Mama Black Widow Read online

  I heard their steps going toward the bedroom door and then stop.

  Lockjaw said, “Mrs. Tilson, I’m coming by tomorrow with a croaker, and he better tell me Carol’s had a miscarriage. If she ain’t . . .”

  The front door slamming behind them sounded like a pistol shot. I went down the hall to look in on Carol and bumped into Bessie and Mama coming out of her bedroom to do the same thing. Carol’s bright eyes focused on Mama who fidgeted and leaned over to touch her. Carol moved away, and her great hazel eyes flooded tears.

  And then I felt Mama quiver beside me, shaken by Carol’s gently whispered question, “Mama, why yu kilt mah baby?”

  Mama croaked from a choking throat, “Shet up, heifer! Yu lyin’ an’ th’ truf ain’t en yu. Ah ain’t kilt yo’ baby. Ah wuz chestizin’ yu ’bout thet nasty peckahwood fuckah an’ yu fell. He tu blame fuh biggin’ yu. Heifer, Ah want yu tu stop bad moufin’ me ’bout that peckahwood bastid varmint, yu heah me!”

  Carol just lay there staring up accusingly at Mama.

  Mama shouted, “Yu tryin’ tu bus mah haht opun wif them evul eyes uv your’n, ain’t yu? But th’ Lawd knows Ah ain’t kilt thet varmint.”

  Mama turned and saw Bessie’s hostile eyes. She fled down the hall to her bedroom. I told Carol I’d search the garbage bin again for her baby come daylight. She smiled, nodded her head and closed her eyes.

  Bessie got the bedding that Papa had used from the hall closet and made my bed on the sofa. I lay there exhausted, and my kid’s brain tried to make the insane pieces of the night’s horror puzzle produce a sane picture. At some agony-racked moment, I fell into deathlike sleep.

  I awoke chilled in the dreary gloom of a headstone grey dawn. I got up and lit the small gas heater across the room. Then I remembered my promise to Carol to find her baby in the garbage bin.

  I dressed in a hurry and went quietly past Mama’s door on the balls of my feet. I was at the back door when I decided to look in on Carol before I searched the garbage bin.

  I tiptoed into the bedroom. A long lump that was Bessie rose and fell in deep sleep at the foot of the bed. Carol was uncovered lying on her back. I leaned over to pull the covers over her.

  I saw something tiny that glowed starkly white between her breasts. I leaned closer. I went woozy at the sight of it. It was the head of her dead baby resting on her chest. The rest of him was wrapped in Carol’s yellow silk Sunday handkerchief.

  I sat on the side of the bed to give my legs a chance to strengthen. I felt a wetness on my thigh. I looked down and saw a slender dark rivulet had stained my pants. And the raw stench of blood made me suddenly nauseous.

  I looked closely at Carol’s face, and my heart jumped rhythm. It was ghostly pale and waxen. I stared at her chest. It was still. I touched her arm with a shaky hand. It was stiff and cold and clammy.

  I heard a mad creature gibbering inside my head, and then he screeched me into darkness absolute. I was on the floor when I opened my eyes. Bessie was weeping and pressing a cold towel against my face.

  Mama was sitting on the side of the bed holding Carol’s corpse in her arms and shrieking at the top of her voice, “Mama’s po’ li’l baby gurl. Ah luv yu. Ah luv yu. Fuhgive me. Please fuhgive me. Mama’s po’ li’l baby gurl.”

  I stood up and looked on the bed for the baby. It was lying on the dresser still wrapped in the yellow silk shroud. The place where Carol had lain was a dark mass of half-congealed blood. The strenuous search in the garbage bin for her baby must have hemorrhaged her, and while she lay asleep she bled to death.

  Bessie tenderly took the tiny body from the dresser top and led me to the living-room sofa. Bessie and I stopped weeping after a while and sat in a grief-stricken stupor. The strange thing was, Mama stayed in there shrieking and begging Carol’s corpse to forgive her.

  Lockjaw and Red came at ten A.M. with a short black M.D. to cross-check Mama’s story about Carol’s miscarriage. The three of them brushed by us and rushed down the hall.

  Bessie and I followed them to the bedroom. Mama was still clutching Carol tightly, and Carol’s face appeared to be sleeping as it rested on Mama’s shoulder facing us.

