did any of them wait for the bag's owner to remove all the clothes from the suitcase. If Emily or Betty saw some material or color in Annie Ruth's bag that caught her eye, she would dip into the bag like a child discovering a glittery bauble in the bushes in the yard and pull it out. And if they were at Mudear's house and Mudear happened to be interested, they would have to haul all the bags and clothes down to her room for a second show.

  This night, Annie Ruth was thankful they weren't there. As a rule, there was no place on earth that she felt safer and happier than in her sisters' circle of love and familiarity. They always knew just what she needed. On the ride home from the airport, Betty and Emily had let her stretch out on the backseat for a while with just the music playing. But not for long.

  After a few miles, Betty had smoothed her hair down in back, switched off Sade singing on the CD player, turned around, and said over the black velvet headrest, "Okay, sit up, Annie Ruth." It was an order, but Annie Ruth had just rubbed her face deeper into the plush seats and groaned. She didn't think she had ever felt so nauseated in her life.

  "Come on, girl, lift up your head and face the world," Betty coaxed sternly. "Come on, Annie Ruth."

  Annie Ruth spoke directly into the seat. "This is the only place on the face of this earth where anybody calls me Annie Ruth."

  "Well, when you get back to the Coast, you can become Ruth again. But you home now, girl."

  Annie Ruth still didn't sit up or lift up her head, but she did turn her face out of the backseat cushion and toward the window. It was the first time she noticed the light rain beginning to fall.

  "Umph, it's raining," she said, noting the bright fall sunshine bouncing off the raindrops on the window.

  "Yeah," Emily said, turning on the windshield wipers. "Raining with the sun out. 'Devil must be beating his wife over the head with a frying pan.'"

  Emily couldn't help but shudder a little at the saying because when they were younger and someone in their house repeated the old saying, Mudear would always say the same thing: "Humph, if the devil's wife had any sense, she'd set his bed on fire while he sleeping."

  Annie Ruth caught her sister's reaction out of the corner of her eye and, remembering how often Emily had been terrorized by some "innocent" statement from Mudear's mouth, she sat up and reached for the back of her sister's neck and gently rubbed it. Just seeing Emily's smile in the rearview mirror made Annie Ruth feel a litde stronger and less nauseated. And she took a deep breath and reached in her big suede purse for her cosmetics bag to put on some mauve lipstick with a litde orange over it to tone down the pink the way her makeup woman at work had shown her.

  Just being with Betty and Emily had made her feel better. But the whole time that she had sat on the porch with her sisters nursing her weak bourbon and ginger ale, Annie Ruth had had to fight the impulse to tell them about the cats.

  It was bad enough that they knew about her pregnancy without adding hallucinations to the mix. I guess they're hallucinations, she thought. Of course, they are. They're not real. Of course not.

  The only thing that had kept her from blurting out that she saw cats lurking just about everywhere was the words of a psychiatrist. Not even her psychiatrist, a TV psychiatrist. She had heard the woman two days before on the early-morning talk show on the L.A. television station where she was evening anchor. Dressed in a calming authoritative dress and jacket and a large nondescript beaded necklace, the psychiatrist had given a few emergency tips to keep in mind until the doctor came, so to speak.

  It seemed that lately there had been a number of cases of anxiety attacks among women living in large urban areas that occurred on the weekends or late at night when mental health people could not be readily reached for help. As a service to these folks, the morning show was asking this photogenic therapist who specialized in such cases to share some of her wisdom with the television audience, many of whom, it had been discovered through demographics, were single women, the likeliest sufferers.

  The one hint that had stuck in Annie Ruth's mind—she was on
ly half listening to the report as she lay in bed reading the morning paper—was the one she felt, on reflection, was the one she truly needed. Namely: don't go around telling everybody just how crazy you are. Keep your neurosis to yourself until you can share it with a qualified mental health professional.

  The doctor announced at the end of her segment that she was writing a book to be published the next spring on the subject. Annie Ruth made a note in her leather time organizer to buy it as soon as it hit the stores.

  The psychiatrist's advice was the only thing that had kept her from telling everyone on Flight 754 all the way from Los Angeles to Atlanta, and then her fellow passengers on the smaller prop Flight 1117 from Atlanta to Mulberry, about the strange sights she saw walking up and down the aisles.

  The cat sightings had begun a couple of weeks before when Betty intimated over the phone that Mudear didn't seem herself, that she had a terrible cough she couldn't seem to shake. Annie Ruth had tried for a number of days to pretend that she did not see what she thought she saw. But she couldn't. First, it was the big yellow tabby she thought she caught sight of in the makeup room. She had yelled, but the little fur ball had scampered off by the time someone came to see it ... and to see about her.