Being from The City, I had dressed for the trip. A black crepe number which pulled and pleated, tucked and shirred, in a warp all its own. It was expensive by my standards and dressy enough for a wedding reception. My short white gloves had lost their early-morning crispness during the ten-hour coach trip,.and Guy, whose immensity matched his energy, had mashed and creased and bungled the dress into a very new symmetry. Less than a year old, he had opinions. He definitely wanted to get down and go to that smiling stranger across the aisle, and immediately wanted to be in my lap pulling on the rhinestone brooch which captured and brought light to the collar of my dress.
In spite of the wrinkled dress and in spite of the cosmetic case full to reeking with dirty diapers, I left the train with my son a picture of controlled dignity. I had over two hundred dollars rolled in scratchy ten-dollar bills in my brassiere, another seventy in my purse, and two bags of seriously selected clothes. Los Angeles was going to know I was there.
My aunt answered my telephone call. "Ritie, where are you?"
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32
"We're at the station."
"What we?"
Like all the family she had heard about my pregnancy, but she hadn't seen the result.
"My son and I."
A tiny hesitation, then: "Get a taxi and come out here. I'll pay the cab fare." Her voice didn't ooze happiness at hearing from me, but then, the Baxters were not known to show any emotions. Except violent ones.
Wilshire Boulevard was wide and glossy. Large buildings sat back on tiny little lawns in a privacy that projected money and quiet voices and white folks.
The house on Federal Avenue had a no-nonsense air about it. It was a model of middle-class decorum. A single-story, solidly made building with three bedrooms, good meant-tolast furniture, and samplers on the wall which exhorted someone to "Bless This Home" and warned that "Pride Goeth before a Fall."
The clan had met, obviously called by my aunt, to check out my new addition to the family and give me the benefit of their conglomerate wisdom. My Uncle Tommy sat, widespraddled as usual, and grumbled. "Hey, Ritie. Got a baby, I see."
Guy was in my arms and talking, pointing, laughing, so the meaning in his statement was not in the words. He was simply greeting me and saying that although I had a child without benefit of marriage, he for one was not going to ignore either me or the baby.
f
33
My family spoke its own mysterious language. The wives and husbands of my blood relatives handed my son around as if they were thinking of adding him to their collection. They removed his bootees and pulled his toes.
"Got good feet."
"Uh huh. High arches."
One aunt ran her hand around his head and was satisfied. "His head is round."
"Got a round head, huh?"
"Sure does."
"That's good."
"Uh huh."
This feature was more than a symbol of beauty. It was an indication of the strength of the bloodline. Every Baxter had a round head.
"Look a lot like Bibbi, doesn't he?" "Bibbi" was the family name for my mother. Guy was handed around the circle again.
"Sure does."
"Yes. I see Bibbi right here."
"Well... but he's mighty fair, isn't he?"
tic* ' >*
bure is.
They all spoke without emotion, except for my Aunt Leah. Her baby voice rose and fell like music played on a slender reed.
"Reetie, you're a woman, now. A mother and all that. You'll have two to think of from now on. You'll have to get a job-"
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34
"I've been working as a cook." She shouldn't think I hJS' come to be taken care of. |
"-and learn to save your money."
Tommy's wife, Sarah, wrapped my son carefully in his blanket and handed him to me. Aunt Leah stood, a signal that the inspection was over. "What time is your train? Charlie can drive you to the station."
My brain reeled. Had I given the impression that I was going on? Did they say something I missed? "In a few hours. I should be getting back."
We were all shaking hands. Their relief was palpable. I was, after all, a Baxter and playing the game. Being independent. Expecting nothing and if asked, not giving a cripple crab ~ a crutch.
Tom asked, "Need some money, Reet?"
"No thanks. I've got money." All I needed was to get away from that airless house.
My uncles and aunts were childless, except for my late Uncle Tuttie, and they were not equipped to understand that an eighteen-year-old mother is also an eighteen-year-old girl. They were a close-knit group of fighters who had no patience with weakness and only contempt for losers.
