Corregidora

by Gayl Jones

  “I know too well how a man gets,” I said.

  “I wasn’t trying to make you or nothing like that I just …”

  “Don’t lie, Max. I don’t wont no lying,” I said, and then I was thinking perhaps he wasn’t lying, perhaps he didn’t want to make me, just wanted to be hugged and touched. I said nothing else.

  “You mad at me?”

  He had straightened up even more now. Somehow I’d never really pictured him as being after women. If he had a woman, I’d never seen him with her, and I’d never been in the habit of asking around about people.

  I didn’t answer his question.

  “You gon still work for me?” he asked.

  “If we keep things the way they was. Otherwise, I’ma walk out. I don’t know where I’m walking to, but I’ma go somewhere.”

  He stood there saying nothing. I almost thought he would let me leave.

  “You know you too good to lose,” he said finally.

  “You won’t touch me no more?” It was more of a plea than a question.

  “Honey, I ain’t gonna lay a hand on you.”

  “I’ma go home and change,” I said.

  He stood aside and let me pass.

  Before I got to the door, he said, “I know how you feel about it now. There won’t be no more.”

  I turned around and looked at him and smiled a little, then I went out the door.

  “You got a hard kind of voice,” he said now. “You know, like callused hands. Strong and hard but gentle underneath. Strong but gentle too. The kind of voice that can hurt you. I can’t explain it. Hurt you and make you still want to listen.”

  “If you can’t explain it, I can’t explain it,” I said, thinking about what Cat had said what seemed like a long time ago now. “But I think I know what you mean,” I added.

  He smiled. He was only friendly now. Nothing romantic. He knew I’d meant what I said.

  “You a hard woman to get into,” he said. Then he looked embarrassed, because he hadn’t meant it the way I could have taken it to mean.

  “You wouldn’t want to try, would you?” I said.

  “I guess not,” he said, and got up.

  I wouldn’t have known what else to say if he’d stayed. I went back to the piano.

  “Ursa, have you lost the blues?”

  “Naw, the blues is something you can’t loose.”

  “Gimme a feel. Just a little feel.”

  “You had your feel.”

  “Are you lonely?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still fight the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lonely blues. Don’t you care if you see me again?”

  “Naw, I don’t care.”

  “Don’t you want your original man?”

  “Naw, I …”

  “I know what he did to your voice.”

  “What you did.”

  “Still, they can’t take it away from you. But ain’t nothing better for the blues than a good …”

  “Don’t, Mutt.”

  “Come over here, honey.”

  “Naw.”

  “I need somebody.”

  “Naw.”

  “I said I need somebody.”

  “Naw.”

  “I won’t treat you bad.”

  “Naw.”

  “I won’t make you sad.”

  “Naw.”

  “Come over here, honey, and visit with me a little.”

  “Naw.”

  “Come over here, baby, and visit with me a little.”

  “Naw.”

  “You got to come back to your original man.”

  “Naw. What you did.”

  “Just give me a little feel. You lonely, ain’t you?”

  “I been there awready.”

  “Then you know what I need. Put me in the alley, Urs.”

  “Something wrong with me down there.”

  “I still wont to get in your alley, baby.”

  “Naw, Mutt.”

  “What you looking for, anyway, woman?”

  “What we stopped being to each other.”

  “I never knew what we was.”

  “Something you gave me once, but stopped giving me.”

  “I want to fuck you.”

  “That ain’t what I mean.”

  “I still want to fuck you.”

  “What you stopped giving me.”

  “I still want to fuck you.”

  “Naw.”

  “What he stopped giving you too?”

  “Yes.”

  “What you need?”

  “Yes.”

  “What you wanted from me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What you wanted from anybody?”

  “Naw.”

  “I still want to fuck you.”

  “Yes, fuck me.”

  “Let me get behind you.”

  “Naw.”

  “Sit on my lap then.”

  “Naw, I don’t want it that way.”

  “Then fuck you.”

  “So that’s how the ole man made all his money.”

  “Yeah, that’s how he made it.”

  “Forget what they went through.”

  “I can’t forget.”

  “Forget what you been through.”

  “I can’t forget. The space between my thighs. A well that never bleeds.”

  “And who are you fucking?”

  “No one. Silence in my womb. My breasts quiver like old apples.”

  “Forget the past.”

  “I can’t. Somebody called me over the telephone and said he was making a survey. He didn’t sound right to me, but I asked him what he wanted anyway. He said, ‘How do it feel?’ I just hung up.”

  “That’s too much mascara you’re using, and those shadows.”

  “I made them, to cover up the ones that are really there.”

  “Tell me, Ursa, do insanity run in your family?”

  “Corregidora, he went mad.”

  “They all do.”

  “Ursa, I want you again.”

  “We give each other too much hell.”

  “I never stopped loving you.”

  “Hush.”

  “Do it for me. I haven’t forgotten.”

  “I have.”

  “Forget the past, except ours, the good feeling.”

  “What about …”

  “That was an accident. If I could, I’d give it back to you, but I can’t. I’ll let you take me inside you.”

  “It’s good to feel your breath near me.”

  “Your original man.”

