by Gayl Jones
I wanted to ask if she would have left him, but I didn’t. What I wanted to know now was if she had planned to leave him, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“Are you still there?”
I was silent.
“I went to see him only one time. He seen you. You was about two the last time he seen you, so I know you don’t remember him.”
“No.”
“He was staying at some boarding house up in Cincinnati. I hadn’t heard from him, and then he sent me this money. No letter, just this money and his address on the outside. I was mad at first, and then, Ursa, I didn’t want him back or nothing. I even said my reason was to go give him his money back, cause I didn’t need it, or wont it. When I got up there I just said I come to talk to him. Then I found out it was only just to get me up there. He knew when he sent that, I be up there. I was up there. He just stood in his door for a moment looking at me. He had on these khaki-colored pants, shirt on but chest all out anyway. I went in and he closed the door. He turned on me and first thing he said was, ‘Bitch.’ He said it again. ‘Bitch.’
“I said, ‘Don’t hurt me.’ I knew he was going to. I said, ‘Help me, Martin, but don’t hurt me. Just let me come here, and say hello, and ask you how you’re doing. I just wonted to tell you things are all right with me and Ursa. I don’t need the money.’
“ ‘Shit. Money’s not how I helped you. I helped you that night, didn’t I?’ He held my arm. ‘Didn’t I?’
“ ‘You’re hurting me.’
“ ‘I helped you that night.’
“ ‘No, you didn’t, you hurt me.’
“ ‘I lived in that house long enough to know I helped you. How long was it? Almost two years, wasn’t it? That’s long enough for any man to know if he’s helped. How could I have missed. I mean, the first time. The other times were all miss, weren’t they, baby? They were all miss, weren’t they?’
“He squeezed tighter. I kept trying to get away, but then he started slapping me, just slapping me all over the face. One time it was like he was going to go for some place else, like he was going to go straight for my cunt, or for my belly, or some place like that, but then he stopped himself, and just kept slapping me all over my face, twisting me, and slapping me all over my face. I didn’t think I’d get out of there. I didn’t think I would. I started to scream. And then I said, Naw, to myself. I said, Naw, I wasn’t going to scream for no nigger, and having people coming up there and make me feel worse than I did already. I said, Naw, I wasn’t going to scream for no nigger.
“But all of a sudden he just stopped. He just stopped and stood stone still. He hated me, Ursa. I know he did. I was holding myself all up on my face, and I know I was going to be black and blue all over, it hurt so bad. I was just hugging my face.
“ ‘Ain’t I helped you, baby?’ He was trying to grin, but it just made him look like the devil. ‘Woman?’
“I didn’t answer. I just kept hugging my face.
“ ‘Hurt, don’t it?’ he asked.
“I said nothing. I just wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want him to do anything else, and it was like I was daring him not to touch me again, but I knew there wasn’t nothing I could do if he did. I knew I wouldn’t do nothing even if I could.
“ ‘What was you afraid of?’ he asked.
“I said nothing.
“ ‘You could’ve let me. I know you could have let me. What were you afraid of, Correy?’ He always called me Correy, you know.
“I still wouldn’t say nothing. I never did tell him. I never would. I think he just thought I was just afraid of him being a man, or being too big, or too much for me or something. I never would tell him.
“He just let me go on to the door, then. Or I thought he was going to let me. He kept looking at me like he was hurt, and then when I tried to get around him to the door, he stood aside. But then all of a sudden he grabbed my pants. I had on these purple pants, the kind with the elastic waistband. He grabbed them by the waist, like when you’re grabbing a child or something. He grabbed them and the elastic broke. I caught them before they fell down. He said he was sorry, but he didn’t look like he was. I didn’t bring anything with me, cause I was just going to see him, you know, and come on back home, so I didn’t have anything. I was holding them up. I thought he would give me a pin or something but he didn’t. He just stood looking at me, like he was real, real calm now, and then all at once the evil come back, and then he said, ‘Get out.’ He told me to get out. I ain’t never seen a man look like that, Ursa. When you see a man look like that, you don’t never forget it. It stay with you all your life. He told me to get on out of there and I did. He said, ‘Go on down the street, lookin like a whore. I wont you to go on down the street, lookin like a whore.’ I kind of looked at him, you know, and it was like I could see all that hurt there. He hadn’t really softened, but I could still see all that hurt there. ‘You took me bout as far as a woman can take a man without givin him nothing,’ he said. ‘Remember?’ I went out. I didn’t want to remember. I had to walk down the street, holding up my purple pants with one hand and holding my mouth with the other. My head was all hanging it hurt so bad, and I could feel it turning black and blue, and peoples was all watching. I know what they was thinking. The womens was looking at me all disgusted, and I was scared to borrow a pin offa somebody. Cause if I asked one of the mens for one, they would’ve thought I wonted something. This man leaning against this building kind of stood out and said, ‘Baby, you know where Bud’s Angel Bar is?’ I just kept on walking. He said, ‘Bitch, I ain’t good enough for you, is I? I ain’t good enough for you. Well, you ain’t good enough for me neither.’ I knew what he thought I was, but I just kept on walking.”
