Pretty Hate (New Adult Novel)

by Ayers, Ava

  I took the photo off the line and ran into the house. Rebel Love and Sadie were cooking in the kitchen and Ivory-Lou was shouting orders.

  “Now, don’t overcook the spaghetti. Ain’t nothing worse than mushy noodles. Hey, zombie, you been up all night again? Your sister is gonna be here soon. Try and look decent so she don’t think I’ve been abusing your ass.”

  “Beth,” Rebel Love said as she turned from the stove, “I want to do something and I would really like you to agree.”

  “What?”

  “I want to invite Mama and Merry-Bell to supper. Just one night, Beth. Is that okay?”

  “Fine,” I said, “invite them.”

  “Well, that was easy,” Rebel Love said and smiled as she looked at Ivory-Lou.

  “I tell you what,” Ivory-Lou said as he sipped on a Bloody Mary, “if your bat-shit aunty asks me if I want any fried chicken or watermelon again, I’m gonna give her what for!”

  “She’s racist, baby,” Rebel Love said and sighed. “She’s from a different time.”

  “She’s from a different goddamn planet,” Ivory-Lou said and snapped his newspaper.

  “Rebel Love, I want you to look at this photograph,” I said as I handed her the picture.

  Rebel Love stared at the 8x10 color picture and smiled.

  “Oh my God, Beth, it’s you!” she said “When was this?”

  “It was one of our performances. I thought maybe you’d remember,” I said.

  “Holy shit, this is the Go Your Own Way picture! I so remember that,” she said and turned to Ivory-Lou. “I always loved doing the Pat Benatar songs. Anyway, this day, we dressed Bethy up and chose Go Your Own Way for her. Man, she was amazing.”

  “Fuck is Go Your Own Way?”

  “Baby! You cannot be serious,” Rebel Love said.

  “You forget, he was probably listening to El Debarge and Bobby Brown. It’s a Fleetwood Mac song. They’re a band.”

  “I know what the fuck Fleetwood Mac is!”

  “Look at the picture again, Rebel Love,” I said.

  “What am I looking for?” she said as she stared at the picture. “Oh, shit! How did I miss that?”

  “What?” Ivory-Lou said.

  Rebel Love handed Ivory-Lou the photograph and he stared at it. When he saw what we saw he smiled.

  “Guess she was watching,” Ivory-Lou said and nodded.

  Mazie Goodnight arrived a few hours later and she was very much the beautiful girl she was when she first went off to school. I took her into the darkroom and her eyes filled with tears.

  “It’s beautiful, Beth. How come you never told anyone this is what you wanted?”

  “Because, you went first,” I said and stared at some pictures I just hung when Nicolas and I went to Glade Creek.

  “So?” she said and stood next to me and stared at the pictures.

  “So, I didn’t think I could say it because you went first. Mama would have said I was a copycat or it was a stupid idea or something like that.”

  “You’re really good, Beth,” she said and put her arm around me. “You need to pursue this. I mean, do you want to?”

  “I think I do. I get lost when I’m doing this, you know?”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “But sometimes, I hear these voices as I’m working so hard on this that tell me to stop or that it’s a useless pursuit or that I suck. I wonder if I’m wasting my time.”

  “That’s normal, Beth. I feel it, everyone does. It’s called doubt. You just have to push past it. Hey, that picture of you is awesome,” Mazie said as she stared at the only photo in existence of me and Nicolas. “Is that the infamous Nicolas? He’s really hot.”

  “Yes,” I said and sighed as I stared at the picture.

  “You should scan it and send it to him, Beth. How long has it been since you’ve talked to him?”

  “Oh, since before the face like a can of smashed assholes comment heard ‘round the world. He doesn’t want to talk to me, Mazie. I stupidly listened to India and was really rude to him. I, once again, assumed rather than took a shot and asked the question.”

  “Send it to him, Beth. It’s been a while and at the very least, it may leave him with good memories of you rather than thinking of you as the girl who assumed he liked girls who have faces like cans of smashed assholes.”

