Saving Savannah

by Tonya Bolden

  Unlike Father. Ease and freedom in his ways. Walk, talk. His luminous laugh. If that’s what growing up in New York City did to a person, then yes, New York City was where Savannah wanted to be! Ice-skating on frozen rivers, baseball games … Such were the things Father talked about when remembering himself young.

  Savannah had splinters of memories of Mother mentioning a Miss Abby, a Ma Clara, she-crabs, a place called Shad Island. Snatches overheard when Mother visited, with her in tow, that strange lady who lived in a top-floor apartment not far from them.

  Savannah searched her brain. Dinah? Was that her name? Brown-skinned woman. Something wrong with one arm and thick, thick glasses. Mother brought her groceries, packages.

  And Mother broke down in their vestibule one day. Arms around Father’s neck, she said, “Thank you, Wyatt. Thank you!”

  Father patted her back. “No thanks needed. She has no one but you now. We can well afford to take care of her and this is what we shall do.”

  “When will we see that lady again?” Savannah had asked when older. The visits had stopped. “The one you give groceries and things.”

  “Oh, my darling girl, sadly she has passed.”

  “What was her name again?”

  Skimming the “Horizon” column, Savannah zeroed in on mention of Private Harry Thomas,22 of Philadelphia, a member of the 369th Infantry. The French had decorated him for bravery.

  Savannah left the magazine, went upstairs, returned to the living room with Charlie’s most recent send. Was Private Harry Thomas of Philadelphia in this breathtaking photograph?

  Dear Sis,

  Here’s one I took of the grand parade here on February 17 in honor of the 369th Infantry. This is the regiment the French called “Men of Bronze” and the Germans the “Hell Fighters.”23 Of the two, “Hell Fighters” is the one that has really caught on.

  I covered the parade from the start at 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue. What a jam of humanity with American flags flying, “Welcome Home!” banners, and red-white-and-blue confetti falling like snow. And how the crowds roared when they marched up Lenox Avenue starting at 110th Street in Harlem.

  Our Hell Fighters deserve ten parades! They fought their way from the Champagne to the Forest of Argonne and gave battle to and beat the best that the Boche had to offer. Men who left home with Jim Crow on the throne and came back to it with nothing changed.

  Yet, how our dusky heroes marched with the air of victors, with heads erect, with eyes front in true soldier fashion. They marched with a jaunty step behind Lieut. Jim Europe’s smashing jazz band, a step that thrilled the thousands of spectators along curbs, in doorways, in windows, on rooftops—crowds that cheered, yelled their lungs out, huzzahed. Schools in Harlem closed so the kiddies could attend the parade.

  Love to Mother and Father and 10 hugs to you!

  Savannah was still staring at the Hell Fighters when she heard a rap on the back door.

  KITCHEN CLOCK TICK-TOCKED

  “Evening, Miss Riddle.”

  “Evening, Nella.”

  Nutmeg Nella, tall and slender, had filled in for her mother before, but Savannah had never paid her much attention, like the kids at Dunbar whose fathers were messengers at some government agency or shoemakers, whose mothers were secretaries, seamstresses.

  Nella rested her Boston bag on the floor, hung her broadcloth coat on the peg beside the back door, tucked her tam into a coat pocket, and then, with her bag once again in hand, made a beeline for the utility room off the kitchen.

  Lickety-split, she was back.

  Oxford lace-up pumps traded in for moccasins.

  Handkerchief around her head.

  Apron over a washed-out blue polka-dot dress.

  With bucket and mop in one hand, cleaning caddy in the other, Nella hurried from the kitchen. “I will start up top.” She flashed a quick smile.

  In the wake of whirlwind Nella, Savannah couldn’t think of anything to do but return to the living room, to the davenport, to the Crisis.

  Skimmed more ads: 15 phonograph records for $1 … books by Kelly Miller, by Carter G. Woodson … Lula Robinson Jones Soprano Available for Concerts … “Spend your Vacation at Beautiful Idlewild the most wonderfully ideal spot …”

  Father had toyed with buying property in Idlewild. Just as an investment, he’d said over dinner one evening.

