Corregidora (Bluestreak) (16 page)

Mutt wasn’t there when the show started, but he came in the middle. I was singing one of Ella Fitzgerald’s songs, and as soon as I saw him I kind of gradually increased the volume, hoping people wouldn’t notice. The piano player, though, must’ve thought I was crazy, but he played a little louder too. A few men, I think, who had started waiting for Mutt to come in, looked around and saw him and kind of smiled. I was scared too, but I was still singing, and calling his bluff. I saw him raise his arm, and just keep it suspended in the air. Instead of saying anything, he just let it drop, and put his hand in his pocket and left. I ended the song loud anyway. And then I sang a very soft one.

When I got home he was sitting at the dresser. He didn’t turn around to look at me because he could see me through the mirror. I closed the door and stood looking at him.

“I’m glad you didn’t, Mutt.”

“It wasn’t on account of you, it was on account of my great-grandaddy. Seeing as how he went through all that for his woman, he wouldn’t have appreciated me selling you off.”

“Well, for whatever reason, I’m glad. I was hoping it was for me, though.” I went to hang up my jacket.

“Don’t act Missy,” he said, angry.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t act Miss Missy with me. I ain’t
your
slave neither.”

“I didn’t say you was. I haven’t treated you like you was.”

He’d turned from the dresser and got up. He was standing looking at me real wild, like he would do something.

“I didn’t say you was,” I repeated.

I was looking hurt now, at least I felt hurt. And I was also afraid of him.

“I ain’t looking for no argument,” he said, and walked out, slamming the door.

I must’ve been asleep when he came back. I could only feel him getting up in the morning, getting ready to go to work. He had to be there at eight.

“They got a big-time band from Chicago coming out to Dixieland,” Mutt said. “You think ole Crawdad’ll let you off Friday night?”

He was acting more like himself, but lately I’d gotten into the habit of being cautious.

“His name ain’t Crawdad, it’s Tadpole.”

“Crawdad or Tadpole, they both swim around in the same hole,” he said, but not sarcastic. He was still in good spirits.

“I think I can get off,” I said coolly.

“Come on, Ursa, baby, don’t act that way. We need a little night out together, don’t you think?”

I nodded.

“Come on over here, honey. Don’t stand up there looking like that.”

I went over to the bed, and sat down beside him. We made love and then slept. He was asleep before I was.

The big band from Chicago was probably the best group they’d had out there, but then I’d never really gone much, so I couldn’t be a judge. Most of the time when they had something out there I was working myself. And then again my joy might have been just being with Mutt, acting the good way he was, and that got into the band’s music. I couldn’t jitterbug well and so Mutt and me mostly slow-danced. Mutt called it “two-stepping.”

“You can’t jitterbug?” Mutt asked.

“No, I never really got a chance to learn it.”

“Well, you move good and easy this way though.”

I didn’t like what he was doing now. He was getting up really close to me, more like you see people doing in back alleys than on the dance floor, even though there were other people dancing pretty close. But what he was doing made me think of what people did in the bedroom. He kept making me feel him hard against me, and trying to fit himself in my crotch, and I kept moving a little to the side.

“Be still, woman.”

“Mutt, please.”

He was holding my shoulders tight, so that even if I hadn’t been too embarrassed to move away from him, I couldn’t have. Each time he would try to fit himself between my legs, I would move a little to the side. I know we must have looked bad to some people and funny to others.

“Mutt, we ain’t in bed.”

“You act the same way when we are.”

He talked a little louder than I did.

“Mutt, I’m so embarrassed I don’t know what to do.”

When the song ended I was so embarrassed I wouldn’t even look at people. We went over and sat down. I kept looking down at my beer glass. He was drinking rum cola.

“Mutt, I just don’t understand you,” I said, looking up at him.

“You mumbling, Ursa.”

“I said I don’t understand,” I said a little louder, almost speaking through my teeth.

“You don’t try,” he said, and took a drink.

When the next slow song came on he wanted to dance again, but I wouldn’t. He got up anyway and held out his hand to me, but I wouldn’t take it. He kept looking at me real hard, like he was saying, “Take it, bitch. You better take my hand.” He wasn’t saying it, but it was all in his eyes. And after that was in his eyes, “Don’t embarrass me, woman,” was in his eyes, and then the hard hateful look was there again. I’d taken his hand when the “Don’t embarrass me this way, woman” look had come into his eyes, and we were up on the dance floor when the hard hateful look was back again.

“Don’t do that to me no more, Urs,” he said.

