Mama Black Widow (16 page)

Papa clawed the air and lunged at Junior. Junior sidestepped and punched Papa hard between the shoulder blades as he went by. The twins and I screamed together and clutched at Junior. Mama just stood in the doorway looking curiously down at Papa lying on his back gasping for breath.

Junior stood over Papa with us clinging to his arms to restrain him and shouted, “Mama don' want yu, niggah. Yu jes' en th' way. She tol' me so. Ast her, niggah. Ast her.”

Papa lay there on the floor and walled his pleading eyes up at Mama begging her with them not to crucify him, to deny she'd said it.

Lightning burst through the living-room window and lit the hallway and Mama's face like a klieg light. And Mama's face was cruel and cold and so sick. She turned and shut her bedroom door behind her.

Junior went to the bathroom, and we helped Papa to the sofa. We heard him break down in racking sobs when we got back to bed.

I couldn't sleep. I lay there too hurt and dazed to really understand it all. The storm seemed to get worse, but somehow, listening to the violent lyrics of the thunder and the furious music of the rain drifted me into half sleep.

I awoke startled. I had a vague notion that I had heard the click of the front-door lock. I heard the storm raging and daylight hadn't come. Then it struck me vividly and hard about Papa and the awful rest of it.

In panic I leapt up and ran to the living room. Papa wasn't on the sofa. I looked behind the sofa for the few articles of clothing he stored there. I saw things, but my panic wouldn't let me take inventory.

I rushed out into the storm in my bare feet and rayon pajamas. The blowing rain chilled and soaked me within seconds as I stood on the sidewalk and tried to spot Papa through the walls of rain.

And then there was a brilliant explosion of lightning and I saw him stooped and bent against the storm at the end of the block. He was wearing the comical great coat that had belonged to Bunny's Joe.

Papa's white hair was gleaming in that flash of light, and he carried his pasteboard suitcase, the same one he brought from down South.

I ran toward him screaming, “Papa! Papa! Come back, Papa!”

My voice died on the wind and beneath the rumble of the
thunder. I walked slowly back. I was afraid to go inside where I knew Mama and Junior were sleeping and helpless. I loved them, and I didn't want to do anything bad to them to pay them back for Papa.

I sat numbly on the stoop of our building. I couldn't feel the rain or anything. I just cried my heart out for Papa.

P
apa went to his one source of shelter and friendship, Soldier. I went to bed with a bad cold and high fever from exposure on the stoop that stormy morning. Carol woke up, missed me and found me out there after two hours in hysterics.

After a week of Mama's searing mustard plasters on my chest, and honey and lemon juice laced with whiskey down my swollen sore throat, I got out of bed and felt fair for a kid with a broken heart. The twins and I pleaded with Mama to go and get Papa.

All she'd say was, “We groun. Yu mine yo' bizness. Ah ain't beggin' Frank tu do nuthin'.”

Mama played Junior's irresistible bribe game of “stay away from the dirty white folks” for ten days. Several uncommon events happened during the week I was in bed, or rather, on the sofa.

It was the third morning of my misery, I think, that Junior, feeling guilty about Papa and knowing I was mad at him, stood at the side of the sofa clowning and trying to make up with me. Railhead came through the open front door with clenched teeth and anguished eyes glistening with tears.

Junior whirled around and froze like a stone man as Railhead
blubbered, “Junior, they got Raj. Them sneaky motherfuckers got Raj. Poor Raj, them cruel cocksuckers trussed him up like a Christmas goose and shotgunned the back of his head off. They . . .”

Mama had come to stand behind Railhead. He turned and saw her and went swiftly through the front doorway.

Mama stared at Junior coldly until he blurted out under the icy pressure, “Mama, dahlin', Ah sweah Ah ain't en no truble wif nobody.”

Mama jerked her head slightly and went down the hall to her bedroom. Junior sighed deeply and followed her. I lay and listened to Junior pitching himself hoarse convincing Mama that Rajah's Southside execution was the result of some private boo-boo, that Junior and Railhead had no part in or of, and knew nothing about.

She bought his tale because she came out of the bedroom with all the ice melted in her eyes. I guess she really couldn't afford not to believe Junior even after overhearing Railhead putting the finger on the guilty “they” to Junior. She really couldn't.

