by Mary Monroe
“We ain’t got enough to cover no cab from here to the house. Damn that bus!” he hissed. “I guess—” he stopped and shaded his eyes. He was looking at the Black man with the movie-star looks. “Ain’t that Brother Nelson yonder there?”
“Who?”
“The undertaker that own that big white house directly across the street from us. He come up to me when I was in the yard the other day and introduced hisself,” Mr. Boatwright explained. We watched the man walk toward us, still smiling. He reached out and shook Mr. Boatwright’s hand so hard I thought Mr. Boatwright was going to fall.
“How’re you feelin’, Boatwright?” the man drawled in a deep, husky, slightly Southern accent. “It’s good to see you again.”
I pushed my milk shake aside and leaped up off my seat, smoothing the sides of my cheap corduroy jumper.
“Oh I’m fair to middlin’. The Lord’s good to me, Brother Nelson.” Mr. Boatwright nodded in my direction. “This the young’n live in the same house with me and her mama. I know you done seen her up and down that tree shuckin’ it for them buckeye nuts. Annette, this Brother Nelson.”
“Hi, Mr. Nelson,” I said shyly.
He shook my trembling hand. “I got a girl around your age. She’s spendin’ her summer vacation with her aunt down South,” Mr. Nelson told me. “Uh…look like you folks got a lot of shoppin’ done there.”
“Yep. We been to the slaughterhouse out on Highway 80. We can’t afford them high-and-mighty prices at Kroger’s and the A&P like you. Me and this girl here go to the slaughterhouse two, three times a month. Even Kroger’s can’t beat them screamin’, meaty pork ribs the slaughterhouse sell, praise the Lord.” Mr. Boatwright laughed, shaking his head.
“Well I wouldn’t know. We don’t eat pork,” Mr. Nelson informed us with a serious look on his face. “You know, Black folks would be a whole lot healthier if they’d give up certain things, especially pork.”
I bobbed my head up and down in agreement. “I read about it in that Black Muslim newspaper they go around selling. They say too much pork can kill you,” I offered.
Mr. Boatwright rolled his eyes at me and sighed with exasperation. “Well mighty funny you wanted to stand in that long line just to get them pork link sausages,” he teased. “That’s why we missed the last bus, and now we ain’t got no way to get home lest we call the po’lice,” Mr. Boatwright complained. He immediately turned to Mr. Nelson and looked at him with pleading eyes.
“I’m goin’ in your direction. Y’all welcome to ride along with me,” Mr. Nelson told us, opening his arms like he was going to hug somebody.
Mr. Boatwright couldn’t gather our packages fast enough. There was a shiny black Cadillac parked in front of the drugstore. The same car I’d seen in front of the undertaker’s house. Mr. Boatwright jumped in the front, all the while complaining about his leg, and I got in the back.
“How your family doin’? Scary Mary tells me you got your hands full,” Mr. Boatwright boomed, drowning out Miles Davis coming from the tape deck.
“Well, that woman of mine is goin’ to force me into the poorhouse. That hardheaded boy of mine is drivin’ me crazy. He and his sister fight like a cat and dog. That’s why we shipped her to her auntie this summer.”
“How your mama? I hear she’s havin’ some health difficulties,” Mr. Boatwright grunted, looking with envy at the undertaker’s well-groomed hair.
“Well, Alzheimer’s is pretty serious, but we manage to live with it. She’s a handful though. We can’t keep a nurse more than a few weeks. That’s why I let that crazy half brother of mine move in, so he can help look after her. And, as you probably heard, my wife is not well, or at least she doesn’t think she is. Every other day I drop off a new prescription.”
“Well, I be seein’ your wife in the yard wrestlin’ with them rosebushes y’all got, and comin’ and goin’ with shoppin’ bags from every store in town every day. She look mighty healthy to me,” Mr. Boatwright said seriously, still staring at the undertaker’s hair, blinking fast and hard.
“She cut her finger on a steak knife the other day and took to her bed, certain she was goin’ to get infected. Today it’s a cramp in her foot.” Mr. Nelson laughed.
I sat in silence while Mr. Boatwright and Mr. Nelson talked. As soon as we got home, Mr. Boatwright started badmouthing Mr. Nelson.
