Mama Black Widow (6 page)

My thoughts swung to Papa and the smelly one-room sharecropper's shack in Mississippi with the foul holes in the floor that the tenants before us had used as toilets. Papa had built a privy a hundred yards from the shack and dumped quicklime or something down the holes and sealed them. But the rotten stench seemed to come back with full power in hot weather.

Papa and Mama had a battered old bed. Papa couldn't get his hands on lumber to build beds for us. Many steamy nights I'd lie sleepless on the rough pine floor. I'd hear and smell Mama and Papa
kissing and sexing behind a potato sack curtain in the corner of the room. I'd get a peculiar excited feeling.

I would crawl across my sleeping brother and sisters and tiptoe from the shack. I'd stand there gulping the fresh air that rippled the stark white sea of cotton plants.

I'd often gaze at the alabaster house of the plantation owner gleaming in the sapphire starlight and wonder how much cotton would a sharecropper have to pick at forty cents a hundred to own a house like it.

At the flash of dawn we would eat a breakfast of biscuits, fat back, grits and gravy before going to the fields. At supper we'd have hog maws and turnip greens or maybe black-eyed peas with hot water cornbread.

It was a hard life and coarse food, but we were never hungry because Papa could always get supplies from Mr. Wilkerson, the plantation owner, on tab against the cotton money our family earned.

Our family never had more than a few dollars in cold cash, but Papa had a big pride in knowing he was all-man, one of the best pickers on the plantation. We loved and respected Papa back there in the South, and Papa respected himself.

It was a huge plantation in the country outside Meridian, Mississippi, that worked many families like ours beneath the blistering sun.

I was frail and prone to sunstroke. I collapsed a half-dozen times in the two years I worked the cotton. When I was eight years old I started staying at the shack, helping Mama sew and wash our clothes when she didn't go to the fields.

The big cast-iron tub Mama used to wash our clothes in was also our bathtub. I'd watch Papa strip off his sweaty clothes when he came in from the fields. I'd admire his muscles that writhed like golden snakes when he bathed.

In the off months of cotton my brother and sisters and I went to
a one-room schoolhouse two miles away. Carol and I would often take our reading and writing to a patch of moonlight on the floor after the kerosene lamp had been blown out and Frank Jr. and Bessie were sound asleep.

Papa and my older brother, Frank Jr., and I were real buddies down South. We'd go fishing and hiking together. Papa and Frank Jr. would wrestle each other until they panted. Frank Jr. was taller than Papa and almost as big, but he was no match for Papa's wiry strength.

Sunday afternoon Papa would deck himself out in starched and creased overalls and gleaming brogans ordered from a Sears and Roebuck catalogue. He'd preach beneath a clump of cottonwood trees to his amening congregation. He sure stood proud and beautiful out there giving Satan hell with his booming rich voice.

Papa had some importance and a sense of worth down South, even though living conditions were subhuman. Up North, poor Papa would become a zero, unimportant to everyone, even to his wife and children.

Mama wasn't a bit fire and brimstone like Papa. And when she went to church I could feel that she didn't go because she was religious. Mama and Papa were completely different from each other in habit and desires and morals. But Papa tried because he was a good man and he loved her and his children. I really doubt that Mama ever loved Papa. Small wonder that the Tilsons were doomed to tears and sorrow.

Mama had an obsession to escape the South and go to Chicago where her cousin Bunny lived like white folks with running water, in-the-house privy and a sitting room and electric lights.

Papa was content in the South and would just sit silently with a worried look on his face when Mama read Bunny's letters and got all excited and starry eyed about the wondrous North.

Mama and Papa were unlike peas in a pod in other ways too. They met and married in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1919. Papa was
twenty-eight and had come in from the country with his father on a Saturday night to bring the gospel to the grog heads, whoremongers and craps shooters.

Papa was taking his preaching turn on a sinful street corner when Mama and cousin Bunny passed him, and then came back for a second long look at the extremely handsome high yellow preacher.

Mama told us she had lived with cousin Bunny since she was ten years old. She was mysterious and vague about her parents and her life before she lived with Bunny. I found out why one terrible day years later.

I found out from arguments between Mama and Papa that cousin Bunny had been a fast twenty-five-year-old hustler who was operating a blind pig and poker trap in Vicksburg's sin district that night that Mama saw Papa for the first time.