I was hurt because they didn't take me and my child to their bosom, and because I was a product of Hollywood upbringing and my own romanticism. On the silver screen they would have vied for me. The winner would have set me up in a cute little cottage with frangipani and roses growing in the front yard. I would always wear pretty aprons and my son would play in the Little League. My husband would come
[ 35 ]
home (he looked like Curly) and smoke his pipe in the den as I made cookies for the Boy Scouts meeting.
I was hurt because none of this would come true. But only in part. I was also proud of them. I congratulated myself on having absolutely the meanest, coldest, craziest family in the world.
Uncle Charlie, Aunt Leah's husband, never talked much, and on the way back to that station he broke the silence only a few times.
"You sure got yourself a cute baby."
"Thank you."
"Going on to San Diego, huh?"
I guessed so.
"Well, your father's down there. You won't be by yourself."
My father, who spent his time drinking tequila in Mexico and putting on high-toned airs in San Diego, would give me a colder reception than the one I'd just received.
I would be by myself. I thought how nice it would be.
I decided that one day I would be included in the family legend. Someday, as they sat around in the closed circle recounting the fights and feuds, the prides and prejudices of the Baxters, my name would be among the most illustrious. I would become a hermit. I would seal myself off from the world, just my son and I.
I had written a juicy melodrama in which I was to be the star. Pathetic, poignant, isolated. I planned to drift out of the wings, a little girl martyr. It just so happened that life took my script away and upstaged me.
9
"Are you in the life?" ,-
The big black woman could have been speaking Russian. She sat with her back to the window and the sunlight slid over her shoulders, making a pool in her lap."
"I beg pardon?"
"The life. You turn tricks?"
The maid at the hotel had given me the woman's address and said she took care of children. "Just ask for Mother Cleo."
She hadn't asked me to sit, so I just stood in the center of the cluttered room, the baby resting on my shoulder.
"No. I do not." How could she ask me such a question? *^0
"Well, you surely look like a trickster. Your face and everything."
"Well, I assure you, I'm not a whore. I have worked as a chef." How the lowly have become mighty. Ole Creole Kitchen would hitch up its shoulders to know that it once had had a chef-not just a garden-variety cook.
"Well." She looked at me as if she'd soon be able to tell if I was lying.
"How come you got so much powder and lipstick?" That morning I had bought a complete cosmetic kit and spent over an hour pasting my face into a mask with Max Factor's Pancake No. 31.1 didn't really feel I had to explain to Mother Cleo, but on the other hand I couldn't very well be rude. I did need a baby-sitter.
37
"Maybe I put on too much."
"Where do you work?"
It was an interrogation. She had her nerve. Did she think that being called Mother Cleo gave her maternal privileges?
"The Hi Hat Club needs a waitress. I'm going to apply." The make-up was supposed to make me look older. Maybe it only succeeded in making me look cheap.
"That's a good job. Tips can make it a real good job. Let me see the baby."
She got up with more ease than I had expected. When she stretched out her hands a cloud of talcum powder was released. She took the baby and adjusted him down in the crook of her arm. "He's pretty. Still sleeping, huh?"
Mother Cleo metamorphosed in front of me. She was no longer the ugly fat ogre who threatened from her deep chair. Looking down on the infant, she had become the prototype of mother. Her face softened and her voice blurred. She ran stubbly fat fingers around his cap and slid it off.
"I don't usually take them this young. Too much trouble. But he's cute as can be, ain't he?"
"Well, you know-"
"Don't do for you to say so, but still it's true. And you're almost too young to have a baby. I guess your folks put you out, huh?"
She had noticed I wore no wedding ring. I decided to let her think I was homeless. Then I thought, "Let her think nothing. I was homeless."
