Mama Black Widow Read online

  Of course, no one except me knew that Sally and Bessie were freaking off with the Pullman porters upstairs and taking sneaky round-the-block joy rides with Grampy Dick and several other notorious pimps and hustlers in their gaudy machines.

  But it was Toronto Tony, a white pimp fresh from Canada who had put together a fast stable of black Chicago whores, which made Sally and Bessie gasp and squeal like they were in orgasm.

  He’d cruise by in his white Caddie convertible crammed with his stable and his Barrymore-like profile tilted arrogantly toward the sky. And his diamonds were a vulgar riot in the sun. It was tragic that he played for Sally and Bessie, especially Bessie. But then, who can ever know where and how he plots himself toward the end.

  Moths and wear all but wiped out the clothes that Bunny had given Mama. One Sunday Mama couldn’t go to church because she just didn’t have one thing to wear. We had never seen her so depressed. And then like a miracle the following Saturday she went to the Loop and brought back a sparkling array of new finery. And a furniture store delivered bright green new living-room furniture.

  She got angry when we asked where she got the money to buy the things. We knew Junior hadn’t given her that much money because we heard him ask her if she had hit policy. I found out later that in a way she had.

  With Papa gone, Lockjaw started hanging around the flat a lot, especially on weekend evenings. Mama didn’t object because he handled her like she was a cream puff. And the choice cuts of meat and fancy pastries he lugged in didn’t get him treated like the pompous ass he was. In fact, when he would angrily recoil from Carol’s numerous and chilly rebuffs, Mama would lead the monster to her bedroom and soft talk him to gentle him down. She’d shove him out the front door and his live orb would be radiant with revived lust and hope that Carol would one day be his.

  Around the first part of August, on a Sunday evening, Junior opened the front door and unveiled a surprise package in the doe-eyed, spectacularly bosomed and bottomed person of Ida Jackson, a penny-toned Westside divorcée, maybe thirty-five to forty years old. Her ruined baby face leered risqué half smiles like the ones on freakish bitches in pornographic movies. And her voice was whiskey contralto.

  Mama sat silently and tensely watching Junior paying moon-eyed attention to the battered beauty. And each time Junior called her “Muh Deah,” Mama winced. Junior was sauced up and couldn’t keep his eyes and hands off Ida’s epic chest, and they left after a few minutes. Junior didn’t come home until noon the next day.

  The following weekend Carol was off Saturday and Sunday because of some redecoration at the cafe. Saturday at noon Carol and I were restless and since she wasn’t to see Frederick until Sunday, we decided to visit Papa.

  Bessie and Ida were out double dating Railhead and Junior in the Buick. And Mama was working.

  We had an exciting visit with Papa and Soldier. And it was wonderful to see Papa looking better each time we saw him. They took us to a Chinese restaurant, and then to the Regal Theatre for a stage show. Comedians Butter Beans and Susie gave me laughing cramps.

  Carol and I were chatting gaily on the Madison streetcar when she glanced out the window and stiffened. I leaned over and looked at the street. Frederick’s old Model A Ford was halted at a stoplight across the intersection, and as our car rumbled past on the green light, I saw a young white girl with long straw-colored hair in the front seat beside him.

  Carol was silent all the way home, and I could tell by the way she chewed her bottom lip that tears were on the brink. The flat was deserted when we got there at seven thirty P.M. Carol didn’t cry. She wrote a letter and told me if I hurried I could catch Frederick at the bakery and get back home before Mama arrived at nine P.M.

  I took a streetcar to the bakery on Kedsie Avenue. The front store part was closed. I went down an alley to the rear and peered through a barred half-open window.

  I rattled a quarter across the bars when I spied Frederick and the girl with the straw-colored hair moving about in crisp white uniforms. He walked over and saw me and let me in the back door.

  My mouth flooded as I inhaled the spicy aroma of baking strudel and bread. He frowned as he read Carol’s letter and he kicked the side of a brick oven when he had finished.

  He stuttered in a low voice, “Carol’s wrong about Gretchen. She’s my cousin from Wisconsin.”

  He turned and motioned the girl toward us. She came and stood smiling.

  Frederick said, “Gretchen, this is Otis, a friend of mine. Just for fun, say how you’re connected to me and where you come from.”

