by Mary Monroe
At the end of the day, they was getting benefits from us, too! We had a few things they wanted, other than free alcohol and us being a low-ranking couple for them to look down on. Last Saturday, Joyce had a wedding to go to and needed to get her hair done. Her mama had promised she’d do it. When Joyce went to her mama’s house that morning, come to find out, Sister Millie was fixing to go to a church bake sale and was on her way out the door. Joyce was fit to be tied. The next thing me and Yvonne knew, she was at our door, with ajar of hair grease, her straightening comb, and her marcel curling iron. She begged Yvonne to do her hair, and my baby didn’t even hesitate. She’d been busy washing clothes at the time. But she put that chore aside and started straightening that briar patch on Joyce’s head right away. That was the kind of friend girl Yvonne was to Joyce. Joyce didn’t offer her a plugged nickel, but she promised to go by MacPherson’s and pick up three or four jars of pickled pig feet and bring them to the house the next time she came over.
When Joyce got home from that wedding, she came straight to the house with three jars of pig feet and a big batch of tea cakes for us to serve our guests. I was real impressed. It seemed like she and Odell was trying to be nice to us, after all, but only when it was convenient for them.
Even though Joyce and Odell had been drinking at our house for “free” from day one, they wasn’t as stingy as we thought. One of our other neighbors had told me the same day we moved in that he’d been borrowing money from Odell and Joyce ever since they moved to the neighborhood. He had a system going that I’d never heard of. He’d borrow a dollar from one or the other and pay it back when he said he would. A few days later, the same neighbor would borrow another dollar and pay it back on time, too. He had been doing that at least twice a month for the past year. I wondered if it was the same dollar bill that got passed back and forth. Another neighbor gloated about all the merchandise he stole from MacPherson’s every time he went in and how easy it was. I wasn’t stupid enough to admit to nobody that me and Yvonne had been helping ourselves to merchandise from there, too. I didn’t want to ruin the good thing we had going, not to mention my arrangement with Odell. Stealing from that place was like taking candy from a blind baby, and we wanted it to stay that way.
When Odell came over to bring me my money on Wednesday night, he told me that he was going to let us have a line of credit at the store. After I’d asked him three times.
With today being Friday, me and Yvonne expected the usual wall-to-wall crowd to come to our house after everybody got off work, so we needed a heap of stuff for snacks. Mr. Cunningham had closed the grill two hours early because his sister had called and told him his wife wasn’t feeling good. We caught a ride with one of our regular customers and had him drop us off at MacPherson’s. We didn’t want to spend the money we had on something we could get on credit now or steal. That was why we went from aisle to aisle, grabbing things without even looking at the prices. There was too many other customers roaming around, so we decided not to steal nothing. In our case, credit was as good as us stealing merchandise, because we would never pay for it. Odell would be paying that tab when it came due. He didn’t know it yet, though.
We didn’t think he’d mind giving us a ride home when he got off at five, so after we got our stuff checked out and bagged, we went up to him on the opposite side of the store.
“Y’all find everything?” he asked as he adjusted his tie. Before we could say anything, that happy devil started whistling. That was how blasé he was.
“We found everything we was looking for,” I told him. “Now we need to go home and start getting things ready for tonight. Can we get a ride home with you?”
He stopped whistling and gave me a dry look. “I can’t do that today. After I close up, I got to do inventory, and that could take quite a while. When I finish that, I got somewhere to go.”
“Hmmm. If you don’t mind our company, we wouldn’t mind riding along with you,” I tossed in with a sheepish grin. I knew that the “somewhere to go” was Betty Jean’s house. And, from the tight look on his face, I could tell that he knew what I was thinking. If Joyce was gullible enough to believe that he spent so much of his free time fishing and visiting his sick daddy, she deserved whatever she got in the end.
Odell cleared his throat and glared at me. “Um, I need to go out and check up on my daddy. I’ll probably be out there the whole weekend,” he claimed.
