Read Online Bitter Bronx by Jerome Charyn - Free Book Online

returned to the Bronx with an institutional gray complexion. She went to work at the market on Arthur Avenue. The new head cashier was a man named Robertson. He was a jailbird, like Angela, with his own gray pall. He must have been forty. He had big ears and hands as soft and smooth as a girl’s. He wouldn’t leave off looking at Angela.
    Robertson was quite clever with his hands. He would construct figures out of stray pieces of wire, twist that wire into walruses and lithe, prowling cats. And when he gave these wire figures to Angela, his fingers trembled. He never leered at her once or touched her behind. He was like a strange, balding knight with big ears.
    Angela didn’t know what to do about Robertson. She felt a slight tug in her loins, but it frightened her. “Miss Angela,” he said, after six months of silent, stubborn courtship. “I sure as hell would like it if we could make love.”
    â€œWhere?” she asked, already imagining him ripped to shreds.
    â€œWhere else? In the storage room.”
    â€œMr. Robertson, it would have to be at your own risk.”
    But her balding knight walked her into the storage room and bolted the door from inside. He touched her face. She began to purr, but it quickly became a growl.
    â€œMr. Robertson, do what you want with me. But we can’t kiss. I’m the cat lady. And loving me might mean your own death.”
    He undressed her with his beautiful soft hands.
    â€œI wish,” he said, “I wish I could shape you out of wire.”
    â€œMr. Robertson, you already did. I’m that prowling wire cat.”
    He stroked her flanks, ran his fingers across her breasts until her nipples were taut and fierce as knives.
    â€œMr. Robertson, you’ll have to make me wet. I’ve never been with a man.”
    He wouldn’t stoop between her legs. He kept stroking Angela with his soft hands until her whole body quaked. But the more he aroused her, the more she felt her whiskers grow. He hovered near her mouth. Her thighs tingled, tingled with dread.
    She thought of her father, who had tried to rape her with his wrinkled prick. Perhaps she was the cat lady long before she’d gone to the prison farm, waiting for her father to kiss her, so she could rip out his throat and claw him blind. Poor Papi, she sang to herself, as her own storage-room magician kept fondling her with his soft hands.
    And now she knew why this balding knight appealed to her. He had Papi’s big ears and famished look. Her mother had been out of her mind ever since Angela was a child, trying to stick her own head into the oven, hovering on the fire escape in her nightgown, and being led off to the asylum.
    â€œAngela,” she had wept, “your father stopped fucking me five minutes after you were born. You’re his new bride.”
    And little Angela would walk to kindergarten pretending to wear a bride’s veil. But it made no sense being married to Papi, who snored all the time and smelled like a goat. And she tore her own pretended veil.
    And now she was in the same storage room where Queenie had licked her to the edge of madness seven years ago. But she didn’t miss Queenie. She had Robertson, the jailbird, who began to hum under his breath, and her body stirred to that whispering music. He was shaping her with his hands, turning her into a wire creature.
    She growled once, but it was no less a song than Robertson’s.
    His lips grazed hers. Her mouth opened into a sweet well. His tongue tasted of cinnamon cloves and cherries on a tree. She ripped at him, but her paws didn’t leave a mark. His tongue went deep. Robertson had learned how to survive a cat lady’s kiss.
    He grew morose within a week. And Angela wondered if he was as fickle as Queenie. But it wasn’t that. A hopeless gambler, he had lost a bundle to the Albanians, who had come to Arthur Avenue with their own “caravans”—rag shops and rinky-dink