The Undertaker's Assistant

by Amanda Skenandore

  Effie imagined Mr. Whitmark shifting in his chair and longingly eyeing the parlor door while he reached into his suit pocket for a hankie.

  “You can’t imagine the humiliation my husband endured, Mr. Whitmark. And not him alone. All our men returning home. Though they’d never right admit it.”

  A few sniffles sounded through the wall, followed by a dainty honk of the nose. Humiliation? What did these men know of humiliation? They’d not been poked and fondled, bidden to step lively and act the genial slave while on display. Effie stopped her work. She didn’t trust her fingers not to strangle the pump. And Mr. Whitmark. What of his humiliation? To come home the victor but be treated as the vanquished.

  “All those rights they’d fought and bled to protect—gone! One illegitimate government after the next. Taxed to the very brink of poverty.” The woman blew her nose again. “I’m sorry Mr. Whitmark, I know you’re a Republican, but I just can’t abide what our beloved South has become. It killed him. Just as sure as the illness. It killed him, Mr. Whitmark. A man must be able to hold high his head.”

  More sobs.

  “Every time he strapped on that dratted leg, it was a reminder of what he’d lost. What we’ve all lost.”

  Effie looked at the man on her cooling table. Even with that wooden prosthetic, he must have hobbled when he walked. He’d likely not passed a single black man on the street without the niggling reminder of his folly and defeat. She started up with the injection again, the slow, rhythmic squeeze of the pump, the steady course of fluid. Judging from the pressure and resistance, his veins were nearly filled.

  But Tom had lost a leg too and managed to hold his head aloft. He’d been born and raised as chattel and yet had dignity. Effie pitied the woman her sorrow, the loss of the man she’d loved. But though she managed to keep the flow and force of the injection even, she could not pity this man.

  She’d finished the injection and was tying off the artery when the woman’s tearful diatribe ended, and Mr. Whitmark spoke. For all his moodiness and disorganization, his shaky hand and mediocre skill, his talent for undertaking showed in these moments. He could lay a banquet of the most unpalatable things—death and loss and all their costly accoutrements—as if it were a feast. In similar form, he would disagree with the woman now, defend the Union cause, Republicanism, Emancipation, without seeming the least contrary.

  His first words were conciliatory. How awful all that had befallen her husband. So ugly the ravages of war. History would remember all those who bravely fought. He cleared his throat. The low whistle of a sofa cushion taking in air sounded. Floorboards creaked. Effie guessed he’d stood. Perhaps wandered to the window or marble hearth.

  “Life certainly isn’t as tidy as I supposed in my youth,” he said. “This certainly wasn’t the future I’d envisioned when I joined up with the Unionists. All these Northern opportunists—vultures, really—and the corruption. But take heart. Change is coming.”

  Northern opportunists? Had Effie heard him right? Is that what he thought of her? She hastily tied off the final suture, sealing closed the incision she’d made in the man’s arm. Still clutching the needle and thread, she pressed her ear against the wall, the peeling lime paint cold and scratchy against her cheek.

  “Do you really think so?” the woman asked.

  “Look at what happened last fall in Mississippi. A sweeping victory for Democrats in the statehouse. Why, that carpetbagger Governor Ames resigned just last week.”

  “But you’re a Republican, Mr. Whitmark. Surely that doesn’t suit your cause.”

  “I’m a Southerner, ma’am. Beyond that . . . I don’t know what I am.”

  “I must confess, I’d thought not to hire you. Didn’t seem right to have an enemy of our cause profit from my husband’s death. Not when . . .” She blew her nose again and took a ragged inhale. “But Mr. Randolph said you and your Negress were the best in the city. You came from a good family, after all, and weren’t like those other scalawags. He was right.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” The words came out hoarse, hesitant. Or was that just the muffling effect of the wall? He cleared his throat again. “I best check on my assistant. She ought to be close to finished by now.”

