Corregidora

by Gayl Jones

  “Did Tadpole tell you what I told him?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled.

  “I thought he tell you. I don’t like to come around when women have their evil spells.”

  She was inside now, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “Why? Cause you get evil too?”

  She laughed.

  “I brought you some more broth,” she said, getting up. “I put it in here in the refrigerator, and tell Tadpole to heat it up for you and don’t feed it to you when it’s cold.” She came back from the kitchen and sat back down. “You seen your bastard?”

  “Naw. Tadpole said he moved out of the hotel and they don’t know where he’s gone.”

  “Well, I see him hanging out in front a the place every evening. He hang around there awhile, peeping in ’cause he can’t come in. You know Tadpole barred him from the place?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, well, he peep in and then he go on down the street. He don’t say nothing to Tadpole and Tadpole don’t say nothing to him. Once I saw him I just come on over across the street and said, ‘Mutt, you ain’t got no business hanging around out here, she don’t want to see you.’ He looked at me evil—Christ, that man’s got evil. He looked at me and didn’t say nothing but ‘Shit, Miss Lawson.’ Now, when have he called me Miss Lawson? He call me Cat like everybody else do. He walked on. So I ain’t bother the nigger no more. Just let him stand out there, and walk on when he get ready to walk on.”

  I was frowning.

  “He ain’t going to bother you no more. I didn’t mean to scare you. I don’t think he mean to bother you no more. Just stand out there and get a look. You know how mens are when they do something like that. After they get a look, they just go on away and leave you alone.”

  “Some of em.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I ain’t scared.”

  She looked at me harder than she’d ever looked, then she softened.

  “It wasn’t just the fall, was it, baby?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You was big, wasn’t you?”

  “He didn’t know.”

  “Did you know?”

  “They said I was about a month pregnant, little over a month.”

  “They tell him?”

  “Naw, I don’t think so.”

  “You know which him I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  I looked away from her.

  She said nothing, then got up. “Well, you start to working again things be all right. You got two men evil over you. I passed Tadpole downstairs he act like he didn’t want to speak. I ask was you up here. I knew you was. He said Yeah. I asked if you was sleeping. He said Naw, he didn’t think you was. But trying to get him to say something was like pulling his teeth, so I just came on upstairs.”

  She patted my leg through the sheet.

  “I got to get back down now, baby. You be all right. I promised Elvira I’d do her hair.”

  “Awright, thanks for the broth. They gave Tadpole a menu, but I don’t think he knows what to do.”

  “I be checking up on you then. I just wanted to make sure you wasn’t evil.”

  “Naw.”

  She patted my leg again, and left.

  She hadn’t been long gone when Tadpole came up.

  “What did she want?” he asked.

  “She just came to bring me some broth and see how I was feeling. She told me to make sure you heat it up before you fed it to me.” I laughed but he didn’t.

  “Why she stay so long?”

  “You know how it is when you get to talking.”

  “I seen her out there talking to Mutt Thomas the other night.”

  I frowned. “She was trying to tell him to go away.”

  “But he wouldn’t listen, would he?”

  “Naw. Why didn’t you tell me he was hanging around out there?”

  “I thought you’d find out soon enough. I just didn’t want to bother you now.”

  “Well, I found out.”

  He started to leave.

  “She wasn’t saying nothing about you, Tadpole.”

  “I didn’t say she was.”

  He went out. I turned over and tried to get some sleep.

  I stayed there, and when it was time for the stitches to come out, he’d help me into the tub to soak, and then when a half-hour was up, he’d come with a towel and help me out. He’d never stay in the bathroom. Once, after I’d soaked for a half-hour, he knocked and came in with the towel. He helped me out by the arm. He had a way of looking without looking, only enough to help me in and out. It was a big thick green towel that covered me down to my knees. I held it around me under my breasts.

  “The stitches are about gone,” I said. He was still holding my arm. “You haven’t seen the scar.”

  He said he hadn’t looked.

  “You can feel it,” I said. “I can just reach down and feel it. It’s going to leave a bad one.”

  “I reckon,” he said, helping me back to the bed. I sat down on the edge of it, drying myself off. He went back to let the water out. He came back and put my feet up. I handed him the towel, and got under the cover.

  “You ought to be able to get in and out by yourself.”

  “It’s only so I won’t slip,” I said.

  “The doctor wants to see you again in a couple of days.”

  “I hope that means real food when I get back.”

  “Maybe.”

  He was sitting near the bed and I took his hand and put it under the sheet.

  “You can feel it, can’t you?”

  He said yes. I thought he was going to take his hand away, but he waited for me to.

  “It’s worse when you touch it than when you look at it.”

  “I suppose. Most scars are.”

  I said nothing, then asked, “Has he still been out there?”

  “Yeah, he’s still out there.”

  “You haven’t said anything?”

  “Naw, he’s outside. I can’t bar him from looking.”

  “Tell him that ‘can’t come in’ means ‘can’t look in’ either.”

  He laughed. “I can’t tell him that.”

  “You could make him go away.”

