by Mary Monroe
“What about Yellow Jack?”
“What about him?”
“What he goin to do about all this?”
“He say he wouldn’t have Catty back on a platter, on account of the way she run off with them albums.”
“Didn’t she bring the albums back with her?”
“Goodness gracious, Mo’reen, them albums all got broke up durin the commotion on that rib-joint-ownin nigger’s front porch. And it’s a doggone shame. Now Catty right back where she started. Ain’t got a album to her name.”
“I bet she mad as a Russian, huh?”
“Sho nuff is. And Yellow Jack hot as a six-shooter hisself about them albums gettin broke. He say he’ll help Catty finish packin and that’s all he’ll ever do for her as long as she live. Say she ever come up in his face again talkin about lovin him, he goin to take a brick and bust her brains out. And Lord knows poor Catty ain’t got too many brains.”
Maureen chuckled as Ruby started to hum another song and left the kitchen with a can of beer in her hand.
Fifteen minutes later, Maureen joined her on the living room sofa and Ruby’s arm went around Maureen’s shoulders.
“What you do while I was gone?” Ruby asked.
“Nothin but fuss with them greens.”
“Didn’t no maniac come by here and mess with you, did he?”
Maureen looked at Ruby for almost a minute before answering.
“Mama Ruby, ain’t nobody been here messin with me,” she said evenly.
Ruby drank from her can, not taking her eyes off Maureen.
“Sho nuff?” Ruby asked. She removed her arm from Maureen’s shoulders and wiped her wet lips.
“Lord,” Maureen sighed, looking away.
A knock on the door interrupted the conversation. Ruby and Maureen looked at one another and shrugged.
“Reach me my thing,” Ruby ordered, placing her beer can on the coffee table.
Maureen leaned over the side of the sofa and lifted Ruby’s shotgun from the floor.
“Mama Ruby, if it’s another bill collector or a maniac, don’t kill em.”
“How come?”
“Well . . . it’s such a nice day. I don’t want you to make no mess in the front yard.”
Ruby looked at the gun, then toward the door.
“Oh well . . .” Ruby sighed. “Run to the door and see who it is, Mo’reen.”
Maureen leaped up and darted to the front window, where she snatched back the drapes and looked out.
“Have mercy. It ain’t nobody but ole John French. White devil,” Maureen said, stomping her foot.
Ruby set the gun down on the floor and Maureen opened the door.
John was the teenage son of Ruby’s landlord. A handsome youth with dark brown hair and green eyes, the boy had spent several years off and on in detention homes. Though he was a delinquent, he was well liked and had many black friends. Yellow Jack and Bobby Boatwright often invited him to go night fishing in the Blue Lake. During his earlier years, John and his younger sisters had often been left in Ruby’s care, playing in the sandpile with Maureen. John considered Ruby something of a mammy to his family.
“What do you want?” Maureen asked John, gently kicking his shin as he entered the house.
“Mama Ruby, tell Mo’reen to quit pickin at me,” John pouted. “Every time I come here she go to joogin at me.”
“John.” Ruby laughed. “Mo’reen just loves to meddle with boys. She don’t mean no harm.”
“No matter. She ain’t got to be kickin me. Shoot. I got a risin on my knee from the last time I come over here and she kicked me. She upset on account of every time she want to go off to the movies with Bobby Boatwright, he done already made plans to go fishin in the Blue Lake with me and Yellow Jack,” John whined, giving Maureen a dirty look. She stuck out her tongue at him.
“Mo’reen, you behave. You gettin too old to be carryin on that way,” Ruby hollered.
John gave Maureen a smug look and strode over to Ruby. He kissed her forehead and sat down next to her.
“Mama Ruby, my mama want to know if you can send her a jar of your canned plum preserves,” John said.
“Sho nuff can,” Ruby replied, rising. John leaped up to help her.
“Whose ole sway-backed mule you rode up on, John?” Maureen asked, looking out the window.
“Mine. My daddy give it to me for my nineteenth birthday. Want to go for a ride, Mo’reen?”
