A Walk on the Wild Side (31 page)

Mama shook off his hand. ‘
Who
stick out?
Who
get in a hurry? Admit
what?
’ Mama was getting angry but she didn’t know at what.

‘Why, old black mammies of course,’ he told her as though everyone knew old black mammies were the coming thing.

‘Maybe you ought to come inside before it rains,’ Mama invited him, feeling they’d both be safer in the parlor.

‘It isn’t going to rain,’ Navy sounded certain as God, and began unfolding a little apron from under his coat. He bowed to tie it about her waist. It was striped green and white like peppermint and as he tied it Mama wondered how she had become the prospect. Her fingers plucked without strength at the apron’s price tag. He picked the tag off himself and the cab dusted off in disgust.

‘A good many black mammy-freaks visit you I presume?’ he presumed confidently.

‘It’s been several days since one called,’ Mama played it straight, ‘and he didn’t leave his name. Would you care to offer yours?’

‘My men call me Commander,’ he informed her stiffly.

‘That,’ Mama thought, ‘isn’t what my chicks will call you.’ And led him inside like leading him home.

Just as the first drops began.

Inside the parlor the five-year-old boy with the mind of a forty-year-old pimp, the one his grandmother called Warren Gameliel and the women called the King of the Indoor Thieves, stood on a divan ready for anything.

In a shirt that never reached past his navel and a tight little hide not exactly high-yellow, Warren Gameliel was actually closer to being high-brown. He was even closer to dark-brown. As a matter of fact he was black as a kettle in hell. He was so black you’d have had to put a milk bottle on his head to find him in the dark. He looked a cross between a black Angus calf and something fished out of the Mississippi on a moonless night. One tint darker and he would have disappeared altogether.

Turning his head proudly upon his iron-colored throat, he fluttered his beautiful lashes modestly at the women’s flattery.

‘Meet my grandson,’ Mama always introduced her menfolks first – ‘Aint he fine?’

‘Five year old ’n weighs sixty-nine pound ’n she asks is he fine,’ the woman called Hallie Dear mocked Mama fondly as the big overdressed man saluted the small naked one.

‘Pledge allegiance, boy baby,’ Mama encouraged Warren G. to his single legitimate accomplishment. But Warren G. just planted his black toes the wider, as if to say he’d have to know more about this gold-braid deal before he’d pledge so much as a teething ring.

Reba honked with hollow glee: the boy was growing up so fast.

‘Aint you
shamed?
’ Mama reproved him in a voice that simply
donged
with pride.

Warren Gameliel felt no shame. That belonged, Hallie Dear saw in a single shocked glance, to the hero beside her. For the ghost of a smile that strayed down his lips belonged to a beggar-ghost, a penniless pleader hunting a handout – then it was gone. Leaving him cowering within himself in some cave of no knowing save his own.

Hallie hooked her arm in his to let him know he really wasn’t as alone as all that, and he peered out slowly, warily. Feeling her support, he began coming out of it.

Slowly, warily.

‘In Shicawgo I worked in a office for loryers,’ Reba hurried to keep the man from confusing her with certain common whores trying to crowd him – ‘I specialized in tort ’n see-zure—’ but Floralee elbowed her aside. Floralee was fond of gold braid too.

‘I can sing just
ever
so purty, mister,’ she offered in a voice strung on little silver bells ‘—only modesty songs of course, for I don’t know vulgary words—’ and did him as pretty a little curtsy as ever he’d seen.

Warren G. tried to regain the spotlight, but Mama yanked the cap, that he had taken off the officer’s head, far down over the boy’s eyes, as if shutting off his vision might improve his manners. Somebody got the juke going just then and someone else called for gin. Someone said, ‘Make mine a double’ just as the juke began—

‘I can sing purtier far than
that
,’ Floralee insisted amid pleas, claims, threats and tiny squeals, for now all vied for Navy’s attention.

‘Why do people down here all talk so
Southern?
’ Chicago Kitty complained. ‘Why do they have to talk like the niggers? Why can’t they talk like their selves?’

‘We do talk like ourselves, honey,’ Hallie assured her, ‘the Negras learned to talk that way from us.’

‘May I recite now?’ Floralee begged.

‘As soon as the juke is through, sweetheart,’ Mama promised, and turning to the guest, ‘This girl is a regular angel.’