The day before I got out of bed Rajah was buried, and I watched at the front window when brawny Mrs. Cox, stony faced, practically carried grief-shattered Mr. Cox to the funeral home's family car the morning of the funeral.

Hattie Greene, who had been playing the dead man's row of figures since Rajah's death, hit Lockjaw's policy wheel with a buck bet for eight hundred and sixty dollars! She gave a party that lasted until after Mama went back to work.

Mama lost a good friend a day or so before she went back to work. Lockjaw switched his sister, Jonnie Mae, to an operation on the Southside. She was replaced in the check-in station across the hall by an old retired craps hustler called Five Lick Willie.

A day or so before the middle of July, the twins and I went to visit Papa on the Southside. We found him and Soldier washing cars with a garden hose under the elevated train tracks in the rear of their rooming house just off Forty-seventh Street. Papa sure looked much better, and he was moving instead of dragging.

We kicked off our shoes and wiped off the cars inside and out. Later in the afternoon we all went to a chili parlor on Forty-seventh Street.

Just before we started for home we told Papa how much we missed him and we hoped he'd come home soon. We didn't beg him or press him to come back because he looked like he might be getting well and we all knew he would only get torn down at home.

He and Soldier walked us to the car line and while waiting for a streetcar, I said, “Soldier, what is lemon pool?”

He said, “Little Brother, it's cue stick con played by a shark who never lets the sucker know his true ability. He lets the sucker win and lose in a natural way to build him up for the kill, and the shark also knows how to ‘skill out' and make it look like he ‘lucked out.' ”

I had remembered Junior telling Mama that he, Railhead and Rajah had played lemon pool for the money he had flashed.

I frowned and said, “Can three partners play lemon pool together and all make a lot of money?”

Soldier laughed and said, “No, I doubt it, although sometimes two lemon players will pretend to be bitter rivals and play each other while a third and maybe a fourth member of the team will lay bets among the onlookers. Naturally the lemon players with the heavy bets on him to win will lose to his partner.

“It's possible in spots to pick up nice money playing the lemon, but it's a hard hustle and the scores are usually small and far between. I know some crackerjack pool hustlers solo sharking that are starving to death.”

A streetcar rattled to a stop, and we climbed aboard. We sat in the rear of the car and watched Papa and Soldier waving at us until twilight dropped her quick lavender curtain and disappeared them.

On the way home, I shivered at the sight of every alley mouth. I couldn't forget Rajah, and I just knew “they” were searching for Junior and Railhead. I really did.

The day before Mama went back to work after her ten-day
vacation Junior gave her, she was sitting in a living-room chair soaking her feet in a pan of warm water to soften her corns and callouses for paring off. Hattie Greene rushed into our flat drunk and jubilant. She waved a section of the
Chicago Defender
(the world's most influential black newspaper) under Mama's nose.

Hattie gurgled drunkenly, “Sedalia, it worked! It worked! He swore it would! He swore it would! I'll never have to take her abuse and see her ugly black mug again. Sedalia, she's gone, gone forever.

“This paper called it an accident, but I ‘fixed' her, and it happened to her an hour after she left my flat on her snooping tour. I did it and I can't go to jail for it. Here, read about the dirty black bitch. Now if I could just ‘doo-doo' in her casket, I would.”

Mama had been looking at Hattie with a puzzled expression on her face throughout the strange monologue. When Hattie paused for air, Mama snatched the section of newspaper with one hand and shook Hattie's shoulder vigorously with the other hand.

She shouted, “Heah, heah, gal, git yosef tugethah. Yu drunk an' crazy tu? Ah ain't got no time fo' no niggah foolishment. Whut yu talkin' 'bout?”

Hattie's haunting face was instantly shocked and incredulous that Mama needed a rundown. Hattie spent at least an emotional half hour doing just that after Mama made her admit that she had not discussed any of the details of the weird affair with Mama before, and that it was Hattie's memory that was faulty, not Mama's.

The basis of Hattie's perverse joy was the death of her despised relief caseworker who had tripped and fallen down a flight of dilapidated tenement steps and broken her obese neck.

