Bogeywoman (19 page)

Up front at the Broadway entrance a loiterer leaned in the doorway. The long pencil-thin legs said it was a fuddy; he was wearing white like an intern, or a busboy, but the evening sun behind him turned him black. To this sightseer I would be a junker, a white orphan fallen among ayrabbers and raised by them as their own child. I slouched down next to Tuney and
whatever he did I did. I got set to hawk that sidewalk for anything loose like I’d been in a junk wagon all my life.

Then the wagon stopped. “Say there, Nurse Blanchard. How them loonies today? How all them Napoleons and Virgin Marys over there cross the road?” “I about to ask you the same question, Tuney, seeing as the top loonie be over here this afternoon, visiting you.” And a hard hand closed around my upper arm. It was the Regicide, who appeared to be well known in the ayrabbers’ barn. With one swift jerk, he pulled me off the wagon and straightened me on my feet. He was not as gentle as usual and I could tell he was displeased. “This litta Miss Razorblade,” Reggie introduced me to Tuney and Chug with a shake of my arm. “Yall look out she don’t push yall down no third-floor laundry chute. Course she only do her friends like that. Seein as yall strangers, maybe you safe.” Then he said to me with grim cheer: “Ready, Miss Razorblade?”

Chug burst out laughing, ho ho ho. “Way the joke at?” Reginald asked. Chug said: “This slick nigger Turpentine bragging bout how he turn out the mayor’s daughter. Come to find out he turned out a half-growed he-she lunatic from cross the street who only want to feed his horse, ho ho ho. Wait till Itchie hear that.” “So? You the one oinked her,” Tuney said sullenly, “you know I don’t mess with no wimmins.” “I seriously hope yall gentlemens have not taken advantage of this mentally sick teenager,” the Regicide exclaimed, “my, my, how many years yall get for that, with yalls records?”

“I never oink her,” said Chug, “this he-she? It take another kind of freak to figga out how to oink sumpm like that. I never oink her. I pity her.” “That’s what you call that? pitying? I never know you do that pitying with your pants down round your ankles,
she-e-e-e, she-e-e-e, she-e-e-e
,” Tuney commented. “I
never oink her,” Chug insisted. “I never oink her either,” said Tuney. “You can take her to a doctor,” Chug went on, “she as cherry as Suburban Club Almond Smash, no lie.” “Don’t worry, you guys, I was seventeen in April,” I put in, “I can oink anybody I want.” “You a lie, Princess Razorblade,” Reginald said, shaking me by the arm again, “you know you ain’t but fi’teen years old. Why you want to drag these boys down?” “I’m seventeen and I never said I was princess razorblade either and you know it.” “She say she be princess sumbuddy sumbuddy,” Tunie reported, the dirty snitch. “Them paranoids be the toughest nuts to crack,” Reginald explained, “seeing as they not only think they Jesus, they know how to fake like they don’t think it.” “She thank she Jesus?” Chug asked in alarm. “Well … in her case, Moses,” Reg said. “How about you just oink yourself, Regicide,” I hissed, “I’m going junking with these guys and don’t try to talk me out of it.” “You maybe probly like to go junking with these fools,” Reg said softly, “I don’t put it past you, but I tell you, Princess Razorblade, I don’t figga these gentlemens will take you. I think they done took back. I think they changed they mind.”

I stared at the traitors and my mouth fell open in an O. Yes, here was the O face, the terrible face of a woman wronged, and in some wonderment I felt myself wearing it. In the privacy of my dreambox, I always used to sneer a little when girlgoyles wept over their boyfriends, believing, secretly, that all the girls, and especially my sister Margaret, got what they deserved for putting up with these bullies and fuddies. Now suddenly it dawned on me that the O look went with the territory—you got cow drek on your shoes if you lived in Holland, sand in your shoes if you lived in Arabia, and an O paper-punched on your face if you pinned your hopes to fuddy men and were forever thinking of men
that way
. For the first time to be a
Unbeknownst To
Everybody seemed to me a stroke of fortune, even of good fortune, or at least I could see how a girl like O might sometimes envy a freak like me.

