Mama Black Widow

  Fifteen minutes later I was walking out of the flat. I had one purpose: get a gut full of gin, fast.

  I drank in a skid row bar on Madison Street where the price and the quality of the poison was rock bottom. I had drunk the sharp edges off Dorcas’s marriage and had lit a cigar when I noticed the clock on the wall read seven P.M.

  I called Lucy and told her I was coming over to get glamorous. At nine P.M. I walked in and sat at the bar of Tony Carlo’s Music Box, on the Southside at Sixty-third Street and South Parkway Boulevard.

  I checked my makeup in the compact mirror. My small sexy mouth was moist and red with lipstick, and my tip-tilted nose and slightly almond-shaped hazel eyes gave my satiny yellow face a pixielike cuteness.

  I was resplendent in a fitted sky blue Lillie Anne woolen suit trimmed lavishly in white fox, a blue velvet purse and shoes and sheer indigo-shaded hose. A white pillbox hat sparkled atop the silky shoulder-length auburn wig. And, of course, I wore chic, short white gloves on my delicate hands.

  An expensively dressed middle-aged guy left his stool at the end of the bar and came quickly to stand beside me. He sported fiery diamonds and flashed an obese bankroll when he peeled off a fifty to pay the bartender for my Tom Collins and his double Scotch. I fumbled in my purse.

  I smiled demurely and said, “Thank you.”

  He stuffed his bale of money into his inside coat pocket and poked out his skinny chest.

  He said thickly, “Miss Pretty, I ain’t done nothing for you yet. You heard of me? I’m Cadillac Thompson. Who are you?”

  I said, “Tilli Jones.”

  He dumped the double shot past the gaudy dazzle of his gold teeth.

  He nodded toward his change from the fifty on the bar and put his hand on my knee and said, “Pick it up. It’s yours.”

  I shook my head. “Why? For what?” I asked.

  He said, “I don’t blow no time courting and jiving and bullshitting even a beautiful young bitch like you. Pick it up, girl, and go get in that black Cadillac up the street. I’m gonna’ take you to the Southway Hotel. I know a tender young bitch like you ain’t never had her cunt and her asshole sucked at the same time. Don’t worry, I’m gonna’ sweeten that chump change with a C note, and this!”

  He popped open his cavernous mouth and lashed out the longest, widest, reddest tongue I’d ever seen—except on a cow.

  I was about to tell him I was married and couldn’t play, when the elderly yellow-skinned bartender, while frantically wiping the bar in front of us, said from the corner of his mouth, “Goddamnit, Cadillac, raise. You gonna’ get this young lady slaughtered. Charlotte is in the joint watching you freaking off!”

  Cadillac jumped like he had been shot and scurried away to the john in the rear of the joint. The bartender started to say something to me, but some guy banging his glass against the log pulled him away.

  I sat trembling on the stool as I tried to spot homicidal Charlotte in the mirror behind the bar. I saw a tall, muscular woman with a tense black face striding angrily from the front of the joint straight toward me.

  She stopped and stood behind me. I watched in the mirror as she sneeringly looked me over. Then she moved to the bar beside me and started picking up Cadillac’s change from the fifty-dollar bill.

  She said in a venomous voice without looking at me, “You motherfucking shit-colored bitch. You know who I am?”

  I said, “No, lady . . . I don’t.”

  I spun my legs to get off the stool on the other side. My back was turned to her. A sudden pressure in my side cut off my breath. I looked down over my shoulder. Charlotte was pressing an ice pick against my side.

  I looked into her wild eyes and said pleadingly, “I haven’t done anything. Please . . . Don’t do it!”

  She laughed and pushed harder. I saw the bartender coming toward us.

  She shoved her face close to mine and gritted, “You been fucking my man a long time, haven’t you, whore?”

  I gasped, “Lady, I’m a stranger. I never saw him before tonight.”

  She said, “You lying, half-white bitch. I think I’ll waste you on GP.”

  I was at the point of blurting out that I was in drag and could prove I was the possessor of a penis when the bartender leaned across the bar and shouted, “Jesus Christ, Charlotte, are you out of your mind? This young lady is nothing to Cadillac. He cut into her and went into his routine. Look at her. Why the hell would she want Cadillac? Besides, she just got in town and she’s a friend of mine. Now lay off.”