I shook my head, and let him hold my shoulder hard, and try to grind himself into me. I swore, though, that if he asked me to dance again, I’d run in the bathroom before I’d get up on the floor with him. When the song ended, I could feel his hand move down to my behind. I saw some man look at me and smile. I didn’t look at him again.

“How you doing, buddy?” somebody asked Mutt.

“I’m doing, man. How you doing?”

“I’m doing, too,” the man answered.

I sat down, not looking at people. Then it was the part of the show where they asked somebody from the audience who could sing to come up to the stage. I’d forgotten about that part of the show. I’d never gone up the few times I was there, but I’d still forgotten. Tonight they asked if there was a female vocalist in the house.

“Go on up, Urs, don’t be shy,” Mutt said, pushing me a little on the shoulder.

I saw some people looking my way.

“No, Mutt,” I said quiet, trying to give him the “Don’t embarrass me this way, man” look, but it didn’t come off.

“Go on up, Urs, you can sing.”

I got up from the table and went in the ladies’ room. I saw people’s eyes following me like they thought I was going up to the stage at first, and when they discovered I wasn’t they just kept watching me. When I came out of the ladies’ room, that part of the show was over, and Mutt was standing outside with his arms folded, looking evil.

“Take you a age to pee?” he asked.

“No.”

“Get your coat, we going home.”

I got my coat, and we left. When we got home he slammed the door.

“You ain’t got no right to be mad at me,” I said.

He had that hard hateful look again.

“If you ever see me hold my hand out to you in a public place you better take it,” he said. “I don’t care what you do here, but if we ever in a public place, you better take my hand.”

“You didn’t have no right to act like you was in the bedroom.”

“I wasn’t dancing no different from the way other peoples was dancing.”

“I didn’t see no other people dancing like that. Close, but not like that.”

“It look different than it feel, baby.”

“You didn’t have no right to put your hand on me, though, not where people could see.”

“I didn’t even touch nothing but your shoulders. Shit.”

“Yes, you did. When that song was over you had your hand on my behind, right where people could see.”

“Well, it’s my ass, ain’t it? When I screwed you last night and asked you whose ass it was, you said it was mine. Ain’t no other man had it, or have they?”

“Mutt, that was different. You know it.” I felt like I was going to cry, but I wouldn’t, not in front of him.

“What made it different?”

“Cause people saw it. Cause we wasn’t in here, that’s why.”

“Shit, you my wife, ain’t you? We married, ain’t we?”

I said nothing. He kept looking at me, almost like he was half grinning, half making fun of me. I turned away a little. I thought I was going to cry, but I didn’t. I turned back. “You wont to show everybody when we out in public that you got your … piece—but when we here you act like you ain’t got shit. I ain’t no more than a piece a shit. Well, you got your piece a shit. I can play your game too, buddy. Tomorrow night you can just come on down to the place and sell your piece a shit, cause I don’t give a damn.”

I turned and went out the door. I went down to the hotel lobby and waited till I was in the toilet, and then I cried.

When I came back he was in bed. He didn’t turn toward me, and I didn’t tell him good night. He waited until I’d turned the light off before he hit back at me. “I was just pretend fucking, baby, like you used to do. Wasn’t doing nothing but play fucking.”

When he came to the place the next night, it wasn’t to sell his piece a shit, it was to try to take it off the stage, and then when his piece a shit wouldn’t get off the stage and Tadpole and some other men put him out, it was to knock that piece a shit down some stairs. I should have known something was wrong when he came home from work that night. He’d brought a bottle of bourbon with him. I was on my way out. It was a Saturday night in April.

“When you get there, Urs, just go over to one a they tables for me, and kinda lean down, you know how you can kinda lean down so you show a little bit of them titties, and then just ask one of em what he wont. If you don’t know what he’s gonna say, I do. ‘Piece a ass, please.’ ‘Piece a whose ass?’ ‘Yours, good-lookin woman.’ ”

“Mutt, it ain’t like that.”

“Tell me if they ain’t asked?”

He was all up in my face now, squeezing that bottle in that brown paper sack. I told him I’d be damned if I’d tell him a damn thing.

Mutt came in with his hands in his pockets, drunk this time. The other nights he had been a sober Dick Tracy, but tonight he looked like he couldn’t hardly stand. When he started walking toward me I didn’t think he would keep coming, but he did. He was within a few feet of me when I stopped singing, the look in his eyes somewhere between the mean and hateful and “Don’t embarrass me this way” look. He didn’t have his hand out, though. He had them both in his pockets.

“Come on, you going home,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“I said you going home.”

I still didn’t move. The place had got real quiet.

“What’s wrong with that man?” somebody asked.

“He’s crazy,” somebody else answered.