  “I can’t make him go away.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. He’s waiting for you, that’s all. See you come out and sing, and know you’re all right.”

  “That’s what Cat said. Is that what he said?”

  “I ain’t talked to him.”

  “I thought maybe you might have.”

  “Naw. He looks and I look. He knows I don’t want him in here and he don’t come.”

  “My butt.”

  “What?”

  “He ain’t come in cause he ain’t seen what he wants to see yet.”

  “He ain’t coming in then.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  He said nothing. He stood up.

  “After I see the doctor, I want to see a lawyer,” I said.

  He nodded. He patted my belly through the cover, and went back to finish cleaning out the tub.

  When he came back through, I had my eyes closed. I could feel him bending down, but he must have stopped midway because he didn’t finish.

  “I’m awake,” I said. I didn’t open my eyes.

  He bent down and kissed me. Then I heard the door close.

  “I am going to take you off the pills and see how you feel,” the doctor said. He had finished examining me, and I was sitting in the chair near his desk. “If you start getting nauseated again, take them. I want to see you in two more weeks. Is Mr. Corregidora with you?”

  “That’s my name, not my husband’s.”

  “Oh, I see. Is Mr. Thomas with you? When I looked out there I saw a man standing with you. I’d like to see him.”

  “Naw.”

  “Aw, okay.”

  “You can take Mutt’s name off there anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”


  “I’m filing suit for divorce.”

  “Well, when I looked out and saw that man standing there I thought you’d stopped blaming him.”

  I said nothing, and stood up. When I got outside, Tadpole came over and took my elbow.

  “See you in two weeks,” the nurse said.

  “Okay.”

  “How’d it go?” Tad asked.

  “Awright.”

  “What do you mean awright?”

  “He took me off the pills, unless I get nauseated again.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  We walked to the door.

  “He thought you were Mutt,” I said quietly. “I mean, my husband. He thought you were Mr. Corregidora.”

  “What?” He was frowning.

  “He didn’t know I kept my name and Mutt kept his.”

  “When do you come back?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “I mean what time?”

  “Same time.”

  “Did he say you could work?”

  “I didn’t ask. I forgot to. Should I go back and ask?”

  “Naw.”

  “Yes, I’d better,” I said. “I was planning to start whether he said so or not.”

  He took my arm slightly, but I went anyway. We were standing in the door. Tadpole stood aside to let somebody pass. I asked him to wait for me. “Where would I go?” he asked.

  When I got back, Tadpole was still frowning.

  “What did he say?”

  “Anytime I feel like it.”

  “I’ll go ask him myself.”

  “No. He said anytime I feel like it, after the next two weeks. He said it meant building up time. One hour one night. Maybe hour and a half the next. Like that. Till I build myself back up again.”

  “I would’ve asked him if you hadn’t told me,” he said. “I’ll get you a stool.”

  “I don’t work sitting down,” I said.

  He said nothing, and we got in the car. When I looked over at him, he was looking as if he was mad at me. When he saw me watching him, he looked ahead quickly, and turned on the ignition.

  When we got back I said I was tired and wanted to lie down. It was around noon. I’d had a ten o’clock appointment.

  “Same time, same position,” I said.

  “What?”

  He was hanging up my sweater and his jacket.

  “He had me up on the table so he could look at the scar. Every time you go to the doctor they say, ‘Get up on the table’ or ‘Take your clothes off and get up on the table.’ Somebody ought to say Naw.”

  “That’s what Cat did once. She said the man told her, ‘Get up on the table.’ So she said, ‘I told that bastard, Naw, I wasn’t getting up on the table. And he didn’t make me neither.’ ”

  “How you know?”

  “You know Cat talk the same way in front of men as she do women,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know when she was married to Joe Hunn he broke the window out of his car and come in and said, ‘Honey, you got a piece of cardboard?’ and she went in and got him a Kotex box. He just as silly as she is though. He used it. People said, ‘Man, where you get that thing?’ Making men laugh and embarrassing women. I don’t see why they didn’t stay together, cause they was just alike.”

  “You never can tell,” I said.

  He said nothing. Then he said, “You know what I mean. Both. Not silly. But bold. You know.”

  “Bold silly.”

  “Well … How did he say the scar looked?”

  “He said it looked good. I said if this supposed to look good I hate to see one supposed to look bad.”

  He raised up my blouse. “It looks good,” he said.

  I put my blouse back in my skirt.

  “Did you get a chance to talk to the lawyer for me?”

  “Yeah. He said he’ll take care of it.”

  “Well, when he gets ready for me to sign anything, tell him I’ll be in there to sign it.”

  “I told him.”

  I patted his knee. He smiled a little, but said nothing.

  “What do you want, Ursa?”

  I looked at him with a slight smile that left quickly. “What do you mean?”

  “What I said. What do you want?”

  I smiled again. “What all us Corregidora women want. Have been taught to want. To make generations.” I stopped smiling.

  He looked at me. “What do you want, Ursa?”

  “More than yourself?”

  He raised me and kissed me very hard.

  “I’ll let you sleep.”

  “I don’t want to sleep.”

