Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [54]
I knew it. He did want to marry me. I put my hand on his cheek and pulled him back to face me.
“I don't mind waiting, darling.” I had to reassure him, to erase his deep worry. “As long as I know you care.”
“But, you see, I may have to go away. I owe the big boys over two thousand dollars. And they don't play.”
My God. The mob. I read the papers and had seen enough movies to know they'd take him for a ride and blow his brains out.
“Where would you go?” Anything but to see him killed.
“I used to work for some white folks in Shreveport. Rich ones. I telephoned them and asked for a loan. They said all right, but the wife said I'd have to come back to work for them. Old hot-tailed bitch. I know what she wants.”
“What does she want?” I knew and hated her immediately.
“She nearly got me lynched. Says she's in love with me and don't care who knows it. You know how Southern women are.”
I didn't know about the women, but I knew L.D. was the greatest lover in the world and if white men were as sad as I'd heard, I could believe the old bitch was in love with him.
“How old is she?”
“Be about twenty-five now, I guess. I haven't seen her for three years.”
Old? I thought he had meant wrinkled, yellow-finger-nailed old. Why, that bitch probably tried to make him enjoy having sex with her. She probably wriggled and moaned under him just as I did.
“You can't go back there, L.D. You might get killed.”
“I've got to do something. This is the time I need a good woman.” He had leaned back against the door.
“But I'm a woman, L.D.”
“You're a little girl. Sweet as sugar, but a little girl. I mean somebody who can make some money, and in a hurry.”
My salary was sixty a week and I paid twenty for the baby-sitter, fifteen for my room, five extra for the baby's milk and laundry. I had the right to take all my meals in the restaurant and that would save cutting into the twenty left. I had enough clothes, thanks to L.D., but what good was twenty dollars against five thousand?
“When Head Up had a little trouble with the Big Boys last month, his wife went to a house in Santa Barbara and made five hundred dollars the first week. In a month he was clear.”
“Doing what?”
He still thought I was a square. “But I don't know if I could let anybody I love do that kind of business. I don't think my life is worth a nice woman, my woman, giving up that much of herself.”
“L.D., if a woman loves a man, there is nothing too precious for her to sacrifice and nothing too much for him to ask.” I had to make him know that I was as capable of doing him a favor as his aging wife. He said nothing.
“Love is blind and hides a multitude of faults. I know what you're talking about, and prostitution is like beauty. It is in the eye of the beholder. There are married women who are more whorish than a street prostitute because they have sold their bodies for marriage licenses, and there are some women who sleep with men for money who have great integrity because they are doing it for a purpose.”
“Do you really think that, baby?” His face was beginning to look better.
“Yes, and I'd do it to help you.”
He leaned forward and folded me in his arms.
“You sweet child. No, that's wrong. Sweet woman.” He pulled away and saw the tears sliding down my face. “What's that for? I didn't ask you to do anything.”
“No, I'm just crying out of joy. That you'll let me help you.”
“I heard of women like you, but I never thought I'd have one to call my own. My own.” He patted me and kissed away my tears.
“Clara. You remember Clara? I think she took to you. I would trust her with you. Clara runs a straight house. No three-way girls and no freak parties.” His voice ordered angrily, “I don't want you to get in no freak parties, you understand?”
“Yes, Lou, I understand.”
“When this is all over, I want us to be able to get married and I don't want you remembering nothing that I don't do to you. I always want to be able to make you happy, I want you to keep on being my little Bobby