  The doc was a take-charge guy.

  He stepped forward and placed a hand on Mama’s shoulder and said, “Now, Madame, please let the patient relax so I can get on with my business here. I am desperately pressed for time this morning.”

  Mama turned wild, tear-reddened eyes up at him as the doctor put a hand to Carol’s waist to support her change to the examining position. He jerked his hand back and looked confused.

  He spun around and said, “Mr. Hudson, the patient is deceased. I suggest you call the attending physician or the police.”

  He started to leave.

  Lockjaw, without taking his eye off Carol, blocked his way and said, “You’re gonna be the attending croaker that signs the death certificate. The butchering peckerwoods in the coroner’s morgue ain’t gonna chop up that beautiful girl even though she never gave me a smile.”

  Mama placed Carol back in bed.

  Lockjaw stood there gazing down at Carol, and then, without taking his eye away, he said, “Red, get across the hall to Five Lick Willie’s phone and call Crockett the undertaker. Tell him where she is and tell him I want her handled like she’s British royalty, like a princess. You know, mahogany casket and all the rest of it. You hear that, Red? The goddamn best and nothing less for her. Close your stupid mouth, Red, and move.”

  He stood there like a man in a trance. Mama sat there on the side of the bed thanking him over and over like a litany for guaranteeing a high-class funeral for Carol.

  But Lockjaw’s face didn’t register that he heard her at all. Finally, he cleared his throat and turned away swiftly and went away through the front door. But not before I had seen a tear glisten as it rolled down the monster’s scarred cheek.

  Junior came home from Ida’s place about fifteen minutes after Lockjaw left. He really took Carol’s death hard. He rolled on the floor and wailed like a baby until the undertaker came at noon.

  I guess Junior felt guilty because he wasn’t at home when we all needed a man in the house so badly. And maybe, just maybe, he remembered that he had done his part to drive Papa away.

  Railhead drove Bessie and me to the Southside to tell Papa about Carol. Fortunately, when we got there, Papa was taking a bath. Soldier convinced us it would kill Papa to learn about Carol because of the still shaky stage of his illness.

  Papa really looked disappointed not to see Carol. We told him Carol had eloped with her guy and we hadn’t heard from her.

  When we got home the flat was crammed with Hattie Greene and her children and some people from Mama’s church come to pray. Bessie and I kept the secret of what had really happened to Carol to ourselves, even from Junior.

  Carol’s funeral was held at Mama’s church, and old-timers said it had more flowers and was the biggest and richest ever held in that church.

  Lockjaw didn’t come to the funeral. And neither did Frederick. I found four postal cards and two letters from him among Carol’s things. But all had been sent from different towns in Minnesota, and none had a return address.

  I notified the cafe where Carol had worked that she had died. I was sure that I would hear from Frederick when he got back to town and found out about Carol.

  Carol’s family sat on the first bench near the casket and viewed her remains first after the services. I can’t forget how torn down and lonely I felt inside as I stood and looked down at her lovely face for the last time. Her tiny baby was nestled on her shoulder.

  I fought hard to control myself, but I couldn’t help remembering the night I lay in her arms and she rhapsodized her dreams in that breathless voice of hers. And how could I not remember how pretty and pure she looked that last day in her white uniform and her shy warm smile? And how could I forget the rapture in her eyes when she fell in love and became a woman?

  At graveside, the grain in the mahogany casket stood out r
ichly beneath the brilliant April sun. I felt a new pang of sorrow for Carol who could never again walk in her favorite kind of day.

  Mama wept wildly as the casket was lowered into the grave. Jonnie Mae Hudson, Lockjaw’s sister, and Junior were on each side of her giving her support and speaking to her comfortingly.

  Suddenly, Mama uttered a guttural cry of anguish and jerked her arms free and hurled herself with arms outstretched toward the yawning grave. Several men, including the minister, flung themselves on her at the very rim and pulled her back.

  She struggled and fought them like a crazy woman and screamed, “Bury me wif mah baby gurl. Ah don want tu stay up heah. Git yo hans offen me an’ bury me wif mah baby.”

  Jonnie Mae and several of the church’s sisters saw Mama home and put her to bed. Junior took Ida home where he practically lived. Jonnie Mae, Hattie Greene and Bessie fixed food for the hungry sisters. Everybody had gone by five P.M.

