by Cari Lynn
The café was as tidy as it was empty. She scanned past half a dozen tables with red-checked cloths, the chairs perfectly pushed in, awaiting the next morning’s customers. At the very back of the room, a young, light-skinned black man sat at an old, upright piano, banging on the keys with a fever. Banging away—until, abruptly, his fingers paused in midair. He urgently turned to scribble on a piece of paper. Then he tapped his pencil, thinking . . . thinking. . . . He took a crimson silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. Then, just like that, he dropped the handkerchief, dropped the pencil, and his fingers flew back to the piano, running up and down the keys.
Mary had never seen a person so full of concentration like that, and his playing, it was some kind of powerful! She closed her eyes and tried swaying to the music, but the kip on her back wasn’t exactly a good dance partner.
When she opened her eyes, the piano player was staring right at her, looking straight into her face as if he knew her. Feeling like a little snoop, Mary’s cheeks reddened. At this, the piano player gave her a wink. She quickly looked away, blushing even more. She knew she should turn and hurry right off, but for some reason her boots felt like lead.
“Come on in and have a listen,” the piano player called.
Mary was immediately struck by how perfect his talk was, as if he were from the North or educated, or maybe both. All she could do was stammer. “I was just dawdlin’. . . . Should be mindin’ my own business.”
But he called to her again. “My name’s Ferdinand.”
Not used to friendly salutations, Mary froze. “I . . . gotta get home,” was all she could spit out.
“You can come by and hear me another time if you’d like,” he offered.
She feebly nodded and forced herself to hurry off. It wasn’t until she was down the block that her sense kicked back in. Clearly, she had no manners. Here was someone being nothing but friendly to her, and she . . . well, maybe she would go by one day to hear him play again. But she quickly stopped herself. That was a Negro establishment, and she had no place there. And she probably shouldn’t be listening to their music, either, although she wasn’t exactly sure why. Silly girl, she scolded herself. She had troubles enough without being friendly with a colored fellow.
It was late now and growing dark, so she hurried her pace, not wanting anyone to worry after her. Still, her thoughts kept drifting back to the piano player. He was handsome, with a milkiness to him, a Creole, she bet. She could hear the music in her head, and she timed it with the rhythm of her boots on the dusty ground, and then with the slapping of the kip against her backside, and then with the coins jingling in her pocket. Ah, that damn picayune.
She wondered what Lobrano would say if she told him she’d earned a worthless picayune? Her stomach churned at the thought, and she picked up her stride, not wanting to encounter her number one trouble when he was lit and vulgar.
“Please, Saint Teresa,” she said aloud, “see me home tonight without a sign of him.”
CHAPTER TWO
Mary’s walk spanned clear across town, to low ground, where houses didn’t have plank floors, just the trodden earth. As she walked, the clouds thickened and a fog began to roll in, and it was fortunate she knew the paths well, for when the moon hid like that you could hardly see past your own feet. As her eyes became less and less useful in the growing darkness, her other senses heightened. She noticed, with each step, how sore her thighs were, achy and tight from a long day. And she noticed she smelled ripe, even with the rose oil. Thoughts of a soak in a hot bath and washing off the sweat of johns already began to soothe her.
The ground was soggy, and her boots made a sucking sound as she brought up each heel. The land was no longer the swamp of her mama’s time, but it could get soaked around here when the storms came. After a hard rain, you’d wake up some mornings to find among the street litter rotted caskets and even human bones, washed up from the nearby paupers’ cemetery. Everyone in New Orleans knew that nothing stayed buried for long in such moist ground, but what were poor folk who couldn’t afford an aboveground tomb to do? Groundwater or not, they still wanted to respect their dead. So they tried weighting the casket with stones or even burying the body with pebbles, but it didn’t much matter. Sooner or later, it would float right back to the surface, as if the ground had absorbed the soul but rejected the shell and spit it right back where it came from.
