by Peter Quinn
“Ain’t you from Niggertown?” he said.
“Midian’s Well.”
“Yeah, Niggertown.”
The forbidden word. Sometimes, alone in their play, the children of Midian hurled it at one another. Nigger, nigger, nigger. The men of Midian never seemed to notice when the whites used it. Their faces were impassive. But the children got a beating when they used it.
The man took a canister from beneath the counter and asked her how much she wanted. She put the nickel down, and he poured some of the contents into a small cloth pouch and drew it closed.
“Don’t go tellin’ that head nigger up there what I done. I don’t want him comin’ here threatenin’ to cut my ears off.” He put the pouch in her hand. She juggled it in her palm. The first purchase she had ever made, and in a white man’s store. The Reverend Mr. Enders would make her stand before the pulpit and use her as an example of the wickedness and faithlessness that existed even among the chosen of the Lord. Her father would fall on his knees and pray. He would call out the name of his dead wife and hide his face in his hands.
She tossed the tobacco to the man in the boat.
“Where are you sailing to?” she said.
He motioned over his shoulder with his thumb. “The city.”
“Take me.”
“You got family there?”
“My grandmother. She’s sick real bad, and my poppa doesn’t want me to go, but I got to see her before she dies.”
He stood with one hand on his hip and one hand shielding his eyes. “You ain’t foolin’ me, girl. I’ll take you along, but you ain’t foolin’ me.”
“I ain’t lyin’.” She looked down at the gray planks, the green sea visible between them. Speaking each line with the same tone of sincerity, brazenly, no fear in her voice, looking into their eyes: tricks she hadn’t learned yet.
He held up a hand. “Get in,” he said. She took his hand and climbed into the boat. “We’re goin’ to the Fulton Market. After that you’re on your own.”
Eliza hadn’t eaten for two days when the vegetable seller found her poking around in the garbage and grabbed her by the neck. “Why, you little nigger,” the woman said, “what are you lurking around here for?”
It was early morning, and the market was filling up with customers. Eliza squirmed. She tried to shake herself loose, but the woman only tightened her grip, pulling Eliza along the stalls until they reached the end of the row. “You back there, Effie?”
A soiled blanket that served as a curtain parted, and a small, fierce-looking black woman with a bandanna tied around her head came out. “Who da sonofabitch makin’ all dat noise?” she said in a loud voice.
“This belong to you?” the woman holding Eliza asked.
“Why you think every nigger in dis city belong to me? Every piece of white trash belong to you? Hell, no, but anytime some nigger be caught doin’ anythin’ at all, dey brings ’em right to Effie Blanchard like I’m momma to every livin’, breathin’ one of ’em.” She was talking at the top of her voice, and people were coming over to see what the fuss was about. She was as short as a child, and her eyes bulged out of a deep-brown face that was webbed with wrinkles. She put her hand under Eliza’s chin and moved it back and forth.
“What mischief you up to?”
“She was rummaging in my refuse pile,” the vegetable seller said.
Mrs. Blanchard suddenly dug her fingers into the sides of Eliza’s cheeks and screamed in her face, “Stay outta other people’s garbage, you hear?”
Eliza began to cry. She tried to stop, but couldn’t. She was weak from hunger and filled with fear. From the moment she had landed at the bottom of Fulton Street, the recklessness of what she had done had overwhelmed her. She sat on a piling and watched the hubbub on the piers, white people everywhere, men cursing and groaning as they loaded and unloaded cargo, carts moving quickly up and down the street, their iron-rimmed wheels making an earsplitting noise. A man came over to where she was sitting and said, “Move it, nigger, we got a ship comin’ in here.” She crossed the street and stood against the wall of a building. A man stopped and asked, “How much, sister?”
She smiled. “Sister” was what the Reverend Mr. Enders called all the women in Midian’s Well. The man stood in front of her. “Well,” he said, “how much? I sure as hell know you ain’t givin’ it away.”
“How much for what?”
“Nothin’ exotic. Just a straight lay.”
“A straight lay?”
“You got it, sister.” He took her by the hand. She pulled it away. “You’re new to this business, ain’t you?” he asked.
“I’m waiting for my mother,” she said.