Instead of answering, Maureen looked at Ruby.
“Yeah, she can go for a ride,” Ruby said with a smile.
“I seen Zeus. He told me about Catty runnin off with some dressed-up fancy man from the city. I declare, yall, them Flatts sho nuff have troubles. My daddy just loaned Irene ten dollars to get her some nerve medicine,” John said.
“I know the Flatts havin troubles. But it ain’t they fault. The devil done got loose in the house,” Ruby said, leaving the room.
Maureen had her back to John and was looking out the window at his mule, whose belly almost touched the ground.
“Whoever sold your daddy that messed up mule must have been mad at him!” Maureen laughed.
“Daddy got him for little or nothin,” John said dryly, standing close to Maureen. She moved back a little and they touched. John lifted his hand and stroked her thick hair. Maureen turned and looked at him and their eyes locked. Without a word, John moved over to the side.
“You seen Bobby Boatwright? My fiance . . .” Maureen said, returning her gaze to the mule.
“Not since the weddin last night. He left out of here with that gal Jolene. . . .”
“Oh?” Maureen said, not surprised. Bobby was hardly discreet. She had seen him with many other girls, all the while claiming to be her man.
“Mo’reen, after I carry you for a ride on my sway back mule . . . want to go swimmin in the Blue Lake with me?”
Maureen gasped and turned to face John with her mouth open and her eyes wide.
“Bobby Boatwright would have a cow if I was to go off swimmin with another man. And a white man? John, what’s the matter with you? The sun gettin to you or somethin?”
“Mo’reen, me and you growed up together. I’m just as much your friend as Yellow Jack. You go swimmin with him.”
“He more like family . . . I think. I can trust him.”
“What do you mean by trust?”
“Well . . . won’t nothin happen.”
John looked in Maureen’s eyes.
“You do care about me, don’t you?” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder nervously.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Maureen whispered back. She looked over John’s shoulder toward the kitchen.
“I swear to God, girl, you must be the cutest little colored girl I ever seen in my life. If you was to step on a nickel, when you lift your foot you’d leave a dollar bill behind. You sharp as a tack, Mo’reen.” John’s voice was low and level. He squinted his eyes as he looked at Maureen.
Alarmed, Maureen quickly opened the screen door and went outside to the porch.
When John emerged with the jar of plums, Maureen was already sitting on the mule’s back.
“Hurry up so I can get on back home,” she said.
John climbed up on the mule and secured himself in back of Maureen, handing her the jar. Her stomach muscles tightened when his body touched hers in a way much too intimate.
Ruby stood on the porch waving until Maureen and John rode out of sight up the hill onto Duquennes Road.
“Where you takin me?” Maureen asked.
“Girl, I am fixin to carry you on the ride of your life!”
The mule started to move slightly faster when John dug his feet into the animal’s sides. They rode down Duquennes Road and passed Bobby driving toward the hill to Ruby’s house.
“Whistle at him, John. I want to make sure Bobby Boatwright see me!” Maureen giggled.
John obeyed and Bobby stopped and climbed out of his car. Recognizing Maureen, he stomped his foo
t and shook his fist in her direction. A sudden, strong wind blew Bobby’s wide-brimmed hat from his head. Maureen and John laughed and continued riding.
Maureen stopped laughing when she felt John’s hands tighten around her waist. He leaned forward and placed his face against her hair.
“Girl, girl, girl,” he swooned.
“You stop that!” Maureen ordered, frightened.
“I declare, Mo’reen. I meant every word I said back at the house. You is sharp as a tack. Sometimes I see you struttin down Duquennes Road wearin cut-off jeans and a T-shirt—”
“Let me off this mule,” Maureen said suddenly, squirming.
“How come? I was goin to carry you all the way to my house and let you see what else I got for my birthday!”
“I’ll see your birthday gifts some other time. Now let me down so I can go back home.” Maureen handed John the jar of preserves. He looked in her eyes as she turned around to face him. “Un-ass me. Your hands is way too tight around me anyway. I can just barely breathe, John.”