  “So we can’t ever spend time there?” Savannah had asked.

  “Maybe now and then,” Father had replied.

  “Is it as lovely as Highland Beach?”

  That was when Savannah really loved Highland Beach, used to relish Mother’s ritual.

  With suitcases and hampers unpacked, with the airing out of the cottage begun, they made the pilgrimage to a sacred house. There Mother told of how when his youngest son decided to create a resort for Negroes, the honorable Frederick Douglass was his first investor, how the great man himself designed his own cottage, calling it Twin Oaks.

  Mother pointed to the odd narrow second-story balcony of the hip-roofed Queen Anne cottage. “He wanted a view of the Eastern Shore where he was born a slave.”

  And Mother never tired of telling about the first time she met the Honorable Frederick Douglass, how nervous she was.

  Then Savannah thought back to last summer at Highland Beach, her deeper fascination with Twin Oaks. Sketching it over and over, from the front, right side, left side. In one she had even put Douglass on that odd second-story balcony, imagining had he lived to see his cottage completed, what would have gone through his mind as he looked out over Chesapeake Bay.

  Freedom.

  Sketch Twin Oaks. Walks in the woods. That’s all she had wanted to do, but after a few talkings-to from Mother—about shoulds and oughts and musts—she had played the piano when asked, joined in badminton games, charades, had been part of the crew that collected stones and wood for clambakes.

  On that last night, with Yolande cracking open lobsters, slurping down clams, she nibbled on corn, a shrimp or two, then when Cary Sanderson beckoned her to join him for a stroll along the beach she felt so ashamed of ever having set her cap at him. But still, beneath banks of gauzy clouds drifting away from a fading sun, she went for that stroll, still she accepted that sterling silver friendship ring.

  Savannah glanced at the ad in the Crisis for busts of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Bishop Richard Allen: $1.50 each or all four for $5.00. She looked up at the floor-to-ceiling bookcase opposite the davenport. Dunbar, Washington, and Allen looked down on her from the middle shelf. Douglass, looking a bit cross, had pride of place on the nearby fireplace mantel.

  Then came the ad that made Savannah smile.

  That was her work, when Father wanted something more modern.

  “Think you can help me out, pumpkin?”

  “Really?”

  “Why not give it a shot?”

  She had truly labored over that design. Going back and forth on whether or not to include a photograph or a sketch of the F Street building.

  Now, the more she stared at the ad, the more that smile faded. It had always been about Charlie. Never her. Sure, she could design an ad, tidy Father’s desk, but … Even after Charlie left. Never her.

  How galling, too, that Charlie was named after Mother’s hometown but she got stuck with Savannah.

  “So neither of you have any family there?”

  “No,” Mother had replied.

  “Any relatives named Savannah?”

  Another no.

  “Then why did you name me Savannah?”

  “I just love the sound of it,” Mother had replied, then mysteriously misted up.

  Nella was in the kitchen humming “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.”

  The scent of Lysol F&F wafted into the living room.

  Savannah made up her mind to do something Mother would likely consider a shouldn’t. Not that Mother ever barked orders at Miss Gertie, treated her in any way unkind. Mother simply kept a polite distance jus
t as she did with Miss Myra, who took in their laundry once a week.

  I need to widen my world! Savannah rose from the davenport.

  She was almost in the kitchen when—

  What do I say?

  Savannah spun around, returned to the living room for the Hell Fighters. Fortified, she headed once again for the kitchen.

  She stopped at the threshold.

  The floor was wet.

  The Lysol F&F overwhelming.

  Mother had instructed Miss Gertie to not dilute it as much as the manufacturer recommended. She insisted on the same even after Spanish flu waned. And she still had them using Lysol toilet soap, and Father, Lysol shaving cream when he wanted to go back to Colgate’s.

  Nella had scoured, washed, polished, swept. She was just about done mopping, working her way to the back.

