by Gayl Jones
I sat there a moment, finishing my beer, then went back upstairs to take a nap before the supper show.
The last time I was in Bracktown, I went to the Baptist church with Mama.
“Who’s that? Some new bitch from out of town going be trying to take everybody’s husband away from them?” somebody asked.
“Naw, that’s Ursa, that’s my baby.”
“Is that little Ursa? She growed up.”
“Yeah, she have.”
The church supper.
“Can I help you to some potato salad?” he asked me.
I let him help me to some. I didn’t see she was with him but she kept watching. Then when he wasn’t there, she eased over. “You red-headed heifer.” Then when I was just walking down the street minding my own business, these two women in a car. “You red-headed heifer.” I didn’t stay long back in Bracktown. Just to see how folks was.
I’d slept for an hour when Tadpole came in. He was walking softly trying not to awake me, but I was already awake.
“Aw, I thought you was sleep,” he said when he saw my eyes open.
“Naw.”
“I was just over to Cat’s,” he said. “She said something crazy about going back to Versailles cause her roots was there. I told her her roots was wherever she take them. She said naw your roots are where you was born and you can’t pull them up, the only thing you can do is cut yourself away from them but they still be there.”
“Well, you can’t sew yourself back onto them,” I said. Then I thought that seemed a plea for her staying, but I didn’t care.
“I finally told her to do whichever way she feel it,” he said. “I had to tell her something. She act like she was looking for my approval or something. I just told her to do it the way she feel it. I told her she got all her customers here though.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she try to get customers there too, and if she can’t, then she do whatever she have to.”
I said nothing.
“I told her to take care of herself. You going over there to see her before she leave, ain’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said, but I knew I wasn’t going over there. I asked him when was she leaving. He said probably tomorrow morning.
“I said we be coming down to see her, but she said she didn’t know where she was going to live yet. That’s funny, ain’t it?”
I said it was funny.
I went in to take a bath and get ready for the supper show.
Jim would still come in sometimes to have a beer, but now I didn’t say nothing to him and he didn’t say nothing to me. I’d got over my feeling that he was spying for Mutt. Maybe he was just spying for hisself. Mutt never stood outside the window anymore. I never even saw him by accident out on the street, or down in town anywhere, and nobody I knew had seen him. I was glad. It probably meant he really was gone.
“It don’t hurt anymore?” he asked.
“Naw.”
He was inside me now. I was holding his back. There was still a kind of tension in my belly.
“You fine, baby,” he was saying. “There’s nobody like you.”
I was struggling against him, trying to feel what I wasn’t feeling. Then he reached down and fingered my clitoris, which made me feel more. He stopped. “Please, honey.” He fingered again. I wrapped my legs around his back, the feeling inside me. Tension in my belly, like a fist drawn up. “Please.” He kept on.
“What am I doing to you, Ursa? What am I doing to you?”
I kept struggling with him. I made a sound in my throat. I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. What I felt didn’t have words.
“Am I fucking you?”
“You fucking me.”
“What are we doing, Ursa?”
“We fucking.”
He dug his finger up my asshole. I contracted against him. “You fucking me. Yes, you fucking me.” He fingered my clit again, but it was painful now. “It hurts,” I fretted. He took his hand away. I kept moving with him, not feeling it now. I waited till his convulsions were over. His sperm inside me. Then we lay back together, exhausted, ready to sleep.
“Urs, he’s going to wont more.”
“He knows what I ain’t got. Don’t talk to me. I don’t know you.”
“What do you mean you don’t know me? I was in your hole before he even knew you had one.”
“At least I still got one, ain’t I? You didn’t take that away from me.”
“I couldn’t if I tried.”
“Did you?”
Sperm to bruise me. Wash it away. Vinegar and water. Barbed wire where a womb should be. Curdled milk.
“Did I displease you so much?”
“Naw, you didn’t displease me.”
I came to you. Why didn’t you want me? I lay on my belly waiting. That’s what a woman waits for. To be fucked. A woman always waits to be fucked. Why didn’t you? Now I’m without feeling.
“Was I so bad?”
“Naw, you wasn’t bad.”
“Did you forget so soon? I know you from way back, Ursa. That’s what I said, didn’t I? But you’ve forgotten.”
“Naw I haven’t forgotten. I’m still thick with you. I can’t get you out.”
“Does it feel good?”
“No.”
“Really, Urs? Really no good?”
“Yes. I mean, I’m lying. Yes.”
“What am I doing to you, Ursa?”
“You fucking me.”
“I thought you were still afraid of those words.”
“Didn’t I tell you you taught me what Corregidora taught Great Gram. He taught her to use the kind of words she did. Don’t you remember?”
“I got a terrible memory. I kept asking you, but you never would tell me … What am I doing?”
“You fucking me, bastard.”
