The Undertaker's Assistant

by Amanda Skenandore

  “Night,” he said over his shoulder to Samson.

  “Good night,” Samson called from behind them.

  Effie said nothing.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Got yourself a feller, do ya now?”

  Effie froze at Colm’s words, her scalpel flat against the whetstone. Had he followed her to the club meeting last night? Been among the White Leaguers drilling in the street? No. Surely she would have seen him. And he’d certainly not been there on that side street when . . . no, no more thoughts of that kiss.

  She turned around. Colm was leaning against the doorjamb of the storeroom. His long legs and broad torso all but blocked the exit, caging her in the small room. She squeezed the cool metal handle of the scalpel and took a step back, her bustle flattening against the lip of the workbench. Then she noticed the folded square of paper clasped in his hand. “Did that arrive for me?”

  “Maybe,” he said, flipping it round in his fingers to hide the writing on the front.

  Who would send a note to her here? Her mind immediately turned to Samson. An apology for not walking her home? A request to meet her again? Her free hand rose to her mouth unbidden, her fingers skating across her lips.

  “Ha! I knew it,” Colm said.

  Effie dropped her hand and glared at him. The note couldn’t be from Samson. He didn’t know what she did, let alone where her employer kept shop. The greater part of her, however, ignored such logic and she snatched at the letter. Colm whisked it from reach, holding it high above his head.

  “What’s his name?”

  “I haven’t got a fellow. Now give it here.”

  “Maybe I’ll just read for myself.” He raised his other hand and began unfolding the paper.

  Her hand tightened around the scalpel. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Share-eh Effie, un-eh pet-it-eh fet-eh—”

  She stomped on his toes with her boot heel. He cried out and his arms slackened. She grabbed the letter with one hand and held out the blade with the other, lest he try to take it back.

  “Sheesh, I was just joshing with ya.” He balanced on one foot and rubbed his toes through his balding leather boots.

  “Haven’t you the wagon to oil?”

  He lingered a moment more in the doorway, boxing her in. Sweat slickened her palm around the metal handle and the air grew stuffy. When at last he lumbered off she set down the scalpel and finished unfolding the letter.

  Chère Effie,

  Une petite fête demain soir. Wear your purple dress.

  —Adeline

  Another lesson. She tucked the note into her apron pocket and returned to the whetstone. With each scrape of the blade across the stone she chided herself: for goading Colm, for the excitement she’d allowed herself to feel at the prospect—however dim—that Samson might have written her, for getting herself into this ridiculous situation where her Sunday evening plans now included une petite fête.

  * * *

  She made the mistake that evening of mentioning the fête to Meg during their reading lesson, who then announced it excitedly to the other women in the parlor. Much brouhaha ensued—squeals and snickers, questions and speculation—derailing their lesson completely and making Effie dread the coming event all the more. Who was hosting the party? Would there be music and dancing? What would she wear? How would she style her hair?

  To this last point, Meg offered her a small bottle of elixir before they finally all parted for bed. “You simply gotta try this. My friend Peggy used it fo her weddin’ and her hair done shine like satin.”

  Haddy’s Oxidizing Ox Marrow, Hair Straightener. Beneath the name was the silhouette of a woman with an aquiline nose, diminutive lips, and long, sleek hair. Effie frowned. “This is bunkum. Ox marrow isn’t an oxidizing agent.” She tried to hand back the bottle, but Meg wouldn’t take it.

  “Peggy swears by it. Trust me. I can help, if you like. Ain’t easy to manage on your own.”

  Effie declined. In her room, she sat on the bed and read the back label: Get rid of snarly, ugly, kinky hair with just one use. She unscrewed the lid and inhaled. Citrus blossoms and chemicals. Barium dioxide perhaps?

  The next afternoon she lined the tin basin in the bathing room with a linen sheet and filled it with several buckets of water from the cistern. Her skin prickled from the cold shock as she clambered in and sat down. She lathered the soap and scrubbed her skin, starting with her arms, neck, and shoulders, then working her way down until she reached the crevices of her toes. She doused her hair and likewise scrubbed her scalp.

