South Central Noir

She’d barely resumed her seat at her station before another ruckus erupted on the other side of the dining room. “Who y’all think you s’posed to be in them stupid hats and military fatigues and boots?” Only one person talked so loud. She got up wearily and walked to the other side of the room.

“Augustus Jackson, you leave them boys alone! And if you can’t leave ’em alone, then just leave! Get outta here!”

“You got no cause to talk to me like that, Mae!”

“And you got no cause to talk to them boys like you was, Gus! You got no right to call them names. They come in here to eat just like you do. Ain’t no difference.”

Gus Jackson stood up tall and straight and it was an impressive sight from behind: He was six feet, four inches of hard muscle earned from years of lifting and moving everything that came and went through the Port of Los Angeles. Everything, that is, the union boys didn’t want to bother with and left for the colored men to handle. The view from the front, though? A belly that entered a room five minutes before the rest of Gus, but he came by it honestly: He ate at Mae’s every day and he always ate two dinners at a time, followed by two desserts, followed by a night of heavy drinking. Today it was liver and onions with sides of rice and gravy, black-eyed peas and rice, and yeast rolls, then the baked chicken with sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, and cornbread. The desserts would be cobbler and cake. “There’s a big damn difference, Mae!” he bellowed. Too bad his vocal cords weren’t in his gut — they’d be squeezed shut by now.

He took a few steps toward the back of the room and the table where five Black Panthers sat. Mae approached from the other direction. She liked these boys. They were very respectful, always, and she had noticed that their presence spelled increased security outside. They nodded at her. They ignored Gus, which infuriated him.

“They oughta be over in Vietnam like the rest of our boys—”

One of the Panthers started to stand but two of the others restrained him. They all looked at Mae. Everyone in the restaurant was looking at Mae. “Please go sit down and finish eating, Gus.”

“I wore the uniform and fought for this country, just like your husband did—”

“You leave my husband outta this.”

“These boys oughta be doing the same thing.”

“Like your son, Gus? Is your son in Vietnam?” It was a low blow and Mae knew it but didn’t care. She was past caring. Today. Perhaps tomorrow she’d care about hurting someone, but today she didn’t. She watched Gus sag and deflate and shuffle back to his table where his two desserts waited. She sagged and deflated internally but walked briskly back to her cash register station, exchanging smiles and nods and handshakes with patrons on the way. She knew most of these people, and just as she knew who patronized the Night Life club listening to the risqué, raunchy patter of Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor, and enjoying Sir Lady Java and the other female impersonators, she knew which men were WWII and Korean War vets. She knew whose sons were in Vietnam. And she knew who Gus Junior had robbed, sometimes at gunpoint, to get money for his drugs because his parents had put him out of their house: he’d robbed them once too often. Then Velma Jackson put Gus Senior out after he came home drunk one time too many, pushing her past the breaking point. And some of these people in here were pushing her the same way, especially the holier-than-thou church people. She’d had enough of stone casting.

She walked to the front of the room. “A lot of y’all in here owe me money. You eat your fill but say you can’t pay and ask will I wait till next payday or the next one or the one after that. I don’t call you names and I don’t embarrass you in front of people. So here’s my new rule: no more name-calling and no more sitting in judgment of other people. And if you don’t like the people who eat here, then you can eat elsewhere.”

Mae Hillaire didn’t need the newspapers and the television to tell her that the world was changing fast. She saw the proof every day. In the people who came in, yes, but also in the clothes they wore and the things they talked about and the food they ate... or didn’t eat: more and more people didn’t eat pork, and quite a few didn’t eat meat at all, so Mae added more vegetables to the daily menu and more fish a couple days a week. But perhaps the biggest change wasn’t a visible or tangible one, it was the change happening within Negroes. Or Black people, as the young people preferred — demanded — to be called. She thought about the Louisiana countryside where she grew up and wondered how her relatives and friends and neighbors reacted to being called Black these days. When she was a child that five-letter word was worse than a four-letter one and an invitation to fight.