“Already crazy, he don’t need to be drunk, too,” another said.

Mutt turned quickly and looked in the direction where the voices came from, and then turned back to me.

“Woman, you heard me.”

I said nothing.

“You my woman, ain’t you?”

I kept looking at him. I couldn’t make out his look, and I was too embarrassed right now to look anywhere else. He still didn’t hold his hand out, though. He seemed like he’d planted them more firmly in his pockets.

“You ain’t they woman, is you?”

I stood looking at him. He almost had the “Don’t embarrass me this way” look, but the mean and hateful one kept getting in the way. The hard look won.

“Bitch, you coming home,” he said and grabbed for me. He almost stumbled and some men grabbed him. While they was taking him out he was saying, “You ain’t they woman, is you? Is you they woman, or mines?” The men got him out the door. Tadpole came over to me and asked if I was okay, if I wanted to stop, but I said naw, I was all right. I finished out the show. Mutt kept peeking in, the mean and hateful look on his face, his collar pulled up. And then it was when I was on my way home, he knocked his piece a shit down those stairs.

“You was cussing everybody out,” Tadpole said. “They said they didn’t know
what
you was.”

He was standing up over me in the hospital, the first person I didn’t think was Mutt.

I don’t remember what I said in the hospital, but Tadpole told me later that I kept saying something about a man treat a woman like a piece a shit.

“You got your piece a shit now, ain’t you? You got your piece a shit now.”

IV

It was June 1969. I was forty-seven, still working at the Spider. I walked by one of the tables on my way to the stage.

“I wont you to put me in the alley tonight, sister,” one of the men said. He was drunk.

“Will do.”

“Next best thang to the blues is a good screw.”

I sat down at the piano.

“Show business is funny, ain’t it?”

I started singing a song, hoping that would make him quiet. It did. I put him where he wanted to get. I sang a low down blues. It surprised me he stayed quiet throughout the whole show, otherwise Logan would have throwed him out. When I finished, though, he came up to me. “Can I bring you over to my table? Come on over to my table and have a drink with me.” I went over with him. I’d handled drunks before, and he didn’t seem like a dangerous drunk. I sat down and he asked me what I drank. I said beer. He ordered me a beer.

“Show business is funny, ain’t it?” he repeated.

I said, “Yeah, it’s funny.”

“I’m sanging over at the Drake Hotel,” he said. “I’m fifty-eight years old and just got my first job sanging over at the Drake Hotel, and I been sanging all my life. Show business is sho funny, ain’t it?”

I nodded and drank.

“Before then I had to go around with a paper sack. They let you sang in their places, but I have to go around with a paper sack. Some people don’t understand that. They say you looking for a handout. But I ain’t looking for a handout. I been sanging all my life, and just got my first job yesterday sanging over at the Drake Hotel.”

I said nothing.

“You come over there and see me, won’t you?”

I nodded, but I knew I wouldn’t.

“You won’t forget where it’s at, will you?”

“I know where it’s at.”

“Yeah, I been sanging all my life. You know how long Thelonius Monk was playing in that place all that long time before they discovered him. You know, I don’t like to use that word ‘discovered,’ cause it’s already there, ain’t it?”

I nodded.

“Yes, indeedy, it’s already there, but don’t seem like they can see it. I don’t know how many years daddy Monk was playing funk before they seen him. I call him daddy Monk because I wrote a song about it. I like to write my own songs, you know. I sing some of the others too, but I like to write my own. And I’m fifty-eight years old. You know, I don’t like that word ‘discovery.’ Ray Charles is a genius, you know that? But let me tell you something and I don’t have to spell it out for you cause you know what I’m talking about. Sinatra was the first one to call Ray Charles a genius, he spoke of ‘the genius of Ray Charles.’ And after that everybody called him a genius. They didn’t call him a genius before that though. He
was
a genius but they didn’t call him that. You know what I’m trying to tell you? If a white man hadn’t told them, they wouldn’t’ve seen it. If I come and told them they wouldn’t’ve seen it. Do you know what I’m talking about? I could’ve told ’em. You could’ve told ’em. Like, you know, they say Columbo discovered America, he didn’t discover America. You hear that song where Aretha say she discovered Ray Charles. Now tha’s awright.” He laughed.

I laughed too.

“I could tell them about you, but they wouldn’t listen. And you could come over there and tell them about me, but they wouldn’t listen.” He stopped, then he said, “You know you made me feel good sanging. You made me feel real good sanging.”

