Mama Black Widow (10 page)

Sally tossed her head arrogantly and wiggled her way out the front door. Tears welled in Bessie's eyes.

Mama put an arm around her shoulder and said softly, “Ain't no need tu bawl. Thet pore chile jes' ain't no gud. Yu fin anuthur fren whut ain't mixin' wif low-down niggah pimps en big cahs.”

Bessie shook herself loose from Mama and screamed, “Mama, yu wuz wrong tu hurt Sally's feelins. Ah don' need no other fren. An' also Ah wish Ah wuz sweetheartin' wif a cute rich fella lak thet Grampy, have a fine cah tu ride me en an' buy me a red satin dress.”

I heard a shoulder seam rip in Mama's gingham dress when she backhanded Bessie hard across the mouth. Bessie tumbled off the sofa and bounced on the floor. She drew herself into an agonized knot and moaned in high pitch as she pressed her palms tightly against her face.

Mama sat on the sofa staring at her. Finally Bessie got up, dry sobbing, and glared at Mama with reddened, cold eyes. She patted her lips that were swollen fat and went down the hall to the bedroom.

Mama went upstairs to see Hattie Greene. I went to Bessie and hugged her and cried with her until I felt like a firebomb had exploded in my chest.

The last week in March an element of deadly fate popped up in the circumstance that Jonnie Mae Hudson moved into Bunny's old flat.

Jonnie Mae was a jolly hulk of black jelly in a size forty dress. She had a wide snoutish nose that coalesced with her fat face and spacious mouth. Her hippolike tiny ears were carelessly pinned toward the rear of a small round head, cockleburred with short kinky hair.

Peewee embers of maroon fire flared in sunken sockets whenever she laughed or was angry. There was nothing deadly about Jonnie Mae herself. In fact, she was likeable. She and Mama hit it off friendly like right away.

It turned out that it was a deadly circumstance that Jonnie Mae was a tool for and sister to Lockjaw Hudson. He was a policy racketeer who had installed Jonnie Mae in the apartment to use it as a policy game check-in station.

In the early evening of April 4, Jonnie Mae brought Mama a big yellow birthday cake that she had baked. Soldier, and then Jonnie Mae, would slip in and out of the bathroom with a quart bottle of Soldier's colored bootleg whiskey.

We were in the living room having cocoa and cake and laughing at Soldier's antics when someone knocked on the front door. Carol stopped on her way down the hall and swung the door open.

I saw her stiffen as she looked up into the face of Lockjaw, hideous in a bright spot of living-room light. He had a body and face shaped remarkably like Jonnie Mae's except that the right side of his face had been crushed in from eyebrow to jawbone. His maimed right orb was crimson and unblinking. It protruded from its mangled socket like a bloody gut.

Carol finally stammered, “Howdy do.”

He stood there staring his live eye down at her. He was breathing hard and fast and cocking his ugly head from side to side like some monstrous dog in heat. The terrible quiet was broken by Jonnie Mae's flushing of the toilet down the hall.

Papa had risen from the sofa to break up the weird tableau when the monster croaked, “Jonnie Mae here?”

Jonnie Mae came to the doorway and looked at her brother. She
smiled and took his arm and led him to the living room. A tough-looking red-haired guy with psychotic yellowish eyes and a battered bulldog face followed on his heels. She introduced him to everyone; everyone except Soldier who was acquainted with him.

His right hand was infested with diamonds, and when his left hand moved, a fantastic cluster ring on his pinkie burst colors like a swarm of pastel fireflies.

As the Hudsons went out the front door, Lockjaw turned and crawled his live eye over Carol's curves. Carol shut the door and came to sit beside me on the floor. She squeezed my hand. Her palm was wet, and she was shaking.

Soldier said, “That bird gets uglier and uglier every time I run into him. And that bulldog with him is Cockoo Red. He's done at least five murders for Lockjaw and countless mayhems. He knows Lockjaw will spring him.”

Mama said, “Is them dimons sho nuff?”

Soldier said, “As real as bedbugs. He's the operator of the Eldorado policy wheel on the Westside and the Lucky Tiger wheel on the Southside. He's rich as cream. I can't understand why he don't spend a few grand and get his face fixed and replace that pukey right eye with a clean-looking fake.”

Papa said, “Ah don' want thet ol' ugly niggah sniffin' 'round mah babee gul iffen he holin' all th' money en th' wurl.”

