Ugly Ways

by Tina McElroy Ansa

  When Betty finally glanced over at Annie Ruth, she looked as if she had seen a ghost. And at the sight of her sister's face, Betty nearly paled, too.

  "Good God, Annie Ruth, what's wrong?"

  But Annie Ruth couldn't find her voice. It seemed frozen in her throat. So, she just kept shaking her head.

  Emily jumped out of the backseat and ran to Betty's side. "What in the world is the matter?"

  "I think this is too much for her, Emily. She's not up to seeing Mudear now."

  At first, Betty suggested that she and Emily go in to see to Mudear quickly while leaving Annie Ruth in the car. But then, they both looked down at Annie Ruth in the car and they hadn't the heart to leave their wild-eyed sister out there alone.

  Betty stood at the side of her car for a while with her hand still on the door handle. She was so torn.

  She could just picture Mudear inside the mortuary, lying there with no color in her face and her hair standing up all over her head from sweating in the hospital. She knew she could do something for her, make her look like her own self with some makeup and the hot curlers. It was her duty.

  But she kept glancing down at Annie Ruth in the car, curled up on the seat with her face buried in the upholstery as if she were afraid to look out the window at her sisters.

  "Y'all hold on a minute," Betty said and dashed into the building and was thankful to see one of the Parkinsons who worked with the bodies standing at the desk. Even though he didn't usually work with live customers, he came toward Betty with a solicitous mortician's face and his arms extended. Before Betty could lock her elbow with her arm stretched out in front of her to block the man's assault, he was on her, softly feeling her up through her flowing silky dress and murmuring cooing mournful sounds in her ear. Betty just sighed, counted slowly to three, giving the mortician time enough to caress her shoulder and back, then she broke his embrace and cut in on his running line.

  "Hi, Billy, thank you so much, I do, my whole family really appreciates your condolences and your assistance. Oh, they're fine, they're fine. You'll see them later on. Yeah, pretty as ever. You know, Billy, there is something you can do for me. My father wants to move the service up a couple of days. To tomorrow. Anytime. Thank you. Now, one more thing and I'll be out your way. Oh, what a sweet thing to say. Well, I have to go run a quick errand and I wanted to come back by here in a half an hour or so and do Mudear's hair and makeup. Yes, I know it's a closed casket service, but I still want to do this. Could you have her ready? Thank you, Billy. I knew you'd understand. You always were my favorite Parkinson. What? Oh, if you could have her in her casket so I can see how her hair is gonna look against the satin and everything, that would be wonderful. Uh-huh. The light oak. Yes, it is a beautiful thing. Very simple. Yes, just like my Mudear, beautiful and simple."

  When Betty ran out of the building to her car, Emily was already behind the wheel with the motor running. Betty jumped in back and Emily pulled off without saying a word.

  Betty felt she just knew what was going to happen on the ride home. Emily ought to have enough sense to see that Annie Ruth is in bad shape, Betty thought as Emily easily negotiated the late-morning traffic. But sure as she's born, no sooner will we turn the corner before Emily lights into her with some more of that talk about the baby.

  But Betty was wrong. Emily didn't say a word to Annie Ruth all the way back to Betty's house. As she drove, Emily kept her eye on Annie Ruth and two or three times reached over to pat her arm, but she didn't say a thing about a baby or anything else.

  Betty looked over the seat a few times to see how Annie Ruth was breathing, but she kept quiet, too. Once, Emily had to pull over to the curb to let Annie Ruth lean out her open door and retch into the sewers of Mulberry before driving off again.

  As they pulled into the long gravel driveway of Betty's house, Emily thought the car felt like it belonged in a funeral procession.

  CHAPTER 29

  It felt funny to Poppa to be off from work more than two days in a row. So, he rose at 6:00 A.M. as always and went down the hall quietly to the family bathroom to shower and shave as he did every weekday for work.

  Moving quickly around the family bathroom, he cleaned up after himself and left. He wanted to be finished and back in his room by the time Annie Ruth awoke. Poppa couldn't bear the thought of facing his youngest daughter after he had allowed himself to weaken and even cry in front of his child. A bit of the night before was still fuzzy in his mind as if he had been drinking. But he remembered enough to know he was ashamed and ought to be.