I don't know whether Bunny had used bright-eyed, curvaceous Mama as a shill, or worse, in her joint. But I'll always believe that Mama was hurt morally by those years with Bunny in her blind pig. And perhaps what Mama revealed when Bessie left home to whore could explain the cold-blooded things Mama did up North.

Papa rescued Mama from Bunny's den of iniquity and took her for better or for worse a month after they met. Papa took her to Meridian, Mississippi, shortly after that, perhaps to escape cousin Bunny's scarlet charisma and the outraged condemnation of Grandpa Tilson.

Papa shoed horses and mules in Meridian and fathered his first child, Frank Jr. The livery stable burned down, and Papa took his small family to Wilkerson's plantation.

In the spring of 1936 (the same year we went to the Promised Land), Mrs. Wilkerson borrowed half a dozen teenage boys from the fields for the annual scrubbing and wall washing in the big house. Frank Jr. was among them. Mr. and Mrs. Wilkerson had gone to Meridian, and her eldest son was in charge of the workers.

I was helping Mama peel potatoes for supper when Frank Jr. got
back from the big house. Papa and the twins hadn't come in from the fields. Frank Jr. acted strangely from the moment he set foot in the shack. His eyes were flashing excitement as he tossed a small paper sack of raw sugar in front of me. I thought he had lost his mind, because as far back as I could remember, he'd always slunk off somewhere alone and devoured his goodies from the big house.

He flung himself to the floor in front of Mama's chair and with his head on her lap stared at her with a radiant look on his dirty face.

Mama said, “Yu sho looks funny. Ah hope yu ain't ben nippin' th' Wilkerson's applejack. Yu ain't no baby; git yo' haid offen mah lap an git kindlin' fer th' cook stove.”

He got to his feet and ran to the door. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked down the path that Papa and the twins used coming from the fields.

He rushed back to Mama and shot a suspicious look at me and said, “Mama, sen thet lil' niggah outdoes. Ah got uh secret tu tell yu thet Ah don' want him blabbin' tu Papa or nobody.”

Mama looked sternly at him and said, “Sweet Pea don' blab nuthin'. An' tell him not tu. Now, stop ackin' lak uh star natal fool an' say whut yu goin' ta say.”

He stooped and pulled up a trouser leg. He had a red bandana handkerchief tied around his leg. He walled his eyes at the open door as he plucked a roll of bills from beneath the bandana.

In a speedy flow he said, “Now, Mama, Ah ain't stole nuthin'. Ah wuz sweatin' an' slavin' up there en th' big house. Ah wuz thinkin' 'bout mah one an' only dear Mama achin' fer thet train goin' North when dis forgot money fell at mah feet jes' as Ah moved thet ole grandfather clock frum th' wall.

“Nah, ma'm, Ah ain't stole nuthin'. See how dusty these greenbacks is. It's sho 'nuff forgot money. Ah found it fer ye, Mama. Count it.”

He held out the bills toward Mama's lap as if to drop them there. Mama's mouth flew open, and she spun her lap away like the money
was a water moccasin. She gasped and held her hands up as if to ward him off. She got to her feet sputtering and pointing to the big house.

She cuffed him against the side of his head and words came out, “Yu crazy rascul, git them white folks' money back there en thet same spot quick as yu rusty laigs kin go.”

Frank's bare feet drummed the floor as he fled the shack. Mama stood in the doorway biting her lip and staring at Frank Jr. sprinting toward the big house. She turned her head and looked down the path leading to the fields.

She screamed, “Boy, come back heah.”

In a moment Junior ran back out of breath with a puzzled look on his face.

Mama squeezed his sweaty brow with the edge of her hand and said softly, “Now think hard, an' tell Mama, duz eny uv them lil' niggahs thet wurked up at th' big house know yu found thet forgot money?”

Junior pressed the bills in Mama's hand and said loudly, “Nah, ma'm. Nah ma'm! Wuzn't nobody pee-pin'.”

Mama's hand was trembling violently as she counted the tens and twenties. Junior went outside and stood revolving his head from the path to Mama.

Junior hissed like a snake and stuck his head inside the shack and stage whispered, “Papa is cumin'.”

Mama balled a fist at me and laid an index finger across her pursed lips. She shoved the bills in her bosom and started to hum a spiritual.

Junior came in with kindling and was starting a fire in the cook stove when Papa and the twins got to the shack. Collard greens with slat pork and potato patties were on our supper table when I heard the Wilkerson's Ford pickup coming home from Meridian.

