Mama Black Widow (7 page)

He paused and watched Junior's spastic tongue irrigate his gray lips.

Papa shut his eyes and said, “Lawd, draw th' thief forth fer purgin' uv his sin an' returnin' Miz Wilkerson's greenbacks.”

Mr. Wilkerson stroked his hooked nose and impaled Junior on sharp blue eyes for a lone moment before he said, “Lissen, Lil' Frank, we gonna' root out the criminal before Miz Wilkerson get that mean sheriff on the place at noon tomorrow. Since Ah knows you innocent and cleverer than them others, Ah'm pintin' you mah secret investigator.

“Ah want you up at daybreak rousing them suspecs and standing the guilty one before me no later than noon. Ain't gonna' be no penitentiary and crool treatment. Jes a fair and honest whupping with a piece of horse harness at the punishing spot. You understand me, boy?”

Too quickly Junior almost shouted, “Sho do, Mr. Wilkerson, sho do, an' ah be up at 'em early, early, sho will.”

Mr. Wilkerson's face had a cunning look as he picked up his lantern. He patted Papa affectionately on the shoulder and walked away into the salubrious and innocent night.

Papa walked the floor and prayed until daybreak. Mama's face looked awful with the strain and pressure she was under. She fixed biscuits and hash for breakfast that everybody just picked at. Junior kept his eyes riveted to Mama's face like he desperately needed guidance.

Right after breakfast Papa sighed and said to Mama, “Sedalia, Ah best go an' help Junior hunt out Miz Wilkerson's greenbacks.”

Mama squeezed her brow between her palms like she was treating a bad headache.

Her vacant eyes looked past Papa out to the backbreaking green oceans of early cotton plants when she said, “Frank, Ah tell yu true, it ain't nuthin' but uh low-down dirty shame thet po' niggahs got tu shag down money fer them rich white folks. Ah swear iffen Ah wuz Miz Wilkerson Ah wouldn't make no commotion. Since Ah ain't payin' but forty cents uh hundard no how.”

Papa turned crimson and hollered, “Sedalia, yu stop thet devilish talk. Wikerson's don' pay but uh cent uh hundard, ain't nobody got uh right tu steal frum 'em. Come on, Junior, let's git 'bout our bizness. It be noon 'fore we know it.”

Suddenly there was a burst of sobbing. Everybody in the shack turned toward Carol in a corner. Papa rushed to her and lifted her into his arms.

He pressed her close and crooned, “Papa ain't gonna' let nobody harm his baby girl. Now yu shet off them tears.”

Carol hugged Papa tightly around the neck and blubbered, “Papa, Ah ain't scairt fer me. Ah'm scairt cause Ah know thet sheriff is cumin' at noon time.”

Mama and Junior stood frozen, staring at Carol and Bessie.

Papa patted her and said, “Ain't no sheriff cumin'. Me an' Junior gonna' dig up th' thief an' take him tu the big house fer his justiz on th' punish spot. Mr. Wilkerson don' welcome no law on his place iffen he kin help it.”

Carol wailed, “Oh, Papa, the sheriff got tu come, 'cause thet money ain't out there en sumbody else's shack. It's right en this shack! Junior took th' money frum the big house! Papa, please don' let th' sheriff take Junior tu th' pen.”

The big vein at Papa's temple ballooned out lividly like his head was going to explode. He roughly stood Carol on her feet and
turned and seized Junior by the shoulders. He thrust his face close and moved his eyes up and down Junior's face like he was reading a printed page.

Junior's eyes were bucked wide and his lips trembled to speak.

Papa shook him hard, and he sobbed piteously, “Papa, God en his Heaven knows Ah ain't stole nuthin' en mah heart. Ah found forgot money, Ah thought. Ah figured we all ketch th' Chicago train. Papa, whut you gonna' do?”

Papa embraced him for a long moment, and tears rolled down Papa's cheeks.

Then Papa flung him away and said very quietly, “Ah'm takin' yu tu th' big house so's Mr. Wilkerson knows Ah ain't hidin' th' thief's face 'cause he mah flesh an' blood. Yu goin' tu git justiz on the punish spot fer stealin'. Where them greenbacks?”

Junior moaned, “Mama got 'em. Please, Papa, don' take me! Don' take me!”

Mama took the bills from her bosom and stepped between them.

