The Undertaker's Assistant

by Amanda Skenandore

  Freedmen murdered—unknown perpetrators—6

  Freedmen shot at, whipped, stabbed, beaten &c—210

  Freedmen murdered by Freedmen—2

  Whites murdered by Freedmen—1

  The subsequent pages gave a brief synopsis of each case. Drownings, hangings, rapes, shootings, assaults, lashings. One victim, described simply as a “freed boy,” had been dragged for three miles with a rope about his neck. In no instance, the report read, had a white man been punished for these offenses.

  She and Adeline said nothing as they read through the stories. After several minutes, Adeline flung the papers back into their box. Her glassy eyes glinted in the lamplight. She grabbed her jacket, fumbling with buttons as she tried to fasten it closed. “It’s late. We should have left hours ago.”

  Effie agreed. The heat and dust and stink were enough now to make her retch. She tidied the papers, closed the lid, grabbed the lantern, and followed Adeline from the room, leaving the stories to regather dust.

  CHAPTER 13

  Effie stared out the streetcar window. Dust speckled the glass and the casement rattled in its frame. The other riders, Sunday regulars like herself, no longer paid her any mind, despite her being the only colored person in the car. Those cars they passed heading the opposite direction were filled with colored women, maids and cooks and nannies heading uptown after their Sunday morning off. She spied their faces, almost like a reflection, as they peered out their windows at the monstrous homes and manicured gardens.

  Two new passengers clambered aboard her train, white suburbanites heading downriver to comfort a sick friend or pay an overdue visit to some less-distinguished relations. The man pursed his lips as he searched out a seat for his wife. All the seats were filled. His gaze settled on Effie and his expression screwed into a glower. Effie didn’t move, despite the contempt flung from his eyes.

  She disembarked at her regular stop. Clouds drifted through the sky like bolls of cotton. She still mistrusted the March warmth and carried along her coat, as if at any moment the snow and wind and ice of Indiana might find her here. The weight of it slung over her forearm comforted her. In the three days since she and Adeline had visited the statehouse, she’d become like a fishing boat teetering in the wake of a mighty steamboat. She no longer belonged to the North. To Captain Kinyon and the life she’d cultivated in his shadow. But the South, New Orleans, seemed at once to embrace her and push her away. Without the anchor of kin or memory, she drifted unmoored, reliant on the river’s mercy.

  The parlor was empty when she arrived back at Mrs. Neale’s. A gentle cross breeze wound through the house, carrying with it the scent of stewing leeks and cabbage from the kitchen out back. She retrieved her writing implements from her room and brought them down to the parlor, as its south-facing window offered better light. With any luck, she’d finish her letter before the other women returned from whatever post-church activities they were attending and descended upon the parlor like a flock of nattering pigeons.

  Age dulled the lacquer finish on Mrs. Neale’s writing desk. But its legs were sturdy and, save for a few nicks and scratches, the tabletop smooth. Effie dipped her pen in ink and wrote the date and address. Her hand wavered then. She set down the pen so ink would not dribble onto the expanse of blank paper. Damn her dithering. Yet one more sign of her weakening constitution. Either she had words to print or she did not. Her two prior attempts at this letter had ended as kindling in yesterevening’s fire. She couldn’t afford to waste more paper.

  In truth, it wasn’t a problem of words. What if her letter went unanswered? Or worse, what if Elijah Jones was her kin, but wanted nothing to do with her? She shouldn’t have let Adeline drag her to the statehouse in the first place. She’d slept far better when she hadn’t been concerned about a family she couldn’t recall.

  Best get it over and done with, she decided. Adeline would undoubtedly pester her about it otherwise.

  Mrs. Sally Baker

  Opelousas, La.

