The Beautiful-Ugly (The Beautiful-Ugly Trilogy)

by James Snyder

  “Go to hell, Yolanda,” said Beatrice, with her back humped, and pretending to read her schoolbook.

  Yolanda laughed and looked at her, playfully squinting her eyes. “It ain’t so bad here, long as you mind the rules. You see, they give you fifty points when you get here, and that goes into what they call your bank account. Then when you obey the rules and do things right they give you more points, and when you don’t they take them away.”

  “What are points?” she asked.

  “Points like money or privileges,” said Yolanda. “You want to watch TV or go to the movie or do the mall run to Fresno on Saturdays, you got to give up points.”

  “You ain’t got the points, you don’t make the run,” another girl said, whose name she couldn’t remember.

  At dinnertime, she went with her cottage group over to the dining and recreational hall behind the main house. Yolanda showed her how to get her tray and go down the food line, where she watched the two chatty ladies there plop a scoop of mashed potatoes, a spoon of string beans, a piece of chicken, and a Jell-O cup on her plate.

  “That’s our table over there,” Yolanda told her.

  She started to follow her over there when she saw Eric across the room, sitting at another table, and went there instead.

  All the boys at the table looked up at her, standing there, holding her tray.

  “What are you doing, Con?” Eric asked.

  “Can’t I sit beside you?”

  “No, you have to go back.”

  She saw some of the boys laughing and whispering to each other.

  One of the men residents came over to her. “Young lady, you need to go back to your table.”

  Eric motioned his head for her to leave, and finally she did, walking slowly back to her own table.

  “Where you off to, little biscuit?” Yolanda asked her. “Didn’t I tell you the group got to hang?”

  “Dummy,” Beatrice said. “Boys and girls can’t sit together; it’s not allowed.”

  “But he’s my brother,” she explained.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Beatrice said, “there’re rules we have to obey. Don’t you know about rules?”

  Of course she knew about rules, but she still didn’t see why she couldn’t sit beside Eric. He was all she had left from her family, and now they had to eat apart. It wasn’t fair. But then nothing seemed fair anymore, and so she sat down in her chair and began to eat. The food was a little better than the Johnsons’, but not as good as her mother’s. She thought about her mother’s stuffed meatballs and mushroom sauce and wanted to cry, sitting there, eating two or three bites of her pasty potatoes. Next, she took a bite of her chicken, but it was dry; so she ate her string beans instead, before pushing away her plate.

  “Can I have your chicken?” Beatrice asked her, and she nodded.

  Beatrice’s big hand came swooshing past her, and the piece of chicken disappeared.

  Now, slowly, sadly, she ate her Jell-O cup, and was little comforted that was still the same. It tasted like her mother’s Jell-O, except there were no peaches. And she thought she would have given anything in the world at that moment to find a slice of cold sweet peach, hidden inside, she could mash between her teeth and tongue.

  *

  Yolanda explained to her that after dinner was free time until nine, when everyone had to be back in their cottages for the count. “You want to be with your brother, you better go do it now. But make sure you’re back on time. The night res’ll be by with her clipboard and take away points if you’re late.”

  She had decided she hated points, she thought as she went looking for Eric. They could have all her points—she didn’t care.

  When she found him, they wandered about until they found a bench beneath an old crooked shade tree, farthest away from everyone else they could find, and sat there reading the small brass plate on the upper slat: This bench has been donated to the Pilgrims Mercy State Children’s Home by their friends at Fiesta Markets in Fresno, California. It was made from over 5,000 recycled Fiesta plastic shopping bags to help save our environment. We hope it also helps make your life a little easier.

  “What’s your cottage like?” she asked him.

  “Same as yours, I guess.”

  “What about the other boys, Eric? Are they nice?”

  He didn’t want to talk about it.

  They sat there listening to the surrounding noises. She heard a train horn somewhere and people talking and someone playing hip-hop music, which she was starting to like.

  She looked at her brother. “Do you think we’ll ever have a real home again?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Con. I guess we will. It’s hard to say.”

  Now she thought about that: being in a new home, a new family. She liked that, and, yet, she didn’t. She wanted her old family back. She wanted her real mother and father. She didn’t care if other people said they were dead. She hadn’t seen them dead, so they might still be alive. They could be, couldn’t they?

  She said, “What if mom and dad came here right now, out of the dark, to take us both away. Would you go with them?”

  “Of course I would,” he said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.” She sat there waiting, staring into the darkness before her, but nothing happened. She sighed and listened to the music instead.

  “The important thing,” Eric said, “is that we stay together. As long as we’re together, we’ve still got our family.”

  Now she looked at him again. She had never considered that before—that, for some reason, they might not be together, always. Now she held his arm, leaning against him. When the music stopped playing, silence momentarily surrounded them. On one of the tree limbs overhead a bird appeared, a blue jay, her father’s favorite bird. Shortly, another jay joined it, and she watched the two fret and dance about the limb, looking down at them. She noticed the way one of the birds turned its head to the side, curiously watching her, and a chill went through her, as she squeezed Eric’s arm, and the two birds flew away together into the night.

