Black Betty (27 page)

“I had twins by him. They call ’em fraternal a’cause they don’t look alike. He took me down to Mexico City so I could give birth an’ nobody would ask no questions. They let Gwendolyn stay up at the house.” Betty’s words slowed with sudden guilt. “They told her that her momma died and that they was keepin’ her in her momma’s memory. They sent Terry away a’cause he didn’t want no men in the house. Not even a little boy. He made Sarah send Arthur to boarding school when she came back.”

“How come you couldn’t say that Gwen was yours?”

“He was afraid that it would get out about him havin’ a colored child livin’ right there in his house. An’ anyway, that’s just the way he was. He didn’t want nobody to have nuthin’. But he knew that he couldn’t take her away so I never see her. So he let us… let us… be friends.” Betty shook her head. “She was always askin’ if I knew her mother. And I’d tell her stories.” That was too much for her and we had to be quiet for a while.

“What about Terry? Did he know about you?”

“Yeah, he did. Marlon told’im. He put Terry wit’ the Tylers and I sent them what I could. I even went to see’im sometimes when Felix was at work an’ I was visitin’. But I never told’im that Gwen was his sister. I tried t’get them to be friends but they was too different. Gwen was gentle and like to play like she was havin’ tea with the queen and Terry wanted to rassle.”

I was surprised and I wasn’t. I had had it all worked out in my mind that Sarah was Gwen’s mother. I thought that she had gone off with some black man to spite her husband and her father. And Terry, well, Terry didn’t seem to matter much now that he was dead. It was hard enough keeping up with the living.

After a while I asked, “You said that Sarah came back from someplace. Back from where?”

“She run off with a man right when I was pregnant. Ron Hawkes. He was the gardener and she was the fool.”

“She married him?”

“I cain’t blame her, Easy. That was before Mr. Cain took sick. He’d hit that girl, do all kindsa mean things to her. It was really more what he said than what he did.” Betty cast her eyes down toward the gross beetle.

“That’s Arthur’s father?”

She nodded. “That’s why he so mixed up.”

“Mixed up how?” My question must have carried more weight than I intended. Betty’s bloodshot eyes became red slits.

“Nuthin’ bad. Not that. He just empty like. Empty. Nobody really cared about Arthur around the house. His momma was always sick and kinda weak. She didn’t really know how to take care of children, and so I mostly raised him an’ Gwen. I used to let him run around behind me when I’d be cleanin’ or whatever.”

“Where’s his father?”

“I don’t know. He got inta some kinda trouble and had to go away. And Mr. Cain hated him ever since the first time he found him with Sarah.”

“He didn’t like that, huh?” I imagined some big rich man finding his millionaire daughter grinding down in the toolshed with some trash.

I had been a gardener myself.

“Kicked her out. I tried to stop him but he wouldn’t listen.” Betty rubbed the back of her hand against her nose. “It killed Cassandra.…”

Betty started crying in a way that made her whole body vibrate. I waited for her to stop but she didn’t, so I got up and hugged her. Her powerful arms went around my neck and she cried, “Oh, baby! Baby!” shamelessly and loud.

Maude came to the door, still sensitive to the attention that noise might bring, but when she saw Betty in my arms she withdrew.

Betty in my arms.

For years after her kiss I dreamed of it, yearned for it. And there she was, filled with passion and calling out for love. But not my love. Not me.

I held her and ran my flat palms over her back and head. We slid down to the porch and she tucked up her legs so I could run my hands from her head to her feet; not a lover’s stroke but a mother’s. A mother whose child has come awake from a terrible nightmare.

After a long time she quieted down. Her head was against my shoulder and she even fell asleep. Her face became younger in sleep and the same brash girl who kissed me for a lark on the muddy streets of Fifth Ward came out. My body was aroused but my mind was in the ascendant. I thought right then that maybe Odell was right; maybe we did live forever in grace.

I decided to have a cigarette for that deep thought. When I struck the match Betty woke up.

“Oh!” She pushed away from me, hurting my bruised chest. She got to her feet, her fists loosely balled at her side.

I’d come from the same time and place. A place where if you showed a vulnerable belly you were bound to get punched.

So I didn’t say anything for a while, just puffed on my cigarette and watched the air on Denker shimmer in the afternoon heat.

After three Luckies she started talking again. “He sent Gwen away to school in Europe and when she was here she played the maid.