Unless it was storming Mary didn’t mind this long walk, for it gave her time alone, just herself and her thoughts. Little Mary, mind wanderin’, Mama would always say. It was true, when left to herself she allowed her head to travel beyond her small world. Of course, she had never set foot outside New Orleans, so all she knew of the world beyond was from the newspapers and the few books she’d managed to read. But she had come across enough to compel her to keep a running list in her head of all the things she wanted to do someday. She frequently recited it to herself but never spoke of it to another person:
I want to ride on a train someday.
I want to get all dressed up with a corset and velvet gloves and have my picture taken and put in a fancy frame.
I want to sit in the balcony at the French Opera House and feel shivers from the beautiful voices.
She decided that she could add a new entry right now: I want to have a man look at me as deeply as the green-eyed john did today. Only, a man with a genuine heart and with nothing messed in his head. She sighed. That one was a daydream, really . . . maybe even more of a wish. If there were such a man, he wouldn’t be in her world, wouldn’t want to have anything to do with someone of her ilk. Little Mary, mind wanderin’. If wishes were birds, Mama would say, then beggars would fly.
A light up ahead flickered through the fog: at last, her little home. It wasn’t much, just one room and an outhouse. Some folks in other parts of town would call it squalor, but Mary knew nothing else. To her, this was what home felt like. Her younger brother, Peter, made sure to keep the bin stocked with firewood, and his wife, Charlotte, had taken care to sew pretty lace curtains, and they all took turns scrubbing the place so it was always spick-and-span.
When Mary thought of those two her heart yearned for all the things she’d like to give them someday. They were so eager and well meant, just starting out together. Peter was seventeen and had always been sickly until love brought color to his sallow cheeks. An honest, unassuming sort, he was reliable as the sunrise. Charlotte, only sixteen, was the kind of girl Mary secretly wished she were like, all maple-sugar sweetness, so much so that even Charlotte’s eyes smiled. Poor thing had never uttered an unkind word, and yet, the world was unkind to her when she lost all her relations a couple of years ago to the grippe. She and Peter clung to each other, trying to find their way together. Mary knew they deserved better, and, more important, the baby deserved better.
A rustling in the leaves startled her, sending goose pimples crawling over her skin. She peered around her kip but couldn’t see more than a foot away, let alone check if anyone was following her. She felt about for a rock she could wrap her fist around, just in case, when suddenly, a dark figure rushed at her. Hands clutched her waist, pushing her hard against a tree. The rock fell from her grip.
“Scared ya, sissy!” a man hissed.
Immediately, Mary recognized the voice—and the sour stench.
“Damn you, Lobrano!” she shouted, swiping her fists through the air.
Lobrano’s hands grabbed at her hungrily. “Where’s my day’s earnin’s?” he demanded.
Mary gave him a shove. “Will you let me put my kip down? And come near the light so I don’t go dropping money we’ll ain’t never find.”
They moved closer to the lamplit house, and Mary unloaded her kip, then pulled a wad of cash from her cleavage. Lobrano watched with hawk’s eyes as she counted off half and handed it over.
“You sure that be the full of it?” he sneered.
With a shift of the clouds, the moonlight illuminated them. Mary stared straight at his sunken,
greasy face, her gray eyes unflinching. “’Course it is,” she said firmly. “I’d never skim on you.”
Lobrano studied her with a wary squint. He knew those mysterious eyes well, knew how there was chatter going on behind them, a woman’s brain click, click, clicking away. This was what unhinged him most, and Lord knew he’d rather be all sorts of things than intimidated by a woman. It made his chest feel tight and uneasy, and the only way to dull that was to remind himself of his power.
He took a step closer to Mary. She stood as tall as his collarbone, and he liked feeling that his frame, no matter how scrawny, towered over her. He ran his hand down her leg, not caring that she flinched.
“I’m sore, and it’s late,” she said quietly. “And they’re expecting me.”
“Forget them vultures,” he snapped. “Leechin’ off every cent. Your brother’s a man now. Don’t look like a man, that weak sissy, but he can fend for himself.” Lobrano leaned into her, pinning her against the tree with one hand as he clumsily tried to undo his belt with the other. Mary closed her eyes, knowing that when he was like this, it was no use to protest. It would be over soon.
