Mama, page 9
Like Crook, Rufus drank too much. At first he seemed to have it under control, but when Mildred started ignoring him under the covers at night—after the pills had long worn off—and giving him orders in the daytime like he was one of the kids, Rufus began hitting the bottle like he had grown accustomed to doing before Mildred had said "I do."
Rufus would go into a purple rage when he drank more than ten ounces of eighty proof. His brain cells became toxic and he choked on his own pitifulness, his own worthlessness and powerlessness, and began to spit it out at Mildred. She jumped back. Then he started looking slovenly all over again and began smelling like old rags and turpentine.
"You need to do something with yourself, Rufus," Mildred told him. "You make me sick just looking at you."
So Rufus went out and bought himself a brand new suit, a white shirt, and some cheap black shoes.
Mildred wasn't impressed. "I don't know who taught you how to dress, but that suit ain't hitting on nothing."
"You want me to take it back? I'll take it back, Milly," he said.
"Naw, why don't we go somewhere tonight? I'm sick of sitting in this house." The truth was, Rufus had asked her on lots of Friday and Saturday nights if she wanted to go down to the Shingle to have a drink, listen to some music. But Mildred had always said no. First of all, she was too embarrassed to be seen with him, but to be completely honest, she was scared she might run into Spooky.
And sure enough, who was sitting at the bar, sipping on a rum and Coke, when she and Rufus sat down at the other end of the bar. And he was not alone, of course. One of Mildred's so-called friends, Faye Love, was staring him in the face so he couldn't look at anyone else.
"It's hot in here," Mildred said, making sure her head stayed turned in the opposite direction.
"It ain't hot in here. That niggah down there is making you sweat. That's it, ain't it?"
"What niggah?"
Mildred turned her head in Spooky's direction. He was laughing with Faye Love and didn't seem to notice her.
"I want to go home," she said.
"Yeah, I think that's a good idea, a very good idea." Rufus finished his drink. Mildred had already hopped off the bar stool. Instead of heading for the door, she walked down the length of the bar and stopped in front of Spooky. Faye Love turned her head away.
"Hey, good-lookin', what you know good?" she said to Spooky.
"Nothing, Milly, not a thang."
Mildred turned away, pivoting like a ballerina, and slid her arm through Rufus's at the door.
For the next few months she tried to tolerate Rufus. Even though he went to Ford's every single day, he just couldn't pull himself together. She didn't love him and got sick and tired of making excuses for her feelings, of trying to convince herself that things would work themselves out. Rufus was making her miserable.
Finally one afternoon, while he was lying on the couch, she told him she was divorcing him.
Rufus didn't want a divorce and tried to explain why in a language Mildred was all too familiar with. He pulled a knife on her.
"I'll kill you first before I let you leave me. You know I've always loved you and now that you mine, I ain't letting you go for nobody. What I'ma do without you and the kids? Y'all my whole world." Rufus was crying and started kicking the wall over and over, harder and harder.
But Mildred did not feel sorry for him at all.
"Now who in the hell you think you gon' stab, motherfucker? You better put that knife down. You just like the rest of 'em. Ain't worth a good fuck. I should'a known all along. But I ain't crazy. I know when I've made a mistake. Crook was a mistake, and you, you worse than one, you was an accident."
The girls were peeking through their bedroom door, where they'd been playing tic-tac-toe, and when Freda saw Rufus come at Mildred with the knife and grab her arm, Freda ran out of the room screaming.
"Let go of my mama, you son-of-a-bitch!" she screamed. Freda hollered at her sisters to run and call the police. Money was spending the night with Chunky and BooBoo.
Rufus looked at Freda, still holding Mildred's arm behind her back. "Move, girl, go on back in the room. This is between me and your mama."
And before knowing what had come over her, Freda was on him like lightning, and with the strength of any grown man, she pushed her mama out of the way, grabbed Rufus by his shirt, and flung him into their room, where his head hit the metal bar of the bunk bed. He fell backward on the mattress. Freda grabbed the knife from his hands and put it up to his throat.
