The woman laughed, flinging her arm dramatically in the air. “Oh, it takes more than a little dust to bother me. Do I get meals, too?”
“The rent ’cludes breakfast an’ supper both. One at seven, one at six.”
Again the woman laughed merrily. “Oh, I’m rarely up for breakfast! But I do like a home-cooked supper now and again. Is four dollars a month enough?”
“No,” Sadie spoke up suddenly, and Sarah gave her a harsh look.
“Well, how about six, then? I’d like a quiet room, and this street’s quiet as can be.”
“That’s ’cause there’s decent folks on this street,” Sadie said.
This time Sarah pinched her friend on the soft of her arm to hush her up. Six dollars a month! Would this woman really be willing to pay six dollars a month just for a tiny room, a meal, and a bed? “Here, lemme show you,” Sarah said, straightening up and wiping her hands on her apron. “It’s right on through the kitchen … Miss … ?”
“Just Etta,” the woman said, shrugging girlishly. “Everybody calls me Etta.”
“I bet that ain’t all they call you …” Sadie muttered just within Sarah’s hearing, and Sarah hoped Etta hadn’t heard the rude remark, too.
Lelia was frozen on the back step, gazing up at Etta with wide eyes. She and her basket sat directly in their path. “Well, who’s this princess?” Etta said, stooping over before Sarah could ask her daughter to move. “Ain’t you about the most darling little thing I’ve ever seen?”
Lelia grinned so wide that Sarah thought her daughter’s lips might crack from the strain.
“Go on, girl, let us by,” Sarah told Lela.
Instead of moving, Lelia blurted out, “Is that yo’ real hair?” Sarah thought she would choke from the boldness of her daughter’s question. She was curious about the woman’s long tresses, too, and on closer examination she’d decided Etta must be wearing a wig.
“Oh, it’s somebody’s real hair, child. Is that good enough for you? I got it straight out of a mail-order catalog and paid for it with my own money. You wanna touch it?”
Lela nodded eagerly. She reached upward, allowing strands of Etta’s silky hair to fall between her fingers. Sarah had to fight the urge to ask to touch it, too. Just thinking about hair made her scalp itch again beneath her head-wrap. How much would a wig like that cost?
Lela pointed at Etta’s timeworn suitcase. “What’s that stuck all over your bag?”
“Well, I keep a memento of every place I’ve been! You see this one here? That’s from New York City. I just come from there. I been all the way to San Francisco, California. I been so many places ’til my head is spinning, and now all I want is my own bed.” Etta stretched her hand out to Lelia. “Why don’t you show me my new room, honey?”
Much to Sarah’s amazement, Lela stood up and clasped the stranger’s hand, still studying her with shining eyes. Lela was far from shy, but she had a tendency to be reserved with people she didn’t know. Lela had extended Etta her instant friendship. Behind her, Sarah heard Sadie suck on her teeth with irritation.
“It’s close to the kitchen, so it keeps plenty warm!” Lelia told the woman brightly.
“Oh, is that so?” Etta said, and she winked at Sarah over her shoulder with her thick black eyelashes. Sarah had seen plenty of men wink, but never a woman. The gesture looked bawdy, giving her pause. But then Sarah was drawn to the sincerity of the woman’s private gaze. “Something tells me you have big plans for this one, huh, Mama?”
“God’s my witness,” Sarah told her.
“Well, a little extra money never hurts.”
“Sho’ don’t,” Sarah said. Six dollars a month would make up for the loss of Mrs. Wainwright. She might actually be able to cut back on her washing and finally start going to night school like she wanted to; her reading and writing skills had diminished since the days in Miss Dunn’s class in Vicksburg, and Sarah was embarrassed to see her young daughter’s skills already beginning to surpass her own.
She prayed Etta would like the unfinished room.
“Now, I didn’t ask your name,” Etta said to Sarah in that engaging, syrupy voice of hers.
“Sarah McWilliams,” Sarah told her quickly. “I’m a widow.”
“Ain’t we all, honey?” Etta said with a small smile, and her tone offended Sarah at first because she wondered if Etta thought she was like scores of colored women who’d lived with men for a time and then called themselves widows when their men moved away. But Etta’s smile slowly faded until Sarah saw a gleam of sadness in her eye. “Ain’t we all.”
At that, Sarah’s doubts vanished.
Chapter Ten
MAY 1896
“What ’chu said this stuff is called, Etta?” Sarah stared with curiosity at the pasty, clear jelly from a small jar that Etta had smeared on her fingers as they sat at the kitchen table. Sarah sniffed her fingers. No scent. But she’d seen Etta using it before, rubbing it on her kneecaps and elbows to soften them. It had caught her eye, so she’d asked Etta to bring her a jar.
