Corregidora (Bluestreak) (8 page)

“What?”

“Nothing. Anyway, they ain’t nothing you can do when they tear the pages out of the book and they ain’t no record of it. They probably burned the pages.”

“… Naw, I don’t remember when slavery was abolished, cause I was just being born then. Mama do, and sometime it seem like I do too. They signed papers, and there wasn’t all this warring like they had up here. You know, it was what they call pacific. A pacific abolition. And you know, people was celebrating and rejoicing and cheering in the street, white people and black people. And then they called Isabella, that was the princess, they started calling Isabella the Redempt’ress, you know, because she signed the paper with a jeweled pen. And then after that black people could go anywhere they wanted to go, and take up life anyway they wanted to take it up. And then that’s when the officials burned all the papers cause they wanted to play like what had happened before never did happen. But I know it happened, I bear witness that it happened. Yeah, and Corregidora’s whores was free too, but most of ’em Mama said he put down in the rut so deep, that that’s bout all they could do now, though lot of ’em broke away from it too, but leastwise now they get to keep they own money and he wasn’t getting hide nor hair of it. Mama stayed there with him even after it ended, until she did something that made him wont to kill her, and then she run off and had to leave me. Then he was raising me and doing you know I said what he did. But then sometime after that when she got settled here, she came back for me. That was in 1906. I was about eighteen by then. Naw, she didn’t come near the place herself. She sent somebody to tell me where she was. Naw, she still think he was going to kill her. Whatever it was. By now I think he probly want to take her back, but I don’t think she go back. Shortly after that I went off and met her and then we come back up to Louisiana where she was living then. Naw, I don’t know what I would’ve done if she hadn’t come. He wanted to keep me, the bastard. But it’s hard to always remember what you were feeling when you ain’t feeling it exactly that way no more. But when she come back for me, I was so happy I didn’t know what to do, and was glad to get away from there. But by then I was big with your mama. Naw, she was born down in Louisiana. Then we come up here, you know, to get better work, and Mama was working for some Irish peoples, and I was staying home taking care of your mama and then little later on, Mama would stay at home and I was out working.”

“Didn’t your daddy do anything?”

“What?”

“About the burned papers?”

“Naw, my daddy was in the war.” He frowned.

“Died?”

“Naw. He went off to France during the war, and stayed in France.”

I said nothing.

“You never talk about your daddy neither. It’s always them women. What’s your daddy like?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“She met him when she was working down at the train depot. He just came in to get work, you know, help out and he ended up helping my mama out too, and then she had me and he went away again. He died up in New York somewhere. Some woman poisoned him. Mama never would talk about him. She said he had gypsy in him. Most of which I know my grandmama told me and told me not to tell my mama she told me. Mama never would have told me anything.”

“You mixed up every which way, ain’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem like you got a little bit of everything in you,” he said.

“I didn’t put it there,” I said. I felt the resentment again, the kind I’d felt when Sal was talking to me. I didn’t say anything else.

“I better get some sleep,” Tadpole said. “It be ’bout time to wake up in a little while.”

He turned away from me. I closed my eyes, but didn’t go back to sleep. I wanted him again, but I said nothing. I waited for the alarm to go off. I stayed in bed while he got dressed to go downstairs and open up. Then I got up to get breakfast ready when he came back.

Tadpole watched me through the mirror. I was brushing my hair. We’d been married for several months now.

“Your hair’s like rivers,” he said.

“Is that why you married me?”

“Naw, that ain’t why I married you.” He laughed a little. “Naw, that’s hardly why I married you.”

I wanted to ask him why did he, but I was afraid to ask.

“I coulda sung with Cab Calloway,” I said. “That time him and his band come out to Dixieland. He ask me to come up on stage with him, but I wouldn’t do it.”

“You lying.”

“Naw, I ain’t lying.”

“Yes you are.”

I grinned at him. “Yeah, I’m lying,” I said. “There’s a woman over on Deweese Street, though, every time she meets somebody she tells them that. I don’t know if it’s the truth or not. I don’t even try to guess myself.”

“Have you heard her sing?”

“Naw.”

“Cab Calloway must’ve heard her do something, though?” he laughed.