  Dear Madame:

  I had occasion recently to review the report you made some years back to the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands regarding one Elijah Jones. I am writing to inquire whether you were able to locate said individual. I myself am in pursuit of information regarding family connections last seen before the War. I have few particulars, but as I share Mr. Jones’s surname—

  Effie stopped at the clickety-clack of approaching footfalls. Meg and Harriet entered the parlor. They paused in the doorway, Harriet glaring, Meg offering a timid smile, then sat down on a couch across the room and began chatting about the bonnets they’d seen in a shop window on Canal Street. Three other boarders followed a minute or two later, dragging over chairs and stools to form a closed-off ring.

  Normally, Effie was good at tuning out conversation. But today their voices tugged at her ear—not what they said, rather the general cacophony of it. The wave-like rise and fall of their pitch and volume. The pauses and sputtering and interruptions. The tangle of two or three voices all speaking at once. She tried three times to finish the line she’d begun before their intrusion, but though her hand sat at the ready, her thoughts refused to settle. Something about their conversation reminded her of what Adeline had said about the opera. She set down her pen and picked up the letter as if to read what she’d written, but instead peeked over the top at their circle.

  At first glance, she saw what she’d always seen: that tiresome social ritual of endless yapping peculiar to the female sex. But upon closer examination, she realized far more was happening. Each woman sat with her body angled toward Harriet. They laughed when she laughed, nodded when she spoke. At one point in the conversation, she shifted her weight from one side to the other, moving her right ankle from in front of her left to behind it. Over the next few minutes, each of the other women recrossed their ankles in the same way.

  Effie sat fascinated, like the time she’d crouched beside an anthill and watched the little red insects scurry this way and that, each independent yet very much under the sway of the collective. Eventually, they’d crawled up her leg and bitten her through her stockings. Here in the parlor, however, nothing dissuaded her attention. No one interrupted or contradicted what Harriet said. Except for Meg, who cloaked her disagreement between statements of praise with surprising stealth and skill. Perhaps she was smarter than Effie had given her credit for.

  Clearly Harriet played the role of prima donna. Meg, the mezzo. The other women were the chorus. Effie smiled. The analogy hadn’t made sense when considering the ladies of the ward club. But here it fit. Perfectly. More than that, she saw how much was at play besides the exchange of trite opinions and ideas, now saw why her straightforward approach to these situations had failed. Adeline would be so impressed with her revelation.

  “What is you smilin’ on about?” Harriet said. “You got your ear up in our conversation?”

  It took Effie a moment to realize Harriet was addressing her. “I’m . . .” She stopped. Before she would simply have announced the truth. I’m smiling because I’ve deciphered the behaviors you employ to exert your standing within the group. But Harriet would likely find such a statement pert. “I was just thinking about . . . the opera.”

  “You’ve been to the opera?” one of the women asked.

  Effie hesitated. This business of thinking through one’s speech, of anticipating and correcting for others’ reactions wasn’t easy work. In the end, she decided the truth would satisfy. “No.”

  Harriet raised her chin and gave a humph. The women returned to their conversation and Effie to her letter, their words and interjections and giggles no longer a distraction.

  The burst of satisfaction that had brought forth her smile faded as soon as she picked up her pen. Elijah Jones. He couldn’t be her kin. A waste of ink and postage, that’s all this was. And yet every corpuscle of her body hummed at the idea of a brother, an uncle, a father.

  . . . but as I share Mr. Jones’s surname I thought it prud
ent to investigate a possible connection. I was taken up by the Yankee army at Georgia Landing, Assumption Parish, October 1862. How far I traveled to get there I can only speculate. White folks call me Euphemia, but I prefer Effie and likely went by both when Mr. Elijah or his kin would have known me. My age is twenty-one years, give or take a year or two. I have no further details to offer. I thank you in advance for any information you or Mr. Jones can supply. Address me at 1730 Thalia St, New Orleans, La.

  Yours, Most Respectfully,

  Effie Jones

  She set down her pen and dabbed the wet ink with blotting paper. Her palms were sweaty, and the muscles of her thumb and index finger sore from too tight a grip on the pen. The impulse to crumple the letter or tear it into tiny pieces played through her like a shiver. Then there’d be no waiting. No hoping. No inevitable despair. She picked up the sheet and pulled it taut between her hands.

  “Your letters sho are pretty.”