  Glass cabinet doors … porcelain sink … white enamel refrigerator … porcelain cabriole-legged stove … the copper kettle—the whole room gleamed. Drain board and countertops clear except for the space beneath one cabinet where Mother kept the stair-step blue willow canisters: FLOUR, SUGAR, COFFEE, TEA.

  “It feels as if it could rain tonight,” Savannah finally said.

  Nella kept mopping. “Quite possible.”

  “May it hold off until you get home.”

  “Yes, that would be good.”

  Savannah fiddled with the Hell Fighters. “Did you hear that the NAACP has gotten that man out of jail, the one in South Carolina?”

  “The one they said shot off the white man’s head?”

  “Yes. And isn’t it wonderful that the Anthony amendment has been introduced again in the Senate?”

  “True, but the clock is ticking fast. Congress is only in session a few more days.”

  “It’s ridiculous. In more than a dozen states women can vote in all elections. In a bunch of others they can vote in some. After what so many women did for the war effort, working in factories, with the Red Cross, the Army Nurse Corps, navy, coast guard, marines, even …”

  By then Nella had the bucket and mop by the back door. She sighed, wiped her brow.

  “Are you all right?” Savannah asked.

  “Oh, I’m fine. Just tired. Long day.”

  “What’s wrong with your mother—if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Dizzy spells since early morning.”

  “Has a doctor been to see her?”

  “Not yet. Doctors cost money. We’re praying it’s nothing serious, hoping she’ll soon be right as rain.”

  More fiddling with the Hell Fighters. “So when you aren’t filling in for your mother, you clean for other people?”

  Nella looked at her blankly.

  “I don’t mean to intrude or—”

  “No intrusion. Just surprised you ask, that’s all, Miss Riddle.”

  Miss Riddle. That sounded so wrong. Nella had to be three, four years older. “Just Savannah is fine, Nella.”

  “I’m not so sure, Miss Riddle.”

  “I insist.”

  “Do your parents?”

  Savannah decided not to push it.

  Nella surveyed the floor. “Since you ask, Miss Riddle, I work some days at Nannie Burroughs’s school.”

  Savannah thought for a bit. “Over on …”

  “In Lincoln Heights.”

  “It’s for wayward girls?”

  “Why, no, Miss Riddle!” Nella looked downright offended. “Nannie Burroughs only accepts girls of good character. No deviants.”

  “It’s a trade school?”

  Now Nella looked a wee bit annoyed. “Yes, but it’s more than that. As Principal Burroughs is always telling people, she is training young women not to be servants but to be of service. Most of all to be self-sufficient. Her vision of true womanhood is not of young ladies holding their breaths for Prince Charmings.”

  Savannah lit up inside.

  “She has nothing against marriage per se, but to her mind true womanhood is about a woman being able to do for self, think for self. Principal Burroughs says, if you’re going to be a seamstress be an expert at it—so good that you can command top dollar, have your own enterprise even.”

  Savannah had no interest in being a seamstress or anything like that, but this Nannie Burroughs sure sounded like someone she’d love to meet. “And how many days a week do you clean there?”

  “I don’t clean there, Miss Riddle. I help out as an instructor in the domestic science department. Teacher’s assistant. Normally, Miss Burroughs only hires college graduates, but for some reason she made an exception for me. I’m sure it helps that I go to Miner part-time.”

  “Oh, so you want to be a teacher?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Domestic science?”

  “Actually, Miss Riddle, I want to be an English teacher. Above all else I love literature.”

  Literature? Savannah kicked herself for being surprised by that.

  Nella pulled a rag from her apron pocket, rubbed at a spot on the floor. “And just last week I became a qualified Poro agent.” That smile again.

  Savannah stared at the floor. Dry, darn it, dry! She wanted to make tea, have Nella sit across from her at the table, engage in some real conversation, show her the Hell Fighters.

  She checked the kitchen clock. “Nella, have you had dinner?”

  “Not yet.”