  “I will think on it,” I said as I stared at the picture.

  As we set the table we joked around and I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much. Even Ivory-Lou was in a good mood as he made Sangria for our dinner.

  “Rebel Love told me Billy Rider died a few weeks ago,” Mazie Goodnight said as she folded the cloth napkins Rebel wanted on the table.

  “Yeah,” I said and stared at Ivory-Lou. “The baby will be coming soon. It’s better this way, I suppose.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The doorbell rang and we all fought over who should answer the door.

  “I will answer the door,” Ivory-Lou said as he pushed us all aside and walked into the foyer. “I am still the man of this house!”

  He opened the door and my mother and Merry-Bell stood in the doorway. My mother looked nervous and Merry-Bell smiled and held out a pink Jell-o mold.

  “Made it myself,” she said and smiled at Ivory-Lou. “It’s watermelon.”

  Ivory-Lou looked down at her and took a deep breath.

  “Never had no bat-shit crazy white aunty cross my threshold before.”

  “First time for everything,” she said and walked around him and into the house.

  Mazie Goodnight gave Merry-Bell a hug then ran to our mother and hugged her. Mama stared at me over Mazie’s shoulder with tears in her eyes.

  “Cheese and crackers, you got yourself a big place!” Merry-Bell said as she walked in a circle in the living room. “You get this all from slinging tail? I’d probably be good at that.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did,” Ivory-Lou said. “May I take your coat?”

  “Listen to this one...may I take your coat,” Merry-Bell said and snorted. “You been watching the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?”

  “Merry-Bell, easy on the comments,” my mother said. “He’s a good man.”

  “I ain’t never said he wasn’t a good man. Long as he’s good to Rebel Love, he’s okay in my book. You good to Rebel Love?” she said and looked up at him.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ivory-Lou said and looked down at her.

  “You don’t shit where you eat, do you?”

  “Ma’am?” he said.

  “My niece is special. Don’t you go treating her like one of them loosey-goosey girls.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said and sighed as he took Merry-Bell’s coat.

  We all sat at the table and Mazie Goodnight proposed a toast and Merry-Bell said grace and thanked Jesus for little white babies and little black babies holding hands. Rebel Love stared at me across the table and winked.

  “Show Mama what you did for her, Beth. Mama,” she said and looked down the table at my mother, “Beth made you a gift.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’d call it a gift,” I said.

  “Show her!” Rebel Love said as she twirled her spaghetti on her fork.

  I grabbed the photograph off the counter and walked around table and knelt beside my mother’s chair.

  “What did you do?” my mother said and shook her head.

  “Um, I want you to have this. I developed it in--”

  “Beth built her own darkroom, all by herself,” Mazie Goodnight said. “She is an amazing photographer. She really has the eye, Mama. She’s going to be very successful.”

  “Photographer?” my mother said and stared at me. “I didn’t even know...”

  “I never told anyone,” I said and handed her the photo. “I want you to have this.”

  My mother stared at the photograph and shook her head as her eyes watered. Big drops of tears dripped onto the picture as she looked down at it.

  “I’m gonna ruin it,” she
said and wiped her eyes.

  “The thing about this picture, Mama, the first thing I noticed, was you. Do you see yourself?” I said.

  In the photo, I held a broom that we used for a microphone wearing one of the few dresses my mother owned. My mother stood in the corner and the sun shone through the window and covered her in warm light. She was absolutely gorgeous. There were no bags under her tired eyes or swollen cheeks from the alcohol. And she had a smile on her face as she watched me sing that went from ear to ear.

  “I see you,” she said and looked at me. “And I see me.”

  “You look beautiful in this picture, Mama...so happy.”

  “I was happy, Beth,” she said and closed her eyes, “I was watching you.”

  I won’t say that my relationship with my mother was fantastic after that, but when I showed her another side to herself, things seemed to improve.

  A few weeks later, I was in the darkroom and scanned the picture of me and Nicolas into my computer. I attached it in an email to him with a note that only said: I’m sorry.

  “We’ll see if he responds,” I said and pressed send.