  I lay down on the sofa, but my whirling brain wouldn’t let me nap. At eight P.M. Mama got up and went to the kitchen. I heard her washing dishes.

  I went to the kitchen and started drying them. I was drying a steak knife when I got the terrible urge for the first time to kill Mama. I stood there staring at the pulse in her throat and feeling a strange kind of scary ecstasy thinking about plunging the knife to its hilt to start the scarlet spurting.

  I stood there ecstatic and terrified. My hands trembled so violently I locked them together and hid them behind me. I could see clear as real Mama thrashing to death on the kitchen floor like a chicken with its head hatcheted off.

  I dropped the knife and ran to the bathroom. I locked myself in.

  I was leaning against the face bowl sweating and panting when Mama knocked and said, “Sweet Pea, yu awright?”

  I fought for breath and managed to mumble, “Yes, Mama, dear, I’m awright.”

  10

  THE WIZARD OF WOO

  Two days after Carol’s funeral I made my bed on the sofa. Sleeping in the bed where Carol had died gave my mind wrenching nightmares. Bessie and Junior were in the streets, and Mama was asleep. I was falling asleep when I heard knocking on the door.

  I looked out the window to see if a police car or Lockjaw’s limousine was out front. I went and put an eye to a thin crack in the doorjamb.

  It was Frederick. I held my breath and heard Mama snoring. I eased the door open and stepped outside into the hall. Frederick’s round face was drawn. His merry blue eyes were sad, and his pug nose was red like he had been weeping.

  He said in a breaking voice, “I got in an hour ago. The chef at the cafe told me. Where is she?”

  I said, “Oh, Frederick! She was buried with the baby two days ago in Rosehill Cemetery.”

  He stood silently with a piteous look on his face. I didn’t tell him about Mama’s bestial part in the miscarriage. I did try, in a kid’s clumsy way to comfort him.

  Just before he left he said bitterly, “Why did God take her? She was the loveliest, sweetest girl I ever met and will ever know.”

  Then his cherub face softened, and he had a dreamy look in his eyes.

  He almost whispered, “Sweet Pea, it was magical with Carol. I never felt dwarfish and pudgy and comical looking like I know I am. Girls of my own race in subtle ways never let me forget it. But Carol, bless her angel heart in heaven, made me feel six feet tall, handsome and loved.”

  He turned and walked dejectedly away. I went to the window and watched his old Model A careen madly and disappear into the lonely April midnight.

  With Carol gone, 1939 was a lonely year for me. Junior was seldom home. Bessie was openly hostile toward Mama and in defiance, ran the streets with Sally, and with Railhead when he could catch up with her.

  I had no close buddies at school because I didn’t take to sports. But otherwise, I wasn’t doing badly in school. I had been advanced to the fifth grade, which was only one grade behind for an eleven year old.

  Connie, the landlady, had a stroke that paralyzed the whole right side of her body. She was a no-good woman, but she looked so pitiful with a crutch and dragging her leg that I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. And her only relative, her son, never came to visit her any more, not even to get money.

  I couldn’t visit Papa and Soldier as often as I wanted to because Papa would quiz me dizzy about Carol and where she was and why she didn’t write him. I’d get nervous and have a helluva headache after all the fast lies I’d have to tell him.

  Lockjaw and Red dropped in several times for short visits. I didn’t hear Lockjaw mention the money Mama owed him. In fact, he almost always brought a slab of corned beef or some other delicacy. I guess he had one soft spot in his ruthless heart, and that for Carol’s Mama.

  Mr. Cox, Railhead’s papa, dropped dead while shining a customer’s shoes in the Loop barbershop where he had worked for twenty years. A pal of Mr. Cox told Railhead that his papa’s boss had to canvas the black shoe shiners and porters in the neighborhood of the barbershop to find out “what the hell is Bill’s last name so I can send some funeral flowers?”

  It was strange and awfully cold-blooded that after twenty long years, Mr. Cox, like multitudes of other black men and women, wasn’t really a human being to his white boss, but only a shadowy flunkey with a mop and toilet brush and shine rag who answered to the name of Bill.

