The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  I took a handful of Silky Smooth and began massaging my scalp. Then, just to be on the safe side, I added Precautionary Oil, thick, odorless, indigenous to the Georgia swamps. Massaging deftly, I remembered that old-fashioned hair aids were mixed with yak dung and lye. They burned the scalp and if the stuff got in your eye you could go blind from it. One thing was certain: you combed out scabs of dried blood for a month. But a compassionate northern senator had the hair aids outlawed. Said he, in ringing historic words: “Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment to this great Spade tragedy! These people are real Americans and we should outlaw all hair aids that makes them lose their vibrations and éclat.” Silky Smooth (using a formula perfected by a Lapp tribe in Karasjok, Norway) posed no problems.

  Yes indeed. A wild excitement engulfed me. My mirrored image reflected, in an occult fashion, a magnificent future. I hadn’t felt so good since discovering last year that I actually disliked watermelon.

  But the next step was the most difficult act of my life. I had to wait five minutes until the pomade penetrated, stiffened, evaporated. Five minutes of suffering. I stood tall like the great-great-grandson of slaves, sharecroppers, Old World royalty. Tall, like a storm trooper, like an Honor Scout. Yes! I’d stalk that druggist if the experiment failed. Lord—it couldn’t fail! I’m Walter Mitty’s target-colored stepson. Sweet dreams zipped through my mind. A politician had prophesied that it was extremely likely a Negro would be elected President of the United States in the year 2,000. Being realistic, I could just picture myself as Chairman of the Handyman’s Union, addressing the Committee on Foreign Relations and then being castrated. At least I’d no longer have to phone Mr. Fishback, the necrophilic funeral director, each time I went downtown. What a relief that would be. The dimes I’d save!

  While the stuff dried I thought of Mr. Fishback. Sweet Daddy Fish, Nonnie called him, but Nonnie liked to put the bad mouth on people. I owed Mr. Fishback for my latest (was it counterfeit?) Credit Card.

  Beams of the morning sun danced through the ice-cube-size window as I began to wash the pomade out of my hair. I groaned powerfully. The texture of my hair had changed. Before reaching for a towel, I couldn’t resist looking in the cracked mirror while milky-colored water ran down my flushed face.

  Hail Caesar and all dead Cotton Queens! Who the hell ever said only a rake could get through those gossamer locks?

  Indeed! I prayed. I laughed. I shook my head and watched each silky curl fall into place. I had only one regret: I wished there were a little wind blowing, one just strong enough to give me a windswept look; then I’d be able to toss a nonchalant lock from my forehead. I’d been practicing a week and had the bit down solid.

  You could borrow an electric fan, I was telling myself, and just then I heard Nonnie Swift scream.

  “Help! Won’t somebody please help me?” The voice came from the hall.

  Let the brandy bitch scream her head off, I thought. A Creole from New Orleans, indeed. If there’s anyone in this building with Creole blood, it’s me.

  “I’m dying. Please help a dying widow . . .” the voice wailed from the hall.

  I unwillingly turned from the mirror. The Wig was perfection. Four dollars and six cents’ worth of sheer art. The sacrifice had been worth it. I was reborn, purified, anointed, beautified.

  “I’m just a poor helpless widow . . .”

  Would the bitch never shut up? With the majesty of a witch doctor, I went to Nonnie Swift’s rescue.

  She was sprawled on the rat-gnawed floorboards of the hall, clutching a spray of plastic violets, rhinestone Mother Hubbard robe spread out like a blanket under her aging, part-time-whore’s body, which twitched rhythmically. Nonnie’s blue-rinse bouffant was a wreck. It formed a sort of African halo. Tears sprang from her sea-green contact lenses. She jerked Victorian-braceleted arms toward the ceiling and whimpered pitifully.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Nonnie folded her arms across her pancake stomach and moaned.

  I knelt down beside her, peered at her contorted rouged face, and got a powerful whiff of brandy.

  Like a blind thief’s, Nonnie’s trembling hands pawed at my chin, nose, forehead, and The Wig.

  I wanted to break her goddamned hand. “Don’t mess with the moss,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m in great pain, Les.”

  I tried to lift her into a sitting position. The lower part of her body seemed anchored to the floorboards.

  “Feel it,” Nonnie said, belching.

  “Feel what?”

  “Feel it,” Nonnie repeated tersely.

  “Don’t you ever give up? You’re old enough to be my mother.”