Meanwhile, “Unh-unh,” “No sir,” “No way,” “No Princess Moses Razorblade on my junk wagon,” Tuney and Chug were muttering. “Cheese, you guys are scared of a measly mental patient? When I was the mayor’s daughter you weren’t backing out.” Chug and Tuney looked at each other. “Mayor’s daughter sumpm different,” Chug announced gravely. “Mayor’s daughter can cay for herself,” Tuney agreed. “Anyhow I don’t got to worry bout the mayor’s daughter,” Chug continued. “No more’n she worry bout me,” Tuney added.

“I’m never speaking to either of you again,” I said.

Chug and Tuney looked at each other again and, “
She-e-e-e, she-e-e-e, she-e-e-e
,” “Ho ho ho ho,” laughed a little sheepishly. “You just make that a promise and we be satisfied,” Tuney said.

“Come on now, litta Miss Razorblade.” I wrenched my arm away from Reggie but followed him toward the street.

“Them is two raidin lootin thievin evildoin niggers through and through, what got no more civilization between the two of em than a pair of wrong-matched snakes,” Reggie fussed as soon as we were out of hearing. “You really lay your body down for them two?” He shuddered. “Your taste so low you could mine coal in it.” “What’s wrong with coal?” I replied testily, “I needed the money. Besides, what’s good enough for O is good enough for me. I can be as hard as O, you watch”—and I cut him a richly signifying look. But he didn’t catch the poisonal tilt of my remark. “That girl got to stop thinking bout menfolks
that way,” he observed piously. “Not counting you I guess,” I said. “Huh? what you said?” “I know you oinked her in the broom closet, you hypocrite. I shoulda snitched on you.” “I never oinked no mental patient, and if I did she was sane at the time,” Reg said blandly.

We were crossing the yellow-striped traffic isle on Broadway where we Bug Motels waited for our dinky school bus every morning, and out of habit Reginald reached in his pocket, pulled us each out a Lucky and flashed his pearl-encrusted Madame Dunhill lighter, and there we loitered and smoked in the purplish haze of evening. Reggie was awfully quiet, for him—not a word about my see-through princess, which made me sure the news was bad. “I guess Emily’s dead, isn’t she,” I finally asked. “No, she still hanging on by that litta bitty thread she specialize in.” “Will she be okay?” “Depend what you mean by okay. They say she probly live awhile.” “She’ll have bad scars, won’t she.” “Hmmmm. I reckon this won’t improve her looks none. Won’t mess up her social life, though, since she never had no social life.” “What do you mean?” I said uneasily, “everybody loves Emily.” “You blee that, I sell you the B&O, cheap.” “I’ll take it,” I said. “I bet you do, you hard-head know-it-all.

“You know,” Reg said, “I use to think you smarter than them everyday nuts, but now I see you worse than all them others. You want to do what everybody here do, only worser. You tryna make like them damn fools who can’t help theyself. This here a hospital, girl, not a nut contest. Why you don’t get with the program stead of copycatting them genu-wine coo-yanns who don’t know no better?” “All the same you oinked her,” I said. “What you talking bout? I know O from the corner. We come up together. O like a sister to me.” “Yeah, well, plenty of guys oink their sister,” I observed, “that’s the main thing you hear around this rotten bughouse, about all the girls whose brothers
oinked them, in fact O didn’t need any more brothers to oink her, she already had two or three or I forget how many.” “I see you gone twist every subject round back to me like I was the one in the bughouse. I see you gone do just what you want to anyhow, you hard-head ragmop. If you want to oink them two lowdown dirty street pirates for a bag of rags, a bucket of oats and a pony ride, you belong in this place.”

“I wish I was with those ayrabbers right now,” I said, sticking my chin out. “Them ain’t ayrabbers,” Reggie said, “they
junkers
. You just junk to them, you understand me? It ain’t personal. You shut the door on they kind, they take your doorknob and the bricks out your wall, they take the marble off your stoop till you got no stoop, if your dog bark they take your dog, and if you get a fence, they take your fence and sell it at the scrap yard and the padlock with it. They a plague of locusts, you hear me?” I laughed. “I wish I was with them,” I said. “Go on, go with them. Next time they get popped they be glad to let you take the rap.” “So? How much worse can jail be than the bughouse?” “Even simple as you is, you know better’n that.” And I did: If I went to jail there would be no gamboling by the sleepy guard at the front entrance, for instance, just because old Lopes wasn’t in the mood that day to shake up his mashed potato and gravy lunch.

