I hadn’t eaten all day and I wasn’t hungry. I was too excited to sit down and eat a full meal. With time to kill while waiting for Michelangelo to return, I munched on a bag of kale chips, and turned on Grandma Eula Mae’s recording.
• • •
People thought that all I did was sit around counting money. They spoke of me as if I had ice water running through my veins. But truth be told, I had a gentler side that I couldn’t afford to let others see. My gals would have tried to walk all over me and my enemies would have known exactly how to hurt me if they knew my Achilles’ heel.
After O’Grady had me and my girls locked up for the umpteenth time, he took over, marching around my establishment like he owned the place. Man, oh, man. I wanted to put a bullet in his ass for strutting around like a barnyard peacock and bossing me around like he was the true owner of my brothel.
According to the gossip mill, I was romantically involved with Mr. Banner, but there was no truth to that rumor. Mr. Banner enjoyed my whores and he valued our friendship. We had mutual respect for each other, but that was as far as it went.
Through my friendship with Mr. Banner, I met a Negro physician who was also a lover of art. This physician, a fine-looking and dignified man, had introduced Mr. Banner to a local artist. A colored fella named Horace Pippin, who was untrained and whose work was considered crude by art lovers. His paintings looked like crap to me, too, and I didn’t have a trained eye. But Mr. Banner bought up the man’s entire collection and added it to his gallery. White folks fell in love with Horace Pippin’s folk art and pretty soon, he was getting commissioned to paint for folks from Europe and other faroff places around the world.
I have one of his paintings. It’s up in the attic somewhere. Heard his work is worth a fortune now, but I haven’t had the energy to go digging around up in the attic to find the dusty painting. If any of my descendants ever bother to listen to this recording, you need to get your butt up in the attic, find the painting, and get it appraised.
Okay, what was I talking about? Lord, that quick, I lost my train of thought. I hate the way my memories come and go. Oh, I remember. I was talking about the Negro physician who became very, very important in my life. His name was Dr. Felder Bradwell.
When Mr. Banner caught the clap from one of my gals, he convinced Dr. Bradwell to start treating all my gals, behind the scenes, of course. Not only did he treat their various womanly ailments, but he also gave them regular checkups to make sure their privates stayed in good working condition. Before long, the white customers secretly began getting treated by Dr. Bradwell—after hours, also. None of them would have been caught dead paying a visit to a Negro doctor during daytime hours. They’d rather slink to his office in the dead of night than put themselves through the embarrassment of facing their regular family physicians with yellow puss leaking out of their peckers.
With Dr. Bradwell in my corner, I didn’t have to rely on ol’ Hattie Baker and her risky coat hanger method of getting rid of pesky pregnancies. Dr. Bradwell did the abortions safely, and no one bled to death from a punctured uterus or got infected from a rusted wire hanger.
He was a handsome man with wavy hair that he wore brushed backward, showing off his chiseled facial features. He had beautiful dark eyes and wore a thin, neatly trimmed mustache. Although the round spectacles he wore gave him an intellectual look, those eye glasses couldn’t hide the doctor’s good looks.
I would venture to say that when I was first introduced to Dr. Bradwell, it was a case of love at first sight. For both of us. There we were, two people from very different worlds, and yet we both recognized something familiar in the other.
Felder, as I referred to him behind closed doors, was a married man. He was married to a high-society gal named Daffodil, and it took two years of hell before he came to realize that Daffodil was crazy as a bedbug. When she started showing up at his practice wearing a wrinkled slip covered by a terrycloth robe that was encrusted with oatmeal and egg yolk, he had no choice but to put her away in a mental institution. Back then, folks didn’t divorce their spouses the way they do today. You married for better or for worse and stuck by those vows
In the eyes of the law, I was carrying on an illicit affair with a married man, but Felder and I were so much in love, our bond was surely sanctioned by the Lord.
We were both masters at keeping secrets, and no one, not even Mr. Banner, was aware of the fiery passion that burned between us.
Felder despised Commissioner O’Grady for continually locking me up. He hated the man as much as I did, maybe more so. It bruised his ego something terrible that he couldn’t protect me from O’Grady, and his desire for revenge was starting to eat at him.
I’m ashamed that we had to sacrifice an innocent woman to get to O’Grady, but in times of warfare, there’s always collateral damage.
I had this new whore named Baby Cakes, a cute little petite thing, with the deepest dimples and big, round eyes. She looked childlike and adorable, and the men went wild for Baby Cakes. She was so tiny that even the puniest customer could feel like a he-man when he picked her up and carried her up the flight of stairs.
I was fit to be tied when during her very first week of employment, one of those dirty bastards gave her the clap—not only in her pussy, but also in her throat.
It burned me up having to lose money due to Baby Cakes being out of commission for a while. If it were up to me, she would have been back sucking and fucking as soon as Felder gave her the shot of penicillin. But Felder always insisted that the gals he treated lay low and refrain from sexual activity for at least two weeks.
Felder shocked me when he decided to hold off giving Baby Cakes a dose of penicillin. He confided that he planned for her to infect the commissioner when the ol’ brute made his regular Wednesday night visit.
There was no doubt that O’Grady would want a toss in the hay with Baby Cakes. He made it a point to try out all the new meat, free of charge, of course.
“If giving O’Grady the clap is your idea of punishment, I don’t think it’s severe enough,” I complained to Felder.
