by Cari Lynn
She wandered off, but found her feet taking her to the only place that seemed to make sense. She passed women carrying baskets atop their heads, passed Clementine selling rice fritters, and walked straight into the cigar shop.
The front room was empty, and Mary made the rash decision to boldly step, uninvited, behind the velvet curtain. Moving cautiously down the hallway, she saw Eulalie’s door was open. She peeked in.
Her back to the door, Eulalie was meticulously stitching a taxidermy cat, poised as if hissing. Mary cowered at the sight of it.
“Too late to turn back now,” Eulalie murmured as if she had eyes in the back of her head of thick, wild hair. “So you returned to Eulalie at the waning moon after all? It’s a peculiar moon month. That milk moon will be up to her majestic tricks soon. Playin’ her little hiding game. Just you wait and see.”
Eulalie’s talk sounded like gibberish to Mary. She hadn’t come here because of the moon. With a deep breath, she took a step into the cramped room. It smelled strong of musk and grass. “Miss Echo, did you come to my bedside last night?”
Eulalie held a magnifying glass to inspect a stitch on the cat’s belly. “We must make a sacrifice in Congo Square,” she replied. “Tonight at dusk.” Still, she didn’t turn to face Mary.
“Miss Echo, I need to know,” Mary insisted. “I saw some wild sights in my dreams and I need to know if any are true.”
“See me there tonight, at the scarred oak. Bring three silver dimes to put in the tree’s hollow.”
“I didn’t come here looking to make a sacrifice—”
“Fine, then,” Eulalie said, dismissive. She returned to her stitching on the cat. Mary waited uncomfortably, and as the seconds of silence ticked away she couldn’t exactly figure out why she wasn’t turning to leave.
Finally, Eulalie piped up. “If your mind sees fit to change, remember to bring a little offerin’ to the queen Marie Laveau. She guides Eulalie from the spirit world.”
Feeling empty and drained, Mary turned to go but was startled by the screeching of a chair as Eulalie flipped around to face her. She held up a bony finger.
“The underworld is rising. The time o’ queens be comin’, and you, child, must be ready.”
Ready for what? Mary wondered. But she let Eulalie’s words resonate. Here she was, about to be stripped of her crib, her life savings, and her means of making a living, and if Eulalie thought an offering to her spirit guide would help, what more did Mary have to lose? She flinched at how to-the-letter the answer suddenly was: nothing. She was as low as anyone could be, so why should she fear anything anymore?
She mustered up a voice. “What do you think Miss Laveau might want for an offering?”
Eulalie gave her a tiny smile. “Oh, Marie? She like a tin pail o’ crayfish bisque . . . but not too red hot, too red give the queen some nasty bout of indigestion.”
Across Rampart Street was the notorious Congo Square, a clearing bordered by thick woods, and the place where, during slave times, Africans could gather legally. In the old days, it was every Sunday afternoon that black folks would congregate to sell or trade the handful of goods they were permitted to make on their own—or those they made in secret. But it was during the nighttime when Congo Square really came alive with chanting, drumming, stomping, and pulsating bodies and ritualistic ceremonies that made the place sacred.
Mary had heard Beulah talk of going to Congo Square, and how she and her kin would raise a ruckus there until all hours of the night. Beulah called the square holy ground, and Mary always reckoned she’d meant holy as in church. But now, after her dealings with Eulalie Echo, Mary suspected Beulah meant holy as in black magic.
With one leaded step after the other, carefully steadying the offering of a pail of soup, Mary wondered if the bump on her head had caused her good sense to get jumbled. She approached the clearing and sloughed off a chill as she scanned the square. Her eyes quickly found the unmistakable gnarled oak Eulalie had described.
Slowly, she walked toward the tree and set the pail at its twisted roots. From her pocket, she took three dimes. Three precious dimes. Even more precious now that her cigar box of savings was nearly empty. She envisioned the picture of the train on the box but instead of traveling to interesting, unknown places, she imagined it to have no steam, barely inching along until it could inch no farther and came to a whining standstill.
