by Gayl Jones
Mama looked at me for a moment, at first like she wasn’t going to answer, then she said, “I think there was some boys. I think they told me there was some boys, but Corregidora sold the boys off.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask them that. The only reason I’m telling you is so you won’t ask them.”
“Ursa, wake up Ursa, baby.”
He was stroking my hair.
“You must have been having a nightmare.”
He got into bed with me, stroking my hair.
“Was it the old man again?”
“Yes.”
He stroked my hair. “I’ll stay with you,” he said.
My voice was dancing, slow and blue, my voice was dancing, but I was saying nothing. I dreamed with my eyes open. All the Corregidora women with narrow waists and high cheekbones and wide hips. All the Corregidora women dancing. And he wanted me. He grabbed my waist.
“Ain’t even took my name. You Corregidora’s, ain’t you? Ain’t even took my name. You ain’t my woman.”
“You had a bad night, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Get their devils off your back. Not yours, theirs.”
I said nothing. I pretended I didn’t know what he meant.
Tadpole arranged things with the justice of the peace and we were married. Tadpole wanted Cat Lawson to be the witness. I said Naw, then I finally conceded, because I couldn’t tell him why not. I didn’t know how it would be, because I was finding it difficult to even say anything to her. And I felt that she must have suspected why I left. I hadn’t been over there since the morning I’d walked out, and she hadn’t been to visit me. She scarcely said anything before the ceremony, and then when we were driving back, she didn’t say a word.
“Cat got your tongue?” Tadpole asked.
“Yeah, I got my own tongue,” she said. She was sitting on the side by the window. I was in the middle.
“You happy for us, ain’t you?” he asked.
“You know I wish you all the happiness in the world,” Cat said.
I didn’t say anything.
When we got home, Cat said, “You can just drop me off here.”
“You coming in and have a drink with us, ain’t you?”
“Naw, Tadpole, it’s too early in the day for me.”
“Since when?”
Cat looked at me, but I said nothing.
“Come on,” Tad said.
“Well, awright. I just have a nip though.”
We got out of the car and went inside. Tadpole had Sal’s husband, Thedo, take over at the bar while we were gone. His real name was Theodore, but everybody called him Thedo.
“Thedo, some champagne,” said Tadpole.
“I just have some plain old Kentucky bourbon myself,” said Cat.
“Naw, I got a bottle down there especially for the occasion,” said Tadpole. “Thedo.”
Thedo got out the champagne and poured.
“If I get a bellyache it’s y’all’s fault.”
“This is delicate stuff,” said Tadpole.
“Well, my stomach ain’t been used to delicate.”
Tadpole laughed. I drank. Then I said, “Honey, I think I’m going upstairs. I’m a little tired.”
“Awright, baby,” he said, frowning.
Cat was looking at me, but I didn’t look at her.
“So long, Cat,” I said, without looking at her, to make it sound right.
“Sure, see you around,” Cat said.
I got up from the stool.
“All women just married act funny?” I heard Tad ask.
“Yeah,” Cat answered.
It was a short time after I came up that there was a knock on the door. I knew who it was before she opened.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
“You already are,” I said. I was sitting on the bed, getting out of my stockings. I laid them on the chair, then I took them off the chair, and put them on the bed beside me. Cat came in and sat down in the chair. I didn’t look up at her at first. Then I looked up at her. She was looking at me calmly, but I could tell she was hurt. I was hurt too. She was sweaty from drinking.
“You look flushed,” I said.
She said nothing. Then she said, “I heard you in there that morning.” Her voice was steadier than I thought it might be, all the time I’d imagined such a talk.
“Did you?” I said. I had nothing else to say.
“It was easier not to let you know I heard you then,” she said.
I said nothing this time.
“I want you to know I heard you now.”
“What does it matter?” I asked.
“Don’t make me feel clumsier than I already do,” she said.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” I said coolly now.
She said nothing.
“Do you feel good treating me this way?” she asked.
“No, I don’t feel good about any of it,” I said.
There was silence. She sat looking at me. I’d stopped looking at her again. I could feel her flutter as if she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. I wouldn’t make it easy. I waited.
Then she said finally, “You don’t know what it’s like to feel foolish all day in a white woman’s kitchen and then have to come home and feel foolish in the bed at night with your man. I wouldn’t a mind the other so much if I didn’t have to feel like a fool in the bed with my man. You don’t know what that means, do you?”
I said nothing. She was crying but they were dry tears.
“I wanted to be able to come home to my own bed and not feel foolish. You don’t know what it feels like.”
