White butterfly, p.7
White Butterfly, page 7
Crying in that strange way. Like a kitten maybe. Or an inner tube squealing from a leak. Like a baby.
I opened my eyes, feeling chilly because I had kicked off the blankets. Edna was crying in little bursts. I got up and stumbled to the door. At the door I looked back to see that Regina had her eyes open. She was looking at the ceiling.
I was frightened by her. But I dismissed the fear as part of my dream.
Soon it will all be over, I thought. They’ll catch the killer and my nightmares will go away.
CHAPTER
6
I WENT TO THE KITCHEN to put Edna’s formula on the stove. Then I got a diaper from the package that Jesus brought home every other day from LuEllen Stone.
Edna was crying in the corner of the living room where we’d set up her crib. I turned on the small lamp and loomed over her. That silenced the cries for a moment. Then I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. That got a smile and a coo. I carried her back to the kitchen, where I laid her on a sheet rolled out over the kitchen table. I filled a red rubber tub with tepid water and undid the safety pin of her diapers.
She was crying again but not angrily. She was just telling me that she felt bad. I could have joined her.
I washed her with a soft chamois towel, saying little nonsense things and kissing her now and again. By the time she was clean all the tears were gone. The bottle was ready and I changed her fast. I held her to my chest again and gave her the bottle. She suckled and cooed and clawed at my nose.
I turned toward the door to see Regina there staring at us.
“You really love her, don’t you, baby?” she asked.
I would rather her call me that sweet name than make love to any other woman in the world. It was like she opened a door, and I was ready to run in.
I smiled at her and in that moment I saw something shift in her eyes. It was as if a light went out, like the door closed before I got the chance to make it home.
“Baby,” I said.
Edna shifted in my arms so that she could see her mother. She held one arm out to her and Regina took her from me.
“I need some money,” Regina said.
“How much?”
“Six hundred dollars.”
“I could do that.” I nodded and sat down.
“How?”
I looked up at her, not really understanding the question.
“I asked you how, Easy.”
“You asked if I could get you six hundred dollars.”
When she shook her head her straightened hair flung from one side to the other and then froze there at the left side of her head.
“Uh-uh. I said that I needed that money. I ain’t ax you fo’nuthin’. You coulda wanted t’know why I needed it. You coulda wanted to know how much I already have.”
Out of the small back window, over the sink, the sky was turning from night to a pale whitish color. It felt like the world was getting larger and I wanted to run outside.
“Okay. All right. What you need it for?”
“I need clothes for me an’ the baby, I got bills t’pay for my car, and my auntie down in Colette is sick and needs money t’go to the hospital.”
“What’s wrong with’er?”
“Stones. That’s what the doctor said.”
“An’ how much you already got?” I almost felt like I was in charge.
“Uh-uh, Easy. I wanna know where you could get yo’ hands on six hundred dollars,” she snapped her fingers, “just like that.”
“I don’t ask you ’bout the money in yo’ pocket, baby. That’s your money,” I said. “It ain’t got nuthin’ t’do with me.”
“You don’t need t’ask me nuthin’, Easy Rawlins. You know I work right down at Temple. I get there at eight every mo’nin’ an’ I’m home at five-thirty every day. You know where my money come from.”
“An’ you know I work fo’ Mofass,” I argued. “I might not have reg’lar hours like you but I work just the same.”
She snapped her fingers at me again. It made her furious that I could tell such a lie. “Ain’t nobody clean an’ sweep fo’ a livin’ could come up wit’ that kinda money. You think I’m a fool?”
We had both come from hard times.
Regina was the eldest of fourteen Arkansas children. Her mother died giving birth to their last child. Her father disintegrated into a helpless drunk. Regina raised those children. She worked and farmed and smiled for the white store owners. I don’t know the half of it but I do know that her life was hard.
She had once told me that she’d done things that she wasn’t proud of to feed those hungry mouths.
“I ain’t no criminal,” I said. “That’s all you gotta know. I could get your money if you need it. You want it?”
Edna, who was now cradled in her mother’s arms, laughed loudly and threw her bottle to the floor. Her eyes and smile were bright and mischievous.
Regina bit her lip. That might have been a small concession for some women but for her it was capitulation to a bitter foe.
“You should tell me what I wanna know, Easy.”
“I ain’t hidin’ nuthin’ from you, baby. You need money an’ I could get it. That’s because I love you an’ Edna and I would do anything for you.”
“Then why won’t you tell me what I wanna know?”
I stood up fast and Regina flinched.
“I don’t ask you about Arkansas, do I? I don’t ask you what you had to do? When you tell me your auntie needs money I don’t ask you why, at least I don’t care. If you love me you just take me like I am. I ain’t never hurt you, have I?”
Regina just stared.
“Have I?”
“No. You ain’t laid a hand on me. Not that way.”
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“You don’t hit me. It wouldn’t matter if you did, though, ’cause I be out that door right after I shoot you if you ever laid a hand on me or my daughter.” The defiance was back. It was better than her pain. “You don’t hit me but you do other things just as bad.”
“Like what?”
Regina was looking at my hands. I looked down myself to see clenched fists.
“Last night,” she said. “What you call that?”
