Authors: Iceberg Slim
Hattie stared blearily at his smooth brown-skinned profile and blurted, “Soldier, you handsome thing. Have you ever been married?”
Soldier slowly turned his head and looked at her through half-closed eyes for a long moment.
Finally he said, “No, Hattie, I have never been married. In fact, I have never lived with a woman for more than three months. Like legions of black men, I just never found a black woman who inspired and helped me to set free my inner power and strength and to achieve the glory of my manhood in this hellish white man's world.”
Hattie drew back with a frown and yapped, “All right, nigger, I'm waiting. Say it. All black women are turds, and white women are great.”
Soldier fixed level eyes on Mama sitting tensely across the room and said, “No, I won't say that. There are many black women who understand that black men living in this hellhole life where the white man has a stranglehold on the lifeline, goods and services, need their black women fighting the enemy with them, not unwittingly
helping the enemy to uproot the black family. Black women who don't understand this and crush their men are pathetic fools.
“Oh yes, about white women. I have never tried any. All I know about them is what I have learned from black women who ape them.
“I have also learned the bitter truth that great numbers of black women today stomp on the manhood and dreams of trapped black men just as their arrogant and ignorant sisters, drunk with freedom, did at the end of slavery. Like them, certain misguided black women still ruthlessly and criminally help the white man to deball and destroy black men.
“This is happening on a mass scale, and so long as it continues, the lowly masses of black men must go on blundering and hobbling about in the white man's complex world mentally maimed and crippled by white haters and unthinking black women. The positive black woman uses her glory and strength and power to inspire her man toward self-improvement and leadership so that her children might have a strong pattern image.”
Soldier's hard stare softened as he continued to look at Mama fidgeting uneasily.
Soldier went on, “The negative black woman dominates the home like a despot or she covets the role. In both cases, during the lunatic strife, these pitiful black women are never aware of the terror and hurt on their children's faces as papa crumbles. The negative black woman fears and hates the white woman because ill-advised or not, black men in droves are defecting to the promise of sympathetic white arms.”
Soldier saw that Papa was asleep beside him. He stood up. Mama sat there in her chair staring coldly at Soldier.
Hattie sighed and said, “Soldier, you oughta be a lawyer.”
Mama snorted and mumbled something that sounded like, “Sojer been drinkin'!”
Soldier ignored her and started to turn toward the front door.
Hattie said, “Tell me, Soldier, have you ever been in love?”
He paused and looked wistful for a moment.
Then he said, “Hasn't everybody at least once? I fell hard for her a week after I got out of the army in 1918. We shacked up at Thirty-fifth and State streets for those three months I mentioned. We couldn't live apart until her divorce became final.
“I was a young dreamer with the idea I was going to invent something and get rich and famous.
“One hot night in July I left to get cold suds. Something or other triggered what I thought was a brilliant idea for an invention so terrific the white man would be forced by public demand to put black Edward Cato's name in his Jim Crow history books.
“Well, anyway, I rushed back to her without the suds. I tossed her in the air and blurted out my brainstorm. Then I noticed she had a sour look on her pretty face and she demanded that I put her down.
“I stood there with my mouth open in shock when she said, âNigger, are you crazy? Stop dreaming. Don't you know that if one of your silly ideas was worth a good goddamn, a white man would have thought of it already? Now hurry back with our beer. I'm dying of thirst.'
“I don't remember what the invention idea was, but I do remember that I turned and walked out that door and never came back.
“And I have never since given another woman a chance to stomp on even an impossible dream of mine.”
Soldier opened the front door and limped away on his game leg into the night.
I don't know how much money Junior gave Mama in the kitchen that Sunday morning when he bought the expensive groceries. I do know she didn't go to work for a week. When Connie the landlady picked up the rent Mama gave her all paper money. It was one of the rare times that she didn't scramble frantically about searching out every nickel and dime to pay the rent.
The strange and worrisome thing I couldn't figure out was why Junior and the Cox brothers didn't leave the building until two weeks after Rajah parked Railhead's Buick out front.
Papa was like a vacant-eyed robot as from day to day he injected his insulin and forced down the bland but nutritious fish and vegetables Carol brought home from the cafe. He visited Soldier and the doctor once during the two weeks and got a fresh supply of insulin, at Soldier's expense.