“But I wouldn’t let him touch her. I told him that I’d kill him if he ever touched my girl.” There was passion in her threat. Even in her weakened state she wouldn’t take everything. She wouldn’t abandon her child.

“Why did you stay so long, Betty?” I asked. “He couldn’t do anything to Marlon after this long.”

“I couldn’t leave after Cassie died. There was Sarah and her baby. Gwen wouldn’ta understood if I took her. He didn’t want sex no more after Cassie passed, and I owed that woman somethin’.”

“So you killed him?” It was the only question I really had.

“I ain’t killed nobody.”

“That policeman who caught Marlon, he says that Albert Cain was murdered.”

“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout that. In his older years Albert got feeble. I used to have to take him to the bathroom and feed him strained peas with a spoon. When Cassandra died, Sarah came back and started to blame Albert for everything. I kept her from hurtin’ him. I didn’t wanna see her mess up her life ’cause of him and his evil.”

“Did Sarah kill him?”

“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no killin’s. I didn’t do nuthin’ neither.”

“Then why’d you run, Betty? Why are they after you?”

She didn’t have any more to say. She took one step down the stair and stepped on the big beetle. He broke open, making the sound of a large nut being cracked.

“Why’d they kill Marlon, Betty?” I asked, but all she did was turn her back on me and walk into the house.

BETTY DIDN’T WANT MY HELP. She didn’t want something simple like the truth or revenge.

What could I do anyway? If the cops had killed Marlon there was no court that would hear his complaint. The only revenge we could get would be personal—a showdown. But I wasn’t willing to kill a cop.

I couldn’t help Betty, so I traded one impossible task for another.

THERE WAS A LITTLE cat tail of a street off of Crenshaw named Ozme Lane. It was a cul-de-sac of cluttered matchbook houses that would have been impressive if they grew to five times their present size.

The mailbox in front of the puce ranch house with the fairy-tale castle facade read “Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Mix and Son,” in black block letters. I knocked on the pink door, and soon after a bronze slat that was situated at about the height of my gullet swung inward. It presented me with a lovely almond-shaped eye.

“Who is it?” the eye asked, none too friendly.

“Mr. Hall,” I replied.

“What you want?”

It was her. That voice was burned into my brain just as clearly as Bruno’s last stand.

“Ted Mix live here?”

“Ain’t that what it says?”

“I need to talk to him.” Actually I had hoped that Ted would be out. It was Sooky that I wanted to talk to.

“Well he ain’t here.”

“Then maybe you can help me. You Sooky Freeman?”

“I’m Mrs. Mix, but I ain’t got no time to listen to no pitch. The kids comin’ home soon,” she said. And then as an afterthought, “With their daddy.”

“I ain’t sellin’ nuthin’, ma’am. It’s just that I got a letter from a friend’a mine, a fellah that we call Two-toes because of a birth defect he suffered. This friend, he’s in prison, but he’s comin’ out soon and he told me to tell your husband that he wanted to talk to him about a friend that they had in common.”

“What friend?” Sooky didn’t know that Theodore consorted with criminals.

“A man that he called…” I snapped my fingers twice to show that I could hardly remember. “Called Raymond.” I watched that eye double in size. “Raymond Alexander.”

“What you want here, mistah?”

“Nuthin’, ma’am. It’s just that Two-toes didn’t have Ted’s address and he couldn’t find a phone book up in jail. So he asked me to come on by to find out if Ted wanted to talk.” I smiled as pleasantly as I could.

Sooky was shaking on the other side of the door.

“Ted don’t know that man,” she said.

“What man?”

“The one you said!” she shouted.

“Which one?”

“None of ’em. You go and tell that man that ain’t nobody here name of Ted Mix.”

“Why should I do that if Ted don’t know my friend?”

The door came open. Sooky Freeman was a sight to behold. She was that sloppy kind of beautiful. Full brown skin with the sort of wide ample lips that could wrap themselves into a kiss. She had on a ratty housecoat and floppy slippers. She knew she was beautiful; so beautiful that here it was two in the afternoon and she still wasn’t dressed or made up.

“Come on in here,” she said.

I went through the entrance hall, which was about the size of a broom closet, into the living room—a closet with windows. When I sat down I had the feeling that I’d followed some little girl into her dollhouse for tea.

“What do you want?” she asked.