Her words were rapid and impassioned. “Frank, ain't no need tu take mah chile up there fer white folks tu tear his hide off. Fact is, ain't even no wiz reasun tu take this money back. Ole man Wilkerson were bull scarin' us 'bout ole Miz fetchin' the sheriff en tuday. Ain't no way fer him not tu smell thet funky still stinkin' up th' place.

“An' sumthin' else. How we know Wilkerson ain't ben robbin' us wid his pencil all these years? How we know, Frank? Remember whut thet niggah tole us en Meridian even 'fore we cum tu wurk here. We ain't cumalated nuthin'. Don' be no fool, Frank. We keep this money an' tuff it out. Few months we ease off this plantashun an' ketch th' fust thing smokin' tu Cheecogo.”

Papa had been standing with an unbelieving expression on his face.

He snatched the bills from Mama's hands and said carefully, “Sedalia, Lawd have mercy on yo' soul. Ah ain't nevah gittin' off this plantashun iffen Ah got tu steal to git off. Yu done fergot th' Lawd said, ‘Thou shalt not steal.' ”

Papa took a firm hold on Junior's wrist and led him out the door.

Mama went to the doorway and cried out to Papa's back, “Niggah, yu ah uh star natal fool tu take thet money back tu them cheatin' white folks. Forty cents uh hundard ain't uh precious gift no way yu look at it. Ah'm gonna' quit yu, niggah, iffen yu don bring mah chile an' thet money back heah. Fool, forty cents uh hundard ain't uh precious gift.”

Papa didn't even turn his head. He just kept marching Junior to the big house. We all went to the window and watched them go up the hill to the big house followed by people from the shacks who sensed that Junior was the thief, and they were eager to break their awful boredom at the punishment spot.

The twins and Mama sprawled on the floor and bawled. Carol was pitiful the way she told Mama over and over how sorry she was that she told Papa the secret.

Mama cried bitterly and shouted over and over, “Ah hate white folks. Oh, how Ah hate white folks.”

I stood at the window remembering what the punishment spot looked like and cried for Junior. In the days of slavery it had been a hut where recaptured runaway slaves and troublemaking slaves had been beaten and tortured under the supervision of Mr. Wilkerson's grandfather.

It no longer had sides or a roof, just a rotted floor of bloodstained planking with four iron stakes in the center making a square roughly the size of a man's spread-eagled body.

I stood at the window until I saw people drifting down the hill to the shacks. Then I saw Papa and Junior. Junior's chin seemed to be resting on his chest, and Papa had his arm around Junior's waist as they came down the hill.

I raced out of the shack and met them.

Junior's back was covered with ropey welts, and he kept mumbling, “Papa, don' touch me. Papa, don' touch me.”

It was more than a week before Mama's lard-based ointment took
the soreness out of Junior's back. It was longer than that before Papa and Junior exchanged whole sentences.

Something sweet and important had soured and died between them. They didn't tussle or horseplay together any more, and I'd often see Junior looking at Papa with cold eyes when Papa wasn't noticing.

For more than a month after Papa took Junior to the punishment spot, Mama communicated with Papa by grunts and head nods and head shaking.

And then one night the moon filtered through the potato sack curtain and I saw Papa's naked shadow humping and thrusting and finally quivering with Mama's legs and arms locked around him.

On November 1, 1936, the day I reached my eighth birthday, a miracle happened. Mama's cousin Bunny's husband died, and there had been enough money left from his insurance policy after funeral expenses to send Mama money for five tickets to Chicago and a furnished apartment with rent paid up two months across the hall from Cousin Bunny.

The letter with the money said, “Please hurry, because I have lung cancer bad, and I need someone to look in on me.”

Everybody except Papa was thrilled and excited at the prospect of going to the enchanted North. Papa hassled with Wilkerson about our cotton account and got a fabulous sixteen dollars.

Three days after Mama got the money we were on the train wearing our hand-me-down and homemade clothes. But I didn't give it a thought. There would be bales of money waiting for us up North and store-bought clothes by the piles.

I remember how sad Papa's face looked when the train crossed the Mason-Dixon line. Poor Papa couldn't know that his brawny back and strong hands would become counterfeit as exchange in the Promised Land where cotton didn't grow and the trade unions locked out black men.

Papa couldn't know that hope, self-respect, manhood and dignity
would die inside him in the brutally repressive North. How could he know that Mama would become like the man of the family and he would become like the woman?