  She screamed again. Cracked lips showed through her American Lady lipstick, which is a deep, deep purple shade.

  “Thank you, son,” Nonnie sighed.

  “Are you stoned?” I asked. I had a feeling she wasn’t talking to me.

  “Stoned?” Nonnie sneered. “I’m in pain!”

  “Just try to sit up,” I pleaded. “Then put your arm on the banister.”

  “What us poor women go through.”

  “Do you want me to call the doctor?”

  “Yes! Call the doctor! Call the fire department! Call the militia!” Nonnie shouted. “It’s coming. Two years overdue.”

  Disgusted, I stood up. “You’re really loaded.”

  “I ain’t no such thing. I’ve been trying to have this baby for a long time. I even said I’d have it on television. But they wouldn’t let me. Of course you know why, don’t you? I come from one of the oldest families in New Orleans, too. I’m only living among you people because of him. I want my son to see all the good and bad things in this world. Understand?”

  I understood only too well. “Do you want me to help you to your pad?” I said. “I ain’t got all day.”

  “You’d leave a pregnant woman flat on her back?”

  Just then Mrs. Tucker opened her rusty tin-covered door. Resplendent in a pleated burlap sack dress, domed head, always sucking rotten gums, she stood and glared.

  I glared right back. “Hey,” I said (that’s Carolina talk for “hello”). “Hey, you dried-up old midwife.”

  “Harlem riffraff,” Mrs. Tucker spat. “A young punk and a common slut. You’d be lynched down home.”

  Nonnie raised up and said sweetly: “Mrs. Tucker, my baby is coming at last. Aren’t you delighted?”

  “A sin,” Mrs. Tucker shuddered. She pulled her seventy-nine pounds up and slammed the tin-covered door.

  “She just ain’t friendly,” Nonnie commented sadly.

  “Don’t let it get you down, cupcake.”

  “At least she could have offered to nurse my baby.”

  “Is the father a white man?”

  “I hardly think so,” Nonnie said slowly. “But you never can tell, can you?”

  Suddenly, Nonnie was choked with sobs. Strong tears washed away the sea-green contact lenses, leaving only the true color of her sky-blue eyes. “No more pain, Les. I’ve paid the cost. But just think what he’ll have to go through in Harlem. Leaving the warm prison of my womb. Born into unchained slavery.”

  I looked down at Nonnie. Perhaps she was Creole. “Things are getting better every day,” I said.

  “Oh. I hope so,” Nonnie cried. “Things have got to change, or else I’ll go back to my old mansion in the Garden District, where the weeds have grown and the Spanish moss just hangs and hangs, and the wind whistles through it like a mockingbird.”

  Does that chick read? I asked myself, can she? and decided probably not, she probably saw it and heard it all in the movies.

  I had an urge to tell Nonnie she ought to be on the stage or in a zoo. I’d listened to all this fancy jazz for three years. I realize people have to have a little make-believe. It’s like Mr. Fishback says: “Son, try it on for size because after you see me there’ll be no more changes.” Sooner or later, though, you have to step into the spotlight of reality. You’ve got to do your b
it for yourself and society. I was trying for something real, concrete, with my Wig.

  So I said to Nonnie, “I’m gonna make the big leap. I’m cutting out.”

  “You? Where the hell are you going?”

  “Just you wait and see,” I teased. “I’m gonna shake up this town.”

  “And just you wait and see,” Nonnie mocked. “You curly-headed son of a bitch. You’ve conked your hair.”

  “Not conked,” I corrected sharply. I wanted to give her a solid blow in the jaw and make her swallow those false teeth. “Just a little water and grease, Miss Swift.”

  “Conked.”

  “Do you want me to bash your face in?”

  “I’m sorry, sweetcakes,” Nonnie said.

  “That’s more like it. You’re always putting the bad mouth on people. No wonder you people never get nowhere. You don’t help each other. You people should stick together like the gypsies.”

  “It’s a pity, ain’t it?”

  Although I was fuming mad, I managed to lower my voice and make a plea for sympathy. “I can’t help it if I have good hair. You can’t blame a man for trying to better his condition, can you? I’m not putting on or acting snotty.”

  “I didn’t wanna hurt your feelings,” Nonnie said tearfully. “Honest, Les. You look sort of cute.”

  “Screw, baby.”

  “I really mean it. I hope my son has good hair. God knows he’ll need something to make it in this world.”

