Corregidora

by Gayl Jones

  “Mutt, please,” I said quietly.

  “I said, ‘Don’t bring it here.’ ”

  That was all he said. He made sounds like he was sleeping. I thought he was, until he asked me, quieter than I’d heard him ask anything, “Tell me if they ain’t asked you.”

  I tried to touch him again.

  “I said I don’t want it,” he said.

  That time I’d gone in the bathroom.

  When Tad came back, I was still facing the wall. I could feel him near me, but I didn’t turn around.

  “I knew about that other shit in the hospital,” he said coldly.

  “What shit?” I turned around.

  “I mean that other shit,” he said.

  I was afraid to ask more. I knew by his look what he meant, and I was afraid that if I moved too far, he’d move farther. I held my stomach and turned back around to the wall. He walked on behind me and went downstairs to work.

  One evening after I’d finished singing, a man came up to me and offered me a job singing Saturday nights at the Spider. I talked to Tadpole about it.

  “Do whatever you want to,” he said. “You your own woman.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he wanted me to take it, or he was thinking too much about what caused the trouble between Mutt and me. I wanted to take it, because I wanted the change. It was different living there now, and working there. I felt different.

  “I’d like to take it,” I said. “You could probably get Eddy’s combo to come back on Saturdays, don’t you think?”

  “You your own woman,” he repeated.

  I didn’t say anything else. I telephoned the man and said I’d take the job. I had a two-hour show on Saturdays, playing piano and singing. Tadpole had Joe Williams playing piano for me there. Tadpole would come to pick me up after work. He came to pick me up the first night.

  “Did you get Eddy’s?”

  “Naw, I got a girl,” he said.

  “Oh. Is she any good?”

  “I think so.”

  Her show had ended when I got back, so I didn’t see her, but Sal said she couldn’t’ve been more than fifteen.

  Once when I was playing piano at the Spider, Jim came in. He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. In fact, he looked like he couldn’t believe I was there. And I hadn’t reckoned with what his being there meant. If Jim could come in, I was thinking … I went on singing. There was a break between hours, and when I finished, Jim came up to say something to me.

  “What is it?” I asked. I was sitting on the piano stool. He was standing with his drink.

  “You stop working for your old man?” he asked.

  “I still work there,” I said.

  “But you work here too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He got a pretty little thing working over there. I was over there last Saturday. I didn’t ask about you. I just assumed you wasn’t working.” He looked at me. I knew what he was thinking.

  “Naw, I’m working,” I said.

  “You get paid more over here?” he asked.

  “Yes, but that’s not my reason.”

  “You just wanted a little change of pace, that’s all?”

  “I guess so. Look, I better get back to work. That’s what he pays me for.”

  He nodded, and went back and sat at his table. I could’ve taken a longer break but I just didn’t want to talk to him. He left shortly afterwards. I didn’t see him the next Saturday, but I finally saw the girl. She came in once during the supper show and went over and said something to Tadpole. She had long straightened hair and eyeliner around her eyes. She looked fifteen and older than fifteen. After she finished talking to Tadpole she went out. When I finished singing, I asked Sal if that was the one. “Yeah,” she said. “Her name’s Vivian. Fast little nigger.” I didn’t say anything to Tadpole about her. I kept going my Saturdays to the Spider, and Tadpole would come and pick me up afterwards.

  But one night he didn’t come and pick me up, and I took a cab home. When I got there Sal was still there, and Thedo was behind the bar.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Where’s Tad?”

  “He had to go out somewhere,” she said. She acted nervous. “Come over and have a drink with me.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “He didn’t say where he was going. Come over and have a drink.”

  “He could’ve called me,” I said. I went over to the bar with her, but then I turned and said I was going upstairs.

  “She’s up there with him,” Thedo said in his low voice.

  “Thedo,” Sal said.

  I went upstairs. I knew what I’d find. Tadpole drunk and that hussy in bed with him. I opened the door.

  Tadpole looked up. They weren’t doing anything now, but they’d been doing it. I came in the room.

  “Get your ass out of my bed,” I told the girl. She wasn’t drunk or afraid of me, but she got up and started dressing. She seemed to be making fun of me without saying it, or even smiling. “If you want something to fuck, I’ll give you my fist to fuck,” I said, surprised at the words I’d echoed. I didn’t touch her though. I just stood there watching her. She dressed as she would have dressed if I hadn’t even been in there.

  “Now, honey, you don’t have to go on like that,” Tadpole said. He was still in bed. “And Vive, honey, you don’t have to leave.”

  Vivian dressed, told Tadpole she’d see him and went past me out the door.

  “You see me,” I said, but she’d already left. She hadn’t closed the door. I closed the door.

  “What right you got coming in here?” he asked.

  “I’m your wife,” I said.

  “What do you do?” he asked.

  I said nothing. I just looked at him. He was raising up, but then lay back down.

  “Come on over here, baby.”

  I didn’t move.

  “You goddamn bastard,” I said.

  “You ain’t got no right to go on like that,” he said. “We wasn’t doing nothing. I wasn’t doing nothing but sucking on her tiddies.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you was sucking on. Or what she was sucking on either.”

