Read Online Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa - Free Book Online

became so pointed that she couldn't misinterpret or overlook them, she began to watch her mother in the way that Mudear had quietly taught her to watch other people, then come home and tell her what the girl had observed.
    Mudear always talked to her girls as if they were already women. They had conversations, never just silly meaningless small talk. They all understood that Mudear didn't take time for such trivialities as chitchat.
    They had never, even before the change, had conversations about school, dates, homework, skinned knees, and such, but rather about feelings and impressions and conjectures and opinions. When they talked of their grade school, it was a discussion of their friends and teachers and other people and their families and their clothes and their personal habits and their personal histories.
    If a teacher were cranky with the students, the girls would tell Mudear about it as they cleaned the house when they came home from school. Then, they would discuss the possibilities of the source of her displeasure. Finally, Mudear would make the call.
    "Mrs. Johnson's husband probably had hell in him last night and got drunk. Ya'll said she drinks, too, huh? Maybe he didn't pay some bill. I'd be mad, too." Or, "Didn't you tell me Mrs. Johnson's brother and wife just moved in with them with a new baby? Probably kept them all up last night."
    Then, on to the next topic.
    They would come home offering up their news, perceptions, observations like royal honey for the queen bee. It was what was expected of them. Their ears perked up like little cats' ears when they overheard something outside the house that they thought might pique her interest. Sometimes, her girls brought her the outside world without even realizing it. If Mudear let them visit a friend's house, when they returned they reported to Mudear.
    The conversation would begin with a few comments on what was done, what was seen, what was eaten and then it would slide easily into an examination of the adults and the intricacies of the household: gained weight, lost weight, new clothes, new anything, music playing, other visitors, nervous habits, mother and father touch, speak, fight. Were your little friends unusually quiet today? she would ask.
    Anything that would add texture, perspective, feeling to the picture the girls painted for Mudear. Mudear would keep these images in order but overlapping like a plate drawing in a biology book of the human body and all its organs that has many overlays. With all the transparent colored pages in place, the picture took on a three-dimensional appearance that left the girls amazed that Mudear instinctively knew so much without leaving the house.
    It added to their mythical image of her.
    They never voiced their awareness that Mudear would have no connection with her community if they didn't bring the world to her.
    Betty's thoughts seemed to drift out the car window like the cigarette smoke that trailed from her nostrils. She thought again about going back in the house to try and convince Annie Ruth to come stay with her and Emily at her house for the night. But she knew that the three of them could not stay under one roof that night. With the day she had had and the one that loomed ahead, she wouldn't have the strength to keep Emily from interrogating Annie Ruth about her plans. She felt Annie Ruth couldn't take it. Even though her sister looked a lot better now, Betty couldn't stop picturing her as she had been at the airport.
    Then, all of a sudden she remembered Matthew, her first boyfriend in high school. Thinking about her sisters always put her in mind of her men. She smiled to herself thinking how he had asked her the first time they met, "You ever been shanghaied?" then proceeded to do it. Taking her to one of the new houses under construction in Sherwood Forest after all the workmen had left for the day, giving her a boost through one of the windows, spreading a tarpaulin splattered with rose-colored paint on