  “That’s a fact,” I agreed solemnly. “The Wig is gonna see me through these troubled times.”

  Nonnie questioned the plastic violets for confirmation. “It gives me a warm feeling to know that I can buy bread in my old age,” she remarked with great dignity. “My baby boy will be a great something. I’m sure high-school diplomas and college degrees are on the way out, now you can get them through the mail for a dollar ninety-eight, plus postage. Look at the mess all those degrees have got us in. By the time he’s a grown man success might depend on something else. Might well be a good head of hair.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. Then, blushing, I couldn’t help but add: “You know, Nonnie, I feel like a new person. I know my luck is changing. My ship is just around the bend.”

  “I suppose so,” Nonnie said bitchily. “I suppose that’s the way you feel when your hair is conked.”

  I turned and began walking away. Otherwise, I would have strangled Nonnie Swift.

  Now, she began to cry, to plead. “Les—Lester Jefferson. Don’t leave me flat on my back. Please. I’m all alone. Mrs. Tucker won’t help me. You’ll have to sub for the doctor.”

  “Screw.”

  I had no time for the drunken hag. How could a New Orleans tramp appreciate The Wig? That’s the way people are. Always trying to block the road to progress. But let me tell you something: no one, absolutely no one—nothing—is gonna stop this boy. I’ve taken the first step. All the other steps will fall easily into place.

  Who was I talking to? Myself. Feeling at peace with myself and proud of my clear reasoning, I decided to make it up to Miss Sandra Hanover’s on the third floor, to what Miss Sandra called her pied-à-terre.

  Miss Sandra Hanover was intelligent, understanding. A lady with class.

  Two

  THE DOOR, HUNG with an antique glass-beaded French funeral wreath, was open. Hopefully, I entered and looked over at Miss Sandra Hanover and was chilled to the bone.

  Miss Sandra Hanover, ex-Miss Rosie Lamont, ex-Mrs. Roger Wilson, nee Alvin Brown, needed a shave. The thick dark stubble was visible under two layers of female hormone powder. But she had plucked her eyebrows; they v’d up toward Chinese-style bangs like two frozen little black snakes. A Crown Princess, working toward a diva’s cold perfection, she did not acknowledge my entrance. She looked silly as hell, sitting on a warped English down sofa, wearing a man’s white shirt, green polka-dot tie, and blue serge trousers. Her eyes were closed and her Texas-cowboy sadist’s boots morse-coded a lament. At home Miss Sandra Hanover normally wore a simple white hostess gown which she’d found in a thrift shop. So freakish, I thought, mustering up a smile.

  Coming up, I’d decided not to comment on The Wig, realizing rhetoric would not be effective. The Wig would speak for itself, a prophet’s message.

  I went over to the warped sofa and said, “What’s wrong?”

  Miss Sandra Hanover clasped her two-inch fake-gold-finger-nailed hands. Then she opened her bovine eyes, but made no reply.

  “Did you upset those faggots last night?” I coaxed.

  Miss Sandra Hanover blew her nose with a workman’s handkerchief. Her face was bright. Then it caved. A chalice of tears.

  “Oh, Les. It was simply awful. Remember Miss Susan Hayward in I Wanna Live?” Her voice was so heavy with suffering that I immediately thought of Jell-O.

  “Yeah. But why the waterworks?”

  The Crown Princess masked a doubting stare. She bolted over to the gun cabinet and got a perfumed Lily cigarette.

  Imitating a high-fashion model’s coltish stride, Miss Sandra Hanover paraded around the nine-by-seven pied-à-terre, striking grand bitchy Bette Davis poses.

  Sucking in her breath, she suddenly stopped and began speaking as if she had rehearsed her monologue diligently:

  “Well, I went to this drag party on Central Park West last night. Mr. Fishback couldn’t chauffeur me in the Caddie. A night-rider funeral. So, your mother taxied down. Ever so grand. I looked like Miss Scarlett O’Hara. Miss Vivien Leigh was simply wonderful, wasn’t she? You should have seen how lovely I looked, Les. Peach-colored satin. I let my silver foxes drag the floor like Miss Rita Hayworth in Gilda. I’m maiding for this call girl on Sutton Place South. The sweetest little thing from Arkansas. She let me wear her diamond earrings like those Miss Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She had this John glaze the foxes. The sweetest little furrier. I didn’t even have to do him. I just told him that he really loved his mother. Like he wanted to sleep with her when he was four years old.”

