2 or 3 things I know about her

After knocking out several numbers, the entire band filed into a
saloon for drink, and when they came out everybody started kicking
'em up. The dance grew more violent. Women lowered their posteriors
to the ground, shaking them wildly as they rose and fell, rolled
their stomachs, vibrated their breasts. A crowd of babydolls came
along, all dressed up in tight, scanty trunks, silk blouses and
poke bonnets with ribbons tied under dusky chins, false curls
framed faces that were heavily powdered and rouged over black and
chocolate skins, the costumes were of every color in the rainbow
and some that are not, they joined the crowd, dancing and shaking
themselves.

"Sure they call me babydoll," said one of them, who was over six
feet tall and weighed more than two hundred pounds, "That's my
name. I'm a babydoll today and every day. I've been a babydoll for
twenty years, since I always dressed like a babydoll on Mardi grads
the other girls said they would dress like me; they would wear
tight skirts and bloomers and a rimmed hat, they always say you do
more business on Mardi Gras than any other day so I had a hard time
making them gals close up and hit the streets. See, men have fun on
carnival, they come into the houses masked and want everything and
will do anything, they say, "I'm masker, fix me up." Well, them
gals had some time on Mardi Gras, having their kicks. The way we
used to kick 'em up that day was damn shame, some of the gals
didn't wear much clothes and used to show themselves out loud,
fellows used to run 'em down with dollar bills in their hands, and
you didn't catch none of them gals refusing dollar bills. That's
why all the women back perdido street wanted to be babydolls."

"We sure did shine, we used to sing, clap our hands, and you
know what 'raddy' is? Well, that's the way we used to walk down the
street. People uses to say, 'here comes the babies, but where are
the dolls?'"

"I'm the oldest living babydoll, and I'm one bitch who is glad
she knows right from wrong, but I do a lot of wrong, because I
figure wrong makes you happy as right. Don't it?"

"Sure, I tried religion, but religion not give you no kicks just
trouble and worry."

"Say what you like, it's my business, I'll tell anybody I sells
myself enough on Mardi Gras to do myself some good the whole year
round. There ain't no sense being a babydoll for one day only. Me,
I'm a babydoll all the time."

"Just follow a babydoll on Mardi Gras and see where you land.
You know, if you follow her once, you'll follow her all the time,
that's the truth. I ain't no trouble-seeker, but I got plenty
trouble. The other day a man come into my house with fifty cents.
but a dime short. I just picked up a chair and busted it over his
head. That nigger is always come in short, he punched me in the
nose, and we went to jail. The judge turned me loose, but he says,
'Gal, don't want you come back her no more,' I says, 'No, Sir,
Judge.' When I stabbed Uncle Dick the next day they gave me three
months, but Dago Tony got me out."

"I didn't want to cut Uncle Dick, but he kept messin; around, I
sure don't like nobody to mess around with me, I just can't stand
it."

Babydoll has been living with Uncle Dick for five years now, she
beats him up regularly. She has stabbed him and hit him over the
head with rocking chairs, bricks, and sticks. Uncle Dick is a
retired burglar, and switchblade wielder; that is, he used knife
that popped when he pressed button and he could kill a man dead in
a split second, but things got too hot, now it is whispered he is
stool pigeon for the police in the crime infested neighborhood
where he lives. He depends on Babydoll, but she's tough number,
besides her profession, she curses a blue streak, uses dope, is a
stick-up artist, smokes cigars and packs a Joe Louis wallop.

"Dago Tony has been around himself," Babydoll went on. "He is
all right. Me and him done pulled plenty lemons together, he got
the peelin' and I got the juice." A lemon is methods of extracting
a man's bankroll while he is busy with a woman.

"Dago Tony got me into business once that was too hot keep up,
but, man it was solid! He'd give the drunks a big hooker with
knock-out drops in their glass, and when they passed out I was on
'em. The trouble was I had to hit too many of those niggers on
their heads. They'd wake up too quick. I'd seen so much blood
dripping from people's head that I got sacred and cut that shit
out. I'll tell you, a Babydoll's life ain't no bed of roses."