I had leaned farther across the table, watching her. Just the side of her face was enough for me, she didn’t even have to show me the rest, but she looked around and showed me the rest.
“I only went back to him once. He was staying at this boarding house, Ursa. All he did was start beating on me. He started beating on me.”
I went over and put her head against my thighs.
“I carried him to the point where he ended up hating me, Ursa. And that’s what I knew I’d keep doing. That’s what I knew I’d do with any man.”
“I’ll walk you to the highway.”
“You don’t have to, Mama.”
“I want to.”
“Ursa.”
“What, Mama?”
“I know about those other things you would never let me know.”
I said nothing. She was telling me she knew about my own private memory.
“Do you want me to talk?”
“Sometime when you’re back here and feel you have to.”
“Awright.”
She pulled her shawl around her tighter. I fingered my trade beads.
“You see all these colors in them, these formations?” I asked.
She looked at my neck, and touched them. We stopped walking for a moment.
“They form naturally,” I said. “They just form naturally that way. No one paints them on.”
“Those stripes too?”
“Yes.”
She looked like she couldn’t believe it, but I knew she did. She kept touching them for a time and then we started walking. We walked slowly.
“You didn’t ask where your father is now, Ursa.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know.”
We kept walking. We walked so slow it was almost like we weren’t really walking. We had left early enough for me not to miss the bus, though, as if she had wanted to stand down there with me as long as possible before I had to get up on the bus, and she had to turn around and go back up to that house. The only thing that had changed in it was the kitchen, the old iron coal stove replaced with a gas one—the kind you used bottle gas from a tank outside the house, like people do in the country where there are no gas lines—and the old icebox replaced by a Frigidaire. She had
moved the icebox into a corner and used it for storage space. And the old iron stove was still rusting in the backyard. The one they used to empty ashes from, lifting out those big iron rings in the top. That stove had always frighted me. When I was older, though, they’d make me take the tray out, and empty the ashes against the side of the road. The big bed was still in the middle room, except she had moved the trundle bed out of the front room, and put it in there too. I didn’t know whether she slept in the big bed or the trundle one, and that wasn’t something I felt I could ask her. It would have seemed ridiculous to an outsider, but to us I think it would have been a kind of prying she didn’t want, or need. They’d slept there before I did. And in the front room that ageless china cabinet. The big one with all the good dishes and the silverware that was never taken out. I could never remember its ever having come out, even on holidays. The only time it was opened was to be dusted or polished. I’d never looked, but I think it had been imported from Brazil, or I used to think so. It was an expensive dark-mahogany thing, the best thing we had in the house. Great Gram used to be in charge of it at first, and then Grandmama, and now I guess Mama was. When I had gone through the house, it was still sparkling.
After a while, she began speaking again, hugging her shawl to her. It sounded almost as if she were speaking in pieces, instead of telling one long thing.
“After he come, they didn’t talk to me about making generations anymore or about anything that happened with Corregidora, but Martin and me could hear them in there talking between theyselves. We’d be in the front room, and they’d be back in there in the bedroom, Great Gram telling Mama how Corregidora wouldn’t let her see some man because he was too black.” Mama kept talking until it wasn’t her that was talking, but Great Gram. I stared at her because she wasn’t Mama now, she was Great Gram talking: “He wouldn’t let me see him, cause he said he was too black for me. He liked his womens black, but he didn’t wont us with no black mens. It wasn’t color cause he didn’t even wont us with no light black mens, cause there was a man down there as light as he was, but he didn’t even wont us with him, cause there was one girl he caught with him, and had her beat, and sold the man over to another plantation, cause I think he just wont to get rid of him anyway. Cause Corregidora himself was looking like a Indian—if I said that to him I have my ass off—so that this light black man looked more like a white man than he did, so I just think he wont any excuse to get rid of him. I don’t even know how he got him. He didn’t buy him himself, I think he just come in with a load of other mens they wont to work out in the fields, cause he had cane, you know. But anyway he wouldn’t let me see him, cause he said a black man wasn’t nothing but a waste of pussy, and wear me out when it came to the other mens. He didn’t send nothing but the rich mens in there to me, cause he said I was his little gold pussy, his little gold piece, and it didn’t take some of them old rich mens no time, and then I still be fresh for him. But he said he didn’t wont no waste on nothing black. Some of them womens he had just laying naked, and just sent trash into them. But some of us he called hisself cultivating us, and then didn’t send nothing but cultivated mens to us, and we had these private rooms, you know. But some of these others, they had to been three or four or five whores fucking in the same room. But then if we did something he didn’t like he might put us in there and send trash into us, and then we be catching everything then. So after that, first time he just talked to me real hard, said he didn’t wont no black bastard fucking me, he didn’t wont no black bastard fucking all in his piece. He was real mad. He grab hold of me down between my legs and said he didn’t wont nothing black down there. He said if he just catch me fucking something black, they wouldn’t have no pussy, and he wouldn’t have none neither. And then he was squeezing me all up on my pussy and then digging his hands up in there. We was up in his room. That’s where he always bring me when he wont to scold me about something, or fuck with me. Him and his wife was living in separated rooms then. Then he was just digging all up in me till he got me where he wonted me and then he just laid me down on that big bed of his and started fucking me …