“We don’t eat pork,” he mimicked. “Hmmmph! I bet he’d eat pork iffen he didn’t have nothin’ else to eat. And what he need with a car that big? Iffen I had a wife like his’n, always whinin’ about a cut or a scratch or cramps, I’d slap her!”
“Mr. Nelson seems like a real nice man,” I said casually. We were putting the meat away. I kept the pork links out so that I could eat a snack before dinner. “He doesn’t look like an undertaker,” I added thoughtfully.
“And just what is a undertaker supposed to look like?” Mr. Boatwright sniffed, shaking a pack of chicken wings in my direction, his other hand on his hip.
“Well…you know…grim, heavyset, spooky. The way you—” I covered my mouth with my hand. Mr. Boatwright looked at me like he wanted to slap me, but he didn’t.
“I bet he ain’t half the man I am, iffen you know what I mean. Scary Mary say he got a balled-up sock stuffed in his crotch.” Mr. Boatwright laughed.
“And she should know,” I said sarcastically.
He lifted one of the links, shook it at me, and grinned. “You won’t find no balled-up sock in my shorts.” I pretended not to hear him. “Hurry up and eat your links. Then I’ll give you the real thing.”
“Mama’ll be home soon!” I snapped, slamming the refrigerator door so hard it shook.
“Not tonight. The judge givin’ his poker party tonight. We got plenty of time to have a good time.”
“You mean you have a good time. I thought—” Before I could finish my sentence, Mr. Boatwright slid his knuckles along the side of my face.
“You sassin’ me over a little poontang?”
“I’m not sassing you. I’m sick of doing…what we do. You know it’s not right. Why can’t you get a girlfriend your own age. Somebody who wants to do it with you.”
Mr. Boatwright looked confused. He leaned back on his legs and put his hands on his hips. “Like I said, I could get any woman I want.”
“Then why don’t you?” I had lost my appetite. I wrapped the links back up and put the package in the refrigerator.
A long uncomfortable moment of silence passed. “You know I could make your life a livin’ hell, girl.”
“You already have,” I assured him.
Mr. Boatwright gave me one of his meanest looks. One that took so much effort, his nostrils started flaring. “I’ll remember that the next time you need money for the movies or books or somethin’.” With that, he hobbled out of the kitchen and went to the living room.
I went to my room and lay down on my bed, proud that I had stood up to him. I just had to do it more often. Minutes later, he entered my room. “What do you want?” I barked.
“You can’t tease me like you been doin’ all day and get away with it,” he said hoarsely. He rushed over to the bed and grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me. “Come on now, girl. This ain’t gwine to take but a minute. Look on the bright side.” That was the bright side. It took only a minute to satisfy him. As long as he was happy, he was good to me, and being alone with him so much, that was important.
On one side of our house was an empty lot. On the other side lived a widower named Caleb Davis and his thirteen-year-old son, Jerry. Caleb was a barber, and he had his shop in his house.
He and Scary Mary came to the house almost every day. Sometimes three to five times all in the same day, even when Mama was not at home. They would sit and drink beer with Mr. Boatwright and complain about almost everything. Mostly, they trashed other people, and it seemed like every time they got together one of them had some mind-boggling physical ailment that they liked to discuss in great detail. They tried to outdo one another. Scary Mar
y had high blood pressure and various female problems. Caleb complained about high blood pressure and ulcers, but the thing Caleb had, which ranked him way up there with Mr. Boatwright’s fake leg, was a bullet lodged in his head from a war injury.
Caleb was nice, but I didn’t trust him or feel comfortable around him. In fact, I didn’t trust or feel comfortable around any male. Not even a preacher or an undertaker. I was convinced that they were all boogiemen. All because of what Mr. Boatwright had done to me.
Yet, I liked Caleb as much as I could like any male. He brought me candy and rib sandwiches and other tasty stuff and always said something nice to me. “That’s a mighty pretty frock you got on, possum. Them some nice T-strap shoes you wore to church today.”
Caleb was much taller and thinner than Mr. Boatwright, but they looked enough alike to be brothers. They were almost the same shade of brown, and each had a wide flat face.
I didn’t let Caleb in when I was home alone. I didn’t want to find out if he was a rapist, too.
