Free Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa Page A

can't do a damn thing with those pretty hands of hers. Couldn't make a decent centerpiece for the Last Supper if she had the chance and the Garden of Eden to work with. But those long skinny hands sure are pretty, look like something out of a Jergens lotion magazine ad."
    Emily, sitting on the banks of the turbid Ocawatchee, could see Ron in front of her now. Could almost smell the scent of his body fresh out of a shower with Lifebuoy deodorant soap and a hint of his musk clinging to his hairs.
    Perhaps another kind of woman could have dealt with Ron and his memories of war, could have even helped him, gone through it with him, been there for him when he screamed at night from his Mekong Delta dreams. But his troubles seemed to just mirror hers too closely. Post-traumatic stress syndrome was what they both suffered from. One would have thought they were made for each other. Instead, they were both so deep in their own distress, in their own misery, that they merely canceled each other out. The war he still fought was too much like the one Emily had to fight with her own demons.
    When she tried to help, it only seemed to make matters worse for Ron, confused him. Even as she tried to soothe him, held his hard sweaty body, cried with him, she was really crying for herself and for her sisters and for the destruction that family warfare had wreaked on all of them.
    When Ron reluctantly agreed to go to a V.A. counselor for a while and his nightmares suddenly subsided, Emily would still wake in the middle of the night sweating and heaving as if
she
had had a nightmare. And then, to find Ron, her husband, sleeping the sleep of the innocent next to her shaking body would nearly send her into a rage.
    I can almost understand why Mudear always said she was surprised more men aren't found murdered in their beds, she would think. Then, she would wish immediately that she hadn't recalled Mudear's words because they always made her remember that each time her mother said them when Emily was young, Emily had a hard time sleeping through the night. Staying awake 'til dawn, waiting to hear the sound of her father's footfall in the hall on his way to the bathroom so she would know that he had made it through the night. That Mudear had not in fact acted on her implied threat against her father. Hacked him to death with a butcher knife, splashed kerosene around his bed linens and set them on fire.
    Poor Poppa, she thought now. What he gonna do without Mudear?
    Emily shifted her butt uncomfortably on the rocky ground of the riverbank. She had been sitting in a relatively dry spot under the bridge protected from the misty rain. And after rummaging through the back of her car among overdue library books and hair spray from Betty's shop, she had found a plastic garbage bag to spread on the hard wet ground to protect the seat of her favorite jeans. But she still had to unzip the tight pants in order to breathe and sit comfortably.
    Once when she came to sit under the bridge in foul weather, she had discovered a makeshift shelter of cardboard boxes left there by some homeless person. That time, fresh from Betty's beauty shop and distraught over the bitter ending of a quickie relationship, she had really planned to kill herself. But the thought of a homeless person in the tiny town of Mulberry kept intruding on her deadly thoughts. And instead of killing herself, she had left her lined leather gloves there with a twenty-dollar bill tucked inside.
    All the way back to. Atlanta, she had kept saying to herself, A homeless person in Mulberry. A homeless person in Mulberry.
    She didn't dare say it, even to herself, but she had thought, it could be Ron. The last time she had seen him, a year or so before, he was walking near the river wearing his old camouflage jacket and dirty jeans with his red toolbox on his shoulder. She had made an illegal U-tum to avoid passing him even though she yearned to ask him what he was doing in Mulberry. She could tell by the