  Chapter 5

  The School

  In the morning Anne drove her and Eric over to Rio Valero Elementary School and enrolled them. Connelly thought this school was so different from Hawthorn-Regent, their school in San Francisco. It was a flat brick building at the edge of an enormous field filled with dry-looking weeds.

  There was a moment of confusion when the lady in the office argued with Anne about what grade to put them in.

  “The girl should be in first grade and the boy in fourth,” she said.

  “But their records indicate they were moved to the next grade,” Anne said.

  The lady looked at them standing there and said, “Well, it isn’t fair to the other children.”

  Anne said, “Well, it isn’t fair to them either. Obviously there’s a reason they were moved ahead.”

  The lady pinched her mouth together and went to get the principal. He was an older, smiling, white-haired man who invited the three of them into his office and said, “So we’ve got a couple of scholars on our hands, have we?”

  Connelly watched him, sitting behind his desk, looking through their yellow, children’s-home folders. Then he had them both read from their primers—first her, then Eric. Finally, he called in the lady from the office and told her to let them stay in the grades they had been assigned.

  “Yes, Mr. Ramirez,” the lady said, pinching her mouth again.

  Afterward, Anne told them they were on their own now. “Good luck,” she said. “Your lunch tickets are paid automatically. And make sure you get on the right bus. Most of them come by the home. Just find the kids in your cottage group and go with them. I’ll see you after school, okay?”

  Then she was gone.

  Now Connelly and Eric were also separated. She watched him go down the hallway one way, his new green, Pilgrims Mercy backpack on his back, following the monitor. One of the older girls came and took her the other way, and she adjusted her own backpack
and followed behind her. She wanted to ask her something—anything to calm herself; but the girl didn’t say anything to her, and at the classroom door she just pointed and walked away.

  Connelly swallowed and opened the door. The room was filled with faces that now turned toward her. The teacher stood in front of the class, looking at her.

  “You’re from the home,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Did the office give you a paper?”

  She shook her head.

  The teacher sighed. “Then go sit down—there.” She pointed.

  Slowly, Connelly walked between the rows of desks, feeling everyone’s eyes on her, passing.

  “Hurry,” the teacher called. “You’re disrupting the class, moving so slowly.”

  There was a titter of laughter, then a noise in another part of the room, when she heard the teacher say angrily, “Alberto—deje de jugar!”

  “Chingalo,” a boy’s tired voice replied.

  Everyone laughed.

  She removed her backpack and sat down, placing the pack by her feet. As soon as the teacher began talking again, someone poked her from behind. She turned around, and a big, flat-faced boy sat there, smiling. He ran his tongue slowly over his lips, still smiling, and she turned away. He poked her again, and she didn’t turn this time. She heard another voice whisper: “Chinga, chinga, chinga.” And then she heard the quiet laughter around her, when the voice came again: “Chinga, chinga, chinga.” Like a scratchy tinkling bell.

  She listened to the teacher. They were doing numbers, which, she realized, she already knew. They went very slowly, she saw, first in English, then Spanish. She remembered Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez were Spanish. They lived down the hall from their apartment and would talk noisily to each other, going back and forth to the elevator. They owned a small restaurant on Market Street, and one time her father took the four of them there to eat. They ate something very hot and spicy, and her father and Mr. Rodriguez talked in Spanish and English. And after they ate, Mrs. Rodriguez brought out her and Eric each a small ice cream cone, which felt wonderful to her mouth, still burning from the food.

  The boy behind poked her again. “Chinga, chinga, chinga,” he said in a deep whisper.

  That’s when she heard someone else quietly say, “You fucking pilgrims.”

  *

  At lunch she was relieved to discover her cottage group in one corner of the cafeteria. Yolanda said, “Hey there, little biscuit, you come sit with your homeys, awright?” And she hugged her and Connelly felt a little like when her mother hugged her, and she hungrily ate all her food, except her roll, which she gave to Beatrice.

  When someone asked her how she liked her class, she said okay. That wasn’t the truth, she knew, but she didn’t want to complain. Still, she felt they knew anyway.

  Yolanda said, “The town folk here don’t care too much for the orphanage kids. They think we a burden, even though the state pay them good for letting us use the school and all.”

  “Even the local Mexicans don’t like us out-of-town Mexicans,” said Camerina.

  “That’s the truth,” Maribel said. “Shit, and they mostly just fruit pickers and tannery workers. Half of’em ain’t nothin’ but wetback border-orphans themselves.”

  “Just don’t let no one touch you, girl,” Julie told her. Julie was beautiful, with long blond hair and blue eyes. She seemed like an angel. “You do know about touching, don’t you?”

  Now all the girls at the table hovered near her.

  Yolanda said, “Your mama ever teach you about touching, little biscuit?”

  “Yes,” she said, embarrassed. “She told me to tell her or my father if someone touched me there.”

  “Where’s there?” Camerina insisted.

  She reluctantly pointed down to her private area.

  “That’s right,” Yolanda said, hugging her again. “That sweet little joy-box belong to you and no one else, and don’t you ever forget it, hear me?”

