Madam: A Novel of New Orleans

by Cari Lynn

  Only when Mary grew older did she come to realize that according to most people’s standards these women were nothing more than lowly whores. Still, they would never be that to her. These were women who had made their way in the world, all on their own, and Mary had decided long ago that was the kind of woman she wanted to be.

  Mama was able to get out of the Swamp when a great thing happened: the banks of the Mississippi became filled with sailors. At last, a swell of business on dry land! Mama and her friends packed up their few mud-caked possessions and overtook an abandoned building on Gallatin Street. They nailed a sign out front: HOUSE OF REST FOR WEARY BOATMEN. Truth was, the place was hardly habitable enough to be called a house, and the last thing going on there was rest. But Mama and the others were the best welcome a homesick sailor could hope for, and that stretch of the river soon became known as the Port of Missing Men. Mama regaled how, as a ship would dock, she’d lean out the window, flaunting her cleavage. “Hey, sailor!” she’d call. “A picayune will get ya a bed for the night, a drink o’ whiskey . . . and some company!”

  Mary rolled the picayune over in her palm, Mama’s voice echoing in her head. She caught her reflection in a little cracked mirror she’d hung with twine, the only decoration on the crumbling walls of the crib. Her own eyes stared back at her. Mama and MawMaw before her had these slate gray eyes too, a trait passed down through the generations. But only the women. Gray eyes that didn’t often cry, but also didn’t sparkle. Rarely would they give away what was going on behind them. Eyes of mystery, Mama would say. Use them, Mary. Use them.

  A husky voice from outside the crib startled Mary from her thoughts. “Gettin’ on in time, Mary!”

  Yes, yes, Mary thought, quickly reminded that Venus Alley may well be on dry ground, but it wasn’t like the Swamp, where the whores looked out for one another. Here, it was everyone for herself. It didn’t matter a darn if a john were mid-action on top of Mary, not if her cribmate’s shift were due to begin. Someday, Mary told herself, she’d never have to hear Beulah Ripley’s voice at her door again.

  But for now, she didn’t let Beulah’s whining rush her. She brushed off her dirty feet and reached for her boots. In the right toe bed she’d hidden her burlap purse, and from that, she pulled out a little amber bottle of rose oil she’d purchased for a nickel at the apothecary. Removing its tiny cork, she tilted it upside down, using her finger as a stopper. With a dab on one side of her neck, then the other, she inhaled the brightness of the rosy scent. How nice to smell something fresh in this dank, close crib. For good measure, she dabbed some oil on her armpits before corking the bottle. She pressed her feet into her boots and was careful not to tug too hard as she hooked the threadbare laces. Then she hoisted her kip over her back.

  As expected, Beulah was hovering on the stoop, fists dug into her hips. Her dark hair, which was usually in dozens of tight braids, had been sheared close to her head ever since the lice had spread around her family. All Mary knew of Beulah’s people was that they were Negroes from the cotton plantations. Truth be told she barely knew much more about her own people, just that Mama’s father had been a young stowaway on a boat from Germany—as Mama would say, a fitting beginning to a low life.

  “Well, la de do!” Beulah said, giving Mary a smirk. “Pretty girl keepin’ time today.”

  Mary gave her a weary glance.

  “Why you keepin’ time today? Ain’t there no johns ’round?” Beulah taunted. “No ship come in?”

  “You want I can go find another trick and be a while,” Mary barked back.

  “Just that you been late three times already this week,” Beulah said with a wag of her finger. “Always actin’ like you’re above your raising.”

  Mary let out a sigh. “We’re all just tryin’ to earn a living.”

  Beulah snorted. “So the bossman can pour your livin’ down his throat?”

  Mary couldn’t have agreed more, but she didn’t let on. It was Philip Lobrano who held the crib in his name, and he liked to think he pimped Mary and Beulah even though business tended to come in with no help from him.

  “Bossman come collect your pay today?” Beulah asked.

  Mary shook her head.

  “Oh, he’ll be finding you,” Beulah warned, her eyes growing wide. “Saw him stumblin’ around, and he’s crazy with drink. Crazy Devil Man today. Lookin’ like something the dog’s been hidin’ under the porch.”

