A Piece of Mine

by J. California Cooper

  Sometimes Letta went 30 miles or so … on the bus! She had to win! She had what it took! Bout four months later, a very well to do mortician asked her to play chamber music sometimes before the funeral. Like, you see, come early. He was single and bout her age. His business was bout 35 miles away and he took to sending a car for her. A big, long black Cadillac. She was in style! Chile! Other mens came to see her but she wouldn’t carry on with none of them. She said, “I might like somethin they do and end up in love with a poor man and I don’t want to, so if I am not around them, I can’t grow to like them!” That was that!

  She always came home on the same day she left at first, but pretty soon, she didn’t come home the same day! Her and that mortician was getting pretty close. Then one day, she stayed home three weeks without going anywhere. Told me, “I like that man and I could love him, but I don’t want no job. I want love and a husband and that’s what I know I can get! Hope it’s him, but if he ain’t right, he can do it with them dead folks for all I care! I sure could love him though!”

  I was so busy going to funerals and learnin how to sew I didn’t see her for a little while, a week or two, but when I did see her she flashed a smile and a engagement ring on me and you couldn’t tell which one was the brightest! She began to drive her own big car, I don’t know what it was, but it was not black! Well, Letta married that mortician and it’s like her life just started! I been over there to see them, at the funerals, you know! They both look like they in love. He watch her with such pride, she watch him like to say “I’m glad I’m where you are.” Funeral long gone out of their minds and they right there in the middle of it! “I understand” she tells all the bereaved.

  Me, I’m still working the plan, for real now, sho nuff! Cause the other day at a funeral, a man got up to say something bout the deceased. I’m learning all the words now, I used to say, dead or passed on. Anyway, he happened to say he wasn’t married. He just bout my size too. I liked his looks. After the funeral, when he was blowin his nose and wiping his eyes, I walked over, patted him on the back and said, “I understand.” He looked at me real bright and reached out to shake my hand and hug me. I paid good attention to how it felt to be in his arms, had to do it real quick but I liked it. I invited him home to a good ole-fashion, home-cooked meal. I didn’t take time to be smart like Letta. When he accepted and we was on our way to my house I wondered if he had a plan too! But I don’t care. I’ll tell you somethin, they say a good man is hard to find, well, a good woman is too! Anything good is hard to find and if you got any sense you don’t want nobody else’s. Like me, I want mine! So, when we was walkin along and talkin you could just call me Ms. Happy Hopeful cause I was!

  So, now I am cuttin him a piece of dessert cake I just made this morning from a new recipe. See, I got a lot to share and you can catch more bees with honey than you can with butter, so now I’m goin on in my fresh clean livin room where this new man friend of mine is helpin my mama get comfortable and take him some of this delicious cake! You can just call me Ms. Honeybunch, cause I’m on my way!

  He Was a Man!

  (But He Did Himself Wrong)

  I HAVE always been the kind of person who wonders about people and things and I have some neighbors who have kept me pretty busy with plenty to wonder about! It’s not real important how or where Smitty and Della met, the main thing is they were married nine years when I got to know them. At first, because of the way the world looks at things, they seemed an unlikely, funny couple. He was short, 5 feet or so, 125 pounds, while Della was 5′7″ or so, and 207 pounds. You pictured them making love and in your mind it was real funny, but you shouldn’t do that picturing stuff because making love, real love, is never funny! Remember the heart has its own way of picking a partner and never asks for measurements.

  Anyway, Smitty was a feisty, loudmouthed, bragging, aggressive little man. Always trying to out-talk or out-do some taller man. But Della loved him even beyond the love-is-blind thing. Anything Smitty did was alright with Della.

  I mean even the way she cooked his meals; he had so many things he disliked and his food had to be just right. I mean JUST RIGHT! He was the kind of man who even liked gravy on his lamb chops! Very few vegetables, hardly any fruit and all that! All of which made Della gain more weight because of course she had to taste it to be sure it was just right. She could make home-made bread that would make you kill yourself. She did everything, Della did. Wash, cook, clean, garden, shop, chauffeur, watch football games, listen to him lie, pet, massage and make love too. Maybe more, you know, I don’t know everything.