Caleb’s son Jerry was called Pee Wee because he was short and puny. With no encouragement from me, this boy eased himself into my life and became in many ways my shadow. Mr. Boatwright and a lot of people were convinced that he liked boys. He was what we called “funny,” and it was no wonder. He was swishy, and he didn’t play sports. He cooked, made most of his own clothes, and hung around with girls and old folks.
Even though Mr. Boatwright thought that Pee Wee was funny, he liked him, as did Mama. Pee Wee was a major gossip and never ran out of scandalous things to tell them.
He wandered into our house without knocking almost every day.
“You seen my cat?” he asked one evening.
I had just come home from returning some books to the library and had left the front door unlocked. I didn’t hear him come in. I was in the kitchen when I whirled around and saw him standing in the kitchen doorway. I gave him one of my meanest looks. Down South people entered a house without knocking. It was not just a Black thing—even the white folks did it. It was a country thing. I didn’t like it there, and I didn’t like it in Ohio. To me, it was the height of arrogance. What if I had been naked?
“You look here, boy. From now on, you knock before you come in this house. You don’t live here.” Funny or not, and even though we had a vague relationship, he was a male, and I didn’t trust him.
“Girl, what’s wrong with you?” he exclaimed. He snatched open our refrigerator and drank from a carton of milk. Pee Wee was not bad-looking for a boy. He was medium brown, with more than a few zits on his square face screaming to be popped. His eyes were too small and too close together, but his pleasant smile made up for it. Like so many Black boys in the early sixties, he wore his hair cut close to the head. One reason I tolerated him was that he baked cookies for me.
“You can’t just walk in this house without knocking. Burglars do that,” I told him.
He gave me an incredulous look. Then he let out a short, sharp laugh. “Girl, what burglar would risk goin’ to jail to bust in here with all this junk y’all got?” He made a long, low, sweeping gesture with his hand. “Ain’t nothin’ in here nobody would want, specially me. Now, y’all got any more of that cake bread from yesterday? Hi, Brother Boatwright.” Pee Wee rushed across the room to pat Mr. Boatwright’s shoulder.
I didn’t even know Mr. Boatwright was in. A lot of days I came home to an empty house. Mr. Boatwright spent a lot of time at Scary Mary’s claiming to give Bible lessons to the prostitutes. A minute didn’t pass before Caleb and Scary Mary marched in and planted themselves at the kitchen table with Pee Wee and Mr. Boatwright. I was pleasantly surprised when Mama walked in shortly after they did. She dropped a bag that was full of beer onto the table. Her faded, ripped scarf was tied in such a messy knot, she had to struggle to get it loose.
“You off mighty early today, Sister Goode,” Caleb said. He rubbed his head on the spot where the bullet was lodged.
Mama dropped her scarf and coat on the kitchen counter and let out a long sigh. Her cheap, ill-fitting stockings had rolled almost all the way down her legs. “Judge Lawson is goin’ to visit some ex-colleagues in Cleveland. He wanted to get a early start, so he sent me home early with pay, bless his heart,” Mama explained. I stood back against the wall as she dragged a chair from the dining room into the kitchen and sat near the rest of the crowd. When Mama crossed her legs, I noticed quarter-sized holes in her secondhand shoes. Everybody’s hands were spread out on the table like at a séance.
“Anybody got any juicy news today?” Mr. Boatwright began. He looked directly at Pee Wee. By then everybody had a beer on the table. All the adults that is. I could see Pee Wee’s mouth watering for one of the beers. But he knew better than to drink in front of that many grown folks that included his own daddy.
“Well, that uppity undertaker’s brother done finally outdone hisself,” Pee Wee started. All eyes turned to him.
“Let me tell this one here,” Caleb interrupted, holding up his thick hand in his son’s face. I never noticed before, but Caleb had two gold-plated teeth.
“But Daddy—” Pee Wee pouted.
“Young’n, don’t you sass your daddy,” Mama advised Pee Wee. She turned to Caleb with a large smile. “Go on, Brother Davis.”
Caleb sucked in his breath first, took a long swallow of his beer, then folded his arms, but not before rubbing his head again. “That uppity undertaker, Brother Nelson, from across the street, had me trim his hair last night. Hmph! I bet Nelson ain’t even his real last name. He took it on tryin’ to put hisself up there on that same pedestal with Ozzie Nelson on the TV and he sure tries to behave like the real Nelsons. They is classic white folks. Since when is Nelson a colored name.”
