The Mulatta

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

What the hell did he know. He had come from a white world, from a white bread (a word that before he met her was unknown, maybe unknowable, to him), a white world of neighborhoods meant to be kept that way without any overt effort, and certainly without any rancor but that was just the way things were in this wicked old world. You kept to your own and they kept to their own, whoever the “they” were. So he grew to manhood in a neighborhood, a working- class Irish neighborhood mainly with a few Italians thrown in who had come over to work the now worked-out quarries that had made the city famous (that and famous presidents, Presidents of the United States that is). A neighborhood where in early summer before the heat really beat down you could tell it was summer because every kid, or almost every kid, who went to the local beach was bright red from the sun’s exertions. 

There was a standing joke, a joke that should have let him know what was what but didn’t, that the Italian kids, especially the girls (and that was all that really counted in his corner boy guy-driven world) when they tanned up all dark and everything looked like n-----s, looked all black. Of course that was just an unkind joke, meant or not, since what really set the tone of the neighborhood was that in his high school graduating class of almost six hundred there was not one, not one, black student, and not much else for non-white minorities either . Another standing joke was that someone had seen, had actually sighted mind you, an Arab one time in downtown Adamsville. Only passing through though. What was not a joke was that from his house and from many houses in that insulated community you could see a bridge that led to the big city, Boston, and a teeming and growing black ghetto. Yah, so what did he know.       

Yes, so what did he know when he saw her walking down the street, down a friendly sunny early summer Frisco street, Bay Street, young, younger than he from a quick glance, all casually beautiful, brownish skin, long legs, short dress as was the fashion of the time, and some peasant blouse with multi-colored designs worked in, and she smiled at him. Not a “come hither” smile so much as a thanks for the look, and I hope I made your day smile like she had been doing that look and smile response for ten thousand years.  Maybe she had, had done that in five hundred previous generations and it has stuck, stuck deep in the DNA. And that would have been it that except some papers she was carrying in her right hand had blown away in the street after a sudden wind whirl from the bay, not unusual in Frisco town, caught them. He chased after them, retrieved most of them, and returned them to her. And that started a conversation, you know,” thanks,” “oh it was nothing,” “are you a student?” and then a few seconds silence while he/she calculated whether this thing should be a start or a finish. A start. He asked her where she was a student, she said, part-time over a San Francisco State. He told her that he had finished school, had headed to California to see what it was all about and stuff like that. And so they talked for a while. And after a while they headed to one of the cafes that dotted Mission Street just then.

So they did the eternal boy-girl thing, had a few drinks, a couple of stutter laughs and so maybe that was that. He hoped not although as they were talking he noticed that she would keep wiping her nose, not from a cold nose, and he thought maybe she was into cocaine, coke, girl, since he had tried it a few times and had the same reaction with the nose. He had given it up after a short while for just that reason, and also that he was far more comfortable with an occasional joint, some weed, marijuana the drug of choice then, mainly among the young. He asked her for a date just out of the blue, asked her if she lived in a dorm, or something and she said no, she lived over on a street in South San Francisco, a street that she gave him directions to since as a newcomer he was unfamiliar with that part of town. She said to pick her up there the next afternoon. He asked her why not a date at night and she said she was busy then.  Yah, so what did he know.                      

The next afternoon after about seven wrong turns and mis-directions he wound up at her address, an address that turned out to be in the heart of the black ghetto, although unlike back East the houses looked well-kept up and did not have that Boston shanty town look. He was afraid, very afraid, since he had never actually been in such a situation before, and was further afraid every time a black man looked at him with black man eyes, eyes that said “what the hell are you doing here white bread, go back to your own turf,” although, there was no apparent menace behind those eyes. He rang the doorbell to her apartment, the front foyer door opened and he walked up to the second floor where she lived. She opened the door and entered her small apartment which was half student modern, half dope den. He was familiar with that look from some places in Boston where he had friends so that did not scare him off. Nor did the telltale mirror on the coffee table in front of a flop house sofa, a universal sight in those days. And on the mirror were a couple of random lines of coke that were waiting to be inhaled. He asked her if they were for her use she said-“ Yes, was that a problem?” He said no although he related his own negative cocaine experiences and she said she felt the opposite. He shrugged his shoulders.

He really didn’t think much of that cocaine situation one way or the other because if that had bothered him he would have cut the thing short the previous day. He was more and more intrigued by her. What set off an explosion though was when he asked her why she was living in a black neighborhood. Was she trying to save money on rent or something. She laughed, laughed a self-conscious laugh that he thought was making fun of him. She told him she was black, well, not all black, black and white, a mulatto, a mulatta. He freaked for a minute and then blurted out that he thought she was either Italian or Mexican or something like that and that look was what intrigued him. He started, self-consciously, to tell her about where he came from to explain why he had freaked for a minute, about his white bread prior existence but she cut him short a little, cut him short by saying was he going to stay or go, stay and they maybe could work something out. Go and that would be that. He half-stuttered “stay.” Then she went to that flop house sofa, sat down, rolled up a dollar bill and snorted a line of coke. She offered him a line; he hesitated and then said “what the hell.”

Later, after a few more lines, and a little talk they went to her bedroom. After their sweaty exertions, after she made him holler to high heaven with her body moves he blurted out that although he had never been with a black woman before it didn’t seem that different except she was more thoughtful and inventive about her love-making that the white girls he had known. She laughed. Then they both laughed. Both knowing that he was in for the ride, that she had him hooked, and that they would see where this trouble led them. Yah, so what did he know.