“So how come that Negra doin’ better’n you?” he asked, still fumbling with his belt.
“’Cause Beulah’s got better shifts. How am I supposed to make good money sharing space?”
“You know damn well the coloreds come at night,” he said, his spit catching Mary’s face. “You gettin’ sad enough that you’d serve a colored? That what you’re saying?”
It occurred to Mary that this could be her moment. A hundred times to herself she’d rehearsed what to say. Oh Saint Teresa, Mary silently prayed, let him still be high on absinthe! She gulped air, then as steadily as she could muster, she said it: “I need my own crib.”
Her words hung in the air, and she could feel the muscles in her face tighten as she waited for him to answer.
He dropped his trousers. “Can’t,” he said flatly.
“You know I can make money,” she pleaded.
“Anderson’s got us all by the balls.”
“But I’m not old and sagged. I got all my teeth. I can make good money!”
“I says no.”
Mary’s jaw clenched. She hated how he talked to her like she was still a child, how he talked like he controlled her. She knew she should just stop there and that to push more would be asking for Lobrano to erupt. But she always gave in, always stopped and cowered from him. Her thoughts darted to Charlotte, to Peter, to the baby coming into this world. And she decided here and now to test Lobrano.
“What if,” she said coyly, sidling up to him, “what if some other pimp wants to get me my own crib?”
He let go of her waist and grabbed her by the wrists, pushing her hard against the tree. He put his face right up next to hers. “You’re so full o’ shit, your eyes be turnin’ brown,” he hissed. “You and your brother’d be in the ground years ago if not for me. You’d be nothin’. Who the fuck’s Mary Deubler? Nobody, that’s who.” Disgusted, he stepped back and let her arms drop.
Mary rubbed her wrists, sure to be bruised tomorrow. There was no denying that a part of what he said was true—maybe she and Peter would have starved, and somebody would be stepping over her bones when the earth spit them out. But she’d been paying Lobrano for years; was she expected to owe him for the rest of her life? She stepped toward the door of her house.
“And go take a bath,” he yelled after her. “All that perfume don’t cover the cunt underneath.”
Mary wanted to scream at him that she had an excuse for the way she smelled—that it was her job to lie under men, even if they were odorous, and it was her job to make them heated. What was Lobrano’s excuse for his putrid stink? But she forced herself to say nothing, and instead slipped quietly into her house, where, with a stifled sigh, she bolted the door.
The house was toasty from a crackling fire, and Mary was heartened to see Peter still awake, leaning over the hearth, shifting the embers.
“Hiya, Josie,” he said quietly, calling Mary by the nickname he’d used since he was a little boy. He turned to face her, but the smile that usually came so easily to brighten his face now seemed strained.
“She okay?” Mary whispered, nervously looking to the corner of the room, where Charlotte, flushed and sweaty, was asleep on the cot. Mary hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until, at Peter’s nod, her chest sank with relief.
“Don’t know how she’s still sleepin’, though,” he whispered. “That baby be kickin’ so hard, nearly knocked me outta bed.”
Mary smiled at their sweet girl, her dark hair clinging in damp clumps to her heart-shaped face. She looked still a child herself, with thick lashes and a dainty, upturned nose. Her dry, delicate lips moved faintly and silently from the midst of whatever she was dreaming.
“Hard to believe that tiny thing can have a belly so swollen,” Mary said as she leaned her kip against the wall. She then went to the only piece of furniture under their roof that held any meaning for her: a cherrywood bureau that had been Mama’s. It wasn’t much to look at, especially not for anyone used to fine furnishings, but it did have pretty carvings on its four corners of small bouquets strung together with ribbons. Mary gave the bureau a little shove, then squatted down behind it.
