Bandit Queen

by Jane Candia Coleman

  I fought down my anger. He thought he was going to get around me because I was a woman who had come to him for a job. The signs were all over him. I decided to take a risk.

  “You heard me sing. So did your customers. Fifty dollars in advance, Mister Burke, or I go to your competitors and take those men with me.”

  Of course, he agreed. He needed a drawing card, and I was it. And I’d learned a valuable lesson, one I should have been taught earlier. That was, never to sell myself short. Miss Pearl Hart was a quick study.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It seems that nothing in my early life came without a struggle. I’d been working for three weeks and making good money, when I got up one morning feeling sicker than I’d ever felt. As the day wore on, the symptoms passed, and I was almost well by the time I dressed for work that evening. But the next morning the sickness returned, and the morning after that, and it was with dread that I finally realized I was with child. Frank’s child! Conceived on that bitter, brutal night in Chicago. And I was alone with no one to help, on my own with a life growing inside me.

  I tried to picture it and failed. Childbirth had never been discussed in my presence. The women I knew usually went into retirement as soon as they began to show, returning to public life only after the baby was born. I’d been too young to remember Maude’s birth. In fact, I was sent out of the house for the event, coming home after it was over and Maude lay fussing in her crib.

  What did it look like? I wondered. Was it a boy or girl, and, worse, would it bear the marks of that violent mating? I shuddered at the memory and at the abyss that lay in front of me. What to do? I supposed I could go home and lay my problems in my mother’s lap, but that meant I’d be where Frank could find me, if he was looking. And I’d be a hawk in a cage, stifled, forever trying to spread my wings. I’d be clothed, fed, cared for, but at what cost?

  A swift calculation, and I knew I had at least another two months before I had to stop working. If I was lucky, if I saved enough, I’d be able to manage on my own until the child came. I’d find a cheaper place to live. The hotel was a luxury I couldn’t afford. And there might be other jobs I could take, at least for a while. I would stay where I was and hope. A glance in the mirror showed me still slender enough to get by. The face that looked back at me seemed hardly old enough to be that of a mother. My skin was unlined. My hair, still short, curled next to my cheeks, giving me the look of a saucy boy. Only my eyes had changed. Gray as slate, they were wary and full of the bitter knowledge that every freedom comes with a price.

  That night I finished my last number and sang a few requests. As usual, the Valverde was packed full of men who came to hear me, who elbowed each other away from the stage and fought for the privilege of buying me a drink and maybe walking me home. I accepted the drinks—that was part of the job—except what I drank was the strong, sweet tea Huey kept in a separate bottle under the bar. The other invitations I refused with a smile.

  Huey had appointed himself my guardian. It was like having a huge and ugly mastiff who walked beside me and kept strangers away. Every night he left the bar for the length of time it took to see me home. He rarely spoke during the walk except to say as he left: “There. You’re all right now.”

  With him along I never worried. I looked at the stars, more stars than I ever knew existed, and, when the moon was bright, our shadows accompanied us, long and dark on streets turned to silver. In the distance the mountains glimmered. They seemed like animals asleep in the moonlight, and, looking at them, I was happy, free to feel things, to do as I chose, not what someone else decreed.

  I was wearing the white peau de soie dress with the ruffled neckline, and I had a scarlet geranium tucked between my breasts. I bowed, and smiled, and opened my arms to my audience in an effort to share my pleasure. And then I saw him—in the shadows against the wall where the light from the lamps never quite reached. Those green eyes of his met mine, and there was mockery in them. And desire. And something else I couldn’t name.

  I think I said, “Frank,” and then stood there, open armed, unable to move. How had he found me? I couldn’t think, but ran off the stage and into the alley where a few whores still sat in their doorways, smoking, half-dressed, most of them ugly even in the half-light.

  “What’s yer hurry, honey?” one of them called, and the others cackled like crones, the sound following me like a bad omen.

  He caught me before I reached the corner, one hand gripping my arm and spinning me around to face him.