"Now, who you gon' stab? Huh? I'll tell you something, and you better listen good, you hear me?" She stuck the point of the knife into his neck. "If you put your hands on my mama ever again in your life, I'll slit your fucking throat and cut your dick off and you won't ever be able to fuck with nobody else again. Do you hear me, motherfucker?" Freda was shaking and shivering like a puppy, but she soon began to regain her strength.
Mildred was in a state of shock and hadn't realized that Rufus had cut her. Her blouse was bloody. She walked to the doorway. "Leave him alone, Freda," she said. "I can handle it from here."
Rufus got up without saying a word and followed Mildred toward their room, which was right off the living room. The girls ran past them, back into their own room to comfort themselves with Freda.
"Here we go again," Angel said.
"You crazy, Freda, you know that," whispered Bootsey. "You fucking crazy. He drunk as a skunk and could'a cut you too."
Freda frowned. "I wish he would'a tried."
Suddenly they heard the sound of glass shattering and Rufus yelling. Mildred had grabbed a beer bottle from the end table, rammed it against the wall, and jabbed Rufus in his side, where the glass had formed a long, smooth, sickle-shaped cut. Blood was gushing out like a red waterfall. Freda ran to see what had happened, and Rufus crumpled over on the floor. She suddenly felt sorry for him. Police cars were pulling up, lighting up the long driveway, and the sirens and red flashing lights brought the other kids from their room again.
"You didn't have to try to kill him, Mama," Freda screamed. She ran to the bathroom to get a towel and Doll opened the door for the police. When Freda returned, a patrolman was asking Mildred what had happened. She told him nothing. Another policeman went back to his car to call an ambulance, while the other three, bored with the incident, left altogether.
Freda was hysterical. "Y'all both crazy! First you try to screw each other to death one day and then try to kill each other the next! First it was Daddy, now this stupid jerk. I'm gettin' out of this house if you keep this up. I mean it! I can't stand living like a bunch of savages!"
Mildred told her to shut up and go somewhere and sit down. Freda stomped out of the room.
"Get up, motherfucker," Mildred said to Rufus, and he did. The ambulance arrived and took him to the hospital, where he was given fifteen stitches. When the kids woke up in the morning, his shoes were outside Mildred's bedroom door.
Eight
"CURLY, GIRL, I gotta do something," Mildred said into the phone. "And quick. Since me and Rufus broke up, I feel like I'm in a rerun. These damn bills done piled back up and I swear I can't get on nowhere decent. You know ain't nobody hiring, not even Ford's or Chrysler's or Prest-o-Lite. I'm back on the state again, did I tell you?"
"Naw, you didn't tell me," Curly said, cradling the telephone against her shoulder.
"Shit, these kids need winter coats and snow boots and Christmas'a be here before you know it. Now that Freda's in high school, every time I turn around she need money for this, money for that. That girl sews her behind off. Buys the most expensive fabric she can find. But let me stop boring you, chile, and get to the damn point. I need to get in touch with one of your friends."
"It ain't nothing to be ashamed of, Sis. I've been trying to tell you for years, when you get in trouble, you always need a friend. Somebody who can afford to do you a favor. The men around here can't even eat your pussy good, let alone help you pay for anythang."
Up until last year, Curly hadn't turned a trick for her husband, Clyde, in quite some time. Then he got burnt down at the foundry and they had to live off his disability. It was hardly enough, so Clyde suggested that Curly do "something." She did. Drove their Buick across the Blue Water Bridge to the first nice bar she came to in Ontario and made lucrative propositions. All of Curly's "friends" were Canadian. And she had always been and still was good-looking, even after seven kids. It seemed like the more kids she had the dumber she got, because she wasn't charging her regulars the going rates any more. She used a declining scale and was damn near giving it away.
"How you do it, Curly? Tell me, what do I do?"