“And I’m Jesus Christ.” He grabbed her hand again. “Listen, I’m gonna introduce ya to some people who can help. Believe me, ya not gonna last long otherwise. They’ll set ya up in a room, make it easy.” He started to tow her along.
She yelled so loudly she hurt her throat. He dropped her hand. “Hey, ain’t no need for that.” She screamed again. Nobody stopped, but some people walking by turned and looked.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “You’re gonna learn the hard way.” He left her there.
That night, Eliza slept in an alley. She didn’t awake until the sun was already up and the noise of carts and voices was impossible to ignore. The sidewalks were so crowded that people walked in the street, dodging the growing crush of vehicles. Eliza walked out of the alley, unsure of which way to go. People bumped into her and pushed her out of the way. There were peddlers everywhere, and hordes of bedraggled newcomers walked up from the docks carrying bundles and trunks. These people were set upon by packs of boys with handcarts who took their possessions, often wrestling with them to do so, and led them to the rickety-looking boardinghouses that lined the side streets. Eliza wandered around the whole day, afraid to stand still, letting the flow of the traffic move her along. She wanted to strike out for some other part of the city, the marble and granite streets of her imagination, the porticoes she had seen in the frontispiece of the family Bible, Saint Paul preaching in Athens, the paving stones immaculately clean, tall, slender trees ringing the hills in the distance. But this squalid dockside was the only part of the city she had seen, and as terrifying as it was, it was at least familiar and less terrifying than what lay beyond.
She slept a second night in the same alley, and in the morning, while rummaging in a pile of half-rotted vegetables, was grabbed by the neck and hauled to Mrs. Blanchard. When Mrs. Blanchard stopped screaming, the vegetable seller walked away and left Eliza standing there. Mrs. Blanchard walked behind the curtain. She came out with a box of fish.
“Stop your cryin’,” she said in a softer voice. “Go home to your momma, if you got one.” She adjusted a metal scale that hung by a chain from a rafter. She went behind the curtain and brought out another large box of fish, their dead eyes open and fixed on some distant point. Eliza wiped away her tears.
“Where you from?”
Eliza didn’t answer.
“You got a tongue?”
Eliza stuck it out.
“Don’t be silly with me!” Mrs. Blanchard’s voice rose again. She came out from behind the stall. “Now, I axed you a question.” She was at least three or four inches shorter than Eliza and had to stand on the tips of her toes to put her face into Eliza’s.
“I’m from Jersey.”
“What you doin’ here?”
“I ran away from home.”
“Well run back just as fast as you can, ‘cause you don’t belongs here. Go back and stop worryin’ your momma and pappy. Ain’t nothin’ here for you but trouble, and plenty of dat.”
Mrs. Blanchard went back to work. The market was flush with people, the aisles filled. She took a long sharp knife from a sheath beneath her apron and began cutting fish, chopping off head and tail with quick strokes, slicing open the belly and back, peeling out the fillets, laying them on a bed of salt, and spreading more salt on top. She had the last
stall in the market, and Eliza stood in the space next to the wall to keep out of the way. Mrs. Blanchard ignored her.
Set into the wall was an iron grate that was lifted up and hooked to the roof like the hatch on a ship. Outside, in the street, stood a man on a box, his back to the grate. He had a Bible in his hand, and in front of him was another man handing out pamphlets.
A small crowd gathered. The man on the box began to preach. He had some of the same sentiments as the Reverend Mr. Enders but none of his eloquence, none of the fiery lakes and skies dripping with the burning tears of a merciful God forced by the wickedness of men to wreak acts of vengeance. The man raised his voice to imitate the anger of the Lord, but it conveyed only noise, not the soul-seated anger that resonated in the Reverend Mr. Enders’s speech or even the passionate annoyance of Mrs. Blanchard’s. And then, suddenly, from inside the stall, came a thunderous explosion that startled Eliza and echoed across the market.
“Fresh fish!” Mrs. Blanchard said in a voice that seemed beyond the capacities of her slight build. “I gots dem all!”
The tract men, the retailers of the word of God, stopped their preaching and pamphleteering, and turned and looked. The rest of the market went about its business.
