by AJ Sikes
“Yes’m,” Aiden said again. “It doesn’t look like gambling. Not a bit, Ma. Honest.”
His pa kept hush, but Aiden still caught the grunt that came up into the quiet that followed his words. His ma’s face darkened and she went to lean against the sink.
“It doesn’t sound honest, Aiden. The people you’d be working for aren’t our kind of people. They aren’t honest people.”
Aiden didn’t know what to say to that. He’d hoped she wouldn’t mention it, because he knew what his pa would say about who Aiden would be calling boss. But he remembered how Mr. Brand would shake hands with the dark-skinned delivery men, and how he used to huff and puff about having to wait for another white man to be finished using the can instead of just using the one marked COLOREDS when it was empty.
“They’re just people, Conroy. A colored man can die in a war same as any other man.”
“They’re just folks, Ma. Not like you and me and Pa here, sure, but they’re still folks. They’ve lived here good and long, and we’re the new guys in town, hey? I figure them offering me this job is like getting a welcome mat. Kind of,” he added when he saw his mother’s face hang with doubt.
“Kind of,” she said, almost mocking his tone. “Aiden I don’t kind of want you working around those people, and even though he’s too drunk to say it himself, I’m sure your father doesn’t, either.”
Aiden was about to add a few licks of his own, because the way his mother said those people had started to eat at him. But she beat him to it and what she said surprised Aiden even more than it burned.
“I suppose your father is right, though,” she said, her eyes going soft and the snarl dropping out of her voice. “If you’re going to earn for the family, you’ll have to take work where you can find it. How much did you say they’d pay you?”
Aiden almost missed the cue. “I … the man said I’d get fifteen cents a day, but only three days a week. Unless they have extra work, and that can happen pretty often, the man said.” Aiden went on, doing his best to parrot back what he’d been told.
“Which man, Aiden? The one who threatened your father or another one with a knife hidden in his walking stick?”
“The one at the workhouse, Ma. Like I said. He was a dark-skinned fella, sure, but he was wearing suspenders and carrying a mop and bucket. No knife on him that I could see.”
“That you could see. That’s just the point, Aiden. You won’t see it until they’re sticking it in you.”
“They aren’t like that, Ma. They’re not all hiding knives and trying to kill us because we’re white.”
Aiden had heard the words but didn’t believe they’d come from his mouth until the look on his mother’s face told him she’d heard him loud and clear.
His ma took a few breaths to cool off, and Aiden figured he should do the same. His pa just picked up his bottle again and took the last swallow. He set the bottle back down and looked at the wall some more.
“Well, Aiden,” his ma said. “Why don’t you tell me again what they were like. Apparently I’ve been misinformed by the twenty-seven years I’ve spent living with colored people free to walk the same streets as I do.”
Aiden wanted to fix his ma, put her mind right about things, but he didn’t know how to do it. And every time he thought he had the words to send back her way, she’d come up with something worse for him to deal with. He just couldn’t see how to change her mind, so he gave up trying and stuck to the facts.
“I just went around the back of the house there, with the guy carrying the mop. He showed me a couple of colored folks, a man and a woman, and they were all dressed up in glad rags. They’d been talking, but went hush when we came around the corner of the house. The guy with the mop told me, ‘Go on,’ so I did. I asked about work and the woman gave me the rundown on the gig.”
“And what was that, Aiden? The rundown.”
Everything felt all turned around in his head now, where he’d be working, how much he’d earn, and what he’d have to do. But he remembered how his heart got light when the color— When the lady told him he’d be cleaning up houses.
“I’ll be cleaning floors, just like Pa used to do back at the Field. Sometimes it’s washing out a kitchen sink I’ll be doing, and sometimes washing walls, too. Mostly just floors, they said.”
“And where are these places you’ll be cleaning up? What do they do there?”
Aiden had to think a second, and he realized he didn’t have an answer for his ma’s question. Not a ready one anyway. The people he’d met hadn’t told him anything about what would happen or why the houses would need cleaning. Aiden figured it was just because houses need cleaning.