  She nodded.

  All the girls were giggling and whispering around her.

  Maribel said, “That’s right, cause some day some boy’s gonna come along—”

  “That be the right boy,” Yolanda said, “at the right time.”

  “And he’ll want to touch you there,” Camerina added.

  “And then you’ll have to decide,” said Julie, winking at her. “Is he the real thing or not?”

  Yolanda began to sing and sashay back and forth: “Oh, he the real thing…”

  The other girls joined in singing and swaying, “Yeah, the real thing…”

  Everyone was laughing and talking now, Connelly noticed, except Beatrice, who, to her surprise, sat there with her head down, eating her chocolate pudding and crying.

  She asked her, “What’s the matter, Beatrice?”

  Beatrice shook her lowered head, quickly spooning another bite of pudding into her mouth.

  Yolanda put her arm around her again, squeezing her. “Oh, little girl, Miss Bea awright. She just thinking about something else, that’s all.”

  But the happy spell was broken, and the girls began to talk about other things, until the bell rang, returning them to classes.

  *

  That night Martha was gone. They went to dinner, and when they returned, her bed had been stripped.

  No one else seemed surprised, but Connelly asked Yolanda what happened to her.

  “She got fostered out, baby. What—you think we all gonna stay together like one big happy family?”

  She didn’t know what she thought, except the suddenness of change, surrounding her now, made her feel a way she had never felt before. Her home, before, living with her mommy and daddy, had never been like that. They would never have allowed that: changing, changing constantly. Everything always different than the moment before. Nothing you could get used to. Nothing you could count on—ever, not for one breath, it seemed. She didn’t know what she thought. She was afraid even to think, in fact, because the next moment would be something different, and she would have to think something else. Instead, she sat on her bed, holding Priscilla and staring at Martha’s bare bed. She wondered where she went. And who had taken her there. And what would her life be now. She wondered that, looking at the other girls, moving around the room, doing the little things they did each night, as if their lives there would go on forever.

  *

  In the morning at school, with the teacher yelling in Spanish at the boys across the room, and the other boys, around her, poking her back and whispering things to her she couldn’t understand, another older girl appeared at the door with a note.

  The teacher said simply, “Connelly Pierce, you go with her. Take your things with you.”

  The girl, saying nothing, escorted her to the office. There, Mr. Ramirez brought her into his office where she saw someone else sitting.

  “Connelly,” he said, “this is Mrs. McDonough. She teaches our best second grade class here, and I’m putting you in her care.”

  Connelly barely heard what he was saying. She was looking instead at Mrs. McDonough’s hair, which was prettily long and brown and parted on the side, just like her mother’s.

  “Hello, Connelly,” Mrs. McDonough said, standing up and coming over to her, taking her hand. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’ve heard you’re a good reader. That’s great, because we do lots of reading in our class.”

  Connelly wanted to swoon, because the way Mrs. McDonough stood, a little to the side, with her hair coming down over one eye was also like her mother. So pretty like her mother.

  She felt dizzy, walking down the hall, holding tightly to Mrs. McDonough’s hand, watching her out the corner of her eye. The teacher was telling her all the things they did in class, but she really didn’t hear her. Finally, Mrs. McDonough stopped and asked her, “Connelly, is everything all right?”

  She felt her face go hot, as she nodded.

  Mrs. McDonough stood with her in front of the class and introduced her, and everyone said hello. Then she showed h
er where to sit—in the very center front-row seat. “This is our new kid’s desk,” Mrs. McDonough explained. “So you don’t miss anything. Then, once you’re comfortable, you can move somewhere else if you’d like.”

  She sat at the desk, setting her pack aside, and listened to everyone read, and looked at the blackboard on which someone had written: A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea. But mostly she watched Mrs. McDonough move about the room—the way she moved, the way she talked, the way she smiled—dreamily watching her, until she realized the teacher was standing right in front of her, saying, “Connelly, are you still with us? Everyone would like to hear you read the next page. Would you do that for us?”

  “Yes ma’am,” she said, her ears burning, turning the page and beginning to read.

  Chapter 6

  The Special

  That afternoon when Connelly got back to the cottage, Martha’s bed was made up. The other girls looked in her drawer, and there was underwear and a few tops. They all ran to the long walk-in closet, next to the bathroom, and there were things hanging in Martha’s spot: A ragged blue-nylon coat and sweater and two old dresses. Dirty sneakers sat on the floor beneath.

  “I know them things,” Yolanda said. “Them’s that Sara girl’s. What’s her name?”

  “Gill,” said Camerina. “Sara Gill. She’s one of the specials.”

  Everyone stood there, staring at the clothes.

  “Special what?” Connelly asked.

  “Special cases,” Beatrice said. “Like I was.”

  Now everyone went slowly back and sat on their beds, waiting.

  Yolanda said, “I hear she come up from Patton State.”

  Everyone sat there quietly, Connelly saw, as if they were all drifting away, wrapped up in their own thoughts.

  “I don’t understand,” she interrupted the silence. “What’s going on?”