82 Desire

expected to become a poetry lover at this late date, but he hadn’t thought he’d be yelled at.
    Yet, almost the minute The Baroness walked to the mike, he was glad he’d stayed. She had fabulous purple robes and that crazy wild hair—how did black people get it like that? A pretty face, of course, but big deal. That wasn’t it. Something about her was galvanizing, made him sit up in his chair and feel the bottom of his spine and the top of his head; made his fingers tingle.
    It wasn’t a sexual thing—there wasn’t anything sexual about it, his wife was right there. But it was like sex. It was a sense of excitement, a feeling of something big about to happen.
    Must be stage presence, he thought. Star quality, something like that. Well, I knew this was no ordinary chickie-poo. Hoped not, anyway.
    She had a voice like butterscotch sauce, and she sort of singsonged her lines, didn’t yell at all, made you feel instead like you were sitting in a warm bath.
    At first she just started out talking. “There was a poet named Mr. T. S. Eliot, who you’d expect me to hate on grounds of political correctness, but who speaks to me, not only in the Four Quartets and shit like that, but also in a lesser work on which a famous Broadway show is based. Mr. Eliot wrote about cats.
    “And Mr. Eliot wrote that every cat has three names—his formal name, like Buckaroo, say; the name the family calls him, like Bucky, maybe; and the secret name he calls himself, like King Ahmat the Nineteenth of Chichunga.”
    While she talked, a man with dreads for days arranged a series of paintings behind her—one of cats, one that looked vaguely medical, a domestic scene, and the poet reclining, a crown on her head.
    The Baroness produced a piece of paper and said, “I am like a cat.”
    And then she repeated the phrase, reading this time, so you’d be sure it was the title:
I Am Like a Cat
    When I was born, I was a little piece of toffee.
    Brown toffee.
    Soft and sweet and just as innocent as the baby Jesus. Just as innocent as my mama.
    Or maybe I should say my sweet mama was just as innocent as her own sweet baby.
    My sweet mama was so proud.
    Here the poet’s voice rose. She said the word “proud” like three words. She repeated the line.
My sweet mama was so proud.
    Even though her own sweet baby was born at
    Charity Hospital—
    ( Couldn’t have been worse—there ain’t really no St. James Infirmary )
    She was lyin’ there at Charity like Cleopatra in exile, and she says to the Pill Man, the one pulled her baby out of her womb and stopped that relentless screaming pain.
    She says to that nice young man, “What you think I ought to name my baby?” My mama so proud of her little piece of toffee, She wants to name her somethin ‘fine. Somethin’ fancy.
    Somethin’ so special ain’ no other little girl got the same name.
    And the doctor say, “Name that girl Urethra.” And my mama, she just as pleased, and she so proud,
    And she say, “That’s a beautiful name. Ain’ nobody in my neighborhood name Urethra. “We got Sallies and we got Janes and we got Melissas and Saras—we got LaTonyas, just startin’ to have Keishas—but ain’ nobody else name Urethra.
    I’m gon’ name my baby Urethra for sure.”
    And that’s my first name—the one they put on my birth certificate.
    I am named Urethra. Now ain’t that a beautiful name?
    But somebody knew. Somebody in our neighborhood.
    Somebody told my sweet mama she named her little candy girl after some ol’ tube you piss through.
    My name is Piss Tube.
    My name is Pee Place.
    My name is Exit for Excreta.
    And my sweet mama so proud.
    Every time she said “proud,” the poet went all out, so that it came out like “prowwwwwwwwwwwd.” She delivered the last four lines with her eyes closed, and started up again, snapping them open.
Now she call me “Sandra.” I never did find out why.
    Must be for the sand got in her eyes when she listen to that white man.
    Do I look like a Sandra to you?
    My name is Urethra.
    My name is Exit for Excreta.
    The poet’s voice rose again—in fact, Ray had to admit she did yell, but even so, her voice was still like butterscotch .
And I am a baroness.
    Because a cat has three names,
    And I am like a cat.
    My sweet mama’s broken and weak now, After what that white man did to her—
    She never did trust no one again, black or white. And I can never say again, “My mama’s proud.”
    But I am a baroness.
    And I’m so proud.
    I