Corregidora

by Gayl Jones

  “Little later. If you don’t mind.”

  He said nothing.

  “She seem like she too young to be like that,” I said.

  “Well, they start off young.”

  He came over to the bed and sat down.

  “Sit closer to me,” he said.

  I sat closer.

  He pulled me closer.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes, a little.”

  “Did they say you could do it?”

  “Yes, we can do it.”

  “How does it feel now?”

  “Go on.”

  “How did you sleep?” Tad asked.

  I said nothing. I put my cheek against his chest. He said it was time for him to go down and open up. I watched him rise.

  After a while I got up.

  “I thought you’d still sleep,” he said, when he came back. I’d made the bed, but hadn’t folded it back to be a couch.

  “I’ll just rest today,” I said. “I want to start work this evening.”

  “Do you think you’re ready? I don’t think you’re ready.”

  “I feel like it. The doctor said whenever I felt like it.”

  “After two weeks, he said.”

  “I feel like it now. I want to, Tad.”

  “No more than an hour, and only one show.”

  “The evening one.”

  “Okay. And I’ll have them get a chair for you.”

  “I never sat down singing.”

  “Well, tonight you will.”

  “No, not tonight either.”

  “If you seem tired or anything I’ll just tell them the show’s over.”

  “I won’t. I’ll be okay.”

  “You rest a lot then.” He unmade the bed.

  I looked at him.

  “I’ll feel better if you rest a lot,” he said, and went back downstairs.

  I’d put on my robe but hadn’t dressed. I sat back down on the bed. Then I started singing about trouble in mind. Still the new voice. The one Cat said you could hear what I’d been through in. I tried not to think about the rest of what I’d heard Cat say.

  They call it the devil blues. It ride your back. It devil you. I bit my lip singing. I troubled my mind, took my rocker down by the river again. It was as if I wanted them to see what he’d done, hear it. All those blues feelings. That time I asked him to try to understand my feeling ways. That’s what I called it. My feeling ways. My voice felt like it was screaming. What do they say about pleasure mixed in the pain? That’s the way it always was with him. The pleasure somehow greater than the pain. My voice screaming for him to take me. And when he would, I’d draw him down into the bottom of my eyes. They watched me. I felt as if they could see my feelings somewhere in the bottom of my eyes.

  I saw Mutt’s cousin Jimmy come in while I was singing about trouble. He sat down at a table. I was singing my last two songs. Singing and trying not to see the face outside the window, troubling my eyes. When I finished, Jim came up to me. “Jimmy, how are you?” I asked. He asked me to come have a drink with him. I nodded and went over with him and sat down. I saw Tadpole watching us, but I didn’t look back at Tadpole. I didn’t look at the man outside the window.

  “Do it trouble you me in here?” Jim asked.

  “Why should it? You ain’t him.”

  “You did fine. It’s good to see you back.”

  I said nothing. Then I said, “Tell him to go away, Jim.”

  “He worries.”

  “Tell him I’m all right, and he can go away.”

  “He got the papers from your lawyer and signed them. He said if that’s what you wont.”

  “Yes.”

  “It ain’t what he wonts.”

  “I never did know what he wonted.”

  “He just wont you to come outside and say something to him.”

  “I already cussed him out. In the hospital I cussed him out. I thought everybody I seen was him and I cussed everybody I seen out. I kept looking up cussing everybody.”

  “He said he go away. He just wont you to come out and say something to him before he go away.”

  “I’m not going out there and say nothing to him, Jim.”

  He said nothing. He sipped his drink.

  “I guess he be going away without it then.”

  “Don’t do that, Jim. Don’t try to draw my pity. It ain’t there.”

  “It’s there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s there. It’s just turned all inside.”

  I wanted to slap him but didn’t.

  “I never have pitied myself and never will,” I said.

  “You pitied yourself when you left Bracktown and came to the city and you been pitying yourself ever since.”

  “Shit. Don’t try to make it easy for him, Jim. I never thought of you that way.”

  “You never thought of me anyway,” he said. He took another sip.

  I watched him, but said nothing.

  “What man was you singing to now?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Once you told me that when you sang you always had to pick out a man to sing to. And when Mutt started coming in, you kept picking out him to sing to. And then when y’all was married, you had your man to sing to. You said that you felt that the others only listened, but that he heard you.”

  I said nothing. Then, “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I ain’t.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “I think there’s your old man.”

  “What?”

  “Tadpole Mac-I-want-my-woman-back giving me the evil eye. I think he wants you.” He finished his drink and stood up.

  I kept looking at him. I wouldn’t look at the window, or at Tadpole, behind the bar.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “I enjoyed the music.”

  I rolled my eyes at him, but looked back at him.

  “He told me to ask you something. He said you know what it meant.”

  “Ask me what?”

  “What’s a husband for?”

  I took my eyes off him.

  “It’ll keep hurting, Urs.”

  I kept my eyes off him. He started towards the door.

