Chapter 8
“Anything botherin’ you?”
Marguerite came home about twenty minutes after Earl left. She had been at Shirley’s house, a friend of hers who lived two doors down. They were playing spades for a nickel a game. She waited until the game was over even though she’d seen Earl’s Cadillac pull off. Upon entering the house, Marguerite smelled the food Johnnie was preparing and walked into the kitchen, where Johnnie was sitting at the table about to eat. Marguerite pulled a chair back and sat down. She put some of the red beans, rice, and plump spicy sausage on her plate. She was just about to dig in when she noticed Johnnie had something on her mind.
“What are you thinking about so hard?” Marguerite asked in French.
Johnnie was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out what kind of mood her mother was in. One moment she could be friendly, and the next she would snap at her like a vicious dog.
“Mama,” Johnnie said, also in French. “Did you love my daddy?”
“Yeah, I suppose so. Why?” she asked while cutting up her sausage.
“I don’t remember him. I guess I wanna know what happened between y’all to put us in this situation, Mama.”
“It’s a long story, girl,” Marguerite said gruffly. “Maybe I’ll tell you about him someday.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.” Marguerite put some more food into her mouth. As if it were an afterthought, she said, “Anything botherin’ you?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“I don’t know . . . I guess it’s the way people look at me now.”
“They just jealous of you, girl. Women always have been jealous of us Baptiste girls ’cause we’s pretty.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, girl. They was jealous of my mama. They was jealous of me. And they sho’ as hell gon’ be jealous of you. I remember when I was about twelve years old. My mama was attractin’ all the men, especially the white ones, and all the women got mad at her and put us outta the house. We didn’t have nowhere to go, but my mother got one of her suitors to get us a place of our own, and that’s where we lived for a while. Then I met Michael, Benny’s daddy, and like a fool I ran away with him.”
“Was he colored?”
“Yeah, he was colored. You don’t think a white man is goin’ to marry a colored woman in the South, do you?” Marguerite didn’t bother to wait for an answer. She just continued talking after a brief pause. “Let me tell you somethin’ about white men, girl, and don’t you never ever forget it. A white man got to have his brown sugar. That’s just the way he is. It’s in his blood now. See, girl, ever since slave time, the white man has been havin’ his brown sugar. He creep his ass out to the slave quarters at night, havin’ his way with the colored women. Then he go back to the big house with his family. The same shit Earl is doin’ today.
“Now, his white sugar is for show, see. They need the white woman for respectability, but what they didn’t know is, all them years of sneakin’ down to the slave quarters and sportin’ with the colored women give him what they call a predilection for us. And a lot of his offspring end up havin’ the same penchant. That’s why colored women, like my mama, always had it better than white women did. And that’s also why white women and colored women don’t like each other too much.
“It’s all about what we got between our legs. And how we use what we got between our legs usually determines our lot in life. We womenfolk like sex, too, so now it comes down to who gon’ have a man. You see how we women compete with one another for a man’s attention. How you think a white woman feels, knowin’ her husband is doin’ to us what she wants him to do to her?”
“But if white women like doin’ it, cain’t they get the same . . . what’s that word again?”
“Predilection toward colored men? Yeah, and many do. White women either love colored men or they hate ’em. And even when they hate ’em, I have to wonder why. Most of ’em think a colored man wants to rape ’em. Colored men know not to even look at a white woman, let alone rape one. They know if they do, the white man will string ’em up and cut off their plows.”
“How old was you, Mama?”
“How old was I when?”
“When you ran away.”
“Oh, about sixteen or seventeen.”
Marguerite looked into her daughter’s eyes. In them, she saw the flicker of young love on the horizon. Intuitively, she asked, “You like some boy at school or somethin’?”
“Yeah, Mama,” she said, her fondness of the boy gushing forth. “His name is Lucas Matthews, and he likes me too, Mama. I see ’im watchin’ me all the time.”
“Girl, don’t you get yo’self in trouble with that boy,” Marguerite snapped. “How we gon’ live if you get yo’self with child?”
“Cain’t Earl get me with child?” she asked flippantly. “And if he do, how we gon’ live then, Mama?”
Marguerite reached across the table and slapped the triumphant grin off Johnnie’s face. “Don’t you get snippety with me. I’m still yo’ Mama and I expect you to show me some respect in my house. You understand me, girl?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“And don’t think you too old for me beat the black off you neither!”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“You better be.” Marguerite frowned. “Now finish your dinner. You got homework to do before you go to bed.”