I shouted, “Mama, are you here?”
No answer. The feeling was overpowering that something ghastly had happened to her. I almost knew somebody was behind that door. Perhaps the murderer was crimson with Mama’s blood, panting, trapped, waiting for me with a butcher knife or hatchet in the dark in the other side of that door.
I decided to go back to the car. I turned and walked quickly back toward the front door. Then I glanced at the murky mirror on the wall next to the front door.
I froze. My legs wouldn’t move any more. There was a kind of wavering shifting movement in the blackness behind me near Mama’s bedroom. I almost tinkled on myself as I stared in the mirror and saw a mass of the blackness split off and glide toward me.
I spun around and faced the thing. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. The thing came closer and giggled. Then I saw a slash of white in a familiar black face. It was Mama in a long black robe smiling at me. I started crying in relief.
I blubbered, “Mama, darling, why did you do that to me? Why didn’t you answer when I called to you? OH! Mama, I thought something bad had happened to you.”
Mama held her long arms open and crooned in her racing voice, “Come here and kiss me and tell me you love me. Mama didn’t want to frighten her pretty baby, but I’ve been mad with you for neglecting me. Come on, Sweet Pea. Come to your mama.”
I felt a tremor of rage, not toward Mama really, but just for those spidery arms reaching out for me. In my anger I got the weirdest thoughts standing there. A lot like the terrible thoughts I used to get when I helped Mama with the dishes.
I’d have to lock my trembling hands together so I couldn’t obey the terrifying impulse to stab a kitchen knife into her. It was awful because I love Mama and always will. But standing there in that hallway I thought how funny Mama would look without those arms. And what if I had found her not dead but with those clutching creatures chopped off cleanly with no pain, no blood, just open-mouthed surprise to see herself without them.
Then suddenly I was sorry for my mean thoughts. I rushed to her arms and buried my face in her bosom. She crushed me to her so hard I could hardly breathe. I raised my head and kissed her lips.
I sobbed, “Mama, I’ve missed you. I love you so much.”
We stood there hugging and kissing like we hadn’t seen each other in years. Mama led me into the living room and switched on a brass cherub lamp on a table at the end of the white sofa.
We sat on it close together. Mama scanned my face with bright black eyes. They were tiny, unblinking eyes that I could never look into for long. When she was upset or angry they seemed to glow balefully.
But her eyes were warm and kind when she gently placed her hand on my thigh and said softly, “Sweet Pea, I see you, and I just can’t understand how we could live apart for a whole year. How do we stand it, precious?”
I didn’t answer. I looked at her thinking how she’d changed; she’d been good looking and shapely down South. She’d even lost her thick Southern accent with hard study and desire.
I moved my thigh away and said, “Now Mama, please don’t start. It’s not like I’m living out of town. I’m never going to stop calling you and visiting you. Think back, Mama, and remember what happened to Frank, Carol and Bessie. It makes me want to bawl to think about them.
“Mama, I’m the only kid you got left. I’m forty years old, and this is my big chance to stand on my own and be a man. Try to understand. Help me, Mama. Only you know what I’ve gone through.”
The warmness deserted her eyes. A toil-coarsened hand thoughtfully pulled at the tip of her wide, flat nose. I sat there on the edge of the sofa, waiting for her to speak, afraid that I had said the wrong thing. I’d always tried very hard not to displease her. I suffered when I did.
Finally, she clasped her hands beneath her chin and murmured in an icy voice, “That stale slut is poisoning my baby’s mind against me. That’s what she’s doing. She’s trying to make you stop loving . . .”
I took Mama’s hands and pressed them against my face and cried out, “NO! NO! Stop it, Mama. You’re wrong about Dorcas. She’s a sweet person. She really is. She wouldn’t try anything like that. Visit us, Mama, or let her come to see you. You would find out that she’s a good woman.”
Mama jerked her hands away and spat out, “I wouldn’t go to that deceiving bitch’s funeral. Sweet Pea, you’re the biggest fool on God’s green earth to forget how she and her highfalutin father treated you like dirt and hurt your heart.