Hattie had discovered a black sorcerer in the next block who was known as Prophet Twelve Powers. He dealt in “enemy destruct” powder and “lover stay forever” oil candles, lotion and incense, and other items and services to cover the total spectrum of human desire, frustration and general frailty.

Hattie had treated a chair in her living room with some of
Prophet's “enemy destruct” powder. It was where the caseworker always sat when conducting her humiliating inquisitions.

Perhaps it had been pure coincidence that the unlucky caseworker had left Hattie's flat and had her fatal accident. Hattie believed also that one of the Prophet's “fast luck” candles was why she socked it to the policy wheel for the eight hundred and sixty dollars. Prophet Twelve Powers had gathered unto himself an everlasting disciple.

I was set to wondering after Hattie's rundown, to hear Mama say, “Hattie, gimme thet house numbah. Ah mabbe see th' Prophet one uh these days.”

No more than a week after Mama went back to work Railhead started offering his brittle heart to frivolous Bessie. He bought her perfume and huge boxes of chocolates for openers. Mama approved. I guess she was hoping to marry Bessie off before the street claimed her. Junior was in Railhead's corner all the way. But Bessie liked cute guys, not guys with ugly faces and deformed noggins.

Of course, no one except me knew that Sally and Bessie were freaking off with the Pullman porters upstairs and taking sneaky round-the-block joy rides with Grampy Dick and several other notorious pimps and hustlers in their gaudy machines.

But it was Toronto Tony, a white pimp fresh from Canada who had put together a fast stable of black Chicago whores, which made Sally and Bessie gasp and squeal like they were in orgasm.

He'd cruise by in his white Caddie convertible crammed with his stable and his Barrymore-like profile tilted arrogantly toward the sky. And his diamonds were a vulgar riot in the sun. It was tragic that he played for Sally and Bessie, especially Bessie. But then, who can ever know where and how he plots himself toward the end.

Moths and wear all but wiped out the clothes that Bunny had given Mama. One Sunday Mama couldn't go to church because she just didn't have one thing to wear. We had never seen her so depressed. And then like a miracle the following Saturday she went
to the Loop and brought back a sparkling array of new finery. And a furniture store delivered bright green new living-room furniture.

She got angry when we asked where she got the money to buy the things. We knew Junior hadn't given her that much money because we heard him ask her if she had hit policy. I found out later that in a way she had.

With Papa gone, Lockjaw started hanging around the flat a lot, especially on weekend evenings. Mama didn't object because he handled her like she was a cream puff. And the choice cuts of meat and fancy pastries he lugged in didn't get him treated like the pompous ass he was. In fact, when he would angrily recoil from Carol's numerous and chilly rebuffs, Mama would lead the monster to her bedroom and soft talk him to gentle him down. She'd shove him out the front door and his live orb would be radiant with revived lust and hope that Carol would one day be his.

Around the first part of August, on a Sunday evening, Junior opened the front door and unveiled a surprise package in the doe-eyed, spectacularly bosomed and bottomed person of Ida Jackson, a penny-toned Westside divorcée, maybe thirty-five to forty years old. Her ruined baby face leered risqué half smiles like the ones on freakish bitches in pornographic movies. And her voice was whiskey contralto.

Mama sat silently and tensely watching Junior paying moon-eyed attention to the battered beauty. And each time Junior called her “Muh Deah,” Mama winced. Junior was sauced up and couldn't keep his eyes and hands off Ida's epic chest, and they left after a few minutes. Junior didn't come home until noon the next day.

The following weekend Carol was off Saturday and Sunday because of some redecoration at the cafe. Saturday at noon Carol and I were restless and since she wasn't to see Frederick until Sunday, we decided to visit Papa.

Bessie and Ida were out double dating Railhead and Junior in the Buick. And Mama was working.

We had an exciting visit with Papa and Soldier. And it was wonderful to see Papa looking better each time we saw him. They took us to a Chinese restaurant, and then to the Regal Theatre for a stage show. Comedians Butter Beans and Susie gave me laughing cramps.

Carol and I were chatting gaily on the Madison streetcar when she glanced out the window and stiffened. I leaned over and looked at the street. Frederick's old Model A Ford was halted at a stoplight across the intersection, and as our car rumbled past on the green light, I saw a young white girl with long straw-colored hair in the front seat beside him.