"You don't do much of nothing, really. Just take 'em up to some motel—I'd go to the Starlight 'cause it's out of the way. And wear something pretty. Then just take it off, shake your behind a few times, and don't give him more than a half hour, forty-five minutes at the most. Make sure he use some protection so you don't catch nothin' and make him drank something first. Then tell him about your kids. How hungry they is, and how they ain't got nothing to wear to school or church, and that your lights is cut off and you can't even see 'em," she said, giggling.
"Come on, Curly, I'm serious."
"I know, I know. Can't you take a joke, Milly? Just exaggerate every damn thang. Let him know that this could be a regular thang so long as he improve your financial situation. Promise him that you'll guarantee he'll feel good at least once a week. Don't give him your address or phone number, though. I made that mistake years ago, chile."
"How much do you charge?"
"How much you thank it's worth?"
"I don't know, I ain't never thought about it before."
"You'll find out after you finished, honey, believe me, you'll know how much it's worth to you."
Mildred took him to the Starlight, the same place, she remembered, where Sissie had tried to strangle Janey Pearl when Sissie caught her with her husband. Crook had spent many nights up there with Ernestine, too. As a matter of fact, the only time anybody from town went to the Starlight was when they were creeping.
It was snowing so hard that at first Mildred was going to change her mind. She was nervous and scared and didn't know whether she could go through with it, but this felt like the only alternative she had. Hell, her kids weren't babies any more. They ate like grown people; grew out of their shoes and clothes so fast it seemed like as soon as she bought them new ones for Christmas, by Easter they needed the next size. Some things just can't be passed down another year. Fuck it, Mildred thought, pulling up to the motel. I'll do this till I can thank of somethin' better.
Her skin felt like little ants and maggots were crawling all over it every time he touched her—a complete stranger, and a white man at that—but Mildred had drunk three stiff shots of Jack Daniel's before she'd opened the car door, and once inside, offered him some and took three more. She told him that her name was Priscilla and she was a widow. That her husband had died of a heart attack and left her with an unpaid insurance policy and seven growing kids. Mildred was so dramatic about it, even she started crying. It took exactly five minutes to make his tiny penis droop with satisfaction. And Mildred went home with one hundred dollars.
She hadn't known just how many people actually crept at the Starlight, but when she started recognizing the cars parked outside her room, she decided to take this fellow to a motel in Canada. Now the kids were going to school in brand new everything and she met him every Sunday for three months, till she couldn't stand it any more. He had started to really like her. Even wanted to meet her kids. Mildred told him he must be nuts. Besides, she was tired of getting drunk every Sunday and lying to her children about a part-time job where she could never be reached by phone. The kids, however, weren't the least bit suspicious.
Ever since Carabelle had moved into Mildred's old house on Twenty-fifth Street, she'd been giving weekend parties—well, not exactly parties; more like a combination casino, restaurant, brothel, and cabaret. Mildred had even gone a few times. Her kids' old bedrooms had been turned into trick stops. The sun porch had little card tables and folding chairs situated so people could eat the platefuls of greens, macaroni and cheese, barbecue, chitterlings, and potato salad that Carabelle sold for $1.50 (the two pieces of white bread were free, she said), and one corner of the living room had been made into a bar. Drinks were a dollar. Didn't matter what proof you wanted, they were all the same price. Folks danced to records in the dining room. There was always a crap game going on in the basement. The serious gamblers came in through the back door and went straight downstairs. The room was always full of smoke and loud voices, and cursing and grumbling and heavy drinking.
Whenever Mildred had run into Carabelle at the dry cleaners or the drug store or the liquor store, Carabelle always flashed a wad of twenties at least six inches thick. Hell, Mildred thought, my house is big enough for a party. And everybody know I make the best barbecue sauce and potato salad in South Park. She made up her mind that she would finally do something that would make her a lot of money.
The kids were excited. They made signs out of cardboard and used bright paint to make sure they could be read at night. Then they put them all over town—in Stinky's Liquor Store, in the Shingle, at the pool hall, at the A&P, in the beauty and barber shops, in the parking lot at the welfare and social security offices, outside the telephone company on a telephone pole, and at Detroit Edison under a streetlight. Mildred's phone was jumping off the hook from folks calling to make sure it was for real. They should've known better, because everybody knew that when Mildred said she was going to do something, she did it.