“Sweet Pea, it’s bad enough that you’re sleeping with that treacherous slut. But before you leave me I want you to promise me that you’ll never marry her. I’m telling you, Sweet Pea, that woman is a snake waiting to destroy you. Now say it, baby. Say that you won’t break my heart and marry her.”
I felt like I was suffocating under Mama’s pressure. I could hardly breathe. I was so ill and angry. I really was.
I stood up and said sharply, “Mama, please! Give me a break, will you? I can’t promise you that. Dorcas has always loved me. Her father didn’t break us up. I did, with stupidity. She never really loved the two guys she married.
“Mama, I think I love her. I’m going to marry her as soon as I get my mind together. So don’t call her names. I love you, but I’m not going to stay tied to your apron strings and play with myself until I’m a dried up old man. I’m sick in my head, Mama. With Dorcas I might get well. So give me a chance and stop putting pressure on me. I can’t stand it.”
Mama’s face was a tight black mask. I leaned over and kissed her forehead. I turned and walked to the front door. I glanced over my shoulder. Mama was coming toward me with her eyes almost closed and an odd smile on her face. Her silk robe rustled like a centipede snagging on autumn leaves. I flinched when she took my face between her palms and stared into my eyes.
She crooned too sweetly, “Sweet Pea, you’re trembling. I know you’re sorry you hurt me. I forgive you. Now come to your senses and come home soon to stay. We’ll be so happy.”
I twisted my face away and opened the door.
I said, “Mama, you didn’t want me to make love to guys, and you don’t want me to have Dorcas. I’m human. I have to have somebody.”
She smiled broadly and said, “Precious, Mama will make a bargain with you. Come back home and I won’t mind who your friends are, just so you respect me and your home and don’t wear women’s clothes. Fair enough?”
I could feel tears filling my eyes. I shook my head slowly and said, “Mama, you’re really something, aren’t you? You never give up. Respect? You don’t give a damn about my self-respect. You wouldn’t care if I went down on every guy in Chicago, just so I don’t marry Dorcas. Right?”
Mama came toward me with those awful arms outstretched. I backed into the corridor and turned and walked toward the vestibule door.
I could hear Mama pleading, “Sweet Pea, don’t leave like this. Come back and kiss me. I’m your mama. I’m the only one who loves you. Please come back and kiss me. You’re killing me, Sweet Pea. I feel an attack coming. You better come back here. Come back, Sweet Pea.”
I went through the vestibule to the sidewalk. I glanced back at Mama’s window. She had her head wedged between the white curtains, and her glittery little eyes were glaring at me. The street lamp shone through the telephone wires and imprinted a spidery web against the curtains.
2
SALLY FREAKS OFF
I was fluttery and depressed when I left Mama. I drove aimlessly to Madison Street and parked in front of a straight bar near the corner at California Avenue. The visit to Mama had torn me down inside, and I felt so guilty about quarreling with her.
I felt a familiar palpitating anxiety and confusion. I knew I had to be careful that I didn’t wind up in a hotel bed beneath some strange brute bulling himself into me.
During that part of it, I’d be ecstatic. And even later, alone, I’d lie there popped dry—but still feeling marvelous with spastic orgasmic waves ripping de
ep inside me—like a woman.
Then the horror part would start. I’d remember the contemptuous look on the coldhearted fruit hustler’s face as he patted my twenty dollar bill in his pocket. I had been so hungry for love and affection. He had performed with neither. Then he’d toss some inane con over his shoulder as he hurried away to the streets to snare another freakish sucker.
Each time I’d want to die as I lay there alone with the pungent slime oozing from me. I’d cry my heart out in the lonely darkness in remorse for the abuse, humiliation and shame of it all, and guilt that I had set the bitch inside me free.
I lit a cigar and went into the crowded bar. I took a stool near the front window and ordered a tall cool Tom Collins from the elderly black bartender. Several guys who knew me from childhood stopped and made small talk.
Two cigars and five Tom Collins later I felt better. My watch read 10 P.M., so I went to the phone booth at the end of the bar and called Dorcas. I told her I was starting out for the Southside.
