by Mary Burns
Feeling more comfortable since I’d stood at the same place yesterday, I slid behind the counter at the front, ran my palm over the glass case, thought of Anna Eva. Mr. R had the keys for the cases behind the counter, the tall ones held the most expensive illusions, and the secrets contained in them, and some others, like the cotton bandage test, not so dear. But I already knew how Anna Eva would get herself tied into a cabinet alongside noise-making things, and, with her still tied, as far as any of the audience knew, objects would come flying out, banjos would strum, tambourines would rattle. Mr. R’d explained how the cotton bandages were fixed so as to let her reach through the iron loop supposed to hold her, reach through and play, or even throw them objects outside. A good trick, comical it was with her head sticking out the top. My goodness, doesn’t that banjo have a mind of its own. People would laugh even if they knew it to be a trick. No, it was the other things Anna Eva could do interested me, the mind reading and the way she communed with the dead. There were them called that a trick, too, though the great Houdini himself thought her a true medium, and if Houdini didn’t know, who did?
A mystery, so, but would any person be referring to somewhere the good people danced in the night, where lovely women called on the spirits of those already gone, and men and ladies both flocked to shows and shops such as ours, and consulted the mind readers you could find everywhere—would all that happen if such a place never existed? A place we felt, but could not see, that we knew of, but could not verify, could not look up in the directory or on a map?
It drew me then, and in the years followed, when the news came out about Professor Einstein’s discoveries, and the jokes went round, the cartoons showed him with the wild hair. “Sorry I’m late honey, but don’t worry. Time is just an illusion.” Them too nodded to the mystery. There was something more beyond the labor troubles and the cruelty, people torturing each other and taking advantage, like’d happened with poor Janet Wilkinson. Something accepted. Not only accepted but assumed by Mr. R and Houdini himself, the Great Sebastian, all the magicians and tellers of the future and those called upon spirits. The mystery. It is all in the power to make people believe, Mr. R liked to say, sure. But believe what, or in what, that was my question then and one continued to weave through my destiny, a single nagging thread always dangling just out of reach.
Even now, maybe more so now, it tickles me in a bothersome way, for when you are close to leaving life, looking back on all unfolded in what was given you, you see that while you thought there to be a single reality, in truth the day-to-day living was more like the top of a cake expertly covered with thick icing so you could not see the layers made its height. Yet if…just if…I’d been able to summon the powers I supposedly possessed—those said to a been given me because of the hour I slipped out of my mammy’s womb—if I’d considered the possibilities, even thought of them layers I’m aware of today, on the doorstep to wherever it is I am going, would it have made a difference in that week of weeks? Believe, believe. The nuns said it, the priests, Mr. R. You had your believe, sure, and then you had your make-believe.
I looked at the book titles on the shelves behind the front counter of The Chicago Magic Company, thinking I might find an answer there, but no. Fact is, I was not sure of my question. I would write to Anna Eva, for I’d heard she answered letters and then she could tell me—if not how she knew what she knew, then simply if the man in the hospital would live and when we would marry. But could I get the letter to her? I found no listing in the directory, and though Mr. R might know where to find her, he wasn’t there to tell me and, if I asked, wouldn’t he be curious to know what business I had with the woman? It was something I did not want him or anyone to know.
With a cloth I found beneath the counter I polished the glass over them locked cases. I’d seen Florence doing the same, rubbing at the glass, dusting the dark wood behind. The electric light hung down burning yellow and burnishing it so, the wood, and then I touched something gave and the case angled open to the office where lay Mr. R. Not gone at all but there in the flesh, snoring on the satin settee he kept for his visiting cronies. Nothing for it but to slip back into the shop before the case angled shut again and he woke and saw me there. But on top of a letter from the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank sat a slim, leather-covered book like people used for addresses and such. I swept it away before I ever thought how I’d get it back, while also wondering what made him hide there when he must a heard us in the office. Did the bottle of whiskey on the floor beside him say all? Had he slept through everything?
Mr. R, drunk?
All the uncertainty bruised me, and, though I did nothing to bid it, a picture popped into my brain and pressed on me like a headache. Himself, my man Desmond, lying in that hospital bed breathing his last, alone, the coloreds there wanting to keep their distance, despite his gaping mouth said he was parched. The image weighing me down and me clamoring out from under with resolve, just the same as when Margaret and me quietly shut the mission door and ran along that sandy road, and dogs barking at us and some lights meant the grand station was not so far off we couldn’t get there and happiness spurred us. Same as hope spurred us from Ennis. But what was this? Had to be love, though I’d never read or seen a love story like this was turning out to be.
Nothing in the book but scribbled notes. No addresses, and though I thought later I might a found a secret in those pages would help me divine what I needed to know about the somethings, the somewheres, I let the book fall instead, as if he’d dropped it himself before he snuck away with his bottle. If he ever imagined different, if he even suspected I’d spied him there—with his arm after dangling to the square of oriental carpet between the desk and the scarlet settee, his jacket open and that perfect hair mussed—he didn’t say. Not long after I forgot myself what I’d seen. The surprising sight of Mr. R got pushed to the far borders of a mind beset.