  She frowned and looked rapidly from him to me. She slipped the ice pick up her coat sleeve, threw her head back and laughed loudly and long.

  She wiped tears from her eyes with her sleeve and said, “Honey, I was just jiving. I wasn’t going to do you no harm. You sure looked comical, girl. Mr. Henderson, give her a drink on me.”

  I said quickly, “No, thank you, Mrs. Cadillac . . . I mean . . . Thompson.”

  I went to the ladies’ john. I came out and as I passed the men’s john, I saw Cadillac peeping out through the narrowly cracked door.

  He stage whispered, “She still out there?”

  I ignored him and stopped at the bar when I noticed Charlotte had gone. I gave Mister Henderson a five-dollar bill and a big warm kiss. He insisted that I have a drink on him. I gulped down a double gin and went to the street.

  I started down the sidewalk toward the corner. I stopped and cut across the street. Charlotte had a rapidly growing audience watching her perform against a black Cadillac. She had flattened all four tires, and apparently had sprung the lock on the Cadillac’s gaping trunk lid.

  She had taken off her topcoat and smashed out every one of the Caddie’s windows and started to demolish the form and shape of the battered car with Herculean swings of a heavy bumper jack.

  Wary of her spotting me and switching targets, I skulked through the El platform shadows to the safety of a jitney cab going north on South Parkway Boulevard. I got off at Fifth-fifth Street and went into the Hurricane Lounge.

  I sat at the bar drinking Tom Collins and thrilling to my toes at the way young guys kept pestering me and whispering lewd somethings in my ear.

  But none of them really appealed to me enough so I could reveal my secret and risk instant and loud-mouthed exposure in the bar. And on the other hand, a young guy could be dangerous when put in a sexual cross like taking a pretty girl to a room and discovering he had been tricked by a stud.

  Coming back from the ladies’ restroom, I passed a booth and thought the back of a brown-skinned guy’s head was familiar. But I was too looped to remember to look at his face when I sat at the bar.

  I was making eyes at a handsome black guy in his thirties down the bar when somebody bit the side of my neck. I turned angrily like a lady to tongue-lash the culprit. I smiled instead.

  It was cute brown-skin Ray whose party I had gone to the day I met Dorcas. And he wasn’t slobbery drunk like then, just high.

  The bartender brought my change from a ten-dollar bill. I opened my purse and pushed the bills into a coin purse bulging with close to a hundred dollars in tens and twenties. I noticed that Ray’s eyes lingered inside my purse, but I was high and glad to see him, so I promptly forgot about it.

  He looked me up and down and said breathlessly, “Damn! I didn’t know you went all out like this. You look like a sure enough pretty bitch. Shit, you look like an ice-cream cone to me. You dig?

  “I’ve been dreaming about that dime-sized round eye since I first dug your fabulous yellow butt in the shower at school. You hip to it? Now take this key to the blue convertible Chevy out front and wait for me.”

  I nodded my head toward the rough-looking black girl watching him from the booth where he had been sitting.

  I said, “Ray, I already had a helluva close call tonight. I’m not going to let you get my throat cut.”

  He pressed the key into my hand and laughed.

  He said, “She’s just a nice girl I picked up an hour ago. I can cut h
er loose without a hassle.”

  I took the key and waited impatiently for almost half an hour, but at midnight we were checking into a Westside hotel, near home.

  I had decided to do it that way because I knew how infrequently streetcars and El trains ran from the Southside in the wee hours.

  We got naked and kissed and petted while we drank the fifth of gin we brought with us. He insisted that I wear the wig and hose.

  I had paid for the room and the gin. But I didn’t feel like I had been conned or anything, because Ray was a boss freak, and so sweet. We swapped out on everything—even-steven.

  He took as good as he gave. He sodomized me, and he loved it when I sodomized him. He frenched me like I had never been before. In the heat of his frantic passion he told me at least a hundred times how beautiful I was and how much he loved me and needed me.

  After it was over, I lay in delicious exhaustion, too spent to move. My rectum tingled, and I felt tiny temblors of sensation shake me like the nerve quakes in a woman at orgasm.