“Call what?”
“What you did to me. I didn’t want none’a you. But you made me. You raped me.”
“Rape?” I laughed. “Man cain’t rape his own wife.”
My laugh died when I saw the angry tears in Regina’s eyes.
Edna stared at her mother wide-eyed, wondering who this new mother was.
“An’ that ain’t all, Easy. I wanted to name our daughter Pontella after her great-grandmother. But you made us call her Edna. You said you just liked the name, but I know that you namin’ her after that woman yo’ crazy friend was married to.”
She meant EttaMae.
She was right.
“All I wanna know,” I said, “is if you want that six hundred dollars. I’m willin’ t’get it but you gotta ask me.”
Regina raised her beautiful black face and stared at me. She nodded after a while; it was a small, ungrateful gesture.
And an empty victory for me. I wanted her to be happy that I could help when she needed. But what she needed was something I couldn’t give.
CHAPTER
7
I MADE MYSELF SCARCE for the next few evenings. I’d go out to different bars and drink until almost eleven and then come home. Everybody was in bed by then. I could breathe a little easier with no one to ask me questions.
Never, in my whole life, had anyone ever been able to demand to know about my private life. There was many a time that I’d give up teeth rather than answer a police interrogator. And here I was with Regina’s silence and her distrust.
At night I dreamed of sinking ships and falling elevators.
It got so bad that on the third night I couldn’t sleep at all.
I could hear every sound in the house and the early traffic down Central Avenue. At six-thirty Regina got out of bed. A moment later Edna cried in the distance, then she laughed.
At seven the baby-sitter, Regina’s cousin Gabby Lee, came over. She made loud noises that Edna liked and that always woke me up.
“Ooooo-ga wah!” the big woman cried. “Oooogy, ooogy, oogy, wah, wah, wah!”
Edna went wild with pleasured squeals.
At seven-fifteen the front door slammed. That was Regina going to her little Studebaker. I heard the tinny engine turn over and the sputter her car made as she drove off.
Gabby Lee was in the bathroom with Edna. For some reason she thought that babies had to be changed in the bathroom. I guess it was her idea of early toilet training.
When she came out I said, “Good morning.”
Gabby Lee was a big woman. Not very fat really but barrel-shaped and a lighter shade than about half of the white people you’re ever likely to meet. She had wiry strawberry hair and definite Negro features. She reserved her smile for other women and babies.
“You here today?” she asked me—the man who paid her salary.
“It’s my house, ain’t it?”
“Honeybell”—that was one of the nicknames she had for Regina—“wanted me to do some cleanin’ today. You bein’ here just be in my way.”
“It is my house, ain’t it?”
Gabby Lee harrumphed and snarled.
I went around her to relieve myself in the bathroom. There was a dirty diaper steaming in the sink.
The newspaper on the front porch was folded into a tube shape held by a tiny blue rubber band. I got it and started a pot of coffee in the old percolator that I bought three days after my discharge in 1945.
Jesus kissed me good morning. He had his book bag and wore tennis shoes, jeans, and a tan short-sleeved shirt.
“You be good today and study hard,” I said.
He nodded ferociously and grinned like a candidate for office. Then he ran out of the door and tore down out to the street.
He was never a great student. But since the fifth grade they put him in a special class. A class for kids with learning problems. His classmates ran a range from juvenile delinquent to mildly retarded. But his teacher, Keesha Jones, had taken a special interest in Jesus’s reading. He sat up nearly every night with a book in his bed.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and settled down to the breakfast table intent on making some decision on what to do about Regina. Who knows, I might have gotten somewhere if it wasn’t for the headline of the Los Angeles Examiner.
WOMAN MURDERED
4TH VICTIM
KILLER
STALKS SOUTHLAND
Robin Garnett was last seen near a Thrifty’s drugstore near Avalon. She was talking to a man who wore a trench coat with the collar turned up and a broad-rimmed Stetson hat. The article explained how she was later found in a small shack that sat on an abandoned lot four blocks away. She was beaten and possibly raped. She had been disfigured but the article didn’t specify how. The article did explain why this murder was front-page news where the previous three were garbage liners—Robin Garnett was a white woman.
I found out that Robin was a coed at UCLA. She lived with her parents and had attended L.A. High. What the article didn’t say was why she was down in that neighborhood in the first place.
I lit a Camel and drank my coffee. I opened the shades so that I could see them coming when they came.
At about nine, Gabby Lee emerged from my bedroom with Edna all dressed up for the park. I held out my arms and Edna screamed joyously. She reached for me but Gabby Lee held back.
“Bring my baby here to me,” I said simply.
I held Edna and she held my nose. We made sounds at each other and laughed and laughed.
“We gotta go,” Gabby Lee said after a while.
“I thought you was gonna clean?”
“I gotta be alone for that,” she snapped. “Anyway, it’s a nice day out there and babies need some sun.”
I handed my daughter back to the sour woman. Gabby lit up with Edna in her arms. That baby was so beautiful she could make a stone statue smile.
When they left the phone started ringing. It rang for a full minute before the caller disconnected. After that I took the phone off the hook.