She was looking at me, expecting something. She wanted me to tell her that I knew what it was like, but I wouldn’t tell her. Yes, I know what it feels like. I remembered how his shoulders felt when he was going inside me and I had my hands on his shoulders, but I also remembered that night I was exhausted with wanting and I waited but he didn’t turn toward me and I kept waiting and wanting him and I got close to him up against his back but he still wouldn’t turn to me and then I lay on my back and tried hard to sleep and I finally slept and in the morning I waited and still he didn’t and I thought in the morning he would but he didn’t and I waited but the clock got him up and he went off to work and I lay there still waiting. I was no longer even angry with waiting. I just lay there saying don’t make me use my fingers, and then I got up too. Yes, I could tell her what it feels like. Do I have to wait until in the morning? Don’t punish me this way. What’s a husband for? Don’t you feel like a man? And wanting to cry and not wanting him to see me and turning over against the wall until sweat came out of my eyes but never wanting him to hear me cry.
“I didn’t wont to be a fool in front of them and then have to come home and be a fool with him too. Couldn’t even get in my own bed and not be a fool and have him making me feel like a fool too.”
Two swollen plums for eyes. What are you doing to the girl? I wanted to ask. What about when it comes her time? Do you know what I mean? But she was telling me about Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hirshorn and something that happened in the kitchen. She was a young woman, about my age. She lived in during the week and every morning at six o’clock she had to get up and get Mr. Hirshorn’s breakfast because he was the supervisor in a plant, and his wife stayed in the bed sleeping. He always waited till she called him, but one morning he was sitting at the table while she was fixing coffee. “You pretty, Catherine, you know that? You pretty, Catherine. A lot of you nigger women is pretty.” She kept thinking he was drunk, and wished he’d stayed in the room with his wife till she called him like she always did. But he kept sitting, thumping on the table, watching her, her bare arms in a housedress. “You ought to let me watch you straighten your hair sometime. Beatrice said you were in there straightening your hair.” She was saying nothing and then when she’d got the can of coffee grounds down and was opening it to pour in the pot, he was behind her, touching her arm, and she dropped t
he can, and it banged and rolled across the kitchen floor spilling grains. He jumped back, and she was stooping trying to clean it up when his wife came in. “What happened, Tom?”
“That clumsy nigger. I won’t have time to eat breakfast this morning, sweetheart.”
While she was bending, she could see him bending to kiss his wife’s mouth, then he went out the kitchen door, stepping over coffee grounds.
“You made a mess,” his wife said, and went back to bed.
“I wanted to come back home to my own bed and not be made a fool of. You know what I mean?”
I said nothing. I waited for her to calm down. She kept watching me. I waited till the trembling stopped. I must have waited fifteen minutes.
“You over your hysteria now?” I asked.
“Don’t judge me,” she said.
“I won’t judge you.” I looked at her.
She was waiting for an embrace that I refused to give, then she stood up.
“Things pass over you like that,” she said.
I didn’t know what she meant, but didn’t ask. She kept looking at me. I wouldn’t look up at her.
“This means the end of it, I suppose.”
“Whatever you feel it means,” I said.
“I guess you didn’t tell him.”
“No.”
“You won’t, will you?”
I said nothing.
She waited a moment, then she said, “They never let you live it down.” She went out.
“Yes, if you understood me, Mama, you’d see I was trying to explain it, in blues, without words, the explanation somewhere behind the words. To explain what will always be there. Soot crying out of my eyes.” O Mister who come to my house You do not come to visit You do not come to see me to visit You come to hear me sing with my thighs You come to see me open my door and sing with my thighs Perhaps you watch me when I am sleeping I don’t know if you watch me when I am sleeping. Who are you? I am the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of Ursa of currents, steel wool and electric wire for hair.
While mama be sleeping, the ole man he crawl into bed
While mama be sleeping, the old man he crawl into bed
When mama have wake up, he shaking his nasty ole head
Don’t come here to my house, don’t come here to my house I said
Don’t come here to my house, don’t come here to my house I said
Fore you get any this booty, you gon have to lay down dead
Fore you get any this booty, you gon have to lay down dead
“… There were two alternatives, you either took one or you didn’t. And if you didn’t you had to suffer the consequences of not taking it. There was a woman over on the next plantation. The master shipped her husband out of bed and got in the bed with her and just as soon as he was getting ready to go in her she cut off his thing with a razor she had hid under the pillow and he bled to death, and then the next day they came and got her and her husband. They cut off her husband’s penis and stuffed it in her mouth, and then they hanged her. They let him bleed to death. They made her watch and then they hanged her.”
I got out of my wedding suit and was sitting on the couch/bed in my slip when Tadpole came in.
“Y’all women sho act funny at wedding time,” he said. He was excited with drink. He sat down and held me around the waist and kissed me. I’d been sitting stiffly but relaxed and returned the kiss. He squeezed my breasts.
“That hurt?”
“Naw.”
“It hurts some women.”
“It doesn’t hurt me,” I said.
I sat there, letting him hold me around the waist. I was saying nothing.
“I told Thedo to stay on the rest of the day. I thought maybe you might wont to drive down to Midway or over to Versailles or something.”
“Naw.”
“Aw, that’s right, you said you was tired. You been taking those iron pills the doctor give you?”
“Yeah. I’m all right now though. I just felt a little tired. But I’m all right.”