I went through the bar bedlam to the sidewalk. A rib joint firing up its ovens belched eye-stinging gouts of smoke into the sky.
The night people were crawling Madison Street like maggots on a corpse. Thickly painted queers and whores, white, black and high yellow jiggled corrupt behinds inside loud minidresses. They leered dirty smiles at the shabby tricks prowling for an orgy for five bucks. Black pimps with brutish faces stalked the turf in long flashy cars.
I unlocked the Plymouth and started the grumbly motor. I leaned across the seat to lower the window on the sidewalk side. I heard urgent high heels. An instant later a seamed white face framed by a red wig thrust through the open window and grinned at me. It belonged to Lucy, an old queen friend of mine, in full drag. His voluptuous face was a debauched image of the world-famous comedienne’s.
“Tilly, my gawd, it’s simply creamy to see you,” he gurgled in a gritty contralto voice.
I said, “Hi, Lucy,” and opened the door.
He gracefully slid his wide hips into the seat and adjusted the hem of the tight gold lamé microdress cut high at his droopy thighs. He slit his large blue eyes and pouted his scarlet mouth in fake anger.
He said, “Tilly, I don’t know why the hell I’m so glad to see you. You dropped out of circulation eons ago without so much as a hint to your friends. I supposed that you were shacked up with some utterly divine cock that you couldn’t bear to risk sharing.
“Oh, which reminds me, Mike is back in town on his bare ass, but creamy and cute as always, and Gypsy was stomped to death by that crazy, jealous Mexican of hers. I’m still slaving at Spiegel’s mail-order house. And I’m shacked up with a living dream.”
I sat there thinking, Mike is back! Mike is back!
I forgot I had told Dorcas I was on my way home. I scarcely heard Lucy as he chattered on and on bringing me up to date on the romances and happenings among the queers I had deserted.
In a mechanical daze I drove Lucy several blocks up Madison Street to an old apartment building. He begged me to come up for a moment to have a drink for old times’ sake.
I followed him into a first-floor rear apartment reeking with sandalwood incense. An amber light shone from a pole lamp. The small living-room walls were aglow with Lucy’s phosphorescent paintings of nude male figures.
He went across a burnt orange carpet to a yellow bar. I sat down on a yellow leather sofa. He brought a glass tray and put it on the yellow cocktail table in front of me.
He sat beside me and said, “See, Honey, I remembered your poison: gin and soda.”
We sat there sipping, chatting and listening to Ray Charles records for quite a while. Then Lucy dropped a red devil, so just to be a good sport, I dropped one, and I really started to feel groovy. I really did.
Lucy took my hand and led me into a pink and blue bedroom. She switched on a bed lamp. A coal-black young guy with gleaming processed hair was lying on his back beneath a satin quilt. He was fast asleep.
Lucy cocked his head, gazing raptly down at him. He said, “The poor baby is sleeping off a binge. Isn’t he gorgeous?”
I said, “He’s attractive all right, but don’t you think he’s awfully young and innocent? He couldn’t be more than seventeen. His parents could make trouble for you.”
Lucy giggled and flung the covers back. He leaned over and pulled the boy’s huge dick from between his sinewy thighs and hefted it lovingly in his palm. The boy smiled in his sleep and scratched his belly.
Lucy said, “The goddamn creamy thing goes nearly twelve inches hard. It’s so big, I’ll soon be crapping in a washtub. He’s the greatest lover I’ve ever had.
“There’s no parental danger. He’s got ten brothers and sisters, and no father that he remembers. His mother is happy he’s found someplace to eat. In fact, I’m something of a good fairy, no pun intended. I take food and clothing to her often.”
Lucy went to the dresser and got a pink ribbon from a drawer. He tied it into a bow around the base of the boy’s manhood, kissed it and pulled the covers up.
Lucy turned and said, “My gawd, we’ve been yakking, and I almost forgot Stel’s birthday party. You remember Stel, the lesbian on Warren Boulevard?”
I looked at my watch and said, “I remember her. I can’t forget her. I met Mike at her place. It’s only midnight. If her parties are anything like they used to be things are getting groovy about now. Come on, I’ll drop you off.”