  Losing control of himself, knocking over his coffee cup, having to be put to bed. It woulda been better if I'da just told her the truth, he thought.

  Back in his room, dressed and ready for the day, he sat on the side of his bed. He didn't think about making the bed. Mudear liked her bed rumpled and loose so she could get back into it during the day if she liked. In a while, he heard Annie Ruth get up and start moving around the house, first in the bathroom then up and down the hall. She stopped at his door on her way toward the stairs and stood there listening awhile. Poppa didn't move a muscle. She knocked softly on the door. Poppa didn't respond. And after a while she went on downstairs.

  Down there, he could hear her moving around in the kitchen and rec room. When he heard the kitchen door close, he got up and went to the back window and watched Annie Ruth walk out to Mudear's garden. She gonna ruin those high-heeled boots, Poppa thought. He watched her stroll up and down the paths of cedar chips edged in white gravel looking over the garden and stopping every now and then to stoop and examine some plant or pot more closely.

  When she got to one of the garden's freestanding cedar swings, she sat down in her tight black outfit and high-heeled boots and began swinging with her cup of coffee in her hand.

  After a while, he heard Betty's car pull up in the driveway. He could tell it was Betty just by the sound of her car. How many times a week does she come out here to see 'bout us? he wondered.

  He stepped back from the window when he saw the girls look up to the house and point at his room. After a while, he heard them come in the house for Annie Ruth's things and then leave together.

  When he heard them pull off, he went downstairs. There was a yellow Post-It on the hall mirror from Betty: "We've gone to Parkinson's. Get something to eat."

  He didn't want anything to eat, but he made himself put one of the carrot raisin muffins Betty had left in the bread keeper for him into the microwave oven. He ate it slowly with a cup of Sanka as he stood at the back window overlooking Mudear's garden in back.

  He saw a number of things he knew Mudear would probably want him to do. The new camellia bushes she had ordered had arrived a few days before and he needed to dig some holes and get them planted. Mudear had told him where she planned to put them. It was time to do some pruning. It was a job Mudear enjoyed, but she had almost let it get away from her so late in the season.

  He looked at the big steel structure in the middle of the garden covered with vines and flowers and remembered the struggle it had been to get it moved and positioned just right. How his muscles had ached in his back and his legs.

  He hoped if he worked hard enough for a few hours now, he could tire himself out enough to be able to go downtown to the funeral home and face Mudear with her daughters. He wondered if Annie Ruth had already told the others about the spectacle he had put on the night before. He rinsed his empty coffee cup out and put it in the sink and headed outside to get the pruning shears.

  CHAPTER 30

  Even after Betty and Emily had brought Annie Ruth in the house, helped her to lie down in the living room on a comfortable overstuffed sofa, and fixed her a cup of herbal tea, she and Emily were still gravely concerned about their baby sister. For about an hour she had been deathly silent. Not even responding to her sisters' questions and suggestions. She lay tight and stiff on the sofa under a soft wool blanket Emily had spread over her with her clothes and boots still on. Emily took off her own sh
oes and settled into a chair across from the sofa to watch her.

  She still didn't respond to Emily, but Emily noticed after a while that she seemed to relax a bit and breathe evenly. Betty came in a few times from the library where she was trying to conduct some business over the phone—moving appointments around, conferring with her managers, canceling a trip to Aruba she had planned to take Cinque on after Thanksgiving, trying to reach Poppa—to check on Annie Ruth. But Emily, who sat reading a magazine and playing with her hair, would just look up, biting her bottom lip, and shake her head slowly.

  Annie Ruth lay quietly for about an hour more. Then, she started muttering a bit to herself. As Emily caught snatches of words and phrases, "There he is..." "It's a big one..." "No, a baby..." "Don't let 'em get me..." "Kill that cat..." she realized Annie Ruth was talking in her sleep.

  Finally, Emily walked over and gently shook her shoulder. "Annie Ruth? Annie Ruth?"

  Annie Ruth opened her eyes, then sat up laughing. Emily was relieved to see it.