After what seemed like weeks, our train pulled into Chicago. It was all so shocking. The street sounds exploded like a bomb. Hordes of insane-looking people with twisted, tense faces moved at breakneck speed down the dim sidewalks, shadowed by ominous buildings that seemed to be teetering in the heavens.

We all crowded into a taxicab. I looked at Papa on our way to the Westside. He was staring at the desolate concrete wilderness, and he had a look of fearful awe on his face that I would see many years later on the face of a white cop trapped by a mob of blacks.

I looked at Papa's work-scarred hands, and I felt like crying when I remembered Mama crying out to Papa's back, “Fool, forty cents a hundred ain't a precious gift.”

T
he apartment supplied by Cousin Bunny was in a six-unit building. It was located on Homan Avenue, on the Westside. Faint indentations in the concrete facade of the weather-battered structure read: Regal Arms Apartment. Roaches crawled about even in daylight, and at night, huge rats squeaked and scampered about the flat.

The first night I turned on the light in the kitchen and saw a large rat about the size of a squirrel on the sink drainboard staring at me with tiny malevolent eyes. He had only three feet. The stump was ragged, like a trap had backed off the foot, or perhaps the old crip had chewed it off in a valorous escape from the trap. He outstared me. I forgot I wanted a drink of water and went back to bed.

The apartment was furnished with old but sturdy stuff moved from Cousin Bunny's apartment a week before our arrival. She had decided to furnish her own apartment with new stuff.

The instant water taps, the magic blue gas flames for cooking and heating and the bright odorless electric lights were exciting novelties. Only Papa was unimpressed and unhappy. He spent most of his
time pacing the floor and gazing out the window at pinched-faced figures in flimsy overcoats shuddering against the blasting winds.

At the end of our first week in Chicago a snowstorm hid the grimy bleakness beneath three feet of glamorous whiteness. Cousin Bunny made Papa smile for the first time in Chicago. She gave him a pile of winter work clothes that her dead husband had worn to work sewers and to collect city garbage for twenty years. Then she had Soldier Boy, an acquaintance of hers who was a snow scuffler, pick up Papa to help shovel snow from the sidewalks of commercial businesses for a fee.

Mama and we kids crowded the frosty front window looking at Papa going down the walk turning to wave to us. His face was glowing with happiness, because he was going to earn some money for us.

Papa was a slight, but sturdy, five feet nine, and he looked so comical struggling into the snow scuffler's battered pickup truck. Cousin Bunny's husband had been a large man, and his clothes made Papa look like a child masquerading in his father's storm coat and boots.

Later I followed Mama across the hall to look in on Cousin Bunny. Her door was open, and she was sitting on a purple sofa, and she sipped whiskey from a double shot glass.

Drab patches of tarnished silver fouled her shoulder-length auburn hair. Her tiny figure was skeletal, and the big-eyed yellow face was gray tinged and saggy. A flicker of fire in the brown eyes and curves in the sexy lips were the last reminders that she had once been the belle of Vicksburg's black sin streets.

Mama frowned and scolded, “Bunny, why yu mixin' cansur with hooch? Yu gonna' die.”

Bunny quickly drained the shot glass and said thickly, “Honey, you're sweet to remind me. But I don't really give a goddamn.”

She refilled her glass from a pint bottle on a table beside her at the end of the sofa. She stared for a long moment at a paper-framed photograph of a good-looking black man on the table.

Mama said, “Oh, Bunny, yu got nice things, an' yu ain't much mo' than forty. Why yu stay down en th' dumps? Shoot, Ah wish we git yu an' Joe's luck up here.”

Bunny laughed mirthlessly and said, “Sedalia, bless your dumb little heart. Poor Joe must have flipped-flopped in his grave when you said good luck. Sedalia, I loved Joe so much. He made me respectable.

“He died in his sleep at forty-two, and the coroner, with all his knives and education, could only say that Joe died a natural death. It wasn't a natural death for Joe. He was intelligent, ambitious and a high school graduate.

“But he was black in the white folks' hateful world, where a nigger is like a mop head or toilet brush. The white folks used him to clean up their puking and droppings until he wears out. Then they simply press another hungry nigger into service. They never really see him or realize he is a human unless he steals from them or kills one of them. Then they drop the full weight of their double standard law and bury him in prison or barbecue him in the electric chair.