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.
“I made a whole dollar yesterday,” Pee Wee added. I was mad enough to slap him.
“Well now.” Mama turned to me. Her look said it all. The next morning I went to pick beans. That was my first and last day in the bean fields, thanks to Mr. Boatwright. A lot of mannish boys worked in the bean fields. Some of them had already fathered a baby or two.
When old Mr. Jones stopped in front of our house to let me out at the end of the day, one of those boys slapped me on the butt as I was getting out of the car. Mr. Boatwright was on our front-porch glider sitting straight-backed and stone-faced, with his hands on his knees like a sphinx. He saw what that boy did to me and hopped in the house before I could get up on the front porch.
Before I could get in the door, Mr. Boatwright had grabbed me by my arm and snatched me the rest of the way in. He was filled with rage. I honestly thought that he was going to kill me or at least make me wish I was dead.
“You fat horny pig!” he roared. He shoved me so hard I stumbled all the way across the room and hit the wall so hard a picture of Jesus fell to the floor.
“What?” I cried.
“You heifer! You wench! I seen what was goin’ on in that car!” He waved his finger in my face. “Get a switch!”
“For what?” I had done nothing that warranted a whupping.
“For what? What you mean for what? I seen what just happened. Like you ain’t got no shame atall!”
“I didn’t do anything. Robert felt on my butt—”
“Get a switch!”
While Mr. Boatwright was whupping me, we fell to the living-room floor with him landing on top of me. Suddenly, he stopped swinging the switch. He gave me a thoughtful look, forced my legs open, snatched my panties down far enough, and satisfied himself with just one violent thrust.
When Mama got home, Mr. Boatwright told her how I’d flirted with a boy from the bean-picking crew who had already made two other girls pregnant.
“You ain’t goin’ to pick beans no more, girl,” Mama informed me. “There is too many boys in them fields. The fields is where I got myself ruined by that bean-pickin’ daddy of yours, and look what he done to us! Make friends with some of them girls at the church or when you start your new school. Forget about boys.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I promised. I attempted to make friends with a couple of girls my age at church but failed.
Mona Mack, who was thin and considered plain, kept reminding me I was overweight. “You should always wear dark colors, girl, and stay away from stripes and plaids,” she told me. I stored away all of my bright-colored clothes and gave my striped and plaid outfits to a secondhand store.
“Ash Hat Shoppe got some new wigs, and you sure ought to get one to cover your head,” Mona told me on another occasion.
She enjoyed putting me down, especially in front of other kids. When I realized that, I dropped her.
Being friends with another girl, Francine Bryant, a plump, dark-skinned girl who was already wearing wigs, didn’t work out either. She borrowed money from me that she never paid back.
Mama gave me a dollar every week, and I earned a lot by running