  “Still up to your old tricks.” I laughed.

  “Now, Lester Jefferson,” Miss Sandra Hanover said coyly. “Everybody’s got something working for them. I bet you’ve got something working for you.”

  Smiling and silent, I went and sat down in a modern Danish chair which looked like a miniature ski lift.

  Miss Sandra Hanover cleared her throat. “Remember Miss Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard? Coming down that spacious staircase, mad with her own greatness, beauty? And all those common reporters thinking she was touched in the head? She knew deep down in her own heart that she was a star of the first multitude! Well, love, that was me last night.”

  Greedily relishing her victory, Miss Sandra Hanover clucked her tongue, leaned back and struck a Vogue pose. Vigorous, in the American style, she wetted liver lips, exhaled, and continued: “Oh, did those faggots want to claw my eyes out! I acted like visiting royalty. Remember Miss Bette Davis in Elizabeth and Essex? I sat on that cockroach-infested sofa like it was a throne and didn’t even dance! I just gave’m my great Miss Lena Horne smile . . .”

  Drunk with dreams of glory, Miss Sandra Hanover’s voice became a coquette’s confidential whisper: “Later, things got out of hand. The lights were turned down low. Sex and pot time. Miss Sammie knocked over the buffet table, which was nothing but cold cuts anyway, and those half-assed juvenile delinquents started fighting. I pressed for the door.

  “Three Alice Blue Gowns came running up the stoop. Naturally, they thought I was a woman. I flirted like Miss Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa. Then this smart son-of-a-bitch starts feeling me up. You see, I was a nervous wreck dressing for the party. I couldn’t find my falsies. I looked high and low for those girls! I had to stick a pair of socks in my bosom. And this smartass cop has a flashlight and pulls out my brand-new Argyle socks. Oh! I was fit to be tied. In high drag going to the can at two in the morning. Suffering like Miss Greta Garbo in Camille, and before you knew it: daylight . . .”

>   “And the doll was ready for breakfast in bed,” I joked, craning my neck for a glimpse in the oval-shaped mirror above Miss Hanover’s crew cut.

  She cleared her throat again and slumped back on the sofa. “Breakfast? I couldn’t eat a bit. Slop! I felt like Miss Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number. But I did this lovely guard and he brought me two aspirins and a cup of tea.”

  Miss Hanover fell silent. I couldn’t resist another glance at myself in the mirror, dreaming an honest young man’s dream: to succeed where my father had failed. Six foot five, two hundred and seventy pounds, the exact color of an off-color Irishman, my father had learned to read and write extremely well at the age of thirty-six. He died while printing the letter Z for me. I was ten, and could offer my mother little comfort. I remember she sprayed the bread black. I remember the winter of my father’s death as a period of black diamonds, for my mother and I had to hunt for coal that had fallen from trains along the railroad tracks. Like convicts hiding in an abandoned farmhouse, we sat huddled in our ramshackle one room. My mother read to me by candlelight. I vowed that I would learn to write and read, to become human in the name of my father. The Wig wasn’t just for kicks. It was rooted in something deeper, in the sorrow of the winter when I was ten years old.

  Remembering this now, I bit my lower lip and turned to Miss Hanover. “It’s a good day, doll.”

  But Miss Sandra Hanover only saw the blood of suffering. “Les, they sent me to a headshrinker. Everyone knows I’m a clever woman. I am not about to go to no nut ward! I lied to this closet queen. I said I was from down South and they’d told me it was all right to go in drag in ‘Nue Yawk cit-tee.’ The closet queen nodded her bald head and said, ‘That’s interesting.’ ‘Yes,’ I smiled back like a nice little water boy. ‘Don’t feel bad. This is quite common among Negro homosexuals who come North.’ ‘Let’s get this straight,’ I said. ‘I am not a homosexual. I am a real Negro woman.’ ‘You don’t understand,’ Miss Headshrinker had the nerve to tell me. ‘My name is Miss Sandra Hanover. Do you wanna see my ID card? You know. Blue is for boys and pink for girls.’ Did Miss One turn red in the face! She excused herself and came back with two more closet queens. These bitches told me that I was a common Southern case. Ain’t that a bitch? I was born and raised in Brooklyn. Now I got to take treatments twice a week because they think I is queer and come from the South. Why, everybody knows I’m a white woman from Georgia.”