God Still Don't Like Ugly (28 page)

I braced myself. “Did they find her?”

Pee Wee composed himself and let out a deep sigh before continuing. “So you don’t know.”

“Know what?” I was getting impatient. “Did they find the child or not?!”

“Turn on Channel Two news.” Pee Wee let out another sigh, then he hung up.

Richland, Ohio was not a crime-free city. We had our share of barroom brawls, domestic disturbances, and burglaries, but murder was something that didn’t happen in our city that often. The year before, we had had only one murder. An ex-con had returned to exact revenge on the person who had sent him to prison. That crime didn’t 222

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garner that much attention. But what we had to deal with now was the worst thing that had ever happened in the history of our city.

The television reporter could barely get the story out without stopping to clear her throat. In a raspy voice, she revealed that before dawn, a homeless woman had discovered P.’s body on the ground behind a Dumpster in an alley just six blocks away from Jean’s house. P.

had been dead for several hours. In addition to being strangled with her own knee sock, she had been raped and beaten. I was on the floor sitting with my knees held against my chest when Lillimae entered the living room from upstairs just a few minutes later.

“Annette, what’s the matter?”

“Somebody killed a little girl from down the street,” I said hoarsely.

“Somebody killed that child and threw her away like she was a piece of garbage.”

“What little girl?” Daddy asked, weaving his way down into the living room. “Who was her peoples? This the little missin’ girl y’all was talkin’ about last night?”

I nodded. “My friend Jean’s daughter.”

Lillimae stumbled to the couch, clutching her chest. “Lord have mercy! Do they know who did it?” As soon as Lillimae hit the couch, she started fanning her face with her hand. Living in Florida, she didn’t own much heavy clothing. She had not been prepared for our winter weather. She had one of my sweaters on over a muumuu that she had slid into.

“No,” I said, turning off the television, forcing myself to keep my opinions to myself. It was too soon for me to say what I was thinking.

But as soon as I had heard the news, I believed in my heart that Vinnie Gambiano had had something to do with that child’s murder.

I immediately called Jean’s house. When Vinnie answered, I hung up the telephone so fast and hard it fell out of its cradle.

I grabbed my coat and started down the street with Lillimae and Daddy running along with me. When we saw all the police cars in front of Jean’s house, we decided to delay our visit. With long faces, we returned to my living room, where Lillimae sank to the floor, with Daddy struggling to pull her up.

“I feel for that child’s mother. I don’t know what I would do if somethin’ happened to one of my boys,” Lillimae sobbed.

“Children is the most precious gift the Lord gives us,” Daddy said.

Looking in my direction he added, “I know that now.”

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In the meantime, I stumbled to my kitchen and spent a few minutes on my wall telephone talking to Muh’Dear. P.’s murder and other heinous crimes dominated the conversation for the first five minutes.

“I don’t know what this world is comin’ to. Why men rape is beyond me. I just read about some demon out there in California that they say had raped three teenager girls. Some shyster of a lawyer got him off and then that same demon up and raped another woman,”

Muh’Dear hollered.

“I guess he got off for that one, too.” I sighed.

Muh’Dear cleared her throat and sucked her teeth. “Yes and no,”

she said gruffly. “That last woman he raped was burnin’ up with that new disease they can’t cure. AIDS. Now he got it. See, there. When somebody act ugly, God treat ’em ugly, ’cause He done showed us he don’t like ugly.” Muh’Dear paused and sniffed hard. “Too bad P. didn’t have a deadly disease.” Muh’Dear sighed. I was glad when she changed the subject. “Uh, your daddy ask about me?” Her voice cracked, but I didn’t know if it was because of P. or Daddy.

“You know he did, Muh’Dear. He knows you don’t want to see him, but Daddy still wants to see you,” I told her. Daddy had entered the kitchen and was now standing right next to me, listening. He frowned at the mention of his name. Muh’Dear quickly diverted the conversation back to P.

“Ain’t nothin’ but a devil would do that to a child. I hope when they catch him, they slice his nuts off before they send his ass to hell.”