  The last thing Mary wanted to do was stick around knowing Lobrano had spent hours sidled up to a bottle of absinthe. She gave a nod to Beulah, for as much as each resented the other, they both shared the millstone of Lobrano. Beulah lifted her own kip onto her back and Mary moved past, stepping from the warped stoop of the crib onto Venus Alley.

  Venus Alley was really a street, though it was so narrow and cramped with row-to-row cribs that it had come to be called an alley—also seemed easier for johns to hide their illegal indiscretions on an alley as opposed to a wide-open street.

  Mary had long ago dulled her senses to Venus Alley. There was no way someone could work a place like this day after day without overlooking most of it. She no longer saw how potholes became film-covered pools of muck that sat and stank until the next rain. Or how rats scuttered about like they ruled the place, not even flinching when you stomped at them, their droppings, along with horse dung, a fixed layer on the bottoms of your shoes.

  Snotty-nosed children scampered about the Alley too—the unintended consequences of a whore’s thriving business. Barefoot, unwashed, unschooled, skinny things, all of them, their stomachs always rumbling, their faces pinched. They ran around with no one bothering to mind them. The stray children barely outnumbered the dogs and cats roaming about, whining for attention. Although the animals often looked better fed than the children since they were wise to all the back doors of saloons and restaurants that threw out scraps. Even the whores seemed more inclined to toss crumbs to the animals than to the kids—animals were a nuisance, but a baby could halt your career and suck up your earnings.

  The cribs were the only buildings on the Alley, moldy shanties sinking into the soft ground and threatening to crumble with every summer storm. Even still, it was a fortunate whore who had use of one, as there were just a few dozen.

  Up and down the street, whores lounged in the crib doorways. Wearing chippies—which, if you wrapped it right, could come off with one tug—they posed seductively, allowing a shoulder to be exposed or showing leg up to the thigh. They called their pitches like the sellers in the French Market.

  “Come looka what I got, Papa!”

  “Ya come to the right door fo’ a good time!”

  “I’ll make ya happy as a pig in slop!”

  “C’mere, handsome, wanna tell ya sumpthin’. . . .”

  Other more desperate whores who didn’t have use of a crib prowled the street, going right up to johns and trying to convince them to just lean up against the side of a building. Mary had never stooped to that, not even in her early days, back when she had to skip supper just to save up and buy herself a kip. She could have saved up more quickly had she not been so high-minded, but the way she saw it, she may be an Alley whore, but at least she practiced her trade behind a closed door and on a bedroll.

  Also, unlike many of the other girls on the Alley, Mary wasn’t hanging on to the notion that some john would fall in love and want to save her. She gave up those daydreams long ago. She’d heard of it happening once or twice and always the man took the girl far from here, where she could start anew as a legitimate woman and wife. But Mary would never leave here without her family, so even if some starry-eyed john were willing to look past her lot in life, he certainly wouldn’t want to claim responsibility for her kin, too.

  Mary’s thoughts traveled to the man with the green eyes and the fluttering sense of what it might be like to really connect with another person. Even though it had only been a fleeting moment or two, it had felt . . . well, nice. And there wasn’t too much in Mary’s day that felt
that way. She tried to imagine a world where her days would only be about catching the genuine affection of a man. But she shook off the notions, too farfetched to even daydream about, and besides, she shouldn’t go soft over a john, even for just a moment. Shouldn’t ever get caught up in a man beyond what he could do for business.

  She continued making her way down the Alley, passing a group of teenaged boys. Barefoot and in knickers and suspenders, they huddled under the gas streetlamp, a small pile of pennies as their wager in a rowdy game of agates. A boy shot crooked, and a bright red marble smacked Mary’s boot.

  “There goes your masher,” one of the boys huffed to the shooter.

  Mary picked up the marble, holding it to the light to see that the red sphere was sliced with a bright yellow orb.

  “Called a Devil’s Eye,” the shooter said.

  Mary twisted the marble, watching it glisten like the stars and wondering how the yellow eye had gotten into the middle of the smooth globe.

  “You can keep it, pretty lady,” the shooter offered. “For a trick.”