  She shifted puzzled blue eyes from him to me and said, “You’re my cousin Frederick, and I came from Ripon, Wisconsin, yesterday to help with the shop baking, and I’m certain you have been drinking.”

  She laughed and walked away. He scrawled a message hurriedly on the back of Carol’s letter and gave me cab fare and a hot loaf of bread.

  Carol was at the front window biting her nails when I got home. She heard what I had to tell her and read the note. I could tell by the way her face relaxed that all was well with her and she’d keep her Sunday date with Frederick as usual.

  Mama came in around nine P.M. Carol and I were in the living room when Lockjaw and Cuckoo Red paid another of their oppressive visits. They plopped down on the sofa between me and Carol.

  Mama was taking a bath and shampooing her hair for Hattie Greene’s pressing and curling irons early next morning for church. Lockjaw had been drinking heavily, and his horny thigh chased Carol to the end of the sofa.

  Lockjaw said, “What the hell, you think I’m poison?”

  Carol said quietly, “No, it’s hot an’ stuffy en heah.”

  He dropped a paw where her escaped knee had been and said, “C’mon, baby, I’ll have Red take us for a long cool ride along the lake.”

  Carol had stood to avid the paw. She yawned and looked past his head at the street and murmured, “No, thank yu, Mistah Lockjaw. Ah’m goin’ tu bed.”

  She turned to go, and he grabbed her wrist and jerked her between his knees and locked them around her legs. I started to rise with the thought of pushing his knees apart.

  Cuckoo stabbed a stiff index finger into the soft spot under my earlobe, and a bright galaxy of lopsided stars whirled in the near blackout. I wanted to get Mama, but I was stunned and my legs felt numb.

  Lockjaw said, “Girl, you’re a joke. You got a run in those forty-nine cent stockings a foot wide. But you got the nerve to nix dough and cold-shoulder me, Lockjaw. I always get what I want, and I’m gonna have you if you walk this earth and stay pretty. Now, c’mon and kiss me good night. You owe me that.”

  Carol’s face was flushed in fury, and she literally leaped from the knee lock and her voice dripped with contempt, “Ah ain’t nevah goin’ tu be nuthin’ tu yu, ole funny-lookin’ niggah. Ah ain’t swallowed uh moufful uh thet food yu brought heah. Ah’m goin’ tu have Mama put yu out fer good when she heah whut yu done tu me an’ whut yo’ flunkey done tu Sweet Pea.”

  Carol was walking away when Lockjaw brayed like a jackass, and she froze in her tracks when he said, “She can’t throw me out of here unless she returns my down payment on you.

  “How the hell do you think your old lady got this fancy furniture and the ritzy clothes from Marshal Fields—with box tops? She got a grand and a half from me with the understanding she’d talk you into giving me some consideration. And if she failed, then she’d pay it back at ten percent.

  “She begs me to have patience, but I’m busting loose soon and putting you in my bed gangster style. Go on, ask her about our deal.

  “Oh yeah, the way you abuse me and call me names—I better not find out you got some punk. I do, I’m gonna have Red stomp his guts out.”

  Carol just stood there staring at him in shock with her palms pressing to her temples like she was asleep with her eyes open. Lockjaw and Red stood up, and Carol didn’t flinch or anything when Lockjaw kissed her flush on the mouth. Lockjaw and Red walked to the front door a
nd paused.

  Lockjaw hollered down the hallway toward the bathroom, “Sedalia, I’ll drop in next week.”

  They went out and I said, “Carol, let’s tell Mama what he said about buying you.”

  Not an eyelash flickered. I said it again. She blinked her eyes.

  She stood there for a long time wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before she sighed deeply and said in a breaking voice, “Oh, Sweet Pea! He ain’t lyin’. She got th’ stuff, ain’t she? Ain’t no use tu say nuthin’.

  “We ain’t got tu worry now wheah she got the money to buy th’ clothes an’ furntchur. Ah got uh headache. Mama put th’ hurt tu me. Ah’m sick. Ah’m goin’ tu bed.”

  She went slowly down the hall, and I heard her say a dry hello to Mama coming from the bathroom. Mama came down the hall and stuck her haggard face into the living room.