"Well, I'm going to give you a hand. I'll keep him and I'm going to charge you less than the white ones." I was shocked
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38
that she kept white babies. "Lots of white women trusf their babies with me rather than they own mothers. There lot of them from the South and they like the idea that they still got a mammy for they children. Can't you just see them? Snottynosed little things growing up talking about 'I had a colored f.. mammy.' Huh?" She uglied her face with wrinkles. "But I naturally like children and I make they mommas pay. They pay me good. Don't care how much I like they young 'uns, they don't pay they have to go."
I agreed to her terms and paid her for the first week. Before I left, the baby struggled awake in her arms. She began a rocking motion which didn't lull him. His large black eyes took in the strange face and he began to look around for me. A small cry found its way to the surface before I came into his vision. Once he had assured himself that indeed I was there, he hoi- **BST lered in earnest, angry that I had allowed him to be held by this unknown person, and maybe even a little afraid that I'd given him away. I moved to take him.
"Let him cry." Mother Cleo increased her rocking and bouncing. "He got to get used to it."
"Just let me hold him a second." I couldn't bear his loneliness. I took his softness and kissed him and patted his back and he quieted immediately, as a downpour of rain cuts off.
"You too soft. They all do that till they get used to me." She stood near me and held out her arms. "Give him to me and you go on and get your job. I'll feed him. You bring diapers?"
I nodded to the bag I had dropped beside the door.
"Hush baby, hush baby, hush baby, hush." She had
"?fF-
39
]
started to croon. I handed the baby to her and right away he began to cry.
"Go on. He'll be all right."
He yelled louder, splitting the air with screams. She contrived a wordless song. His screams were lightning, piercing the dark cloud of her music. I closed the door.
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The night club sat on the corner, a one-story building whose purple stucco fa?ade was sprinkled with glitter dust. Inside the dark square room, a bar dimly curved its way from the door to a small dance floor in the rear. Minuscule round tables and chairs jammed against one another, and red bulbs shone down, intensifying the gloom.
The Hi Hat Club had almost too much atmosphere.
Music blared and trembled, competing with the customers' voices for domination of the air. Neither won, except that for a few seconds during the lull between records, the jukebox sat quiet up against the wall, its green and red and yellow lights flickering like an evil robot from a Flash Gordon film.
The customers came mostly from the underworld, though there was a scattering of young sailors among them. They all jockeyed and shifted, lifting glasses and voices in the thick air, which smelled of Lysol and perfume and bodies, and cigarettes and stale beer. The women were mistresses of decorum. They sat primly at the bar, skirts tucked in, voices quick or
40
silent altogether. On the street they had been as ageless as their profession, but near the posturing, flattering men, they became modest girls. Kittens purring under the strokes.
I watched them and understood. I saw them and envied. They had men of their own. Of course they bought them. They laid open their bodies and threw away their dignity upon a heap of come-filled rubbers. But they had men.
In the late evenings, boosters and thieves wove their paths among the night people, trading, bartering, making contacts and taking orders.
"Got two Roos Bros, suits. Thirty-eight. Black. Pinstripe and nigger-brown. Tag says one-ninety dollars . . . they both yours for an ace fifty."
"Gelman shoes. I. Magnin dresses. Your woman'll catch if she wear these threads. For you, four dresses for a deuce."
Depending on the evening's take and the sweet man's mood, the thieves were given money by the pimps which had been given them by the girls which they had saved by lying down first and getting up last.
The waitresses, in a block, were the least interesting of the club's inhabitants. They were for the most part dull married women, who moved among the colorful patrons like slugs among butterflies. The men showed no interest in them, leading me to believe that virtue is safest in a den of iniquity.
I was younger but no more interesting than my colleagues, so the pretty men lumped me with them and ignored us all.
I had no chance to show them how clever I was because wit is communicated by language and I hadn't yet learned theirs. I understood their lack of interest to imply that smart
[
41
women were prostitutes and stupid ones were waitresses. There were no other categories.
I worked cleaning ashtrays, serving drinks and listening for over a month. My tips were good because I was fast and had a good memory.
"Scotch and milk for you, sir?"
"That's right, little girl, you got a good memory." Though he never saw me, he'd leave a dollar tip.