  His friend shook his head under a too-big straw hat. “My pop says if you’re gonna touch a whore, make sure it ain’t no Alley skank.”

  Another boy joined in the raking—no matter that his clothes were just as frayed and his feet just as dirty as Mary’s. “I wouldn’t bang her with your dick,” he said, pointing to one of his friends. Then he pointed to another. “And with him pushing.” At this, they all roared with laughter.

  Mary glared at them, tempted to just pocket their curious agate and be on her way. But instead, she gave the Devil’s Eye a good throw back into the circle, knocking the other marbles and ruining their play.

  “Bona fide lavenders!” she shouted and headed off. They hissed and booed after her. Although she wasn’t exactly sure why it was this way, Mary knew it never hurt business to imply that a man had some lavender in him, maybe had certain tendencies, or was a little light on his toes. Chances were, that man would sneak off and come to see her, paying her just to prove her accusations weren’t true. Sometimes he was trying to prove it to himself; but mostly it seemed about the opinion of a stranger, even if it was just proof of his manliness to a lowly whore.

  Mary moved on, passing a young redheaded boy she often saw sitting on a stoop. He took a puff on a cigarette, exhaling through a freckly, button nose. Lazily, he bellowed, “Maw!”

  There was no response, and, from the aimless look on his face, he hadn’t really expected one. He hollered again, this time as if he were being stolen by gypsies. “Ma-a-a-a-w!” But none of the whores even turned—no kid of theirs was no problem of theirs. At last, a woman’s out-of-breath voice screeched from a nearby crib, “Boy, I says a minute!” The child scowled and took another puff of his cigarette. He reminded Mary of how her younger brother, Peter, had looked as a child, with purplish puddles under his eyes and a slight frame that wasn’t frail enough to be called sickly but not solid enough to quit worrying over. Only, Mama would’ve whipped Peter good for smoking. Not that they had any money to spend on a smoke anyway.

  Mary never said a word to any of the children around here—why should she, when every year many wouldn’t make it to spring? Heck, she didn’t pay much mind to the other whores, either, but for a different reason. Sure, plagues hit hard on the Alley, but any whore who’d come of age here was a hearty breed. That wasn’t to say that plenty of women didn’t turn dark and shadowy and then disappear altogether, but you’d not be met kindly if you asked after anyone’s health—might lead them to think you were gunning for their crib or trying to steal johns. Besides, no one had money for a funeral service, let alone a proper burial, anyway. Mary had long ago realized it was best to just let people fade away, to just keep to yourself and know you were the better for not knowing. Nod at familiar faces, but don’t step too close; don’t ask questions or effort over small talk; don’t bother learning anybody’s name.

  It was only a hardened person who could live like this, but it was the way of the Alley, where most people barely had a pot to piss in let alone a window to dump it out of. Here, you couldn’t expect anything from anyone—not when just one trick could be the difference between a square meal or your stomach begging all night. Not when this kind of struggle, this vying with every other soul here, was your daily toil. Not when people could become fierce with desperation, and that was the worst kind of fierceness.

  So it was for the good of all that they followed the unwritten rule of going about your own business and not blinking at anyone else’s. Especially when a whore had a big mess on her hands—like the old bat at the end of the row, calling to Mary.

  “Help a friend?” she pleaded, her brows raising hopefully as Mary approached.

  Looking down, Mary saw the woman’s troubles: out cold in her crib doorway was a round, bald man, spread flat on his back, his face salt white. Mary gave a nervous shake of her head. She didn’t need to be anywhere near a dead john.

  The whore’s expression turned ugly as Mary passed. “Egg-sucking dawg,” she snapped before resuming a wide-legged stance, wrapping her hands around the man’s armpits, and giving a tug as hard as she could. Shaking and heaving under the weight, she slowly dragged the man out the door, his shirt hiking up, his rolls of flesh joggling. She cursed him under her breath. “Devil’s spawn, what nerve to just keel over. Coulda crushed me, ya son of a bitch.”

  As she dragged him, her chippie loosened and eventually slipped around her shoulders, granting the Alley a full view of her saggy breasts. With a breathless grunt, she dropped the body smack in the middle of the dusty, dung-littered banquette. He fell limp and lifeless.