  “Then rest.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be back up later and fix us something to eat.”

  “No, I’ll do it.”

  “No, I want to.”

  “Okay.”

  He started to go.

  “When the doctor gave you that menu for me, who did you say you were?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  “Who did he think you were?”

  He didn’t say. He went downstairs.

  “… The important thing is making generations. They can burn the papers but they can’t burn conscious, Ursa. And that what makes the evidence. And that’s what makes the verdict.”

  “Procreation. That could also be a slave-breeder’s way of thinking.”

  “But it’s not.”

  “No. And you can’t.”

  “Not anymore, no.”

  Gram was standing in the doorway looking down at me. She looked tall then, because I was little, but Mama said she wasn’t no more than five feet.

  “… His hair was so dark and greasy straight you could a swore he was pure Indian, but if you even dare say something, he stick a poker up your ass, a hot coal poker. Naw, but he wasn’t though. He was from over there somewhere in Portugal. Naw, it wasn’t Lisbon. That’s the capital. Naw, I don’t know where. He probably didn’t even know where. He was a seaman. Naw, a sea captain. That’s why the king give him lands, and slaves and things, but he didn’t hardly use nothing but the womens. Naw, he wasn’t the first that did it. There was plenty that did it. Make the women fuck and then take their money. And you know sometimes the mistresses was doing it too so they could have little pocket money that their husbands didn’t know about. And getting their brothers and their brother’s friends and other mens they know, you know, and then they make theyselves right smart money for their purse. Naw, his wife didn’t do that. She sleep with you herself. I guess she didn’t wont no money. Or didn’t need none. Or just figure it was all the same. That hot climate. Nose like a baby hawk. Naw, she couldn’t do a damn thing. Naw, she didn’t give him nothing but a little sick rabbit that didn’t live but to be a day old. So then he just stopped doing it. Naw, she couldn’t do a damn thing.”

  “No, because it depends on if it’s for you or somebody else. Your life or theirs.”

  I wouldn’t take my eyes off her. She kept looking down at me.

  “What you doing?”

  Cat had come in but I hadn’t heard her.

  “Tadpole said you might be sleeping, but I said I’d just peep in and see and if you was, I wouldn’t bother you. He’s got right evil these days.”

  “Yeah. Naw, I wasn’t sleeping.”

  “Just thinking?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I seen you staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, and didn’t know if I should disturb that either.”

  “Naw, come on in.”

  She came in.

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  She came and sat down on the bed.

  “You okay? How did it go with the doctor?”

  “He took me off the pills. He wonts me to come back in a couple of weeks though, and then I think I can start working again after that.”

  “It be good to hear you sing again. Eddy Pace was trash and all they doing down there now is wining and dining. I should say whiskeying.”
>
  “I’m sorry. I wish I wasn’t being so much trouble to him.”

  “I didn’t mean nothing by you.”

  “If he didn’t have me up here he’d be having a band in.”

  “Aw, that nigger don’t care. He rather have you up here anyway.”

  I said nothing, then I said, “But seriously, if I don’t start feeling better in another week can I come stay with you?”

  “Sure. You could’ve come stayed with me anytime. I just figured things was settled here.”

  “No.”

  She said nothing, then patted my knee. “Well, you be awright.”

  “Mutt still out there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, Tad said he was.”

  “Why you ask me then?”

  “No reason.”

  She looked at me hard.

  “Tad’s seeing a lawyer for me about the divorce and when he gets ready I have to sign the papers.”

  “You got Tad seeing him for you?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “No reason.”

  I looked at her, then I said, “I think maybe we might get together, you know, after all this is over.”

  “Then you don’t want to move in with me.”

  “Yeah, you know, till I’m feeling better. I don’t want to be a burden to him.”

  “You want to be one to me,” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Okay,” I said finally.

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, I’ll stay here.”

  “Naw, I think it be better if you was over to my place. Sooner the better. But seem like to me you already together. People think you already together.”

  “Naw, we not. He’s been a good friend. I don’t care what people think anyway. I never have.”

  “What Mutt think?”

  “Naw, nor what Mutt think. I told you that story. From the day he throwed me down those stairs we not together, and we not coming back together.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “You sound like if he was sitting here what he be saying. ‘Aw, honey, I was drunk. Aw, honey, it was a accident. I didn’t mean to do it. You know I wouldn’t’ve done it. You know I’m sorry. All I wanted to do was take care of you like a husband should.’ Now, what good am I for a man?”

  “Why don’t you ask Tadpole that?”

  I told her to go to hell.

  She said she was, if I promised I was still coming back with her.

  I said nothing.

  “Listen, honey, I’ma tell you something seem like you don’t know or play like you don’t know. Right now’s not the time for you to be grabbing at anything. Any woman to be grabbing at anything. Out of fear. I don’t know what. Ask yourself how did you feel about Tadpole before all of this happened. I know he’s being good to you, but this is a rush job. Just thinking about the two of y’all getting together is a rush job. You know what I mean? He’s looked at you and seem like you scared somebody else won’t. You a beautiful woman. They be many mens that …”