Corregidora

by Gayl Jones

  I hadn’t seen Sal Cooper much since I walked out. We’d see each other on the street sometimes downtown. We were polite, but we never stopped and talked. I usually kept to my end of town, going to work, then back to the apartment, except when I had groceries to get or some shopping to do downtown. But I rarely did shopping downtown. The drugstore on the corner had most of the things I needed and the grocery store down the road. I made most of the gowns I sang in and I wasn’t one for changing costumes a lot. So that I’d only run into Tadpole maybe three or four times. We didn’t speak or even acknowledge each other. I heard from somebody that he and Vivian got together, and then about five years ago he sold the place and moved to Chicago. Yeah, and the papers came for me to sign. I was a free woman again, whatever that meant. Sal Cooper I’d heard stayed on at the place when the new owner came. His name was Austin Bradley and he was from Columbus, Ohio. I heard that he was going to change the name of the place, but as far as I knew, it still had the same name. And people were still talking about going over to Happy’s. He was going to call it some kind of club but I reckon he figured it was successful enough with its old name, so he just kept it. I think he imported some woman from Detroit to come in and do the singing. Some woman from one of them big cities up North. I think maybe it was Detroit or maybe it’s just I keep Detroit on my mind, cause that’s the only place I been out of Kentucky. Anyway, what’s funny is when he first got there, he come over here and heard me sing and offered me a job singing over there. I told him, Naw thank you anyway but I had my job. I didn’t tell him nothing else, but he musta found out about it when he went back over there and started talking to Sal. And then shortly after that he imported that woman from someplace up North. But I bet Sal must’ve been surprised when he said who it was he asked. Well, I was surprised myself him asking me, though some people say I don’t look my age, I look younger than my age. I just tell them it’s hereditary. I be forty-eight in June. Well, I never saw Cat no more. I didn’t even hear anything about her till I saw Jeffrene that time. Yeah, Jeffrene’s grown up now. They calling her Miss Jeffrene, except her mama, her mama still call her Jeffy or sometimes Jeff. I’d see her on the street, and she wouldn’t speak and I wouldn’t speak. Except one time I seen her she stop, like she was going to say something, but I started on by. She was standing out in front of the Freeze and Eli’s dime store over on Third Street. I’d been down to the appliance store over there to pay a bill, and come out and there she was. She kind of jumped when she seen me, and stopped, but I was still going.

  “Just walk on by,” she said. “That’s right. Just walk on by.”

  I started to, but then I didn’t. I stopped to see what she had to say. I figured if I didn’t like it, I could just go on.

  I stood there looking at her. I must have been looking hostile because she said, “I ain’t lookin for no argument.”

  “What is it?” I asked, still standing there. I think I had my hands on my hips or folded or something.

  “I was sick with pneumonia. Didn’t nobody come to see me but Mama. I got thinner. Did you notice?”

  She did look thinner, but I didn’t say I noticed. She had on blue jeans like she always wore, except when you seen her coming from work. She worked out at the narcotics hospital out there on Versailles Road. She was a nurses’ aide, I think somebody told me. Now she had on blue jeans. They looked like they were a little too big for her.

  I said nothing.

  “Cat got your tongue?” She grinned. “She always used to wish she had it.”

  I looked away from her at the traffic light. She was standing close to the building and I was standing out on the sidewalk. Someone passed by and pushed me a little closer toward her. Then I stood next to the building, but away from her.

  “You scared of me, ain’t you?”

  “Naw, I’m not afraid of you.”

  She said nothing, then she looked at me and smiled. “I don’t think I’m taking too much for granted if I say you are.”

  “Jeffy, I’ve got to go.”

  “I seen Cat.”

  “How is she?”

  “You care?”

  I said nothing.

  “I seen her down in Versailles.”

  “I thought she went to Midway.”

  “Well, when I seen her she was in Versailles. She don’t look too good. She start looking her age now, or letting herself look her age. I told her she better get her shit together. She was in a accident, you know.”

  I grimaced. “What kind of a accident?”

  “She work over at the Wax Works, you know. One that makes Dixie Cups or something like that. She was reaching down to get something and got her hair caught in one of these machines and it pulled all her hair out. Well, it pulled all the top part out. Might as well say all of it. She was in the hospital about six months. What you looking like that for? You didn’t care nothing about her.”

  “I do care.”

  “You could’ve fooled me.”

  “I don’t mean that the way you want to take it.”

  “I don’t want to take it any way. I wouldn’t mind you giving me some.”

  My eyes hardened.

  “Well, I’ma tell you about Cat,” she continued. “She wearing that wig. She sued the company, and now they got to buy all her wigs for her. Shit, I told her I’d go down there and pick me one of them good wigs. I wouldn’t be wearing one of them shitty wigs like she got. You can tell she got a wig on. I’d go down there and pick me out one of them wigs you couldn’t tell was a wig.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Scalp healed all up. She said you can still see where it all come out though. I ast her to show it to me, but she wouldn’t show it to me. I said I thought we meant more to each other than that, but she still wouldn’t let me see it. I couldn’t even touch her head. Now, you know that ain’t right.”

