The Beautiful-Ugly (The Beautiful-Ugly Trilogy)

by James Snyder

  Now when she brought a painting back to the cottage, sometimes one of the other girls would notice it, and sometimes not. And once, when she painted a red cow like her father had done, and taped it on the wall above her bed, Beatrice said, “What’s that—a dog?”

  “No, Beatrice, it’s a cow,” she told her.

  “Well, it looks like a dog to me. A deformed one at that.”

  Still, she kept it there where she could see it when she woke up each morning.

  *

  Another day she and Eric were sitting on their bench, talking, when some boys from the older boys’ cottage came by and began teasing them. One boy took Eric’s glasses, and he chased him. Then another boy tried to put his hand down her shirt, and she screamed, slapping at him.

  That’s when a voice made everything stop: “Hey now!” it came from somewhere behind, startling her. “Hey!”

  It was the same odd raggedy voice she’d heard their first day there, like feet dragging over gravel. Then she saw him come around the bench and stand there, hands on hips. It was that same old black man, short and round as a barrel, the same towel still draped around his neck, except now he wasn’t smiling. He looked mean, in fact.

  He said, “Y’all c’mon over here. C’mon now.”

  All the boys lined up before him, except Eric, who came back and sat beside her on the bench. Now they both watched the man.

  He looked at the boys meanly for a moment, then said, “What y’all got to say about it?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Pete,” one of the boys said.

  “You damn right, nothing,” he said. “‘Cept messing with my lil pilgrims.” He shook his head. “How many you boys want me to go tell your res about this?”

  “None of us, Mr. Pete,” said another boy quietly.

  “Say what?” the man growled.

  Then all the boys shouted: “None of us, Mr. Pete!”

  She watched him still look meanly at all of them, like he would go tell the res right at that moment.

  Instead, he said, pointing, “You—give the boy his glasses back.”

  The boy who took Eric’s glasses came over to the bench and handed them to him.

  “Now tell him you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry,” the boy mumbled.

  “You—” He pointed to another boy. “You lose something down that young lady’s blouse?”

  “No sir.”

  He glared at him. “You do something like that again, I’ll break your damn fingers first, then go tell your res—you understand me?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “So what you got to say?”

  The boy looked over at her and said, “I’m sorry.”

  The man said, “Now y’all go on, before I put a whupping on you your granddaddies gonna stand up and feel.”

  When they were gone she was surprised to see the meanness in the man’s face disappear. He chuckled and came over and sat down on the bench, lighting a cigarette and telling them, “They ain’t mean boys, no. Just bored with bad coming on top of worse, I reckon.”

  As he smoked, they watched a tiny tractor moving through the middle of the big field before them. A cloud of dust followed behind the tractor, dissolving into the blue sky.

  He said, “If the good Lord don’t provide us some rain soon, that wheat’s gonna up and blow away. Then I might not get my Wheaties.” He looked over at them. “Y’all like Wheaties?”

  They both nodded.

  He said, “I got to have my Wheaties every morning, first thing, with a cup of good chicory coffee—mmmm, mmmm.”

  He looked at them again. “Now how ‘bout that chicory coffee—you like that too?”

  Eric said, “Our parents never let us drink coffee.”

  Now Connelly added, “Only our father drank coffee. Our mother drank tea.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” he said, nodding his head. “And you always want to listen to your folks now, don’t you.”

  She saw Eric lower his head, and she didn’t say anything either.

  Meanwhile, the man was looking at them both, and finally said, “Lookee here now—anyone around here cause you any more problems, you come see Mr. Pete, you understand?”

  They nodded again.

  “Meanwhile, I got to get back to work,” he said. “Mercy don’t pay me to sit here all day long and socialize with our lil pilgrims.” Then she saw him hold out his cigarette before him and twirl it between his fingers. He saw her watching him and said, “That’s called field-dressing a cigarette. Learned it in the Army. Either you two ever field-dress a cigarette before?”

  “Not hardly,” she told him, amazed he would even ask them that.

  “Not—what?” he said, sounding surprised. Then he laughed, his laugh sounding deep and happy inside himself, standing up and walking off, still laughing and shaking his head, talking with himself.

  *

  Once, when she had to talk with a therapist, Anne told her, “Don’t worry. They just want to see how you’re doing. She’ll talk with you and Eric, and do a report. You know, some people pay lots of money for that.”

  She didn’t see why. The lady was nice and asked her how she was getting along? Did she think about her parents much? Were things bothering her? Did she have good dreams or bad dreams? What did she think about this or that? She didn’t tell her much. Actually, she preferred just talking with Anne or Mrs. McDonough at school, or the girls in her cottage group, or sometimes Mr. Pete, or, mostly, Eric, who understood her—the way she saw and felt things now—better than anyone.

  “We got to be careful who we trust, Con,” he told her once, near the end of school. “Mom told me that, not long before she died. She said her and dad were the only people we could ever really totally trust. She said other people weren’t the same as parents. They had their own lives. But parents’ lives and their kids’ lives were the same. There wasn’t any difference. So you could trust them.”

  “But they’re dead now, Eric,” she told him.