“You want to do anything? I’ll take you somewhere else for dinner tonight. Maybe over to the Spider or something.”
“I thought I’d be singing the supper show tonight.”
“I won’t have you working on your wedding day.”
“You won’t start that too, will you?”
“Start what?”
“Nothing. It’s not the working. I’d like to sing for you.”
“Sing for me here,” he said. He unbuckled his pants and lay down on the bed. I sang for him, then we made love.
II
Sal Cooper and I had never been friends. She worked during the day and would leave during the supper show, so that we weren’t there more than two hours together. But even during that time she’d always managed to avoid me. I tried to be friendly at first, but she didn’t act friendly back, and I’ve always been the kind of person that when I see somebody don’t want to be bothered with me, I don’t be bothered with them. So it surprised me when she came over and said something to me. And when people started changing in their feelings toward me, I wasn’t one to begrudge them. I didn’t even suspect why she was being nice then, though now, when I think back on it and what she told me then, I think I know why. I’d married Tadpole, and Tadpole was dark like she was.
“How was the ceremony?” she asked, sitting down. She hadn’t said anything when we came back from the wedding. She waited a couple of days before she said anything.
“It was nice,” I said. I smiled.
She didn’t return the smile but she had a pleasant look on her face. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, the time of day when there’s not much business, and she was taking her break. I’d come downstairs because it was so hot upstairs, and I was tired of staying up there. We just sat there saying nothing. She was having a Coke. I had a beer.
“You know every since I first laid eyes on you I thought you was one of my long-lost relatives. I can’t help it, I just kept feeling that you kin to me. You know, I’m a spiritualist. I believe in things like that.”
I kept looking at her. I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“I reckon you think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“No,” I said, but I wasn’t sure what I thought.
She sat silent a moment. I didn’t say anything either.
Then she explained, “My mother came out the darkest, and so they wouldn’t claim her. I don’t know who they are. I don’t even know what they look like. Mama probably wouldn’t even know them now. She think they up in New York somewhere now though, passing. I don’t know, but when I first saw you, I had that feeling.”
“I couldn’t pass,” I said. I had to say something. I felt resentful, and a little angry because she was saying those things to me.
“I don’t mean passing white. I mean passing for Spanish or something, you know. Like Cole Bean getting in the front door down at the Strand that time.”
I started to say I didn’t know, but I nodded.
“Come over here, baby.”
I went over to the car. He was a black man but he had two white girls in the back seat. One of them was barefooted and had her legs up on the seat. Another black man was sitting in front, leaning across the seat looking at me. The other man was out of the car, smiling, showing his gold tooth.
“What’s your name, baby?”
“Ursa.”
“My name’s Urban, Urban Jones. They both kind of sound alike, don’t they. The Ur.”
I nodded.
“What are you?” he asked.
“I’m an American.”
“I know you a American,” he said. “But what nationality. You Spanish?”
“Naw.”
“You look like you Spanish. Where you from?”
“Kentucky.”
“Maybe that’s why you talk like that. What’s your address? I want to come and see you.”
I said nothing.
“What’s wrong?”
&
nbsp; “Nothing.”
“Something’s wrong, sweetheart. Your boyfriend wouldn’t like it?”
I didn’t have a boyfriend, but I said, “Naw.”
“Well, he don’t have to know.”
“He’d have to know,” I said.
“Well, I thought maybe I could take you out to dinner or something.”
“No.”
“Well, you pretty.”
I smiled and said I had to go.
“Can I drop you somewhere?”
“Naw, I got to meet somebody.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
He frowned, “Well, take it easy, honey.” He got back in the car and drove off. I kept walking. That was the summer Mama had taken me up to Detroit. I was seventeen, but everybody said I looked older than I was.
“Do you know what you are?”
“What?”
“What all you got in you. I know you got something else in you that funny name you got.”
I said I didn’t know.
She kept looking at me. I could tell she wanted to confess something else, and to me. I took a sip of beer and waited.
“My mother married a light man so that her children could have light skin and good hair. But look what happened.”
I frowned. We sat there saying nothing again.
“… They burned all the documents, Ursa, but they didn’t burn what they put in their minds. We got to burn out what they put in our minds, like you burn out a wound. Except we got to keep what we need to bear witness. That scar that’s left to bear witness. We got to keep it as visible as our blood.”
“I didn’t bother you, did I?” Sal asked.
“Naw, you didn’t bother me,” I said. I didn’t smile this time, but she was still looking at me as if she liked me for the first time. “No, I’m not bothered,” I repeated.
“Cat thinks you’re beautiful,” she said, smiling, showing two gold teeth.
I said nothing.
“Cat ain’t been around in a month of Sundays, have she?”
“Naw, she ain’t been around,” I said.
A man and a woman entered.
“I better go take care of these people,” Sal said. She got up.
“You red-headed heifer.” That’s what that woman down in Bracktown called me. I wasn’t even studying her man. He looked at me, I didn’t look at him.