Mama’s thin-line eyebrows arched higher. “Twenty-nine thousand, five hundred dollars?”
Martha nodded, the tiniest mouse motion of a nod. Mama raised her voice, addressed the boys like they were a studio audience. “Twenty-nine thousand, five hundred. Can you all believe that?”
They could not; they shook their heads in shared astonishment, real slow, back and forth. I couldn’t quite believe it, either. I tilted my head to one side, looking with fresh eyes at this girl—this Martha, or Wanda, or whatever her name might have been. Mama leaned back and pulled out a new long Camel.
“Twenty-nine thousand, five hundred,” she said, lighting her cigarette. “That number is very—what is the word I want, Elton?”
“Specific,” said Elton through a mouthful of smoke. Elton was the one with the knocked teeth.
“That’s a lot of dollars.” Mama looked at me. “Ain’t that a lot of dollars, Just-a-Friend?”
“Yes,” I said. “I guess so.”
“Question being, baby—you white. What about you get a job?”
“Well, I…” Martha looked down, then away, pained. “I’m working on it. I was actually just at this job fair thing, at the convention center, that’s what I was doing all week…” She looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, although of course I had no idea what she’d been doing all week. Of course I knew nothing about her. “I’m trained as a medical assistant.”
“Medical assistant.” Mama shook her head and smoked and clucked.
“Yeah. And—and a couple other things. I work. I do. I have money. It’s just—not enough. I have my son, you know. I have bills. I can’t hardly save nothing.”
“Times is tough,” said Mama Walker, waving faintly at the abandoned house visible through the kitchen window. “Times is real tough. And we still haven’t heard what you need it for, anyway, this very specific twenty-nine thousand, five hundred dollars.”
Martha answered right away. “I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me?” Mama Walker’s eyes glittered. “She can’t tell me! Marvin, baby, you hear that? It’s a secret!”
“Look—come on, ma’am. I mean, Mrs. Walker.” Martha steeled herself, looked the older woman straight in the eye. “Is it going to be possible to borrow the money or not? It doesn’t have to be the whole twenty-nine five, okay? Whatever you can do, I will take. And I can pay it back. With interest.”
“Goddamn right you will!” said Mama Walker. She stood up, and a long circle of ash fell from her smoke down to the table. “Obviously you would fucking pay interest. This isn’t fucking Goodwill. I’m not running some charity shop for desperate white girls.”
“Sorry,” said Martha. “Sorry.” More apologizing. I had known this girl Martha for three days and all I’d seen her do is say she was sorry. Abashed before fussy white men and flinty black women alike.
“All right, well, listen, baby,” said Mama Walker, and Martha smiled hopefully, but it was over. Mama wasn’t sitting down again. The boys had shifted their weight. There was a change in temperature, and I knew what it was—I had sat in rooms like this: I had observed negotiations. Gun runners, bent cops, border bribers, slave traders, snatchers. I could tell a no-go when I was sitting with one at the table.
“Listen to me very carefully: when I give out money, I give it on return. I give it on terms.”
“I know,” said Martha. “I said—”
“I know—you’re going to pay it back with interest. Well, how I guarantee that, baby? You won’t tell me what you want it for; I barely know how I know you. You come in here, a black boyfriend, a black son, like I might get mixed up, start thinking you something you not. Like I’m gonna trust you then.”
“But I—I would promise! You would have my word on it!”
Mama Walker didn’t even bother to answer that. She stubbed out her cigarette with hard meaning, and the boys at the door opened it. At last Martha saw that this wasn’t happening, and immediately she switched modes; immediately she was ready to get out, out of Freedman Town, as fast as feet could go. “Lionel,” she called, and when he didn’t come at once, captivated by the cartoon show, climaxing in a blur of flash and sound, she said it again, sharp—“Lionel!”—and he bounced over.
“Real nice to meet you,” said Mama Walker. “Real nice to meet all of you.”
The big men stepped aside, then Mama Walker said—so low you almost couldn’t hear her—“I’ll give you the money you give me the boy.”
“What?” said Martha. I pulled her out by the arm. “What did you say?”
I pulled her down the stairs. “What did she say?”
I hustled her and her child along the block, her eyes wild. I stuffed her in the car. I drove her away.
20.