by Mary Monroe
I liked Jason Pool, but I’d only gone there to swim a few times. Weighing close to two hundred pounds, I didn’t feel comfortable even though there were a lot of other overweight people flopping around in the water like seals. No matter how hard I tried, I could never find an attractive bathing suit I could afford. I couldn’t figure out what made designers think fat people liked swimwear with big flowers, tutus around the waist, and zippers that got stuck or pinched. Whoever was in charge did not clean the pool regularly, like the people did at Sun Tan Acres. People peed in the water and threw things in it like beer and pop cans that floated around for days.
We had two movie theaters, both on the south side of town. The rich people saw first-run movies at the Mt. Pilot Theater. The Strand, just four blocks from the Mt. Pilot, didn’t get movies until months after they had been released. The ushers at the Strand did nothing when people got loud or brought in their own refreshments and alcohol. Fights often broke out when somebody stepped on somebody’s foot, somebody stole somebody’s seat, or somebody had the nerve to stroll in with somebody else’s lover. People smoked weed, and the ushers ignored them. I loved going to the movies so much, I tolerated all that. Every first of the month, when Mr. Boatwright received his disabilitiy check, he treated me to a movie at the Mt. Pilot Theater, where we could eat fresh popcorn and hot dogs and enjoy a recently released movie in peace. I treasured those outings. No matter what movie was showing I enjoyed the experience, even with Mr. Boatwright next to me sometimes snoring so loud the ushers came over to wake him up.
I still didn’t like having sex with Mr. Boatwright and avoided it every chance I got, but now the sex itself didn’t bother me as much. And I knew him well enough by now to manipulate him to my advantage. I offered to pick up beer for him from Scary Mary, which he would drink right away, get drunk, and give me extra money that I used to go to the movies by myself or buy magazines and paperback books. I had him convinced that my periods lasted ten days when they only lasted four. He was superstitious about touching a female on her period.
“Woman’s curse could ruin a man iffen he got too close,” he told me once with a grimace on his face.
“Oh yes I know. I read all about it,” I agreed, nodding.
He was getting so forgetful he would wake up with a hangover, come to my room, and I’d convince him that we had already had sex. “Did I pay you?” he asked seriously on one occasion.
“Um…no, but that’s OK this time,” I lied. With the exception of the food Mama and I had stolen from her white employers in Florida, I didn’t feel right taking something for nothing too often.
Mama often told me, “What goes around comes around.” Her example was us skipping out owing all those creditors and landlords in Florida. Because of that, Mama couldn’t get credit anywhere in Richland. Our phone bill and our utility bill were in Scary Mary’s name, and Reverend Snipes cosigned for every house we rented in Richland. “You be good, and God’ll be good to you,” Mama assured me, and I believed her.
CHAPTER 8
Over the years, Mama worked for a lot of rich white people in Richland I never got to meet. Then I met the employer she gave up all her other commitments to work for exclusively; a retired judge name Bill Lawson. Judge Lawson was one of Scary Mary’s most frequent visitors and one of her closest friends. I had overheard her tell Mama that the judge was the main reason she always got out of trouble with just a “talking-to” every time her house got raided.
The judge was a tall, gray-haired, barrel-chested white man with a narrow face and bushy mustache. He reminded me of Jed Clampett on my favorite program at the time, The Beverly Hillbillies. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen and thin lips that were always smiling. He lived in a big blue house on a hill with an enclosed swimming pool, and he owned houses all over town. Every time I saw him he had on an expensive-looking suit.
“How do you like school, Annette? Your mama tells me you get straight A’s,” he said to me one night when he dropped Mama off.
I broke into a grin when he slapped a one-dollar bill into my anxious hand. “Oh I have some real good teachers, and I like to learn,” I told him proudly, walking behind him as he strode like a cowboy across our living-room floor.
Mama and Judge Lawson sat down on our living-room couch and popped open cans of beer. I sat on a chair across from them, caressing my dollar. Mr. Boatwright was in bed.
