The Undertaker's Assistant

by Amanda Skenandore

  “American spirits don’t make good party guests?”

  Effie marveled that she’d made a joke, but Harriet didn’t laugh. Neither did the others. Meg flashed a smile, but flattened her lips when Harriet glanced her way.

  They continued in silence until Meg asked, “How’d you meet Madame Desâmes?”

  “Through a friend,” Harriet said. She walked a step ahead of the others, her chin high, not bothering to look back as she spoke. “She hosts regular sittings for Madame Desâmes. Known her ever since Madame unhexed her sister.”

  A few of the women gasped.

  “A witch planted a serpent in her sister’s leg, see? It twisted round her knee and pained her somethin’ good.”

  “Rheumatic gout is a more plausible explanation,” Effie said.

  Harriet stopped walking and turned again, this time with a scowl. She was shorter than Effie, her skin an even-toned sepia like one who hadn’t labored away her childhood in the sun. “Is you telling this story, or is I?”

  Effie gritted her teeth.

  “One day, the pain got so bad—”

  “Likely because the weather turned or she’d eaten too many sardines.”

  “Hush,” Meg said, but not unkindly, taking Effie’s arm and looping in her own, the way one might with an unruly child. Effie, never overly fond of such contact, fought the urge to pull away.

  Harriet continued. “The pain got so bad she couldn’t walk or stand or nothin’. Word got round to Madame Desâmes and she worked up a Voodoo potion for the poor gal.”

  Effie snorted, but managed to cover the sound with a cough. A serpent wound about someone’s knee? Voodoo potions? Could the story get any more preposterous?

  During the War, though she’d barely been tall enough to peek over the surgery table, Effie had seen legs bloodied by minié balls, sliced by bayonets, shredded by shrapnel. She’d seen shattered kneecaps, severed arteries, pulverized muscles. But never once a snake or serpent. Unless you counted the maggots.

  Effie caught her tongue before sharing this, though. Over the years, she’d learned that few people had the stomach for such things. Perhaps that accounted for the stories—curses, spells, possession. To Effie, reality was plenty grim without such tales.

  Next Harriet spun a tale about a different friend who’d attended one of Madame Desâmes’s séances and communed with her deceased brother for over an hour. “The table they sat at left the floor and done float midair!”

  Meg’s hands flew to her mouth and Effie used the opportunity to disentangle her arm. She continued on beside the women, though, clenching her jaw every time she had the urge to speak. However silly their stories, she’d hardly thought of the man from Tivoli Circle.

  She recognized the obsessive quality of her sickness over him and had endured such afflictions before.

  In wartime, it had been buttons—the gilt brass or pewter buttons embossed with eagles, stars, and letters that decorated the soldier’s uniforms. She never took them from the dead, or the living for that matter, but kept a lookout on the dusty, wagon-rutted roads and abandoned battlefields for ones that had fallen. A shiny glint of metal winking in the sunlight. She had little in those days. A single set of clothes. A rag to cover her hair. A blanket. An out-of-date physician’s manual Captain Kinyon gave her to study her letters. And her buttons.

  She kept them in an empty tobacco box cushioned with tufts of cotton. Each night when the camp was quiet, and especially those nights when it was not, when stray bullets whistled through the air, when rats scratched at the canvas, when the moans of the sick and dying resounded until dawn, Effie would take out her buttons one by one, fingering their raised designs, rearranging them by size, weight, and color. Eventually, sleep would come.

  During her girlhood in Indiana, as Captain Kinyon began teaching her in earnest the art of embalming, anatomy became her obsession. She could recite the names of every bone and muscle in the human form and reassemble a skeleton in a matter of minutes. Later, she experimented with injection fluid, obsessing over which admixture and ratio of chemicals produced the least offensive fumes while maximizing preservation.

  This latest obsession was different, however. Not an object she could collect, a diagram she could memorize, a formulation she could tinker with, but a man. A nettlesome one at that. There seemed no rationale or benefit, only a nagging preoccupation and a dull ache arising inside her. Indigestion, she’d thought at first, and vowed to steer clear of Mrs. Neale’s gumbo. Then she ascribed it to a hysterical affliction, but her monthly courses were yet many days away. Winter fever, pleurisy, colic—no diagnosis fit. Distraction was her only remedy.