“Can you take a few minutes off now and take us home?” Yvonne asked in a weary tone.
“I can’t do that. I’m too busy right now,” he claimed.
Busy? I had to force myself not to laugh. The busiest thing Odell had going on was humping two women and making babies! He claimed he spent a lot of time on his job, doing paperwork, ordering stuff, meeting with vendors, and whatnot. But the gossipy elderly cashiers—Buddy Armstrong and Sadie Mae Glutz—and the random teenage boys that stocked the shelves done all the real work. Odell probably had the most laid-back job in town. Almost every time I went in the store, he’d be holed up in his office, reading magazines or whistling, strutting around, and scribbling on a notepad. The bottom line was, him and Joyce had it made in the shade. I didn’t have no problem with people having it easy, but I had a problem when they looked down their noses at their friends and got stingy with their favors, the way Odell was doing now.
“We got a bunch of heavy canned goods, so it’ll be hard to tote these bags. Can you at least leave for a few minutes and give us a ride as far as Liberty Street? We sure would appreciate it. From there, we’ll walk the rest of the way home or catch the bus. It’s been a long, sad day for us,” I whined.
“No, I can’t give y’all a ride, period!”
Odell’s outburst stupefied Yvonne so much, she whimpered and stumbled a few feet to the side. I scrunched my lips off to one side and stared at him so hard, he cringed. I thought that by now he’d go out of his way not to get me riled up. He had to know that it wouldn’t do our friendship no good.
“Leave them bags here and go out on the street and find somebody with a car that can take y’all home. But y’all better get back here before I close up. Otherwise, them bags will sit here until I open up on Monday.” Odell glanced at the clock above the door. “Excuse me, but I have to get back to work. And if y’all ain’t buying nothing else today, y’all have to leave. That’s our new policy since we been having so much trouble with shoplifters lately. We can’t keep a eye on everybody.”
I didn’t appreciate being lumped in with the run-of-the-mill shoplifters—especially by a deceitful sucker like Odell. It was a good thing I had smoked me some rabbit tobacco before I left the grill. I was feeling pretty mellow, and that helped me keep my cool. But I could hear Yvonne breathing hard and mumbling cusswords under her breath.
“Okay, we’ll let you get back to work. We’ll take our bags with us. Maybe we’ll run into somebody we know with transportation, and they can give us a ride,” I grumbled.
He glanced at the clock again. “It’s just four o’clock. How come y’all ain’t still at the grill? Done got fired, huh?” he said with a sneer.
Odell was pushing his luck. His shoplifting comments had hurt my feelings bad enough. Now he was accusing us of losing our jobs.
“No, we didn’t get fired,” Yvonne blurted out. “Mr. Cunningham’s wife had some kind of fit, and he had to rush home and tend to her, so he closed up early today.”
“Good God. I’m sorry to hear that. I hope Sister Cunningham is going to be okay. She is one of our best customers.” I was pleased to see Odell show some compassion for somebody other than hisself. He actually sounded sympathetic. “No wonder y’all looking so down in the dumps. Um . . . what’s going on Sunday evening? If it ain’t too late when I get home from visiting my daddy, me and Joyce might come over and have a few drinks.”
“I hope you do come, Odell,” I said. “I put in a double order with Willie Frank this week, so we’ll have plenty to drink.”
He surprised me with a wall
-to-wall smile. “Your hillbilly friends sure know how to operate a still. They brew some of the best spirits I ever drunk. I’m surprised they ain’t ran the real liquor stores out of business by now.”
“Well, there’s too many stores for something like that to happen. But Willie Frank and his family have to stay on top of the game, so they just started using a more sophisticated still that brews better and bigger batches. It set them back a pretty penny, so they had to go up on their prices again. They charge us almost twice as much as they used to.” I stopped talking when Yvonne snuck a kick to my foot.