“Am I crazy, Saint Teresa?” Mary said aloud. Three dimes. That was a pound of butter. A steak, maybe two small steaks even. And here she was about to trade sustenance for what could likely be the work of the Devil? But Eulalie’s words echoed in her head: The time o’ queens be comin’, and you, child, must be ready.
Mary knew the truth, that a steak or a pound of butter wasn’t going to make a damn bit of difference in the long run if something big didn’t change. Angel or devil, if Mary couldn’t keep working, that baby would come into the world hopeless.
Ceremoniously, she placed a dime in the hollow and announced her wish. “Good fortune for Peter.” She wished upon the next dime. “Good health for Charlotte.” And then she studied the third, lingering over it, lingering over the wish for herself.
“Flames!”
Mary jumped. There was Eulalie, sitting just inches away, as if she’d been there the whole time.
“Flames, for you,” Eulalie said. “That fire in your belly. Ask it for yourself. Go on, ask Marie Laveau.”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Come now, don’t want Miss Laveau’s supper goin’ cold.” Eulalie reached toward the bisque and dipped a finger in to taste. “Just the way she likes it.”
“I don’t know what to ask for,” Mary said timidly.
“Ask for what you want. Ask Marie, the high Voodoo priestess who guides Eulalie from the spirit world. Marie is power. When she did rituals on Saint John’s Eve, thousands of folks traversed for days just to take sight of her.”
“This ain’t temptin’ the underworld, is it?”
Eulalie let out a cackle. “The underworld? Child, you are the underworld.”
Mary realized her knees were trembling. “You’re scaring me some, Miss Eulalie.”
“Fear makes change. Isn’t it change you’re after?”
Mary desperately nodded. She screwed up her courage and wrapped her fist around the dime. “I gotta find my own way,” she said, her voice tiny, and she moved to throw the dime in the hollow, but Eulalie stopped her.
“You’re talkin’ to the queen! Ask big, ask for real.”
Mary bit her lip. Closing her eyes, she thought of the Countess’s girls at the market, pink-cheeked and clean and happy and making business with no shame. Making business by throwing a fancy-dress party, for Lord’s sake! From somewhere deep within her chest, Mary found her voice. She declared, “I want to work in a proper house, on a proper mattress, making a fair living.” She watched the dime disappear into the dark hollow.
“Queen Marie Laveau, please hear this child!” Eulalie called, pressing her palm to Mary’s forehead, forcing her to kneel. “Danga moune de te! Canga do ki li! Mother Haiti, Mother Congo, receive her!” Reaching both hands to the sky, Eulalie began to tremble as if a current were traveling through her. “Oh holy day! Rise up, child!”
Mary looked to her awkwardly, not sure what she was supposed to do.
“Rise!”
Shakily, Mary stood.
“The time o’ queens is comin’!” Eulalie writhed as she stretched her arms higher and higher toward the sky. Her body quivered, writhing more and more as if she were having a spell. And then she dropped, wilting as if the current had been suddenly cut off. “Leave the dimes in the hollow,” she said flatly. She picked up the bisque and sauntered off.
Mary stared after her, wondering what was supposed to happen now. She didn’t feel any different. The three dimes didn’t magically turn into three hundred. Was she supposed to go home and wait for the lightning? The lightning that was going to burn down the Alley but spare just her cri
b?
A few paces away, Eulalie paused. She looked back offhandedly. “And Saturday night,” she said, “at the Countess’s party, just go ’round to the back door. The colored folks’ll let you in.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Countess’s party? There was no way, black magic or not, that the likes of an Alley whore would be welcomed at the Countess’s party. Mary might as well show up knocking at the front door of the president of the United States’s house for all it mattered. And yet, she found herself compelled by Eulalie’s orders, even though she was certain she’d become a laughingstock, booted out onto the street where she belonged.
Her worn boots picked their way along the cobblestones. They seemed to have a mind of their own, these boots, desperately coaxing her along Basin Street, past ornate, looming Victorian mansions that must have been grand in their day but were now left to crumble and rot in the unfashionable back of town. Her heel stuck between a gap in the stones and she stumbled, catching the hem of her pale blue dress. She heard the sound of fabric ripping and she felt herself well up—this dress couldn’t stand to be any more tattered.