  They crossed Canal Street and wound through the French Quarter. Passersby strolled more than walked here, chatting in an easy mixture of French, English, and Creole patois. Despite the cold, footfalls rattled on the balconies overhead. Tobacco smoke and laughter wafted down.

  Harriet’s friend greeted them from the doorway of a single-story cottage squeezed in a row of similar houses, each with cracked adobe walls and weed-grown tile roofs. Rust wept down the siding from the mental windbreak above. Even in its disrepair, the house had a stately quality, one mirrored in the erect, almost haughty posture of its mistress. She held out her hand as they entered, and each woman pressed a silver coin into her palm.

  Meg turned and glanced at Effie. “Er, I forgot to mention, there’s a fifty-cent fee.”

  “Honorarium,” Harriet’s friend corrected. “For l’artiste.”

  Effie frowned. “Artist?”

  “Oui, the spirit artist, Madame Desâmes.”

  A laugh pressed at Effie’s lips. What nonsense she’d engaged in! Nevertheless, she untied her purse strings and plucked out a coin. It pained her to hand it over. Fifty cents could buy two pounds of coffee, a month’s worth of detergent, a new blade for her scalpel. But relief from her thoughts, however temporary, was worth it.

  Inside, must tickled Effie’s nose. Their host led them through the front parlor into an adjoining dining room crammed with a large table and several mismatched chairs. The gaslight chandelier had been damped to an anemic glow, its flame fitful and sputtering.

  At the far end of the table sat the most beautiful woman Effie had ever seen. With her fair skin, sharp cheekbones, and aquiline nose, Effie first mistook her for a white woman. But her eyes were dark, as was the sleek hair that peeked from beneath her tignon. The purple silk of her dress caught the flickering light, making her appear almost iridescent.

  She stood with patrician grace and spread wide her dainty arms. “Enchanté! Welcome. Sit, please. Sit.”

  Effie, like the others, shuffled to the nearest chair and sat. For the first time that evening, she noticed her own cottonade dress. Dark blue and simply cut, it served her well during the long hours of embalming. But the thick fibers that kept her warm against the damp air now scratched against her skin. Perhaps she ought to have changed into her Sunday dress too. Not that it was any more—what did the Creoles say?—à la mode. God may have rested on Sunday, but death did not. And neither did she.

  Madame Desâmes seated herself, taking great care to smooth and arrange her skirts. She smiled then, in an almost theatrical way, and looked over each of the sitters. “We mustn’t admit anyone with too magnetic a temperament, lest they dampen the power of the spirits.”

  Once satisfied that none among them would scare away the spirits, the medium bid them hold hands and delivered a short prayer, calling upon the dead and offering herself as a conduit through which they might congress with the living. She closed her eyes as she spoke, and the other ladies did likewise.

  All but Effie. It was bad enough to hold their hands—Harriet to her right, whose grip was limp and fingers cold; Meg to her left, squeezing every time Madame Desâmes said the word spirit or dead or ghostly. The other sitters leaned in, their faces screwed as if the moment demanded intense concentration. Strange that here in this shabby dining room with its feeble, trembling light they found talk of
the dead palatable, titillating even. Effie need only mention her work as an embalmer and they grimaced and glanced away, avoiding her altogether when possible.

  She looked from their intent faces back to the medium and found Madame Desâmes staring directly at her as she uttered her final words of supplication. For the flash of a moment, Effie felt the same way she had years ago when Captain Kinyon realized she was a girl. A day or two after her arrival he’d handed her several trinkets from a dead soldier’s pocket and watched intently as she set them aside on a nearby table, carefully folding the man’s silk hankie into a square and resting the other objects on top.

  “You’re a girl,” he’d said. Not a question, but a statement. Somehow, she didn’t feel afraid that he might turn her out at this. She felt visible. Seen.

  Now, as then, Effie found herself holding her breath until Madame Desâmes’s sharp gaze released her.

  “Ma foi! I sense the spirits circling around us now,” she said. “Can feel you them?”

  “Oui,” their hostess said.