Then again I wondered if jail might not be a less embarrassing place than Rohring Rohring to come down with a social disease. And all at once I pictured what I’d done today, remembered that warm heavy hand at the back of my neck, and felt a strange sensation at the bottom of my gut, sumpm like a hot green wind in the kishkes.

“Say, you’re not going to snitch on me to Foofer for the sex part, are you?” I asked Reggie, “you know I can’t talk about sumpm private like sex with these farty old dreambox mechanics.” Reg
shook his head sadly at me. His eyes said, Am I a rat and they ain’t even no money in it? He was not a rat for fun. But having been reminded he said: “You lucky if you ain’t pick up some vanilla disease from them junkers. You know them don’t bath from year to year and they ladyfriends is the fi dolla stand-up kind in the men’s toilet.”

Sickness swept over me then, rose like a cloud of pea-green smoke from my stomach to my head, probably the first symptom of a social disease, and dizzily, cigarette in hand, I sat down on the pavement of the traffic isle, hard. “If that happen you won’t need me to snitch to no Foofer, you be running to that sawbones so fast to beat your nose from falling off in your cheerios.” Reginald smiled down at me. “I don’t care,” I snapped, “lemme die before I tell Foofer.” “If your nose fall off, he figga it out for hisself.” The Regicide squatted down beside me but I turned my back on him and blew smoke out my nose angrily like a dragon. “Anyhow they say the brain go first. Probably you won’t even know by then who you telling what.” “Then I won’t care anyway, will I,” I seethed.

“Say, you lookin sick, Bogeywoman,” Reg observed. “You got them little balls of sweat all over your forehead. Why you ain’t taken off that fool hotdog jacket from Carlin’s Park? You ain’t sawed up them arms again, is it?”

I didn’t answer. I sprawled there on strike with my legs sticking out in front of me and the plastic bag with the pink party dress in it on my lap. Since I wasn’t going to look at either Reg, or Rohring Rohring, or the ayrabbers’ stable, I had to hold my neck at a funny angle, from which all I could see was the combed-out skeins of streetcar and electric wires, bouncing like circus tightropes when the pigeons landed on them. “Why’d you come looking for me anyway?” I whined, “you don’t even like me as compared say to Emily or O.” Yes I was fishing, I hate
to admit it, but in my weakened condition I was sentimental. After Tuney T. Turpentine, Escrow, indifference to my person had temporarily lost its charm. The Regicide put me squarely in my place: “Yeah, I prefer the womens, you got that right,” he agreed. “They say I have a certain professional touch with the female mental patients. Anyhow I do like them girls, young ones, old ones, long, small, all.”

“I’m a girlgoyle, I mean I got just as many
x
chromosomes as the rest of em,” I growled. “Sho is, sho is. Sho you a girl, Ursie,” he said carefully, like talking to a mental patient, “sho you a girl but you got the manners of a chained-up dog. Like you ain’t had nothing but pencils to eat for a week. It ain’t personal, I seen worse, you just not my type.” “So why didn’t you leave me with the ayrabbers?” I said bitterly, “that Chug guy would’ve been glad to oink me.” “Hell’s bells, girl, I find somebody better than that to oink you if that’s what you want, come to that, I oink you myself. Maybe I don’t like you but I don’t hate you.” “Just keep your hands off the mental patients,” I hissed. “That’s what I’m talking bout, girl, that’s what you is, a mental patient. I use to think you smart but now I see you don’t have the sense to come in out the rain. You don’t know how many pea beans make five. You don’t have the sense God gave a nanny goat. You the type climb on the metal clothesline pole to see which way the storm be passing. You ain’t got the motherwit to track a rhino in four foot of snow. You don’t know which way you at, girl. You couldn’t get there if I put you there.” “I’m glad O and Emily are models of common sense,” I said. “No but they got they certain little girly ways.”

I decided never to speak to this fuddy again. However, there are slanders that cannot be passed over in silence. I added icily: “As a matter of fact I’m an expert tracker, thank you.” This was an empty brag when you thought of someone like the wood
wizardess, but I was sure I was the best they had around here. “Yeah? Then how come you can’t find nobody in this whole wide world to love and kiss your smart-ass self?” “How do you know I can’t?” I said, and we snarled at each other, all pretense of mutual regard temporarily laid aside.