  I know he was proud of Della, he was always bragging down there at the pool hall and at work about her, but he never told her, thinking just staying with her was enough. Well, after nine years, maybe he was right. Their marriage musta been strong because they got over some real big hurdles which made me wonder at the way it all turned out.

  Like, one time I ran over to their house. They had a nice little house, sitting all by itself on a neat little lot, that they rented. Anyway, I went over there and he was standing on a box directing her how to tie a rope over a beam so he could hang her. SHOUTING “I am the man! You gon have to do what I say! I ain’t taking NO shit!” Della just crying, trying to tie that rope like he telling her. Well, I talked them out of it that time. I think he was glad because he didn’t know no other way to back down and give her her life back. I told her later “You are a fool! Big as you is, you gonna let that littler man kill you? Help him kill you?!” That’s when I found out it wasn’t the first time. Anyway she just said, “I don’t think he was really gonna do it!” and smiling, went on about cooking him something special. I just really want you to know she thought he was special, that he had power, black and otherwise! Whatever he said she believed him. I mean … that man had him a woman!

  Now there’s always a little hell waiting round paradise and Della’s hell was that every once in awhile, Smitty hit her, abused her. It hurt and it didn’t hurt! But it seemed to do so much for him, being so small and all, hitting a woman so large, she never tried to hit him back. He would tell everyone down at the pool hall and work (again) that “I know I am boss!” He pranced as he told them, his chest stuck out in pride, he had a lot of that! He had whipped his woman, all 207 pounds of her!… all those pounds that loved him.

  Their bed had to be braced up by bricks underneath so the mattress wouldn’t tilt when Della got in bed and bring him crashing over to her side, reminding him of his size. One night when they were sleeping, someone broke into the house. Don’t know what they came for cause Della and Smitty didn’t have nothing much special. Just one of these crazy people that don’t have sense enough to be honest and ain’t got sense enough to know how to be dishonest and rob somebody with something! Anyway, Della heard the noise and woke Smitty up. He lay there a moment then said, “Let’s go see what’s going on.” He hollered from the bed, “Who’s there! Who’s in this house?”

  They got up and went into the hall and there was this dope addict or something looking raggedy and holding a gun. Smitty ran past him, going to get his gun, I guess, and Della got scared and tried to follow him past the robber, who was then squashed against the wall with Della screaming at him to let her go! She must have hit him or something, he was really trying to get out of that tight spot with all that mouth wide open screaming in his ears, and probably hoping somebody would come in and save him from his victims, but their house stood all alone and the cafe-bar across the street made so much noise, nobody could hear them. The gun went off around that time and Della thought Smitty had saved her when Smitty came rushing around a corner hollering Della’s name, guess he thought she had been shot, and the robber slid down the wall at her feet, dead.

  Smitty hadn’t been able to find his gun. They grabbed each other and looked at the dead man; he had shot himself with Smitty’s gun … accidentally. Della said, “We gotta call the police!” Smitty said back, “Wait a minute! Let’s talk about this!” So they did. Smitty continued
“Now listen … if we call them cops we gon have a lot of trouble! That’s my gun! And I ain’t got no license for it! And I can’t prove I didn’t pull that trigger and put that gun in his hand! All them cops look at TV and ain’t no tellin what they gon decide happened here!” Della’s eyes grew even wider. “Well, what else can we do? We can’t throw him outside in the street!” Smitty shot back, “Oh yes we can! That’s just what we got to do!”

  He ran to look out the window with Della following him, her large white flannel gown billowing around her. No one was in sight and the music blasting from the cafe. It was settled in Smitty’s mind … the dead man was going outside. Della started crying til Smitty slapped her into just whimpering and sniffling. She went to get her robe and a cap and Smitty went to get an old blanket out of his car. She noticed the blood that had flowed from the man’s wound and went to get a bandaid, Smitty came back and snatched it and stuck it in the man’s shirt pocket. In fact, they did all the wrong things you see on TV. They rolled the man up and when the cafe closed and all was dark they carried the corpse over to the empty lot and left it! Went home, cleaned up, wiped off the gun, put it back in the drawer and went to bed with Smitty explaining, “I didn’t kill him, you didn’t kill him, so we ain’t got nothing to do with it! He broke in our house, took our gun (everything was suddently “our”) and shot his own self! We didn’t know him before, we don’t know him now! So go to sleep and forget the whole thing!”… So they did. See, what I mean, something that’s big like death, they stepped over that like it was a broom!

