Mama Black Widow (29 page)

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 her 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 little 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?”

I thought about the night she and Junior drove Papa away, and how cruel she had been to Carol and Bessie. I remembered like it all had happened yesterday. I moved across the bed away from her hands.

I stared into her eyes and said, “Mama, you're wrong. I'm not like a nasty freak. I am a nasty freak who loves drag and guys. And I'm not stopping until I pick up some guy like the one that butchered Bessie, and he'll do me a favor and chop me into little pieces.”

She jerked herself erect and folded her arms across her chest and stared down at me with a poker face.

She said solemnly, “Sweet Pea, I love you, and I am going to do what is best for you. I can't let you disgrace me and destroy the great confidence that many troubled souls have in Madame Miracle's power to help them. I am going to save you and my image. I am not going to let you put me back to cleaning filth for the dirty white folks. I am going to put you in a sanitarium until you can think right.”

I said coldly, “Why does Madame Miracle have to send the only kid she's got left to the nuthouse for help? Mama, do me a favor and don't be a good mother like you said you've always been, and don't love me because I remember you loved Carol and we know why she's in the cemetery.

“And Mama, did your love make Bessie hate your guts and make her leave home and whore? Papa was driven away from home and crawled into a hole like a dog to die. Junior is rotting in prison for 99 years. Why, Mama? Why?

“I dare you to put me in the nuthouse. You do and I'll write a note or scratch one on a wall before I kill myself telling your suckers and the world all about wonderful Madame Miracle and how, with her great wisdom and love, she helped her children and their Papa into the grave.”

She stood there evil eyeing me with a knitted brow for a long moment. Then she turned and walked toward the bedroom door. She paused at the threshold and looked back over her shoulder at me.

She shook her head and said pityingly, “Mama's mixed-up little man and his wild imagination.”

I hollered at her retreating back, “I'm the phony Madame Miracle's stinking little faggot!”

A
fter the Second World War ended in 1945, the years of my life seemed to slip away almost imperceptibly and surprisingly painlessly (except on one horribly exclusive occasion) until 1959.

These illusions were due, perhaps, to the desperate gaiety I found in my butterfly affairs with an endless variety of guys and in my endless, numbing drinking.

Pain! Gibbering, excruciating, heart-busting, everlasting, exclusive pain crashed through my numb haze in 1956 on April 6 at two forty-five
P.M.
at the Obee Funeral Home on the Southside.

The heavyset, handsome proprietor was sunning himself outside the doorway. A young guy I'd been drinking and sexing nonstop with for two days pulled to the curb in front of the establishment. I was in flashy drag and half drunk.

I walked up to the proprietor and said, “Am I too early for Mr. Edward Cato's funeral?”

He said softly, “Miss, I'm sorry, but you're very late. Mr. Cato was buried yesterday afternoon in Rose Hill Cemetery.”

I said, “Isn't today the fifth of April?”