I left the front and returned to my desk and watched Ruth braid her hair, and listened to her talk about her brother and how they would move out of the city once she finished her studies, for wasn’t it getting too dangerous, didn’t I agree? I nodded while looking at the few orders on my desk and wondered if the world and all would ever get back to normal. But what was normal? Nothing stopped long enough for me to answer myself. For just then, late to be appearing for the workday, our artist fellow George walked in. His narrow face with its droopy mustache as much as said, Where else can I go? He homed to his drawing table as usual and sat there, staring down, without taking off his hat, the soft, floppy-brimmed ones the artist-types favored then.
“I want to be out there drawing the people,” said he, “but the fact is I haven’t the guts. Not like the photographers from the papers, but not even them got there in time. Did you hear what happened down the block, just this morning? Men in soldier and sailor uniforms, too, chasing a Negro down and beating him to death. Right here! Men with experience in killing, like as not can’t get the instinct out of themselves after all the practice they got. Yet wearing the uniform of a United States soldier!”
We knew the story, sure, but what we didn’t know is how George’d come close to seeing the dead body, did see the police, did feel the fright electric as any bulb sputtering in the lamps along State Street and retreated to Charles Francis Brown’s office on the seventeenth floor, where he’d been since, him and Charles Francis both being artists and understanding each other, liking to talk. I knew this from my chum Gladys, how Charles Francis would blather for hours to his pals, but clammed up on her. Gladys, whom I’d forgot in all the ruckus. I asked George if he’d seen her.
“Cosmo’s closed and locked,” George told us. “Other offices, too. But you know Charles has the divan where he’ll sleep if he works late. He hasn’t been out.”
Gladys home, then. Safe with her aunt lived just north of the river, which is why my friend could buy the newest fashions from the big stores, at least some of the time. I never met the aunt welcome
d Gladys to Chicago when her folks sent her down from some farm up north where her only friends were cows, she’d said. Gladys would invite me, then something would barge into our plans. Her aunt had tickets for a show, or some other relative was after visiting. Always something. So, I never did get to see the comfortable apartment where Gladys had her own room, where her aunt gave piano lessons and regularly entertained up-and-coming politicians and even artists, according to my friend, because after that week unforgettable, everything changed.
Not an hour after George arrived, Mr. R stepped into the back room, his hair smooth again, his jacket buttoned, and him carrying cold drinks he must a brought up from the café off the lobby. We all three aimed ourselves to our work.
“That’s right. Keep busy. We’ll not declare it a holiday today, for if people ever needed their magic it’s here, this week in Chicago. The banks may try to stop me, the churches may think we’re the devil, but those who deny us also deny our power to better the city, because, as you are aware, and as I am accustomed to saying, it’s the magician who creates the magic. Not the tricks, but the magician and his power to open his audience to the range of the possible. If we believe, they believe. Our customers are like seeds we cultivate with instructions that let them transform an unhappy face to one smiling. In truth, ladies and gentleman,” he continued, as if he were holding forth in front of a crowd, and not just we three, “we pass on the power of belief to those with nothing much left to believe in.”
I wrote them words out, best I could remember, at home that night, and when I still had my book I would open it and read them again, because he was powerful, Mr. R, when he wanted to be. I didn’t think of it at the time or I might a been brave enough to ask if the bank’d turned down his request for a loan to manage the expansion he wanted. But the churches? Was he after thinking it a competition, magic or religion? He never said more about it, only stared at us like he wanted to fix us to himself, his will the paste to do it. He handed around the Dr. Peppers and told us to finish our work that day and we’d see about the next, despite what he’d just said about not declaring a holiday. If the cars were still on strike, maybe we’d keep the office closed for a day. He spoke as if thinking aloud.
“It wouldn’t affect the magic, really, because the strike won’t last long. I’ve seen it in my ball.”
§
CHICAGO IN GRIP OF CAR STRIKE
AUTOS JAM LOOP
TROOPS MOVING ON CHICAGO
AS NEGROES SHOOT INTO CROWDS
COLORED EX-SOLDIERS
BACKED BY MOB OF 500
TERRORIZE SOUTH SIDE DISTRICT
TOLL OF FIGHTING REACHES 34
Walking my way back to West Monroe in a stream more listless, work finished and the novelty of the morning given way to exhaustion, eyes down or glaring into other eyes, wondering. Young men, the ruffians from some club, Ragen’s Colts maybe—them gangsters got up to much of the trouble and proud of it so—those lads taunted the Negroes walking together, not mixing in among the rest like you normally saw with we Micks, the Greeks, and the Hunkies, the Polacks, the Italians, and the Krauts, and the true-born Americans.
The odd person yelling his frustration, generally young, with the energy to holler after such a day. Someone pointing out the smoke rising in the already hazy sky, fires over there, towards the south, where the riots continued for days. Could it be him down there, really, and how would I know without going to Provident Hospital myself to take a look? Even if the strike continued tomorrow, I would have the day to myself and I would say nothing to Margaret about my plans but let her think Mr. R wanted us at our desks, because, as he’d said, Mr. R—the magic business had to continue if any did.
