Jaimy Gordon - Bogeywoman

“Cheese it caused an international scandal already my leaving with Zuk, and besides I thought Merlin thought she was dangerous-”

“Politics, dear, politics. Anyway by now that’s all blown ovah,” Suzette purred, “nobody cares, dear, as long as you’re all right. You are all right, aren’t you? Do you need any money?”

“I’m fine,” I muttered.

“I’m glad you’re out of the mental hospital, that’s no place for you. Call Mrs. Kuchmek will you? So how about that Doctor Zook?”

“I’ll look into it,” I said.

“Moilin wants to see you when he’s in Washington in eighteen days.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

“Any messages for your father?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll give him your congratulations.”

“Give him my congratulations.”

On the beltway, heading for Route 70 West to Frederick, the cabbie tuned in WBUG “Afternoon Bandstand” and what do you think I hear?

Bugs Baloney, who’s a phony?

The fat begins to fry

Nobody home but the telephony

Me myself and I .

Doowop dwop dead

The blind eat many a fly

Every slave will have a slave

Why not you and I?

“Hey, that’s my song,” I shrieked, “pull over.” The cabbie looked at me in mild alarm. She was a buzz-cut old jasper in an A-1 Auto Body tee shirt with a neck like a tree trunk. “There ain’t no shoulder, hon,” she said, “you fixing to get us kilt?” “I mean, turn off at the first ramp with a pay phone,” I said. So along we go, calmly, another two miles. Meanwhile the Frogman comes on: “This little tune,” he grates, “was written by the Bug Motels’ legendary fugitive girl singer-songwriter Ursie ‘The Bogeywoman’ Koderer. It was recorded live at the bughouse on the Regicide label by our own! Balmer! bughouse band, Dion and the Bug Motels! and zoomed overnight to number two on our charts! This is WBUG! Top! Forty! Mad! Mad! Radio-o-o-o-o! ”

I dialed East Six. Who should pick up the phone but Reginald carpet-nails-in-honey Blanchard himself? He says: “Bug Motels. How we can help you?” “Cheese, is this a bug hospital or a booking agency?” I spluttered. “Bogeywoman! Izzat you? How fast can yall haul ass back to the bughouse? You is no longer persona niggerata round here. The Bug Motels has debuted, they has busted into the big time, you my songwriter and I am your manager.” “What is this Dion and the Bug Motels stuff?” I asked, “you know that silly peacock can’t sing a note.” “Well-lemme tell you how it is-don’t nobody want to look at O’s big as a house self right now. Egbert and Emily best lay back dead in the looks department. And anyhow Egbert’s bailing out-found some gig in a bookstore coffeehouse on Charles Street-how square can you get? So I figure I can sell that pretty-boy face-hump I done already sold it. We got a TV date on WAAM on Friday. Way you at? I come get you.”

“I’m not coming back.”

“Get the oink outa here-you be back. This your chance for fame and fortune, girl. All you gotta do in this bughouse is eat and sleep-grease and zee and play that pukelele-I take cay the rest.”

“Ain’t coming,” I said, “maybe I’ll send you a song now and then.”

“Aw, you be back afta while. Go on now, take you a bitty vacation. I just glad your ass still kicking. When I hear that Rooski dreambox repair queen come back all alone from that all-night boat ride, I worried you drownded or shot or in the Gulag or sumpm.”

“Excuse me,” I said, trembling, “what Russki dreambox repair queen do you mean?”

“I mean that Zook, that lady doctor you run off with. I hear she pass through and pick up her brass booties…”

I hung up the phone, composed myself and told the cabbie: “Indian Mound Downs. And step on it.”