  “Do more for me than yours does.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Her tiddies do more for me than your goddamn pussy-hole do.”

  “Shut up, nigger.”

  “Nigger, yourself. You can’t even come with me. You don’t even know what to do with a real man. I bet you couldn’t even come with him when you had something up in there. Don’t give me that shit about he didn’t wont you to work no more. A man wants a woman that can do something for him.”

  “You know what you can do for me.”

  “I know what you can’t do.”

  “You knew what happened to me when you married me,” I said.

  “I know some women that can fuck your ass off you too after it happened to them.”

  “How do you know you a real man?” I said. “If you had to leave me for somebody that ain’t even a real woman yet.”

  “She got more woman in her asshole than you got in your whole goddamn cunt.”

  I said nothing. I was holding back too much now. Then I said, “If you wanted to get rid of me, you didn’t have to do it this way. It’s not me, it’s you.”

  I went out, leaving the door open. When I got downstairs I said nothing to either Sal or Thedo. I walked out. There was no Cat’s to go to now. I checked in at the Drake Hotel. I’d kept from crying until I got in the room, and then I couldn’t keep from crying.

  Because I knew why he kept me waiting, Cat, that’s why I knew what you felt, why I wouldn’t tell you that I knew. A man always says I want to fuck, a woman always has to say I want to get fucked. Does it feel good? And all those dreams I had lying there in the hospital about being screwed and not feeling anything. Numb between my legs. Part of it was what I needed to make myself feel, what I had to know. Okay, I’ll admit that now. But what changes? Mutt doesn’t change. I couldn’t go back to
Tadpole, either. Not that he’d take me back, getting what he wants. What I feel crawling under my skin. That fifteen-year-old heifer. Even I didn’t have eyes like that. What she needs is some of Cat’s medicine. That would tame her. What am I thinking? Afraid only of what I’ll become, because those times he didn’t touch the clit, I couldn’t feel anything, and then he … Why won’t you, honey? But he turned away. Anyway, you knew what was wrong before you snatched after my ass. No, what’s inside my head because those other women they could do it. Afraid of what I. No, I didn’t push it, Cat. He wanted it too. He pushed it too. But with a man, it’s easy to just push it away. The doctor said there wasn’t anything wrong with me, Cat. I didn’t go back, because there was nothing wrong, and he said it looked all right down there. I felt all right, and my strength is back. Why won’t you turn back toward me? I’m so tired of waiting. Afraid of waiting. I gave you what I could. You didn’t ask for that. You knew about the scar on my belly. You didn’t ask for children that I couldn’t give. What I wanted too. Afraid of what I’ll come to. All that sweat in my hands. What can you do for me?

  “What bothers you?”

  “It bothers me because I can’t make generations.”

  “What bothers you?”

  “It bothers me because I can’t.”

  “What bothers you, Ursa?”

  “It bothers me because I can’t fuck.”

  “What bothers you, Ursa?”

  “It bothers me because I can’t feel anything.”

  “I told you that nigger couldn’t do nothing for you.”

  “You liar. You didn’t tell me nothing. You left me when you threw me down those …”

  It was a couple of days after I’d found them together, that there was a knock on the door. I hadn’t left the room in those two days, mostly lay on the bed, sent down for some coffee. When I opened the door it was Tadpole. I didn’t shut it. I didn’t ask him to come in. I stood aside, and he came in. He stood there, looking at me. I still had on the dress I’d sung in, and I must’ve looked bad.

  “This ain’t good for you,” he said.

  I didn’t answer him. I shut the door, though.

  “I gave myself hell,” he said. “That was the first time, Urs.”

  “First time is always a beginning,” I said, still standing near the door. “It’s what you wanted.”

  “Urs.”

  “Naw, Tad, cause when you got that girl there you was thinking it.”

  “We’ve got to work something out, Urs.”

  “Work what out? Little piece on the side? You be having me, but you gonna be having her, ain’t you? When? Every time I go to the Spider, she be performing up in my bed.”

  “I was drunk, Ursa.”

  “I was sober, and I got a good memory.”

  “I gave myself hell.”

  “She still working for you, though, ain’t she?”

  “Yeah, she need the job, baby. She … she not well taken care of.”

  I laughed.

  “Urs, you know you the only woman I want. I love you, Urs.”

  “What about your other need?” I looked at him hard. “Naw, Tad.”

  He’d started getting close to me, and put himself up against me, squeezing my ass.

  “Baby.”

  “Tadpole, go away, please!”

  “That was the first time, Ursa!”

  “Won’t be the last, will it?”

  He just looked at me. I turned away from him. There was silence for a long time. I could feel him behind me. Then: “What are you going to do, fuck yourself?” he asked.

  The door slammed.

  I stayed in that room for two more days, and then I went to talk about getting on full time at the Spider.

  I got on full time, and I guess Vivian was on full time with Tadpole. The Spider was way on the other side of town, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to run into either of them. I did see Vivian once, though, but played like I didn’t know who she was. We were standing on different sides of the street. She was waiting on the bus going out East End and I was waiting on the one going out West. She kept looking at me, though, as if she expected me or wanted me to come over and say something to her, but I just gave her that “I’m not studying you, Vivian” look. She looked really run-down and bad too, or maybe I was just imagining she did. But I’m sure anybody who didn’t know her would’ve thought she was a woman in her twenties instead of fifteen or sixteen or however old she was now.