The fabric of her housecoat was worn and soft. Her figure stood out from under it almost as if she were naked. I thought for a second that I could take everything in that room. I could get Ted’s wife and his house for just a promise. A promise tangled up in those lips.

But I didn’t want any of it.

“Toes said something about a man named Alfred too. You know where he live?”

Sooky folded her arms underneath her breasts and then, when she saw how I admired the framing, she brought her arms higher to be more modest.

“It was Alfred,” she told me.

“What you talkin’ ’bout, girl?” I didn’t enjoy what I was doing. I didn’t enjoy it but it was easier than interring a murdered man or facing Commander Styles; it was easier than letting Mouse kill me for keeping him from killing three innocent men.

“It don’t matter if you understand me. You just tell your friend that it was Alfred who did what he thinks I did. Tell’im that it was Alfred Broadhawk told.”

“Told what?”

“That ain’t none’a your business, mistah. You just tell yo’ friend—”

“Hold up on that, honey. I’m right here.” I pointed at my foot, which I then crossed over my left knee. “You got to deal with me. If you want me to be your delivery boy then you got to pay my fee.”

“Pay you?”

I nodded.

“How much you want?”

“First you got to tell me what I’m gettin’ into, then I’ll give you the price tag.”

“You don’t know nuthin’?”

“I know the names and I know it’s somethin’ serious.”

Sooky licked her lips and glanced over at the door. “Ted gonna be home soon, Mr. Hall. Why’ont you meet me tomorrow… someplace else.”

“’Cause by tomorrah you have a lie all sewed up. ’Cause by tomorrah you could have three brothers come knockin’ on my head. I’ll deal with Theodore if he comes.”

Sooky looked at the door one more time before she started to talk. “Me’n Alfred used to go together—kinda. He was in my uncle’s church. He never even really liked me but I was a minister’s niece and he wanted to be part’a that. He wanted to be a minister himself. And so he went out wit’ me.”

“So? That ain’t nuthin’,” I said.

“Yeah, but we was always fightin’. He didn’t wanna do nuthin’. A kiss was a big thing for him.”

I shook my head, thinking, poor fool. Sooky couldn’t help but smile a little at the compliment.

“So it took me a whole week to get him to take me to hear T-Bone Walker over at the Ace Club. He didn’t wanna be where there was drinkin’ an’ loose women. He was afraid of it.

“So he didn’t wanna take me an’ then he wanted to leave after just the first set. It was hardly even eleven but he start yammerin’ ’bout Sunday school and how he couldn’t even look them kids in the face if he didn’t leave.”

“Go on,” I prompted. I stifled a yawn too. I really was tired. Tired down into my bones.

“Then he wanted to go through this alley and I didn’t want to. And then we heard shots.” Tears started from her eyes. “And Alfred run to see even though I tried to stop him. He came back and said that he saw Mr. Alexander with his gun standing over Bruno Ingram.”

Sooky was crying. I understood. All she wanted was a good time, a good life, but the world wouldn’t leave her alone.

“I told him to fo’get it,” she said. “I told him that it was the Lord’s worry, not his. But he didn’t listen. He didn’t listen. He drug me off to a phone booth and stoled the dime right outta my purse.”

“What’d he say?” I asked. “What did Alfred say to the cops?”

“He told about Mr. Alexander and Bruno Ingram.”

“But what were the words he said? What did he say exactly?”

“I don’t know. Somethin’ about the Lord wouldn’t let him be quiet or somethin’ like that.”

That was all I needed. I didn’t feel good about it. Sooky had told me what my friend needed to know. She’d put her mark on Alfred’s grave.

“Fifty dollars,” I said.

“What?”

“Fifty dollars to deliver the message and to leave out your name.”

She went through every drawer and pocket in the house. Then she took out the change jar. She came up with thirty-four dollars and twenty-seven cents. I took it. I told her that I’d be back for the balance but I never went. I took her money because that cost would give her the hope that maybe I’d be an honest crook and do what I promised.

Who knows? Maybe I would.

SHE EVEN GAVE ME Broadhawk’s address. He was living in a little shack of a house on Ninety-sixth Place. Using beach stones, dry grasses, and three made-up dolls he’d created a Nativity scene on the left side of his weedy brown front lawn. On the right side he’d constructed a ten-foot cross from weathered fence boards. The cross lay on its side leaning against the front of the house.