“We can’t afford to let nobody drink on the house no more,” she lied. It was one lie that needed to be told, though. It was time for Odell and Joyce to start paying for their drinks like everybody else.
“Pffft!” He waved his hand and snickered. “Me and Joyce don’t mind paying for our drinks next time we come. We don’t need to mooch off nobody.” He turned around and strutted off without saying another word. Not even bye.
My face felt like it was on fire. “Well, I’ll be doggone. Odell seem to get snootier by the day,” I complained.
“Sure enough. I would hate to see how he’d treat us if we wasn’t his friends and neighbors,” Yvonne hissed. “Maybe the reason he get so flustrated sometime is that he ain’t getting enough nooky.”
“Uh-uh. He getting more than enough of that.”
CHAPTER 14
YVONNE
JOYCE CAME TO THE HOUSE FRIDAY NIGHT, A FEW MINUTES AFTER 7:00 p.m. “Odell wanted to come with me tonight, but he had to go straight from the store to his daddy’s house,” she announced right after she came through the door.
I was pleased to know that a man as high and mighty as Odell was so devoted to his daddy. “Well, he’ll be blessed for being so caring. I’d give anything in the world to have a daddy I could spend time with,” I said. I didn’t plan on dwelling on this subject, because I could already feel tears flooding my eyes. “Come on in, Joyce, and make yourself at home.”
She dropped down on the couch. It was already occupied by two nurses that worked at the colored clinic. They was the chatty type, and it was hard for anybody else to get a word in edgewise. I was happy that Joyce wasn’t behaving like the Queen of Sheba right off the bat for a change. She was as quiet as a mouse. When the nurses got up and started dancing, I sat on the couch next to Joyce. She didn’t waste no time loosening up her lips, and it was the same old tired subjects she always harped on. And then she said something that made me want to slap her.
“Yvonne, let me know when you have some free time on a Saturday. I need to take you to see the lady that does my hair sometime—and quick!” She gawked at my hair and shook her head in a slow “I feel so sorry for you” way, which made my temperature rise.
“Um, beauticians charge too much for me. I always do my own hair,” I replied, wondering where she was going with this.
“Well, please stop doing that,” she requested, giving me a pitiful look.
Her comment felt like somebody had bounced a brick off my head. I had a good comeback for her, though. “I’m lucky I got good hair, so I don’t need no grease and hot combs like you,” I fired back. I wasn’t going to let her off too easy. “By the way, I noticed you been using a different shade of face powder.”
There was a tight look on her face now. “Yeah, we can’t keep my nut-brown shade in stock. I don’t like using a lighter shade, because it makes my skin look like sandpaper.”
“Well, make-up can only do so much. At least it covers up them lines on your forehead.”
That shut her up and brung her down a peg. And then she suddenly “remembered” that a friend from work was coming to pick her up so they could go out tonight, and she had to leave. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not, because she’d used the same excuse to leave early before.
* * *
After Joyce left, the crowd got even bigger and the place really started jumping. A group of men squatted down on the floor in a corner of the living room and started rolling dice. There was a pile of dollar bills laid out in front of them. There was another pile of money on the kitchen table, where four other men was playing poker. As much as Milton liked to gamble, he didn’t do it at home too often. The main reason was that he had to stay focused on helping me and Willie Frank serve the drinks and collect the money.
Since we’d moved to the neighborhood, the class of the people we entertained had gradually climbed up the ladder. The majority of them was no longer just the low-level types we’d been dealing with since we got in the bootlegging business. Now all three of the doctors that lived in the vicinity came over at least once a week. In addition to them nurses, tonight’s crowd included a retired teacher who had taught at Grove High when I was still there, and one of the only two colored barbers in Branson.
A few people who used to go to the jook joints and other bootleggers’ houses had dropped by because some of their friends had told them what a good time they’d had during their drinking frolics at our place.
