The Lenox Avenue address Hilda Coleman had given me turned out to be a rundown boarding house on an otherwise nice block. Despair permeated the building. Resignation crept through its gloomy hallways and defeat roamed its dirty stairwell.
Mabel Dean Henry’s room was a wonderful contrast. She’d hung inexpensive bright curtains at the windows. She’d started her own little garden in flowerpots. Small plants, with thin delicate leaves, were inching their way out of the soil.
Mabel herself was small-built, in her late twenties, with prematurely gray hair. She was unemployed and deaf in one ear, from a beating she said Whitfield gave her. In short sentences, she told me about their brief, brutal affair.
“It’s not like I went in not knowing nothing. The other girls warned me about him. But I didn’t care. He was too important to say no to. I just wanted to have some fun, you know?”
She reflected. “And yeah, maybe I thought that I’d be the one, you know? The woman he finally decided to stay with.” She ground out her cigarette. “Boy, was I wrong.”
She offered me a glass of water. I declined and she poured herself one. “He was really nice at the beginning. I didn’t even mind doing those crazy things he wanted me to.”
“What things?”
She was embarrassed. “Look, it’s the kind of stuff you don’t mind doing at the time, but you can’t believe you did later, okay? I didn’t enjoy it. But I went along ‘cause it turned him on and I really liked that, you know, the idea that I could turn on such an important man.”
“Look, Mabel. I know what a woman will do to please a man—and I know how he can make you feel afterward. So you won’t be getting any criticism from me. Now tell me, what did he ask for?”
She chewed on her lower lip. “It could make a difference with you looking for this girl you told me about?”
“Maybe.”
She thought about it. “Let’s just say that he … he liked doing things that hurt.”
“Hurt bad?”
She nodded.
“And you never talked to anyone else about this?”
Her jaw hardened. “Suppose I had? Then what? It would’ve been my word against his. He would’ve said he didn’t have nothing to do with me, and everybody would’ve believed him.”
I nodded. “You’re probably right.”
“You damn tootin’, I am.” She took a sip of water. “You sure you don’t want nothing? If you don’t like water, I got something stronger.”
“Okay, thanks. But water will be fine.”
Mabel had put up a brave effort to resist the despair of her environment. At first I thought she was succeeding, but the longer I sat with her and the more I listened, the more I worried. As young as she was, Mabel looked about ready to give up.
“I been looking for work,” she said.
“For how long?”
“Too long.” She looked out her window, at the hookers on the corner, and spoke in a rush of bitterness. “My friends say I was stupid to be giving it away. ‘Specially to a big muckety-muck like Sexton. If I got to be beat and suck his sausage, then I should’ve gotten paid for it.” She looked at me. “You think I’m a nasty girl for saying that?”
“No. But it doesn’t matter what I think.”
She looked away, but not in time to hide her tears. “He broke something inside me. Every time he …” She bit down her lip. “Every time he took his fists and …” Silent tears slipped from her eyes.
I handed her a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and sniffed.
“How long did it go on?” I asked.
“He was nice for ‘bout two weeks. I was stone cold in love with him. The things I let him do—and that I did.” She swallowed. “Two weeks, and then …” A little shake of the head. “And then I don’t know. He wasn’t never the same man no more.”
“You decided to stop seeing him?”
“I went with him for about two months in all. Two sickening months.” She hugged herself, cleared her throat. “One day he asked me to do something. It was so scary, I wouldn’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“He wanted me to … to string him up, you know? With a rope. Hang him—I mean, really hang him. Can you imagine? And he was gonna put on my underwear and make me …” She shuddered, waved her words away, and didn’t finish.
“It’s okay. It’s all right.”
Some kids went by outside, chasing a ball and yelling happily at one another.
“Was that when you said—”
“Yeah, I—I couldn’t go on like that. And man, oh, man was he angry. The funny thing is, I don’t think it was ‘cause he was hurt ‘bout me wanting to leave ‘im. It was more like, how dare I? That day, the day I tried to leave him, he beat me, beat me bad. There’d been other times, but never like that.”
“Was it him—or this Mr. Echo?”
“So Hilda told you about him, too?”
“Warned me.”
“He and Sexton belong together, two evil peas in a pod. But Sexton never let Echo touch me. He said he wanted to save that for himself. Beating the shit out of me was his own special pleasure.” She gave a little grunt. “He actually said that. And I was dumb enough to think it was a compliment.”
“And you told no one.”
“Hell, no. I was so ashamed. And scared. He made me promise, at the very beginning, not to tell nobody. If I wanted to be with him, then that’s what I had to do. But I didn’t mind. That kinda made it more fun. I thought.” She gave a weak little grin. “Wasn’t I the fool?”
“Tell me about that last day.”
She drew a deep breath. “I went to work. I knew he’d been following me home, but I thought he’d stop. So I went out with some friends after work. Afterward, we split up. I was about a block away from the house when I looked down and there he was, in the car, telling me to get in. I told him I didn’t want to. He said he was sorry he’d hurt me, that he wouldn’t ask me to do stuff like that no more. I said I didn’t believe him. Then he said that if I didn’t get in, and give him what he wanted, he’d make sure I lost my job. So I got in.”
She blinked back her tears. “The funny thing is, I let him fuck me and beat me and he took my job, anyway.”
She wasn’t going to get any criticism from me.
“Mabel, will you go on the record?”
She thought about it and shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m not ready to do that.”
“Why not? What have you got left to lose?”
“My life.” Her eyes were somber.
“Do you really think …?”
“Oh, yeah.” She nodded. “You don’t know. You just don’t know.” She reached out to me. “So please don’t let him know I been talking to you. Please don’t say a word.”
I promised, thinking how lucky I’d been to have had Hamp, and how I couldn’t leave her like this, not without trying to do something to help. Then it came to me.
“Mabel,” I said, “I have an idea.”