  Anyway, the police found the body the next day, took it somewhere and did something and since the man was black the case was closed, even with all those clues, stamped “killed by person or persons unknown … CLOSED!” and that was that. Smitty and Della picked up their life and went on as usual. He felt real smart cause he had handled it real smart so he began to add, when they had arguments, “You ain’t got no sense! If it wasn’t for me, a man in this house, ain’t no telling what would happen to you!” Della smiled at all that, she was used to it and she loved her Smitty!

  Then this thing happened that made me wonder at them because they had been through such big things and this seemed little to me, you might say.

  It was a day that Della had not been feeling well; maybe lost a baby or something almost as important; she was always talking bout having a baby and Smitty was always trying to make one. Also, her special cake for Smitty had burned while she was trying to untangle something in the washing machine wringer and when she put the cake on the sink, she burnt her hand and in flinging her arm out she hit the filled dish drainer rack. It fell to the floor and dishes and glass flew everywhere! She was barefoot and cut her foot tipping across the floor. She burst into loud, dreadful tears and ran into the hall past the sign that read, “God Bless This Home” through the pink door she had painted because pink made her feel like a woman going into a romantic bedroom. She flung herself across the bed onto the spread she had crocheted painstakingly to laugh and love on. She cried herself to sleep.

  When Smitty came home, he did his lion’s roar at the door and receiving no answer he went through the house and found Della asleep and … he got mad! He started stomping around and shouting at her about the dirt (there was no dirt). The filthy kitchen (just broken dishes, that’s all). No dinner (well, there was none, but my lord!) The messed up favorite cake (as if it was on purpose) and anything else his little mind could come up with! He never did ask her what was wrong. He kept shouting, “A man this and a man that.”

  Della swung her legs around and sat on the edge of the bed and tried to smile and explain. She was still trying to smile and explain when Smitty came rushing up and slapped her twice! One way and then back the other! Her arm must have shot out instinctively in reaction and she caught him solid and he flew all way cross the room, through the door and hit the wall in the hall and blacked out! Now, that alone was bad enough but Della went and picked him up and placed him in bed! That Della was strong! So when he woke up, an hour or so later, he looked around him and … cried. Now he really was a man, ain’t no question, but he cried … him!… Smitty!

  Della came rushing into the room at the sound of the crying and when she saw him she started crying too. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt daddy? What’s the matter, baby?” But he pushed her away, snot and spit flying, then he snarled at her from his pain … an ego can be a dangerous, painful thing. “Get away from me! Get away! I hate you, you big, fat, ugly bear! You a ape! A gorilla! You ain’t no woman!”

  “But, Smitty,” she began to whine and try to ease him but he wouldn’t have any of that! He got up trying to move without showing his pain and got the little raggedy suitcase (they didn’t never go anywhere so they didn’t need no new ones) and began to throw things in it. Della’s eyes were big and red and swollen, she kept trying to grab his shirts and underwear from him, but he done stopped crying now and was really talking mean to her, calling her all kinds of names, sloppy fat bitches and things like that! It was untrue and it hurt her. You could almost see her drawing up, shrinking, every time a word struck her. Seemed like the words were razor blades cutting her to ribbons. This was her Smitty talking to her!