  I snarled like an animal. “God damn you! Let me go!”

  “Stop!” he commanded. “Stop fighting. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Oh, no. You’d never hurt me, would you, you son-of-a-bitch?” I was back in Chicago, choking on my own blood, struggling for my life.

  “It’s me, darlin’,” he said. “It’s me.”

  I laughed then. It sounded like the laughter of the old whores—used-up and mirthless. “Of course, it’s you,” I said. No one else had ever called me “darlin’ ” in that tone that was like a kiss.

  “Miss Pearl?” Huey had followed me. Next to his bulk, Frank looked small, unable to hurt anybody.

  “It’s all right,” I said, imagining a street brawl and me in the middle.

  “You bet it’s all right,” Frank intervened. “I’m her husband.”

  Huey turned to me, his forehead wrinkled. “That true?”

  I hated to admit it. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, he is.”

  He shook his head, looking more than ever like a bewildered watchdog. “I’ll get back then?” It was a question.

  I nodded. “Go on. And thank you.” I watched him lumber off and wished I’d asked him to stay.

  Frank whistled. “Jeezuz…where’d you find him?”

  “None of your business. How did you find me?”

  He grinned, a cocky gesture that made me want to scream. “Your mother.”

  Oh, God! My mother! I’d written to her, as I had from the very beginning, saying that she wasn’t to worry, that I was in Phoenix and had a good job. In it were lies and half-truths, everything sugar-coated the way I had always done. She knew nothing about how I’d lived. She wouldn’t have believed me if I told her.

  “What did you do? Play the betrayed husband? Cry on her shoulder? I know your tricks, all of them, so you better tell me.”

  “I told her we had a fight,” he said, sounding humble in the face of my accusations, not at all like the man I’d known. “I told her I loved and missed you. That I wanted you back.” His voice broke, but I wasn’t about to be taken in so easily.

  “I didn’t miss you,” I said. “I didn’t miss a bloody nose or black eyes, either.” I turned and started to walk away.

  He was beside me. “Please. You don’t understand. I love you, darlin’. When I found you were gone, I went crazy. I turned Chicago upside down, trying to find you. To make it up to you.”

  I set my chin. “I’ll bet,” I said, but part of me was listening, wondering if what he said was true and thinking of the child that lay, helpless, inside me.

  “Can’t we try again?” He was pleading now. “You don’t know how sorry I am. Please say yes. I won’t lay a hand on you. Except…,” he smiled, and the moon touched his face, lighting the hunger in his eyes, “except to love you.”

  I remembered how our bodies had once melted and fused from the lightning strike of passion. I remembered, and it seemed a long time since I had felt the touch of a man’s hands, the feel of his lips. I was young. And lonely in spite of the audience of males to whom I sang. I sang about love, but I was empty.

  I pulled my shawl tight and looked up at him. “We’ll have to talk,” I said. “But not here, and not now. I’m tired. I’ll meet you for breakfast. Not before ten. I sleep late these days.”

  His face sagged with relief. “Think about this, Pearl,” he said. “I’ve changed. I’ll never hurt you again. You can believe it. Remember the good times. We’ll have them again, you and me. We’
re meant to be.”

  “Good night, Frank,” I said, and left him standing there, his hat in his hands.

  I didn’t sleep for hours, replaying scenes from our marriage over and over. Could I believe him? Had he really reformed? I tried to count the times he’d sworn the same thing to me, but there were so many times, and me bruised and bleeding but wanting so desperately to believe him. But children needed a father. If I took Frank back, we would be a family, and if, indeed, he had turned over a new leaf, my worries about supporting myself would be over. I got out of bed and went to the window, stood watching the moon as it hovered in the west and then disappeared, leaving an emptiness in the sky.

  Finally I climbed back into bed and curled up like a miserable child. “Maybe he has changed,” I whispered to myself. “Maybe this time he means it.”