I laughed, then I frowned. He saw me through the mirror. I hadn’t meant for him to.

“What’s wrong, Ursa?”

“Nothing.”

“There’s something wrong.”

“Naw, they ain’t.”

“Come on over here, baby.”

I came to him and he put his head against my belly. I had on my slip. Sometimes I went to bed in my nightgown. Sometimes I wore my slip.

“You feel all right, don’t you, Ursa?”

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong? I know something’s wrong, baby. I can tell something’s been wrong.”

I stroked his head, then I laughed a little. “I could’ve sung with Cab Calloway, that’s all.”

He didn’t laugh.

“I love you, baby,” he said.

It still got me somewhere inside when he said that, and I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him the same. If he noticed it, he didn’t let on. He squeezed me a little as if he were waiting for me to say something.

“If anything bothers you, Ursa, you know you can tell me. I’ve always been here for you to tell.”

“I know, baby.”

We said nothing for a long time.

“What was you doing up on that stage besides singing?” he asked, looking up at me, smiling.

“The same thing I can do here.”

When we were together, he said, “I want to help you, Ursa. I want to help you as much as I can … Let me get up in your pussy … Let me get up in your pussy, baby … Damn, you still got a hole, ain’t you? As long as a woman got a hole, she can fuck.”

“I don’t know if you can … you can’t … I don’t know if you …”

He was up inside me now.

“I don’t want to do nothing till you ready, baby. I don’t want to do it till you ready.”

He was inside, and I felt nothing. I wanted to feel, but I couldn’t.

“Is it good?”

“Yes.”

“Is it good, baby?”

“Yes, yes.”

“I just want it to feel sweet, baby. I just want it to be sweet.”

“You don’t have to …”

“I want it to be sweet for you.”

I held him around his neck till I finally slept.

It was in the morning when he asked, “Did it hurt?”

“No.”

He looked over at me. He had his head on the pillow, and I was looking toward him, my head almost on his chest.

“It was something. You can’t tell me it wasn’t,” he said.

I said nothing. I kept leaning almost on his chest.

“You hurting somewhere, baby. I know you hurting somewhere.”

I wished he wouldn’t say that, because I wasn’t sure what it meant to him.

“I’m waiting for you to tell me,” he said. He seemed hard now. Before he had seemed gentle.

My chin was almost touching his chest when I said, “Let’s stand.”

We stood up but I couldn’t get him inside me. I wanted to say, “I’m not relaxed enough,” but I didn’t.

He stroked me on the behind, pulling up on me, then he said, “You have to work too.” He pulled up on me more, squatting down. He took me with him to the wall, squatting more. I still couldn’t get him in.

“Work, Ursa.”

“I
am
working,” I said. It was almost a cry, but a cry I didn’t want him to hear. I don’t know how long it was between it and when I finally said, “Tadpole, I can’t, I can’t.”

He stood watching me for a moment, and then he said, “Well, I’m not going to stand here all day.”

He walked away from me and went in the bathroom.

I stood facing the wall, remembering that time I wanted it but Mutt was angry and wouldn’t give it to me.

“Don’t bring it here,” he had said.

I bent down then to kiss him.

“I said, ‘Don’t bring it here, Urs.’ ”

“I just want to kiss you.”

He turned away. “Shit, I know how it is. Mens just hanging in there trying to get some. It’s the Happy Café awright. Mens just hanging around so they can get something.”

“Mutt, you know it ain’t that kind of a place. Tadpole don’t run that kind of a place.”

“I bet if I went over to one a those tables and I asked them what they have and they would tell me the truth about it, they’d say, ‘Piece a tail, please,’ and I asked them ‘What tail’ they say, ‘That woman’s standing up there. That good-lookin woman standin right up there.’ Shit, I know how mens is. They just be laying in your ass if they could.”

“You know I ain’t give it to nobody else.”

“How I know?” He turned on me, his eyes narrowed, then he turned his back to me. I tried to turn him back around, but gave up trying.

“Mutt, please,” I said quietly.

“I said, ‘Don’t bring it here.’ ”

That was all he said. He made sounds like he was sleeping. I thought he was, until he asked me, quieter than I’d heard him ask anything, “Tell me if they ain’t asked you.”