“Any of them, even them he had out in the fields, if he wonted them, he just ship their own husbands out of bed, and get in there with them, but didn’t nothing happen like what happened over on that other plantation, cause I guess that other plantation served as a warning, cause they might wont your pussy, but if you do anything to get back at them, it’ll be your life they be wonting, and then they make even that some kind of a sex show, all them beatings and killings wasn’t nothing but sex circuses, and all them white peoples, mens, womens, and childrens crowding around to see …
“Naw, he said he wouldn’t’ve been nothing but a waste of my pussy, cause he said my pussy bring gold. But what was funny after that they kept claiming he did something. Not Corregidora, but this black man. I was only talking to him once, all Corregidora did was seen us talking, and I guess he figure the next step was we be down in the grass or something. I don’t know, but they said he did something, and they were goin to beat him real bad. He was young too, young man, so he run away. When somebody run away, it almost mean you can do whatever you wont to with them. I think he woulda run away anyway, cause he had this dream, you know, of running away and joining up with them renegade slaves up in Palmares, you know. I kept telling him that was way back before his time, but he wouldn’t believe me, he said he was going to join up with some black mens that had some dignity. You know, Palmares, where these black mens had started their own town, escaped and banded together. I said the white men had killed all of them off but he wouldn’t believe me. He said that was what his big dream was, to go up there and join all these other black mens up there, and have him a woman, and then come back and get his woman and take her up there, but he had to find his way first, and know exactly where he was going. I said he couldn’t know where he was going because Palmares was way back two hundred years ago, but he said Palmares was now. But they claimed he did something, and he had to leave before he planned to. Wasn’t nothing but seventeen or eighteen. This ole man said he told him to rub garlic on his feet so the hounds wouldn’t smell him, but he said the boy must’ve forgot to. We was all praying for him, though. They sent this whole mob of mens out after him. You know, they didn’t need no mob for just one person. Mob and hounds. So they can have the hounds to smell out nigger blood, cause they trained them to do that. But it was only because Corregidora thought he’d been fooling with me when he hadn’t, or that we’d been fooling with each other, cause all that was all uncalled-for. Sometimes I would be a little bold with him, little bolder than the others, cause I know I was the piece he wonted the most, so I said, ‘He wasn’t after my pussy. He ain’t been after my pussy. He even too young to know I got one.’ ‘Ain’t no nigger on this place too young to know you got one, way I got them trained,’ he said. He moved away from me, then he moved back toward me. He must’ve been fucking me while they was chasing after him. But maybe he did the right thing to run anyway, because maybe if he had stayed there, the way Corregidora was looking when he seen us talking he might’ve had him beat dead. I ain’t never seen him look like that, cause when he send them white mens in there to me he didn’t look like that, cause he be nodding and saying what a fine piece I was, said I was a fine speciment of a woman, finest speciment of a woman he ever seen in his life, said he had tested me out hisself, and then they would be laughing, you know, when they come in there to me. Cause tha’s all they do to you, was feel up on you down between your legs see what kind of genitals you had, either so you could breed well, or make a good whore. Fuck each other or fuck them. Tha’s the first thing they would think about, cause if you had somebody who was a good fucker you have plenty to send out in the field, and then you could also make you plenty money on the side, or inside. But he was up there fucking me while they was out chasing him. ‘Don’t let no black man fool with you, do you hear? I don’t wont nothing black fucking with my pussy.’ I kept saying I wouldn’t.
‘I don’t wont nothing black trying to fuck you, do you hear that?’ ‘Yes, I hear.’ Let his own color mess with me all they wont to. Sometimes I used to think he even wonted to be in there watching, but out of respect for them, not me, he wouldn’t. Yes, tha’s just how I was feeling, while he was up there jumping up and down between my legs they was out there with them hounds after that boy. Wasn’t nothing but seventeen. Couldn’t’ve been more than seventeen or eighteen. And he had this dream he told me about. That was all he wanted me for, was to tell me about this dream. He must’ve trusted me a lot, though, cause I could’ve been one of them to run back to Corregidora with it. But I wouldn’t. It was because he seen us out there talking. I wouldn’t even go tell him, cause I would’ve been seen telling him. And I kept feeling all that time he was running, he kept thinking I’d told something when I didn’t. And then there I was kept crying out, and ole Corregidora thinking it was because he was fucking so good I was crying. ‘Ain’t nobody do it to you like this, is it?’ I said, ‘Naw.’ I just kept saying Naw, and he just kept squeezing on my ass and fucking. And then somehow it got in my mind that each time he kept going down in me would be that boy’s feets running. And then when he come, it meant they caught him …
“When they come back, they said they lost the boy at the river. They said they got to the river they didn’t see him no more. We was all glad. We didn’t show it, but the rest of us was all glad and rejoicing inside. But you know what happened? Three days after that somebody seen him floating on the water. What happened was they chased him as far as the river and he just jumped in and got drownded. Cause they didn’t know nothing till three days after that when he rose …