Corregidora (Bluestreak) by Gayl Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t tell him what I’d overheard. I didn’t tell him what Cat was. I didn’t tell him why I’d really left.
    “She should have told me Jeffy was like that before, and I wouldn’t have said she could come in and sleep with me. Cat knew she was like that, that’s why she told her to sleep on the floor.”
    “She could have told her to sleep on the couch,” Tadpole said.
    “Cat don’t allow nobody to sleep on the couch, because she says it’s the only decent thing she got and she wonts to keep it decent.”
    “And you ain’t going back over there?”
    “Naw.”
    “I guess you wont me to go over there and get your stuff for you?”
    “Little later. If you don’t mind.”
    He said nothing.
    “She seem like she too young to be like that,” I said.
    “Well, they start off young.”
    He came over to the bed and sat down.
    “Sit closer to me,” he said.
    I sat closer.
    He pulled me closer.
    “Does it hurt?”
    “Yes, a little.”
    “Did they say you could do it?”
    “Yes, we can do it.”
    “How does it feel now?”
    “Go on.”
    “How did you sleep?” Tad asked.
    I said nothing. I put my cheek against his chest. He said it was time for him to go down and open up. I watched him rise.
    After a while I got up.
    “I thought you’d still sleep,” he said, when he came back. I’d made the bed, but hadn’t folded it back to be a couch.
    “I’ll just rest today,” I said. “I want to start work this evening.”
    “Do you think you’re ready? I don’t think you’re ready.”
    “I feel like it. The doctor said whenever I felt like it.”
    “After two weeks, he said.”
    “I feel like it now. I want to, Tad.”
    “No more than an hour, and only one show.”
    “The evening one.”
    “Okay. And I’ll have them get a chair for you.”
    “I never sat down singing.”
    “Well, tonight you will.”
    “No, not tonight either.”
    “If you seem tired or anything I’ll just tell them the show’s over.”
    “I won’t. I’ll be okay.”
    “You rest a lot then.” He unmade the bed.
    I looked at him.
    “I’ll feel better if you rest a lot,” he said, and went back downstairs.
    I’d put on my robe but hadn’t dressed. I sat back down on the bed. Then I started singing about trouble in mind. Still the new voice. The one Cat said you could hear what I’d been through in. I tried not to think about the rest of what I’d heard Cat say.
    They call it the devil blues. It ride your back. It devil you. I bit my lip singing. I troubled my mind, took my rocker down by the river again. It was as if I wanted them to see what he’d done, hear it. All those blues feelings. That time I asked him to try to understand my feeling ways. That’s what I called it. My feeling ways. My voice felt like it was screaming. What do they say about pleasure mixed in the pain? That’s the way it always was with him. The pleasure somehow greater than the pain. My voice screaming for him to take me. And when he would, I’d draw him down into the bottom of my eyes. They watched me. I felt as if they could see my feelings somewhere in the bottom of my eyes.
    I saw Mutt’s cousin Jimmy come in while I was singing about trouble. He sat down at a table. I was singing my last two songs. Singing and trying not to see the face outside the window, troubling my eyes. When I finished, Jim came up to me. “Jimmy, how are you?” I asked. He asked me to come have a drink with him. I nodded and went over with him and sat down. I saw Tadpole watching us, but I didn’t look back at Tadpole. I didn’t look at the man outside the window.
    “Do it trouble you me in here?” Jim asked.
    “Why should it? You ain’t him.”
    “You did fine. It’s good to see you back.”
    I said nothing. Then I said, “Tell him to go away, Jim.”
    “He worries.”
    “Tell him I’m all right, and he can go away.”
    “He got the papers from your lawyer and signed them. He said if that’s what you wont.”
    “Yes.”
    “It ain’t what