. on my birthday. Jesus Christ! She’d be so happy. She was a country girl . . . barefoot ’til she was sixteen. My old man ambushed her with sucker sweet talk and popped a squealer in her gut . . . me . . . they split the Big Foot cotton slave scene and hit the Big Windy kitchen slave scene in Nineteen Eighteen. You know, white folk’s mansions and hotels. They had discovered the promised land all right.
‘Right off, my old man copped some loud mouth suits . . . his introduction and sample of white pussy . . . it freaked the nigger out! I was six months old . . . must have been a sonuvabitching stumble block to his night life chumping around. He and Mama fought like pit bulldogs one early bright . . . he pranced home stone broke with his fly fouled with “come” . . . his mustache starched with cunt juice . . . he beat the puking, living crap out of Mama . . . he bounced me off a tenement wall to close his act . . . he split with a cardboard suitcase and his pearl grey spats flashing in the zero wind. Mama had a nice round ass, with a Watusi face and lollipop knockers. Why shit, any other young country broad equipped like that would’ve dumped a squealer and split to the bright lights and some high class dick.’
Sue trembled against me as she finger stroked my temple. Her eyes were damp with empathy.
‘. . . But Mama was a blue ribbon Mama to the bone . . . she bundled me in an old army jacket . . . took a curling iron and some grease to the streets . . . dressed hair door to door for a lousy half buck a shot . . .’
She pressed her glass against my lips. I took a sip, then raced my tongue, a few laps, inside her mouth.
‘Tell me more, Slim! Tell me more!’ she pleaded.
I went on with the painful narrative, ‘Well, somehow she put together a survival kit that took us through the soup kitchens, bread lines, apple hucksters on every corner nightmare of the great depression. I was nine . . . maybe ten when she got tired, I guess . . . you know, the struggle must have been a bitch of a drain . . . anyway, a big, ugly black galoot chased her until she caught him. He wasn’t her style . . . she was a sucker for good looking bums . . . like my old man.
‘I remember how Mama would cringe away from Henry’s kisses . . . she hated him. But he was the only father I ever knew . . . and I loved him! Mama dreamed I’d be a lawyer . . . Henry swore he’d see to it . . . opened the plushest black beauty shop in Rockford, Illinois for Mama. She got the hots for a two bit hustler one day who brought his pretty face her way . . . dropped in to get his nails done. Just like that, she split with him back to the Windy. I cried until my guts dry locked . . . the pretty bastard was so cruel to us! Tried to turn her out. Mama cut him loose finally. But it was too late for me . . . I was already street poisoned. Maybe I got a secret hate for Mama hidden deep in my soul, because Henry died from a broken heart after she split. Maybe that’s why I’m punishing her. Why I’m not with her on my birthday. Maybe I want her dead and stinking like Henry. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to see her happy for even one day.’
The Mama rundown worked like a MoJo. She leapt to her feet with eyes brimming tears. Her body was twanging emotion.
She said with righteous heat, ‘Slim, you all fucked up in your head about your mama. You ain’t hip she’s a saint? Shit, lemme tell you about my chippie ass, dead and stinking Mama – that half-white Creole bitch treated Papa and me like dogs. You know why? ’Cause we had black skins. She only married him ’cause he had a farm and a few bucks. Her ass was dragging. She was played out as a chicken-shit flat-backer ’ho in Baton Rouge.
‘I got an older sister that thinks she’s white – she got the new shoes and pretty dresses. She was high and mighty Miss Anne. I had to wait on that bitch hand and foot or get my head busted. Papa and me picked the motherfucking cotton and slopped the hogs. Papa and me did the cooking and the washing. Mama and Miss Anne kept their asses pretty and prissy like muckety muck white bitches. Papa caught her sucking a white man’s dick in the barn. He killed her and the white man.’
Her voice broke, staggered the bitter rim of hysteria: ‘I’m glad he did. I’m glad she’s in her grave, dead and stinking. I’m just so sorry poor Papa had to do it.’
I pulled her down beside me. I said, gently, ‘What happened to your papa?’
She made a strangulated sound of anguish in her throat. She stared into nowhere like a sleep walker.
She almost whispered, ‘I found him in a pond. I didn’t know what the thing was at first there in the bloody water. They beat, shot and axed him to pieces . . . poor Papa!’
She collapsed in my arms. Great heaving sobs of sorrow racked her. I rocked her in my arms like an infant until she got herself together somewhat.
She said, ‘Slim, will you do something for me?’
I said, ‘Sure, anything.’
She looked me dead in the eyes. ‘Go over there and call your mama.’
I said, ‘What the hell am I gonna tell her?’
She said, ‘Tell her you love her, Slim. Make her happy . . . make me happy, Slim.’
She followed me to the phone, embracing my waist from behind. I put through the call and awakened Mama in Milwaukee. I talked to Mama for twenty minutes. She kept whispering to me to introduce her. I did and she and Sue hit it off swell for an hour.
Before Sue hung up, she made me happy. She said to Mama, ‘Honey, we will be dropping in on you one day soon.’
She looked into my face for a long moment. She said, ‘Kiss me. I wouldn’t bullshit your mama. I’m your girl!’
I kissed her for real.
She said, ‘Close your eyes, Birthday Bunny.’
I did. Shortly, I felt her fingers at my pajama coat. I opened my eyes. I fingered the stickpin. She slapped the roll of bills in my hand.
She said, ‘There’s fifteen hundred there . . . now let’s fuck, Daddy!’
I led her on off to bed. We made love until noon. I wondered whether I could beat the gorilla to the draw when I staked my claim to his woman. I couldn’t have legal pimp title until I faced him with her since he was available in town. We laid in Phil’s emperor-sized bed, steeped in the odor of our love juices. We made our plans to hustle tough for a year before we would make a home for Carla, her daughter.
Finally I said, ‘Let’s get up and do what we have to do.’
She said, ‘You mean catch a plane out of here?’
I said, ‘No, I mean let’s go drop the bad news on Jabbo. You know, and get your things.’
She propped herself up in the bed and squeezed my face with her eyes before she said, ‘We don’t need to take a risk like that. You don’t know Jabbo. I boosted everything I got. I can steal a new wardrobe. Let’s just split, Daddy. Okay?’
I eased Phil’s snub nosed rod from between the mattresses. I said, ‘We’ve got to do it right . . . we’ve got to face him . . . this rod makes us equal.’
She sighed and slipped out of bed to the shower. I lit a joint and tried to figure just how to accomplish the mission and leave it in a perpendicular position. I mean alive! I called the desk to locate Phil. He answered from Bitsy’s room.
He said sleepily, ‘Pally, you and that ’ho are in serious trouble