“I feel the same way, Muh’Dear,” I said stiffly. As far as I was concerned, whatever punishment they gave the perpetrator, it wouldn’t be harsh enough.

Daddy folded me in his arms as soon as I hung up the telephone and started leading me back to the living room. “God sure was good to me. He didn’t let no harm come to you all them years I wasn’t there to protect you,” he said.

I smiled and nodded.

I finally made it to Jean’s house that evening around six. The police were gone, but the house was full of other neighbors, friends, and relatives. Vinnie, gadding about with no shirt on, was in tears the whole time. Poor Jean was inconsolable. A doctor had sedated her and sent her to bed. I didn’t get to see her at all.

About an hour after my arrival, old Mr. Antonosanti showed up, ac-224

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companied by his male nurse and three ferocious, stout Italian men.

According to Scary Mary, Mr. Antonosanti had been sick for years and was dying from a rare liver ailment. The three stout men and Mr.

Antonosanti were all dressed in black. Stomping across the floor in their heavy black shoes, huddling together, they reminded me of a herd of bulls.

“I won’t die until the monster that killed my little Piatra is dead,”

Mr. Antonosanti vowed in a weak voice.

Harming a child was the one sin even I could not forgive. I wanted to see the person responsible suffer.

Jean had never explained her relationship to the Antonosanti family to me. But I learned from a woman who identified herself as one of Jean’s cousins that Jean’s mother and Mr. Antonosanti were first cousins. Knowing the connections and the money the Antonosanti’s had, I knew that the police would make P.’s case their highest priority.

However, Richland was a small city with not many resources. The cops in our little Mickey Mouse police department spent most of their time writing out speeding tickets, chastising drunkards, locating missing pets, and kicking back. I didn’t expect them to solve this hellish case quickly, if at all. And even if they did, I couldn’t see them admin-istering a punishment that fit the crime.

That was why—as much as I hated violence and people taking the law into their own hands—I hoped that the Antonosantis got to P.’s killer first.

CHAPTER 55

Icould not imagine the pain Jean was experiencing, but I was feeling like hell myself after hearing the news about P. I could hardly eat or sleep. Being an outsider and feeling the way I did was one thing. But to a parent, losing a child to murder had to be unbearable.

During some of my loneliest days, I fantasized about having a child of my own someday, whether I had a husband or not. I had even considered adopting at least two. While I was in my senior year in high school, my social studies class went on a field trip to our county orphanage. Ironically, it was located across the highway from our county asylum. I had learned from the orphanage director why some of the kids had ended up in the orphanage. The reasons varied. Some of the kids had severe physical and mental handicaps; some were incorrigible and it had been too much of a hardship for their families to keep them. But the saddest ones to me were the ones nobody wanted because of the way they looked. One cone-headed boy in his late teens was transferred from the orphanage to the asylum, the same day of our field trip.

I knew right then and there that if I ever did adopt children, I’d take the ones nobody else wanted. I didn’t care how severely handicapped or incorrigible they were. After learning the history of some of our local orphans, my own painful childhood seemed like a picnic.

Mr. Boatwright was still in my life at the time of my field trip. I had 226

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come home to him that day, grateful that he was the only evil in my life.

But then there were also days when I was glad I was childless. Just the thought of someone brutalizing a child of mine made me temporarily blind with rage. It was a horror I knew I would never get over.

The truth hurt and the truth was: no one could protect a child. Not the parents, not even God.

According to the newspaper report, P.’s face had been battered beyond recognition and her arm had been broken in two places. Jean’s daddy had made the painful trip to the morgue to identify P.’s body. I had been told that the old man had fainted immediately afterward.

Jean was not doing well at all. Two more days went by before I was able to talk to her. By then, she was practically out of her mind, staring at me through glazed eyes. It had only been four days since the murder, but Jean had already lost weight from not eating. Her face was already gaunt enough that I could see her cheekbones for the first time since we’d become friends. Those pretty violet eyes of hers that I admired so much were bloodshot and almost swollen shut.

