I, Stagolee by Cecil Brown

Author:Cecil Brown [Brown, Cecil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58394-392-2
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2011-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

Captain, captain,

How can you stand to see me cry?

Dirty low-down nigger, I can stand to see you die!

—convict work song

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Free Again

My carriage stopped at 911 Morgan Street. My house boy waited in front of the white picket fence. At the entrance I pushed open the gate and walked past a statue of a jockey holding the reins of a horse.

“Mr. Stagolee is back!”

“Yes, I’m back,” I told the boy as I went in the door he opened for me.

Lillie grabbed me as I came in. “Oh, Stagolee!” she exclaimed.

Gussie and the girls joined us and we all sat down at the table. My women were overjoyed to see me. “Oh, Stagolee, we never doubted that you would come back!” Dagmar said. Looking at my family, I felt good again.

“Well, I must tell you I am happy to be with you again!” I said. We joked and caught up on the latest business.

“Come with me,” Lillie said after a while, rising from the table and shielding me from the other girls with her arm. “I want to have you to myself.”

“Goodbye girls,” I said to Dagmar and the others who waited to swarm on me and ask a thousand questions, no doubt about my adventure in jail. “I have to go now, but I’ll be back for dinner. In fact, I will give out a few trick names tonight. Would you like that?”

“Yes!” Dagmar said, no doubt remembering that I had not given her a trick name—a name that whores like to go by. Usually it’s given to her by her mack.

“Who has no house name?” I asked.

One of the other girls raised her hand. “I don’t have a trick name,” she said. “My real name is Amanda Young and I don’t like it. I want you to give me a good trickin’ name, Stagolee.”

“How long have you been with us, Amanda?”

“A week.”

“Amanda, you know that a trickin’ name is for the streets. A house name is for the house. So what do you want?”

“A house name, ’cause I don’t want to work on the streets.”

“Let me think about this. Where do you come from?”

“I was born on a farm in Alabama and I been trickin’ since I came here ’bout two years ago.”

I take a lot of my names from French novels, especially Zola. I had Suzette, Madeleine, Lizette, Fifi, and Mitzi. Then I used names from the Spanish—Carmen, or Rita, or Chiquita. Some American ones that were common were Gertie, Margie, and Pansy.

“You shall be called Isis,” I said. I hadn’t named anybody Isis for a long time.

“Can you get her pillow made?” I asked Lillie, referring to the horseshoe-shaped embroidered pillow that each girl was given.

“Sure,” Lillie said, pulling out a “blank” pillow. I held it up and said, “You’ll have your name embroidered on this.” I took up my gold-edge register and wrote Amanda’s house name down beside her real name. “Your house name will be put on your kimonos and chignon scarves, and engraved on a silver bracelet that you will always wear on your left wrist,” I told her.

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