Mama Read Online Free PDF Page A

some extra change, or wives whose husbands were out of work or had left them.
    Fletcher Armstrong owned the Shingle. He was one of the only black men fortunate enough to have some money in his family. His father, who lived fifty-four miles away in Detroit, was in the numbers business. It was supposed to be a well-kept secret, but everybody knew it and always had. Fletcher lived out on Ross Road in a house he had had built. It was a split—three levels—like the white folks' houses up on Strawberry Lane. Sometimes on their way out to the country, black folks from South Park would drive by Fletcher's house just to ooh and aah. Some were quite jealous, and the most considerate thing they could find to say was nasty. "Niggahs thank, they something when they get a little money, don't they? Gotta throw it all up in your face. Look at them pink shingles. Wouldn't you say they was too damn loud to be on your house? Can't take the country out of a niggah, can you?" But some people were quite proud. "It sure is nice to see colored people moving up in the world, ain't it? Ten years ago, weren't no colored people even living out here. Now look. And look at them pink shingles—they beautiful, ain't they?"
    Fletcher had green eyes and peach skin. He didn't associate with the regular black people of Point Haven because he thought he was better than they were. The closest he came was when he opened up the Shingle every afternoon and started heating up the grease in the kitchen for fried chicken and french fries and turned on the grill for the barbecued ribs he was famous for.
    In one tight corner of the bar there was a platform barely big enough for a singer and piano player, but on many a night an entire four-piece combo managed to squeeze in and play forty-five-minute sets of jazz, blues, and rhythm-and-blues until the Shingle closed its doors at two o'clock in the morning, when most of the people were fatally drunk and still didn't want to go home. People like Ernestine Jackson.
     
    Sure enough, when Mildred walked in she was sitting at the bar, with her stingy hair plastered down to her head with grease, and lint balls coating the tips of old curls. Ernestine was talking just as loud as always. Mildred sat down next to her and lit an L&M.
    "I just want to tell you that you can have the sorry son-of-a-bitch if you want him. He's at the house. I'm divorcing him as soon as the courthouse open up in the morning, or God ain't my witness." Mildred got up from the bar stool, and walked toward the bathroom. She could hear the soles of Ernestine's shoes shuffling on the tile behind her.
    Mildred was in front of the mirror when Ernestine barged in. She tucked in her lip and applied more lipstick on top of an already fresh coat.
    Ernestine kicked the door shut and put her hands on her hips.
    "Look, cunt, you ain't giving him to me, 'cause he was about to leave you anyway."
    "Is that so," Mildred said, watching Ernestine from the mirror.
    "Crook never loved you in the first place, and you know it. You tricked him into marrying you. You was supposed to be so goddamn respectable. Hah! Now look. He done come back to me and his daughter after all this time. Life is a bitch, ain't it, Mildred?"
    Mildred wanted to reach inside her purse and blow Ernestine's brains out, but she knew this hussy didn't have any. Besides, she wasn't going to jail for shooting some scag who wanted her trifling husband. She simply looked at Ernestine like she was a bad joke, shook her head back and forth, laughed, and left the bathroom.
    So after ten years of sneaking, waiting, and loving the man who had married her rival, Ernestine finally had her chance. And like a fool, Crook went with her. Mildred felt like she'd shed ten layers of dead skin. She knew she'd made the right decision because when she sat down to think about it, the only thing she'd ever appreciated about Crook all these years was the fact that he was a good lover when he was sober and had given her five