It was after noon, and Etta had just emerged from her bedroom in her wide-sleeved muslin nightgown, her hair bunched beneath a stocking and her face clean of powder or rouge. She’d lived with Sarah for two years before going to New York to work for a year, and it had been a year since her return. Since she’d been back, Etta routinely slept until two or three in the afternoon and stayed out all night long, as far as Sarah could tell. Sarah often thought she heard telltale sounds in the kitchen just before dawn, and she hoped her daughter hadn’t noticed Etta’s late arrivals, too. What kind of example was that for a girl Lelia’s age? Etta had never, ever brought a man to the house, at least as far as Sarah knew, but the thought of the peril to her reputation alarmed her.
That morning, Etta stretched her thin arms high above her head, waking herself up before she answered Sarah’s question: “The drummers along the levee—the traveling salesmen, I mean—call that stuff rod wax.” She yawned. “I’ve heard it called Cosmoline, Vaseline, all kinds of names. They use it to grease up everything, rub it on cuts or burns. I knew some showgirls in New York using it to make their hair shine. Also keeps dandruff from showing, they say.”
“Well, shoot, maybe I kin grease up my head, too, stop all my itchin’,” Sarah said.
“Worth a try,” Etta said.
Gazing at the jelly, Sarah wondered if it might have any softening qualities. She occasionally ran a fork she’d heated on the stove through Lelia’s hair the way her mother used to with her own hair, but Sarah had never been satisfied with the results. A hot fork untangled the hair some, but Lelia complained that her hair broke off too easily. She’d tried softening Lelia’s hair with lard, too, but that stank and seemed to damage her hair. This new jelly was certainly something to think about! As usual, Sarah found herself delighted by a novelty Etta had brought into her house, like bottles of a sweet, delicious extract called root beer she mixed up in five-gallon tubs to drink, chocolate-cream candies, and exotic soaps that smelled of coconut. Ain’t nothin’ like bein’ lucky ’nough to travel all over an’ see all kinds o’ things, Sarah thought.
“Thank you, Etta,” Sarah said, deeply grateful, but she was still troubled by questions of how Etta spent her nights. The subject had come up between them before, and Etta’s only explanation had been: Tell you what, Sarah, honey—you don’t ask me questions about things you don’t really want to know, and I won’t ever shame this doorstep.
But was that enough? There was Lelia to think about, after all. Lelia adored Etta, eager to hear about her travels and the people she met listening to ragtime music in the Chestnut Valley saloons. Even though Sarah would hate to say it to her friend’s face, Etta was not the sort of woman she would want her daughter to be like.
Etta was a dancer by training—a good one, too, Sarah knew from private performances for her and Lela in the front room—and she’d spent several months dancing in a musical show called Oriental America in Palmer’s Theatre on Broadway
. Oh, the stories she’d told when she came back! She’d described the dancers, the singers, the actors, and how all of them had performed for white audiences and gotten written up in the newspapers. Big-time, Etta had called it. When she came back to St. Louis, exhausted but happy, she’d breathlessly told them she would be packing her things for good soon because she expected a letter at any time inviting her to dance in the next big show. But no letter had ever arrived for her from New York.
“You ain’t heard nothin’ from New York?” Sarah asked her again, to be sure.
“You know better than that, Sarah McWilliams. It sounds like you’re trying to get rid of me,” Etta said, looking Sarah squarely in the eye. “And besides that, I’ll tell you the plain truth: Whether it’s Broadway palaces or vaudeville houses or even little ol’ gin mills, nobody wants brown-skinned dancers. Yellow girls, Sarah—that’s all they’re after. The lighter the better. Even with my gingerbread skin, I was the darkest girl in my line. That’s why I never heard from nobody in New York, and I never will.”
Sarah didn’t know if she was more upset by the injustice of Etta’s words or the nonchalance in her voice. Did that mean she had already given up?
“I ain’t tryin’ to git rid of you, Etta,” Sarah began, hearing Lelia’s voice reminding her that it was proper to say get, not git, even as she spoke the word. “I’m tryin’ to help is all.”
“Well, some things can’t be helped,” Etta said with a small shrug. Her eyes drifted, and she smiled. “I know I must tire you out talking about Oriental America, but there wasn’t anything else like it, Sarah. Black folks on Broadway, an’ Sissieretta Jones up there singing arias—that’s a kind of opera, like I told you before—and I can’t even describe the sound of her voice, not in words. She’s like an angel, a black angel, as good as any white singer. They thought they were coming to a minstrel show to make fun of us running around in blackface paint, but they couldn’t in the end. Know why? Because we were good, that’s why. We took their breath away. They clapped until it sounded like the roof was falling in.”
Etta’s chest had heaved up high while she spoke, and then she sighed luxuriously, awash in her memories. “And I was there—I was a part of it. I’d be a fool not to know it was the highest moment of my life, and I can’t spend the rest of my days trying to match something that’s come and gone. So I’ve moved on, and my work now has gotten me through hard times.”