She had the kids clean up the whole house and she cleared all the furniture out of the way to make room for people and dancing. Freda and Money cleaned thirty pounds of chitterlings and hog mogs—took them almost nine hours—while Mildred had Bootsey and Angel chop up celery, onions, and bell peppers for the potato salad. Doll's job was to roll plastic forks and knives inside napkins and put a tiny rubber band around them. Mildred's sauce simmered for two days, and she hired Deadman to watch the barbecue grill. When Freda saw him, she couldn't bring herself to say anything, and he acted like nothing had ever happened. Mildred turned her bedroom into the gambling room, but refused to have any whores.
When Friday night came, cars were lined up for more than ten blocks, alongside the railroad tracks and up and down Moak and Thirty-second Streets until daylight peeked through the drawn curtains and Mildred had to make everyone leave. After she paid Deadman, gave the kids ten dollars apiece, and paid Gill Ronsonville for running the crap table, she had made more than seven hundred dollars. She put it in a Tiparillo cigar box and put it on the highest shelf in her bedroom closet. Then she started humming Nancy Wilson's song. "And you don't know and you don't know and you don't know, how glad I am." Mildred knew she was on to something good.
The kids cleaned up the house again the next day, and Saturday night was a repeat performance. For the next several months Mildred had these parties twice a month. She felt like she was on easy street.
Then she got busted.
Carabelle didn't like Mildred taking away all her business, and one Sunday morning, after Mildred had just put out the last of her customers—all except two or three die-hard gamblers and a couple of her friends who were too drunk to move—there was a knock at the door. The police had received a phone call from an anonymous neighbor complaining about the noise. Mildred knew this was bogus because her neighbors had been the first to show up. When they searched the house and found the crap table on the premises, they hauled everybody downtown, including Mildred. She was fined two hundred dollars, put on probation for a year, and released. This marked the end of her parties. And even though Baby Franks, the owner of the house, had been one of the highest rollers, when he found out Mildred had been arrested, he suggested it would be better if she found another place to live. Said he didn't want a lot of illegal hanky-panky going on in his house. Mildred didn't hesitate to start looking because she had something she never had before: some money in her pocket.
***
The city had started excavating to build those housing projects that nobody believed would be built, smack dab in the middle of South Park between Twenty-fourth and Twenty-eighth Streets, and from Moak to Manuel, which was a good ten acres. It had been estimated that about two hundred or more low-income families would have a decent, cheap, and modern place to live. But these dwellings wouldn't be ready for at least another six to eight months. Mildred told Baby Franks she planned to move into one of them, and since he was a righteous, churchgoing man, he said he could wait until then.
Mildred had never learned how to put money in the bank—never had enough to save—so she kept her cigar box hidden in the garage. Then the engine in the Mercury blew up and she had to buy a new one. The gas station attendant told her that if she wanted to go on living, she'd do best to replace the two balding back tires, too. Then she needed snow tires. After all, this was Michigan. Then it was two dollars here and ten dollars there, till the box was empty. So when Prest-o-Lite finally called her, Mildred was glad to take the job. But after she'd been working there a while, she couldn't decide which was worse, scrubbing white folks' floors, waiting on people in a bar, cooking hamburgers and french fries, taking care of dying old people, or winding spools of wire from three-thirty to eleven-thirty at night.
While she sat bent over a conveyor belt, her kids were doing things at home that would take Mildred some time to catch on to. Money and Bootsey had become the biggest rogues in South Park, stealing from the Rexall Drug Store everything they could drop into a pillowcase—candy bars, games, toys, cigarettes for Freda, who was now smoking almost five a day. Angel and Doll were practicing pressing and curling each other's hair, and Angel had talked Doll into letting her cut hers, since it hung down past her shoulders. Angel cut a gigantic plug out and didn't even tell Doll until the next morning when she went to comb it. They were both afraid to tell Mildred.