I dreamed that my belly was swollen and restless, and I lay without moving, gave birth without struggle, without feeling. But my eyes never turned to my feet. I never saw what squatted between my knees. But I felt the humming and beating of wings and claws in my thighs. And I felt a stiff penis inside me. “Those who have fucked their daughters would not hesitate to fuck their own mothers.” Who are you? Who have I born? His hair was like white wings, and we were united at birth.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t even know your own father?”
“You not my father. I never was one of your women.”
“Corregidora’s women. Yes, you are.”
“No!”
“What did Mutt do to you, baby?”
“I don’t need your pity.”
“It looks ugly in there.”
“It’s no worse than what you did.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, you old bastard.”
Great Gram, if she were back, what would she say?
“Be glad he didn’t fuck you.”
“Oh, but he did. What do you say to me now?”
“Where’s the next generation?”
“Hush.”
I am Ursa Corregidora. I have tears for eyes. I was made to touch my past at an early age. I found it on my mother’s tiddies. In her milk. Let no one pollute my music. I will dig out their temples. I will pluck out their eyes.
“What is it?”
“What? I’m all right.”
“You weren’t sleeping well again.”
“I’m all right. Is it morning?”
“Almost.”
“You said they never told you anything about your past. I mean theirs. That’s the same as yours.”
“Naw. You know, they be some things that pass down. But they didn’t just sit me down and talk about it. But they be stories. Like, you know, about my grandmother. I took after Papa though, and the daughter that came out dark.”
“Was she your mama?” I asked.
“Naw, my mama was the one that come out light.”
“Aw. What else do you know?”
“Well, I know that they taug
ht Papa how to be a blacksmith doing slavery, and when the slavery was over, he went on being a blacksmith, and then everytime he saved up some money, he’d buy a little taste of land, so the generations after him would always have land to live on. But it didn’t turn out that way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they crooked up there. When Mama went into the courthouse to claim the land, somebody had tore one of the pages out the book. Tha’s one reason I got away from up there. Aw, they let her keep the little piece of land where the house is, and I send her money every chance I get. But the rest of the land. Anyway, it’s …”
“What?”
“Nothing. Anyway, they ain’t nothing you can do when they tear the pages out of the book and they ain’t no record of it. They probably burned the pages.”
“… Naw, I don’t remember when slavery was abolished, cause I was just being born then. Mama do, and sometime it seem like I do too. They signed papers, and there wasn’t all this warring like they had up here. You know, it was what they call pacific. A pacific abolition. And you know, people was celebrating and rejoicing and cheering in the street, white people and black people. And then they called Isabella, that was the princess, they started calling Isabella the Redempt’ress, you know, because she signed the paper with a jeweled pen. And then after that black people could go anywhere they wanted to go, and take up life anyway they wanted to take it up. And then that’s when the officials burned all the papers cause they wanted to play like what had happened before never did happen. But I know it happened, I bear witness that it happened. Yeah, and Corregidora’s whores was free too, but most of ’em Mama said he put down in the rut so deep, that that’s bout all they could do now, though lot of ’em broke away from it too, but leastwise now they get to keep they own money and he wasn’t getting hide nor hair of it. Mama stayed there with him even after it ended, until she did something that made him wont to kill her, and then she run off and had to leave me. Then he was raising me and doing you know I said what he did. But then sometime after that when she got settled here, she came back for me. That was in 1906. I was about eighteen by then. Naw, she didn’t come near the place herself. She sent somebody to tell me where she was. Naw, she still think he was going to kill her. Whatever it was. By now I think he probly want to take her back, but I don’t think she go back. Shortly after that I went off and met her and then we come back up to Louisiana where she was living then. Naw, I don’t know what I would’ve done if she hadn’t come. He wanted to keep me, the bastard. But it’s hard to always remember what you were feeling when you ain’t feeling it exactly that way no more. But when she come back for me, I was so happy I didn’t know what to do, and was glad to get away from there. But by then I was big with your mama. Naw, she was born down in Louisiana. Then we come up here, you know, to get better work, and Mama was working for some Irish peoples, and I was staying home taking care of your mama and then little later on, Mama would stay at home and I was out working.”
“Didn’t your daddy do anything?”
“What?”
“About the burned papers?”
“Naw, my daddy was in the war.” He frowned.
“Died?”
“Naw. He went off to France during the war, and stayed in France.”
I said nothing.
“You never talk about your daddy neither. It’s always them women. What’s your daddy like?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“She met him when she was working down at the train depot. He just came in to get work, you know, help out and he ended up helping my mama out too, and then she had me and he went away again. He died up in New York somewhere. Some woman poisoned him. Mama never would talk about him. She said he had gypsy in him. Most of which I know my grandmama told me and told me not to tell my mama she told me. Mama never would have told me anything.”
“You mixed up every which way, ain’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem like you got a little bit of everything in you,” he said.
“I didn’t put it there,” I said. I felt the resentment again, the kind I’d felt when Sal was talking to me. I didn’t say anything else.
“I better get some sleep,” Tadpole said. “It be ’bout time to wake up in a little while.”
