Free Mama Black Widow by Iceberg Slim Page B

grabbed a leg and dragged the little black guy to the vestibule.
    I heard his skull clunking against the vestibule’s stone steps. Junior’s face was a hard mask of hatred as he pushed our apartment door shut.
    I followed Mama and Bunny to the front window. It was snowing hard, but I could see the cops drag Woodrow to their car at the curb.
    Carl, the cop, had the burlap feet wiper from the vestibule under his arm. He stooped down and wrapped the sack around Woodrow’s bloody head before he flung him onto the rear floor of the police car. The three of us squeezed ourselves together and watched the police car speed away.
    It was the first really horrible sight I’d ever seen. It really was.
    Bunny called the district station and complained about the bloodletting. A captain told her to mind her own fucking business.
    The terror and excitement of what the landlady and the cops had done to the little black guy really upset Mama and me. Mama gave Bunny some soup, put her to bed and we went home.
    Junior and the twins were huddled silently at the front window staring out at the snowy dusk. Mama and Carol went to the kitchen to fix supper. Bessie turned on the living-room lamp and stretched out on the floor with a dog-eared high fashion magazine.
    Junior and I were playing checkers on the sofa when I saw Papa and Soldier Boy trudging down the snow-clogged walk. I shouted Papa’s coming and ran to unlock the front door.
    After Papa and Soldier Boy had washed up they sat down at the kitchen table and destroyed Mama’s smoked neck bones, navy beans, and cornbread.
    The fresh memory of the bloody little black guy had killed the appetites of the rest of us. Later in the living room, Soldier Boy entertained us by acting out some of his exciting battlefield adventures as a foot soldier in World War I.
    He had to be at least forty, but he pantomimed his lean six-feet-two inches across the floor like a twenty-year-old. Soldier’s face had a powerful American Indian cast with its high cheekbones, lustrous piercing black eyes, buffalo nickel Indian nose, a full but delicately shaped mouth. The deep red in the velvet brown complexion and the luxuriant mop of curly blue black hair completed the strikingly handsome effect of African and Indian bloodlines coalesced.
    I watched fascinated as he lost himself in vicious hand-to-hand combat with an imagined German soldier. The friendly face twisted in hate as he straddled his enemy and bayoneted the phantom soldier.
    Papa shook Soldier’s shoulder. Soldier shifted his enormous black eyes to Papa.
    Papa said loudly, “Sojer, yu don kilt him an’ the wah bin over.”
    Soldier’s snarl softened to a grin. He and Papa sat down on the sofa beside Mama. There was a long silence.
    Finally Mama said, “Two white law wuz heah an’ beat a lil’ man’s head tu jelly out en the vestabul.”
    Papa frowned and said, “Whut he don?”
    Mama replied, “He ain’t did nuthin’ Ah seen but deman his rightful money from thet ole crooked lanlady he put on thet flat upstairs. Ah wish cullud law had come en place uv white.”
    Soldier’s hearing had been damaged in the war. He leaned forward intently as Mama spoke.
    He shook his head and said in a loud bass voice, “Mrs. Tilson, please don’t ever wish for nigger cops. They’re worse than the gangster white cops.”
    Papa blinked his eyes and looked at Mama.
    Mama laughed nervously and said, “Frank, lissen tu Sojer talkin’.”
    Soldier said, “I wish it was a lie, but every black soul in Chicago knows it’s true. I was born and educated here, and I want to tell you nice folks about this big funky town and the police department.
    â€œSometimes fairly decent human beings join the force. They don’t stay long after they find out they’re a part of a vicious system that has a license to maim and murder black people in the street.
    â€œBut