  Meg clamped down ever harder around Effie’s hand. “Yes! Me too.”

  The others echoed her response.

  Effie said nothing. She’d spent her life around the dead and never felt a phantom touch, never heard ethereal whispers, never sensed an unearthly presence. She’d stared into the dead’s eyes, sometimes just minutes after death, before the cornea clouded over. She’d stared into their wide and fixed pupils and seen nothing. No evidence of God or a soul. Only blackness.

  “What about you?”

  Effie startled. “Me?”

  “Oui,” the medium said. “Is there some family member you wish to connect with? A grandmother? A sibling died in infancy? Perhaps they are here waiting.”

  A strange rapping noise rang through the room. Several of the girls around the table gasped.

  A pricking sensation skittered down Effie’s neck, but not on account of the rapping. “No.”

  Madame Desâmes’s gaze narrowed. “Non?”

  “I do,” Meg said. “I do!”

  She regarded Effie a moment more, her full, painted lips synched closed, her right eyebrow twitching ever so slightly. After a deep breath, she turned to Meg, all smiles again. “Very well. Dites-moi this person’s name.”

  “Betsy-lou.”

  Madame Desâmes straightened and said to the room, “Betsy-lou, are you among us?”

  Three loud knocks, just like the noise Effie heard before, sounded in quick succession. “She’s here!” the medium said. “She has rapped upon our table.”

  She coaxed Meg into asking a series of simple yes or no questions to verify the spirit’s identity. One rap in reply meant no. Three meant yes. The acoustics of the room muddled the source of the sound. A sleight of hand perhaps? But Madame Desâmes never let go of those beside her. Her feet? No. Those seated nearby would notice something so conspicuous. A pole hidden beneath her skirts? How would she operate such a thing? The more Effie listened, the more familiar the noise became. Sure as the dead, she’d heard it before.

  The others seemed entirely convinced it was the spirits. They fed on one another’s excitement until near hysteria gripped the room.

  “Ask Betsy-lou if she’s seen Big Joe up there,” Meg said, her voice high and squeaky.

  A single rapping sound.

  “No, suppose not. The devil always did seem to have a hand in his ways.” Meg shook her head and then said to the air, “’Member that time he done pulled Willie’s arm clear from its socket?”

  Of course! That was the sound. Effie turned her ear toward the medium, the next round of knocks confirming her suspicion. Madame Desâmes was popping her knee joint to emit the noise. Effie had reset enough limbs into their sockets to be sure. How clever and yet . . . deceitful.

  Talk of the devil had dampened the women’s elation. Their rickety chairs whined as they squirmed and shifted.

  A well-played gasp and Madame Desâmes had them leaning in again. “Another spirit’s come to our table,” she said. “A man . . . so young and handsome to be among those who’ve crossed over. L’amour has led him here.”

  “Silas!” Harriet shouted, letting go of Effie’s hand and reaching into the air. “It must be him.”

  “Pitiful spirit, is your name Silas?”

  Silence.

  Then three loud clicks.

  Tears burst from Harriet’s eyes. Even though Effie didn’t care overmuch for the woman, rage flamed like fever over her skin. Long-gone family members were one thing, but this . . . this was cruel.

  “The Klan done got him after the War.” Harriet wiped her cheeks. “We was meant to marry that summer.”

  Not for the first time, Madame Desâmes’s gaze flickered up to the chandelier. The flames blinked and struggled, starved for gas.

  “I’m sensing . . . I’m sensing he wants to give you something. A token of his lasting affection.”

  Just then the lights died. Blackness shrouded the room. A chorus of gasps and cries erupted around her. Effie strained to see through the darkness, but with the pocket doors drawn and windows shuttered, not a sliver of light reached them. A sharp floral scent suffused the air. The gaslights blinked back aflame.

  After but a breath of silence, a new commotion arose. A shock of pansies lay strewn across the table.

  “Mon Dieu!” said their host.

  “Sweet Mary and Joseph,” Meg echoed. “It’s a miracle!”

  Harriet scooped up the flowers, the fledgling light glinting off her tears.

  Effie wrenched her hand free from Meg and stood. How could these women be so gullible? “It’s not a miracle. She’s a fraud.”