  When she finished, Effie lingered in the sudsy water, watching the tiny soap bubbles skate atop the surface until one by one they burst. Her fingers brushed over her stomach and up to her breasts, dancing over her tented nipples. More than one man had groped and pinched her—in church while others bowed their head in prayer, on a crowded streetcar when she reached for a handrail, in that awful memory she’d recalled on Mardi Gras. Each time her stomach folded in on itself and her muscles turned to rocks.

  But what would it be like if it were a man she desired, a man whose touch she craved? She’d read a few of the dime novels Mrs. Kinyon secreted beneath the spools of thread and scraps of fabric in her sewing basket. Enough to know that some women, in the right moment, with the right man, enjoyed such a touch. She imagined the fingers atop her skin were Samson’s, not her own, and decided she too might be such a woman.

  After toweling off and draining the tub into the gutter that led out to the street, Effie returned to her room and picked up the bottle of hair elixir. Likely it would do nothing for her curls, but at worst her hair would smell of citrus blossoms. Following the instructions printed in tiny lettering on the back, she set her iron heating on the coal stove, then worked the elixir into her hair from root to tip. Her scalp tingled.

  Lay hair out flat and iron Haddy’s serum into hair, the next step read.

  Just how the deuce was she supposed to accomplish that? Pulled taut her hair extended little more than a hand’s width from her head. She cleared her bedside table and moved it closer to the stove, covering the top with a towel to keep the iron from scorching the wood. Then she knelt and leaned her head against the table. With one hand pulling a section of hair as straight as possible, her other groped for the iron, blistering her pinkie on the stove before she found the handle.

  The tingling across her scalp was more of a sting now, growing in intensity the longer she dallied. The iron sizzled when it touched her hair. She did her best to drag it over the strands in a smooth, continuous motion. In the brief moments when the iron was stilled atop her hair, the smell of blossoms and chemicals turned to that of singed animal hide.

  She quickly finished with that section and set the iron back on the stove. The hair she’d ironed was still hot, but smooth and impossibly straight.

  Buoyed by this success, she repositioned her head beside the table and grabbed another section of hair. Never mind that her knees ached and her scalp no longer tingled or stung but positively burned. To have hair like Adeline’s or the woman’s on the label she could bear a little discomfort.

  She straightened another section, starting closer to the roots, then reheated the iron. But the hair closest to her scalp remained coarse and kinky. That wouldn’t do. With the next section, she brought the iron as close to her scalp as she dared.

  It took a moment for her brain to register the pain. Then she flung the iron and clapped her hand to her head, closing her lips around a scream. She doused her head with water from her pitcher before snatching the iron from where it had fallen and returning it to its rest on the stove.

  The rug alongside her bed bore the singed imprint of the iron. Lucky it hadn’t caught fire. She probed her scalp and winced. The skin was bald and blistered from the iron’s scorching heat. Clumps of burnt hair caught in her fingers.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and fought the urge to crawl under the sheets and close her eyes. Water dripped from the ends of her hair, the sections s
he’d managed to straighten already screwing back into curls. She hadn’t time to finish, let alone start all over again.

  Small cracks zigzagged across the plaster wall opposite her bed. Other women in the house decorated their walls with magazine cutouts and cross-stitch samplers, postcards and tintypes, beads and crosses. Hers were completely bare.

  She imagined throwing the bottle of hair elixir against the naked plaster. Imagined the shattering of glass. The blooming of citrus and chemicals in the air. The oozing of brown serum down the wall. Her hands tightened into fists, itching for the bottle.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have refused Meg’s help. Perhaps she shouldn’t have tried at all. Foolish to think a few drops of goopy elixir could transform her into someone beautiful.

  She willed her eyes from the wall and her legs to stand. She fastened the tapes of her crinolette about her waist, donned her skirt, and buttoned her bodice. It had taken her several brushings and washings, but the dirt and lime from Mardi Gras were all but gone. Gingerly, she combed back her hair and pinned it in a simple bun, then tied on her bonnet, and forced herself to away.