Houses get dirty, right?
“The lady—”
“The colored lady, Aiden,” his ma stuck in.
Aiden swallowed what he’d thought about saying back to his ma before he went on with telling her about the gig.
“Yeah, her. She called ‘em workhouses, and I didn’t think to ask her on it. She said something about watching out for the mothers, but . . . it just sounds like cleaning up houses. I figured . . .”
The look on his ma’s face went from soft to cold. She narrowed her eyes and glared at Aiden’s pa, almost like she she was thinking he could have found better work for Aiden. But she’d heard about what the man said, up on Magazine Street. Aiden’s pa was out of work for good.
The old man had the bottle in his lap again, even though it was empty, and his eyes drooped low like he’d fall out of his chair any second.
“Aiden,” his ma said. “You’d better hope that whatever you’ve gotten mixed up in doesn’t lead to trouble. I’ll give you the money. But you keep track of your dollars and cents, young man. Every time you get paid, you make note of it in that book. Every time somebody charges you something, you make note of it.
“Don’t let those people take a cent out of your hands without a good reason, and don’t think for a second that they won’t try.”
“I won’t, Ma,” he said, even as he wished he could have said something to send the words back into his ma’s mouth. Her voice went sour in his ears, like a wrong note on a piano that won’t stop ringing. He nodded, trying to shake the feeling out of his head.
“I’ll be all right, Ma,” he continued, bringing his eyes up to meet hers again. “I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” she said, with a twist to her lips that said she only half heard what he’d said. “Do me a favor and brush your hair now, Aiden. I need to go— Oh, I can hardly believe I’m doing this,” she said, stepping to her left and taking a can of coffee off the shelf.
“Doing what, Ma?”
“I need to make an offering at their so-called church, so I can get one of those pieces of tin that says it’s okay for me to walk on the street or ride the streetcar. I’d use yours, but you’ll need it to get around town yourself, since you weren’t able to find work in this neighborhood. And then I’ll need to confess all of this to Father James before mass. Since your father’s in no state to do much of anything, you’ll have to walk with me.”
Aiden nodded and stepped over to the mirror by the kitchen. He raked their one comb through his hair and slicked his cow lick down as best he could.
“Here’s the money, Aiden,” his ma said, holding out a five-dollar bill to him. He took the fin slow and careful, to show her he knew how big this was for her to be doing.
“We’ll eat lean for the rest of the week now. If you earn what you say you can … we might get some bread again in a couple of days.”
Aiden pocketed the five and took his mother’s hand at the door. They both turned to look at his pa, who had fallen asleep where he’d been sitting. The empty bottle slid to the floor and rolled off to the side, up against the bundles of rags that Aiden’s folks called a bed.
For a few breaths, he and his ma watched the old man sleep. Before they left, Aiden’s ma whispered a prayer. Aiden closed his eyes and thought about what he’d do with his fi
rst day’s pay.
Chapter 19
At the entrance to the alley, Aiden hopped down from the wagon and tipped his hat to the driver.
“Thanks for the lift,” he called up to the heavy jowled Irishman holding the reins. Aiden waited while the man pawed through the little box by his right hip and came up with Aiden’s badge of transport.
“Here y’are, me boy. Walk safe now, mind.”
Aiden tucked the badge into his coat pocket. He nodded and tipped his hat again before stepping back. The driver cracked his whip on the nag’s rump, edging her along the alley and around the far corner. The street beyond had just woken up, and the bums’ usual chorus rang out in fits and starts, covering up the sound of wagon wheels on the cobblestones.
Aiden counted the coins in his pocket one more time as he walked down the alley. Two days after getting the gig, he’d received his first day’s pay. The cleaning cart he’d used to earn it was safely stowed back at the workhouse. It was a big house, with lots of rooms inside, all emptied out mostly, except for a little stage in one room downstairs and a piano in almost every room except the two smallest ones upstairs.