  “Him or me?” I called.

  He went out. When I looked to see if Mutt was still there, he wasn’t.

  Tadpole came from behind the bar.

  “You better get upstairs,” he said.

  He didn’t ask what Jim wanted. I thought he would, but he didn’t.

  I got up, tired, but trying not to show it.

  “You coming up?” I asked.

  “I got to close up first. I be up. Do you want me to take you up?”

  “Naw.”

  Tad went back to the bar. I saw men watching me as I walked across the room.

  I went upstairs and undressed, put on my robe, but didn’t get in bed.

  “Songs are devils. It’s your own destruction you’re singing. The voice is a devil.”

  “Naw, Mama. You don’t understand. Where did you get that?”

  “Unless your voice is raised up to the glory of God.”

  “I don’t know where you got that.”

  But still I’ll sing as you talked it, your voice humming, sing about the Portuguese who fingered your genitals. His pussy. “The Portuguese who bought slaves paid attention only to the genitals.” Slapped you across the cunt till it was bluer than black. Concubine daughter.

  “Where did you get those songs? That’s devil’s music.”

  “I got them from you.”

  “I didn’t hear the words.”

  Then let me give witness the only way I can. I’ll make a fetus out of grounds of coffee to rub inside my eyes. When it’s time to give witness, I’ll make a fetus out of grounds of coffee. I’ll stain their hands.

  Everything said in the beginning must be said better than in the beginning.

  I didn’t know what time it was when Tadpole came u
p.

  “I thought you’d be in bed.”

  “Naw.”

  “Thank you for waiting for me.”

  I said nothing. He got undressed and came and sat beside me.

  “You were beautiful, honey,” he said. His hand went under my robe, stroking my shoulder.

  “I know what they must have been saying about my voice,” I said.

  He shook his head. “It sounded like it had sweat in it. Like you were pulling everything out of yourself. You were beautiful, sweet.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Yeah, I saw him.”

  “I thought he might try to get in.”

  “Naw, he wasn’t going to try to do that.”

  He still didn’t ask me what Jim wanted. I was glad. His hands were gentle hard on my belly, then stroking my thighs.

  “I love you,” he said.

  I said nothing. I was thinking I’d only wanted him to love me without saying anything about it. Cat had told me enough. I was grateful he didn’t ask me the same question.

  “What did you and Jim talk about?” he asked finally.

  “He wanted me to come out and talk. Mutt did.”

  “And you didn’t.”

  “He says Mutt’s released me.”

  He was stroking my thigh.

  “You heard what I said,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to be my wife.”

  I nodded, but he wasn’t looking.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes. I mean, yes I’ll marry you.”

  He drew me into bed.

  “Are you relaxed now?” he asked.

  I said yes I was relaxed now. I started to tell him Jim said Mutt wasn’t coming back, but I didn’t. Tadpole got between my legs.

  “What’s a husband for?”

  “Somebody to give your piece of ass to.”

  “Mutt, just suppose something was in there when they took it out? What would you feel then?”

  “Was something in there?”

  “Just suppose.”

  “Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.”

  “… They would bend down with their fingers feeling up your pussy.”

  “You don’t care if you ever see me again, do you?”

  “Naw, I don’t care.”

  “What do Mutt do?”

  “He works in tobacco.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “I could feel your thing. I could smell you in my nostrils.”

  What do blues do for you?

  It helps me to explain what I can’t explain.

  I was already awake when he woke up. He looked over at me and rubbed under my eyes.

  “You dark under your eyes,” he said.

  “That’s mascara.”

  “Aw.”

  He touched my cheek.

  “Do you know what your eyes do?”

  “No.”

  “They make a man feel like he wants to climb inside them.”

  Fall to the bottom of my eyes. What will you do there?

  “Can I do the supper show tonight?” I asked.

  “Not unless you check with Dr. Stevens first.”

  “He said I should gradually increase time.”

  “Not your kind of gradual. You saw the chair I had sitting there for you.”

  “Yeah, I saw it.”

  “I think you ought to go tell Dr. Stevens you working awready.”

  “I feel like it.”

  “I still think you should go over there. I’ll drive you over there as soon as I get things started and Sal gets here. Otherwise, I won’t feel right.”

  I said okay I’d go.

  “You pushed it, didn’t you? Started to work now.”

  “I had to.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Well, the nurse’ll take care of you. I’ll be in in a minute.”

  I went into the examining room and undressed and got up on the table. The doctor came in. He started feeling my belly, feeling places and asking me if it hurt. I kept saying Naw.

  “Did you get tired out last night?” he asked.

  I said Naw.

  “Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong. Any more nausea?”

  “Naw.”

  “Well, get dressed. Stop back and see me before you leave.”

  I got dressed and went back into the doctor’s office.

  “I’m going to put you on some iron pills anyway.”

  He wrote out a prescription.

  “Have you started back having sexual relations yet?”