Babydoll began to think she had talked too much. Other things
began to creep into her mind, too. Some young black men edging the
crowd were giving her the once-over, and business is business.

"You're holdin' me up. I got to hit the streets, there's more
money for me in the streets then there is here. Maybe I'm missin' a
few tricks." And she was off through the crowds around the floats,
walking 'raddy' to attract attention.

"I was the first babydoll," Beatrice Hill asserted firmly, when
questioned about the history of the organization. "Liberty and
Perdido were red hot back in 1912, when that idea started, women
danced on bars with green money in their stockings, and sometimes
they danced naked, they used to lie on the floor and shake their
bellies while the mens fed them candy. You didn't' need no system,
to work uptown, it wasn't like the downtown red-light district,
where they made more money but paid more graft. You had to put on
the Ritz downtown, which some of the gals didn't like, you did what
you wanted uptown, still do." Beatrice is fifty-two and is about
beat out now, her arms and legs are thickly spotted with black
needle holes. She still uses drugs, and admits it. Also, she goes
to Charity Hospital for treatment of syphilis. Back in 1912 she
made fifty to seventy-five dollars a day hustling and stealing. Her
man, Jelly Beans, got most of it, and they blew the rest getting
their kicks. Beatrice is all bad and proud of it. she's been to
jail for murder, shooting, stealing, and prostitution. She boasts
of her hectic past with gusto and vanity.

"Them downtown bitches thought their behinds was solid silver,"
she recalls contemptuously, but they didn't never have any more
money than we did. We was working right there on Gravier and
Franklin streets."

"We gals around my house got along fine, them downtown gals
tried to get the police to go up on our graft but they wouldn't do
it. Does you remember Clara clay, who had all them houses downtown?
Well, she was making good money and used to buy up some fun. All us
uptown girls had nothing but good-looking men. We used to send them
downtown 'round them whores and make 'em get all their money until
they found out and had 'em beat up. Then we stopped. I'm tellin'
you that war was worse'n the civil war. All the time we was tryin'
to outdo them downtown gals."

"Everywhere we went like the silver platter, the elite, the
black and tan and so on, people used to say, 'look at them whores!'
We was always dressed down and carried our money on our stockings.
See like around Mardi Gras day? We used to breaks up the Zulu ball
with money, used to buy the King champagne by the case, that's
another thing, we had the Zulu's with us. Shux. we took Mardi Gras
by storm. No, we wasn't the babydolls then, ' I'm talkin about
before that."

"In 1912 Ida Jackson, Millie Barnes and Sallie Gail and a few
other gals downtown was makin' up to mask on Mardi Gras day. No I
not know how they was goin to mask, but they was goin' to mask. We
was all sittin' around about three o'clock in the morning in my
house, a gal named Althea Brown jumps up and she says, 'let's be
ourselves, let's be babydolls,' That's what the pimps always called
us. We started comin' up with the money, but Leola say: 'hold your
horses. let every tub stand on its own bottom.' That suited
everybody fine and the tubs stood."

"Everybody agreed to have fifty dollars in her stocking, and
that we could see who had the most money. Somebody says, 'whats the
name of this here organization?' And we decided to call ourselves
the million-dollar babydolls, and be red hot. Johnny Metoyer wanted
us to come along with the Zulus, but we said nothin doin. We told
Johnny we was out to get some fun in our own way and we was not
stoppin' at nothin'."

"Some of us made our dresses and some had 'em made. We was all
lookin' sharp. There was thirty of us- the best whores in town. We
was all good-lookin and had our stuff with us. Man, I'm tellin'
you, we had money all over us, even in our bloomers, and they
didn't have no zippers."

from gumbo-ya-ya

lyle saxon robert tallant, eds.

1945 houghfton mifflin