My first week in San Diego, Mother Cleo had told me she had a room for rent. "I see you a good girl coming over here to see your baby ever day and all, so my husband and me, we ready to let you live here with us. Room'll be fifteen dollars a week. Got a new bedroom suite in it and if you put a rubber sheet on the bed, your baby can sleep with you." So I became a roomer in the home of Mr. Henry and Mrs. Cleo Jenkins.
My life began to move at a measured tempo. I found a modern dance studio where a long-haired white woman gave classes to a motley crew of Navy wives.
I went to work at six (five-thirty to set up tables, get change, arrange my tray with napkins and matches) and was off at two. I shared a ride with a waitress whose husband picked her up every night. I slept late, woke to fix my breakfast around noon and play with my baby.
He amused me. I could not and did not consider him a person. A real person. He was my baby, rather like a pretty living doll that belonged to me. I was myself too young and unformed a human being to think of him as a human being. I loved him. He was cute. He laughed a lot and gurgled and he was mine.
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I had begun to look forward to two women coming in every night. They were both just under thirty, and separately they would not have attracted much attention. Johnnie Mae was thin, taller than average, dark-brown-skinned. Her long jaw sagged down, giving her a look of sadness even when she laughed. She wore fuchsia lipstick and most often s
howed pink smudges on her long white teeth.
Beatrice was plump to ripening. A short yellow woman whose role seemed to be straight man to Johnnie Mae's unfunny but loud humor.
The fact that the pimps and panderers didn't harass them, bespoke the tolerance in the black community for people who chose to lead lives different from the norm. Although they were obviously not sisters, they dressed identically and never spoke to anyone except each other and me.
"Good evening, ladies. Two Tom Collins, I presume." I was a democrat and treated every lady the same.
"Evening, Rita. That's right." They must have spent their free time practicing before mirrors. They sounded alike and even the looks on one face were reflected on the other.
"Got you running this evening, ain't they?" The question did not really need answering. My tray was always filled with fresh drinks, dirty ashtrays or empty glasses.
"When you going to come over to our house?" They smiled at each other, then gave me their sly glances.
43
"Well, I work all the time, you know."
"Yes, but you have a day off. You say you don't have any friends here."
"I'm thinking about it. That'll be two dollars, please."
Lesbians still interested me, but I no longer felt tenderly protective of them: when I was fifteen I had spent nearly a year concerning myself with society's gross mistreatment of hermaphrodites. I was anxious over the plight of lesbians during the time I was consumed with fear that I might be an incipient one. Their importance to me had diminished in direct relationship to my assurance that I was not.
"Johnnie Mae got something nice for you yesterday."
"Sure did."
"It's a birthday surprise."
"But you don't know my birthday."
"That's how come it's a surprise."
They laughed into each other's laugh and I was forced to join them. Customers at other tables needed my attention, but the two women stayed on the fringes of my mind as I laced myself around the room. They weren't frightening, and they were funny.
"We'll get a bottle of Dubonnet"-Beatrice pronounced it doo bonnet-"for you and I'll cook. You're off on Sunday. Come over and I'll fry a Sunday bird."
"And we can have a ham."
"Just the three of us? Chicken and ham?" That was a lot of food.
"Nigger ham. A watermelon." Their laughter, crackling, met in the air above the table.
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"I take my baby out on Sundays." f>
They thought about that while I waited In the other customers. *
"You can bring him over."
"I'll think about it."
At the bar a thick-waisted waitress who had" never invited me to her house curled her upper lip.
"You'd better be careful." She sent a hostile glance to Johnnie Mae's table.
"Why?" I wanted to hear her say it.
"Those women. You know what they are?" Her voice had taken on a sinister depth.
"What?"
"Bull daggers." She smirked her satisfaction at saying the word.
"Oh, really?" I put no surprise in my voice.
"You know about bull daggers, don't you?" Her face showed how her tongue relished the words.
"They dag bulls?" For a second she wasn't sure if I was being smart.