  * * *

  A hired coach waited in Adeline’s carriageway when Effie arrived.

  “You’re late,” Adeline said as way of greeting. Her eyes roved Effie’s body, as if she expected her to have grown a third arm in the days they’d been apart.

  “Your note didn’t specify a time.”

  “Non?” She waved a finger for Effie to spin around. Effie frowned but complied. “Haven’t you anything besides that bonnet? Un chapeau, perhaps?”

  “No.”

  “Hardly à la mode. And your chignon—”

  “Make one more comment about my hair and I’m leaving.”

  “I was only going to suggest—”

  Effie turned and stomped past the carriage toward the street.

  “All right, d’accord.” Adeline caught her by the arm. “I’m sorry. You look, well, quite lovely really. That shade of lavender suits you.”

  For once, Adeline’s voice was free of artifice, and Effie allowed herself to be steered toward the coach.

  “You look lovely too.”

  And Adeline did. Her skirt of sleek blue silk fell in beautiful flounces from her sleek bodice. Her hair, smooth as the woman’s on the bottle of elixir, sat in a crown of braids atop her head with thick ringlets cascading down her back. Even if Effie had succeeded in straightening her hair, she never could have managed such an updo. As it was, her scalp still ached and molted strands of singed hair.

  Inside the carriage, Adeline fidgeted with the strings of her reticule, twining them this way and that about her fingers.

  “Where are we going and why are you nervous?” Effie meant to sound conversational, but her words came out sharp, accusatory, a betrayal of her own nerves.

  “Here, let’s at least take off this ghastly bonnet. We’re going to a party, not a quilting bee.” Before Effie could protest, Adeline untied the strings of her bonnet and tugged it from her head.

  Effie quickly patted and smoothed her hair, making sure the bald spot was covered. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I’m not nervous, simply excited.” Adeline plucked one of the pearl-studded combs from her updo and stuck it in Effie’s hair just above her bun. “Voilà.”

  Effie fingered the smooth pearls and silver filigree. The weight of it tugged on her hair, sharpening the pain of her blistered skin. But never in her life had she worn something so . . . fine. It wasn’t just that she hadn’t the money. Such ornaments were meant for pretty girls. White girls. Or so she’d thought until she met Adeline.

  Effie turned away and looked out the window. Gas lamps twinkled above the sidewalks. Palm fronds and sweeping banana leaves spilled over courtyard walls. She blinked in rapid succession to sweep the dampness from her eyes. Beside her came the rasp of Adeline’s purse strings again.

  “If you’re nervous I’ll embarrass you, you shouldn’t have invited me.”

  “Ma foi, Effie. Of course that’s not the cause. But best not mention what you do or talk too much in general, I suppose. Just nod and laugh. That’s your lesson for tonight. Nod and laugh.”

  “And if no one says anything amusing?”

  “You fake it, bien sûr. Men love to feel clever.”

  She turned back to her. “Is that it, then? A man?”

  The corners of her lips turned upward. “There is a gentleman I’m keen to make acquaintances with tonight.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Monsieur Chauvet.”

  * * *

  The carriage dropped them at a two-story townhouse set back from the banquette on Esplanade Avenue. It was a warm night and guests had spilled out onto the lower gallery, lounging on cushioned benches or leaning against the grand fluted columns. They all seemed to know Adeline, several of the gentlemen hastening down the steps to meet her street side. Effie could scarcely rise from one curtsy before the next introduction began.

  Inside came the din of French, violins, and clinking glassware. Cigar smoke curled through the double parlor. Portraits and watercolor landscapes in thick, gilded frames adorned the walls. Gasoliers with frosted shades hung from the ceiling. Effie hovered at Adeline’s side through more introductions, clinging to the words and phrases she’d memorized and no longer needed to filter through Latin. She nodded whenever Adeline did and choked out a few fake laughs.