“Hmmm. Ever consider going into the teaching profession when the time comes?” Judge Lawson asked, taking a long swig from his can.
“Oh no, Judge Lawson. I hope I can get a good secretarial job after I graduate,” I replied excitedly.
“Well if there’s anything I can do to help, all you got to do is let me know and I’ll fix it,” he said firmly. Then he put his hand on Mama’s knee and started rubbing it.
Judge Lawson’s offer impressed and stunned me, but I didn’t take him seriously. I knew he was rich, didn’t have any kids, and was not on good terms with his family. But he had a lot of friends. Mama told me that he entertained a lot. He often had lavish poker parties. Every time he did, Mama had to stay late cooking and running around serving his guests.
Something happened shortly after Judge Lawson’s offer, and Mama was forced to call on him for a favor. An inspector came snooping around our neighborhood, and our house was one of the ones he condemned because the place had extremely bad and dangerous wiring, termites and roaches sliding up and down the walls, plaster falling from the ceiling, and holes everywhere he looked. We had thirty days to find a new place to live.
Mama couldn’t afford to take time off from work, so Mr. Boatwright and I went out looking for a new house. We took buses when we could, but we did most of our searching on foot. With Mr. Boatwright’s leg situation it was a long, exasperating experience. Because of him I couldn’t walk as fast as I normally did. And every ten or fifteen minutes we had to find a bench for him to rest.
The next day we looked at three more places. The ones we could afford looked worse than the one we were in and were located in neighborhoods even rougher and more run-down.
“I don’t know what to do,” Mama moaned one evening. She had just come in from work and still had her coat on. Her eyes appeared to be in pain. They were red and swollen from all the crying she had done over our knotty problem. “We ain’t got but ten more days to vacate these premises.”
“What happens if we don’t move by then?” I asked. I was on the living room couch with Mr. Boatwright. An hour earlier he and I had prayed out loud on our knees asking God to help us find the right house.
With a worried look on his face, Mr. Boatwright replied, “The sheriff will come out with a crew, set our stuff on the ground, and put a lock on the door.”
Time was running out, and we still had not found a suitable house to move to.
“What are we going to do, Mama?” I was getting scared. I was not that crazy about our house, but it was all we had.
“Well, Scary Mary done already told me, I can stretch out on a pallet on her livin’-room floor, you can sleep with Mott, Brother Boatwright can pile up on her livin’-room couch ’til we find a place.”
It was never discussed, but I knew that Mama was tired of having to fall back on Scary Mary so often. I sure was. Scary Mary was the type of person who would eventually call her favors in. Whenever she wanted Mama to come and help entertain her male friends, Mama got kicking and screaming mad, but she went. “Blackmail. Scary Mary blackmailin’ me,” Mama said under her breath to herself one day after getting off the phone with Scary Mary.
“What did you say, Mama?” I had entered the kitchen just in time to hear her.
“Nothin’!” She then sucked in her breath, and told me, “Go lay me out some clean step-ins that ain’t got no holes or ravels, go to my bureau and dig out my black brassiere, and iron my red dress.”
“That red dress you said was too short and tight?” I gasped, worried about what I had heard her say about Scary Mary blackmailing her.
> Mama looked away from me as she spoke. “Uh…it ain’t that short and tight,” she said, her voice cracking.
Scary Mary now lived across the tracks in a huge green-shingled house in a neighborhood with nothing but nice houses. With all the women working for her, and the money the rich dead husband had left her, she could afford to. She had moved there several years earlier. It was the same neighborhood where our only Black undertaker, our only Black doctor, and one of the only two Black barbers lived. The rest of the neighborhood was white. I liked Scary Mary’s house, but I didn’t want to stay there even for a few days. I didn’t want to live in that big nice comfortable place, then have to give it up and go back to living in another falling-down shack like the ones we always rented.