  I watched Ray’s handsome face frowning in the dresser mirror as he repeatedly bungled the tying of the Windsor knot in his blue silk tie.

  I thought, He loves me, and this has been the most complete and beautiful sex I’ve ever had with anyone. From this moment on, I am going to be happy because I’m through with girls and the heartbreak behind them.

  I’m beautiful in drag. I’ll stay in it for Ray until I die, and we could even get married and no one would know I wasn’t a woman. Lucy fools everybody, even experts, and I’m prettier and look more like a woman than she does.

  I should have known my luck had to change. OH! How perfect after we are married to adopt a baby, and then move far away and new friends would really think I had given birth to Ray’s baby. This is happiness. This is love. I feel so good. I want to scream!

  I said, “Darling, why not forget that silly knot and take your clothes off and stay. We’re paid up until noon.”

  He darted a peculiar, devious look at me through the mirror that made me uneasy. But he flashed his lopsided, little boy smile and I was happy again—sure that I had been mistaken.

  He said, “Baby, I have to split. It’s three thirty in the A.M. There’s something I gotta do for my old man early this morning.”

  I said, “All right, Honey. Come over here. I think I’ve got enough strength to make a Windsor.”

  He came over, and I sat on the side of the bed. He tongue kissed me and knelt on the carpet between my legs. He embraced my waist and caressed my spine with his strong fingers while I put the knot in his tie. I was dizzy with happiness.

  I said tremulously, “I hope it’s like this with us forever. Don’t you?”

  He stood up suddenly and grinned down at me.

  He said, “Me and you, Baby.”

  He went to the closet and got his pearl gabardine topcoat. He threw it across his shoulders cape-style and stroked his hand across his hair as he peered into the mirror.

  My heart jumped rhythm because I was certain I had caught that devious, darting look again.

  He said, “Baby, you got a brush?”

  I said, “Sure, Honey. There’s a small one in my purse right there on the dresser.”

  He opened the purse and spent a helluva long time rummaging about in it. It puzzled me because the purse only contained a compact, cosmetics and comb and brush.

  It didn’t even contain the bulgy coin purse with the hundred or so dollars in it. I had removed it and tucked it in one of my shoes under the bed when I undressed. I knew we were going to be drinking and sexing. I had been afraid that Ray and I would fall asleep afterward and some slick maid or desk clerk would pass key in and clean us out.

  I felt like I was going to suffocate when he pulled out the brush and stood there with a tense face, slapping the back of the brush into his palm, staring at me through the mirror with cold eyes.

  I said, “Ray, what’s wrong? Please, Honey, don’t look at me like that.”

  He turned and faced me and managed a monstrous grin that ripped at my insides.

  He cleared his throat and rasped, “Baby Sweet, you got some bread?”

  I lay back weakly on the pillow and said “A little. Why?”

  He came and sat on the side of the bed. He lit a cigarette and puffed the tip to a vivid red. He blew a cloud of smoke into my face.

  He said, “Baby, stop shucking me. You had a nice piece of bread in the Hurricane.”

  I said, “Ray, please don’t spoil things. Let me keep this good feeling I got. Don’t say anything else about money. I’m your girl. I’m in your corner.”

  I swung my arm over the edge of the bed and plucked the change purse from my shoe. I opened it and peeled off a twenty-dollar bill. I smiled and held it out to him.

  He curled his lip and said coldly, “Nigger, come off of that girl shit. You ain’t no bitch. You’re a queer stud. Get hip to yourself. Jack, you got to lay two bills on me. I fucked up some bread that belonged to a terrible stud. I’m in bad trouble. Now unass the two bills.”

  My head felt like he had split it open with a white-hot axe.

  I said harshly, “Ray, you’re full of shit. You’re not smart enough to jive me out of a nickel. And I’m prettier and look more like a girl than that ugly, black whore you were with in the Hurricane.”

  His face suddenly became so ugly and twisted with rage it frightened me. He moved his right hand upward and tricked my eyes to follow, as he adjusted his coat on his shoulders. I didn’t see his left hand push the glowing end of his cigarette into my navel.

