Mama Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  About the Author

  Copyright © 1987 by Terry McMillan

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recoding, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  McMillan, Terry.

  Mama.

  I. Title.

  PS3563.C3868M3 1987 813'.54 86-15367

  ISBN 0-395-39974-2

  eISBN 978-0-547-52404-7

  v1.1112

  I want to thank my editors at Houghton Mifflin: Janet Silver, whose insight and faith helped me to transform this book through many revisions, and Larry Kessenich, who said yes in the first place and gave me constant pep talks and reassurance. Thanks to them, I have developed something I didn't have before: patience.

  I would also like to thank both the Yaddo and MacDowell artist colonies, where the first draft of Mama was written, and the PEN American Center, the Authors League, the Carnegie Fund, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts for their much appreciated financial support. I am also grateful to the many people who helped me get through the long revision process: Doris Austin, my family, the members of the New Renaissance Writers' Guild, the word processing department of PBW&T, Jackie Berke, Virginia Dunwell, Betty Hopkins and her entire family, and Leonard Welch.

  Finally, I have to thank my son, Solomon, who, at two years old, discovered he could write, too.

  For my own Mama, MADELINE TILLMAN, whose love and support made everything possible

  One

  MILDRED HID THE AX beneath the mattress of the cot in the dining room. She poured lye in a brown paper bag and pushed it behind the pots and pans under the kitchen sink. Then she checked all three butcher knives to make sure they were razor sharp. She knew where she could get her hands on a gun in fifteen minutes, but ever since she'd seen her brother shot for stealing a beer from the pool hall, she'd been afraid of guns. Besides, Mildred didn't want to kill Crook, she just wanted to hurt him.

  She hated this raggedy house. Hated this deadbeat town. Hated never having enough of anything. Most of all, she hated Crook. And if it weren't for their five kids, she'd have left him a long time ago.

  She sat down at the kitchen table, crossed her thick brown thighs, and rested her chin in her palms. An L&M burned slowly in the plastic ashtray next to her now cold cup of coffee. At twenty-seven, Mildred was as tired as an old workhorse and felt like she'd been through a war. Her face hurt. Her bottom lip was swollen and it would stay that way the rest of her life, so that she'd have to tuck the left corner in whenever she wore lipstick, which was almost always. It would serve as her trademark, a constant reminder that she had quick-firing lips.

  Her left foot was swollen, too, from the tire Crook had backed over it last night when she wouldn't move. She had gotten up at five o'clock this morning and soaked it in Epsom salts for a whole hour but that hadn't done much good. Now the combination of this pain and the crisscrossing of her thoughts irritated her like an unreachable itch, so she went ahead and took the yellow nerve pill Curly Mae had given her last week. Then she wrapped her foot in an Ace bandage, covered it with a fake-fur house shoe, and pulled another chair in front of her to prop it up. She took a sip of her coffee.

  As Mildred waited for the pill to work, she stared out the kitchen window at the leafless trees and drew deeply on her cigarette, one strong puff after another. She twirled her fingers around her dyed red braids, which hung from the diaper she had tied on her head. She patted her good foot against the torn linoleum, something she always did when she was thinking.

  The way she figured it, there'd been no sense trying to be too cute last night and get herself killed thoroughly. Crook had smacked her so hard outside the Red Shingle that she had forgotten her name for a minute or two.

  He was the jealous type.

  Everybody knew it, but Mildred had made the mistake of carrying on a friendly two-minute conversation with Percy Russell. Crook had always despised Percy because, as rumor had it, their oldest daughter, Freda, wasn't his, and could've easily been Percy's. Both men had skin the color of ripe bananas and soft wavy hair, which Freda had inherited. And both men had high chiseled cheeks, which, as time passed, emerged on Freda's face too.

  Mildred ignored the rumors and knew that in a town as small as Point Haven people ran their mouths because they didn't have anything better to do. Crook never did come right out and accuse her of cheating because he'd been having an affair with Ernestine Jackson off and on for the past twelve years, before Mildred was even showing with Freda. And before they got settled good into their marriage. He wasn't whorish, except when he had more than eight ounces of liquor in him, which was just about every day.

  And while Crook ran the streets, it was Percy who nailed plastic to the windows in the winter, bought Mildred maternity clothes, fixed the drip in the bathtub, and paid the plumber to fix the frozen pipes. It was Percy who had shoveled the heavy blocks of coal from the shack in the back yard and carried them to the house when Crook was too drunk to stand up, and then waited for the fire to pop and crackle in the stove. It was Percy who made sure Mildred was warm, who bought her cigarettes, aspirin and vitamins, lard and potatoes, and even paid her light and gas bills when Crook had done something else with the money, but pleaded amnesia.

  The three of them had grown up together, though both men were six years older than Mildred. Percy had always had a crush on her, but he was so shy and stuttered so badly that she didn't have the patience to hear him out when he tried to express his true feelings for her. So Percy was forced to demonstrate his feelings rather than making them audible, which was a lot easier on both of them. And although Mildred always thought of him as kind and mannerly, his slowness and docility annoyed her so much that she never took his intentions seriously, except once.