  “What?” said their host. “Impossible. You heard the rapping.”

  “She’s disarticulating her knee joint.”

  Madame Desâmes laughed weakly. “C’est ridicule.”

  “What about the flowers?” Meg asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious? She was hiding them in her skirts, waiting for the lights to go out.”

  As a collective, their eyes turned to Madame Desâmes, who straightened her shoulders and smiled. “What of the scent? If I’d hidden them in my skirts as you say, surely you would have noticed their fragrance when first we met.”

  Their eyes swung back to Effie.

  “Yeah, what about the scent?” Harriet said.

  “Perfume.” Effie waited for the truth to dawn on their faces. Instead, their expressions hardened with contempt. “Can’t you smell the alcohol?”

  “I told you she’d ruin the night,” Harriet whispered loud enough for all to hear.

  The fire that but a moment before had burned her to speak vanished, leaving Effie’s skin cold and her chest empty. Why were the women’s narrowed eyes and pursed lips turned on her? She hadn’t ruined their night, Madame Desâmes—or whatever her real name was—had. Effie tugged on the wispy coils of hair at the nape of her neck and turned to Meg.

  Meg looked down. “I’m sorry, Effie. I think you should leave.”

  Though she hadn’t wanted to come, had hated linking hands, and had barely endured their hysteria, the thought of being cast out pained Effie like the cut of a scalpel. Madame Desâmes’s smug gaze stung like chemical salts to the wound.

  The dining room door squealed as Effie opened it and then again as she drew it closed. Any moment she expected the women to come to their senses, to see what, to Effie, was plain as buttermilk. Instead, her final glimpse of the room showed them turning back toward the table and clasping hands.

  “Pay her no mind,” Madame Desâmes said. “She’s only jealous. Une femme like her wouldn’t know love if it dropped on her head from heaven.”

  Their laughter followed Effie, haunting her lonely walk home.

  CHAPTER 5

  Rain dribbled down from the heavy gray clouds settled atop the city. It pinged against Effie’s umbrella and dripped down onto her skirts, soaking through to her stockings. Paving blocks had given way to mud several streets back. It clung to her boots
like a leprous skin, adding weight to every step.

  She stopped before a long, narrow house that matched the number Mr. Whitmark had given her. In the shelter of the eave, Effie closed her umbrella and cleaned her boots on the iron scraper beside the door. Thankfully, the mourning badge tucked inside her dressing case had remained dry. She fastened the rosette to the brass knocker at the center of the door, adjusting the folds of black crepe and ribbon until they lay just so, then picked up her embalming cabinet and slipped inside.

  Mr. Whitmark had already laid the body on the cooling table in the small sitting room just beyond the door and sat with the deceased’s husband at a small dining table in the adjoining room.

  “This is my helper, Miss Jones,” Mr. Whitmark said.

  Though she knew he meant no offense, Effie bristled. Helper. As if all she did was fetch supplies like some pickaninny. At least Mr. Whitmark could favor her with the word assistant. It set the client at ease, though, smoothing the furrowed brow and pinched lips he’d donned on her arrival. Helper. Yes, that made sense to the old man. Like a maid or errand boy.

  She’d been a novelty in the North. A curiosity. Here she could pass almost invisible, as long as she kept to her place. Hadn’t that been what she’d wanted? To disappear?

  She nodded to the deceased’s husband—a slight gentleman, with hunched shoulders and drooping skin—then closed the door between the rooms to begin her work.

  In the five weeks since her arrival, she and Mr. Whitmark had fallen into a routine. He met with the families, moving the body to whatever room they preferred for the wake, and discussing casket and funeral details. She embalmed the body.

  He’d managed a clean shave on himself today and wore one of the collars she’d had cleaned for him. His eyes were clear, and she’d smelled boiling coffee that morning at the shop instead of spirituous bitters. Perhaps he’d read Dr. Benner’s report on diseased livers after all.

  She turned to the body. A ribbon bound the jaw, and nickels covered the eyes to ensure they stayed closed as rigor mortis set it. She removed the cotton nightshirt that lay rumpled and stained about the body and bathed the fragile skin with cool, soapy water.