“Fresh fish, right from de water! No fresher anywhere ‘cept in the sea!” Mrs. Blanchard chopped and cut as she shouted, barely pausing to draw a breath.
“All de creatures of de deep! Speckled redmouths, long-finned harvest fish, blunt-noses, iron-skins, yellow mackerels, calico bass, bills, spots, shark suckers, mooneyes, gold-eyes, thimble-eyes, conners, siscos, chubs, shiners, pumpkins, yellow-fins, glasseyes, blennies, hair-fins, redfins, rounders, spots, spotted-fins, spotted threads, blows, puffers, horse mackerel, sheepheads, needlefish.” The poetry of fish: a monologue shouted at the rafters, the great bellows of Mrs. Blanchard’s lungs going all day. She seemed to have only five or six varieties of fish, but she repeated the litany over and over, and the customers who came all seemed to know her and not be bothered by the small selection they found; some of them stood around just to attend to her litany. Eliza lingered by the stall. In the early afternoon, Mrs. Blanchard stopped pretending not to notice her and told her to go back behind the curtain and bring out a box of fish. Eliza jumped to the work. When the market was ready to close, she helped Mrs. Blanchard wash down the stall. Eliza scrubbed as hard as she could. Mrs. Blanchard stood back and watched.
“You a stupid little creature for sure.”
Eliza put down her rag. Mrs. Blanchard was speaking in a loud voice, and although no one else seemed to take notice of her words, Eliza was embarrassed.
“What you leave home fer? What you think you gonna find here?”
A scarlet city, the Reverend Mr. Enders called it. City of whores. An abomination in the eyes of God. The dwelling place of the Egyptians. From atop a hill on the other side of Staten Island where Eliza and her friends went to gather blueberries, they could see the distant outline of the city, a wall of masts around it, slender steeples rising above them. The sun blazed down on the red brick, not scarlet at all but ocher, the color of earth in spring. She sat as the others went on gathering. The wind that came off the sea was soft and fragrant. Overhead, a flock of blackbirds lifted out of the trees and flew toward the city.
“I wasn’t happy where I was,” Eliza said.
“Happy?” Mrs. Blanchard said. “Girl, you more stupid den I thought. Happy? You wasn’t happy? O Lord, you got lots to learn.” She put a raggedy shawl over her shoulders and began walking to the street. After a few steps she stopped and turned. Eliza hadn’t moved from the stall.
“Where you gonna stay?”
“I’ll find a place,” Eliza said.
“I don’t doubts that! And pretty soon dey pull you outta de river like some fish!” She shook her head. “Come wid me, child, I puts you up for de night, ‘cause it look like dat what de Lord sent you to me fer.”
They stood in the street. After a few minutes, a two-wheeled cart came whipping around the corner. It pulled to a stop in front of them. Mrs. Blanchard gestured to Eliza to get on and climbed up after her. They sat with their backs to the driver, their feet dangling over the rear. Mrs. Blanchard reached up and opened her hand. “Mister Flynn,” she said, “here my two pennies, and two fer de girl here.” The driver turned around and grabbed the pennies. The cart reeked of horse manure, which was splattered everywhere on the floor and rails. Eliza tried to find something to hang on to that wasn’t smeared with it. Neither Flynn nor Mrs. Blanchard seemed to care. Flynn brought his whip down on the horse with a loud crack, and the cart jerked into motion. Flynn threaded his way through the narrow streets, whipping the horse constantly, cursing at the drivers of other coaches and wagons and carts. When they came to an avenue lined with imposing buildings, he turned right and they raced for a block before they were caught in another maze of traffic and pedestrians, a hopeless tangle of vehicles. They crept past a band playing on the balcony of a building hung with banners, and a park with a fountain, and buildings that looked as if Saint Paul could have preached beneath their columns. This was a city more like the one Eliza had imagined; noisier, dirtier, and more chaotic certainly, but massive and imposing, exciting, women in beautiful dresses, men in fine clothing, more people and movement than she thought could exist in one place.
