The Undertaker's Assistant

by Amanda Skenandore

  She frowned. Wasn’t that obvious? “I’m attending to the supplies.”

  He shambled down the stairs. “This can wait. Go home. Celebrate.”

  Home seemed too sentimental an appellation for the boardinghouse where she lodged. The roof was sound, the floorboards solid, the bed free of fleas, and the food palatable. She wasn’t in want of much else. Certainly not celebration.

  She heaved the sudsy water into the gutter flowing to the street. “I’m nearly done.”

  “If you insist on finishing up, at least have a drink with me.” Mr. Whitmark shuffled to the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards.

  “I don’t drink,” she called, but he paid her no mind, returning with a bottle of brandy and tin cup.

  He handed her the cup, filled it halfway, then clanked it against the bottle in a toast. “Merry Christmas, Effie.”

  She took a cautious sip. It tasted like horse piss—or what she imagined horse piss to taste like—and she spat it out onto the stone pavers.

  Mr. Whitmark laughed and drank a long swill. “I gather John and the missus didn’t drink.”

  “Teetotalers,” she said. Never mind the whiskey the captain kept tucked away in his study.

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  A firecracker popped from a neighboring courtyard. Mr. Whitmark flinched. “Blasted toys.”

  “The captain hated them too.”

  “You called him that? Captain? ” He plopped into a creaky rocker. “Even as his ward?”

  Effie paused, then set to packing up the instruments she’d laid out to dry. “What else should I have called him?”

  “I don’t know . . . papa, father. You were just a girl, weren’t you, when he took you in?”

  Effie didn’t know how old she’d been. Seven? Eight? Too young to remember much of what came before. And though he’d been the closest thing to a father she’d known, he’d never said she might call him papa. “I called him sir sometimes.”

  Whitmark chuckled again. “He was a bit of a fussy fellow. So serious all the time. What’d he do to send you running?”

  Her stomach clenched. “Nothing, I—”

  “Most Negroes with any money and a lick of sense are pulling up stakes these days and heading North.”

  “I just . . .” She took another sip of brandy, regretting it the moment the rancid liquor hit her tongue. “Wanted to see the land where I was born.”

  More than that, she’d wanted to find a place where she could blend in. Disappear. Belong. Where people, well-meaning or not, wouldn’t regard her as a specimen.

  But Mr. Whitmark seemed satisfied with her answer, for he leaned back in his chair and nodded. The wicker groaned beneath his weight, as if it had been decades since someone had last sat and rocked in it. “This is where he found you?”

  “Nearby, I believe.”

  “What of your own folk?”

  Effie looked down at the amber liquid in her cup. She hadn’t any folk, any kin, any true family. None she could name or remember. “I haven’t much recollection before the War, sir.”

  “Don’t you go calling me sir now too.” He took another drink from his bottle and stood, swaying a moment before finding his balance. “I have something for you.” He fished in his trouser pocket and tossed her a small paperboard box. “Merry Christmas.”

  Effie held the box in her palm and examined it. It was light, almost weightless. One corner mashed and rounded, the string tying it shut fashioned in a sloppy bow. She glanced back at him. His hooded eyes glinted with a kindness she’d hitherto overlooked. “I . . . thank you.”

  He flapped a hand, his cheeks flushing beyond their usual ruddiness. “It’s only a trifle.”

  She set aside her cup and untied the bow. Inside was a large brass button with an embossed eagle in the center. In one talon, it clutched three sharpened arrows. In the other, an olive branch.

  “I’ve seen the other buttons you keep tucked in your pocket and thought . . . well, you might like this one too.”

  “You didn’t take this from your uniform, did you?”

  “Ain’t doing nothing but gathering dust. Hell, I was surprised I still had the damn thing.”

  Effie turned the button over in her hand. Angled it toward the light. The years had tarnished it some, but otherwise it was unblemished. She closed her fingers around it and cradled it in her palm. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Like I said, it’s nothing to me now.” He drained half of the remaining brandy in his bottle with one guzzle.