‘She’s a whore like everyone else,’ Kitty put in – ‘
anyone
can be a whore. I feel rotten about everyone but myself.’

‘Is that true?’ Navy asked Mama curiously. ‘Can any woman become a whore? Any woman at all?’

‘Anyone at all,’ Mama was optimistic. ‘Aren’t we all created free and equal?’

‘Tell me one thing, sailor boy,’ Chicago Kitty demanded. ‘Where do you keep your submarines?’

‘Why ask me a thing like that?’ The lieutenant looked embarrassed.

‘I have to know. I’m a spy on the side.’

‘I don’t want anyone calling our guest sailor boy,’ Mama scolded Kitty and everyone. ‘Look up to this man! He’s honoring us! Hear this! Commander! Report all insults directly to me! Warren Gameliel you little black fool, get that fool hat off your head and pledge allegiance in-stan-
taneously!
’

‘Mama!’ Hallie scolded in turn, ‘stop giving orders as though we were in battle formation! This man didn’t come here to have
you
pin a medal on him. Can’t you see you’re spoiling his fun?’ And brushing everyone aside, she framed his face in her palms to make him return the look she gave. ‘Navy, don’t mind Mama,’ she told him, ‘she’s just impressed by your uniform.’

‘Don’t
dare
call our Guest of Honor Navy like that!’ – Mama was getting worse by the minute – ‘This man represents the entire Atlantic fleet!’

‘I represented two loryers,’ Reba remembered wistfully.

‘I represent a tube of K-Y jelly ’n a leaky douche bag,’ Kitty commented bitterly.

‘I can sing like a damned bird,’ Floralee marveled aloud, ‘only how did I fly here?’

Outside the drunks were coming out of the country’s last speak-easies and the street lamps began to move like the breasts of a young girl under the hands of a man who has bought too many. Warren Gameliel reached out blindly and secured a black strangehold on the officer’s neck.

‘If you don’t behave I’ll send you to the nigger school,’ Mama threatened him.

And in an odd little silence a girl’s voice said, ‘I was drunk, the juke box was playing, I began to cry.’ And all the air felt troubled by cologne.

‘I think our guest wants to see me,’ Hallie guessed, and pulled Navy’s head right against her breast. He nodded strengthless assent.

She helped him to rise, and he rose more like a sick man than one drunk.

‘Send two double gins to my room,’ Hallie ordered Mama, ‘the rest of you drink whatever you want.’

The door shut behind them and a lamp lit a room that might have served a whore of old Babylon: a narrow bed in hope of bread, a basin in hope of purity. A beaded portiere to keep mosquitoes out and let a little music in. A scent of punk from an incense stick to burn off odors of whiskey or tobacco, a calendar from the year before and an image above it of something or other in hope of forgiveness for this or that. A whole world to millions since the first girl sold and a world to millions yet.

The lamp’s brown glow on her amber gown made of Hallie a golden woman. For her eyes were gray, her skin was olive and about her throat she wore a yellow band.

Her gown, unfastened at one shoulder, was kept from falling only by the rise of her unbound breast. Still she said, ‘No matter how often I trick, as soon as I’m with a man I get shaky.’

‘You don’t have to bother to get shaky with me,’ the seagoing executive assured her, ‘don’t even bother taking off your clothes.’

So he had found some fault in her. ‘What’s the matter, don’t you like dark girls?’

‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ he reassured her, ‘I’m of no use, that’s all. But I’ll gladly pay you for your time.’

‘I don’t need charity.’ Hallie was hurt nonetheless.

‘It isn’t charity. You’ve already helped me in a way that can’t be bought.’

‘Then I’ll take the money all the same,’ Hallie recovered herself and sat beside him on her dishonored bed, letting the gown drape loosely over her breast in event he should prove not so useless as he thought.

‘I’m from Virginia, of course,’ he announced as though that were more important than a woman’s flesh.

‘I’m from Louisiana myself,’ Hallie went along. ‘Of course.’

‘What I
mean
is’ – he felt it time to be kind – ‘I’m a gentleman.’

‘I’m certain you are,’ Hallie told him he really was. ‘When you’re a lady yourself that’s something you can tell about a man right off.’

‘What I’m trying to say,’ he tried afresh, ‘I’m a
Virginia
gentleman.’

‘I don’t mean to be sarcastic, mister,’ Hallie promised him, ‘but so what?’