She’d bought the dress from a whore on the Alley called Birdleg Nora for the special occasion of Peter and Charlotte’s marriage. Birdleg Nora had probably stolen the dress, or at best was gifted it by a john, but it was relatively high style, with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a sashed waist, and she’d needed money fast. Mary got it for a steal. She’d matched the dress with striped silk stockings, which were all the latest rave from Paris—Mary knew this because she always heard the vendors telling the high-society ladies, who would pay an unbelievable two dollars a pair! Of course, Mary hadn’t bought the stockings; rather, one day she overheard an angry lady yelling at a shopkeeper that her stockings hadn’t even lasted through one washing. Come closing time, Mary lingered around the rubbish and, sure enough, there was the returned pair, with just a small run that could easily be stitched up.
The tiny wedding had been held at Holy Trinity Cathedral, with a young priest agreeing to bless the union only because, when Charlotte’s parents were alive, her family had attended regular mass there. Since the priest had never seen Peter’s face in his pews, he’d sped through an abridged version of the marriage ceremony, all the while tossing disapproving glances at the only other attendant, Mary. Unless God really did speak to him, Mary wasn’t sure how a man of the cloth would know she made her way on the Alley, especially since she was dressed in the fashion of a society girl.
Still, his stare had sent a prickly rash down Mary’s chest, and the dress’s lace collar suddenly felt like a choke hold. Mary hated the notion that her lot in life was already tarnishing the new life her brother and Charlotte were about to begin. And she resented the thought that if ever there was a man who would want to marry her, he wouldn’t be able to do so under the eyes of God. The moment she returned home from the church, she tore off the dress, convincing herself it was a relief there’d never be an occasion to wear it again.
She’d found the dress in her bureau drawer, wadded up, just as she’d left it. After a good ironing, it was wearable. But as soon as she shimmied the dress over her head and buttoned herself up, she could once again feel prickly heat flush her chest and belly. It was as if the dress had kept her shame within its lace and seams all this time.
Waiting until Peter and Charlotte were out, she changed and then hurried from the house, not wanting them to glimpse her as they’d most surely inquire about the dress, the silk stockings, and that she’d braided a ribbon into her hair and dabbed on her rose oil more generously than usual. The last thing Mary wanted was to reveal her farfetched longing to become one of the Countess’s girls, and she couldn’t bear the thought of Peter and Charlotte asking all sorts of hopeful questions she couldn’t answer.
Now she tucked the dragging seam into her boot and continued on, but with each step closer, doubts pelted her, reminding her that bastard girls who made their way in a crib should know their place. And her place had been set the day Lobrano sent her, with a push, into the middle of the Alley. She didn’t want to think back to that day, but the memory was suddenly with her, spilling out like a cracked egg. How she’d stood there trembling as Lobrano shouted, “Virgin! That’s right, bona fide virgin! Pure as rain!” She’d wanted to disappear right then and there, and if not for little Peter, eyes hollow and sunken, grasping on to her leg, she would have run, would have run away from there and away from Lobrano. But instead she remained frozen as men jeered while passing by. A barkeep she recognized from a nearby saloon presented Lobrano with two dollar bills. He had always leered at Mary through the saloon window when Lobrano left her and Peter waiting outside while he sidled up for a drink. Now the barkeep’s hand was on her shoulder, leading her away. She didn’t dare look back at little Peter as she and the man disappeared behind the saloon. He forced himself on her and covered her mouth in case she tried to scream. But she wouldn’t scream; she knew better. Screaming would only add on a beating. She was twelve years old.
The sound of reckless merriment grew closer as Mary saw Lulu’s glowing bordello ahead. The opulence took her breath away, most especially the lit stained-glass archway of LULU WHITE that fanned the door. She’d never seen anything so dramatic. Stifling back all the voices in her head telling her she wasn’t worthy of even standing on this plot of land, she allowed herself to become momentarily hypnotized by the allure of what possibilities lay beyond that door. If only she could catch the Countess’s favor . . . then her life could change in an instant.