Vinnie sat next to Jean on the plush blue couch in her living room with his arm around her shoulder, gripping her like he was afraid she’d break loose. But then every time Vinnie attempted to rise, Jean pulled him back down and guided his arm back around her shoulder.

I didn’t know what-all P. had told Jean about Vinnie’s actions toward her when Jean was not around. However, since Jean had told me herself about P.’s claim that Vinnie had kissed her on her mouth, that alone should have been enough to put Jean on her highest alert.

Instead, here Jean was now, weeping like a widow and clinging to Vinnie like a vine, knowing how much P. had hated and feared him.

Jean’s behavior toward Vinnie disturbed me. I had heard of cases where the mothers of abused children,
who knew about the abuse
, chose to stay with the abuser! I had attended junior high school with a girl whose mother had kicked her out of the house for “tempting” the mother’s husband and getting pregnant by him. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the girl’s two older brothers had been fucking the hell out of her, too. What really got my goat was the fact that when the girl finally exposed her father and her brothers, a well-known business-man and two star athletes, everybody got mad at her and said that the girl herself had taken advantage of her father and brothers. Ruining her family must have been a greater crime than the abuse she had suf-GOD STILL DON’T LIKE UGLY

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fered, because that girl committed suicide. It was no wonder so many kids kept secrets of that nature to themselves.

I had convinced myself that the only people who understood the shame of females like me, were females like me. I was only sorry that I had not been able to reach out more to P. However, I had tried to help by making that anonymous telephone call to the Child Protective Services. But even that had not been enough to save that child.

“I think I saw P. running down the street, trying to get home,” Jean told me, talking as she licked tears and snot from her bottom lip. Her eyes were so red and swollen, she looked like she had been severely beaten. She had on the same soiled, stiff duster she had on the last time I saw her. “P.’s so slow-witted and clumsy. Runs into walls, sometimes gets lost a block away from home. She lost her way again and hasn’t made it home yet.” Turning to Vinnie, Jean added, “Honey, don’t worry. P.’ll be home soon.”

“No, she won’t, darlin’,” Vinnie sobbed, his eyes darting from side to side each time I looked in his face. The oil, or whatever it was that he wore on his hair, had dripped onto the shoulders and neck of his shirt and the sides of his face. He looked like he was melting right before my eyes. Just like that witch in
The Wizard of Oz
. He cleared his throat and slid his hand across the top of his head, then dabbed at the sides of his face with his sleeve.

Vinnie was nervous, but that was nothing new. He often fidgeted when he was around me. I wasn’t that much larger than Jean, so I knew it was not my size that intimidated him. I had always treated Vinnie cordially to his face, so I had to assume that he didn’t like me because of comments Jean had told him I’d made about him.

I didn’t care if Jean had told him that every time she and I were alone, I bad-mouthed him for treating Jean like a piece of property and for putting his hands, and his mouth, on her child. I was glad he knew that I had his number. I liked seeing him squirm and, in an odd way, I hoped that I would be around when he met his downfall. It all had to do with what I had experienced with Mr. Boatwright. I didn’t know whether to call it revenge or justice, as long as Vinnie got what he had coming. Even if he wasn’t the one responsible for P.’s murder, he had done enough to P. to warrant some degree of punishment.

I didn’t know what Jean and the other people I knew were thinking, but I had a strong opinion about this hellish crime: this was no 228

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ordinary rape and murder; this was a crime of passion. I was certain that P. had known her killer and that she had done or said something to push him over the edge. But what could a five-year-old child do to anger someone to the point of murder?

Through narrowed eyes, I glared at Vinnie Gambiano’s brooding face and I saw Mr. Boatwright. And I recalled the numerous threats Mr. Boatwright had made to me.
If you ever tell anybody about us, I’m
gwine to kill you.

I could have been wrong about Vinnie being P.’s killer. But knowing that some other child-killing monster could be on the loose in my neighborhood didn’t make me feel any better. I knew in my heart that it was a macabre thought, but I still hoped that it was Vinnie.

“What are the police saying?” I asked, directing my attention to Vinnie.