  On a blustery Saturday night at the end of the first week in December Mama had unexpected visitors drop in. They were Marva Pike, the curvy coffee-cream-shaded secretary-treasurer of Mama’s church, and the secretary’s mother, Sister Pike and stentorian-voiced Reverend Owens who was the assistant pastor and heir apparent to the pulpit of the slick extortionist with the debauched yellow pimp face.

  Sister Pike cleared her throat noisily and said, “Sister Tilson, the Lord has sent us on a sad but necessary mission.”

  Then Sister Pike rolled and lowered her cow eyes apologetically and said, “Sister Tilson, all the members of our church know of your high regard and . . . uh . . . affection for our beloved pastor. My heart is heavily burdened to have to tell you that Reverend Owens and myself are starting a movement to drive Reverend Rexford from the pulpit of The Church Of Divine Holiness.

  “And we know you will help us after you find out that Reverend Rexford is nothing but a thieving no-good nigger that has been using church money for diamonds and furs and a Northside love nest to fornicate with his white slut sweetheart.”

  Sister Pike heaved her monumental chest to catch her breath and nodded to Reverend Owens who shook his head sadly and said, “Sister Tilson, Sister Pike has spoken the gospel truth.

  “When I found out the truth about our pastor, I went out into the open country and threw myself on my knees. There, under God’s heaven, I wept and prayed for righteous guidance because I love Reverend Rexford like a brother of blood, and I had a confused and troubled mind.

  “Sister Tilson, the earth shook beneath me when I heard the Lord denounce the pastor. We must drive him from the pulpit of our precious church.”

  Mama sat motionless through the whole thing. Reverend Owen’s rundown on how he had unearthed the scandalous truth about Reverend Rexford lasted for half an hour.

  The fateful details of the good reverend’s detective work were that a black city garbage man who was a tenant in a house the reverend owned was transferred to the plush near Northside of Chicago to pick up garbage.

  His first Monday on the new route he spotted a gleaming black Cadillac limousine that seemed familiar. It was parked in the driveway of an attractive bungalow.

  It worried him, and since he was a devout elder of The Church of Devine Holiness, his eyes were drawn to the license plate number of his pastor’s black limousine parked in front of church the next Sunday.

  The next morning as his truck approached the suspect bungalow, his weathered eye saw Reverend Rexford in the doorway. He was kissing good-bye a pulchritudinous young platinum blond white woman who probably seemed to coruscate like an unattainable jewel in
the morning sun.

  His garbage man’s brain maybe turned moss green with envy as he watched the wizard of woo get into the limousine and gun away.

  While dumping the bungalow’s garbage into his truck, Elder Elijah watched as a shabby black woman with a work-hacked face and fluid-puffed ankles hobbled down the street and went in the back door of the bungalow.

  He glanced at the name plate on the pole mailbox near the sidewalk and saw that the silky haired wizard was shacking for real under a Mr. and Mrs. moniker of Filipino derivation. Elijah feverishly picked up his route in half the time and sped to Reverend Owens with the electrifying news.

  Late that afternoon Reverend Owens was waiting in his car down the block when the bone-tired cleaning woman finished her labors at the bungalow. He gallantly gave her a lift all the way to the Southside and picked her clean of information. And got her another job paying more.

  The wizard had indeed set up the blonde in the bungalow, and her closet was crammed with expensive finery the dazzled pastor had suckered for. And he was being cuckolded at least twice a week by a penniless young white guy who sang in the dives along North Clark Street, when he got a chance.

  After Reverend Owens had given his outraged account of the pastor’s costly dalliance with taboo white pussy he passed the ball of condemnation to sloe-eyed Marva Pike with an elaborate bow and jerk of shoulder that looked suspiciously choreographed.

  With tortured eyes and in a voice that staggered the piercing rim of hysteria she told how she had aided and abetted the pastor in his embezzlement of fifteen thousand dollars of church money.

  She had done it, she said in lofty language, because, “The pastor made me his abject slave and avid fellatrix through his marvelous mastery of the art of cunnilingus and his peerless skill with his confection penis. But now I want him to suffer for cheating on me.”

  Mama decoded it slowly because her face turned charcoal gray. Marva’s mama frowned disapproval of her candor. Reverend Owen’s face had a look of painful disgust, like perhaps he had found a used menstrual pad in his plate of hog balls.