  “Yes, why? Is there something wrong with it?”

  “No, there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. “But just don’t push it either.”

  He handed me the prescription.

  “I don’t think you need to come back for, say, three weeks. And we’ll see how the work’s going. Don’t push your time too much. Like I said before. A little bit every night. I’d say don’t push it more than a half an hour extra each time.”

  “I wanted to do the supper show.”

  “Forty-five minutes, then, each show. Then that’d give you time to rest in between.”

  I thanked him and started out.

  “Make an appointment with the nurse, will you?”

  “Okay.”

  I made an appointment, and then Tad and I went outside.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said there was nothing wrong with me. He wants me to get these iron pills.”

  Tad took the prescription and said he’d stop and get it filled on the way home.

  I sang the supper show. There was no Mutt in the window. And in the evening, there was no Mutt. But when I got to the last couple of songs, Jim came in and sat down. When I finished I went over to the table.

  “Mutt send you here to watch me?” I asked.

  “I got just as much right to be here as anybody else,” he said. He’d ordered a beer and was drinking.

  “It’s about closing time,” I said.

  “I just come in here to get me a little beer,” he said. “I ain’t studying you or Mutt.”

  “He left me when he throwed me down those steps. I didn’t leave him.” I hadn’t sit down. I was standing, speaking low so I wouldn’t draw attention.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, woman,” he said loud. People turned and looked.

  I was embarrassed.

  “Okay, Jim,” I said, again low. I could feel my eyebrows pulling together. “You got just as much right to be here as anybody, you hear.”

  “You trying to get dangerous?”

  “Naw, I’m not trying to get dangerous,” I said. I walked away.

  When I got upstairs, Tadpole came in after me.

  “What’s that about?”

  “He’s just being a bastard.”

  “Wont me to bar him too?”

  I didn’t like the way he said it. I looked at him.

  “Naw, he’s got just as much right to be here as anybody,” I said.

  “He bothering you about Mutt?”

  “Naw, he didn’t say nothing about Mutt.”

  “I’ll let you turn in,” he said.

  “What if I’d said yes?”

  “I’d go ask him what right’s he got to be here.”

  I didn’t know if he were joking or not. He wasn’t smiling. He went back downstairs.

  I took one of my iron pills. I swallowed it and closed my eyes. I wanted a song that would touch me, touch my life and theirs. A Portuguese song, but not a Portuguese song. A new world song. A song branded with the new world. I thought of the girl who had to sleep with her master and mistress. Her father, the master. Her daughter’s father. The father of her daughter’s daughter. How many generations? Days that were pages of hysteria. Their survival depended on suppressed hysteria. She went and got her daughter, womb swollen with the child of her own father. How many generations had to bow to his genital fant
asies? They were fishermen and planters. And you with the coffee-bean face, what were you? You were sacrificed. They knew you only by the signs of your sex. They touched you as if you were magic. They ate your genitals. And you, Grandmama, the first mulatto daughter, when did you begin to feel yourself in your nostrils? And, Mama, when did you smell your body with your hands?

  “Was your mama mulatto?” Mutt asked once.

  “I’m darker than her.”

  “Did that question make you mad?”

  “No.”

  “You look mad.”

  “I’m not. It’s a long story. Too long for now.”

  “Will you tell me sometime?”

  “Yes.”

  I never really told him. I gave him only pieces. A few more pieces than I’d given Tadpole, but still pieces.

  “Your pussy’s a little gold piece, ain’t it, Urs? My little gold piece.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ursa, I’m worried about you, you so dark under your eyes.”

  He tried to tell me I was working too hard, wasn’t getting enough sleep, said that was another reason he wanted me to stop working at Happy’s—besides the men. I told him my eyes weren’t dark. I told him it was just the mascara. But then he tried to rub it off, and it wouldn’t come off.

  “Why did you lie, baby?”

  And that time he had his cousin take a picture of me and him, and I kept staring at the picture.

  He said, “We look good, don’t we, honey?”

  I got so embarrassed because it was me I was looking at, not us. I handed him back the picture and he put it on the mirror. But when he wasn’t there I’d come by the bureau and just look at it. I’d never look when Mutt was home. But I knew why I was looking. Because I realized for the first time I had what all those women had. I’d always thought I was different. Their daughter, but somehow different. Maybe less Corregidora. I don’t know. But when I saw that picture, I knew I had it. What my mother and my mother’s mother before her had. The mulatto women. Great Gram was the coffee-bean woman, but the rest of us … But I am different now, I was thinking. I have everything they had, except the generations. I can’t make generations. And even if I still had my womb, even if the first baby had come—what would I have done then? Would I have kept it up? Would I have been like her, or them?

  “Did they have any other children?” I’d asked Mama once when they weren’t there. I’d been afraid to ask when they were there, because I’d asked Great Gram once when I was real small if Grandmama had any brothers or sisters, and she’d given me this real hateful look.