  "What you dreaming about that's so funny?" Emily asked.

  "Annie Ruth. Betty. Emily," she said and started laughing again.

  This time, Annie Ruth's laughter did not make her feel better, it made her uncomfortable. It was as if she, Emily, were the butt of the joke.

  "What you laughing at, Annie Ruth?" she persisted, but she was uneasy.

  "Hell, do you know anybody else our age with names like Betty Jean and Emily Mae and, the best one of all, Annie Ruth?"

  Emily didn't know what Annie Ruth was talking about. She thought she might still be half asleep.

  "No, I'll answer that for you, no, you don't," Annie Ruth continued. "You know why? 'Cause other mothers put some time and thought and energy and, yes, let's say it, love into the naming of their children."

  Betty, hearing Annie Ruth's voice, came hurriedly into the living room smoking and smiling expectantly when she saw Annie Ruth sitting up. But as soon as she got in the room and saw her face and Emily's, she knew the situation hadn't gotten any better. Annie Ruth just kept on talking.

  "Hell, I would have preferred to be named Laquita or Chine-akqua or Shaquithra or Urethra or any of those names that people make fun of teenaged mothers for laying on their children. At least those mothers ... I can hear some of those young girls now talking about their babies and what they plan to name 'em. Maybe it's the name of their favorite actress on the soap operas or it's a name they made up and had to spell the best way they could. Or something they read somewhere. We did a story once at my TV station in Washington on names and a woman named her baby Female and pronounced it Fe-maul-i. She did. But she was so proud telling me how she saw it on a document and it reminded her right away of the kind of name she wished she had. And she just knew then that that was the kind of name she wanted to give to her litde girl."

  Betty came all the way in the room and leaned against the arm of the sofa Annie Ruth was sitting on. She could hear the pitch in her sister's voice going higher and higher. And she was getting more and more worried. She felt she should stay close by.

  "I asked Mudear one time why she named me Annie Ruth. She thought awhile and you know what she said? She said, 'I can't recall right now, daughter.' Good God, Betty, Emily, she didn't even remember why she named us what she did. And I finally figured out that the only reason she called us 'daughter' so much is that half the time she couldn't even remember what our real names were."

  Emily was picking up Annie Ruth's teacup full of cold sweet tea from the dear litde side table near the sofa, but she put it down and looked crestfallen at Annie Ruth's last remarks.

  "I always kinda liked it when she called me 'daughter,'" Emily said.

  Annie Ruth just shook her head at her sister. "Did you now, Emily?"

  Betty looked over at Annie Ruth in surprise at the depth of her sarcasm toward Emily. Annie Ruth continued looking at Emily.

  "Oh, you saw it as an endearment, huh, Emily?" Annie Ruth asked.

  Emily just shrugged.

  "Tell me, Em-Em, how many times did Mudear tell you she loved you?" Annie Ruth asked.

  Emily chuckled nervously and walked over to the wide mantel over the huge stone fireplace on the north wall of the room.

  "Yeah, I know," Annie Ruth said as she struggled to unwrap herself from the soft blanket Emily had placed over her. "If she ever said it to you at all, she probably said, 'I love you, daughter, but I hate your ways. You got ugly ways sometimes.'

  "Am I right? That's what she said. That was her expression of motherly love. I love you, but I hate the way you are," Annie Ruth said.

  "Annie Ruth, you know that was how she was." Emily was examining the crystal figures and onyx stones on the mantelpiece.

  "Well, I never believed her. Even when I was a little girl, I didn't believe her, I didn't believe she loved us. I think she really hated us."

  Emily spun around at the fireplace. "Speak for yourself! Maybe she hated you. But she didn't hate me!"

  "Oh, grow the fuck up, Emily," Annie Ruth shouted. "If she hated me, she hated you. She hated you, she hated me, she hated Betty, she hated Poppa, she hated the house she lived in, she hated Mulberry. She hated all of us. Don't you really know that? God, I am so sick of you playing that innocent shit. You've played it to death and I'm sick of it."