Mama and Junior ate like innocents. I could only swallow a few bites. I was worried about the Wilkerson money in Mama's bosom that Papa might find out about, and said a silent prayer that it was
real “forgot” money and that the beet red sheriff wouldn't come and take us all to jail.

I almost fainted when Papa looked across the table at me and said, “Otis, whut's th' matter yu playin' wid them vittles? Iffen yu ailin' en the belly, Ah have ole vet tu dose yu up good wid croton oil when he cum tumurrah.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mama giving me the evil eye.

I said, “No sir, I'm not sick. I been messing with the treat bag that Junior brought from the big house, that's all.”

He grunted and went back to the mountain of food on his plate.

It was a balmy, brilliant night after supper, and the next day was Sunday. So we kids played hide-and-seek, and Mama and Papa brought kitchen chairs and sat quietly relaxing (at least Papa was) beneath the starry sky.

We had all gone in to go to bed when Papa said, “Ah'll be Satan's imp iffen old man Wilkerson ain't out prowlin' dis time uv night. Mayhaps uh mule is ailin' so bad Mr. Wilkerson got tu drive an' fetch th' vet. Ah hope Naomi's asthma ain't got no wurse.”

We all clustered around Papa at the window and watched the jouncing glow of a lantern move down the hill from the big house to a shack in the irregular line that ended with our shack.

One of the cleanup boys lived in that first shack where they had stopped. I shivered when I thought it hadn't been “forgot” money after all.

Papa lit a lantern and said, “Best Ah go. Sumbody mayhaps need mah prayers.”

The twins went to bed after a while. But Mama, Frank Jr. and I stood silently there at the window and watched the accusing orbs of the lanterns moving through the night, stopping at four more innocent shacks on the way to our guilty one.

Finally after what seemed like endless hours, the lanterns stopped at the fifth shack. I felt Mama's fingernails dig into my collarbone. I turned and looked up at her face drawn with tension.

She whispered hoarsely, “We got tu hit th' bed now, an' we don know nuthin' 'bout them white folk's money. Remember, ain't no pruf or nuthin' nohow 'bout Junior.”

I lay wrapped in my quilt and had chills. I was afraid Papa would drop dead or something if he found out that Junior was the thief.

Something touched my shoulder.

Carol whispered, “Ah heard Mama. Junior is en terrible truble, ain't he?”

Before I could answer, the flash of lanterns streaked through a window. Carol scooted back to her section of the floor. I closed my eyes tightly and turned my back to the door.

I felt the flooring vibrate under the clump of brogans. I smelled Mr. Wilkerson's distinctive musk and corn whiskey. I turned over and peeped through a hole in the quilt.

Mr. Wilkerson's corrugated face was flaming red in the glow of his lantern as he stooped close to Junior and prodded his chest with gnarled finger. Papa squatted down on Junior's other side. Junior fluttered his eyes open and looked up at Mr. Wilkerson in sham surprise.

Mr. Wilkerson jogged his fingers across Junior's scalp and said affably, “Lil' Frank, you woke?”

Junior cut his wide eyes at Papa and murmured sleepily, “Yes, suh, Mr. Wilkerson.”

Mr. Wilkerson said, “Laddie, one of them crew with you at the big house stole Miz Wilkerson's big stash of money, near 'bout or more four hundred dollars. Did you see the sneaking scamp that done it?”

Junior swallowed hard, raised himself to his elbows and croaked, “Nah, suh, nah, suh. Papa an' me alike. Ah sees uh smidget of crookedness on th' plantashun, Ah tells th' news right now.

“Nah, suh, Ah ain't seen nobody fiddlin' wid th' big iron safe. Even when we finish th' wurk an' foot race frum th' big house, Ah don' hear no silver dollars rattlin' nobody's pocket. Nah, suh, Ah ain't seen or heared nuthin'.”

Mr. Wilkerson and Papa stood up. Mr. Wilkerson stroked his chin and said, “Laddie, it weren't no silver money. It were in greenbacks stashed agin the grandfather clock.

“Mah ole woman's madder than a smoked out hornet. She had a powerful mind to fetch the sheriff tonight to cull out the criminal. But Ah'm a merciful man, and Ah ain't fer that bloodthirsty sheriff whuppin' heads and kickin' asses of the whole damn crew. Ain't but one guilty.”