Bo Willie Redd and Princess Geraldine II

Bo Willie Redd had his bleary eyes on me from the time he stumbled over the defunctified streetcar tracks at Rampart and Desire. I bent into the baby back ribs of beef I had on the grill acting like I hadn’t seen him. I was getting ready for my big date with Betty Jean Shivers and was not in no mood for small talk with this lightweight hustler who seemed more at home in Orleans Parish Prison than he did here in the neighborhood that he’d grown up in and where his family had owned a corner bar for three generations. It was almost 6 p.m. I still had to take my bath, get dressed, and try to calm my nerves before the woman I’d been dreaming about ever since I’d gotten back from the military would have her knees folded beneath my Japanese table. So I definitely had no time for Bo Willie.

“Say, Brother Man, que pasa?” Bo Willie said as he leaned down to rest his arm from toting the used car battery he had carried clamped in the bite of heavy-duty locking pliers. “You got everybody in the neighborhood slobbering at the mouth. I know you didn’t learn to cook like that in Korea. Dig it Bro’, if you want to get into business, I know we could make grand theft dineros selling ‘Bo Willie and Junebug’s Special Barbeque.’ Just imagine that, Bro. We could use my old man’s bar and everything.”

“Bo Willie—”

“All right, all right, I’ll give you top billing, but remember it was my idea, and it is my old man’s building we talking about.”

“Bo Willie, I’m not interested in going into business with you or anybody else. I’m a nurse.”

“That’s why I mentioned it, Bro. Who ever heard of a male nurse? Come to think of it that could be a pretty hip getover. I bet you’re the only man in that nursing school over there at Flint-Goodridge hospital. Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that. That’s hip, Bro. That’s hip!”

“I thought it would be a good way to use the medical experience I got as a medic in Korea, plus the fact that nurses can get work anywhere. They got plenty of scholarships for the program. As smart as you are, Bo Willie, I know you could qualify.”

“No, no, no, no, no! I’m allergic to W-O-R-K, Bro’. I can’t even say the word. I’m an entrepreneur.”

“Oh yeah? There’s not a lot of buying and selling going on in the Orleans Parish Prison, huh?”

“Hey, Bro’, OPP ain’t no big thing. When people with money take a risk and lose it, it cost them a little money. When I miss on a bet, I lose a little time. It’s just the cost of doing business. I bet you didn’t run into no Rockefellers fighting in the trenches with you in Korea.”

“You’re right about that. But I’m sorry, Bo, I’ve got some special company coming over for dinner, and I have to get ready.”

“Dig it! I’m standing here jaw jacking, and you trying to take care of some serious business.” He squatted to get a grip on the makeshift handle to the battery. “Say, Junebug, you interested in a good used battery with plenty of fire in it? Lookahere . . .” He clicked the lock on the vise grip and turned the metal tool so that it stretched between the poles of the battery. As he connected the two poles a bright, hard spark flared up. “See that! That’s the sign of a real good battery. I can give it to you at a very good price.”

“No thank you, Bo, but I got to go. I’ve been working on this lady since school started in September, so I don’t want to blow it.”

“For you, Junebug, I’ll knock five dollars off the price.”

“No thanks, Bo. I got to go.”

I heard Bo Willie call as he walked down the block toward his family bar, “Junebug’s Bar-B-Q at the House of Redd. Think about it, Junebug. It’s a natural winner.”

 

Everything was ready when Betty Jean got there at 7. I had a stack of LPs playing on the box: Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Arthur Prysock, Billy Eckstine, and that new jam by Johnny Hartman singing with Coltrane.

Betty Jean, or “Miss Shivers” as I had to call her at work, was the Director of Nursing at the black hospital where I was on a special work/study program. Technically speaking, we weren’t supposed to be seeing each other, but there was no way I was going to let this lady get away. She moved gracefully and smoothly like a willow. Although she was gentle when she spoke, you could tell that she was as firm and strong as oak and that the passion in her was like the deep and fierce fire that makes lava flow. I had never known a woman like Betty Jean before. My temperature went up when she just walked in the room.

My little two-room apartment was decorated Asian style. You had to take your shoes off when you stepped in the door. I had waxed the wooden floor to a glossy shine. A full-sized futon covered by a beautiful quilt my family handed down from slavery days was folded up, sofa-style, in front of the fireplace. I kept a bunch of pillows around the large double parlor for people to sit on. I had a batch of silk cloth from China which I used for curtains and covers and accents of different types.

At the far end of the room, before you got to the bathroom and the kitchen, was an old-fashioned player piano, and off to the right was a black lacquered Japanese table. It was set in white with lavender napkins, purple candles, and an arrangement of star gazer lilies that I had worked on for two hours. A Yoruba fertility figure, highlighted by the glow of the candles from the table, sat in front of the fireplace.