They kept moving slowly up the avenue, and finally, after they passed a second park, the congestion dissolved and Flynn beat the horse until the cart raced along. He swung left and went down a street of towering’ houses that had doorways framed by columns and immense windows; endless acres of brown granite. He turned onto another avenue, went up it several blocks, then left again up a street of stables and small brick houses. Eliza could see the North River and the Jersey cliffs in the distance. The driver made another left, and after traveling past rows of iron-shuttered warehouses, they came to a hilly terrain that was occupied by wooden shanties. Some stood alone; others leaned against each other. The cart halted. Mrs. Blanchard got off and slapped Eliza on the knee. Eliza hopped off, and without a word Flynn moved on.
A mud lane led from the avenue up a slight rise. Mrs. Blanchard walked ahead of Eliza. People sat in the doorways of their shanties, and children clad only in short shirts, boys and girls alike, ran around the yards. As at Midian’s Well, here everyone was black, but this was a shabby place, the people sullen, the shacks they lived in looking as if they were ready to collapse. Mrs. Blanchard acknowledged only a few of those she passed, but everyone’s eyes followed Eliza. At the top of the lane was Mrs.
Blanchard’s shanty. Outside, it was as decrepit as the others, but inside, it was exceedingly neat, a table and chairs in one corner, a bed in another, a cast-iron stove in a third.
Eliza slept on the floor. The next morning, when it was still pitch-dark, she and Mrs. Blanchard repeated, in reverse, the trip they had made the night before. The cart stopped. They got on. Mrs. Blanchard paid the pennies, and they rode to the market. Then they went to the docks, where Mrs. Blanchard haggled with fishermen on their boats over the price of their catch. The two women carried the wooden boxes back to the stall. Eliza worked all day beside Mrs. Blanchard, and when it came time to leave, the older woman said, “Where you goin’ tonight?”
“With you.”
“Dat a question?”
“I have no place else to go.”
“Go home.”
“I can’t.”
By now the Reverend Mr. Enders and her father would have gone down to the dock and talked to the shopkeeper, suffered his rudeness in order to find out what had happened to her. When they were finished, they would have gone back to Midian’s Well, walking in silence, uncomprehending of how any child of God could choose to live among such evildoers, and certain of her damnation.
“I don’t run no orphanage.”
“I’ll do whatever work you say.”
“Can’t pay you nothin’. You can have a place to sleep, and food, and I’ll pay for Flynn to bring us b
ack and forth, and since you ain’t got no clothes but what’s on you, I’ll see what de ragman got to sell. But I can’t do better den dat.”
Eliza settled into the work. She told herself she could learn as much about the city from working as she could from watching and listening. Mrs. Blanchard was merciless to her while they were in the stall, screaming and cursing, her voice a regular part of the market’s noise. But the abuse stopped as soon as they got on the cart. At night Mrs. Blanchard hardly spoke, and if she did it was never in a harsh way. She cooked their food and stood by the door to smoke her pipe.
Eliza once asked her where she was from.
“Don’t matter where. What matters is we survive, child. Remember dat.”
Coming home one night they passed a church. A wedding party was just coming out, the bride in a dress of white silk with delicate satin flowers rimming the bodice, the groom in a black suit, both of them smiling and shaking hands with the guests. Eliza couldn’t stop talking about it. She said that she would have a ceremony like that one day, and a dress just like the bride’s.
Mrs. Blanchard interrupted her. “Quiet, child,” she said. “I can’t stand listenin’ to such nonsense. Sometime I wonder what country you growed up in. Ain’t nothin’ like that fer colored people, not here, not anywheres I ever heard of.”
Twice a week, before it got dark, Mrs. Blanchard and Eliza took a canvas sheet down to the river and collected firewood. They laid the wood on the sheet and hauled it home. North of them, white people did their own scavenging.
“Stays away from dem,” Mrs. Blanchard said. “Dey all Irish from de shanties in de hills over dere. Lowest of de low. Times was never very good for colored people in dis town, at least not so long as I been here, but dey never so bad until de Irish people come, and sometimes it seems dere no end to their comin’. My husband, Robert, Mister Blanchard, he was as light as you, child, and he was born in dis town, and his pappy before him. He worked servin’ tables from de time he was a little boy, but when de Irishmen come, dey take most of dem jobs away from de colored, and dey kill a colored person if he get in dere way.”