Corregidora

In the winter of 1947, Ursa Corregidora sings to a roomful of patrons at Happy’s Bar. Her husband, Mutt, arrives drunk and interrupts her show. Although he’s thrown out, he waits out back for her. She leaves the bar and a physical struggle ensues. Ursa ends up in the hospital, where she finds out she has lost the ability to have children as a result of her injuries. She refuses to see Mutt, but entertains another visitor named Tadpole, the owner of Happy’s. Tadpole aids Ursa by permanently banning Mutt from Happy’s Bar and by agreeing to help her recover. She stays with him when released from the hospital, and he makes her his top priority. 

Through Ursa’s conversations with Tadpole and a series of flashbacks, it’s revealed that Ursa descended from women who were forced into sexual slavery. Ursa tells Tadpole that her great-grandfather, Corregidora, was a “slave breeder and whoremonger” who fathered his own prostitution ring (8-9). Ursa’s Great Gram often told her stories about having to sleep with both Old Man Corregidora and his wife. 

While Ursa is recovering at Tadpole’s, Cat, the neighborhood hairdresser, visits Ursa. She asks Ursa if she was pregnant when Mutt attacked her, and Ursa says yes. Cat then tells Ursa that Mutt is waiting outside of Happy’s every night for her and that Tadpole is in love with her. 

After Cat leaves, Tadpole returns to help Ursa bathe. He touches her scar when she asks him to and kisses her when she’s falling asleep. The next day, Ursa goes to the doctor for a checkup. The doctor is confused and thinks Tadpole is Mutt. Ursa corrects him and explains that she is no longer with Mutt. The doctor responds by saying, “I thought you’d stopped blaming him” (19). This upsets Ursa, but with Tadpole’s encouragement, she still asks for permission to go back to work. She tells Tadpole she can go back to work as long as she does so incrementally, instead of all at once. Back at his lodgings, Tadpole undoes Ursa’s blouse and asks her what she wants. She says she wants what all the other women in her family have had: the chance to be mothers.

Ursa then decides she wants to stay with Cat instead of Tadpole, so as not to be a “burden.” Cat agrees and Ursa has Tadpole move her. Her tenure at Cat’s is cut short after Jeffey, a teen neighbor girl whom Cat babysits, threatens to tell Mutt where Ursa is staying and then sexually molests Ursa while she is asleep. Ursa also overhears Cat telling Jeffey “I’ll give you a fist to fuck” (47). These two incidents lead Ursa to believe she is better off back with Tadpole, so she sneaks back to Tadpole’s and then has sex with him. She then returns to work, only to find Mutt’s cousin waiting for her. He tries to get her to talk to Mutt, but Ursa refuses. Tadpole proposes to Ursa and they get married quickly after, with Cat as witness. Avoiding Cat, Ursa quickly returns to her room, only to have a drunken Cat follow her and try to reconcile. An oblivious Tadpole then returns to their room, Cat leaves, and Ursa and Tadpole consummate their marriage.