I was waiting for our family get-together.
I spent time helping out at the concession, and when we closed at eleven, Daddy took position at the exit to make sure no one was trying to sneak in for the last hour of the movie.
It took about an hour to clean up, and Rosy Mae’s disposition seemed much better. She even hummed a bit while she used woolen mitts to pour the grease from the frying pot into a barrel.
Rosy Mae washed the pot and other dishes, and when she finished, she asked if I wanted to go out front while she smoked a cigarette, as she was afraid of her man, Bubba Joe, and my mother did not allow smoking in the house by friend or relative.
Mom overheard us, said, “I wish he wouldn’t go out front. It frightens me to think Bubba Joe might be out there. Why don’t you go on the roof and let Stanley keep you company?”
“Yesum,” Rosy Mae said.
We went upstairs, walked a slanted ramp that opened on to the roof by a trapdoor. We stepped out just below the giant dew drop.
The last of the cars could be seen filing out of the drive-in, their lights coming on, poking at the night. I could see Buster leaving the concession stand, his thermos in his hand, walking toward the exit, moving slowly by the cars as they exited. I thought I heard someone yell “nigger” from one of the cars.
Buster didn’t look up. He kept walking.
Rosy Mae got out a can of Sir Walter Raleigh and shook some tobacco onto a rolling paper. She folded it quickly with one hand, licked, slipped it into her mouth, smooth as any cowboy.
She removed a big kitchen match from her wild hair, cocked her hip, struck it on the side of her dress, and lit up.
“Oooooeeee,” she said. “I needed that.”
She began coughing almost immediately.
“I don’t need that none. Hit me on the back, Mr. Stanley.”
I did, sharply.
“Thanks. It done went down the wrong pipe.”
“You don’t need to call me Mr.,” I said. “I’m just a boy.”
“Yessuh, but you a white boy.”
“Call me Stanley.”
“All right, Stanley.”
“This man of yours . . . Is he dangerous?”
“Scares me. I know some niggers run the other way they see him comin’. I carries me a razor.”
Rosy Mae reached into a fold of her dress and produced it, flicked it open. The blade lapped like a tongue, cut some darkness, flicked closed, went into her dress.
“He carry one too, though. And he done cut folks with his. I ain’t never cut nobody. But I did threaten me a nigger with it once. He got on my wrong side, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. But I don’t want to cut nobody. ’Specially him.”
“You love him?”
“I shuly do, Stanley. I do. I don’t know why and shouldn’t, but I do. I ought to take the ole chicken axe to him, but I won’t. He don’t do nothin’ but make me crazy and sad. He messes with other women, drinks somethin’ awful, plays them cards, shoots that dice all the time. He ain’t no good at all.”
“Then why do you love him?”
“I couldn’t begin to tell, honey. I ain’t got no reason. Men’s got their reasons, and they reasons ain’t much and don’t last long. But a woman. She ain’t got no real reason. She jes’ does.”
“But you’re scared of him?”
“I am. I loves him, but I hates him too.”
“Does he love you?”
“I don’t know he loves nobody. He don’t even love himself. And Mr. Stanley . . . Stanley. You got to love yo’self ’fore you can love most anything. Even if’n it’s a flower, or some old bush you a growin’. You hear what I’m sayin’?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You so polite.”
“So you think he could hurt you?”
“I do. But don’t jedge on him too hard. You know what the Bible say about not jedgin’ least you be jedged yo’self?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well it says that. Somewhere. Or so I been told by a preacher, but since he had his hand on my knee, I don’t know he was tellin’ the truth. I told him, you maybe ought not to jedge, but I sho ought to tell you to get yo’ hand off my knee. And he did . . . Bubba Joe, he done had it hard, Mr. Stanley.”
“Just Stanley.”
“Yes, suh. He done been put down by the white mens hard.”
“White men? How?”
Rosy Mae laughed. “Oh, chile, you just the sweetest thing. And don’t know nothin’, and that good right now, ’cause someday you’ll know somethin’ and you gonna be different. All coloreds be niggers then.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I hope you right, honey. I truly do.”
“How’s he been put down, Rosy Mae?”
Rosy Mae sucked at her cigarette, blew smoke in a little white cloud that hung about her nose, spread, and faded.
“He a man, Stanley. Jes’ like you gonna be when you grow up. Like yo daddy. He a man. And Bubba Joe, he treated like a boy. White man calls him boy, and he a grown man. Bigger than most men you ever see. He six three, weigh near three hundred pounds. Stong as an ox. And I tell you another thing. He a war hero.”
“Really?”
“That’s right. He go over there to Korea, and he a hero. Got him a wound that cause him to walk a little stiff. But when he come back, come into Dallas, he told to go to the back of the bus. Told he can’t eat with white folks. He mean ’cause of them ways he been treated, Stanley. Way his family been treated.
“When he a boy, them Kluxers, they hear Bubba Joe’s daddy stole a watermelon and a chicken ’cause his family hungry, and they take Bubba Joe’s daddy down in them bottoms and whup him good. Then they take off his clothes, and they got this big ole cottonmouth in a tow sack, and they make his daddy put his foot in that bag with that snake, and they tie the bag around his leg and waist so he can’t shake it off, and they tie his hands behind his back and leave him.”
I had a sensation like someone rubbing an ice cube along the top of my skull.
“What did he do?”
“Well, Bubba Joe get this story from his daddy, and he tell it to me on one of his good times, when he’s happy I’m with him. Say his daddy can’t just stay in the woods till either he or the snake dies, so he try to walk home. He do all right at first, then the snake slip down to the bottom of the bag, and he step on it, and it gets its fangs hung in the bag. Now, he thinks he can walk on while the snake’s hung up, and he do good for a time, then the snake works loose, and he bites Bubba Joe’s daddy, and by the time he get to the house, he done been bit, three, fo’ times.”
“Did he die?”
“Might near. But they take him over to a colored man works on horses and such, and he cuts the leg off ’cause it done turned black as the bottom of a well, and swole up big as an oak tree trunk. Bubba Joe’s daddy lives, but now he can’t work no mo’. And he turns mean. He gave some of that mean to Bubba Joe. Coloreds got reason to be mean, but it may be worse on a colored man ’cause he don’t never get to be no man ’cept in his own house, and he overdo it. He knows he goes out, he jes’ another nigger. Some little white boy comes along, he got to step off the sidewalk. Little white boy can call him boy, and he has to grin and live with it. Wears on a person.”
“Does it wear on you, Rosy Mae?”
“Yes, chile. It shuly does. But all that said, it ain’t no excuse for doin’ the wrong thing to people. They’s lots of people ain’t happy, but you don’t get no happier makin’ people unhappy. Least you shouldn’t. Well, I done smoked