  Last night at the Shingle, Crook had barged in and broken up their conversation, grabbed Mildred by the arm, and pushed her outside through the silver doors. He'd ordered her to get in the car—a pink and gold '59 Mercury—and he jumped in and started gunning the motor. When she didn't budge, he backed the car up so fast that it stalled and ran over her left foot. Drunk and aggravated because his anger was being diverted, Crook leaped from the car and hauled off and slapped Mildred's face until she thought it was in her best interest to go ahead and get in.

  She had pushed her platinum wig back in place, pulling on the elastic bands and pushing bobby pins against her skull to make sure it was on tight again. Mildred always wore this wig when she went out. It made her feel like she was going someplace, like she was an elegant, sophisticated woman being taken out on the town by th
e man of her dreams. She got into the back seat of the car and pushed herself as far as she could into the corner of the soft pink seat because she didn't want to be within smelling distance of Crook. He climbed behind the wheel without saying a word and slammed the door.

  "Just take me home, Crook," she'd said, trying hard not to scream or cry, but tears were already streaking her cocoa-colored foundation so that her own lighter skin tone showed through. She rolled her eyes at Crook until the pupils stuck in the corner sockets hard, but Crook couldn't see her or else he'd have hauled off and smacked her again. All she could think of now was how she was going to get him when she got home.

  It only took five minutes to drive home from the Shingle, straight down Twenty-fourth and a left on Manual to Twenty-fifth. Mildred's mind was clicking like a stopwatch, trying to remember exactly where she'd situated the cast-iron skillet among the other pots and pans. Was it underneath the boilers? Or in the oven with chicken grease still in it? Didn't matter. She'd find it. She pressed her forehead against the cold wet glass and stared at the clapboard houses, most of which belonged to people she knew, some even family. Crook was barely staying in his lane. Mildred knew he was drunk on Orange Rock, but she didn't dare say anything to him. She'd been on the verge of being tipsy herself, but the lingering sting of Crook's hand on her face had slowly begun to break down her high. Anyway, there were no oncoming cars. Not at this time of night. Not in this hick town.

  "I'm taking you home all right, don't worry about that," Crook said, trying to keep his eyes focused on the wiggling white line cutting through the two-lane street. "You think you're grown, don't you? Think you're just so damn grown." He wasn't expecting an answer and Mildred didn't give him one.

  "You know you're gon' get your ass tore up, don't you? Gon' get enough of flirting with that simple-ass Percy and all the rest of 'em. You my wife, you understand me? My woman, and I don't want nobody talking to you like you ain't got no man. Especially in front of my face 'cause the next thang you know, I'll be hearing all kinds of mess up and down the streets. You understand me, girl? You listening to me?" He looked at Mildred through the rearview mirror, his eyes dilated so big that it looked like someone had just taken his picture with a flash cube. Mildred simply stared back at him, her tears all dried up now, and kept fumbling with her wig. Her fingers smelled like Evening in Paris, probably because she had sprayed it everywhere—between her legs, under her arms, on the balls of her feet, and beneath the fake skull of her wig. She didn't utter a word, just tried to ignore the pain in her foot and hissed and sucked saliva through her teeth.

  Crook pulled into the cement driveway, and the right headlight barely missed the bark on the big oak tree as he cut the wheel and brought the car to an abrupt halt.

  Mildred opened the door before they'd come to a complete stop, jumped out, slammed the door, and screamed, "Kiss my black ass!" She limped up the side steps toward the porch, turned, and yelled, "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" like a cheerleader.

  All the lights were out in the house, but Mildred knew the kids weren't really asleep. She knew that as soon as they'd heard the car pull up the driveway, Freda had sprinted to the TV and flicked it off and ordered the rest of the kids to "hit it." Money, Bootsey, Angel, and Doll would have scattered like mice to their two bedrooms, closed their doors, and dived into bed to hide under the covers and wait to hear the boxing match they knew was sure to come. It was something they always dreaded when their parents came home from the bar. They'd squeeze their eyes tight pretending to be asleep, just in case Mildred or Crook decided to check on them, but they rarely did on nights like this, when Crook forgot he had kids and Mildred was too preoccupied with her own defense.

  Mildred flicked on the dining room light and walked toward the bathroom. Her foot was killing her. When she looked in the mirror she saw that the blood from her lip had smudged all over the white mink collar of her blue suede coat. The blood had made the mink come to slick points, like the fur of a wet dog. Mildred felt herself getting mad all over again. She had cleaned a lot of white folks' houses to buy this coat, had kept it on layaway at Winkleman's for almost a year, and she knew that blood never came out, never.

  When Mildred looked down, she saw more blood was soaking through the seams of the pockets and staining the white stitching around the buttonholes. The scent of her Evening in Paris permeated the bathroom and started to stink. She wanted to throw up. Instead, she went into the kitchen, grabbed the dishrack, and threw it high into the air so that it crashed and hit the edge of the sink. Everything breakable broke and smashed in the basin. Plates, glasses, cups and saucers, cereal bowls. Some things fell to the floor and shattered into jagged chips. Mildred gritted her teeth, balled up her right fist, and pounded it on the pile of broken dishes. Her fist bled but she was too mad to notice.