After a deep breath, she headed around back, just as Eulalie had instructed.
The kitchen was in chaotic swing. Addie tilted a bottle of sherry into a cast-iron pot that nearly bubbled over with turtle stew. Then she moved over to a large pile of oysters on the half shell and, as delicately as her haste would allow, placed them onto china plates. Boo frantically poured Champagne into flutes that were quickly whisked away by the waitstaff. All the while, a young black boy scurried underfoot, collecting scraps that had fallen to the floor.
“You take those droppin’s out by the alley, Little Louie,” Addie said to the boy. He opened the back door to reveal Mary, her hand hovering in the air, ready to knock.
“Miss Addie, there’s a lady there,” Little Louie said.
Addie turned her head to glimpse a white girl. “Ma’am, the front door’s ’round front.”
Sheepishly, Mary said, “I was told to come ’round back.”
“Confused, girl? Ya look like you’re here for the party. . . .”
“I am.” Mary nodded eagerly.
Addie gave a shrug; she didn’t have time for this. “Well, you got empty hands. Take this tray on your way in.” She whisked Mary inside, handed her a tray with Champagne glasses, and gave her a push toward the party.
The lavish parlor was packed and swinging. Mary gripped the tray of clinking glasses as she shuffled forward into the crowd. A line of topless can-can girls weaved around the room, singing, “I kick up one leg, then the other. Between the two I earn my living!”
From Mary’s tray, the Champagne glasses were plucked up, with the last glass in the hand of none other than Countess Lulu White. Face-to-face, Lulu stared at Mary, raising a perfectly drawn eyebrow. Mary opened her mouth to explain, but nothing came out.
“Countess!” a voice called from across the crowd. “Countess! We’re toasting!” Forced to turn her gaze, Lulu looked to see an already tipsy Mayor Flower sloppily pouring a bottle of Champagne over a pyramid of glasses. “Come, Countess, let’s toast!” he bellowed.
Lulu gave Mary a steely, final glance, then, with a dismissive pivot, she glided off to the center of the room, where she struck a stunning pose in her elaborate crimson gown and diamond-and-feather tiara. Joining her was none other than Tom Anderson, handsome and debonair as could be in a top hat and tails. The mayor handed Tom a glass, then grabbed one for himself, licking the dribbles of Champagne from the rim. “Monsieur Fleur!” Lulu reprimanded.
“Cut the music!” Flower shouted, and the piano went quiet. At the thought of a piano player, Mary craned to look across the room, her eyes finding a shiny grand piano. She sucked in her breath with the hope that it might be the player from Lala’s café. But instead, an expressionless white man with gray hair sat at the bench, looking stiff and out of place. Mary drooped a little with disappointment—how nice it would’ve been to have a familiar, welcoming face.
“My dear friends,” Anderson boomed, commanding everyone’s attention. “This is a great honor. As you know, I don’t believe in sumptuary laws. I think it degrades a citizen to take away the privilege of choosing for himself between right and wrong.”
Flower piped up, “It’s indeed every man’s God-given right to choose wrong!”
At this, Lulu nudged Flower out of the way, repositioning herself front and center, lest she allow him to embarrass himself—or, more important, her—any further.
“We New Orleanians are making history tonight,” Lulu said, dramatically enunciating each word. “Mademoiselles, come, gather ’round me.” Twenty of Lulu’s girls stepped forward with the swishing of satin, taffeta, bustles, and lace, the twinkling of jewels, and the swelling of cleavage. Lots of cleavage.
Lulu continued, “We, the demimonde, are at long last coming into power. Embrace your sisters and recognize this remarkable achievement.” The girls linked arms, some leaned their heads against one another’s shoulders. “Generations from now, women with money to their name, with rights on their side, and with esteemed societal standing will speak of this precise moment, with immense gratitude . . . to us.”
Mary found herself moved by the Countess’s words and noted the same reaction in her girls as they clasped hands and tapped their hearts.
Lulu raised her glass. “Gentlemen and ladies . . .”
As if that were their cue, her girls—sentimentality quickly forgotten—catcalled, shimmied, and hoisted up their breasts as if offering them to the crowd.