Before she knew what was happening, his lips came down on hers and to her surprise, she did not protest. John’s hands moved down the sides of her thighs and he whimpered. Realizing they were sitting out in the open, in broad daylight where anyone could see them, Maureen pulled away.
“Don’t you never do that again,” she hissed.
John kissed her again, longer and much harder this time.
Maureen moaned and pulled away with hesitation.
“Didn’t I just tell you not to do that no more?” Maureen was angry and aroused at the same time.
“You didn’t like it?” John asked.
“. . . Naw, I didn’t like it. Here I am all but a married woman and you slobberin all over me.” Maureen leaped from the mule and glared up at John, who was grinning and staring at her.
“Listen, uh . . . John, don’t you tell nobody what we just done. You hear me? Ain’t no tellin what might happen.”
“I bet that Bobby Boatwright ain’t never kissed you like that, huh?”
“That’s for me to know!” Maureen spat.
John winked at her and turned to leave. Maureen was left standing on the road angry with herself for the ache in her loins, something she believed only Bobby could cause. She looked around quickly to make sure no one had witnessed her act of indecency. There was only the blazing sun over her head, watching.
39
Maureen took her time returning home. Strolling down Duquennes Road, she passed a truck going in the opposite direction containing about a dozen bean pickers, all black and Spanish men around her age. One of the workers had a radio and a lively tune was blaring away as Maureen waved and leaped up in the air. The radio was turned up louder and Maureen teased the men by lifting her skirt with one hand and doing a sexy grind to the music. She laughed and danced until the truck, with the workers cheering and whistling, was out of sight. On her descent down her hill, she recalled John’s hands and lips and stopped in her tracks. She remembered a conversation about romance she had had with Catty the night before her wedding.
“You reckon you’ll marry you a sport, if you ever marry, Mo’reen?”
“I declare, Catty, I’d like to. But I been thinkin. I been seein some pretty sporty men in Miami lately. Cept one thing. Most of em was white,” Maureen sighed.
“Oh, I ain’t got nothin against white men. I just might marry me one of em once to see what all the commotion about white folks is about,” Catty replied.
“I axed Fast Black one time. She been around. She been with Chinks. White mens. Spanish mens. She told me to my face a pecker is a pecker.”
Catty laughed at Maureen’s words.
“I don’t know about all that. I got this theery about Chinks—which I guess is the main reason I laid up with Yellow Jack.”
“What is this here theery, Catty?”
“I suspect Chinese men is the best in the bunch when it come to hanky-panky.”
“How you figure that?”
“You know how in them movies them Chinese women be tip-toein around and smilin and bein so quiet?”
“Yeah. Ole Mai Ling Ching what live in Miami is the same way.”
“Who is she?”
“Oh, a woman Mama Ruby use to visit now and then.”
“Anyway, the reason Chinese women so content is cause Chinese men is fuckin the hell out of em!”
“Sho nuff?”
“Girl, I ain’t as dumb as folks think I is. Why you think I latched onto Yellow Jack instead of one of these full-blooded nigger men. Shoot! Yellow Jack is a humdinger.”
“Oh?” Maureen said.
“And let me tell you—he is what you call a sho-nuff lover—woo!”
Maureen laughed and gently slapped Catty’s head.
“I don’t know about Chinese men for marryin. Anyway, ain’t but a handful in Florida. That’s why I been thinkin about white men a lot lately. Say I was to get married. To a white man. Not your everyday white man now. Oh, I think I could probably stand bein married to Al Pacino.” Maureen paused and scratched the back of her neck. “Course if I hook up with him, he’d probably want to carry me off to live in Hollywood or somewhere.”
“You think Al Pacino too good to live in Florida?”
“Naw. But he’s a city man—”
“Miami is a city!”
“He’s ’phisticated. He the kind of man you’d expect to live in New York or San Francisco.”
“There you go talkin about that San Francisco again. Lamb, I bet you one thing. That dago movie star was to come to Goons—”
“Let’s change the subject.” Maureen had become uneasy and frightened.