  By morning I’d made up my mind, and, when Frank came in and sat down at my table, I felt I was in full command of the situation.

  “I’ve been thinking about this all night,” I began truthfully. “And there’s something you should know. I’m…I’m with child, and it’s yours.” I sat back and watched and waited. His response would determine what happened next.

  He was shocked and, for a moment, couldn’t speak. “A child,” he stammered finally. “A child. Mine.”

  “Yes. It happened in Chicago. More’s the pity.”

  He put his elbows on the table and buried his head in his hands. “Oh, God. I’ll make it up to you. You will let me?” He sounded like a child himself, caught in a situation he couldn’t control.

  “As I said, I’ve thought about this. A child needs a father and a family. This one will have to make do with us. Such as we are.”

  He looked up then, and it almost seemed as if the past hadn’t happened, as if he were the young pirate I’d so loved. My heart skipped a beat. Maybe, I thought. Maybe.

  “Believe me, darlin’. I’ll do my best. I’ll take care of you both, and that’s a promise.”

  I’m sure he believed what he said, that his intentions were honest. He was a man who could convince himself, and others, of anything. That morning he convinced me, who should have known better. But, like him, I wanted to believe, and in the wanting forgot all the hardwon lessons of our past.

  It was so good to be in his arms again, to feel him against me like a pulse. That afternoon we wiped out all the horror of memory and began again in the present, in delight that lifted me, carried me until I fell back, exhausted, onto the pillow.

  Too soon it was evening. I pushed myself out of bed and went to the washstand and heard Frank stirring.

  “What’re you doing?” he demanded, sitting up suddenly.

  “Getting ready for work.” I sighed. I’d much rather have gone back to bed.

  “Work!”

  I cringed at the sound of that one word and took hold of the dresser for support. It wasn’t…couldn’t be starting again so soon. “I have a job,” I said timidly, and cursing myself for it.

  “I don’t want you working. Especially not in that place.”

  It would start. I knew it down in the darkness of my body so recently awakened by desire. It would start and go on and on, a whirlpool that sucked me down and spit out the pieces. But only if I let it. I took a firm grip on the carved wood and faced him.

  “I’ll quit when you get a job, and not before,” I said.

  His head snapped up like I’d hit him. “What in hell does that mean?”

  I took a deep breath. “It means just what I said. It means I can’t live like before, always on the edge, always worried about money and having to sell my clothes just to eat. It means I can’t stand never knowing when something awful is going to happen, when you’ll hit me because your luck’s gone bad. It means I want a home for us and our child like you promised. I want some kind of security. You said you’ve changed. Now I want proof. And I’ll keep on working until I can’t anymore. That’s all.” I felt my legs start to tremble. I had never talked back to him in my life.

  He looked at me for a long time, not saying anything. Then, abruptly, he got up.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll try it your way. But I’m coming along tonight, and every night, just to keep an eye on you. And you can tell that goon who was with you he isn’t needed any more.”

  “Huey’s a good guy,” I said, turning to pour water into the basin. “He can’t help how he looks.”

  Frank clipped the end off a cigar, lit it, and came to stand beside me. “That’s not the point,” he said. “The point is, you have me now.”

  Why, I asked myself as I dressed, didn’t that fact make me feel happy?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Frank’s promises lasted exactly six months. He was unable to find a job that suited him, or to keep any job longer than a few weeks. We lived off what I earned at the Valverde. But when the child began to show, beyond what was considered decent, I had to quit and stay home in the little house we’d rented, and watch my carefully hoarded savings dwindle.

  Everything that had frightened me was happening again, only this time it was worse. This time there was a child to consider, another life, and for the moment I was helpless to do anything except urge Frank to find—and keep—a job.

  “God damn it!” He was shouting the way he always did when I made him aware of his imperfections. “You’re turning into a nag. Just shut up, can’t you?”

  “I won’t!” I was clearing up after breakfast and was already exhausted. Inside me, the child seemed heavy, a constant weight that made my back and shoulders ache and shortened my temper. “I won’t shut up. And I don’t intend to end up on the street, either. Maybe I’ll just go home.”

