Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [20]
Hank was the club's erratic bouncer. Erratic because sometimes he didn't show up, and other times, when his habits hit him, he bounced people onto the sidewalk who had done no more than offend his sensibilities. He spent a few nights monthly in the drunk tank, and was always taken back on his release.
The other waitresses hinted that Hank did a few private jobs for the boss. Secretly I believed the man was afraid of Hank, rightly, for there was no way to anticipate him. He might see in a stranger qualities of great worth, or he might develop an active hate for a person's color.
He had kind of adopted me on my arrival, and at the earliest opportunity I approached him. “Hank, I want to know if you'd look after some business for me?”
In another century that face would have so frightened a slave owner that he would have been compelled to lash the broad back and shackle the wide hands.
“Yeah, li'l sister. What's the matter?”
“You know the two les—bull daggers who come in here?”
“They ain't been messing with you, is they?”
“Oh no.” The reverse. “They've asked me to back them in a business. Whorehouse, to be exact. Wednesday to Saturday. And you're the only person I can trust to watch out for my end. I figure to pay you one third of my take.”
His mouth hung open. “You're going to be turning tricks?”
“Not me, I'm going to keep on working, but they will. Could you manage the place for me? Watch out for the police and keep track of the money?”
After much repeating myself, he agreed. I created an elaborate system of chits, which would be given to the women and the cabdrivers. At around two-thirty in the morning Hank was to put on a porch light denoting a clear coast, and I would go in and pay off the workers.
I had a vague worry—that a sudden large bank account would put the vice squad on my trail. I wasn't afraid of the police, since I wasn't turning tricks myself, but I was terrified of how a police investigation would influence Mother Cleo. She'd toss me and my baby out of the house with much damning me to the depths of hell. There were other places to live of course, and with the money piling up in secret places I could afford anyone to tend my child, but the fact was that I cared for the Jenkinses and what they thought of me was important.
Their home and their ways reminded me of the grandmother who raised me and whom I idolized. I wouldn't have them offended. When my illicit business reached its peak, I joined their church, and stood in the choir singing the old songs with great feeling.
One afternoon Mother Cleo remarked, “I know something.” And smiled a leer. Panic set in.
“What?”
“You doing something.” She sang the accusation like schoolchildren promising to tell.
“What? I'm not doing anything.” The ready lie at my tongue.
“You got yourself a fella.”
Of all things, how could she come up with that? However wrong she was, I perceived she wasn't angry, and it would be safer to lie again.
I asked, “How did you know?” Pleased now that she had caught me.
“'Cause you're coming in later than you used to. Me, I'm a light sleeper. Mr. Henry can sleep till the cows come home, but taking care of children makes me a light sleeper. I hear every footfall. You used to be in around two twenty-five, two-thirty Now you get in sometimes its three-thirty Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, is he a nice boy? Work where you work, don't he?”
“How do you know so much, Mother Cleo?”
“'Cause anybody else couldn't stay up every night till you get off. If you want to, he can come 'round here to see you.”
I started. “Not at night. But in the daytime, I don't mind.” That was more like it. With so many unexpected things happening I would be very unhappy to see Mother Cleo's morals slip.
For two and a half months I operated at the points of a stylistic triangle, braggadocio (in front of the women) and modest servitude (at the club), and kept wondering what to