“You have to trust that I know what I’m doing, Eula Mae,” Felder responded. “When O’Grady comes slithering to the back door of my medical office looking for a shot of penicillin, I’m going to hit him with a dose of something much, much stronger.”
“Something that’ll land him in the hospital?”
“Or worse,” Felder replied in a grim tone.
But neither Felder nor I could have predicted how O’Grady would react to discovering that he’d gotten the clap from Baby Cakes.
He was so furious, he didn’t take the time to gather his men with their axes and sledgehammers to ransack the place and shut it down. He came thundering through the front door, with fire in his eyes. “Where’s that whore, Baby Cakes?” he shouted.
“What could that sweet little Baby Cakes have done to you, Commissioner?” I asked in an innocent tone. As I tried to calm him down, I secretly mouthed to one of my gals to hurry to the parlor where Baby Cakes was playing cards with a gentleman and tell her to run and hide.
“That bitch burned me!” O’Grady bellowed.
“Dr. Bradwell will fix you up, Commissioner,” I whispered discreetly.
“Yeah, and in the meantime, I’m going to put some hot lead in that dirty whore’s ass. I wonder how she’s gonna like whoring around in hell.” He pulled out his gun and all the girls scattered. The gal I had told to warn Baby Cakes that the commissioner was coming for her, abandoned her duty and ran screaming in the opposite direction of the parlor.
With the commissioner on the warpath, waving his gun in the air, whores were hollering as they ducked behind furniture. Johns ran out both the back and front doors, carrying their clothes and other belongings bundled up in their arms. Uncaring that they were stripped down to their underwear, those tricks got the hell out of the whorehouse before any bullets started flying.
To this day, when I think about what the commissioner did to Baby Cakes, I have to hang my head in shame. But neither Felder nor I could have predicted that O’Grady would have taken that kind rage out on such a sweet, little, defenseless gal. No one is ever happy about catching the clap, but when it happens, the average man gets his shot and goes on about his business.
If Satan ever had a brother, his name had to be O’Grady. That ruthless bastard pulled off his belt and wrapped it around Baby Cakes’s neck and dragged her around the parlor long enough for her to nearly choke to death. While she was at death’s door, he pistol-whipped her back to life, cracking her jaw, busting her lips, and knocking out teeth in the process.
It was a horror to observe and while all the other gals were hiding, I was right there in the parlor, crying and begging O’Grady to have mercy on poor little Baby Cakes.
I recall noticing that Baby Cakes’s blood had splattered on some of the leather-bound books in the library and also some of the paintings that Mr. Banner had bequeathed us.
The one thing that gives me a little peace of mind is the fact that Baby Cakes was out cold by the time O’Grady stuck his revolver all the way up her vagina and pulled the trigger.
After killing her, he adjusted his clothing, put his belt back on and returned his weapon to its holster. Then he strolled on out the door, leaving me to contend with the ravaged, bloody body of a dead whore.
I never asked Felder what he put in that needle he injected O’Grady with. There was no reason to inquire. Having no medical training, the contents he used wouldn’t have meant a thing to me, anyway. What did matter is that O’Grady suffered terribly.
Whatever Felder shot him up with had him in and out of the hospital with mini seizures that kept occurring every week or so. The man would think he was free and clear, health-wise, but the next thing you know, he’d wind up on the floor, kicking like he was being electrocuted.
All those seizures took a toll and after a while, he lost his ability to speak, became wheelchair bound, and was drooling so badly, he had to wear a bib around his neck.
His wife, Mrs. O’Grady, thought it was her Christian duty to bring him out to community events like the annual policemen’s softball game. Everyone was there, including me. And I made it a point to get in line with the rest of the community and pay my respects to O’Grady. When my turn came, I told his wife what a fine police commissioner her husband had been and when she turned her attention to the ballgame, I bent down and whispered in his ear: “Payback’s a bitch, muthafucka. That was a helluva injection the good Negro doctor gave you, don’t you think? You bragged about sending Baby Cakes to hell. Welp, she’s not living in misery like you are. I bet you’d give damn near anything to end your miserable life and join her. But you have to keep on living—shitting your pants and being fed like a baby. A pretty woman like your wife probably has a couple gentlemen callers to take care of her needs. After all, with you being a pissy-pants invalid, you can’t do anything for her.”
I spoke those words with a sweet smile on my face while O’Grady grimaced and twisted in his wheelchair. He’d understood every word I’d spoken, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do except grunt and drool.
• • •
Grandma Eula Mae’s story had gotten real juicy, and I reluctantly clicked off the tape. I wanted to take a leisurely bubble bath so I’d be refreshed and smelling good when my boo returned.
As I grabbed a towel, my thoughts returned to my grandmother. Wow! Grandma Eula Mae and her doctor friend were G’s. They handled that O’Grady dude—assigned him a fate worse than death. And he deserved it.
I had no idea that she’d ever been in love with a doctor, though. Hearing the way her voice had gone all soft and sugary when she described him revealed a side of her I had never known. I wondered what had happened between her and Dr. Felder Bradwell that caused her to leave him for the man she eventually married and had two daughters with.
But I forgot all about Grandma Eula Mae’s love life when my phone pinged and the concierge announced that I had a guest. “Send him right up,” I said, twirling my hair and smiling in anticipation of more earth-shattering orgasms.