  She winced, recalling all the bloated, jaundiced bodies she’d attended over the years. “You ought to read Dr. Benner’s report on diseases of the liver. He contends that hot climates and excessive consumption of spirits are chief among—”

  “I know what causes cirrhosis, Effie.”

  “Then why do you drink so much?”

  He sighed and smiled at her. “We all do things that aren’t in our best interest.”

  “That’s illogical.”

  “Maybe, but it’s the only damned thing that separates us from the rest of the beasts of the world.”

  She frowned. “Mr. Darwin has posited we differ from animals in ways of degree not kind. In—”

  Mr. Whitmark threw up his arms, the remaining liquor sloshing against the sides of his bottle. “I yield, I yield! Off with you. Surely you’ve better things to do on your Christmas Eve than debate naturalism with a surly old man like me.”

  To the contrary, she quite liked the topic and hadn’t anyplace more pressing to be. But she ventured not to say so. She stowed the button back in its box, closed the latches on her embalming cabinet, and grabbed her coat from the storeroom. “Day after tomorrow, then?”

  He nodded. “You’re an odd fish, Miss Jones, but a damn fine worker. Whatever your reasons for coming here, John was a fool to let you go.”

  “Merry Christmas,” she said, glad he didn’t pry further. “Happy tidings to you and . . .” Yours, so went the saying. But he hadn’t a wife or children or family of any kind, as best she could tell.

  “Same to you.”

  She left through the carriageway and rambled down Carondelet Street in the opposite direction of her boardinghouse. The carolers from down the way had ceased their crooning, but an occasional peel of laughter still rang from the window. A group of young boys blaring their horns and whistles dashed past.

  An odd fish. Would she ever escape such a stigma? Life had laid the course. She simply followed and made the best of it. In the War years, helping in Captain Kinyon’s surgery tent had saved her from the cotton fields and contraband camps. Her deft little fingers and quick step proved useful to a man already middle-aged and suffering from rheumatism. That, and she didn’t recoil at the sight of blood. Only natural that when he took her North with him after the War she’d continued as his assistant, even as he traded his surgeon’s saw for an embalmer’s syringe.

  Perhaps she was odd. But at least she had another day’s promise of work.

  Most of the shops and businesses had closed early. Garlands of holly and evergreen decorated their darkened windows. The smell of baking bread and turtle soup set to simmer until after midnight mass made her stomach grumble, but she had little desire to turn around. The other lodgers at her boardinghouse—all maids in the big houses that lined St. Charles Street—would undoubtedly be in, chewing over the trivialities of their days.

  Her housemates’ incessant conversation baffled Effie as much as the Christmas noise. As with most things, the Kinyons had been sparing with their words, leaving her unschooled in the art of chatter. The dead afforded no practice either.

  She wandered down Gravier Street toward the river. Carriages rolled past at frequent intervals, and small groups of revelers loped along the sidewalks. No, not sidewalks. Banquettes, they called them here. Ahead in the distance a train whistle blared. She walked, and daylight retreated. Fewer people passed by. The air turned smoky from the bonfires alight on the levee, welcoming Père Noël.


  Effie relished this sliver of time, when night had wrestled all but a few smudges of light from the sky, when families were home around their supper tables and street urchins had returned to their dens, when no one yet thought to don their opera coat or leave the saloon. When the streets were entirely hers. She enjoyed the rhythmic clack of her boot heels upon the pavers, the cool air in her lungs, the scent of honeysuckle or wintersweet wafting from courtyards. In Indiana, spring alone hoarded such pleasures.

  She turned up Common Street to wend her way to the boardinghouse. This part of the city was unfamiliar to her. The lamplighters had yet to make their pass, leaving her to navigate by the pallid moonlight. Some ways on, a narrow, two-story building flanked by a high brick wall caught her eye. Her feet faltered. The air no longer smelled of honeysuckle or smoke, but of dust and excrement. Her heart sped until she felt it like a paddle wheel against her breastbone. Curiosity propelled her from the banquette and across the street toward the building, even as her muscles tensed in protest.