SO I WAS FAMOUS for two days, but it wasn’t worth living in the bughouse. The Bug Motels didn’t get far on those five same old songs of course. I used to sit around Track Kitchen Number Two with a ballpoint and the backs of a few greasy menus trying to make up words, but I had left my pukelele behind and, it was funny, now that I was out of the bughouse and mucking stalls for a living, when I cocked open my mouth, flies flew into it instead of word salad and other buggy stuff swimming out. The Bug Motels made a little dough on their one almost big hit on the Regicide label, “Because I Couldn’t Stop for Lunch,” which sold like crazy in Baltimore-but come to find out we owed the whole take to our manager, the Regicide, on account of some contract none of us remembered signing. Bertie still plays in clubs around the city, but only Dion ever made a name for himself bigger than the Bug Motels. Probably you saw him as Big Henry the helpful Indian scout in Little Bughouse on the Prairie . Just enough so some people around Baltimore still ask, from time to time, whatever happened to the Bug Motels. O well, at least O got sumpm out of it all. She got a set of twins: boygirl, blackwhite, buggysane.

The Bug Motels lost me and in six more months they lost Emily. If I didn’t see my see-through princess before me as I write-yes I mean loyal-to-the-death-by-starvation Emily Nix Peabody, refusal was her middle name, ex-guts of the Bug Motels, now a fleaweight pony girl galloping thousand-pound horses around the track-I wouldn’t believe it myself. Stranger things haven’t happened, not even to me, although I gotta admit she always held up her end on mission. She was tough even then, in her way, with those little aspirin-tablet muscles already popping up on her pipecleaner arms. Well you should see em now. Margaret kept on saying, “I’ll adopt that little Emily yet. Do you doubt me, Ursula? Don’t you see how an ounce of positive desire is worth a pound of negative regulation in this world? It’ll happen, you watch.” Even so I wouldn’t buy it, not the way I was back then, still dragging around the covert conservatism of the mental patient like a torn wrapper of sticky tinfoil.

But after I was here a month, I came to see how Margaret got to thinking like that. One month more and I was thinking that way myself. Here at the excremental end of the sport of queens and kings, where once classy horses that no longer win at Pimlico get dumped, the bosses of the world rub shoulders with folks as low as the ground-folks like me, a former mental peon, and Margaret, the sloppy sexy girlfriend of sleazy Tod Novio, Boyfriend Death (now actually Husband Death), and Boyfriend Death’s hotwalker, T-Bone Riley. T-Bone, who was beautiful as Belafonte when he was young, used to be Eleanor Ogden’s favorite groom at Breadbasket Farm before he got a bleeding ulcer from the strain on his dreambox of rubbing Hardtack, a horse worth ten times as much every day as T-Bone would earn in his whole life. Boyfriend Death gave T-Bone the little trailer when we moved into the big one, Eleanor Ogden was grateful for old T-Bone’s sake, the Davies Ogdens are cousins to Eugenia Ogden Rohring who endowed Rohring Rohring, and Eleanor Ogden is on the board of the American Dreambox Institute-and in short, six more months and Emily arrived, carrying a round blue overnight case which contained her pink plastic toilet set, a new Cowboys ’n’ Indians bathrobe the nurses had given her, with plastic buckskin fringes, and a pile of Donald Duck comics, all her possessions in the world.

“Er, uh, Emily, do you remember Doctor Zuk?” I asked as soon as I could get her alone. “Sure, she was purty and nice,” Emily said, “she took me to the pitcher gallery in my wheelchair one time and showed me all the horse pitchers and the Gyptian mummy, it was a little king, smaller’n me even. And she said when I got rid of those bandages she was gonna buy me a real dress not just a bathrobe, but then she left.” “Did you ever see her come back after that?” I asked. Emily solemnly shook her head unh-unh. “Not even maybe just for a day or sumpm?” Head wagging slowly nunh-unh. “That wasn’t sumpm you just really didn’t want to know or sumpm, was it?” “Unh-unh. I did wanna know, I even ast.” “What’d you ask?” “I ast if she was ever coming back.” “What’d they say?” “She wasn’t never.” “And you never ever heard nuttin more about her?” “Well… one time Miss Mursch said she thought she seen her. She went someplace on a trip. I… I forget where.” “Now, think, Emily. Where? ” “I don’t know where. Miss Mursch went somewheres… It was to see the rich people shop. And… and… she saw Doctor Zuk there… shoppin. Sumpm… New sumpm…” “New York?” “I don’t know. I dint ask.” Her little chin began to quiver and I decided it was sumpm I really didn’t want to know.