Mama Black Widow (19 page)

I heard Mama say something about “cord” and she didn't have her key. I whispered a fast rundown on what had happened. She went into the bathroom and left the door cracked a couple of inches.

I heard Mama say something about “cord” and “varmint.” I tried to see inside, but all I saw was Bessie vomiting into the face bowl near the door.

I heard Mama say in urgent tones, “Bessie, han' me uh razuh blade an' thet alculhull on thet cabnet.”

A few minutes later Bessie said, “Mama, thet blood is sho gushin'. We bettah call uh doctah.”

Mama said, “Shet up an' git thet douche bag full uv cold watah an' mix thet alum powdah en wif it. We git her en bed an' off her feet she be doin' gud as th' doctah ken do. An gimme uh piece uv thet newspapah undah thet bowl so Ah ken wrap the stinky varmint up.”

They brought Carol out between them wrapped in a towel and put her tenderly to bed. Then Mama went into the bathroom and came out with the tiny fetus wrapped in a crumpled sheet of newspaper. She went out the back door. I watched through the kitchen window as Mama went to the huge steel garbage bin and casually hurled the pathetic package into it.

I went to Carol, and she looked up at Bessie and me and murmured over and over in a plaintive voice, “Why Mama kilt mah baby? He didn't do nuthin' tu her. Whut Mama do wif mah baby?”

I heard Mama come in the back door.

I whispered in Carol's ear, “Mama threw him in the garbage box, but I'll get him and bring him to you when she goes to bed.”

And there was bald hatred on Bessie's face for Mama when she stuck her head into the bedroom and sweetly asked Carol if she wanted anything.

Mama told Bessie to stay up until Lockjaw came at eleven
P.M.
Mama was holding her hand over her heart as she went slowly down the hall to her bedroom and shut the door behind her. Bessie stayed in the bedroom with Carol.

I went quietly out the back door to the garbage bin. I climbed in and lit a candle. I poked and searched through the odious heap until my back ached and my arms felt numb. I just couldn't find Carol's baby among the scores of garbage parcels wrapped in newspaper.

I did discover the crushed corpse of an old acquaintance. He had
apparently been beaten to death because he wasn't easily recognizable covered with a mass of dried blood, but I knew by his hacked off foot it was Crip, the old rat.

Finally I gave up and went to the bathroom and cleaned up. Carol's blood was on the floor, toilet seat and the bathtub. Bessie told me in the hall that Carol had stopped bleeding and was napping.

I went and watched out the front window for Lockjaw and Cuckoo Red and shivered as I wondered if Lockjaw would have Red stomp us all into blobs of gore because Carol wasn't going to his birthday party.

I went to the back of the house a dozen times to check on Carol and the time. After the last check I was on my way down the hall when someone rapped sharply on the front door and I almost tinkled in my pants.

I stood there shaking until Bessie came to the door. It was Lockjaw and Red dressed to the brass knuckles in tuxedos and velvet-collared Chesterfield overcoats and natty black derbies tilted sportily.

Lockjaw's orb was flashing about to locate Carol.

He said impatiently, “Well, where's Carol?”

Bessie knocked on Mama's door.

I heard Mama say feebly, “Cum en.”

Bessie opened the door, and Lockjaw strode in wearing a no-nonsense look on his lopsided face with Red on his heels. I went down the hall into the bathroom and stuck an ear against the wall.

I heard Mama blurt out rapidly, “Mistah Hudson, thet deceivin' heifer uv mine don fell en the kitchen an' drapped uh fo munt white varmint an' mighty near give me uh stroke. Natchully she layin' up weak an' sick an' cain't go tu no pahty wif yu. Mabbe yu ken take Bessie stead uv Carol. Thet Bessie is sho bootiful when she's fixed up.”

There was a long tortured silence.

Then Mama pleaded, “Please, Mistah Hudson an' Mistah Red, don' look at me lak thet. Ah sweah thet heifer drapped uh varmint.
Them bloody clothes she wuz wearin' is soaking en th' bathtub. Please, Mistah Hudson, sen' Mistah Red tu see Ah ain't lyin'.”

I heard Lockjaw tell Red to look in the tub and tell Bessie he wanted to see her. I ran into the kitchen. In a minute or so I heard Red and Bessie go into Mama's bedroom. I went back to the bathroom.

Red said, “That john looks like a slaughterhouse.”

Lockjaw said, “Bessie, how would you like to get dressed up in a grand worth of glad rags and go to a fancy blowout with me?”

Bessie said, “Wheah's them glad rags?”

Mama said, “They's en mah closet.”

I heard Bessie's epic feet going across the floor and the closet door open.

Lockjaw said, “Bessie, you better try the shoes on first.”

After several long moments Lockjaw said, “Hell! Your dogs are too big. Bessie, you're out of luck. The stores are closed, and your big bare dogs wouldn't match the costume. Red bundle that stuff up and let's get outta here.”

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 richly 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.