He didn’t give me time to say thank you. He went on: “You know the onliest other time I felt good was when I was in the Apollo Theater. That was a long time ago cause I ain’t been back to New York in a long time. But the Lady was singing. Billie Holiday. She sang for two solid hours. And then when she finished, there was a full minute of silence, just silence. And then there was applauding and crying. She came out and was nervous for a full thirty-two seconds. And then she sang. And you see what they done to her, don’t you?”

I said, “Yes.”

“If you listen to those early records and then listen to that last one, you see what they done to her voice. They say she destroyed herself, but she didn’t destroy herself. They destroyed her.”

He was almost across the table at me, then he stopped, and sat back, as if he were exhausted. All the time he was talking, I could see Logan eyeing us, as if he were ready to come over any moment at my signal.

“It’s a sin, ain’t it? It’s a sin and a shame. Naw it ain’t a shame. It’s shameful. That’s what it is, it’s shameful.”

I didn’t really see the difference then, but I nodded. He took another drink. He was drinking T-bird. Then he sat looking at me.

“I bet you got some good pussy.”

I said nothing. I really hadn’t expected that. I just looked back at him.

“Tell me if you ain’t got some good pussy.”

I didn’t tell him anything. I just kept looking at him.

“I don’t mean to get nasty,” he said. “I just think you a good-looking woman.” He leaned toward me. “Tell me if you ain’t got some good pussy.”

I wanted to go, but I just sat there, saying nothing. He sat back again.

“I know you got some good pussy,” he said, as if he were giving a verdict.

A man we called Cat’s-eye Marble because he had a popped eye, passed by the table. I said hi to him. He said, “You looking prosperous, baby, real prosperous.” That was his favorite word. He went on by. I looked back at the man. He was frowning, still looking at me.

“You won’t forget the name of it, will you?” he asked.

I said I wouldn’t forget it.

“You be over to hear me, won’t you?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I ain’t going to be there but for two weeks. They only signed me on for two weeks.”

I said nothing. He was silent. He drank some more wine.

“Did I make you mad?” he asked.

I said, Naw, he didn’t make me mad.

“I didn’t mean to get nasty with you. I ain’t got nasty with a woman a day in my life, and I didn’t mean to get nasty with you.” He got up rocking. I started to ask him if he was all right, but didn’t. “You stay sweet, you hear?”

I said I would. I told him to take it easy.

“You won’t forget, will you?” he asked.

I said No I wouldn’t forget. Then I nodded to Logan, who came and helped him outside. I went back to the piano.

“… She liked me to fan her thighs when it was hot and then one day she had me fan her between her legs. Then after that she made me sleep with her, cause, you know, he wouldn’t sleep with her, and then after that something went wrong with her. She had some hot prongs she come after me with, and she told me to raise up my dress and I know where she was going to put them, right between my legs. Cause she knew he was getting
his
from me too. But then that was when he came in. He grabbed her and knocked the prongs out of her hands and then he started beating her. That woman was black for days to come. After that he just kept her locked up in that bedroom and wouldn’t even let me go near her. I guess she thought of it that way, the prongs I mean, from having me fan her between her legs. Thought of it that way in her mind. She just went crazy, that’s all. Short time after that, she died up there. But there was a lots of thangs like that that was going on where the husband just let his wife do what she did, or he do it hisself if he was ready for some new pussy. But then lots of time too he just wont the one pussy and do like Corregidora did.

“… He fucked her and fucked me. He would’ve fucked you and your mama if y’all been there and he wasn’t old and crooked up like he got. Mama ran off cause he would’ve killed her. I don’t know what she did. She never would tell me what she did. Up till today she still won’t tell me what it was she did. He would’ve killed her, though, if she hadn’t gone. He raised me and then when I got big enough he started fucking me. Seem like he raised me fucking me. Yeah, Mama told me how in the old days he was just buying up women. They’d have to raise up their dress so he could see what they had down there, and he feel all around down there, and then he feel their bellies to see if they had solid bellies. And they had to be pretty. He wasn’t buying up them fancy mulatta womens though. They had to be black and pretty. They had to be the color of his coffee beans. That’s why he said he always liked my mama better than me. But he never said nothing about what it was she did to him. What is it a woman can do to a man that make him hate her so bad he wont to kill her one minute and keep thinking about her and can’t get her out of his mind the next?”