  Betty stood up. She had decided it was time to break this up. Even though they were all safely inside her big warm well-lit house sitting on beautiful old well-made furniture, sipping tea from bone china cups, Betty could feel the whole scene with all the Lovejoy women inside whirling out of control. But Annie Ruth brushed past her and rushed on.

  "Sister girls, I don't know about you, but I am sick and tired of a lot of stuff. I'm so tired of trying to pretend that she was something she wasn't. I'm so sick of coming home for holidays and sitting around the dinner table like nothing's wrong. And sending gifts home to Mudear like she was the mother goddess Giya as offerings. Like we got something to make up for. Then, sneaking around like scared children talking 'bout her in hushed tones, running our phone bills up going over and over something she did. And then, trying to pretend this is all perfectly normal."

  "Annie Ruth." Betty tried to interrupt. But her sister just turned on her with her eyes blazing.

  "Betty, you know you just as tired of this crazy shit as I am!" she shouted.

  Betty took a last draw on her cigarette and stubbed it out in a pretty flowered ashtray.

  "I was just gonna remind you, Annie Ruth, that Mudear is dead. And all that is behind us."

  "Behind us? Surely, you don't think this all just ends because Mudear's dead, do you? Hell, I got up last night to throw up and I smelled her, felt her in the bathroom. Shit, I feel her hanging around me all the time all the way out in that godforsaken L.A.

  "I'm so sick of pretending that we had something we didn't that I could just about die myself. But that's just the thing now, 'cause I'm gonna be a mama now and I want to turn loose some of this crazy shit. She's behind us now? God, girl, ya'll expect me to go out and have an abortion, get rid of my child because of the kind of mother we had. Does that sound like all this, all of Mudear's shit, is behind us? No! I don't want to not be a mother because I'm afraid Mudear's gonna jump out of me and ruin my child like she ruined us. I'm tired of her ruining my life. I won't have it anymore. And I won't have her ruining it from the grave."

  "See, Betty, I told you!" Emily stormed toward her big sister. "Annie Ruth wants to have this baby, wants to have Mudear's grandchild. I can only imagine how screwed up that poor child will be. Look at us!

  "Betty, say something! Say you agree with me. Say you haven't lost your mind or forgotten how it is to be Mudear's child or how it feel to be the crazy woman's child. Say something that make some sense. If you don't make sense, then what we gon' do?"

  Betty just took Emily's arm and sat her down in the nearest chair.

  Annie Ruth continued as if no one else had said anything.

  "I could think about Mudear s
ometimes and just think I want to die. I don't want to die anymore and finally, I don't think I am gonna die now. But Lord knows I do want a change.

  "Not by delving into it and discussing it and reliving it and being rehurt by it, but forgiving it and turning it loose and moving the hell on with it."

  Now, Annie Ruth was pacing back and forth over a deep rich maroon-design rug worn soft and thin with footsteps, dragging the baby-blue blanket behind her.

  "It's not like you and me and Emily don't know all the shit that's fucking up our lives. Sure, we know. Good God, Emily, how many thousands of dollars have you spent with your Dr. Axelton to find that out? I certainly know that none of us knows how to appreciate anything, knows how to find or even see joy in life 'cause we didn't never see that when we were growing up.

  "'I don't take a vanilla wafer for granted.' That's what she used to say. But it was a lie. She took everything for granted. And didn't give nothing in return. All in the name of her freedom.

  "We were never taught to appreciate anything, whether it was a roasted marshmallow on a stick or a ten-course meal. Shit, I've been sunning myself on the deck of a chartered sailboat in the Caribbean with folks running back and forth trying to please me. And in the middle of it I see my reflection in the brass work and my face is all screwed up and you'd think I was out in the hot sun digging ditches or down at the paper plant working like a man. And I have to remind myself, 'Enjoy this, Annie Ruth, enjoy this, girl, this is nice. Take that ugly look off your face. This is great.' But no, I'm sitting there chewing on some evil shit Mudear did to me or to you or to Emily back when, or something she said the last time I called. I'm sick of it."

  Annie Ruth kept talking and pacing in her high-heeled black boots. As she did, she also kept getting the blue blanket she trailed behind her caught between her legs and tripping over it. She jerked it free from her legs and threw one corner over her shoulder like a toga.