  Effie hastened from the wall, her heel striking one of the open jars scattered about on the floor. Embalming fluid seeped into the pine floorboards and wicked into the rug, its sharp scent blooming in the air. She rummaged through her dressing case for scraps of muslin to soak up the fluid, tossing pins, collar buttons, shaving soap, a brush, a razor, a comb onto the floor around her. The bedroom door opened just as she covered the spill. She scrambled to her feet, standing over the sodden scraps of cloth so they were hidden beneath the hem of her skirt.

  Mr. Whitmark winced and wrinkled his nose. His gray eyes roved the mess of supplies cast about the floor. “Are you finished?”

  The conversation he’d had with the woman didn’t seem to have upset him. Not her rationalizing or misplaced blame. Not her unintended insults. He just looked tired and impatient.

  “I still have to inject the cavity. I . . . er . . . was just looking for my trocar.”

  “It’s there, in your embalming cabinet.”

  She glanced at the case laid open on the side table, her long metal trocar nestled against the pink velvet backing in plain view.

  “Of course. I . . . I thought I’d moved it.” She dragged the fluid-soaked rags into a pile with the toe of her boot, trying to keep the rest of her body still.

  He frowned and did not move. Was he going to stand there and watch her finish? “Well, get to it. I’ve orders to place back at the shop.”

  She turned back to the body, keeping the pile of cloth hidden as she moved. Her gait was awkward. The sound of the cloths a deafening murmur over the floorboards, leaving a damp trail in their wake. “I’ll fetch you as soon as I’m finished. It won’t be but a few minutes.”

  He lingered a moment more. Surely he’d seen the spill. She grabbed the trocar and steadied it above the dead man’s belly button. Mr. Whitmark had never shouted at her. Never struck her. Never threatened to let go of her service. But this new man, this man who disavowed Republicanism, who lauded a victory won in Mississippi by terror and violence, she didn’t know how this man would react to even the smallest mess.

  “You’ve a quarter of an hour. And crack a window. It smells like the dickens in here.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “Baseball?”

  Effie nodded.

  Adeline swished her silk fan to and fro with the same languor as the drooping evening sun. “And a . . . what did you call it?”

  “Baking sale. To raise money for our club and the Negro Veterans Aid Society.”

  “And just what can you bake that anyone would pay money for?”

  “I’ve a recipe for marble cake.”

  “Whose recipe?”

  “My landlady suggested it. I picked up all the necessary components from the market this morning.”

  Adeline laughed and sipped her lemonade. “Ingredients.”

  “Components, ingredients, whatever you call them, I have them all.”

  “Have you ever made a marble cake before? Any cake for that matter?”

  Effie pursed her lips and looked out over the courtyard. Yesterday’s rainwater had pooled in the derelict fountain. A pair of finches sipped and splashed. Perhaps she ought to have purchased extra eggs and flour for a test run beforehand. But how hard could it be? “Am I to believe you bake?”

  “Mon Dieu, no. That was always the cook’s job. Until . . . well, you know. Now I survive on pain perdu, molasses, and dinner invitations—which have dried up quiet dreadfully on account of the Lenten season. I’ll be positively gaunt come Easter Sunday.”

  “Well, you needn’t bake anything. Just come for the baseball match.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about baseball, chère.” She took another sip of her drink and continued to fan herself.

  If it was this hot in April,
what must July be like? Effie swigged her lemonade too. It tasted weak and sour but blessedly cool. She didn’t know a thing about baseball either. In truth, she’d forgotten all about the match and the baking sale. But yesterday, in the pale predawn light, when Samson had walked her home from the levee, he’d asked her if she were planning to attend. She’d still been befuddled by all that happened in the stockyard, at the jail, atop the cotton bales at the dock, and had walked beside him in silence.

  There at the base of Mrs. Neale’s steps, with the scent of magnolia and banana shrub heavy in the air, she’d nodded to his question and let him kiss her again, heedless of whomever might be up and at their window.

  Now, nothing would keep her from the match nor from making the most delicious marble cake anyone had ever eaten.

  “I should like to introduce you to the other club members.”

  “The club members or your Mr. Greene?”

  Effie grabbed her own palm-leaf fan and flapped it before her face, both to cool the heat blooming beneath her skin and to hide the smile that sprang unbidden to her lips at the mention of his name. “He is a club member.”