  A cry rang out from behind the tall wall, high-pitched and plaintive. Had a woman made that noise? It came again and Effie nearly retched. She stumbled forward and braced herself against the wall. The rough brick with its crumbling mortar felt . . . familiar. Not familiar in the abstract. These bricks and this smell and that frightful sound—she’d been here before. A dark, crowded enclosure flashed in her mind. A short, bone-thin finger following the lines of mortar as if it were a maze. She felt the sensation of sweat trickling along her hairline, but when she brought her hand to her forehead it was cool and dry. The stench of human shit and . . . frying bacon filled her nose. A new sound came—grunting—and when she closed her eyes shadowy figures shambled across the black backdrop of her lids.

  She pulled her hand away from the brick and tried to steady her breath. A few yards down the wall gave way to a short stretch of rotting picket fence, offering her a glimpse into what lay behind the high wall.

  Effie stepped forward, rallied her courage, and took another step. The grunts and squeals grew louder. A shiver pricked its way across her skin. Ghosts didn’t exist. She’d sat with death enough to know. But as she neared the opening and peeked into the blackness, certainty abandoned her.

  The smell rose even stronger here and again her stomach heaved. Shapes took form in the darkness. She shuffled back from the pen and blinked.

  Pigs.

  Only pigs.

  Effie forced a laugh and turned back the way she’d come, her quick step and clammy palms betraying the calm she strived to muster. Ghosts, monsters—how foolish! She pulled her coat tightly closed and headed home, keeping to well-lit and familiar streets.

  Her heart had not yet stilled by the time she reached the boardinghouse. She hesitated a moment on the porch, leaning against one of the colonnades and drawing in a succession of slow breaths. A residue of terror remained in her bones.

  Ridiculous, she told herself. Irrational. What harm could there possibly be in a dirty old pig yard? She pinned back her shoulders and went inside.

  A cacophony of chatter and music and clanking glassware struck her upon entry. Roasting mirlitons perfumed the air, but Effie didn’t trust her stomach. She tiptoed past the parlor, where the other boarders had gathered. One woman—Effie couldn’t remember her name, only that her voice had the shrill quality of a parrot—sat before the rickety piano plucking out the melody line of a Christmas hymn. The others sang along, giggling when they missed a note or forgot the words.

  Effie shimmied around the loose floorboard at the base of the stairs and skipped over the creaky third step. She’d almost made it to the landing when she heard her name. She winced and turned around.

  Another boarder, Meg, stood grinning at the base of the stairs. “Come join us. Mrs. Neale’s done cooked up some eggnog.”

  When Effie had first arrived at the house, the landlady, Mrs. Neale, bid Meg show Effie around. Meg took hostage her arm and—before they’d even made it out of the foyer—had told Effie her name, Margaret Louise Talbot; that she’d grown up in Livingston Parish; that she worked for the Clarksons down on Fourth Street; and that her favorite color was blue . . . or maybe purple. By that point, Effie had stopped listening.

  “No,” Effie said now, and then as an afterthought, “thank you.”

  “You don’t have to drink no eggnog. Just come sing with us. We’s—”

  “I don’t sing.”

  “You ain’t need to have a perdy voice.” She glanced over her shoulder, then whispered, “Maybelle sho don’t.”

  “No, I don’t partake in singing.”

  Meg gave a confused look and patted down her fluffy bangs. “Oh . . . Well, we’s heading to midnight mass later if you wanna come.”

  “I’m not a Catholic.”

  “Oh . . .”

  Effie turned and finished up the stairs. To think, only hours before she’d pitied Mr. Whitmark his solitude.

  “Happy Christmas Eve!” Meg called after her.

  She hesitated on the landing but did not turn around. “Good night.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Gray clouds muted the afternoon sun. Winter’s chill hung in the air. Talk about town was of tomorrow’s Twelfth Night parade and ball. Effie had made the mistake of asking Meg about this peculiar celebration and suffered a quarter hour’s explanation that meandered from the feast of the Epiphany to something about a golden bean and the beginning of Carnival. Had she not cut Meg off mid-sentence and walked away, Effie suspected she’d still be trapped in the parlor listening to an endless history of every krewe in the city.

