Free Corregidora (Bluestreak) by Gayl Jones

car. He was a black man but he had two white girls in the back seat. One of them was barefooted and had her legs up on the seat. Another black man was sitting in front, leaning across the seat looking at me. The other man was out of the car, smiling, showing his gold tooth.
    “What’s your name, baby?”
    “Ursa.”
    “My name’s Urban, Urban Jones. They both kind of sound alike, don’t they. The Ur.”
    I nodded.
    “What are you?” he asked.
    “I’m an American.”
    “I know you a American,” he said. “But what nationality. You Spanish?”
    “Naw.”
    “You look like you Spanish. Where you from?”
    “Kentucky.”
    “Maybe that’s why you talk like that. What’s your address? I want to come and see you.”
    I said nothing.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Something’s wrong, sweetheart. Your boyfriend wouldn’t like it?”
    I didn’t have a boyfriend, but I said, “Naw.”
    “Well, he don’t have to know.”
    “He’d have to know,” I said.
    “Well, I thought maybe I could take you out to dinner or something.”
    “No.”
    “Well, you pretty.”
    I smiled and said I had to go.
    “Can I drop you somewhere?”
    “Naw, I got to meet somebody.”
    “Your boyfriend?”
    “Yeah,” I lied.
    He frowned, “Well, take it easy, honey.” He got back in the car and drove off. I kept walking. That was the summer Mama had taken me up to Detroit. I was seventeen, but everybody said I looked older than I was.
    “Do you know what you are?”
    “What?”
    “What all you got in you. I know you got something else in you that funny name you got.”
    I said I didn’t know.
    She kept looking at me. I could tell she wanted to confess something else, and to me. I took a sip of beer and waited.
    “My mother married a light man so that her children could have light skin and good hair. But look what happened.”
    I frowned. We sat there saying nothing again.
    “… They burned all the documents, Ursa, but they didn’t burn what they put in their minds. We got to burn out what they put in our minds, like you burn out a wound. Except we got to keep what we need to bear witness. That scar that’s left to bear witness. We got to keep it as visible as our blood.”
    “I didn’t bother you, did I?” Sal asked.
    “Naw, you didn’t bother me,” I said. I didn’t smile this time, but she was still looking at me as if she liked me for the first time. “No, I’m not bothered,” I repeated.
    “Cat thinks you’re beautiful,” she said, smiling, showing two gold teeth.
    I said nothing.
    “Cat ain’t been around in a month of Sundays, have she?”
    “Naw, she ain’t been around,” I said.
    A man and a woman entered.
    “I better go take care of these people,” Sal said. She got up.
    “You red-headed heifer.” That’s what that woman down in Bracktown called me. I wasn’t even studying her man. He looked at me, I didn’t look at him.
    I sat there a moment, finishing my beer, then went back upstairs to take a nap before the supper show.
    The last time I was in Bracktown, I went to the Baptist church with Mama.
    “Who’s that? Some new bitch from out of town going be trying to take everybody’s husband away from them?” somebody asked.
    “Naw, that’s Ursa, that’s my baby.”
    “Is that little Ursa? She growed up.”
    “Yeah, she have.”
    The church supper.
    “Can I help you to some potato salad?” he asked me.
    I let him help me to some. I didn’t see she was with him but she kept watching. Then when he wasn’t there, she eased over. “You red-headed heifer.” Then when I was just walking down the street minding my own business, these two women in a car. “You red-headed heifer.” I didn’t stay long back in Bracktown. Just to see how folks was.
    I’d slept for an hour when Tadpole came in. He was walking softly trying not to awake me, but I was already awake.
    “Aw, I thought you was sleep,” he said when he saw my eyes open.
    “Naw.”
    “I was just over to