Junior said, “He git his face messed up en th' Fust Wurl Wah?”

Soldier smiled bitterly and said, “No, Little Frank, he's almost seventy. He was too old for that war. He got it in another kind of war.

“I heard a gang of heroic cops in East St. Louis, during the 1917 race riots, handcuffed him and smashed his face in a police quiz room.

“A pal of Lockjaw's had fought a gun duel with the police and killed one of them. They picked up Lockjaw to make him put the finger on his pal's hiding place. At first he tried to con the cops he didn't
know where his pal was hiding. The cops punched him around and made him mad so he boasted that he knew but he wouldn't tell. He never told so the police smashed his face. The underworld rewarded him with the ‘Lockjaw' moniker.”

I said, “What's a policy wheel?”

Soldier grinned and said, “Little Brother, it's a slick joker like Lockjaw with a big bankroll backing him against the nickel-and-dime bets of thousands of half-starved chumps who sucker for odds countless thousands to one against them.

“It's the prospect of the big payoff that hooks them. A dime played on a gig that hits brings eighty-six dollars. A buck on a lucky gig or bet pays eight hundred and sixty dollars.

“They believe they can dream up numbers that will make them nigger rich when thay appear on a slip of paper with a double line of numbers ‘pulled' in some secret place by the wheel.”

Mama said, “Pulled, whut thet? Thet mus' be whut Jonnie Mae's doin' en her flat, all them men en an' out.”

Soldier shook his head vigorously and said, “Sedalia, I don't think Jaw is pulling numbers over there. I think the flat is a check-in station for so-called runners or writers who turn in their bet books and cash, less their earned twenty percent.

“Those books have to be in before ninety-nine numbered balls are pulled from a hopper and those numbers mimeographed on thousands of slips of paper and passed out to the bettors. Jaw is got a sweet racket with the police practically in his hip pocket.”

Bessie said, “Thet wuz some fine purfum' he had on him. Ah wish ah had some.”

Mama said, “Shet up, heifer, an' pull thet dress down.”

Soldier said, “Old Jaw pays top dollar for everything, including broads. With them, he gets more than he pays for. One of my old army buddies who used to bodyguard him told me Jaw is a freak for using mental torture on his women and keeping them under guard like convicts.

“Rumor has it that he brutally uses his women in every sexual way. I guess he really hates broads because he's so ugly he's got to buy them. They say he always gets what he wants and nothing is so low and dirty that he won't do it to keep his score perfect. Old man Lockjaw is a dangerous and powerful man.”

I saw Papa picking at bumps under his chin. I got a sewing needle and sat on his lap and raised the ingrown hairs. The conversation went on and on about Lockjaw and the policy racket. And so did Soldier's visits to the bathroom with the hooch.

The party broke up around 10
P.M.
Soldier was loaded, but he wouldn't take Mama's advice to sleep on the sofa and not try to drive to the Southside.

Everybody was asleep by midnight except me. I was at the kitchen sink getting a drink of water. I glanced out of the window. In the moonlight I saw Railhead Cox sprint across the backyard and dart behind the storage shed.

I saw a feeble flicker of light flash through the sooty shed window. I got my coat and dashed out the back door. I stood on a box and tried to see what was going on. I couldn't, so I eased behind the shed and peeped through the opening.

Railhead was kneeling at a far corner with a flaming match in one hand and he was shoving something into the end of an old rolled up carpet with his other hand. His match went out, and I sped silently back to my kitchen window on the balls of my bare feet.

I watched Railhead walk casually toward the back door of the building. I heard his big feet pounding up the rear stairway. I counted to twenty-five and went back to the shed. I struck a kitchen match and walked over to the stash rug.

I pushed my arm into the end of it. I didn't touch anything. I pushed to my armpit. My fingertips touched something cold and metallic. My match sputtered out. I put my hand in my coat pocket for another. I froze and felt an electric tremor vibrate the pit of my stomach. I heard feet and voices at the rear of the shed!

Somehow my wobbly legs took me behind an old icebox at the empty end of the stash carpet. I crouched there and heard the muffled voices of Railhead and his big brother, Rajah.

I thought I was going to faint. I wondered if they had seen the flare of the match I had lit. But they walked directly to the other end of the carpet. I stuck an eye around the side of the icebox and saw Railhead light a candle and ram his arm up the carpet.