Aunt Mattie, a fish-eyed, tough old madam with a good heart that ran the most popular colored whorehouse in town, showed up at 8:30 p.m. A hour later, Dee Dee, a great big, fat, but attractive woman in her middle thirties that took care of business with the men for Aunt Mattie, waddled through the front door, huffing and puffing. She had just made a house call to one of her regular tricks that lived four doors down from us. As soon as she got close enough, Aunt Mattie got on her case.
“It took you long enough to do your business! Ain’t no telling how many other tricks you lost out on all the time you was gone!” she blasted. Then she snatched Dee Dee’s purse and rooted around in it until she got her hands on the money. She slid it into her brassiere and folded her arms like she was scared somebody was fixing to reach down in there and snatch it.
Dee Dee didn’t say nothing, because she knew Aunt Mattie would fire somebody at the drop of a hat. Times was too hard for a colored woman to risk her job, no matter what it was.
Howard Cunningham, the kindhearted elderly man that owned the grill me and Milton worked at, and three of our coworkers eventually showed up.
“None of y’all better take off Monday with a hangover, or you’ll be unemployed,” Mr. Cunningham warned, wagging his finger at us and raking another finger through his white hair. He was glad his wife was doing better, so he could come out and have some fun.
Me and my coworkers laughed, because our boss wasn’t as strict as Aunt Mattie was. He was determined to help as many colored people survive the Depression as he could. Other than killing somebody on the job or setting the place on fire, I couldn’t think of nothing bad enough that would make that sweet old man fire one of us.
By 10:00 p.m. we had a full house. Lenny, the albino musician we’d wooed away from another bootlegger, was playing the old red piano we kept in a corner in the back of the room. The music was so good, almost everybody in the room was dancing.
Willie Frank was in such a party mood, he was twirling around the floor with Aunt Mattie and Dee Dee at the same time. “Milton, every night is like Christmas at your house!” he yelled without taking his eyes off Dee Dee’s face or his hand off her double-wide butt.
“And you Santa Claus. The stuff you brung me tonight is some of the best liquor I ever tasted!” Milton yelled back, nodding toward half a dozen gallon-size jugs of fresh liquor sitting on the floor.
Me and Milton used to visit a lot of local bootleggers before we got in the business. Now the ones that wasn’t too jealous visited us. One of the reasons was that they had heard about the high-grade stuff Willie Frank and his family brewed, and wanted to get in on the deal. Milton had made Willie Frank promise that if he did start supplying more bootleggers, other than the ones he’d been doing business with for years, he would charge them twice as much as he charged us so it wouldn’t interfere with our profits. So far, Willie Frank had kept his word. One thing I could say about him was that he was a true friend. He had never done or said
nothing to offend me or Milton. Which was more than I could say about Joyce and Odell . . .
I was still pissed off about the way Odell had treated us when we visited him at the store on our way home this afternoon. And I was just as pissed off about that hair comment Joyce had made tonight. I wondered if they really did think they was better than us. I knew the answer to that question. They did.
* * *
All our guests’ jars was full, and they could help themselves to the snacks, so me and Milton had a few minutes to ourselves. A slow song came on that he liked. He grabbed my hand and pulled me up off the couch.
“Will you dance with me, baby?”
“I guess,” I muttered.
As soon as we got on the floor, he started grinding against me. But I was dragging my feet like they was blocks of ice.
“What’s the matter with you tonight, Yvonne? You act like your mind is a thousand miles away.”
“I was just thinking about something.”
“Well, whatever that something is, you need to push it off your mind and get loose like the rest of us. I seen you turn down Willie Frank when he asked you to dance a little while ago.”
“Don’t make me laugh. That man hops around on a dance floor—and on a woman’s feet—like a jackrabbit. My toes still trying to come back to life from the last time I danced with him.”
Milton laughed. “Well, he barefooted now. He stepped out of his boots a hour ago.”
“I’ll dance with him later. He look like he was having too much fun with Dee Dee, anyway. Besides, I’d much rather be in your arms.”