  I was wounded, hurt beyond instant pain. I actually felt frigid—so cold I shivered and my teeth chattered. Then the icy fuse detonated a searing powder keg of pain and blasted agony to a trillion tortured nerve ends.

  I clutched my belly and leaped from the bed. I ran to the bathroom and drew a washbowl full of cold water. I stood there sloshing water against my belly. I remembered my money. I held a wet towel against me and went to stand near the dresser where Ray was counting my money.

  I said, “Why did you do that?”

  He said without looking at me, “Freak, you called my wife a bad name.”

  I said, “You’re not going out of here with my money.”

  I looked about for a weapon of some kind to put me on par with his brawny six feet. There was nothing. He folded the bills and put them in his trouser pocket.

  He grinned down at me and said, “My wife knows I hustle queers, but I had a bitch of a time convincing her to let me run the game on you. In fact, your bread I’m taking her is the only thing that will convince her that you really are a stinking faggot.”

  I laughed contemptuously and said, “I bet you don’t tell that funny-looking black bitch about how I fucked you in the ass, and how you sucked the stinking faggot’s prick and asshole.”

  I saw his right hand make a fist so I shot out my bare foot at his crotch. He grabbed my leg and upended me. He grabbed the other leg and dangled me in the air.

  He started kicking me between the shoulder blades, and then his foot bombed the back of my neck and I swung into blackness absolute on a screaming rope of pain.

  I came to dreamily and heard the tinkle of water. I smiled and thought, Ray is taking a leak.

  I attempted to raise myself on an elbow. Racing pain from my head to ankles jolted me wide awake. I burst into tears because I realized that Ray had continued to kick me even after I blacked out.

  And my luck had gotten worse. There was somebody for everybody the old saw went. But for a stinking faggot like me there would never be anybody who really cared. Until I died or some fruit hustler killed me there would be only beatings, heartbreak and tears.

  I lay there on the carpet thinking about shoving the dresser under the ceiling light fixture and wondering if it could support my weight . . . long enough to . . .

  I just didn’t have the energy to do away with myself. I dressed without sponging off or combing out the snarls in the wig. It was a littl
e after five A.M. when I dragged myself to the street.

  Dawn hadn’t broken, so I decided to risk slipping into the flat in drag instead of changing into my clothes at Lucy’s as I usually did.

  Luckily there was no one on the street when I walked down the block where we lived. I went into our building and worked the key noiselessly into the lock on the flat’s door. I turned the key slowly and carefully pushed open the door.

  I stuck my head inside listening for sounds of Mama moving about. All was quiet. I stepped inside and took off the high heels. I crept down the hall in my stocking feet and went past Mama’s closed bedroom door to my dark bedroom. I had removed the suit jacket when the bright ceiling light flashed on and Mama was standing in the doorway looking horrified, angry and disgusted.

  She whispered sibilantly as if afraid to be overheard, “Sweet Pea, how could you do this to your mama? Anybody see you like this that knows us?”

  I sat on the side of the bed and said, “Madame Miracle, none of your suckers or tenants saw me.”

  I took off the white peau de soie blouse.

  Mama said, “Where have you been all night?”

  I looked at her wearily. I stood and stepped out of the skirt. I removed the half slip and padded bra and turned slowly to model the black and blue bruises covering my back and thighs.

  Mama gasped, “Sweet Pea! You’ve been beaten!”

  I felt suddenly woozy. I lay down on the bed.

  I grinned feebly and said, “Not beaten—kicked and stomped.”

  Mama was holding both hands against her chest over her heart. She leaned over and looked intently at the runny blister on my blackened navel.

  Mama sighed and left the room. She came back with a tube of Unguentine and alcohol and cotton.

  While putting the salve on my navel she said, “Who did this?”

  I said, “It doesn’t matter, Mama. I’m lucky he didn’t murder me.”

  She turned me on my side and dabbed at my back with an icy wad of alcohol-soaked cotton.

  She said, “You could get killed next time. Come to your senses and stop wearing women’s clothes like some nasty freak. I didn’t raise you like that. I’ve always been a good mother. How could you bust my . . . do me like this after all I’ve done for you?”