The first week in July an odd couple of guys moved into the flat above Railhead's on the third floor. I don't mean they looked odd. They were Pullman porters and looked like ordinary human beings coming in and out of the building.
One was tall and husky and black, and the other was tall, willowy and yellow. Both were in their early twenties and wore jazzy clothes.
I noticed when the movers brought their stuff in how fancy and glossy it all was. I mentioned that they were odd because at the end of July little nosey me peeked on them and found out they were.
I remember the date, July 26, 1938. Nineteen thirty-eight. I can't forget it. It was the humid afternoon that Sally Greene led Bessie to her debut as a whore. And perhaps it was the first time that Sally didn't lay for free.
We were alone in the flat sitting on the sofa at the open window when Sally came excitedly through the front door that was open to snare breezes that stirred when the vestibule door was used.
She waggled her head, and Bessie went down the hall a bit with her. I tuned my ears up high and heard Sally's voice say something in praise of Pullman porters, cold champagne and ten dollars. Then I heard Bessie mumble something that had a sour tone of dissent. Sally said something in a scolding way, and I heard their footsteps go down the hall and into the bathroom.
I listened to the faucets run for a long time and wondered what they were doing. Finally I tiptoed down the hall and the keyhole thrust itself before my eyes.
Mama would have gone to the electric chair for sure if she had seen what was going on. Sally apparently had taken a bath and was naked sitting on the commode with Mama's douche bag hanging
on a nail above her and the nozzle buried in a fat bush of jet-black crotch hair.
Bessie was wallowing in the tub. I went back to the sofa. I heard them come out of the bathroom, and I smelled Mama's perfume as they wiggled through the front doorway and up the stairs to the Pullman porters.
I sat at the window for a half hour or so watching Connie the landlady having a heated, arm-slinging argument on the sidewalk in front of her house with her lanky, expensively dressed son. As I had seen her do several times before, she took a checkbook from her bosom and made out a check on the gleaming fender of her son's Lincoln sedan. Then he pecked her on the forehead and zoomed away in his machine.
I guess he only came to visit Connie when he ran short of cash. Maybe like the black people she abused and cheated, he hated her too.
Curiosity nipped hard at me about Sally and Bessie and what was happening with the Pullman porters. I locked the flat and eased up on the third floor in bare feet.
The porters' door was open about four inches, and I saw a length of chain lock stretched across the gap above my head. I could hear the whirring of an electric fan and Bessie giggling against the muted background of a bass-toned phonograph.
I knew from the sounds that the party was in the living room. I stretched out on the floor and almost twisted my neck out of whack trying to get just a tiny peek into that damn living room.
It was no use. I was sweating and dizzy and really ill with frustration. I really was. I was afraid I might pass out and be discovered, so I went back to the flat and fell onto the sofa exhausted.
Then a thrilly idea shot through me. I raced into Mama's bedroom and got a tiny hand mirror from a purse and sped back to my position on the floor outside the freaky flat.
Slowly I stuck the mirror past the doorjamb. I was shocked and
excited at the sight of Bessie and the others naked and freaking off on couch cushions in the middle of the floor.
It was really hard to believe it was my big dumb country sister groaning in ecstasy with her face pushed into Sally's bush. Sally lay there on her back like a bitch dog between the knees of the yellow porter and licked his balls as the black porter knelt behind him and sodomized him with a huge stiff black dick.
I was mesmerized as Sally and Bessie paired off and did a sixty-nine while the porters called them filthy names. I was so angry and hurt when Bessie sucked off both guys.
Then the yellow guy started fucking Sally from the rear as they lay on their sides watching the black guy lock Bessie's legs over his shoulders. I held my breath when Bessie cried out as he poked his gigantic whang into her.
And then as he pounded into her violently with long brutal strokes, the bitch Sally lay there listening to Bessie scream, and hollered, “Oh shit, your dick is beautiful going in and out of that sweet cunt of hers. Fuck her! Fuck her harder. Oh, you gorgeous mule dick sonuvabitch. Tear that bitch up. Oh! Goddamn, fuck me, you pretty yellow cocksucker. OOEE I'm coming, sissy bastard.”