“Mo’reen, I seen John French eyeballin you real hard the other day. Speakin of white men,” Catty purred.
“Hmmmm. John ain’t half bad, but he is much too country. And I know for a fact, he don’t like nothin but blondes.” Maureen shook her head to get thoughts of John off her mind and she continued walking down the hill.
Roscoe and Snowball, the albino, were sitting at the table with Ruby drinking beer when Maureen reached the house. Before she could close the screen door, Zeus walked out of the kitchen carrying a tray with four beers and his tattered deck of cards.
“Hi, Zeus. Hi, Roscoe,” Maureen said. She deliberately ignored the albino.
“Ain’t you goin to say hi to Snowball, Mo’reen?” Ruby asked. Her eyes followed Maureen as she glided over to the sofa and sat down hard.
“Hi, Snowball,” she said over her shoulder.
“Hey, Mo’reen, I just got out the halfway house in Miami. They almost cured me from my heroin, you know,” Snowball said. He stood up and moved over to Maureen.
“I don’t care, Snowball. You always just gettin out a halfway house from messin with heroin. You ought to be shame of yourself. Messin with dope. If you had any sense, you’d be in a school somewhere learnin a trade.”
“Don’t be too hard on Snowball, Mo’reen. He can’t help it if he ain’t been as blessed as you,” Ruby scolded.
Zeus started to shuffle the cards and Ruby and Roscoe watched as he flipped over the ace of spades.
“Lord no!” Ruby gasped.
Maureen and Snowball turned toward the table.
“What is it, Mama Ruby?” Snowball asked, moving over to her. He looked on the table at the ace of spades staring boldly up at him. “Aiyeeee!” he cried.
Maureen rose and rushed to the table and stood next to Snowball, her hand on his trembling shoulder.
“Mama Ruby, somethin bad fixin to happen?” Snowball asked.
“Sho nuff,” Ruby said in a nervous whisper.
“Ruby, I want you to walk a chalk line these next few weeks,” Zeus warned. “And before you go runnin to Miami to any of them honky-tonks, you come to see me first so I can throw the cards to make sure the coast is clear.”
“Zeus, you stop comin down here causin a commotion with them cards. You ain’t nothin but a witch doctor and a sorcerer! Them cards is evil!�
��
“Shet up, Mo’reen! This is serious business. I been readin cards since I was nineteen. I know my business. This ace of spades mean death,” Zeus said.
“Who is this ace of spades for?” Maureen asked quietly. She moved closer to the table and faced Zeus, staring him straight in the eyes.
“Somebody in this room,” Zeus answered, looking from one face to another.
“I’m sho nuff scared . . . maybe I’ll stay here for the night,” Snowball announced. “I’m stayin here so Mama Ruby can protect me. Ain’t nothin’ll get me if I’m with Mama Ruby.”
“I might take a notion and stay here myself,” Zeus said in a shaky voice. The others had not been aware that Zeus had flipped over another card, the king of spades. “The doom is comin to one of us menfolk in this room.”
Ruby breathed a sigh of relief.
Maureen eased quietly away and went to the upper room. She went to bed without dinner, with many thoughts on her mind. Catty and Yellow Jack. Chinese men. Bobby Boatwright. Snowball. And John French’s hands and lips.
At dawn, Maureen went to the upper room’s front window and saw Roscoe walking up the hill. Apparently he had spent the night with Ruby too.
In Ruby’s room, Maureen discovered Zeus and Snowball in the same bed with Ruby. Ruby was the only one under the sheets and the men lay sideways across her legs. Beer cans were everywhere.
“Yall wake up!” Maureen ordered, clapping her hands.
Ruby sat up quickly, looking from Maureen to the two snoozing men.
“What in the world—yall menfolks get out my bed!” she shouted, reaching for her teeth on the nightstand.
The men staggered awake and rose quickly. Snowball’s shirt was unbuttoned and Zeus’ pants were missing. Noticing this, Ruby became alarmed.
“Yall drunks got in bed with me? Why, this is a shame! I could have been took advantage of!” she shouted.