  “Désolé, chère. But I can’t. Monsieur Chauvet is taking me and Mamm on a ride out to Lake Pontchartrain tomorrow after mass. She’s feeling better than she has in weeks. I think it’s the warm weather. And Monsieur Chauvet’s carriage has the loveliest . . .”

  Disappointment nettled Effie, though she knew she shouldn’t feel so. She was glad for Adeline, after all. The improved health of her mother. The continued attentions of Mr. Chauvet. Glad Adeline had been relieved, not angry, when Effie called to apologize about leaving her behind at the Voodoo queen’s house. She’d pulled Effie in off the banquette and embraced her, insisted she stay and take some lemonade with her out back on the second-story gallery.

  Perhaps it was that their worlds seemed so separate. Yes, Effie had attended that party with Adeline on Esplanade Avenue. And the sewing circle with her friends from the Jeunes Amis Club. But Effie had stood out on both occasions like iced tea at a wake. And not once had Adeline deigned to step into Effie’s world.

  They were friends, weren’t they? Or had Effie misread the situation as she was so apt to do? More than anything, she wanted to tell Adeline about Samson. About what had transpired between them on the levee. But Adeline had to meet him first. To see his robust, healthy stature, the near-perfect symmetry of his features. To hear his melodious voice. To listen to the thoughtful workings of his mind. Then Adeline would understand how such a man could overwhelm Effie. Overwhelm her objectivity, her reticence, her inhibitions.

  She did tell Adeline about the memories unleashed at the stockyard. At first Effie relayed only the most salient facts. The yard had been a slave pen. She’d been sold to a trader. Sold again several weeks after. She wrung all emotion from the words before speaking them and kept a steady gauge of Adeline’s expression. Could one who’d never been a slave understand? Or would she treat this as just another piece of gossip batted about over afternoon drinks?

  But no, Adeline only listened. Her lips pressed together and did not waver. Not to smile or sneer or frown. Her eyes widened but did not look away. So Effie continued, filling in the outline of her tale with day-to-day details. Emotion slipped into her voice. Her fingers tightened around the handle of her fan until the dried palm fibers splintered off into her skin. She continued even as evening gave way to twilight.

  Even after Effie finished, Adeline held silent. She worked the fan from Effie’s grasp and refilled her glass with the last of the lemonade. Effie hadn’t realized how thirsty she’d become and drank down the entire glass.

  “Your name,” Adeline finally said. “At least you know where it came from.”

  Jonesy. He’d protected her in the slave pen. Cared for her like a brother. But there was more to it than that. Something lurking just beyond the edge of her remembrance.

  “What now?” Adeline asked.

  Effie told her of Samson’s suggestion to search the old deeds of sale.

  Adeline reached over and held Effie’s hand. “Ma foi, you must be . . . well, I don’t know what you must be feeling.”

  Effie couldn’t name it either. A small prickling of shame remained. But also relief. And hope. Above all a longing to know more—about the master who’d sold her to the slaver in the first place, about the man who’d bought her and where he’d taken her, about Jonesy and why he meant so much to her. And where that shed, those dead eyes, and the humming fit into her past. But all this was too much to stuff into words. Besides, her tongue was tired. She let Adeline hold her hand and watched the sky darken.

  “I told you that Voodoo queen would help,” Adeline said after a while.

  “It hadn’t anything to do with her supposed spirits or gris-gris. It was the tallow. The smell of it. And the darkness. And the way she’d pried my mouth open like I was a mule. A collection of sensory stimuli similar enough to what I’d experienced to . . . I don’t know . . . jog my memory.”

  “Oui, but the right stimuli, all together. Are you telling me there’s no magic in that?” She laughed and Effie did too.

  * * *

  Effie emptied the ash box and stoked the embers from that morning’s breakfast fire. The large cast-iron stove set back into the kitchen’s hearth was similar enough to the one Mrs. Kinyon had that Effie was certain she could operate it. Still, she regretted now not having paid better attention to the uses of the various dampers, trays, and cubbies.

  She cleaned the soot from her hands and studied the recipe. Easy as a wink, Mrs. Neale had promised, and positively delicious.