  “They told me what happened to you, baby.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Yeah, they told me what happened. But you ain’t got nothing to worry about, though. You still got a hole, ain’t you? Long as a woman got a hole, she can fuck. Let me get up in your hole, baby.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Let me get up in your hole, I said. I wont to get up in your goddamn hole.”

  “I wanted to give you something, Mutt, but now I can’t give you anything. I never told you how it was. Always their memories, but never my own. They slept in the bedroom and I slept on a trundle bed in the front room. An old slop jar behind their bed. I can remember how big the bed looked when I was sitting on the slop jar. Big enough to hide behind. The two women in that house. The three of them at first and then when I was older, just the two of them, one sitting in a rocker, the other in a straight-back chair, telling me things. I’d always listen. I never saw my mama with a man, never ever saw her with a man. But she wasn’t a virgin because of me. And still she was heavy with virginity. Her swollen belly with no child inside. And still she never had a man. Or never let me see her with one. No, I think she never had one. They kept to the house, telling me things. My mother would work while my grandmother told me, then she’d come home and tell me. I’d go to school and come back and be told. When I was real little, Great Gram rocking me and talking. And still it was a
s if my mother’s whole body shook with that first birth and memories and she wouldn’t make others and she wouldn’t give those to me, though she passed the other ones down, the monstrous ones, but she wouldn’t give me her own terrible ones. Loneliness. I could feel it, like she was breathing it, like it was all in the air. Desire, too. I couldn’t recognize it then. But now when I look back, that’s all I see. Desire, and loneliness. A man that left her. Still she carried their evidence, screaming, fury in her eyes, but she wouldn’t give me that, not that one. Not her private memory. And then when Grandmama told me I hid my face in the pillow and cried. I couldn’t tell her I knew. I could see her strong eyes full of fury, what she’d kept so long. And I kept waiting for her to tell me, but she wouldn’t tell me. Sometimes I’d try to feel it out of her with my eyes, but I couldn’t get it. No. She was closed up like a fist. It was her very own memory, not theirs, her very own real and terrible and lonely and dark memory. And I never saw her with a man because she wouldn’t give them anything else. Nothing. And still she told me what I should do, that I should make generations. But it was almost as if she’d left him too, as if she wanted only the memory to keep for her own but not his fussy body, not the man himself. Almost as if she’d gone out to get that man to have me and then didn’t need him, because they’d been telling her so often what she should do. But he left before she could leave. Wasn’t it that? Wasn’t it you gave me something that I couldn’t give back? And her body shook with the fury of my birth. She said I came into the world complaining, they didn’t have to slap me. Into the world, her incomplete world, full of teeth and memories, repeating never her own to me. Never her own. And I remember now, I didn’t feel it then, I never saw her with a man, never saw her with a man. I didn’t feel it then, because they were all my world. And I never saw her with a man …

  Something she kept not to be given. As if she’d already given. There was things left, yes. It wasn’t the kind of giving where there’s nothing left. It’s where what’s left is something you keep with you, something you don’t give. I mean, the first giving made what’s left. Created it. Do you understand? You nod your head, but do you really? And we’d have steaming cups of cocoa and remember. Corregidora, who gave orders to whores, the father of his daughter and his daughter’s daughter. “How can it be?” Mama would ask. And when she talked, Mutt, it was like she had something else behind her eyes. Corregidora was easier than what she wouldn’t tell me. They’d look at her. They’d tell theirs and then they’d look at her to bear them witness. But what could she say? She could only tell me what they’d told her. How can it be? She was the only one who asked that question, though. For the others it was just something that was, something they had, and something they told. But when she talked, it was like she was asking that question for them, and for herself too. Sometimes I wonder about their desire, you know. Grandmama’s and Great Gram’s. Corregidora was theirs more than hers. Mama could only know, but they could feel. They were with him. What did they feel? You know how they talk about hate and desire. Two humps on the same camel? Yes. Hate and desire both riding them, that’s what I was going to say. “You carry more than his name, Ursa,” Mama would tell me. And I knew she had more than their memories. Something behind her eyes. A knowing, a feeling of her own. But she’d speak only their life. What was their life then? Only a life spoken to the sounds of my breathing or a low-playing Victrola. Mama’s Christian songs, and Grandmama—wasn’t it funny—it was Grandmama who liked the blues. But still Mama would say listening to the blues and singing them ain’t the same. That’s what she said when I asked her how come she didn’t mind Grandmama’s old blues records. What’s a life always spoken, and only spoken? Still there was what they never spoke, Mutt, what even they wouldn’t tell me. How all but one of them had the same lover? Did they begrudge her that? Was that their resentment? There was something, Mutt. They squeezed Corregidora into me, and I sung back in return. I would have rather sung her memory if I’d had to sing any. What about my own? Don’t ask me that now. But do you think she knew? Do you think that’s why she kept it from me? Oh, I don’t mean in the words, I wouldn’t have done that. I mean in the tune, in the whole way I drew out a song. In the way my breath moved, in my whole voice. How could she bear witness to what she’d never lived, and refuse me what she had lived? That’s what I mean.