I tried to touch him again.

“I said I don’t want it,” he said.

That time I’d gone in the bathroom.

When Tad came back, I was still facing the wall. I could feel him near me, but I didn’t turn around.

“I knew about that other shit in the hospital,” he said coldly.

“What shit?” I turned around.

“I mean that
other
shit,” he said.

I was afraid to ask more. I knew by his look what he meant, and I was afraid that if I moved too far, he’d move farther. I held my stomach and turned back around to the wall. He walked on behind me and went downstairs to work.

One evening after I’d finished singing, a man came up to me and offered me a job singing Saturday nights at the Spider. I talked to Tadpole about it.

“Do whatever you want to,” he said. “You your own woman.”

I couldn’t tell whether he wanted me to take it, or he was thinking too much about what caused the trouble between Mutt and me. I wanted to take it, because I wanted the change. It was different living there now,
and
working there. I felt different.

“I’d like to take it,” I said. “You could probably get Eddy’s combo to come back on Saturdays, don’t you think?”

“You your own woman,” he repeated.

I didn’t say anything else. I telephoned the man and said I’d take the job. I had a two-hour show on Saturdays, playing piano and singing. Tadpole had Joe Williams playing piano for me there. Tadpole would come to pick me up after work. He came to pick me up the first night.

“Did you get Eddy’s?”

“Naw, I got a girl,” he said.

“Oh. Is she any good?”

“I think so.”

Her show had ended when I got back, so I didn’t see her, but Sal said she couldn’t’ve been more than fifteen.

Once when I was playing piano at the Spider, Jim came in. He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. In fact, he looked like he couldn’t believe I was there. And I hadn’t reckoned with what his being there meant. If Jim could come in, I was thinking … I went on singing. There was a break between hours, and when I finished, Jim came up to say something to me.

“What is it?” I asked. I was sitting on the piano stool. He was standing with his drink.

“You stop working for your old man?” he asked.

“I still work there,” I said.

“But you work here too?”

“Yeah.”

“He got a pretty little thing working over there. I was over there last Saturday. I didn’t ask about you. I just assumed you wasn’t working.” He looked at me. I knew what he was thinking.

“Naw, I’m working,” I said.

“You get paid more over here?” he asked.

“Yes, but that’s not my reason.”

“You just wanted a little change of pace, that’s all?”

“I guess so. Look, I better get back to work. That’s what he pays me for.”

He nodded, and went back and sat at his table. I could’ve taken a longer break but I just didn’t want to talk to him. He left shortly afterwards. I didn’t see him the next Saturday, but I finally saw the girl. She came in once during the supper show and went over and said something to Tadpole. She had long straightened hair and eyeliner around her eyes. She looked fifteen and older than fifteen. After she finished talking to Tadpole she went out. When I finished singing, I asked Sal if that was the one. “Yeah,” she said. “Her name’s Vivian. Fast little nigger.” I didn’t say anything to Tadpole about her. I kept going my Saturdays to the Spider, and Tadpole would come and pick me up afterwards.

But one night he didn’t come and pick me up, and I took a cab home. When I got there Sal was still there, and Thedo was behind the bar.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Where’s Tad?”

“He had to go out somewhere,” she said. She acted nervous. “Come over and have a drink with me.”

“Where’d he go?”

“He didn’t say where he was going. Come over and have a drink.”

“He could’ve called me,” I said. I went over to the bar with her, but then I turned and said I was going upstairs.

“She’s up there with him,” Thedo said in his low voice.

“Thedo,” Sal said.

I went upstairs. I knew what I’d find. Tadpole drunk and that hussy in bed with him. I opened the door.

Tadpole looked up. They weren’t doing anything now, but they’d been doing it. I came in the room.

“Get your ass out of my bed,” I told the girl. She wasn’t drunk or afraid of me, but she got up and started dressing. She seemed to be making fun of me without saying it, or even smiling. “If you want something to fuck, I’ll give you my fist to fuck,” I said, surprised at the words I’d echoed. I didn’t touch her though. I just stood there watching her. She dressed as she would have dressed if I hadn’t even been in there.