Mama Black Widow by Iceberg Slim Page A

were lucky together. When there was no snowfall, they found a few store windows to clean or small hauling and moving jobs to do with Soldier’s truck. Papa managed to keep our stomachs filled with chitterlings and hog balls. The butcher called them hog maws. Every penny not spent for food was put in a lard can toward the sixty-dollar monthly rent.
    Soldier had no relatives in Chicago, and he was lonesome. He was so sweet and kind and generous that all of us couldn’t help loving him and treating him like one of the family.
    He wasn’t the least perfect. He had his faults, like constantly nipping from a whiskey bottle he always kept in his smelly sheepskin coat. Whiskey was legal, but he drank bootleg stuff. He was loud and cussed a lot when he talked about cops and highfalutin middle-class niggers. But it wasn’t a filthy kind of cussing, and he did it almost charmingly.
    He was the smartest man we had ever met. He knew something about everything. Many evenings he brought Papa home and after staying for supper he would be too tired or tipsy to drive to his furnished room on the Southside. Mama would make a bed for him on the living-room sofa.
    Soldier gave me the feeling that he felt something extra for me. He called me “Little Brother,” and bought me treats when I went with him in the truck to get groceries for Mama. When we saw a cop I would grit my teeth and put a mean look on my face. Soldier would laugh tears in his eyes. I was crazy about Soldier. I really was.
    About a month and a half after we had come North (around December 19), Papa came home with our first Christmas tree. Mama trimmed the tree with dyed cotton balls and stars made from cigarette package tin foil she salvaged from the trash bin.
    Christmas morning was so exciting and beautiful with the presents wrapped in colorful paper lying beneath the red, green and silver tree.
    I got a black leather jacket lined with fleece and a handsome pair of gray woolen trousers and a pair of shiny high top boots. The twins and Junior also got warm clothing and shoes. It was all used Salvation Army stuff, but we couldn’t have been happier if it had been new.
    Bunny and Soldier really helped Mama and Papa to give us kids a very merry Christmas. Mama roasted two fat hens with dressing and candied sweet potatoes topped with pineapple slices and baked biscuits so light and airy they seemed to melt in the mouth.
    After dinner, Soldier and the twins sang and danced. Bunny brought her portable Victrola and played Bessie Smith’s blues records. It was the happiest, brightest Christmas our family ever had together. We were never to have another like it.
    Mama had decided that we should wait until September to enroll in school. She wanted to be sure we’d be able to afford books and other materials.
    On the second floor just above our apartment lived a Mrs. Greene with eight stair-step kids. Only two of them had the same father, and they had it rough on relief.
    Two teenage girls, Denise and Sally, came to visit Carol and Bessie a day or so before the end of December.
    Sally was golden brown, curvaceous and pretty. Denise was runty and thin with a bad case of acne. But Denise had poise and a large vocabulary. Sally was shallow and giggly, and all she talked about was clothes and boys.
    Junior was dazed. He stayed his distance with a worshipful look on his face. Carol and Denise hit it off as pals right away; Sally and Bessie had almost matching temperaments and identical interests.
    Denise brought Carol two of her high school books, an English text and the other math. I could tell Carol was puzzled and upset by the nervous way she flipped the pages of the English book.
    Soldier and Papa came in just as the Greene sisters were leaving. Sally rolled her hot hazel eyes sexily at Soldier. He gave her an icy look and strode past her.
    After supper, Soldier gave the twins and Junior tests in reading, spelling and math. Then he sadly shook his head and