  “That doesn’t matter. Other people are still the same. We’ve got to be careful, that’s all.”

  And the look in his eyes, sitting beside her on the bench, and the moon shining down, and the insects singing like waves of noise, seeming to wash over them, before going somewhere back into the dark.

  *

  Another time, Anne took her with her on an “emergency run,” as she called it. That was a trip to the wholesale warehouse in Fresno, where she bought things the home needed, until the delivery trucks could come.

  It was a wonderful trip, riding in the van to the big brightly lit warehouse, and all the things she saw and wished she could have, and all the people around them, the excitement seeming to fill up the entire room.

  Then afterward, Anne brought her over to the little café in one corner of the warehouse for a strawberry soda, just like her father sometimes did. That’s when the thought came over her. And for the very first time she really, really understood that she could never do anything like that with him—with either of them—again. Then she thought of all the other things she could never do with them. For her whole life. And it was suddenly like a terrible knife, cutting through her stomach, into her heart, and she caught her breath.

  “What’s the matter?” Anne asked her, looking over.

  But she couldn’t help herself. So Anne moved over beside her and held her, letting her cry against her, surrounded by the enormous, bright, happy, colorful room, not stopping.

  *

  One day Julie had to leave. She was upset because school still wasn’t over and she didn’t know what would happen. Her caseworker didn’t know either, but she still had to go. So she packed her things, crying, as all the girls in the cottage tried to calm her.

  Yolanda said, “Con, you go watch Sara.” Who was also crying, because Julie was her favorite, and knew better than anyone there how to keep her quiet at night.

  “Julie, can I go with you?” Sara cried, sitting beside her on the bed, watching the others.


  “Sara, please don’t start,” Julie said from the closet.

  Connelly watched Sara hold her breath and begin to pull her hair, and told Yolanda, “She’s doing it again.”

  “Awright, Sara,” Yolanda called out. “Let’s go take us a cold shower.”

  “No, I don’t want a cold shower,” Sara said, not stopping.

  “She’s still doing it.”

  “Miss Bea,” Yolanda said, “go strip her skinny little ass down and throw her in.”

  But when Beatrice took a step toward her she stopped immediately, lowered her head, and began pinching one of her legs, as if that interested her more than anything else now.

  Finally, Julie was packed and all the girls were hugging her. Then she sat on the bed, holding Sara, who cried quietly in her arms. “My damn mother,” she said. “She promised me I could come home this summer, and now she’s back in rehab. Goddamn her.”

  Connelly saw the look in Julie’s pretty blue eyes, which had confused her in the beginning, but she was getting used to it now. She saw it almost every day around the home, on the faces coming and going, of not believing what was happening, and then having to believe it.

  The res came in to get her. “They’re here,” she said, meaning the new family Julie would live with now.

  “My goddamn mother,” she said, kissing everyone one last time, and disappearing out the door.

  When the door closed shut, no one moved, no one said a word or made a sound, except Sara, who was curled on the bed, holding the pillow against herself, and making little noises into it that could have been crying or something else, Connelly wasn’t sure.

  Next, Anne broke their mood, not an hour later, bringing over the new girl that took Julie’s bed. She was tall and horribly thin and wore shorts and a top that were much too small for her. Her eyes, Connelly saw, were staring off as she stood there.

  “Everyone, this is Meredith,” Anne said.

  She began going around, introducing them, and when she brought her into the closet to show her her space, Beatrice whispered: “Special.”

  And they all nodded.

  *

  On the last day of school, when the bell rang and the other children were gone, she stayed behind and gave Mrs. McDonough the watercolor she had done of her parents.

  The teacher was sitting behind her desk, and caught her breath and said, “Oh, Connelly, I’m going to have this framed and take it home with me—is that all right?”

  She could only nod, thinking about that. At that moment, realizing she wished she could go home with her too. Her and Eric. Live with her and Mr. McDonough, who she knew must be very nice, or Mrs. McDonough wouldn’t have married him.

  But she only stood there and said, “Can I see you next year then?”

  Mrs. McDonough looked surprised and said, “Of course you can, Connelly. You can see me any time you wish. I want you to come see me.”

  Mrs. McDonough hesitated then, looking at her, and then suddenly pulled her to her, hugging her. She whispered in her ear, “It’s going to be all right for you, darling, I know it will. Because that’s the kind of girl you are.”

  She couldn’t help it. In Mrs. McDonough’s arms, smelling her perfumed hair against her face, Connelly shut her eyes and—just for that moment—pretended it was her mother holding her again. All of her mother’s presence, every time she had held her, filled her up then. And she grew dizzy, feeling her, having her so close.

  When she ran out of the classroom she heard Mrs. McDonough say: “Good-bye, Connelly. I hope you have a good summer.”

  But she didn’t answer her, running all the way to the bus stop before she stopped.

  *

  The first week of the summer, both Kathy and Maribel left. Kathy went home again, and Maribel was fostered out. The second week, they took Sara away. Apparently she had done something with one of the new girls that wasn’t allowed, but Connelly never knew what.

  “She gone back to Patton State, little biscuit,” was all Yolanda would tell her, sitting on the bed behind her, braiding her hair.