From a hole in the floorboards, she removed a cigar box, its wood smooth and worn. A picture was revealed as she tipped the lid. A scene of a yellow streetcar, the A-B-C line, which, so the box told her, traveled to places she’d never heard of—Akron, Bedford, and Cleveland. She wasn’t sure what a streetcar had to do with a five-cent cigar, but she’d decided it was a cheery picture. From her cleavage, she took what was left of her money and placed it in the box. She liked stowing her earnings under the streetcar. It reminded her that there was a whole world out there, that Venus Alley was just a pinprick on a map of the country and that with enough money, someday, she could go see places, she could go to Akron, Bedford, or Cleveland.
The box was weighty in her hands, and she felt awash in reassurance as if the contents of that cigar box were the sole judge of her worth—and her worth was growing. Placing the box back in the floor, she slid the bureau to cover it.
“I have grits warming,” Peter whispered. Mary nodded heartily, then bent down to remove a wad of cash she’d hidden in her boot. She handed Peter the cash. But instead of reaching for it, he just stared as if it were tainted. “Don’t you ever worry that Lobrano will find out?” he asked.
For several months now, ever since Charlotte became sure she was with child, Mary had been skimming. Why now, she wondered, was Peter suddenly wary of the extra money?
“He doesn’t count how many tricks I turn, and he’s no way of knowing what tips I get,” Mary said, urging the money toward him.
Reluctantly, Peter pocketed the cash. Mary noticed he was fidgeting with his watch, clicking the lid open and snapping it shut the way he did when worries were turning over in his head. But she knew to just let him be, that he’d tell her soon enough what was getting at him.
He set a simmering tin of grits before Mary, and she inhaled the steam. As she ate, she tried to ignore the watch cover’s rhythmic snap-click, snap-click. Mama had rescued the watch from discard by a john, and Peter had carried it ever since he was a little boy and it had been as big as his hand. It remained the nicest thing Peter had ever owned, even though it was permanently frozen at half past two.
Finally, Peter offered up his thoughts. “Lobrano was makin’ a racket out there,” he said, then quickly busied himself again with the hearth, so as not to face Mary. “I could hear how he was talking at you.”
Shame landed like a stone in Mary’s stomach. Out of respect, they usually avoided such talk. They all knew her work was crude, and there was no reason to go and speak outrightly about it. They talked of her work the same as they did of his selling potatoes in the market or of Charlotte’s seamstress work. Just jobs that put food in their bellies and shoes on their feet and kept them in cl
othes that weren’t too tattered, which was more than a lot of folks could claim.
But Peter continued on, troubled in a way Mary couldn’t remember seeing him. “What’s gonna happen when there’s a child around?”
“Why are you harpin’ like this, Peter? Things’ll be different soon enough.”
“Different how?” he demanded.
Mary brought the cup of grits to her lips and let a warm, buttery mouthful slide down the back of her throat. She could feel Peter’s eyes on her and had noticed the deepening purplish shadows, just like when he was a child.
“Lobrano’s gonna get me my own crib,” she said staunchly, and as the words hovered in the air, she wanted so badly for them to be true.
Peter’s shoulders drooped, and he stared blankly into the flames. “You keep tellin’ that to yourself,” he mumbled. “Might as well tell it to a fence post.”
Mary ignored him. All she wanted was to savor the last mouthfuls of grits and enjoy the peace of the night with no one grabbing at her, no one wanting anything from her.
But, uncharacteristically, Peter wasn’t going to let their talk taper off. He turned to face Mary. “You keep tellin’ that to yourself,” he said again, only this time his voice rose above their respectful hush. It also wasn’t like Peter to raise his voice, especially not to his older sister. But he was staring at her squarely, his jaw quivering. “You gonna tell that to the baby when it comes?”
Caught off guard, Mary recoiled. She could feel her own temper rising at his insolence. It was she who’d been caring for him since he was born, and she who brought in most of the money; he did honest work, but a whore earned more any day of the week than a potato seller. She’d already held her tongue enough times today, and, even more, what was Peter wanting from her anyway? She was doing everything she could to save money for his baby.