Lucy smiled slyly and said, “The hell you say. You’re going to get into some pretty clothes and go to that party. They wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t bring you.”
She went to the closet. I stood there with my head in an euphoric whirl and watched her rummage for a dress for me.
I wanted to shout out, “Lucy, forget it. I’m not going to that faggot party.”
But I couldn’t make the words come out. The pill and the alcohol and that bitch, Sally, were too powerful to resist. Incredibly, I vibrated at the prospect that I might see Mike again.
Thirty minutes later I had put on a padded bra and dressed. I stood wide-eyed and thrilled before the full-length mirror on the closet door. I was dazzling in the shimmery white silk microdress and blue-black wig that hung to my shoulders in Grecian curls. My size-six feet were elegant in white satin squared-toe pumps with rhinestone buckles.
I stepped closer to the mirror. Lucy clipped mock pearl earrings to my earlobes. I gazed at my huge hazel eyes flashing emerald sparks beneath the curly canopies of dark auburn lashes.
Despite my age, my smooth yellow skin still stretched tautly over my high cheek-boned face. My full lips were curvy and glistening beneath pale pink lipstick. Golden freckles speckled my delicate tip-tilted nose. I was enchanted with my face. I really was. I guess I loved it so much because it was Papa’s face in every detail.
Lucy said, “Tilly, I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it now. You are the creamiest thing in drag I’ve ever seen. Thousands of women in Chicago would froth at the mouth with joy if they had your legs and face and could wiggle inside a size ten dress the way you do.
“That round rear end of yours is so sexy a goddamn vice cop wouldn’t wake up that you’re not really a glamorous twenty-five-year-old broad. Take this mink stole, bag and gloves. Let me put a spot of perfume behind your ears. Now let’s drop another pill and get the hell out of here.”
It was 1 A.M. when we got to the street teeming with cars and people. Under the crazy hypnosis of pills and alcohol I had the strange feeling I was in a fantastic flower garden, hearing the hum and buzz of insects. Bright neon blossoms flashed, rippled and sparkled in the bewitched night.
One of a gang of young guys in a car at the curb shouted at Lucy as we passed. “Lucy, you know you can’t handle cunt. Bring that beautiful bitch back here and let me sock this nine inches to her.”
I tossed my hips and giggled when I suddenly remembered that a killjoy I vaguely knew as Otis Tilson wasn’t around to squelch my fun.
I felt positively beautiful. I was
like an awed spectator watching myself reveling in the absolute surrender to the freak bitch, Sally.
I had to park half a block away from Stel’s place because of the string of cars bumper to bumper. Lucy and I stood on the porch of the fourteen-room house pressing the doorbell again and again. Finally we heard footsteps and someone opened the peephole. The door swung open, and we stepped into a white-carpeted entrance hall.
Torchy, a young blond queen in a bloodred mini, said excitedly, “Lucy, Tilly, follow me. You’re just in time for some sport. Stel’s Penny was out with some stud since yesterday morning. She came home fifteen minutes ago, stoned out of her mind with a raunchy cunt. Stel is furious. Everybody’s in the barroom catching the scene.”
We followed Torchy down a flight of rear stairs to the barroom that had once been a basement. It was the Mecca for many of the Westside black and white queers. It was spacious and had all of the fixtures and geegaws of a commercial bar.
About forty laughing people, black and white, encircled an attraction of some kind at the rear of the room. I heard muffled screams. We went over. Lucy tiptoed and peered down at whatever it was and started laughing.
I couldn’t see a thing on my tiptoes, so I half turned to spot a chair or something to add to my five feet two so I could see the action.
I felt a sudden viselike pressure around my waist, and then I was airborne. I looked down at a gorilla face crinkly in amusement. My hundred and twenty pounds were perched neatly on the ridge of the widest shoulder I’d ever seen. The black giant had his paws locked around my calves balancing me like I was a baby.
I said angrily, “What the hell are you doing? Put me down.”
He flung back his shiny shaved skull against my thigh and laughed.
He said, “Baby, I ain’t going to let you fall. Go on and dig the happenings.”