Parched, despite the Dr. Pepper our boss’d given us, my third Dr. Pepper that week, and the breeze from the lake, I bought myself a lemonade and rested. You saw anything that day. Women like me planting themselves right on the curb from there to watch the pant legs, the skirts, the short-pants-wearing runners, the soiled legs of clopping horses, and rolling wheels of motor cars and trucks. Didn’t my vision go funny on me, so I saw it all as a river, the Fergus again, streaming and streaming.
When I could, I stood up and continued and, spying the peak of St. Patrick’s, I asked God, Please, please let Desmond live—even if He might not want to hear from me no more, considering—and hobbled on my way to Bridey’s, where they all made a fuss because I was the only one’d been downtown and had the news from there, not to mention the scraps of late editions I’d picked up along the way.
“You won’t be goin’ back tomorrow, Maeve,” said Margaret. “Look at your feet.”
I knew the condition without looking, the stockings worn through to the heel, the blister from Sunday broke, and the pus from it gluing the cotton to my skin.
“We’ll find you new shoes, at least, and let your feet repair.” She brought me a basin of water, and while my feet soaked she fetched me a ham sandwich from the Greek store and generally treated me kind, as a way of softening me, perhaps, before she spilled the news that her union’d be stepping out, too.
“Then I’ll have to go tomorrow, won’t I, sister? Bridey’s goin’ to want her money and we have to eat.”
Margaret broke down then, sad as I’d seen her since the old days, really. Try as we might, wasn’t it hard to keep looking up, when the world and all kept beating us down? First Harry out, then the car men, now the garment workers, and all of them with their point to make, sure. It was more about fairness than being Red, but me, wasn’t I glad Mr. R ran the kind of shop he did. If we didn’t earn the most, at least I knew we’d have enough to keep a roof over our heads and our stomachs quiet.
She didn’t want me walking to the Loop again, but she could hardly stop me, Margaret. It’d always been me who’d led us. She knew my determination from the day I pulled her onto the ship and told her to stop her sniveling, lest the Sisters of Perpetual Grace think her sick and make her stay behind, instead of coming with me on our grand adventure. We would be the brides of Christ and serve in a mission school in a place called Florida, where frosts never whitened the land and sweet soft fruit grew on trees.
Oranges came in our stockings at Christmas one year in Ennis, small and wrinkled, but still that fascinating color. How Mammy’d found them we never learned, but we did know they grew on trees, in Florida, for the sisters’d told us. I said to Margaret, “There won’t be no oranges for them not brave enough to go where you can pluck them off the trees, like little suns they are.” And so she came. But here she was slumped on the side of the bed, her straw hair fallen out of its pins, her head hanging like that fruit we did eventually pick.
It’d gone dark by that hour. We could smell the conflagration and imagined every sharp noise we heard a shot. Some claimed they could see flames snaking up through the smoke. Bridey feared the city would burn again like it did in the day when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow knocked that lantern clear over. I took the rest of the pins out of Meggsie’s hair and she fetched the hairbrush and I brushed and brushed until she calmed so and lay back and eventually fell off sleeping.
Not me. It was back to the sill of the window. Gazing out at the ghosts made of clothes ruffling on the lines strung from here to there and back, looking for the good people—though if you looked, often enough you wouldn’t see. More commonly they’d surprise you, appearing from out of that mysterious somewhere, vexed me then and through all the many years followed and does still. That night I caught not a speck of them, unless it’d been them after making the clothes dance like in an actual breeze, not the reluctant spin of air caused by the fumes and heat coming from miles away, terror enlivening the trousers and overalls, the sheets and pillowcases and towels and baby nappies decorated the neighborhood often stank of Bubbly Creek, that part of the river collected all the putrid waste from the Yards.
I had to go find him. Could he be so bad off he’d forgot me? I’ve never been one
for crying, like Margaret. With me, it was doing released me. I started a letter in my head, one I would finish when I next got my hand on a pencil and paper.
Dear Miss Fay,
It is about the man I love, and me wondering if he is all right, if we will marry as seems likely, despite his injuries. The paper didn’t say what it costs for an answer, so I’m putting in these postage stamps, one for your letter to me, and one for extra, like to pay for your advice. We saw your show at the Metropolitan, June it was, and you were marvelous.
Your devoted fan,
Maeve Curragh
I would keep it simple, a single question for her, not to take advantage, and I would not share the answer, if it came, unless she could tell me what I wanted to hear, for Margaret, in her teary state, would just be more bereft if I told her my second chance at a man lay in a hospital full of colored people. There had to be whites, too, or they wouldn’t a taken him there, not with feelings running as they were and Desmond himself not in love with the race, something I had to admit as my mind returned a picture of the night we’d met on Halsted Street, Desmond and me. The Negro man running for the car, him tripping, Desmond standing right there with his leg extended. Too, that skinny fella on the going home car and the spear was Desmond’s voice when he shamed him into giving me his seat. The workers he’d challenged downtown. I’d noticed, and didn’t notice, for it was true what the papers said about the Irish wanting to protect their territory and wasn’t I one, though I lived on the West Side, not Bridgeport, and poverty was a bigger threat than colored people to the likes of Margaret and me.