  There was always the possibility of going back to Toledo, and it scared him—the notion that I might talk, and others would learn just what kind of black sheep he really was.

  “That’s it! Run back to your mother,” he sneered. “Tell her I’m a failure. Then tell her how you’ve been singing in a saloon. She’ll be happy to hear about that.”

  “Better sing than starve!” I slammed the dishes down. “Is that what you want? To see your wife and child go hungry while you play silly card games with a bunch of losers and crooks?”

  I shouldn’t have said it. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew I’d gone too far.

  He slapped my face with all his strength. I felt the blow travel down my backbone, and I wrapped my arms around my belly where the baby lay, heavy as a stone.

  “The baby!” I screamed at him. “Please! The baby!”

  He put his hands around my throat, and I saw his face. It was distorted, the face of a madman.

  “That’s all you think about!” he yelled. “The baby. What about me?”

  He was jealous! The truth dawned, even as I fought for breath. He was jealous of an unborn child, of anyone who seemed to take his place. What would he be like with the reality of it—the crying, the instinctive demands of a new life?

  I closed my eyes so as not to see him. “You’re the father,” I croaked around the pressure of his fingers. “It’s yours, too.”

  “Christ!” He dropped his hands and shoved me against the wall. “You don’t have to keep reminding me.”

  I kept quiet, even while he went to the crock where I kept our money and took out a fistful of bills.

  Let him go, I thought. Just let him go. And was relieved when he went out without a look or a word, banging the door behind him.

  The pain struck an hour later. I was in the tiny yard, trying to calm myself, trying to think, but my mind kept floating off in all directions, making and discarding plans, fighting with itself over words both spoken and left unsaid. And then the pain came, a huge, internal motion, like a fist of fire, a boulder demanding release from the bowels of earth. It was too soon! The child would be born only to die. And then I laughed hysterically, fighting the agony and the hope. If it died, I would be free again to run away and hide. That’s what I thought, and I am still ashamed for wishing death on my sw
eet firstborn.

  Angelita, my neighbor, found me clinging to the fence between our yards. Quickly she got me inside and to bed and then did whatever was necessary while I lay, half conscious, riding the crest of the pains, hating them, wanting to be free of the burden that was hammering within.

  Little Joe was born the next morning. He was big for an eight-month child, and lusty, demanding food and attention at the top of his lungs. I took one look at his red face, his tiny head covered with damp, black curls, and fell in love. He was mine, this fully-formed person who had struggled to be born, to live, almost against my wishes. He was mine. And I would keep him safe.

  Frank didn’t come home until late that afternoon.

  “Come, meet your son,” I called.

  He came, looking stunned. “My God. My God,” was all he could say.

  “He’s fine, no thanks to you,” I said.

  Frank buried his face in his hands. I found his tears repulsive. He was crying, not for what he had done, but for himself.

  “Goldwater’s Dry Goods is looking for a clerk,” I said. “Best go apply for the job.”

  He looked up then, his face twisted. “Me, selling shoes to old ladies with bunions. Don’t you ever stop?”

  “No,” I said. “I never do. You’ll have to live with it.”

  I pulled Little Joe closer to me, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.

  Passion dies quickly without love to sustain it. After Little Joe’s birth, all my passion turned to him. I was a tigress mother, fierce and protective, because I worried, always, that Frank’s jealousy would turn to abuse, not of me, but of a helpless child. Had that happened, I would have killed him. Unfortunately it did not. He took his vengeance out on me, using force to bed me, taking advantage of the fact that Little Joe’s birth had made me weak.

  Our daughter, Emma, was born eleven months later. She, too, was the child of a rape, but so delicate, so lovely, that my heart turned over at the sight of her. Whatever happened, I hoped she would never know what I knew of life, of the cruelties that exist between a man and a woman, a husband and wife.