  But look at me, though, I am not Corregidora’s daughter. Look at me, I am not Corregidora’s daughter.”

  “Stop, Ursa, why do you go on making dreams?”

  “Till I feel satisfied that I could have loved, that I could have loved you, till I feel satisfied, alone, and satisfied that I could have loved.”

  “Do you still hate me?”

  “Yes. In the hospital, standing over me. You. I hated you. I cussed you. And I’ve got more hurt now than then. How do you think I feel? Why did you come back, anyway?”

  “I came to get you.”

  “He made them make love to anyone, so they couldn’t love anyone.”

  “You’ll come back.”

  “If I do, I’ll come with all my memories. I won’t forget anything.”

  “I’d rather have you with them, than not have you.”

  “Mutt, don’t.”

  I couldn’t be satisfied until I had seen Mama, talked to her, until I had discovered her private memory. One Saturday morning I went down to the bus station.

  I hadn’t expected Bracktown to change, and it hadn’t. When I stepped off the bus, there was Mr. Deak’s store right where it had always been, with the tall porch, and those concrete steps leading up to it, except the steps used to be wooden and rickety, so I guess the concrete was a change. And it looked like he had painted the door. I didn’t go in to say anything to him, because I knew he’d get to talking and asking me how things was, and telling me about everybody I didn’t want to hear about. I hoped he hadn’t seen me from the door, though, because then he mighta thought I’d got too uppity to stop in and say something to him. I went across the railroad track and started down the dirt road. I don’t know how long they’d been talking about paving it, and still hadn’t. It was all right when it wasn’t raining, but when it rained there wasn’t nothing out there but mud. A group of people were going to go into Versailles and have them come out and tar the road, but I don’t know what came of that. Maybe the people in Versailles said that Bracktown wasn’t a part of Versailles, even though they had their post office there, and went to school in Versailles. Bracktown was one of those little towns set back from the highway. All you could see from the highway was Mr. Deak’s store, and if you weren’t from the area, you wouldn’t even know Bracktown was there. It wasn’t really big enough to be called a town, anyway. About twenty or thirty families lived there and so they called it a town. All it had there really was Mr. Deak’s store, which did more business from the highway than from the town, though that was the only place the town people had to go, and there was a restaurant that was more somebody’s house than a restaurant, and a church that must’ve been one of the smallest churches in the country. The town had a woman like Cat who straightened hair or, rather, who straightened hair like Cat, except she was considered the authorized beautician and had set up a beauty parlor in the basement of her house, and instead of a barber shop, there was a man who cut hair in his front room or sometimes while they were congregated down at Mr. Deak’s store. Just a pair of scissors and a comb and his haircuts looked better than the ones in the city. His name was Mr. Grundy. I thought he would change, but he didn’t. The last time I was here, when Grandmama died, he still had that pair of scissors and the comb. The older men still kept him, but the younger ones, who had started wearing afros, were saying they had their own scissors and comb. Mr. Grundy said, then they never used the scissors and he wasn’t too sure they used the comb. In the summertime, he would sit his barber’s chair, which was really a kitchen chair, out on the side of the road. I passed some women coming down the road, probably on their way up to Deak’s. I spoke but they looked at
me kind of evil. All I could think of was those women in church that time, when I first came back, telling Mama I must be some new woman in town who be trying to take their husbands. I laughed, then I frowned. I couldn’t even take my own husband, I was thinking. When I had come back for Grandmama’s funeral, though, there had been this one old woman, who had kept looking at me. She had just kept looking at me. She’d looked at me when we were in the church, and then when we were out at the cemetery, she’d stood next to me. I kept feeling she was going to say something to me, but she didn’t until the burial was over and we were going back. She didn’t walk well, and was carrying a cane.

  “Ain’t you Ursa?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “I thought you was. You look just like your grandmama did when she was your age. You don’t look like your mama, you look more like your grandmama. Last time I seen you you wasn’t big as my stick. Now you a woman.”

  I had smiled at her, but didn’t know what to say.

  “I know you don’t remember me, honey. You don’t have to say nothing.”

  I had felt bad, but then a man had come and taken her arm. Then I recognized her because I recognized the man. The man was Mr. Floyd. And she was Mr. Floyd’s mother.

  Mr. Floyd was the man who lived across the road from our house, in a trailer. Everybody had a house out there, except him, but the trailer had stayed put like a house. It must have been before or during the time I was born that he first come out there, because I always remembered seeing him. He was about Mama’s age. Sometimes I would wonder how much he knew, but I’d never had the nerve to ask him. Ever since I was growing up he’d never come over to visit us and we’d never gone to visit him. Mama said he wasn’t nothing but a hermit. But she didn’t dislike him the way Grandmama used to act like she did. I’d only remembered seeing Mr. Floyd’s mother once or twice, and she’d only spoken to Grandmama when we’d all happened to be in Mr. Deak’s store at the same time. She’d asked my grandmother if she’d ever been to Midway, and my grandmother had told her no.

  “You look like a woman that …”

  My grandmother had looked at her hard, and then Mr. Floyd’s mother had looked at me, and said nothing else.

  Grandmama waited for Mr. Floyd and his mama to leave, and then we left.