He turned away from me. I closed my eyes, but didn’t go back to sleep. I wanted him again, but I said nothing. I waited for the alarm to go off. I stayed in bed while he got dressed to go downstairs and open up. Then I got up to get breakfast ready when he came back.
Tadpole watched me through the mirror. I was brushing my hair. We’d been married for several months now.
“Your hair’s like rivers,” he said.
“Is that why you married me?”
“Naw, that ain’t why I married you.” He laughed a little. “Naw, that’s hardly why I married you.”
I wanted to ask him why did he, but I was afraid to ask.
“I coulda sung with Cab Calloway,” I said. “That time him and his band come out to Dixieland. He ask me to come up on stage with him, but I wouldn’t do it.”
“You lying.”
“Naw, I ain’t lying.”
“Yes you are.”
I grinned at him. “Yeah, I’m lying,” I said. “There’s a woman over on Deweese Street, though, every time she meets somebody she tells them that. I don’t know if it’s the truth or not. I don’t even try to guess myself.”
“Have you heard her sing?”
“Naw.”
“Cab Calloway must’ve heard her do something, though?” he laughed.
I laughed, then I frowned. He saw me through the mirror. I hadn’t meant for him to.
“What’s wrong, Ursa?”
“Nothing.”
“There’s something wrong.”
“Naw, they ain’t.”
“Come on over here, baby.”
I came to him and he put his head against my belly. I had on my slip. Sometimes I went to bed in my nightgown. Sometimes I wore my slip.
“You feel all right, don’t you, Ursa?”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong? I know something’s wrong, baby. I can tell something’s been wrong.”
I stroked his head, then I laughed a little. “I could’ve sung with Cab Calloway, that’s all.”
He didn’t laugh.
“I love you, baby,” he said.
It still got me somewhere inside when he said that, and I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him the same. If he noticed it, he didn’t let on. He squeezed me a little as if he were waiting for me to say something.
“If anything bothers you, Ursa, you know you can tell me. I’ve always been here for you to tell.”
“I know, baby.”
We said nothing for a long time.
“What was you doing up on that stage besides singing?” he asked, looking up at me, smiling.
“The same thing I can do here.”
When we were together, he said, “I want to help you, Ursa. I want to help you as much as I can … Let me get up in your pussy … Let me get up in your pussy, baby … Damn, you still got a hole, ain’t you? As long as a woman got a hole, she can fuck.”
“I don’t know if you can … you can’t … I don’t know if you …”
He was up inside me now.
“I don’t want to do nothing till you ready, baby. I don’t want to do it till you ready.”
He was inside, and I felt nothing. I wanted to feel, but I couldn’t.
“Is it good?”
“Yes.”
“Is it good, baby?”
“Yes, yes.”
“I just want it to feel sweet, baby. I just want it to be sweet.”
“You don’t have to …”
“I want it to be sweet for you.”
I held him around his neck till I finally slept.
It was in the morning when he asked, “Did it hurt?”
“No.”
He looked over at me. He had his head on the pillow, and I was looking toward him, my head almost on his chest.
“It was something. You can’t tell me it wasn’t,” he said.
I said nothing. I kept leaning almost on his chest.
“You hurting somewhere, baby. I know you hurting somewhere.”
I wished he wouldn’t say that, because I wasn’t sure what it meant to him.
“I’m waiting for you to tell me,” he said. He seemed hard now. Before he had seemed gentle.
My chin was almost touching his chest when I said, “Let’s stand.”
We stood up but I couldn’t get him inside me. I wanted to say, “I’m not relaxed enough,” but I didn’t.
He stroked me on the behind, pulling up on me, then he said, “You have to work too.” He pulled up on me more, squatting down. He took me with him to the wall, squatting more. I still couldn’t get him in.
“Work, Ursa.”
“I am working,” I said. It was almost a cry, but a cry I didn’t want him to hear. I don’t know how long it was between it and when I finally said, “Tadpole, I can’t, I can’t.”
He stood watching me for a moment, and then he said, “Well, I’m not going to stand here all day.”
He walked away from me and went in the bathroom.
I stood facing the wall, remembering that time I wanted it but Mutt was angry and wouldn’t give it to me.
“Don’t bring it here,” he had said.
I bent down then to kiss him.
“I said, ‘Don’t bring it here, Urs.’ ”
“I just want to kiss you.”
He turned away. “Shit, I know how it is. Mens just hanging in there trying to get some. It’s the Happy Café awright. Mens just hanging around so they can get something.”
“Mutt, you know it ain’t that kind of a place. Tadpole don’t run that kind of a place.”
“I bet if I went over to one a those tables and I asked them what they have and they would tell me the truth about it, they’d say, ‘Piece a tail, please,’ and I asked them ‘What tail’ they say, ‘That woman’s standing up there. That good-lookin woman standin right up there.’ Shit, I know how mens is. They just be laying in your ass if they could.”
“You know I ain’t give it to nobody else.”
“How I know?” He turned on me, his eyes narrowed, then he turned his back to me. I tried to turn him back around, but gave up trying.