  “Beth,” Rebel Love said as she knocked on the darkroom door, “can we come in?”

  “Yeah, lights are on, it’s open.”

  “Beth?” Rebel Love said and tapped me on the shoulder.

  I turned around and looked at her and Ivory-Lou.

  “What’s up? Are you crying?” I said and stood.

  “Oh, Beth,” Rebel Love said and cried, “I can’t...”

  “What happened? Is it Mama? Tell me!”

  “Your sister got a call,” Ivory-Lou said. “Bad news...sit down, Beth.”

  “I’m about to pass out here, Ivory-Lou. You tell me what happened!”

  “Uh,” he said and took a deep breath, “it’s India. She committed...she killed herself, Beth.”

  I fell back into my stool and stared at them.

  “Lucia called me,” Rebel Love said. “India had my number pinned to her cork board.”

  “Yeah,” I said and ran my fingers through my hair, “I gave it to her before I went to Montauk in case she ever couldn’t get ahold of me. How?”

  “She uh, oh, Beth, she hung herself,” Rebel Love said and looked at the floor. “Lucia said she tried to call you, she said that you were her best friend and she wanted to tell you before you saw it on Facebook or something.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said and stared at Ivory-Lou. “I don’t know how I feel.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to feel anything if you don’t want.”

  “There’s a...ceremony,” Rebel Love said and cleared her throat. “Lucia said that she would never have a funeral for anyone. She called it a, um, a reabsorption ceremony. It’s at their house. She asked if we, that is, you and your family, would attend. Uh, the more the merrier, she said.”

  “I don’t know,” I said and shook my head.

  “I told your sister that there was no way in hell you were going to go, but your sister seems to think it’s a good idea. What did you say, baby, oh, so you could have closure on this relationship. I’m on the fence.”

  “We would like to go and support you, Beth. It is one day and I think it’s important. I know she did you wrong and you don’t have to forgive her for that, but this girl was in so much pain, Beth, it just hurts my heart. And then I think of you, Bethy, and I wonder if you’ve ever been in that much pain, I just can’t imagine,” she said and cried.

  I looked at the picture of Nicolas as tears slid down my face.

  “She called me so many times,” I said. “I shouldn’t have turned my back like that.”

  “You walked in on her having sex with your man, Beth,” Ivory-Lou said and shook his head. “Don’t go feeling guilty about this.”

  “We were all on drugs, Ivory-Lou. Christ, I almost had sex with a Swedish hand model named Ingrid except India was already in the bed with Declan.”

  Ivory-Lou raised his eyebrows as he stared at me.

  “Be that as it may,” he said and shook his head, “you could not have done a thing to prevent this.”

  “I prevented it that night we sang the song to her. I was sure that she was going to do it that night and we stopped her.”

  “Which furthers my point,” he said. “She was suicidal from the get and she was gonna do it no matter what.”

  “None of this matters,” Rebel Love said and wiped her face. “It is, unfortunately, done. The, um, reabsorption ceremony is the day after tomorrow. If you want to go, we will go with you. Not so much for India, Beth, but for you.”

  “But, how?”

  “Declan...Lucia said he’s offered his plane,” Rebel Love said.

  “Is he going to be there?” I said and shook my head. “I don’t--”

  “No. Lucia said he’s in Japan.”

  “I told your sister there was no way you’d take that ass clown up on that, even if you wanted to go to the malnutrition ceremony.”

  “Reabsorption, baby,” Rebel Love said.

  “Whatever. Beth doesn’t need no fancy private plane ride as an apology. That’s all he’s doing.”

  I turned around in my stool and looked at the photographs I printed of my family. I thought of India’s life, how jealous I was when I went to Montauk and the horrible things I said to my mother.

  “Do you think Mama would have been a different person if she had a life like Lucia’s? Would we have grown into different people?” I said.

  “Well, sure,” Rebel Love said. “It would have been impossible not to. Now, would we have had a better life? I don’t know.”

  “India’s dead, Beth,” Ivory-Lou said. “She had all those things and look what happened to her.”

