CHAPTER SEVEN

When the big West plane stopped and Mayra looked out the window she saw Mama waiting. And Mayra wasn’t ready for that. Mama thought she had married a fair-to-struggling young architect, and now a big Learstar slides in from across the ocean and only two people get off, one of them li’l Mayra. Mama stood straight and looked just great, but there was gray in her hair. She looked just beautiful, but she wasn’t the young Mama that Mayra always thought she was. She had a stack of Christmas parcels in her arms and she was smiling wide, getting ready to be happy, carrying it all off as though she was always getting driven out to meet her daughter stepping down out of a private, transatlantic plane. She had on a mink stole and she wore it over a gorgeous red dress, her long, slim legs rising above red shoes. There stood Mama. Mayra grabbed Walt and said, “There she is, that beautiful black lady!” She shrieked with happiness and buried her head in Walt’s chest.

The engines stopped. The steward opened the door. Mayra flew down the ramp, across the cement and into her mother’s arms. Mama gave Walt a big kiss straight off and he blushed five shades of red and pink. “He may not be black,” Mayra said, “but you got to admit he’s colored. How’s the credit, Mama?”

“Perpetual at last. I got a food store that sells everything. Big, fat German fella from Dover, New Jersey. His wife says he eats cold spaghetti. I swear. I started him off with a cash deposit of a hundred, then second time I give him one-fifty, then third time round he says why bother to pay it in front, my credit is good with him, and I tell you he sure could give lessons to that Relleh on Manhattan Avenue.”

When they got to Mama’s house she made them tea but she backed it with gin, Scotch, beer, ice and setups. They sat around the dining room table grinning at each other, Walt shy and Mayra manic, Mama calm and happy. They talked about the housing Walt’s firm was working on and Mayra’s hat and dress and Mama’s hat and dress and mink stole. “How about that stole,” Mama said. “Did that almost knock you down? You know where that came from? Remember Miss Lily the—the lady on Madison Avenue and Sixty-fourth a long time ago?”

“The blonde one?” Mayra asked. “The one on cocaine?”

“That’s the one. Well, she died about five months ago and she remembered me in her will. I cried like a baby. She left me that beautiful fur thing.”

After a short while Mayra lied. “Walt, I know you have to see Mr. Tobin and don’t you worry about Mama and me—we have plenty to talk over after all these years—and maybe if you go now you’ll be able to be back in time for dinner.”

Walt knew that Mayra knew that Willie Tobin wasn’t waiting for him anywhere, but he got the drift. Anyway, it was a chance to have a good uninterrupted look at the Seagram Building, so he said, “I can get back here by six. Will six be all right?”

“Then is the hour,” Mama answered.

“Looks like you got a good man,” Mama said.

“Maybe better than that.”

“What about that plane? What about that Rolls?”

“Belong to his daddy.”

“Who his daddy?”

“That’s the crazy part. Our name is West because his daddy is Edward Courance West.”

Mayra expected her mother to be startled, agape with awe, wholly astonished and maybe even speechless for a little minute. But she hadn’t ever expected to see the shock and then the fear that came over her mother’s face. “Mama! What’s wrong?” Mayra asked quickly. The older woman shook her head slowly but did not speak. Mayra could hear clocks ticking. Mama reached out and poured some gin into a glass. “I know that man, honey. He’s a bad man. Baddest there ever was for women. I know him. He even screwed me once on the floor of Miss Baby’s john—and that’s a long time ago, when he was the most famous man in America, and he’s bigger than that now. He put her in that pad and she moonlighted on him. He maybe figured she’d sew or like that between the times he felt like stopping in. He didn’t put bodyguards and secretaries on his meat in those days and he had chicks all over. A little guy name of Willie Tobin used to come around and pay off. Miss Baby was careful not to ball him and I didn’t wear no uniform when we knew he was coming. I played like I was the cook and cleaner. Miss Baby was greedy, that’s all. She got that pad and clothes and a lot of roommates to stay on with her because, like she told Mr. West, she got lonesome—plus he gave her a thousand bucks a month, and that’s in the Depression. Well, Mr. West found out and, man, he wrecked her, and he knocked me around plenty too. Then he calls up the cops. He rates, I mean. The place was full of police inspectors and assistant DAs, and they work, out of me a statement that Miss Baby had been running a house of prostitution and trafficking in drugs and compulsory prostitution and fencing stolen goods—and those last ones were just dreams. He dropped everything on her. Then they took her downtown and they made it all stick in court, and she died in jail with tuberculosis after she done six years. And why? Because she cheated on Mr. West, that’s why.”

Mama began to cry. She hunched over in her chair sobbing and mopping her face with a napkin. “Then he almost killed Miss Pupchen. For nothing. She didn’t do anything. He just came in with crazy eyes and he broke her into pieces, and when it’s all over he’s clear-eyes. Yeah, Mr. Clear-Eyes. He give me five hundred bucks, because he said he lost his temper when he come on me and screwed me the time before at Miss Baby’s, then beat the shit outta me. But this time he didn’t do me nothing. He give me a check for a thousand and he say, ‘Take care of the kid,’ and he start out. I run after him. I say I can’t, I don’t know how, and she’s hurt bad. She’s all wrecked. He says for me to call Willie Tobin, and he strolls out, all clear-eyes.”

“Walt’s not like that. Walt’s not anything like that. And he’s never seen his father in his whole life.”

“His father killed Mary Lou Mayberry. Murder, I’m talking about. He killed her, and I know that, and he’s so bad I wouldn’t be alive right now if he knew I knew that. I found her. I come in at ten in the morning and I found what was left. She hired me one day before, and for once he didn’t know I was going to be on that job. She told me who was paying all those bills, and I come in and I saw that mess of brains and blood and I run outta there before they could put my name in the papers and he could know I knew. His girls got darker and darker. Mary Lou Mayberry was a beautiful black girl. A beautiful black girl just like you.”