I pulled a copy of Plato’s writings from my shelf and read the “Phaedo” by the sunlight coming in my living-room window. My eyes hazed over when he died on that stone bench. I wondered at how it would be to be a white man; a man who felt that he belonged. I tried to imagine how it would feel to give up my life because I loved my homeland so much. Not the hero’s death in the heat of battle but a criminal’s death.
At eleven forty-seven a long black sedan parked in front of my house. Four men got out. Three of them were white men in business suits of various hues. The fourth was Quinten Naylor. They all got out of the car and looked around the neighborhood. They weren’t timid about being deep in Watts. That’s how I knew that they were all cops.
Quinten led the procession up to my door. They were all big men. The kind of white man who is successful because he towers over his peers. Almost every boss I had ever had was a white man and he was either a tall man or very fat; intimidation being the first requirement for obedience on the job.
I was at the door, behind a latched screen, when they mounted the porch.
“Good morning, Easy,” Naylor said. He wasn’t smiling. “We tried to call. I brought some men who want to discuss the news with you.”
“I got to be somewhere in forty-five minutes,” I said, not budging an inch.
“Open up, Rawlins.” That came from a tight-lipped, Mediterranean-looking man in a two-piece silvery suit. I thought I recognized him but most cops blended into one brutal fist for me after a while.
“You got some paper for me to read?” I asked, not impolite.
“This is Captain Violette, Easy,” Quinten said. “He’s precinct captain.”
“Oh,” I mocked surprise. “An’ these the other Pep Boys?”
Violette was my height, around six-one. The man next to him, behind Naylor, wore a threadbare baby-blue suit. He was an inch shorter and blunt in his appearance. His pasty white face was meaty and his ears were large. Black hairs sprouted everywhere on him. From his eyebrows, from his ears. He pushed his hand past Naylor to my door. It was blunt and hairy too.
“Hello, Mr. Rawlins. My name is Horace Voss. I’m a special liaison between the mayor’s office and the police.”
I could see that there was no turning this crowd away, so I unlatched the screen and shook Mr. Voss’s hand.
“Well, come on in if you want, but I ain’t even dressed yet, an’ I gotta be somewhere soon.”
Five big men made my living room seem like a small public toilet. But I got them all sitting somewhere. I leaned against the TV cabinet.
The man I hadn’t met yet was the tallest one of all. He wore a tan wash-and-wear Sears suit. My uncle, Ogden Willy, owned one exactly like it in the Louisiana swamplands thirty years before.
He was thin and bony with long tapered fingers and deep green eyes. He was hatless and nearly bald with just a little black hair around his ears.
He crossed his long legs easily and smiled. He reminded me of a porcelain devil that was popular around that time in the Chinatown curio shops. “My name is Bergman, Mr. Rawlins. I work for the state—the governor. I’m not here in an official capacity. Just keeping an eye on these terrible events.”
“Anybody want something to drink?” I asked.
“No,” Violette said for everyone. But I think Mr. Voss would have liked to use his blunt fingers on a glass.
“We’re here… ” Quinten Naylor started to say but he was cut off by his superior, Violette.
“We’re here to find out who’s killing these girls,” Violette said. He spoke with his upper lip tight against his teeth. “We don’t want this crazy man running our streets.”
“That’s some shit,” I said. “Excuse me, but I’ma have to go get me a beer if I gotta listen to this.”
I went to the kitchen. Being independently employed I didn’t have to worry about those officials getting me fired. I didn’t have to worry about them beating me either. They were too important for that. Of course, they might have sent some goons later on. Maybe I should have been a little more deferential. But those men coming into my house turned my gut.
I filled the largest tumbler I had with ale and went back to the room. Voss looked at the foamy head, barely restraining himself from licking his lips.
“What the hell are you trying to do, Rawlins?” Violette yelled.
“Man, I’m in my own house, right? I ain’t ask you over. Here you come crowdin’ up my livin’ room an’ talkin’ t’me like you got a blackjack in your pocket”—I was getting hot—“an’ then you cryin’ ’bout some dead girl an’ I know they’s been three before this one but you didn’t give one good goddam! Because they was black girls an’ this one is white!” If I had been on television every colored man and woman in America would have stood from their chairs and cheered.
Violette was up from his chair, but not to applaud. His face had turned bright red. That’s when I remembered him. He was only a detective when he dragged Alvin Lewis out of his house on Sutter Place. Alvin had beaten a woman in an alley outside of a local bar and Violette had taken the call. The woman, Lola Jones, refused to press charges and Violette decided to take a little justice into his own hands. I remembered how red his face got while he beat Alvin with a police stick. I remembered how cowardly I felt while three other white policemen stood around with their hands on their pistols and grim satisfaction on their faces. It wasn’t the satisfaction that a bad man had paid for his crime; those men were tickled to have power like that. A Nazi couldn’t have done it better.
“Calm down, Anthony,” the spectator Bergman ordered. “Mr. Rawlins, we’re sorry to interrupt your day, but there is an emergency in the city. A man is killing women and we have to do something. I didn’t know about this matter of the other women getting killed until today, but I promise you that we’ll be looking into that. Still, no matter what way you look at it, we have a job to do.”
