“You know it!”
Granddaddy’s favorite wrestler, Claude “Thunderbolt” Patterson, was in the ring, crouched down low and strutting around like he was doing the funky chicken. “That’s my man,” Granddaddy said. We leaned in close and watched Thunderbolt charge at his opponent, head-butting him so hard he fell to the mat like an old wet rag. “Look at Thunderbolt whoop that cracker’s ass!” yelled Granddaddy.
“Are they fighting for real?” I asked, bouncing on my stool.
“Of course it’s real,” he answered. “You see how that cracker’s laid out? Ooooweee! Thunderbolt put a hurtin’ on his ass.” Granddaddy gave me a sideways smile, then slowly backed up off his stool with his fists up, like the two of us were gonna fight. I jumped down and squared off against him, weaving from side to side, with my scowl face on. The two of us practiced our wrestling moves every Saturday night; it was the best part of my week.
“What you got for me, Baby Girl?” Granddaddy growled. “What you got?”
I wound up my arm and took a step back.
“You know what’s coming for you!” I hollered, and ran toward him.
Granddaddy caught me in his giant paws and threw me over his shoulder. “I got you now!” he yelled. “I got you!” Giggling like crazy, I tried to get him in an upside-down headlock while he spun me around. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see everybody pass by in a blur: Mr. Tommy, the Numbers Man, Aunt Vanessa, and Mama in the corner. And then I saw Miss Betty. She was walking through the door, wearing a faded red dress that was buttoned wrong so that the hem hung uneven. On her head was some hair that looked like it might have originally been a good Sunday wig, only it was raggedy as hell and sitting way back, so her tore-up edges were on full display. Miss Betty stepped up to the bar just as Granddaddy was putting me down.
“Bear Cat, lemme get a drink!” she demanded, slapping her hand down on the counter.
To this day, I don’t know what she was thinking interrupting us during wrestling. Everybody knew not to bother Granddaddy when he was watching TV. But here she was with her half a wig, right in the middle of our show. “C’mon, George,” she said. “I need a drink.”
Granddaddy didn’t even look away from the set. “Where your money at?” he asked.
“I’ll pay you tomorrow,” she said. “You know I’m good for it.”
It’s true that Granddaddy sometimes let his regulars get drunk on credit. Like if they were teachers or construction workers, folks with regular jobs and steady paychecks. But Miss Betty didn’t have any kind of job. She was a full-time drunk and sometimes ho, which I knew for a fact because once a month Granddaddy would pay her twenty dollars to go in a bedroom in the back and fuck Uncle Stanley.
Uncle Stanley had something wrong with his legs, sort of like they were nailed shut at the knees. When it was time for him to get it on, Granddaddy would call for me and Sweetie to help. “Go on back and help your uncle get started,” he’d say.
Uncle Stanley would pull himself on top of Miss Betty, then I would take one leg and Sweetie would take the other and we’d yank them apart. As soon as he got a steady rhythm going we knew he was good to go and we’d run outside to play. I guess Granddaddy thought he was doing some good parenting by helping his disabled son get some pussy. Who cared if it was from a broke-down ho with two little girls holding down his legs?
For a minute Miss Betty just stood at the bar looking stupid, while Granddaddy ignored her. Then she started to yell: “Fuck you, Bear Cat! You ain’t nothing but a big black faggot!” The whole room suddenly got quiet. Even I knew Miss Betty had messed up. You don’t call an old black southern man a faggot unless you’re ready to be carried by six. Granddaddy jumped off his stool, grabbed Miss Betty by the arm, and pulled her out the front door. She stumbled down the steps and fell into the dusty yard, still hollering and cursing.
“Get the fuck outta here,” Granddaddy called from the porch. “You ugly-ass bitch.” I had come running out after him and stood beside him with my eyeballs bugging out of my head, watching the action like I was at the movies.
Miss Betty got to her feet and pointed her finger at Granddaddy. “Go to hell and kiss my muthafuckin’ ass!” she hollered. Then she turned around, bent over, and slapped her behind. “Kiss it, you gotdamn faggot!”
That’s when he shot her.
The first bullet hit Miss Betty in her left butt cheek. She spun around and he shot her again. This time he blew off her pinkie finger. She fell to the ground screaming, but Granddaddy just kept on firing like he was at a shooting range.
“Lord have mercy!” cried Aunt Vanessa, running onto the porch. “Daddy, what’d you shoot that lady for?”
“Fuck her,” Granddaddy answered. Then he added, turning to my aunt. “’Nessa, go on inside and pour the liquor down the drain.”
Auntie Vanessa just stood there.
“Girl, go do what I told you!” he yelled. “Hurry up and get rid of the shit. Then call the police.”
To this day, I don’t know why my Granddaddy was more worried about getting caught for moonshine than attempted murder. Maybe it’s because he thought Miss Betty had it coming. “I shot her,” he said matter-of-factly when the police showed up. “I gave that bitch some hot lead.” The cops shook their heads, put my grandfather in the back of their patrol car, and took his ass to jail.
Granddaddy got locked up for a lot of years behind that mess. Once he was gone, there was no one to run the liquor house and we all had to leave. Aunt Vanessa took in Uncle Stanley; Uncle Skeet got busted for burglary and ended up in jail. For a while Mama and us kids lived with her boyfriend, Curtis, in a three-bedroom house with a chicken coop in the back yard. Curtis took care of us, paying the rent and keeping us fed. But it wasn’t long before Mama ran him off by drinking too much and acting too crazy. Then it was Mama all by her lonesome, drinking her gin and struggling to take care of all us kids by herself.
When we lived in the liquor house, I used to hate the noise and commotion and the smell of stale cigarette smoke that never went away. I hated waking up to strangers in the living room and stealing from folks in the middle of the night. But I didn’t realize that compared to what came next, that shit-hole bootleg house with the bedsheets in the windows and drunks passed out on the floor really wasn’t all that bad. At least at Granddaddy’s I always had food to eat, a roof over my head, and somebody who loved me. After he went to jail, and Curtis left us, all I had was Mama. In other words, I was eight years old and I was pretty much fucked.
Chapter 3
Struggling and Scheming