With just five days left for us to vacate, Mama came rushing into the house after Judge Lawson had dropped her off. “Annette, Brother Boatwright, y’all come quick!” I ran from the kitchen to the living room where Mama was, wringing her hands and hopping around like she had to pee.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” I gasped. Her hair was askew, her lipstick was smeared, and her dress was buttoned wrong. It looked like she had just been mauled.
“What’s gwine on?” Mr. Boatwright yelled, hobbling into the room from upstairs.
“Y’all know that big house with the white aluminum sidin’ on Reed Street direct across from that colored undertaker, one block over from Scary Mary?” Mama shouted.
“Yeah. The house with the buckeye tree settin’ in the front yard.” Mr. Boatwright, arms folded, nodded. “What about it?”
“The tenants moved out a few days ago, and it’s up for rent!” Mama said, waving her arms like she was directing a 747. I had never seen Mama this excited before. There was a big smile on her face, and she was sweating.
“The rent must be three or four times what we pay here, Mama,” I said evenly. “We can’t afford to live in a place like that.”
“Oh yes we can afford it! I just found out it’s one of Judge Lawson’s properties! My Judge Lawson. I told him about our predicament and right off he said he wouldn’t stand by and let us get set out on the ground long as he livin’.” Mama paused and scratched her head, then continued. “After all these years, the judge decided he didn’t like the people livin’ there. They was too hard to get along with and was always complainin’ about one thing or another. He say we can move in right away with no deposit, and we can rent it for the same rent we pay here.”
“Praise the Lord!” Mr. Boatwright was so overwhelmed he started shaking and sweating so hard he had to sit down and compose himself. He snatched a handkerchief from his pocket and started fanning and wiping his face.
“Judge Lawson’s got one foot in the grave, Mama. What if he dies next month?” I asked.
“Well, Miss Smarty, that’s already been considered. The judge promised me first thing in the mornin’ he would have his lawyer revise his will sayin’ me and mine can live in the Reed Street house, rent to never increase, for as long as we want!” Mama yelled. She dropped her tattered coat to the floor and started dancing like a tribeswoman around a ceremonial fire.
“Oh,” was all I could say as I rolled this information around in my head. I sat on the couch and started smiling. It sounded too good to be true. “Why would Judge Lawson do all that for us? What’s in it for him?” I wanted to know.
Mama stopped dancing her jig, and a strange, faraway look appeared on her face. “God told him to do it I bet.” She sighed. “It ain’t no wonder with the way we all been prayin’.”
Mr. Boatwright and I agreed with her, but I knew there was more to it than that. I’d seen Judge Lawson look at Mama the same way Mr. Boatwright often looked at me, like he’d just bought me by the pound.
In June of that year, 1963, we moved across town to the house on Reed Street. It was a bigger place and much nicer than any we had ever lived in. The front porch had a glider that came with the house. Not only was there a big buckeye tree in the spacious front yard, but there was also a gigantic weeping willow directly across the cobblestone walkway opposite the buckeye tree. I felt like we’d just moved to Norman Rockwell’s neighborhood. The floors in our new house had nice dark brown shaggy carpets. In the bright yellow kitchen there was a stove we could turn on without using pliers like we had to do with our old one, a refrigerator that defrosted itself, and linoleum that shone like new money on the floor. Our old neighborhood had lots of bars, and I saw drunk people staggering about and peeing on the ground in broad daylight. Our new neighborhood had only one bar, and my new school was only a ten-minute walk from our house.
Scary Mary’s house was right behind ours on the next street over. Our backyards connected. She had a cherry tree, an apple tree, and a buckeye tree in her part of the yard. From my back bedroom window, I counted dozens of grinning, well-dressed (most of them white) men in and out of her back door. Just like when we lived with her.
Our new house had four bedrooms. Mama took the largest one, which was the one downstairs. Mr. Boatwright took the one upstairs across from mine. And the fourth bedroom, right at the end of a long hallway, was to be used to store things, Mama said, like the brand-new sewing machine Judge Lawson had ordered from Sears and Roebuck. I felt warm and secure in my new room even though all I had in it was my lumpy bed, a big old, chipped chifforobe, and a nightstand with a goosenecked lamp on it leaning over my bed like a sentinel.