  Savannah eyed the pot of soup on the stove, thought of the sandwich and either potato or egg salad in the refrigerator. “I’ll fix that as soon as the floor dries!”

  “That’s mighty nice of you, Miss Riddle.”

  The kitchen clock tick-tocked, tick-tocked.

  “All dry!” Savannah said. This was after more tick-tocking from that clock.

  “All except for a spot underneath the table,” replied a squinting Nella.

  Savannah headed over to Nella, handed her the Hell Fighters. “It’s one my brother took of the big parade in New York.”

  “Nice,” said Nella.

  “You can hold it.”

  Nella wiped her hands on her apron before taking the photograph.

  “Now you just have a sit-down,” said Savannah. “I’ll prepare you something to eat.” Savannah turned on the burner beneath the pot of soup, brought out from the refrigerator a salad plate with a potted ham sandwich and—

  Two small bowls.

  Mother had made both potato salad and egg salad.

  “No, not here, Miss Riddle. I’ll take it home, thank you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Within seconds Nella was at a drawer of kitchen sundries, had a thermos out, a nickel food box too.

  Food packed up to go, Nella washed and dried, put things away. “Mummy will bring back your food containers when she comes next week.” Nella spirited away to the utility room with mop and bucket.

  “So much for widening my world,” muttered Savannah.

  She was about to give up, return to the davenport, when she was startled by a knock at the back door.

  Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

  Another knock.

  Like a cautious cat, Savannah tiptoed, peered through the space between the lace café curtains.

  There stood a lanky man sporting a fisherman’s cap and with his hands shoved in the pockets of a peacoat.

  “Yes, may I help you?”

  “I come for Nella.”

  Savannah paused. “Nella, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nella!” Savannah called out.

  Water was running.

  “Nella!” Savannah called out again louder.

  “Coming, Miss Riddle.”

  Savannah turned, lowered her voice. “There’s a man outside asking for you.”

  “Oh, that’s my cousin Lloyd. Come to collect me.”

  Savannah opened the door. “Please come in.”

  There was a hint of scorn—or perhaps impatience—on the young man’s face when he entered cap in hand.

  Blue black.

  And possessed of
a panther’s gaze.

  “Miss Riddle, this is my cousin Lloyd. He’s recently arrived.”

  Maybe eighteen, nineteen.

  “Lloyd, this is Miss Savannah Riddle.”

  Savannah extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  The young man nodded, turned to Nella. “You ready?”

  His accent was much stronger than Nella’s, as strong as Miss Gertie’s.

  “In a jiffy,” said Nella. “Just need to wipe down the sink and change.”

  With Nella gone from the kitchen, Savannah was at wit’s end as to what to do. “Would you like a cup of tea or—”

  The young man shook his head.

  “Would you care to sit down while you wait?”

  Again he shook his head.

  Savannah glanced at the thermos, the nickel food box on the counter. “That’s for Nella, as she hasn’t had any dinner. I can make you a sandwich.”

  With pursed lips, yet again the young man shook his head. “And I don’t tink Nella really need wunna food.”

  Such disdain in his tone, in his eyes.

  Thank goodness Nella was soon back and donning her coat, her tam. “Ready!” She reached for her food.

  Her cousin tugged her arm. “I let she know we don’t need her food.”

  The frown on Nella’s face was a first.

  “We got food home,” added Lloyd.

  “Good night, Miss Riddle.”

  “Good night, Nella. Good night, Lloyd.”

  They were almost through the door when Nella turned around, pulled a piece of paper from her handbag. “A Poro price list. I’d appreciate it if you would pass it on to your kind mother.”

  Savannah hurried to the door after it closed, peered out. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could tell that Nella and her rude cousin were bickering.

  Who is he to tell her what food she can and cannot take? It’s not as if I was offering them scraps I’d give a dog.

  Back at the kitchen table Savannah picked up the photograph, put it, along with the Poro price list, into her pocket, then dealt with what should have been Nella’s dinner had it not been for that horrible cousin of hers.