  She was just about to look for the skillet when she heard Crook stagger in the side door. Her rage welled up from a hollow cave in her stomach. "Oooooooo! You just irks me so. I'm surprised I ain't had a nervous breakdown by now. Always making a mountain out of a frigging molehill. Thinking thangs is happening when ain't nothing happening. You can't see for looking, you know that? I keep saying to myself, Mildred, leave this pitiful excuse for a man. I keep saying, Mildred, you know in your heart he ain't no good. Rotten, sorry. But how I'ma leave him with five growing kids to clothe and feed?" Her teeth felt like chalk and she scraped them together so hard that they slipped and she bit her tongue.

  "Lord, have mercy on my soul," Mildred pleaded. "If somebody could show me the light, clear a path and give me an extra ounce of strength, I'd be out of here so damn fast make your head swim." Mildred was not a religious person, but she made sure her kids went to Shiloh Baptist every Sunday morning, though the only time she ever bothered to go herself was on Easter, Mother's Day, and Christmas. She shook her head back and forth, letting her eyes roll like loose marbles.

  "Just keep on running your mouth, girl," Crook said, trying unsuccessfully to kick off his shoes.

  Mildred's anger was flowing like hot lava. Pearls of sweat slid down her temples. Her jawbone was tightening as though she were biting down on rock candy.

  "If I was trying to flirt with somebody for real, do you think I'd be stupid enough to do it right in front of your frigging face?" She put her hands on her hips and took soldier steps toward Crook. She didn't know where she was getting this courage from and surely it couldn't have been from God because he'd never given her any clue that being a fool would get her anywhere safe. "But you know what? Yeah, I'd love to screw Percy since you and everybody else swear I've been screwing him for years anyway. Who else was I supposed to be flirting with behind your back? Oh yeah, Porky and Joe Porter and Swift! I'd love to fuck all of 'em!"

  "Mildred, you better shut your mouth up, girl. You know you're gon' get it. You know I ain't two minutes away from your behind." Crook had managed to get his shoes off, scattering wet red and gold leaves that had stuck to his soles. He slipped and fell backward against the china cabinet and plaster-of-Paris knickknacks tumbled all over the floor. He danced over the glass grapes, wishing wells, and miniature cats as though he were walking on hot sand at the beach.

  Mildred didn't care at this point. She knew that whether she kept her mouth shut or open, she was going to get it anyway. His fist would snap against her head, or the back of his hard hand would swipe her face, or he'd hurl her against a wall until her brains rattled. It was always something, so long as it hurt.

  Crook stumbled toward the living room and into the bedroom. He found his thick brown leather belt, the one Mildred occasionally used to chastise the kids for their wrongdoings, then he walked back out to the dining room. He pulled his shoulders back high, trying to act sober, and beckoned Mildred with his index finger. "Since you so damn smart, let's see if your ass is as tough as your mouth is, girl. Now get in here. You ain't had a good spanking in a while."

  Mildred's courage vanished.

  "Crook, please, don't. I'm sorry. I
didn't mean what I said, none of it. I was just running my drunk mouth." Mildred was trying to move backward, away from him, but when she found herself in a corner and couldn't move another inch, she knew she was trapped. There was no one she could call to for help. She didn't want to scare the kids any more than they already were, and Mildred knew they were probably leaning against their bedroom doors, shivering like baby birds in a nest. All she could do was hope that he wouldn't take this any further than the belt to the point where he might just kill her this time. A drunk is always sorry later. "Crook, please don't hit me," she begged. "I promise I won't say another word. Please." Mildred was not the type to beg. Had never begged anybody for anything and now it didn't sound or feel right.

  "Get on in here, girl. Your tears don't excite me," he said, snatching her by the wrists. "You think you're so cute, don't you?" Crook's face was contorted and had taken on a monstrous quality. It looked like every ounce of liquor and Indian blood in his body had migrated to the veins in his face. He yanked off her wig and threw it to the floor. Then he made her drop her coat next to it, then her cream knit dress, and then her girdle. When all she had on was her brassiere and panties, he shoved her into the bedroom where she crawled to a corner of the bed. Crook kicked the door shut and the kids cracked theirs. Then they heard their mama screaming and their daddy hollering and the whap of the belt as he struck her.

  "Didn't I tell you you was getting too grown?" Whap. "Don't you know your place yet, girl?" Whap.

  "Yes, yes, Crook." Whap.

  "Don't you know nothing about respect?" Whap. "Girl, you gon' learn. I'm a man, not no toy." Whap. "You understand me?" Whap. "Make me look like no fool." Whap.

  He threw the belt on the floor and collapsed next to Mildred on the bed. The terror in her voice faded to whimpers and sniffles. To the kids she sounded like Prince, their German shepherd, when he had gotten hit by a car last year on Twenty-fourth Street.