  The recipe looked more complicated now that all the components—ingredients—were spread out before her on the kitchen table. Perhaps she ought to have accepted Mrs. Neale’s offer to bake the cake for her. But no, that wouldn’t do at all. When Samson tasted the cake, she wanted to delight in his praise without having to admit someone else had baked it. She pinned the parchment atop the kitchen table beneath the salt shaker and donned her apron. If she could turn zinc chloride, arsenic, and mercury into embalming fluid, she could turn flour and sugar into cake.

  She started by mixing the ingredients for the dark part of the cake—molasses, brown sugar, butter. A tin cup from the cupboard served as her standard unit of measure, along with a soup spoon and a teaspoon. Hardly the sort of standards the National Academy of Sciences would approve of, but she doubted Mrs. Neale would take any kindlier to her bringing a pharmacy scale into the kitchen than Mrs. Kinyon had.

  Trouble arose almost at once. The dark part of the cake required seven yokes, the light seven whites. Effie had anticipated the need for two separate bowls right from the start, but she cracked the first egg with too much force. Yoke, whites, and shell all ended up a goopy mess in the bowl. She spent several minutes scooping out bits of shell and broken yoke.

  With the next egg she was more careful, calling to mind how Mrs. Kinyon would crack the egg in two, tipping the yoke back and forth between the two halves while letting the whites drip down into the bowl. In all, she managed to cleanly separate four of the yokes from their whites with only a little mixing between the others. Good thing she’d started straightaway after church. Already the baking process was taking longer than anticipated.

  Cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cream of tartar, soda, flour, and the dark part of the cake was done. Effie started then on the egg whites. Beat to a stiff froth, Mrs. Neale had said. Effie stirred until her arm ached. She sat down on a stool and stirred some more. The egg whites turned cloudy and frothed but never achieved a consistency one might call stiff.

  She gave up on account of the time and added the sugar, butter, and cream. As she measured out the flour, her nose began to itch. Her hands were far too sticky, however, to fish around in her pocket for her hankie. She’d sifted out her last cup when a sneeze caught her. Flour billowed around her like gun smoke, settling on her blouse, her eyelashes, even her tongue.

  Fi donc! She wiped her face on
her sleeve, dirtying the fabric further, and cursed again. Already she was running late and now she’d have to change. She gave the mixture a quick stir and grabbed a cake pan from the far shelf. Pour alternating layers of light and dark into pan, then draw a knife through.

  Effie glowered down at her writing. How deep should each layer be? How many layers in total? Why hadn’t she the sense to ask when taking down the instructions? Too late now. Without Mrs. Neale around to clarify, Effie decided on six.

  She did her best to pour an even third from each bowl into the cake pan. The dark batter was thick and lumpy, dropping into the pan in clumps. The light proved overly wet, running from the bowl almost like water.

  When she’d scraped both bowls clean and drawn a knife through the batter, the contents looked more like mud than marbled cake mix. But a quick lick of the knife gave her hope. Sweet and cinnamony. She opened the oven and tested the heat with her hand as she’d seen Mrs. Kinyon do. Warm like noontime in July, but not hot enough to cook a cake. She put the pan in anyway and closed the dampers to the chimney flue to increase the heat. Mrs. Neale had said to bake for forty minutes. An hour might be better on account of temperature.

  As she gathered up the dirty bowls, cups, and spoons, her thoughts strayed to Samson. Had he missed her with the same ferocity she’d missed him in the days they’d been apart? She imagined him turning out his pockets for a second piece of cake. She filled the sink with hot water drawn from the stove and heaped in the sticky dishes.

  After they’d made love she could have lain atop those cotton bales forever in perfect contentment. How the stars glimmered, their brilliance no longer dampened by the moon’s jealous light. How soothing the steady whisper of his breath beside her. But how quickly quotidian concerns bullied into her head. Her dress, already filthy from the stockyard and jail, now had additional stains to tend. Best get it soaking before the blood had a chance to set. And were those stirring seagulls or voices she heard from farther down the dock? The breeze kicked up again, turning her sweat-kissed skin to gooseflesh.