Mama Black Widow

by Iceberg Slim

  I said calmly, “Mama, one of the thousand strangling reasons is that you just called me Sweet Pea for the trillionth time. Mama, don’t press me and make me say things to hurt you.

  “Just realize that with all of your good intentions, you’re doing to me what no human being should be allowed to do to another human being.

  “Mama, I’m intelligent and reasonably healthy. I should have amounted to something besides an aging cocksucker if you hadn’t killed and smothered every instinct and striving of manhood you ever saw in me. Mama, I’m leaving in the morning. I have to know what life is like without you.”

  She started weeping and had a heart seizure. She couldn’t breathe, and her legs gave way. I gave her a sedative and put her to bed.

  That night I packed my things to really go into the world on my own. I didn’t sleep much that night. I was past forty, but Mama had so damaged me I, perhaps, had the trepidation of an adolescent thrown out to face the unknown horrors of the world for the first time.

  I dressed early the next morning and took coffee and toast to Mama in bed. She smiled wanly. I went to the bedroom and got my suitcase.

  I went into her bedroom and kissed her cheek and said, “Good-bye, Mama, I’ll call you and write you.”

  I turned and walked toward the front door. I had my hand on the knob when I heard Mama cry out, “Sweet Pea!” and then a crash.

  I spun and saw Mama lying apparently unconscious with a long scarlet gash on her forehead. I called Doctor Sykes, and because he was fond of me, he came and treated the head wound and conducted tests on Mama’s legs.

  He took me aside and told me she couldn’t walk. She had what he called functional paralysis. I stayed with her for a while until she got a nurse and wheelchair.

  Then early one May morning, I went into her bedroom and sat on the side of the bed. The nurse hadn’t come. She started crying.

  I said, “Mama, I’m all packed and ready to go, and nothing is going to stop me this time.”

  She blubbered, “You mean you would leave me when I’m like this?”

  I stood up and said, “Mama, if I don’t leave I know I’ll do something terrible in this flat. You have money to take care of yourself and to pay for help.”

  I leaned over to kiss her good-bye. I had my lips pressed against her cheek when I heard the faintest, most dulcet metallic scrape and caught the most infinitesimal glimmer of ominous steel in the corner of my eye.

  I leaped back and a streaking dazzle went past my throat. Mama’s face was a replica of the mask of madness she wore the night she punched Carol’s baby from her belly. Mama gripped the scissors like a dagger and glared hatred at me.

  I picked up my suitcase and backed toward the hall. Then I went out the front door into the clean bright sunshine. I reached into my inside coat pocket and got Mike’s sealed letter. I tore it unread into shreds and scattered the pieces in the gutter.

  I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do. But as I strode through the chaotic rubble of riot-ravaged Madison Street, I felt a peace, a surging joy I had never felt before.

  I was never a religion buff, but for some mystical reason, I heard an old slave chant reverberating through my being.

  Free at last! Free at last! Great God Almighty I’m free at last!

  EPILOGUE

  In the middle part of April in 1969, I received a telegram from a writer friend of mine in Chicago. The sad message of the telegram was to inform me that Otis Tilson had taken his own life by hanging in a skid row hotel in New York City.

  I can’t help but wonder what he expected to find there except the misery that is the heritage of his kind. Perhaps the final solution to the torture of spirit and body that he endured could only be death.

  Mama Black Widow

  Copyright © 2013 by Robert Beck Estate

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

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  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  First Trade Paperback Edition: May 2013

  Book Layout: Peng Olaguera/ISPN

  Cover Design: MJCDesign

  Cover Photograph by Inge Morath with the permission of Magnum Photos

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013932033

  ISBN: 978-1-936399-19-2 pbk

  ISBN: 978-1-936399-20-8 ebook