Rajah squatted beside him. Railhead pulled out a blue steel pistol, and then a roll of greenbacks and a shiny package wrapped in black cloth. Rajah undid the package and smelled the contents. He wet an index finger and stuck it into the contents and licked his finger.

Railhead frowned his impatience and said, “Raj, what have I got?”

Rajah put a pinch of the white substance on his thumbnail and sniffed it up his nostrils. He closed his eyes and moaned rapturously, “You got maybe half a pound of cocaine and also pure, is what you got.”

Then suddenly he popped his eyes wide and vised Railhead's arm.

He hollered, “You dumb chump, you've went and put the heist on some big shot dealer. Haven't you? You're gonna wind up in an alley with the rats squabbling over your stupid brains. Tell me, sucker, who did you sting?”

Railhead snatched his arm away.

He had a pained look on his face as he begged, “Please, Raj, don't call me a chump and sucker. You could motherfuck me and it woudn't hurt as bad. I stung Little Hat up in the next block.

“The rats ain't gonna' chew up my brains because Little Hat ain't hip it was me that took him off. I jimmied a window at his pad to beat him for any frog skins I could latch onto and maybe for his table Philco and record player.

“I was prowling the joint when he stuck his key in the door. When he came in I coldcocked him with an iron pipe and took the heater, a grand in foreskin and the dope out of his pockets. Hell,
Raj, I ain't stupid. I'm slick to take off a score like this with a chickenshit piece of pipe.”

Rajah sniffed another nail load of cocaine and said, “Yeah, it was pretty clean considering there was no deep casing our outlay for the caper.”

Then Rajah leaned close to Railhead.

He had a serious look on his sharp cunning face when he said, “Chuck, look me dead in the eye. You're gonna need me to unload this dope on the Southside. Now tell me, have you cracked to that square-ass country nigger, Junior Tilson, about this score, or anybody about it?”

Railhead gazed into his brother's eyes and energetically shook his head no. He started pushing the pistol and money into the carpet. Rajah stood up and put the package of dope in his robe pocket.

He said, “Chuck, gimme that stuff. I'm going to lock everything in my trunk.”

Railhead stood up and dropped the pistol and money into Rajah's other robe pocket. Railhead snuffed out the candle when they reached the opening at the back of the shed.

I heard Railhead say, “Raj, how much can you get for the dope?”

Rajah said, “Don't worry about it, Chuck. I'll get what I can. It's a cinch I ain't gonna' burn my own baby brother.”

I sat there behind the icebox for what seemed like hours. I was so stunned that Junior's best friend was a criminal. I really was.

Finally I left the shed and went to bed. But my sweaty sleep was one long nightmare. I kept seeing Railhead and Junior sprawled side by side in an alley with millions of slobbering rats devouring their blasted out brains.

Next morning I had a hard time forcing down my grits and biscuits for two reasons. The other reason was that everybody was upset because Soldier hadn't come to pick up Papa for several trash-hauling jobs they had scheduled.

At 11
A.M.
Papa left to take the streetcar to Soldier's Southside
rooming house. Junior and the twins got out a deck of cards the minute Papa left the flat. They went to the living room to play dirty hearts.

Mama gathered up some dirty clothes and put them in the bathroom tub to rub clean on a washboard. I followed and was at the point of telling her about Railhead when I heard the front door open and Hattie Greene came down the hall to the open bathroom door.

She was a short, tan double for actress Marlene Dietrich, and the still pretty face stuck there on the lumpy body made her look like she'd had an ill-advised head transplant. Tears streaked her haunting face, and one of her fat tits had almost escaped the torn bodice of her faded housedress.

Mama said, “Hattie, whut's don happen?”

Hattie's heavy bosom heaved with her sobbing. She opened her mouth to say something, but she was so upset only whiney, choking sounds came out.

Mama rubbed her sympathetically across the back and said, “Hattie, is Sally got en tu sumthin'?”

Hattie shook her head and said in her sharp yappy voice, “You got a gun, Sedalia?”

Mama said, “Nuthin' but thet ole shotgun uh Bunny's passed husban'. Why yu huntin' uh weapun?”

Hattie's damp eyes widened hopefully as she held her hands out toward Mama and said, “Oh, please, Sedalia! Let me have it. My caseworker tore my dress and slapped me. That black burly bitch slapped me. Please give me the gun, Sedalia. I don't want to kill her. I just want to set her funky ass on fire. Please, Sedalia, let me have it before she leaves the building across the street.”