“You think he uppity, that woman of his’n call herself Michelle Jacquelyn!” Mr. Boatwright roared.
“Go on, Brother Davis,” Mama said to Caleb.
Caleb frowned and squirmed around in his chair. With the exception of a shiny black suit he wore to church every Sunday, the only clothes I ever saw him wear were stiff overalls and cheap plaid shirts with patches on his elbows. “I know he conks his hair like all the rest of us, but he won’t admit it…all them naps along the side of his neck.”
Caleb paused just long enough to take another long swallow from his beer. Then he rolled up his sleeves. “We all know the undertaker’s white half brother Johnny, is a Bluebeard. I heard he had somethin’ to do with them two wives of his’n dyin’ early. I bet he done away with ’em to collect insurance. Huh, y’all?”
Everybody nodded and urged Caleb to continue. “He told me once upon a time he wanted to preach. But white folks don’t know the Bible like we do.” Caleb paused and waved his hand angrily. “Two things white folks need to leave to us is the gospel and cookin’. Anyway, one of Scary Mary’s gals got herself stabbed to death the other night comin’ out of that Red Rose beer garden on Canal Street. Ain’t that right?” He nodded at Scary Mary, and she nodded back. She reached over to help him massage his head.
“I had told that heifer to stay away from them beer gardens with all them hot-natured, just-released parolee men runnin’ amok,” Scary Mary said sadly.
“So the undertaker is settin’ in my chair and tellin’ all me this. In secret now, so don’t none of y’all go around town and blab this news. He got the body before it was even cold. And had her stretched out on a slab in his dead room like he was supposed to. That lustin’, white half brother of his’n snuck in that dead room after everybody was in the bed and…ravaged that dead woman. Pestered her right there in Brother Nelson’s dead room.” Nobody said a word for several moments, but they all gasped.
Scary Mary waved her hands and shook her head, “Poor Rosalee,” she sobbed. “One of my best girls.”
“This here white man, when he tried to get up from his dirty deed…he couldn’t,” Caleb announced. His thick fist hit the top of the table so hard, the beer bottles rattled. Now the story really had my attention. “Rigor mortis had
set in. Y’all, Brother Nelson was fit to be tied! He had a mess on his hands. Anyway, this nasty dog Johnny’s instrument was locked up inside the woman’s female area! What a mess, what a mess. It took the undertaker and that big old strappin’ teenage boy of his quite a while to pull him aloose.”
Again, Mr. Boatwright amazed me with another comment. “That nasty buzzard. I swear to God, white folks is so unnatural. Ravagin’ a dead woman. I seen a white man ravage a sheep one day when I was a young’n!” he roared. I glared at him so hard, he flinched.
“I bet a man would ravage a snake if he could find the—” I blurted. A long, threatening look from Mama shut me up.
“Go mop that bathroom floor, girl,” she ordered.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mr. Boatwright giving me a threatening look. “And you better not miss a spot!” he yelled.
CHAPTER 9
It wasn’t long before I began to use gossip to my advantage. As soon as I heard something juicy I told Mama and Mr. Boatwright.
Some of the news I brought into the house was so good, Mr. Boatwright kept me in the kitchen repeating things over and over so long that he canceled trips to my bedroom. Good gossip always mellowed Mama. What I couldn’t pick up from eavesdropping at church or peeping in one of Scary Mary’s windows, I got from Pee Wee. Even though he was my so-called companion, he got on my nerves from time to time.
One Sunday when Mama was home, Pee Wee wandered in and made himself comfortable at the kitchen table with Mama and me. Mr. Boatwright had gone to visit his foot doctor. Mama and I had the house to ourselves for a few hours before Pee Wee’s invasion.
“Sister Goode, I just stopped by to see if Annette’s goin’ to pick beans in the mornin’. Brother Jones is pickin’ me up at 8 A.M.,” Pee Wee said.
I gave him a look as severe as the ones I gave to Mr. Boatwright. Pee Wee wouldn’t look at me. I hated working on the farms, and he knew it! I preferred earning my spending money by running errands for Scary Mary and her women.