  “That’s that woman that sing out to Happy’s Café, ain’t it?”

  “What?”

  “That’s that woman that sing out to Happy’s, ain’t it?” the woman beside me asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I said.

  “You got a hard kind of voice,” Max said one day. Max Monroe was the man that owned the place. He didn’t try to make me, because he knew how I felt about it. He had once, though, but I’d set him straight. I was in the back room having coffee when he came in. It was between shows. Sometimes Max would be there for both shows. Sometimes he would be there just for the last show, and then close up. He was a square-shouldered man in his early fifties. When he came in, he was laughing.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He went over and got himself some coffee.

  “Naw, it’s just these people that live up top of me,” he was saying. “Get drunk and argue and then in the morning forget what they were arguing about. Still mad, but don’t even know what it was for.”

  I said nothing. He sat down in one of the chairs, the one nearest me.

  “Yeah, if you ever live in a rooming house, you got some crazy people, always keep you laughing.”

  “I bet,” I said.

  I didn’t like him so close, and I didn’t really know how to be friendly with him. When he talked to you, he liked to get right up in your face. I’d observed him with other people and he’d get up close to them too. Like if he was in a chair talking to somebody, he’d pull his chair up closer. He’d never made a pass at me or anything like that, but I still felt awkward. I remember once I was sitting outside just before opening, and he’d come over and talked to me, and instead of sitting in one of the chairs, he’d squatted down next to my lap and started talking. I’d wanted to move away, but I knew I couldn’t, and there was nothing in his eyes to make me feel it was for any bad reason. Now he pulled his chair up close to mine.

  “How was the first show?”

  “It went pretty well.”

  “Lot of people out here tonight. We been doing good business since you been here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Real good business. I knew when I seen you, get you here and we’d be doing good business. Something powerful about you.”

  I said nothing.

  “Something real powerful.”

  I kept wondering if he were sober or drunk. I kept looking at him, and he kept looking sober.

  “Yeah, that man and that woman’s crazy.” He was laughing again. “Just arguing up there all night long, and then in the morning don’t even know what they arguing about.”

  “People’s like that,” I said.

  “Yeah, they is, ain’t they?” He was shaking his head. “I ain’t never married myself. Cause I seen too many crazy womens … I don’t mean nothing by you.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m only kidding. It just ain’t struck my fancy. Or I guess no woman ain’t struck my fancy. I been a loner most of my life. Grew up as one and grew old as one.”

  “You not old.”

  He said nothing. He drank some more coffee and put his cup down. He reached over and touched me on the shoulder. I tried not to move. Sometimes I found myself not knowing how much men did meant friendly and how much meant something else. Or maybe I was just kidding myself. I wouldn’t let myself tell whether it was a fatherly touch, or whether I should take my hand and remove his.

  “You know you really helped this place. I ain’t never heard nobody sang like you, and guess I never will. Naw, it wasn’t
nothing before you come. I hope you know this. I always feel awkward saying stuff like this, Ursa, but I just wont you to know how much I appreciate you being here. How much you doing for this place.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  I kept waiting for him to remove his hand, but he didn’t. When he tried to reach down between my breasts, I jumped up and almost spilled the coffee on him. It fell on the floor, some splattering against the hem of my dress.

  “Naw,” I kept saying, “naw.”

  “I didn’t mean you no harm, baby. You know I wouldn’t do nothing to hurt you. I didn’t mean you no harm, honey.” He kept trying to pat me up but I kept moving away from him, till I got against the wall.

  “Don’t come over here no further, Max,” I said.

  He didn’t. I kept looking at him. I knew he was sober.

  “It ain’t that way, Max. It ain’t gon be that way.”

  “I didn’t mean you no harm.” He reached out his hand, but my look must have stopped him. He straightened his shoulders. “I really don’t,” he insisted.

  “That looked like harm to me,” I said quietly.

  “It wasn’t.”

  I tried to laugh. “A helping hand, I suppose?”

  “If you want it to be that.”

  “I don’t want it to be anything.” I kept my eyes hard. “Always been that way, ain’t it?”

  “What way?”

  “What you can get. Think you can get something. I mean some. When I was a little girl I used to go over with my mama to the beauty parlor. There was this man that just hang around there all the time. Mama asked me to wait outside for her, ‘cause she wasn’t going in there but for a minute. He come around me. You know, I was a friendly little girl then, I didn’t know no better. He come over by me holding his hand out. ‘Gimme what you got. What you gonna gimme? Gimme what you got.’ He kept laughing. When Mama come out, she looked at that man real evil, and grabbed my hand and pulled me on away from there. When she got me home, she said didn’t I see what that man was doing, he was reaching for me down between my legs. I just thought he was holding his hand out.”

  He looked hurt. “I ain’t that man. I ain’t like that. I didn’t mean you no harm. You know a man gets …” He didn’t finish.