  I opened my mouth to tell her about Lockjaw and Red, but she said, “Sweet Pea, them dirty white folks give me ches’ pains agin, an’ Ah’m beat so don’ let Presadent Roseyvelt hissef bothah me.”

  I sat at the front window and watched Railhead pull his Buick to the curb. Only he and Bessie got out, which meant Junior was probably going to be adoring Ida’s epic chest for the rest of the night.

  Bessie came in with rumpled clothes and hair in disarray and gave me a dollar from a thin roll of sweaty bills she dug from her bosom.

  I heard Bessie running bathwater, and I couldn’t help wondering if Railhead was just another pay-and-lay customer like the Pullman porters. I lay my head on the restful ridge of the new green sofa and closed my eyes against the glare of the street lamp.

  My little boy’s mind thrashed madly in the frightening web spun from the tangled affairs of Carol and the German and Mama and everything that Lockjaw had said and threatened. Soon my head gentled and felt balloon light and seemed to soar above the spectral tenements and slumber on night’s indigo pillow, star embroidered.

  And then I saw an old black Model A Ford park behind Railhead’s Buick. A pudgy white guy got out. It was Frederick! I raced out the front door into the hall. And there, horror of horrors, was Lockjaw and Cuckoo Red talking to a policy runner. I rushed through the vestibule doors to the sidewalk.

  Frederick had started up the walk, and he just grinned stupidly when I screamed, “Don’t go in that building! They’re waiting to kill you! Don’t worry, it’s all patched up with Carol and she’s meeting you tomorrow.”

  He shoved me aside and strode down the walk.

  He said over his shoulder, “It’s really your mother I’m calling on. I’m sick and tired of ducking and hiding with Carol. I’m going in and tell Mrs. Tilson that we are in love.”

  I wanted to shout out the warning that Mama would do him great bodily harm, but I was paralyzed because Lockjaw and Red had come outside and overheard him.

  Red walked down to meet him. I saw the glint of brass knuckles on Red’s brutish right hand as he gouged a crimson rill along Frederick’s jawbone. Frederick dropped moaning to the concrete, and Red stood waiting for orders.

  Lockjaw said gleefully, “Stomp his face in and make the peckerwood bastard pretty like me for Carol.”

  I ran toward them and screamed a dozen times, “Please! Please! Don’t do it! Frederick is a good guy. Frederick is a good guy.”

  And then there was the sudden glare of the street lamp in my eyes and Mama was shaking me and saying, “Yu wringin’ wet, Sweet Pea. Who thet name yu callin’?”

  I stammered, “Wh, who? Oh! A guy at school, I guess.”

  I took a quick look out the window to make certain that Frederick’s Ford wasn’t really there and went to bed on shaky legs.

  Carol took me with her to a Loop movie house for her date with Frederick. I guess she felt that leaving the building with me would bamboozle any spy that Lockjaw might have had about.

  I sat in the balcony several rows behind them. My glimpses of their torrid kissing and petting were few because the picture was taut adventure titled International Settlement with debonair George Sanders, my favorite actor, as a soldier of fortune and the heavenly Dolores Del Rio as his costar.

  I fell asleep during the second feature because I hadn’t slept well the night before, after that Cuckoo Red nightmare. Carol awakened me, and we walked to a side street where Frederick was waiting in the Ford. I was fast asleep on the backseat before we got out of the downtown section.

  I felt a jolting of the car and opened my eyes. Frederick had parked with the Ford’s engine running. I lay looking at the skyline and realized we were on the Westside several blocks from home. Carol was nestled inside Frederick’s arm with her head on his chest.

  She said sadly, “Baby, Ah don’ want tu leave yu. Ah cain’t hahdly stan tu be wifout yu an’ Ah’m so scared uh thet evul ole man. Yo Mama and Papa hate black people, and Mama hates white people. Ah jes’ know sumpthin’ bad goin’ tu happen. Whut we goin’ tu do, Baby?”

  He patted her and squeezed her tightly and crooned, “Now, darling, you promised me you wouldn’t worry. I’m just glad for your sake that you don’t love and miss me the terrible way I do you.

  “Let’s go underground a bit in case the dirty old man has a bad case of nose trouble. We will stop seeing each other in the restaurant for a while, and Sweet Pea can see you home from work except on those two nights a week when we go to ‘you know where.’ And, darling, don’t worry about my parents and your mom.