Every other night, Aiden was supposed to come by around eleven o’clock to start work. He’d scrub scuff marks and shoe black from the floors in the workhouse. Then he’d put a polish of wax in the biggest rooms and make sure the pianos were dusted, too. And if it needed doing, he’d wash out the bathrooms when he was done. An old white man worked the job with him this first time, but told Aiden he’d be on his own starting next week.
“And you got lucky there ain’t much doing on your first night. Usual, you gonna find them mothers in here, watching you work, making sure you do right. They come, you stay out their way. You hear me?”
Aiden had said he heard just fine and nodded fast to make sure the man saw he meant it. The old man chuckled and said something about doves learning to fly. He then sent Aiden off home around four o’clock in the morning.
When he’d told his folks about his schedule, his ma said she didn’t like him being out during those hours. But his pa backed him up.
“Same as I used to do, Alice. Isn’t it?”
Aiden’s ma pretended she didn’t hear the man, and that worried Aiden more than their little feud around the table when he came home with news about the job. His folks just acted more like different people every day.
Their little place above the sewing shop waited a few paces down the alley, all splintered siding and rusted hinges, windows swelled shut, and a door that stuck tight anyway because it was hung wrong.
He dodged a pile of freshly dropped horse manure and went to the back door of the building, beneath the stairs. He could hear his ma and the other ladies working inside already. Their sewing machines made a constant pitter-patter and click-clack, like a drummer taking it easy on the jazz stage, waiting for the crowd to get onto the dance floor. Only Aiden knew there wasn’t any dancing going on where his mother worked.
Nothing but long days and sore thumbs. Fingers tender from getting stuck with needles time and time again. And backs stooped, hunched over, and rounded.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to work so hard now he’d gotten work that actually paid. Maybe now that he was earning real money, his folks could go back to acting how they used to. Or maybe his ma would keep on worrying because of who was paying him.
Aiden knew the stuff his ma and pa said about Negroes wasn’t even half true. But every time he thought about the way that man Hardy’s knife went through his pa’s hand and the way his pa screamed and hollered . . . . Aiden shook the image from his mind and turned the knob, opening the door to the sewing shop.
The ladies and Aiden’s ma all paused for a moment, some of them looking shocked before their faces slipped into a grimace. They all went back to work like nothing had happened, except for his ma. She gave him a look, too, but he could tell she was trying to smile behind it. She set her work down on the low sewing table in front of her and stood to come greet him at the door.
“Aiden, you’re supposed to knock before coming in. You put fear of the Almighty into these women. And your mother,” she added, wrinkling her nose at him. “Now what is it?”
She still wasn’t the warm and kind lady he remembered from before, but Aiden’s ma was in a better mood every time he saw her at work. At least he thought she was. It could be she was just happier than his pa, but then again he could say that about almost anyone.
“Sorry, Ma. About the door. It’s just . . . see, I got paid today. I wanted to come tell you first before . . .”
Aiden’s ma put a careful hand to his cheek. She knew before what. Before he went up the stairs outside, the rickety wooden ones that ran up the wall of the building like a staircase to the gallows.
“That’s really good to hear, Aiden,” she said, and he could see she was holding something back. He wanted to ask what she meant to say, but he caught some of the other ladies behind her coughing into their shirts and working their machines extra loud.
“I have to get back now, Aiden. You go upstairs and tell your father the good news. When he wakes up.”
Aiden’s eyes found the floor before he knew it. “Sure thing,” he said and stepped back so she could close the door. Overhead, the dawn sky rolled aside and made room for a weak ray of morning light in between the clouds.
“Tell your father the good news.”
“Just like when I got the Daily Record gig,” Aiden said to himself. “Me and Digs, working for Mr. Brand.”
Back then, in Chicago City, his pa took it right when Aiden told him about the job. Clapped him on the back, told him he was a real Conroy now, earning good money for good work. He even poured Aiden a splash out of the bottle he sipped from when Aiden’s ma wasn’t around.