  Now, she hurried toward the business district. She’d not had a day off in well over a week, and her list of errands was tiresomely long. While others had filled the Christmas and New Year’s holidays with social calls and parties, Effie had traipsed from one end of the city to the other with her cooling table and embalming tools.

  Death knows no respite, Captain Kinyon had said to her some years back in Indiana, and she found the same to be true here in the South. Lockjaw, consumption, childbed fever, grippe—so many cases they blurred together in her mind. More lasting were the sideways stares and all-too-audible whispers: Negress assistant, darkie, wench. Not that she hadn’t heard those words in Indiana; not that she wasn’t—what had Mr. Whitmark called her?—an odd fish there too. Another reason she preferred the dead: their silence.

  Still, she was grateful for the uptick in business. She crossed the street and cut through Tivoli Circle. Despite the gray day and cold breeze off the river, the circle teemed with people. Effie navigated around them—the Italians tossing their weighted balls across the lawn, the toothless Creole woman peddling toadflax and pansies, the children trundling their hoops—and decided it best to avoid the circle in the future. Near the St. Charles Avenue exit the movement of the crowd slowed and eddied. Effie shimmied and shouldered through until a voice, low and resonate, snagged in her ear. She stopped. The voice rose above the din of the crowd like music, and though she couldn’t make out the exact words, the timbre and cadence seemed to vibrate inside her, stirring some memory just beyond her reach. She pushed in toward the sound.

  “Republican rubbish,” an older white man said, shoving past her toward St. Charles. Two women, shielding their fair skin with parasols despite the sunless day, looked toward the center of the crowd with puckered expressions and shuffled away. Everyone else, however, stood transfixed. Most of those gathered were Negroes, and of those, most were men. They nodded their heads and murmured the occasional “yes, sir” and “don’t the good Lord know it.” Over their slouch hats and derbies, Effie caught glimpses of the speaker—a black man in his shirtsleeves and a brocade vest, standing on a low platform. She caught snatches of his words now too: progress, equality, opportunity.

  Effie squeezed in closer until she could fully hear.

  “Our brothers in Mississippi have already lost those rights promised them in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to our great Constitution, rights we
paid for with our blood. Blood drawn first with the lash and then the sword, as our Great Emancipator said.”

  His voice crescendoed and tapered like a well-written score, each word perfectly articulated, each pause allowing the weight of what he’d said to settle.

  Effie had never cared overmuch for politics. Moving to New Orleans had not changed that. Her clients whispered and stared. Men who doffed their hats for white women brushed past her without thought on the streets. The steamboat she’d arrived on permitted coloreds to dine only after all the white folk had been served. Effie noticed these slights, recognized the injustice, but then, as she’d always done, tucked such notions away and focused on her work. Embalming took patience and care and attention to detail that left little room for thoughts as frivolous as politics.

  Now, however, she stood inexplicably mired. The liveliness in the man’s voice, his conviction, his passion made her lean in and nod along with the others. A young boy came up beside her and thrust a handbill into her palm. He smiled, revealing a checkerboard of missing teeth, and moved on to the next bystander. Effie looked down at the flyer.

  Ward Two Republicans Club

  Weekly Meetings Tuesdays 7 p.m.,

  1010 Constance Street

  All Welcome

  “Wait,” she called after the boy. “I don’t want this.” But he continued through the crowd, hoisting his flyer into unexpecting hands, and didn’t look back.

  The man’s voice reclaimed her attention. He was speaking now of public accommodations, the right of any man to a seat at the theater, or racetrack, or restaurant, or—should he be thirsty and wish to imbibe—a stool at the saloon. The crowd chuckled.

  “Hear, hear,” someone hollered. Another rapped his cane atop the walkway.

  Effie caught herself smiling and quickly righted her expression. What was she doing here? Already she’d tarried too long. The shops would be closing soon, and she mightn’t have the chance to come back for days. She’d whittled her soap down to a sliver and used the last of her shoe polish yesterday. She needed tooth powder, new stockings, a length of twine to—