I livened up my room with colored pictures of stars from my movie magazines and dandelions I picked from our front yard.
It didn’t take me long to get used to our new neighborhood. It was cleaner, quieter, and safer than the one we had just moved from. For weeks, Mr. Boatwright didn’t bother me for sex. I thought that he had gotten tired of me or, because of his age, his sex drive had run its course. I was wrong.
For the upcoming Fourth of July, we planned a trip to a slaughterhouse to get some ribs, pork links, and chicken parts for him to barbecue. Before going to the meat market, he took me to the Mt. Pilot movie theater to see a new Steve McQueen movie. After the movie, we ate at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
“Hurry up and finish eatin’ so we can get to the market and back home before Perry Mason come on the TV,” Mr. Boatwright urged, chewing so hard he bit his tongue. There was grease on his lips and chin, and bits of chicken were lodged between his front teeth.
“OK. After we watch Perry Mason, I’ll help you marinate the ribs,” I told him. I was halfway through my second three-piece dinner meal. Every time I put on a pound, I recalled Mama’s prediction when I was four about how God was going to curse me with a body the size of a moose. At 210 pounds I didn’t have too far to go. Though he seemed to enjoy it, Mr. Boatwright told me all the time how much he hated my bloated body. I made myself believe that eventually I’d be so fat he wouldn’t touch me anymore. “Mr. Boatwright, can I get some more chicken?”
The slaughterhouse was a big brooding gray building across the road from a truck stop. On a normal day it was a madhouse. With a holiday coming up, one that was close to the first part of the month when all the low-income people got their checks and still had money to spend on meat, the place resembled a crime scene. A mob of boisterous people wearing Bermuda shorts and sandals, who had already completed their shopping, stood in front of the market waiting for a bus to take them back home. The parking lot was completely full, and some of the vehicles belonged to the police.
The men who worked inside were running around with bloodstains on their white smocks. Sweaty, impatient customers were standing at the counters five deep trying to bargain, trying to get credit, or trying to get an extra pound of something for free.
Because of all the chaos and the fact that it took Mr. Boatwright so long to walk from one counter to another, (he had to lean against the wall and rest for ten minutes between each counter we went to) it took us longer than we expected to get our orders filled. By the time we walked out of the market, there were so many people ahead of us boarding the departing bus we had to
wait for the next one. It took us another hour to get back to where we had to transfer to the bus that would take us back to our neighborhood. By then it was too late. The last bus for the day on that route had come and gone.
“I guess we’ll have to take a cab from here,” Mr. Boatwright said angrily.
“Let’s walk the rest of the way home,” I suggested. Our house was fifteen blocks away, but I didn’t mind.
“What’s wrong with you, girl? I’m lucky to be alive after all the walkin’ I done did today,” Mr. Boatwright snapped. There were times I forgot about his fake leg and the fact that he was an old man. “All these packages we totin’ too. Let’s get to that pay phone yonder and call a cab.” The nearby pay phone at the corner in front of Thurman’s Pharmacy was out of order. “Maybe that drugstore there got one. Start steppin’, girl.”
I followed Mr. Boatwright inside the drugstore. While he went to the back to use the phone, I waited on a stool at the soda counter with our packages, enjoying the air-conditioning and a strawberry milk shake.
A well-dressed Black man in his mid-forties entered. With his head held high and his shoulders back, he strutted like a king, greeting some of the other customers with a nod and a smile. He was tall like my daddy, but much more handsome. He looked a lot like Mama’s favorite entertainer, Harry Belafonte. He had dark brown skin, full lips, wavy black hair, and, of all things, green eyes. He nodded and smiled at me, revealing a set of dazzling white teeth. I smiled back and watched him stop at the counter in back of the drugstore where they filled prescriptions. Mr. Boatwright returned with a tortured look on his face.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.