  Effie looked up. The other women had left the room save for Meg, who now stood beside her. She laid the paper back upon the desk and hid her hands in her lap as if she’d been caught in some mischievous act.

  “How’d you learn to make such fine markings?”

  “My warden taught me. During the War.”

  “Bet you practiced a lot.”

  Effie remembered the hot afternoons she’d spent beside the hospital tent, the camp listless, guns silent save for the errant misfire, both sides dallying and posturing and angling for better position. She’d clear a patch of ground and trace the letters of the alphabet—A to Z—in the dirt. When she finished, she’d smooth over the dirt and begin again. By days’ end, the fingers of both hands were worn to blisters.

  Later, in Indiana, she’d stay up late into the night, studying German, Latin, anatomy by moonlight, so in the morning she could impress the captain with what she’d learned—Gib mir bitte einen Keks or plus sucus, si vis—and catch his approving grin, or even a word of praise.

  “It took several years to become proficient.”

  Meg frowned. “Golly, Effie. You sho is smart.” She eyed the letter as if it weren’t plain foolscap paper, but hundred-dollar banknotes stitched together.

  “One needn’t be smart to learn to read and write.”

  “I could never do it.”

  “Of course you could.” Effie folded the paper into a small square and stuffed it in the envelope. Seeing in it now as Meg saw it, each pen stroke a tiny miracle, she lamented the ink and paper she’d wasted the night before and resolved, despite her apprehension, to send the letter on. Meg watched over her shoulder as she addressed the envelope and screwed closed the lid of her inkpot.

  The supper bell sounded, but Meg hovered as Effie gathered up her supplies, for once without words.

  Finally she said, “Would you . . . that is, if you ain’t too busy, learn me to read and write too?”

  “It’s not a simple undertaking—”

  “I promise I’ll practice. Every night. However long it takes.”

  Effie opened her mouth, then shut it again. She hadn’t the time, materials, or disposition for such an onerous task. Meg held silent, the raw longing in her gaze something Effie knew all too well.

  “Very well. We’ll begin after supper.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Effie found herself looking over her shoulder as she headed to the club meeting. The busy streets bustled with freedmen and immigrants, yokels and Chinamen. They carried laundry, pushed street carts, lugged vegetables, led mules, puffed tobacco, strummed banjos, and plucked mandolins. Why would anyone notice a lone colored woman amid such a ruckus?

  Still, her skin prickled with the weight of imaginary stares. The man leaning against the lamppost thumbing through a crumpled newspaper wasn’t reading, but tracking her. The shopkeeper brushing his stoop was using his broom as a pretense to spy which street she turned down next.

  She blamed Colm for this paranoia, for infecting her with cockeyed conspiracies. These men didn’t give a lick about her goings-on. Neither did Mr. Whitmark. He was likely active in a Republican club in his own ward. No harm in her attending one too.

  And that’s all she aimed to do. Sit, listen, observe. No more stitching or banner holding. She’d come to see Samson, nothing more.

  She slipped in beneath the bullet-riddled sign just as the meeting commenced. Mrs. Carrière and Jonah made room for her on their bench three rows from the back. Tom waved an ink-stained hand at her from across the room. In the front row sat Samson, his back straight and broad shoulders square. How easy her eyes found him now, despite the dozens of bodies between them, as if the shape and curve of his profile had been tattooed onto her cornea, the same way his voice had imprinted on her eardrum.

  Nearly two weeks had passed since she’d seen him last. Twelve days, six and a half hours, to be precise. What had he done to fill those hours—all 294 of them? In her spare hours, when she’d taken up a book or sat on the balcony and polished the buttons in her old tobacco box, she imagined him engaged in similar or complementary pursuits, perhaps writing a letter or playing a game of chess. But what if his life were totally different? What if he were married, had a family?

  The thought made her queasy. She sat up as tall as she could to get a better look at him through the crowd.