Good news.
Aiden stepped slow to the staircase and put his hand on the bannister. He looked up at the door to their place. The weathered frame looked like it might fall off the wall any minute. His ma had sewn rags together to stuff into the cracks around the frame, to keep the little heat they had from sneaking out to get swallowed up by the cold.
The front of the building had a nice view of Constance Street, and a sign that read DUFFY DRESSMAKERS. The people who went in the front door would never set foot in the alley behind. Only Aiden and his folks and the ladies his ma worked with used the backdoors.
With careful quiet feet, Aiden climbed the stairs, half hoping his pa would be asleep when he got in. At the top of the steps, Aiden stopped outside the door, thinking if his pa was awake, maybe he could convince him to go looking for work today.
Aiden knew he was thinking crazy even as the idea went through his mind. What the barman had said was true as could be. Aiden’s pa wouldn’t be finding work in New Orleans.
The last time the man had gone hunting a job, which was the only time he’d gone out after that day on Magazine Street, he’d just come home silly drunk. Aiden’s pa had slipped when he was only halfway up the stairs, and he’d come to rest in a puddle of horse piss. Since then, he’d mostly just been drunk, when he was able to sneak a few coins for hooch, and he hadn’t been anything like silly.
It didn’t help that the one place his pa probably could find work in a heartbeat was the last place he’d ever think about taking a job. Even though it would mean working side by side with his fellow Irishmen.
“The docks are integrated, Aiden. Like parts of this neighborhood, Negroes and whites side by side. Damn Dagos, too. I know they aren’t supposed to care about this,” he’d said, holding up his bandaged hand. “But I don’t know about working with coloreds, and I don’t want to know about it.”
Well, Aiden figured it was time his pa knew about something other than drink. With hope in his heart, Aiden reached for the door, ready to share his good news, and all the while knowing that nothing he had to say would help his pa feel anything but low. If the man was sober enough to hear a single word.
Aiden’s pa was just where he figured he’d be, slumpe
d over the little table with an empty bottle on the floor at his feet. A trail of liquid bled into the floor, adding another stain to the wood, alongside all the others from spilled food and who knew what else.
Looking at his pa now, Aiden got the feeling the room hadn’t changed much at all since they’d moved in, and maybe it was to blame for how things had gone for them. Maybe if they’d found nicer digs to start off his pa wouldn’t be such an old soak.
“Pa?” Aiden said, stepping up to the man. “Hey, Pa. I got paid, Pa.”
It took all his strength, but Aiden kept his hands loose and relaxed while he waited until his old man stirred.
I should give him a sock on the jaw to wake him up.
As quick as the thought came, Aiden swatted it aside. Even drunk, his old man was bigger and faster than he was, and a fistfight wouldn’t solve anything anyway.
Finally, after what felt like a hundred heartbeats, Aiden’s pa shifted in his seat and raised his head off the table. He turned a pair of red eyes Aiden’s way and let out a sigh that reeked with the stink of old booze.
“Jeez, Pa,” Aiden said, unable to control himself. He staggered back and put a hand up over his mouth and nose. “You gotta get cleaned up.”
“Huh?” his pa said, glancing around the room like he was looking for the ghost that was tickling his ear. His eyes finally settled on Aiden’s face again and they seemed to droop lower than Aiden thought possible, like his old man was just going to melt into his clothes and slide off the chair to disappear between the floorboards.
“That you, son?”
“Yeah,” Aiden said, struggling to keep his stomach. Every time his pa opened his mouth, a fog of stink rolled out and filled the room. “It’s me, Pa. C’mon and get cleaned up, hey? I’ll get the water warming.”
Aiden stepped to his left, to go around his old man, but his pa stuck out his good hand and grabbed Aiden by the arm.
“Just . . . a sec, son. Just a sec. How does a guy like you come in here? All cheerful, like it’s Christmas day?”