  Otherwise her attention wandered. The elaborate molding, the bright carpet, the polished furniture all reminded her of the colonel’s house across town in the American Garden District. But the feeling here was entirely different—jovial and intimate. Even without the shadow of death, she doubted that home ever shed its aloofness. And of course, nearly every face here was black. A few were darker than she, but most a shade of deep yellow, some so light they could pass as white.

  Adeline flitted about the room, never lingering with one group too long. She thrust a flute of bubbling liquid into Effie’s hand and laughed when Effie puckered at the taste.

  “First time trying champagne?” a man standing nearby said in English. “I take it you’re a freedwoman?”

  Effie nodded, the warm, bubbling sensation in her stomach strangely pleasant. She took another sip.

  “Ma foi, Monsieur Rousseve,” Adeline said. “You shouldn’t embarrass her with such a comment.”

  He bowed to Effie. “Apologies, ma’amselle.”

  “It’s all right. I’m not ashamed.”

  “Nor should you be,” he said. “You mustn’t listen to those Creoles who call your kind churlish and backward.”

  “I didn’t know they did. But then, my French is pas bon. Should they express such sentiments in English, Latin, or German, I’d have words for them in return.”

  “My what a vixen you have here, Adeline!” he said with a smile. “You ought to run for office. We could use someone like you.”

  “You’re a legislator?” she said, ignoring Adeline’s pointed stare. “Do you know Mr. Greene?”

  “Samson, of course. Quite the firebrand too. Is he a friend of yours?”

  The room, already warm and humid, grew positively sultry. “An acquaintance, yes. Is he here?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. Though I dare say he’d love all the beautiful women here tonight. Present company included, of course.” Mr. Rousseve smiled at Adeline, rested his elbow on the black marble mantel beside him, and swirled his drink. “No, this is not really Samson’s set. Too much vin and français, I should think. He’s an American, through and through.”

  Effie’s jaw tightened. “We’re all Americans, sir.”

  He laughed.

  Before she could rejoin with a more pointed rebuke, Adeline looped a hand about Effie’s elbow and squeezed. “Mais oui, nous sommes tous Américains. Oh look, there’s Mademoiselle Detiège. What a lovely gown. How nice it plays with her dark eyes. I simply must tell her so. Won’t you excuse us, Monsieur Rousseve?”

  “Of course.” H
e bowed his head to Adeline, then turned to Effie. “You should stop by the Republican Office sometime, Miss . . .”

  “Jones.”

  “Miss Jones. 94 Camp Street. We can always use an Eliza such as yourself.”

  Adeline kept hold of her elbow as they strode across the parlor toward Miss Detiège. “Nod and laugh—it’s the simplest thing. You’d think a woman with your brains could grasp that.”

  “I didn’t say anything untoward.”

  “You were about to, I could tell.” She took Effie’s near-finished glass of champagne and swapped it for a full one from a passing waiter. “Here, next time you have the urge to speak, take a sip instead.”

  Adeline chatted briefly with Miss Detiège, whom Effie remembered from the sewing circle. Her dress was indeed lovely, and Effie ventured it safe to say so.

  “Oh, do you think so?” she replied, followed by a tiresome accounting of the fabric and style.

  Effie took note not to compliment anyone else’s gown lest she be subject to the same drivel. Adeline seemed equally uninterested. Her gaze flickered several times to a newly arrived man at the far end of the room. “Charlotte, ma chère,” she said, talking right over Miss Detiège. “Keep an eye on Effie, won’t you? The room’s so stuffy, I simply must sit down.”

  Before Effie could protest or Miss Detiège reply, Adeline sashayed off in the direction of the man. Instead of going to where he stood, she seated herself on a nearby couch and took up conversation with someone else entirely. Her eyes, however, continued to wander to the man and she sat angled ever so slightly toward him.

  “That’s Monsieur Chauvet,” Miss Detiège whispered. “Of course she’d set her sights on him.”

  He wasn’t a particularly handsome man. Rather stout, with beady eyes and a balding head. “Why?”

  “He’s just returned from Marseille. Was gone nearly a decade. He’s a commission merchant. His family’s been back and forth from France since early days.”