I hadn’t seen Sal Cooper much since I walked out. We’d see each other on the street sometimes downtown. We were polite, but we never stopped and talked. I usually kept to my end of town, going to work, then back to the apartment, except when I had groceries to get or some shopping to do downtown. But I rarely did shopping downtown. The drugstore on the corner had most of the things I needed and the grocery store down the road. I made most of the gowns I sang in and I wasn’t one for changing costumes a lot. So that I’d only run into Tadpole maybe three or four times. We didn’t speak or even acknowledge each other. I heard from somebody that he and Vivian got together, and then about five years ago he sold the place and moved to Chicago. Yeah, and the papers came for me to sign. I was a free woman again, whatever that meant. Sal Cooper I’d heard stayed on at the place when the new owner came. His name was Austin Bradley and he was from Columbus, Ohio. I heard that he was going to change the name of the place, but as far as I knew, it still had the same name. And people were still talking about going over to Happy’s. He was going to call it some kind of club but I reckon he figured it was successful enough with its old name, so he just kept it. I think he imported some woman from Detroit to come in and do the singing. Some woman from one of them big cities up North. I think maybe it was Detroit or maybe it’s just I keep Detroit on my mind, cause that’s the only place I been out of Kentucky. Anyway, what’s funny is when he first got there, he come over here and heard me sing and offered me a job singing over there. I told him, Naw thank you anyway but I had my job. I didn’t tell him nothing else, but he musta found out about it when he went back over there and started talking to Sal. And then shortly after that he imported that woman from someplace up North. But I bet Sal must’ve been surprised when he said who it was he asked. Well, I was surprised myself him asking me, though some people say I don’t look my age, I look younger than my age. I just tell them it’s hereditary. I be forty-eight in June. Well, I never saw Cat no more. I didn’t even hear anything about her till I saw Jeffrene that time. Yeah, Jeffrene’s grown up now. They calling her Miss Jeffrene, except her mama, her mama still call her Jeffy or sometimes Jeff. I’d see her on the street, and she wouldn’t speak and I wouldn’t speak. Except one time I seen her she stop, like she was going to say something, but I started on by. She was standing out in front of the Freeze and Eli’s dime store over on Third Street. I’d been down to the appliance store over there to pay a bill, and come out and there she was. She kind of jumped when she seen me, and stopped, but I was still going.

“Just walk on by,” she said. “That’s right. Just walk on by.”

I started to, but then I didn’t. I stopped to see what she had to say. I figured if I didn’t like it, I could just go on.

I stood there looking at her. I must have been looking hostile because she said, “I ain’t lookin for no argument.”

“What is it?” I asked, still standing there. I think I had my hands on my hips or folded or something.

“I was sick with pneumonia. Didn’t nobody come to see me but Mama. I got thinner. Did you notice?”

She did look thinner, but I didn’t say I noticed. She had on blue jeans like she always wore, except when you seen her coming from work. She worked out at the narcotics hospital out there on Versailles Road. She was a nurses’ aide, I think somebody told me. Now she had on blue jeans. They looked like they were a little too big for her.

I said nothing.

“Cat got your tongue?” She grinned. “She always used to wish she had it.”

I looked away from her at the traffic light. She was standing close to the building and I was standing out on the sidewalk. Someone passed by and pushed me a little closer toward her. Then I stood next to the building, but away from her.

“You scared of me, ain’t you?”

“Naw, I’m not afraid of you.”

She said nothing, then she looked at me and smiled. “I don’t think I’m taking too much for granted if I say you are.”

“Jeffy, I’ve got to go.”

“I seen Cat.”

“How is she?”

“You care?”

I said nothing.

“I seen her down in Versailles.”

“I thought she went to Midway.”

“Well, when I seen her she was in Versailles. She don’t look too good. She start looking her age now, or letting herself look her age. I told her she better get her shit together. She was in a accident, you know.”

I grimaced. “What kind of a accident?”

“She work over at the Wax Works, you know. One that makes Dixie Cups or something like that. She was reaching down to get something and got her hair caught in one of these machines and it pulled all her hair out. Well, it pulled all the top part out. Might as well say all of it. She was in the hospital about six months. What you looking like that for? You didn’t care nothing about her.”

“I do care.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“I don’t mean that the way you want to take it.”

“I don’t want to take it any way. I wouldn’t mind you giving me some.”

My eyes hardened.

“Well, I’ma tell you about Cat,” she continued. “She wearing that wig. She sued the company, and now they got to buy all her wigs for her. Shit, I told her I’d go down there and pick me one of them good wigs. I wouldn’t be wearing one of them shitty wigs like she got. You can tell she got a wig on. I’d go down there and pick me out one of them wigs you couldn’t tell was a wig.”

“Is she all right?”

“Scalp healed all up. She said you can still see where it all come out though. I ast her to show it to me, but she wouldn’t show it to me. I said I thought we meant more to each other than that, but she still wouldn’t let me see it. I couldn’t even touch her head. Now, you know that ain’t right.”