Ms. Shivers didn’t drink or smoke and was determined not to have sex before she got married. I didn’t mind about her not drinking and not smoking, but I did not like her idea of doing without sex. Being a man with some experience of the world, I believed then, as I do now, that regular sex with someone you truly love can be really good for you as well as good to you. Not that I didn’t respect her opinion, but that particular night I had made up my mind that I was going to do everything in my power to convince her that I was right.

I was serious about trying to seduce this woman. I served oyster and artichoke soup, a watercress salad, barbecue, (neatly trimmed but still stuck to the bone so that we had to eat it with our fingers), Korean sauerkraut (which they call kim chee) rice, and a special tea made of ginger, donqui, and ginseng which was sweetened with royal jelly honeycomb. I had pulled out every trick I knew.

I thought it was working. During dinner we laughed a lot. She complimented me for my taste in food, said she admired my simple, manly, but still sexy home, and we often found ourselves in long dreamy-eyed silences. We chatted late into the night about our interests, our work, my experience in the military, her life growing up in Natchez and living in New Orleans.

I got up to turn the LPs over, and we moved to the futon. Billy Eckstine was singing, “When I Fall in Love.” It got to the point where tender little kisses turned into long passionate ones and the buttons on both of our shirts had come undone. Betty Jean might have been a virgin at the time but she didn’t kiss like one. She had a knowledge of the body that she’d gained in nurse’s training and was very curious in her innocent sort of way about the erotic things I’d learned in Asia.

I was trying to convince her that it would be safe for her to spend the night, that I wouldn’t even try to do anything that she didn’t want to do. She had almost decided to stay. I was caressing her passionately, but politely, whispering sweet nothings as I nibbled on the soft fleshy part of her ear and tried the deeper part with the tip of my tongue, when her fingernails suddenly seemed like talons on my thigh and (by now) bare chest.

“Mary Ann?” she said.

“Mary Ann? Who’s she?” says I, trying to conceal my discomfort because I did recognize this name.

“That’s what I want to know.”

“Did I say ‘Mary Ann?’”

“I thought I was the only person you were dating.”

“Of course, you’re the only person I’m dating, baby —”

“Don’t you ‘baby’ me! Who is this ‘Mary Ann’ that you can’t stop thinking about when you’re kissing and rubbing on me?”

“It’s no big thing, Betty Jean —”

“Then you won’t mind telling me why you’re thinking about her when you’re trying to get in bed with me.”

Hoping to cut my losses, I said, “Mary Ann was one of my girlfriends a long time ago — before I went to Korea—”

“I’d better go now. I need to take some time to think things over.”

The next day she called to tell me she was going to spend some time with her family in Natchez. Three weeks later, she was still in Natchez . . . thinking.

Finally, I decided to drive up to Natchez. It turned out that the first black doctor to be admitted to practice at St. Mary’s General Hospital there was very impressed with Betty Jean . . . her skills as a nurse and all.

I said, “Betty Jean, I want you to come back to New Orleans so we can . . . get to know each other better.”

“You sure you don’t mean Mary Ann?”

“Come on, baby. You can’t hold one little slip of the lip against me for the rest of my life.”

“I wanted you to have enough time to think it over. You haven’t started seeing anyone else have you?”

 

Six months later I got an invitation to Betty Jean’s wedding to Dr. Horace Whatchamacallit. After that, one of the first things I would do whenever I felt like I might be falling in love, I would say, “Baby, do you mind if I call you ‘Princess Geraldine?’ See, my grandmama was named Geraldine, and she carried herself with such pride and grace that everyone called her ‘Princess Geraldine.’

“My grandmother is the one who taught me what love is all about and you remind me of her. Do you mind if I call you ‘Princess Geraldine’ after my grandmama?” Almost always they would smile and say, “Yes, of course, Junebug, that would be a great honor.” I haven’t ever had the problem of calling anyone out of their names ever since.

In memory of the second Princess Geraldine I made up this little song.

 

Ode for Princess Geraldine II

(Shades of Pharaoh Sanders)

Baby,

I just want you to tell me this one thing:

How I’m going to be true to you when you so busy being true to someone else?

You see what it is I’m saying?

 

I tell you I loves you

place no one above you

and you smiles and says,

“Be patient, while I makes up my mind.”

 

So I take my aching head in one hand

and my aching heart in the other

goes somewhere to sing some blues to keep from crying.

 

Just about then, this sweet young thing

goes sashaying by

and I jumps up to see if the light is shining in her eyes like yours used to be

and Boom!

What happens?

You got an attitude.

 

Damn, Baby!

How patient am 1 supposed to be?

 

Lord knows I wish I had the master plan.

Try as hard as I can

I just can’t understand how I’m supposed to be true to you

when you so busy being true to someone else!

 

“The Creator has a master plan,

Peace and happiness for every man . . .”

 

Oh, by the way: the next morning after that fateful dinner, I got in my car to go to work and my car wouldn’t turn over. When I raised the hood, Ray Charles could have seen what the problem was . . . Somebody had ripped off my battery!