  I said nothing. She kept looking at me.

  “Bad thing to happen to a woman, ain’t it?”

  I looked at her, trying to keep my eyes hard.

  “Things like that,” she said. “That kind of thing makes you don’t feel like a woman.”

  “When are you going to stop lying?” I asked. I had turned away from her and was looking in the store window.

  “I didn’t know I’d started,” she said.

  I said nothing.

  “You didn’t come to see me when I had pneumonia.”

  “I didn’t even know you had pneumonia.” I hadn’t meant to say it. I don’t know why I did. I stood very close to the window so she wouldn’t see my eyes.

  “I hope that woman gets her ass together,” she said. “I kept telling her to get her ass together. Ain’t no use a her bleeding over that shit, I said. I told her to get her ass together and keep it together.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I think she was glad I told her.”

  She turned, looking with me into the window. She didn’t get close to me as I thought she would, because I had kind of jumped. If she’d noticed it, she didn’t let on. We were both silent for a long time.

  “I used to come in here and buy those little dime banks they got in there,” she said. “You know those little dime banks they sell?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They got penny ones too. I didn’t like the penny ones so much as the dime ones. They got some that you have to wait till you get ten dollars in them before they open up. Then they got some got a hole in the bottom, you can get your money out anytime. I used to like the ones you had to wait for.”

  I said nothing.

  “I knew there wasn’t nothing between y’all,” she said. “I knew it even if you didn’t.”

  I played like I didn’t know who she meant. And then, I was thinking, maybe I didn’t.

  “I don’t have to listen to you,” I said quietly.

  “Who do you listen to?”

  I said nothing.

  “Do you have anybody?”

  I wouldn’t answer.

  “You k
now I got something for you when you ready for it.”

  “I don’t want no shit from you, Jeffy.”

  “Woman like you got to get something, ain’t she?”

  I turned and walked away from her. She said it softly, but I still heard. “You know it felt good that time.”

  I looked back at her quickly, but walked on.

  “Gonna be hard for you, baby,” she said. “Ursa?”

  “What?” I stopped, but didn’t turn around.

  “Maybe you can go see her? Maybe you can help her get her ass together.”

  She said it like she meant it, but still it strangled any impulse I’d had to go see Catherine. And after that day, whenever I saw Jeffrene, I’d cross the street.

  I’d never seen Jeffrene with anybody myself, but somebody said she was going with one of the women patients down at the narcotics hospital. A couple of years back she had been being seen with a man from Versailles, but things hadn’t worked out.

  V

  “You just showed that man your ass, didn’t you? You could’ve tried to understand, tried to help him. But all you did was show him your ass. He wanted to help you.”

  I said nothing. Jim was standing up by the piano waving his hands at me.

  “You show your ass to these mens and then when they try to get on it, you say Uh-uh, uh-uh.” He kept waving his hands.

  Logan came over and wanted to put him out. But I said No. When he went and talked to Max, Max came and said he wanted to put him out for good. But I said maybe they should just put him out for now.

  “You don’t care nothing, don’t wont to know nothing,” Jim said. Logan had him by the arm. “Just had your ass all up in his face.”

  Max waved for me to start playing so it would drown out what Jim was saying.

  After that, whenever Jim came in, I wouldn’t say nothing to him and he wouldn’t say nothing to me. He stopped drinking so much where he got drunk. I guess he must’ve remembered what it was he said, but he didn’t apologize. He just come in and drink just enough and then leave. Logan keep eyeing him though, and every now and then Max’ll come and ask me if Jim keeping his head. I just say Yeah. Seem like every time I look up, though, there’s Jim. Least once a week. He be looking at me, but he don’t bother me. He don’t bother me and I don’t bother him. Sometimes he be looking at me, though, like he’s studying me or something, but then I give him a hard look and he look away. I don’t ask him who he’s studying, I just give him that hard look. I guess I could say something to him, but then I got in the habit of not, and just kept it. I guess he got in the habit of not too—just studying me every now and then.

  I won’t say I don’t think of Mutt Thomas, because I do. But I ain’t seen him in twenty-two years, and don’t know if I know him if I did. I don’t know if I know Jim if I didn’t see him every time I turn around. But sometimes I find myself wonting to look at Jim to see if they’s any Mutt in him, but I don’t. Well, what this is all building up to, anyway, is that Sal Cooper came in the other day. I just about peed on myself when I looked up and saw her, but I know it was me she wanted. Wouldn’t be no other reason she be in here. I finished out the song I was singing and came over there where she was. Now Monroe let me play however way I wanted to, except the regular straight two hours Friday and Saturday show. I couldn’t just stop in the middle of them. But I just stopped and came over where Sal was and sat down.

  “I seen Mutt th’other day,” she said.

  “Why you telling me?”

  “Cause I know how you still feel about him.”

  “Do you?”

  “I knew how you feeled about him when you married Tadpole. I don’t think Tadpole knew how you feeled at first, and I don’t think you knew how you feeled.”

  “I knew exactly how I felt. I hated him.”

  She smiled but said nothing. Then she said, “At least you used the past tense.”