‘Why,’ he had never thought that being a Virginia gentleman might not be self-sufficing, ‘well, it means I can teach at Washington and Lee!’

‘It’s nice to have two jobs,’ Hallie was sure, ‘and in times like these amounts to a real curiosity.’

‘I’ll tell you what is a yet mightier curiosity,’ he got down to business at last, ‘and that’s the way old black mammies stick out in back—’ his voice took on a secret excitement – ‘
the way she come by with a broom ’n most knocks you down – “Boy! – stay outa mah way when ah’m cleanin’, Boy” –’ n here she comes by again with bucket ’n mop – “Boy, when you gonna learn to behave? Didn’t ah tell you stay outa mah way? Boy!” –’ n you just about turn around ’n here comes Mammy back again – “Boy! You got nawthin’ to do all day but stand in mah path? You fixin’ to get y’se’f soaked?
”’ He composed himself only with an effort.

‘Mister,’ Hallie asked gently, ‘how long you been in this condition?’

‘Since the day I broke the churn of course. Black Mammy’s been dead nineteen years – otherwise why would I feel this way? Hand and foot she waited on us and when that day come when all she could do was just to set in her old cane chair, there wasn’t a soul but myself to fetch her a glass of water.

‘“Mammy,” I told her, “you waited on me, I’m goin’ to wait on you.
I’m
takin’ care of my old black mammy.”

‘I slept by her chair, for she couldn’t lie down. When I woke at night I could reach out and touch the back of her skinny black hand and know if she was asleep or awake just by the touch. Mostly she’d be awake. You know what I’d ask her then?’

Hallie felt his hand on her own. ‘What you ask her then?’

‘I’d ask her, “You want anything, Black Mammy?” That’s just what I’d ask her.’

‘She must have been grateful for your care.’

He looked at Hallie so evenly. ‘More than I knew. For the very day she died she raised her weary old arm and give me a back-handed slap.’

‘You broke
another
churn on her?’

‘It was her way of letting me know that she had understood all along what her first back-handed slap, when I was ten years old, had done.’

‘She forgive you at last for breakin’ the churn?’ Hallie kept trying.

‘We were too grateful to one another for forgiving,’ he explained – ‘Don’t you think I know it was Black Mammy’s hand made a mammy-freak out of me? That I might have had a wife and family now if it hadn’t been for her hand? Yet I’m grateful to her still. Who else ever thought I was worth human care? I’m
glad
the porch was slippery.’

Hallie was lost.

‘Mister,’ she shook her head sadly, ‘I just don’t take your meaning.’

‘The water from the churn made the porch all wet. When its handle snapped she saw what I’d done and aimed her hand. I slipped and fell so she paddled me face down. I lay hollering, pretending she was half killing me. Black Mammy had a good strong hand. That was the first time I was made to behave.’

Hallie saw light faintly.

‘What happened
exactly?
’

‘Why, what happens when a man is having a girl,
that’s
what happened. And I’ve never been able to make it happen any other way since.’ He laughed in the watery light yet his face looked stricken.

‘I’m terribly tired, I don’t know why,’ he said and put his face in his hands.

It came to Hallie then that this wasn’t at all some monster of the nastier sort, but only some sort of lonely suckling boy playing Commander with his nose still running.

‘Mister,’ she told him quietly, ‘you don’t need a girl. You need a doctor.’

‘There aren’t any doctors for black-mammy freaks,’ he explained dryly, as though he’d tried looking one up in the city directory.

‘Then just try to rest,’ Hallie told him.

Fast as she could pin, Hallie was preparing Mama for the great impersonation.

‘You don’t think he stole his ship’s money, do you?’ Mama had to know. ‘He isn’t going to get us all in trouble, is he?’

‘You never made an easier dollar your whole enduring life,’ Hallie reassured her, ‘he’s just a green boy been kept on black titty too long. All you got to remember is this rapscallion keeps getting in your way. Just don’t hit him too hard – just hard enough to make it look good.’

‘You wont catch
me
hitting no member of our armed forces,’ and Mama stuck right there.

‘Getting whupped by his old black mammy is what he come here for – turn around so I can pin you.’ She began stuffing a small pillow into Mama’s bosom. ‘The more you stick out in front the more you stick out behind. I’ll have you sticking out so far you’ll look like Madame Queen.’