  “It won’t be long before I won’t need permission to marry you, and then we’ll never be apart, and we’ll have a house full of beautiful kids that will warm their cold hearts and make them proud and happy we found each other and fell in love.”

  Carol moaned and raised her open mouth to his and they tongued deeply.

  He whispered hoarsely, “Gott en himmel, I love you with my soul. It was just Friday, remember? Yet I’m burning like it has been forever since we had some. OH! Please, darling, wake up Sweet Pea and go home before I lose control.”

  I rescued them. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

  It was good that Carol and Frederick “went underground a bit” because Lockjaw and Red haunted the area where Carol worked and often stopped in near the end of her shift to offer her a ride home.

  On Tuesday and Friday evenings, when the lovers went to some secret place, Carol would leave the cafe through the rear kitchen door. I’d be waiting to take her through a catacomb of scary alleys to Frederick parked on a side street many blocks away.

  Lockjaw must have been putting pressure on Mama, too, because she yakked constantly to Carol about how rich Lockjaw was and how even though he was old and ugly, a smart girl could at least be friendly toward him. And a girl wouldn’t exactly be a fool to marry him since he was practically ready to tumble into the grave. And, of course, a girl could think of her mother killing herself slaving for the dirty white folks.

  Carol always got nervous and silent under Mama’s sales pitch. Then Mama would look at Carol wide-eyed like she couldn’t understand why Carol didn’t close her eyes and grab Lockjaw and his diamonds, furs and money.

  I was sure glad Mama didn’t understand it. I really was.

  In the middle of November 1938, Carol and I visited Papa and Soldier. Carol tearfully told them all about Mama and Lockjaw and Frederick. Soldier exploded and advised her to leave immediately and get a furnished room in the building with him and Papa until she could marry.

  Papa didn’t agree and told her to stay with Mama until she was sure that she and Frederick would marry or at least until she turned eighteen on June 25, 1939. Naturally, Papa’s advice had more appeal for her despite the Lockjaw threat, because she was very close to the rest of us.

  And even though Mama racked Carol’s nerves with her Lockjaw heckle she loved Mama dearly. It was a fatal shame that Carol hadn’t taken Soldier’s advice instead of Papa’s. It really was.

  Several days before the new year of 1939 arrived, Carol told me she had been having short dizzy spells and often an upset stomach, and that she h
adn’t told Frederick about it because she thought it would be a passing disturbance.

  New Year’s night we lay in our bedroom alone because Bessie and Junior were out with Railhead and Ida. Mama was snoring across the hall. Carol’s face was radiant in the glow of moonlight, and her eyes were shining.

  She embraced me and said softly, “Sweet Pea, Frederick took me tu uh doctah, an’ guess whut? Ah’m goin’ tu be uh mama en July. Ah’m so happy Ah don’ know walkin’ frum flyin’.”

  I leaped to attention on my elbows and sputtered, “Carol, are you nuts? What about Mama?”

  She smiled and said dreamily, “Ah bought uh girdal an’ mah coat is loose. Ah cain’t show til March or April an’ Mama don’ notice nuthin’ no how. An’ when Ah cain’t hide it, Ahm goin’ tu tell her Ah luv Frederick an’ we goin’ tu git married wif her uhpruvul en May when Frederick turn twenty-one or wifout it on June 25th when Ahm eighteen.”

  I said, “But, Carol, have you forgotten Mama hates white people? She’ll probably go out of her mind when she finds out about Frederick. And the baby, oh boy! And to make it worse, you kept it secret from her. And what about Lockjaw? Carol, I’m scared.”

  Carol patted me and said, “Ahm tu happy tu be scahed. Frederick goin’ tu drive his Papa up tu Minnesota on uh trip after th’ wintah thaw, an’ Frederick goin’ tu look out up theah fer us uh place tu live wheah theah ain’t no hate agin skin color.

  “We goin’ tu wuk tugethah an’ opun uh bakry an’ git rich an’ buy uh fahm biggern th’ Wilkerson’s an’ let Papa run it an’ preach on Sunday like he did on th’ plantation.”

  I lay there in her arms and fell asleep listening to her rhapsodizing her dreams.

  In February, I was riding on the backseat of Frederick’s Ford going west up Madison Street from a Loop horror movie we had seen.