  “It’s been a long time. I don’t know how I’d feel. I don’t know what I’d do. I still resent him.”

  “I know you ain’t took no other man on.”

  “What right have you to …” I stopped. If it had been Cat I never would have started.

  “I’m telling you because I seen him. He was over to the place. He can come in now, you know.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I didn’t even recognize him at first. He had this beard and look like a old man, look older than he is. I didn’t know him till he come over and said ‘Sal.’ I said, ‘That you, Mutt Thomas?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ Then I looked behind all that hair and seen it was Mutt. I told him you wasn’t there. He said he know you wasn’t. I didn’t tell him where you was. But I figure he know, and be over here. I just wanted to tell you that he was coming.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You mad at me?”

  “Naw I’m not mad.”

  “You something at me.”

  “I just said thank you, that’s all. What do you want me to say?”

  “You something at him then.”

  “I don’t know what I am at him. I won’t know till I see him. If he come.”

  “You don’t think he’s coming?”

  “Yeah, I b’lieve he’s coming. I don’t know why I said that.”

  Sal stood up.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything, she just looked at me, then she went out.

  Jim didn’t come in that evening. If he had I would have talked to him. I don’t know what I was feeling. A numbness. I knew I wanted to see Mutt, but I didn’t know what it would be. I was excited, yes, that’s what I was. I was excited about it. Mutt didn’t come that evening nor the next evening. Jim didn’t come either. It was a week before Mutt came. I knew him even with the beard. He wasn’t heavier. He seemed solider. But I would have known him even if Sal hadn’t prepared me. It was the Saturday-night show, so I couldn’t stop. I sang on. I knew I was singing to him. I think he knew it too. But I knew I hadn’t forgiven him. Even when I felt excited about seeing him, I knew I hadn’t forgiven him too. I think he knew that as well, even when I finished and came over to the table. He said nothing. I said, “How are you, Mutt?” He nodded, and ordered me a beer, but he still didn’t speak. When he did speak finally, he said, “Jim been writing me and telling me every now and nen how you getting along.” I remembered that time when I thought Jim had been spying on me. But I wouldn’t have used that word now. I just wondered who else Jim might have kept up on how things were going with me, because when I did feel I had to tell Mama my song, she listened, but it was the quiet kind of listening one has when they already know, or maybe just when it’s a song they’ve sung themselves, but with different lyrics. As far as as I knew about her and Mr. Floyd, though, he was keeping to his side of the road, and she kept to hers. She said he was constantly asking her to make him some strawberry preserves, but that was all she’d done. And she never told me about any other man. She had written me something about having left a certain world behind her. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but was sure that only one man could remake that world. My father.

  “What does he tell you?” I asked.

  “That you’ve still got your voice, that you’re still Ursa.”

  I didn’t tell him I’d known he was coming.

  I drank my beer. I looked at the table, then at him.

  “I want you to come back,” he said.

  I wanted to say I can’t come back, but I couldn’t say anything. I just looked at him. I didn’t know yet what I would do. I knew what I still felt. I knew that I still hated him. Not as bad as then, not with that first feeling, but an after feeling, an aftertaste, or like an odor still in a room when you come back to it, and it’s your own. I don’t know what he saw in my eyes. His were different now. I can’t explain how. I felt that now he wouldn’t demand the same things. He’d demand different kinds of things. But there’d still be demands.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard.”

  “What do you
say?”

  I didn’t take my eyes from him. “Yes.”

  “I’m staying over at the old place,” he said. I knew he meant the Drake. “I’ve got a job over at the Greenwood Cemetery. I know it’s not the kind of job that … I was working in tobacco up in Connecticut. They got tobacco farms up there. Did you know that?”

  I said I didn’t know.

  “Yeah. But then I just got tired of tobacco, I got tired of the smell, and I came back here. That’s the first job I could get till I get something else. You know what I mean?”

  I nodded.

  “You remember my great-grandfather I told you about?” he asked. “The one with the wife?”

  “Yeah.”

  “After they took her, when he went crazy he wouldn’t eat nothing but onions and peppermint. Eat the onions so people wouldn’t come around him, and then eat the peppermint so they would. I tried it but it didn’t do nothing but make me sick.”

  I said nothing.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  I said I was. I told Max good night and went back with Mutt.

  It wasn’t the same room, but the same place. The same feel of the place. I knew what he wanted. I wanted it too. We didn’t speak. We got out of our clothes. I got between his knees.

  “You never would suck it,” he was saying. “You never would suck it when I wanted you to. Oh, baby, you never would suck it. I didn’t think you would do this for me.”

  It had to be sexual, I was thinking, it had to be something sexual that Great Gram did to Corregidora. I knew it had to be sexual: “What is it a woman can do to a man that make him hate her so bad he wont to kill her one minute and keep thinking about her and can’t get her out of his mind the next?” In a split second I knew what it was, in a split second of hate and love I knew what it was, and I think he might have known too. A moment of pleasure and excruciating pain at the same time, a moment of broken skin but not sexlessness, a moment just before sexlessness, a moment that stops just before sexlessness, a moment that stops before it breaks the skin: “I could kill you.”