  No sooner did the dust cloud clear than Snitch, a twelve-year-old black boy, inched over to watch. He fancied himself the official eyes and ears of Venus Alley, and unlike the rest of the folks here, he always made it a point to know everyone’s business.

  “Well, ain’t this bold,” Snitch said with an amused shake of his head. He called out, “Times like this ya wish your crib had a back door.” Snitch was flitty as a skeetahawk, darting out of nowhere to circle around everyone’s heads. Mary suspected that Snitch’s antics were going to be the death of him one day.

  A small crowd began to gather, and even Mary couldn’t help but linger. They craned to see if they knew the unfortunate fella splayed in the road, but no one’s eyes flickered with recognition. The old whore tightened her chippie as she inched away from the body, but just as she was about to full-out ditch him, she noticed a gold wedding band. Her agitated face suddenly registered a spark of luck. With a quick motion she squatted down and laid claim to his left hand, trying to inconspicuously wiggle, then twist, then pull the stubborn ring off his chubby finger.

  “Go on now, ain’t nobody watchin’ but us chickens,” Snitch said.

  The whore looked up. “Poor scamp’s ticker just gave out,” she said with a defensive shrug. The ring suddenly released, causing the whore to fall back on her ass with her chippie dropping open again, this time fully. She first slipped the ring into her boot before bothering to cover herself. As she glanced up, she suddenly became aware of all the onlookers. Immediately knowing her predicament wasn’t good, she rolled back onto her knees and solemnly dropped her head over the body. She crossed herself and clasped her hands in prayer. “May he rest in peace,” she muttered.

  Snitch eyed the whore like a wildcat, circling before running off. She nervously called after him, “Snitch, ya keep this to yourself, now!” But he didn’t look back. She grimaced, then gave a swift, frustrated kick to the dead man’s rib cage, her twiggy foot helplessly bouncing off his numb flesh. As she moved away, she carefully swept the ground with her boot, trying to scuff up the lines in the dirt that linked the body to her crib. “Nothin’ happened. Ain’t nothin’ to see,” she called out. “Just a bad ticker.”

  Mary headed on her way, as did the others, their curiosity sated. They all knew that whore would be walking scared for a time. Not that whores and their peet daddie
s weren’t used to walking scared; after all, no one here was working lawfully. Any one of them could be put under by a steep fine, and there was nothing to keep a whore from getting tossed in jail, especially when the city got its seasonal hankering to demonstrate efforts at combating vice.

  Although Mary didn’t have much, she counted honesty as one thing she could call her own. While it seemed insincere for a person of the Underworld to be spouting off about honest living, she was quick to justify her profession. It was of a man’s own free will if he wanted to use her services. Besides, what else was there for someone like her? She wasn’t learned enough to be a teacher, and she didn’t have any land to live off, so what was she supposed to do with the other two mouths she had to feed and a baby on the way?

  She knew there were some whores who never feared God their whole lives—these were the ones who’d saunter right up to a man on the Alley, spit tobacco juice in his eyes to stun him, and then rob him down to his watch fob. That wasn’t her. Yes, she made her living as she did, but she conducted herself fairly and honestly. A person had to find some way to live peaceably with herself, and that was what she abided by.

  As she walked, she avoided the corner of Franklin and Customhouse. If Lobrano was drinking, he was sure to be there, at the Pig Ankle, deepening the groove he’d already worn into the corner barstool. It wasn’t unlike him to spend most of the daylight there, slumped over glass after cloudy glass of absinthe and washing it down with Lithia water until he saw the Green Fairy herself step from the picture on the bottle and come sit right next to him.

  Instead, Mary turned onto Marais Street, on the edge of Venus Alley. The Waffle Wagon was parked up the block, and the sweet aroma tickled her nose. But she had no money to spare for a delight just now, even though her stomach was rumbling. Rather, she focused on the sound of lively piano music, and since it was free to listen, she allowed herself the indulgence. She followed the music to the open window of Pete Lala’s Café, an eating place for black folks. It was a jaunty tune that leapt from inside—the kind that made you unable to keep your feet from tapping. Only, the music suddenly stopped, then started up again, then stopped. Curious, Mary peeked in to see what the racket was about.