  As Smitty got to the door he turned, “I can’t never live with you no more! You always gonna think you bettern me! That’s what you want … to be the man! Well, I ain’t staying nowhere I can’t be the man! You get yourself and your stuff together and get out of my house as soon as you get you some money! I’m takin all we got now cause I done made it all while you sat chere on your ass! You the man now, you can get you some more!” Della reached for him, “Please daddy, baby, please daddy, don’t go! Don’t leave me! I’m SORRY (she screamed that). I didn’t mean to hit you! Please don’t go! I’m begging you! Daddy, I’m begging you!” She grabbed his arm and such a hate in his face went down to his arm and he struck her so hard she just let go and stood there with her arms hanging, and her tears pouring, down. He left, leaving the door open so she could watch him leaving, wobbling away dragging that suitcase, taking the car. She finally shut the door and went to bed, for two weeks.

  I tended her and checked on her but she wouldn’t eat nothing or talk and usually she’s a big talker. But time takes care of everything and time took care of her. Pretty soon she got up and got on out to find work. She was still grieving, but with every bad there’s some good and she was losing weight like thunder. Smitty had got him a room somewhere and was busy telling everybody everywhere that he done left Della, “Wasn’t gonna keep no woman who wants to be the man in his family, Della didn’t know how to treat no man but she would before he sat foot in that house again.” He meant it too … he said! But every day when he come out of that door at work, lunch and quitting time, he seem to be looking for somebody. Pretty soon, he would go to the windows and peer out all through the day, but nobody was there … least not Della. He let everybody know where he lived, but she didn’t go there either!

  I caught her one day, just a cussing to herself, crying. I said, “What’s the matter with you Della?” “Nothing,” she answered, “Just repeating all the names Smitty called me so I don’t forget and go running out there after him.” Well, that was Della’s formula and it seemed to work. She didn’t go! As she kept crying and grieving she grew thinner and her clothes began to hang on her. She looked terrible, but didn’t care. I tried to make her eat but she wouldn’t.

  There was a church social coming up and I talked two days to get her to go and even helped her to buy some new things to wear that fit her. I can tell you honestly that Della at 135 pounds was a whole new better Della than she was at 207 pounds! She was good looking!! And with that big, sweet, innocent, sad smile, she was pretty and the men let her know it! She danced every dance once I got her started, and laughed and laughed and laughed with happiness! Smitty wasn’t there, he was probably at the pool hall bragging bout his hold on her. I ain’t gonna say a lot about it, but there was a nice man there named Charles … and he took
to Della like wet takes to water! Soon, they was going out together, being seen a lot. Smitty heard about it. He wanted to come around and save his ego at the same time so he began to come around the house and tell her she had to move out, he needed a place. I know he wanted her to say, “Come on home then,” but she didn’t. Instead she said, “Give me a month to see what I’m gonna do and how, then I be gone.” He didn’t really want that house, he wanted Della, but his pride and ego kept him from tellin her. I don’t really know what would have happened if he had told her, but anyway, Charlie told her to move in with him, he was buying his own house. She just said she would think about it.

  One day Smitty came by to check on his “house” and Charlie was there. Smitty said, blustering, “Well, I’m here now and you better go! This is a husband talkin to his wife and you oughta leave!”

  Charlie answered softly, “Well Smitty, I didn’t come to see you at your invitation … I came to see Della at her invitation, so you can’t tell me to go … only Della can do that!” Smitty said, taken aback, “This is my house! I say what goes on here! And this is my wife!” Della said softly, “This the landlord’s house and I been paying the rent Smitty, so it’s not your house.” She looked neat and clean and pretty and you could smell the food cooking! Smitty repeated, stubborn, “I want to talk to my WIFE!” Charlie said, just as stubborn, “When she tells me to go, I will!” Della said, “I invited him to supper Smitty, I can’t tell my company to go!” Smitty said, “I’m your man, invite me to supper!” Della said back “No … you said you wasn’t my man, that I was the man. Charlie don’t think I’m a man.”

  Smitty, quick to think wrong, “Why don’t he think you a man? What you been doin with him?” He balled his fist up! Charlie put in “I hope to marry Della some day.”

  Smitty said, “She already married! To me!” They both looked surprised when Della said, “I ain’t made up my mind about anything!” She looked thoughtful for a minute then continued, “Charlie will eat supper, then he will go, then you can come back and talk.” Smitty was outdone! “Come back?” he asked. Della was up to it. “If you want to!”