  “Yeah, but if Mama had those opportunities; the whole family,” I said. “Take Merry-Bell, I met people at India’s that were a thousand times crazier than her and--”

  “Nope, that is not possible,” Ivory-Lou said and crossed his arms. “Ain’t no one crazier than her.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “But the difference is if Merry-Bell had all that money she would just be considered artistic or, even better, eccentric. If Merry-Bell was rich like them, swimming in a public fountain naked would have been considered her interpretation of a Fellini movie or something. But when dirt poor Merry-Bell swam naked in the fountain, she’s convicted crazy.”

  “Don’t matter,” Ivory-Lou said. “Bat-shit is bat-shit. I don’t give a damn how much money’s in the bank account.”

  “Don’t you see?” I said. “Merry-Bell knows everyone thinks she’s nuts, same way Mama knows people, Mama included, think she’s a loser. But throw the money in there, or at least the lifestyle, and Merry-Bell is an eccentric artist and Mama is this romantic character straight out of a Victorian novel pining for her lover lost at sea. And what’s more, they think that of themselves too. They no longer have anyone standing on their necks. They are free to be whoever and whatever they want.”

  “Sure,” Rebel Love said, “it would have been nice to give them that kind of hope, but we did not grow up like that.”

  I looked down at the floor and took a deep breath.

  “We will take the plane to Montauk,” I said. “We will all go, Mama and Merry-Bell included. I want them to see what I saw.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Ivory-Lou said.

  “I think it’s a perfect idea,” Rebel Love said. “Besides, that fucker owes my sister a lot more than a tankful of gas in his private jet. And we have never taken a trip together, sad occasion that it is, except that one time Mama drove us to South of The Boarder in South Carolina and Merry-Bell’s dog, Dusty Roads, threw up all over us the whole way.”

  “That ain’t what I’m talking about, baby,” Ivory Lou said. “I’m talking about Aunty Loopy. You take that woman out of her environment and she’s gonna be more of a lunatic than she already is.”

  “Who cares?” I said. “It is who we are. We are a tribe.�
��

  Rebel Love looked at me and smiled.

  “Fine,” Ivory-Lou said and pointed at me. “Don’t you dare ask me for help when she goes motherfucking Rain Man in New York. I done told you, Beth.”

  As I packed for the trip to Montauk, I put the picture of me and Nicolas and the copy of The Stranger he gave me into the suitcase in case he came to the reabsorption ceremony.

  “You almost ready?” Ivory-Lou said and came into my room.

  “Yeah, I think I have everything,” I said. “You ready?”

  “I’m flying on a private plane with four crazy white bitches to another crazy white bitch’s house so I can be the only black man in the history of black men to go to something called a reabsorption ceremony for some really crazy white bitch. Yeah, I’m ready.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  At five-thirty in the morning, me, Ivory-Lou and Rebel Love sat outside the airport in Charleston and stared at Declan’s plane as Ivory-Lou chain smoked and we waited for my mother and Merry-Bell.

  “Does that tire look flat?” Ivory-Lou said and pointed at the right tire on the plane.

  “Not to me,” I said. “Anyway, we’re not going to be using the tires.

  “It was really kind of you to invite Mama and Merry-Bell,” Rebel Love said as she stared at the jet. “You know, this is something that they would have never experienced in their entire lives if it wasn’t for you?”

  “Well, hopefully the plane doesn’t go down because I’d never hear the end of it from our mother.”

  “Don’t even joke around about that shit!” Ivory-Lou said as he dragged on his cigarette.

  “What is wrong with you?” I said and stared at him. “Oh, shit, you’re scared to fly!”

  “No, I am not.”

  “You are! You’re sweating like a pig and it’s not even fifty degrees.”

  “Okay, I get a little nervous, but I take a pill and I calm down. Should I take my pill now, baby?” Ivory-Lou said to Rebel Love.

  “Yes,” she said as she looked at her watch, “it’s time.”

  “Mama just pulled up,” I said as I looked across the private parking lot for the private plane passengers.