  It was not as if a married man wore a ring the way his wife might. He didn’t change his style of dress or hair. She thought back to all the men she’d embalmed—married men, single men, widowed men. Surely there was some difference between them. Cleaner clothes perhaps. A little more flesh about the ribs. Married men died less often of blood poisoning and disease. But this was purely anecdotal. Still, she strained to see whether Samson’s shirt was newly cleaned and pressed, how robust he looked compared to those around him.

  The evidence was equivocal.

  “Have you been all right since your encounter with those despicable men on Mardi Gras?” Mrs. Carrière whispered, patting Effie’s hand.

  Effie took a moment to reorder her thoughts. How flighty and soft-minded she must seem these days. “Yes . . . er . . . fine. Thank you.”

  “We were worried about you when you didn’t show for last week’s meeting.”

  Last week . . . she’d wanted to come but . . . ah, yes, the tanner on Magazine Street. Consumption. “I was called to a—” She stopped. Adeline’s sharp ahem sounded in her mind as clearly as if she were seated beside her. “I was held up with my employer.”

  Mrs. Carrière gave a thoughtful nod. “I suppose God and his angels don’t keep regular hours, do they?”

  Samson got up and gave a summary of the week’s legislative happenings. She tucked certain words and phrases away in her memory to relish later—his clever turns of alliteration like, The Negro needn’t be told his place, he must needs take it; his folksy idioms like, Debating them Democrats is like eatin’ soup with a fork; his charming mispronunciations like posthumous with a hard t. Twice she was sure he spied her in the crowd and smiled. Twice paralyzing her once-dependable heart.

  She leaned close to Mrs. Carrière, but held back the question on her tongue. Is Mr. Greene married? Adeline never said or asked anything so straightforward. Neither did her housemates. Instead she whispered, “Does Mr. Greene ever bring a wife to the club meetings?”

  “No.”

  This was exactly why Effie avoided such vague questions. Mrs. Carrière’s answer didn’t affirm he had a wife but didn’t rule out the possibility either.

  “What about on other occasions?”

  “No.”

  Effie pursed her lips. This was futile. “But . . . what I mean to say is . . . is Mr. Greene married?”

  Though Mrs. Carrière’s gaze never flickered from the podium, her lips tottered between a smile and frown. “I don’t believe he is, no.”

  Effie’s entire body lightened, as if her bones were hollow like a bird’s and she might flit to the cobwebby rafters above.

  “I’d caution you against—” Mrs. Carrière continued,
only to be interrupted by the not-so-quiet voice of little Jonah.

  “We pray on the rosary every Sunday that he finds a wife. Him and Tom and—”

  Mrs. Carrière shushed him, a blush deepening the color of her cheeks.

  Effie hadn’t realized he’d heard the discussion, and her own cheeks warmed.

  “Not for my own sake, I assure you,” Mrs. Carrière said, turning the thin gold band on her finger. “For the Party’s. Samson would be far more likely to get that Senate seat he’s after if he settles down a bit.”

  Effie nodded and they both returned their attention to the front.

  Before he sat down, Samson enquired of the club whether they had any concerns they wished him to take back to the statehouse. Several men raised their hands. The first, a light-skinned Negro with a Creole sway to his speech, recounted being turned away by the usher at the Academy of Music unless he agreed to sit in the colored section. Another man spoke of being refused service at a saloon near the levee.

  Samson listened to each complaint, his richly hued eyes never leaving the speaker. He nodded in support, asked questions, and promised to investigate.

  Mrs. Carrière took the podium next. She passed around a rusty tin can to collect alms for the orphan asylum. Coins clanked and rattled as the tin made its way through the crowd.

  “We’ll be hosting a baking sale at next month’s opening baseball game to raise money for the Negro Veterans Aid Society,” she said, her gaze panning the audience. “Please encourage your wives and daughters to attend and contribute.”

  Effie dropped her eyes and pretended to be sifting through her purse for a coin, though she already had one in her palm for the can. Her baking was worse than her sewing.

  “Finally,” Mrs. Carrière said. “I hope we can renew our club’s discussion on the issue of suffrage for us ladies before the summer holiday.”