  Then Camerina fought with one of the new girls and was grounded for a month.

  “That sucks, Anne,” Camerina said when the res came and told her. “She started it.”

  “She’s grounded as well,” Anne said.

  But Camerina still wasn’t happy, and she fought with the girl again, upsetting everyone in the cottage.

  Connelly realized the only good thing was she and Eric could spend more time together now, which they did, every chance they got; sitting on their bench and talking; or taking long walks on the path that ran along the edge of the field; or watching television in the recreation hall when it wasn’t so crowded; or spending their allowance on a Saturday mall-run.

  Once, at the mall, Eric bought a small plastic chess set, and began teaching her to play. After that, they sat for hours on their bench, as he taught her. She thought it hard, because once you made a move—that was it; and you always had to be thinking, close and far, which Eric called tactics and strategy, and which confused her. And she always lost except (she knew) for the times he let her win.

  She told him, “When mom and dad played, she let him win too. Remember how dad would complain, ‘Honey, you don’t have to pity me,’ he’d say—remember?”

  Eric nodded. “You and dad are the same. You have different concepts than mom and I have. You’re thinking with the other side of your brain.”

  “What side are you thinking with?”

  “The logical side. The side that lets you hold several things out at once, and sort of go between them, and look at them.”

  “I can do that,” she said.

  “No, your concepts are more general, like shapes and patterns and colors. Remember how dad always saw strange shapes in clouds, or how a street sometimes looked different to him than it really was?” He shook his head. “Mom could never see that. It was always just a cloud or just a street, but things like chess made sense to her.”

  She made her move.

  “You can’t do that,” Eric said.

  “But you said a knight moved three spaces.”

  “Not along the same line, Con. It’s one and two, or two and one.”

  She sighed and put back her piece. She cautiously moved something else, watching Eric’s eyes, and saw immediately it was a mistake.

  He made his move and said, “Check.”

  “But they’re all just moves,” she complained. “They all look the same to me.”

  “But they’re not,” he said. “They’re all different. Every move is different, and when you make them, everything changes with them.”

  They played until time for dinner, and she still didn’t see the difference; but she did see the way the clouds moved over the field of wheat, with the breeze shifting it, and the enormous sections of it, growing darker and lighter, swaying. She saw everything in her mind there at once. And it made perfect sense to her, without really thinking about it.

  *

  Mrs. Morton came on Saturday, with a couple from Fremont. Connelly wasn’t sure where that was, and didn’t ask. They said their name was Keleman or Kelemer; she wasn’t sure about that either. Apparently Mr. Keleman or Kelemer was a teacher, high school biology; and he and Eric talked about that, and she was bored, moving about in her chair, with Mrs. Morton shaking her head disapprovingly, sitting just behind the couple.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Keleman or Kelemer asked her questions: what kinds of things she liked, what was her favorite this or that, what, what, what. It reminded her of the therapist. And suddenly she remembered the moment, once, when she and her father were talking, and he said, “I got to be honest with you, brat. Painting’s the only thing that ever made any sense to me. Everything else is a struggle. Just the art, that’s it. I’m a one-trick pony, I’m afraid.” So now she told her: “Art—that’s all I really like.”

  “Art?” the woman said.

  “Yes, you know, like painting and stuff. Art.” She looked away
.

  When the interview was over, she and Eric sat on the porch and watched Mrs. Morton talking with the Kelemans or Kelemers, and then they drove away.

  Mrs. Morton came over to them and stood there, saying, “Well, they are interested and said they would call me next week. I’m surprised, considering the perfectly awful way someone acted.” She looked down at Connelly and then away. “In any event, let me have a word with the office, and I’m off. I’ll be in touch.”

  And as soon as she was inside, they both ran, as fast as they could, toward their bench.

  *

  There was a day the summer heat seemed to descend upon them like a giant invisible smothering blanket. Everything moved slower now, while almost every day she saw the same kids and residents come and go. That surprised her, noticing. Because in the beginning, when everything was new and every face a stranger, she didn’t think she would ever understand it at all. But now, being at Mercy was almost like being at home had been. Of course, she didn’t like it nearly as much, but at least she knew it now. She knew how it looked and felt, and even smelled, at different times of the day and night; she knew the faces, and when someone was missing, or someone was new, and she felt, not so much that she belonged there, but that—since she had to be somewhere—it was not so bad after all. And that surprised her as well.

  One day she saw Melissa dropping off a boy. She was so happy, seeing her, she screamed out her name, and ran in her summer shorts and sandals over to her. They hugged.

  “Look at you, long-legged girl!” Melissa said, surprised. “Got your hair in cornrows, got your ears pierced, and got the bling thing goin’—look at you!”

  “Yolanda did my hair,” she said happily. “And Anne took me to the mall and got my ears done and bought me the hoops.”

  Melissa laughed, shaking her head, and hugged her again, asking, “So how’s your case working, baby?”

  “Oh, she’s all right,” she told her, “but I’d rather have you back.”

  “I’d rather that too, but you know how that goes.” She turned around to the boy standing behind her. “Connelly, this is Bryan.”