I felt faint and queasy, so I struggled to my feet and managed to get downstairs to the flat. I rushed to the bathroom drenched with sweat and sudden diarrhea and my heart felt like it might knock a hole in my chest. I was sick enough to die for fifteen minutes sitting on that stool. I really was.
I started to feel better and my heart gentled down. I was thinking about getting Jonnie Mae or somebody to go upstairs with me to rescue Bessie before the black guy killed her with his outrageous dick when I heard Bessie call my name.
I cleaned myself up and went to the bedroom. She was stretched across the bed with her clothes on. She didn't look funny or different or anything except maybe too bright eyed from the champagne. And the raw odor of “come” wafted from her.
I must have been looking strange because she said, “Why yu squenchin' up yo' nos an' lookin' mean at me, Sweet Pea? Ah buy us ice cream, yu git it.”
I lowered my eyes and said, “I don't feel good. Not now, maybe later. You want to use the bathroom?”
I went down the hall and out the front door to the shady stoop. I sat there getting my head together and trying to decide if I should tell Papa or Mama about Bessie and the Pullman porters.
Papa came home at sunset, drunk. I sat on the stoop until Mama came home at 9
P.M.
One look at her haggard, tense face and I knew the white folks had been shooting her through hot grease again. I couldn't heap Bessie's mess on top of it all. I guess the Tilson family was doomed to have horrible things happen to it.
Everybody except Junior was home and in bed by 11
P.M.
The excitement and shock of peeking on Bessie's freak off sure played havoc with my bowels. I had to get up and go to the bathroom every half hour or so.
A bad rain and thunderstorm started around midnight. In fact, I was on the stool when I heard Junior slam the front door and clump noisily down the hall. I heard him stop in front of Mama's door and knock urgently. I didn't hear Mama answer or open her door.
He knocked again and said petulantly and thickly, “Ain't yu uh blip, Mama, dahlin'? Heah ah am fatern uh goose wif frogskins an' kickin' yo' doe down whilst yu playin' possum lak Ah'm shuckin' an' jivin' out heah. Them dirty white folk ain't gonna see yu fer uh munt. Opun the doe, Mama, dahlin', an' looka heah yu ken . . .”
I came out of the bathroom and walked toward Junior at the same time that Papa reached Junior and placed his hand on Junior's burly shoulder.
He said firmly, “Boy, Ah ain't goin' tu stan no mo' ruckus heah tunight. Why yu beatin' on Sedalia's doe? Whah yu git thet fist uh money?”
Papa almost lost his balance when Junior jerked violently away
and stood glaring down at Papa with a crooked grin on his face. Mama opened her door and stood yawning in the doorway and gazing raptly at the sheaf of greenbacks in Junior's hand.
Junior said loudly, “Mama, dahlin', whutsa mattuh wif this crazy niggah? Ah ain't got tu tell him oauh bizness, huh?”
Mama tore her eyes away from the money and patted Papa's cheek.
She said sweetly, “Honey Pie, git on back tu bed an' res'. Ah don' need no hep wif Junior tunight.”
Papa drew back from her and frowned.
Papa said, “Yu ain't wukin' an' ain't nobody givin' way no money. Ah ain't gonna have no crooks 'roun mah house. Whah yu get thet money?”
Junior shot a puzzled look at Mama, and then apparently charting his course by her impassive face he lashed out, “Niggah, yu ain't crazy. Thet wine is got yu stupid. Niggah, yu ain't got no wife an' no house.”
Papa said in a croaking voice, “Yu crook, don' yu talk tu me lak thet. The Lawd gonna' give me th' strenth tu whup yu.”
Junior said, “Fool, Ah ain't no crook, Ah'm uh hustlah. Me an' Railhead an' Rajah play lemon pool. Ast Mama.”
Papa turned questioning eyes to Mama's solemnly nodding head.
The twins came to stand trembling beside me as Junior stuck his finger in Papa's face and said slowly, “Niggah, yu ain't th' boss 'roun heah. Mama is, an' Ah don' want yu effing wif me agin. Nex' time Ah'm gonna' kick yo' ole grayâ”