In St. Louis, colored men, and even white men, had boldly offered Sarah money on the street if she would “go to their room” or “keep them company,” as they put it, until she’d gotten to the point where she kept her eyes cast down when she walked past Union Station or ventured to a new part of town. Even their spoken offers had made her feel sullied; or maybe it was simply knowing she would have done just about anything for money—except that. But some days, if she was honest, she might have wished she could.
“Seem like poison to me,” Sarah said.
“Oh, yes, it sure can be.” Etta nodded solemnly.
Sarah reached across the table and squeezed Etta’s hand. Maybe, she thought, something about Etta reminded her of Lou. Her sister had kept company with so many men in Vicksburg, she might have easily walked down the same path if Mr. William Powell hadn’t married her when he did, Sarah thought. How could a woman with Etta’s intelligence and education have fallen so low? Sarah was convinced Etta was a good woman despite her faults, even if Sadie couldn’t see it and the other church ladies wouldn’t understand.
“Etta, even washin’s better’n what you do.”
Etta’s face hardened, and she shook her head. “No disrespect, Sarah, but I watched my mama bend over a washtub ’til the day came she could barely walk. You …” She stopped herself, sighing. “I won’t tell you how to live your life, but I can’t do what you do. That’s some foolish damn pride, I know, but I can’t. So I am what I am. I may not be proud of it, but at least I don’t have to drink myself to sleep every night to live with it. Whiskey and cigarettes age you, and I plan on staying young as long as I can.” Etta laughed then, sounding more like herself. Her voice brightened. “Hey, look here, there’s no man or madam standing over me taking my money like most of those silly girls out there. One day I’ll have my money saved up, I’ll buy myself a house, take in my own boarder, and my work’s done. Now, would you mind fixing a wayward girl a cup of coffee? I need to wake up these bones.”
“You goin’ to hell, Etta, you keep this up,” Sarah said earnestly. She’d wanted to say those words to Etta for a long time, and she felt both sadness and relief when she did.
“Maybe so, but I ain’t going today. Any biscuits left, Sarah?”
“Not none that ain’t hard as a rock. What you think? It’s closer to supper than breakfast.”
There was a knock on the back door. Sarah thought it was Lelia coming home from school and wondered why she was knocking, but when the door opened, Sadie peeked her head in. She had a folded newspaper in her hand. Sadie grinned at Sarah, but the grin faded when she saw Etta sitting at the table. “Lord have mercy …” Sadie clucked, examining Etta’s night-clothes. “If I ain’t seen everything now, there ain’t nothin’ left I need to see. Look at you, late as it is.”
Etta dismissed Sadie with a fling of her head. “Afternoon, Miz Sadie. Didn’t your mama ever teach you if you can’t say anything nice, you shouldn’t speak at all?”
“Miz Etta, I don’t think you want to hear what your mama should’ve taught you.”
The habitual insults between Sadie and Etta usually began with good humor, but Sarah knew it wouldn’t take much to spark either lady’s temper. She flicked a wood match to light the firewood inside the belly of her stove. “All right, now, both of y’all hush. Sadie, come on in. I’m jus’ heatin’ some coffee.”
“Oh, I just brought over the newspaper to show you. You heard about this Plessy case in New Orleans? They’re tryin’ to take us right back to slavery days.”
“What’s this …?” Etta said, reaching for the paper.
“Right there on the front, that case called Plessy versus Ferguson. A colored man tried to ride in a white train car and got thrown in jail.”
“Ain’t that some foolishness?” Etta said. “Now, in New York—”
“You hush, we don’t want to hear any more damn stories about New York,” Sadie silenced her. “Anyway, Sarah, the highest court there is, the Supreme Court, ruled Homer Plessy didn’t have no right to ride on that train. Negroes can be kept separate from whites as long as they’re ‘equal,’ so they say. You remember how Georgia started segregating its streetcars? They’re gonna try the same thing here and everywhere else. Just wait. In eighty-nine, Missouri already said whites can only go to school with whites, and colored only with colored. And we all know equal don’t mean equal. They’re gonna separate us right back to the plantation. Next thing you know, lynching a nigger won’t even be a crime.”
As she read the newspaper, Etta’s brow was creased with a worry that was unlike her. Watching, Sarah envied how well Etta could read; Sarah struggled over a newspaper now and again with Lelia’s help, but her reading was still poor and she hadn’t gone back to school the way she’d planned. Both of her closest friends could read to her when she needed it, but it just wasn’t the same as casually reading the paper herself. It took her so much time to get through one story, she couldn’t sit the whole day trying to finish the rest.
“Nobody’s treating it like a crime now,” Etta muttered in agreement. “Those mobs are running around, and they don’t do anything about it.”
“Sho’ don’t,” Sarah said. “It’s like my husband use to say, things ain’t gettin’ better, seem like they gettin’ worse. An’ he ’bout got lynched jus’ for sayin’ that. Makes me so damn mad sometimes I jus’ wanna …” But she couldn’t finish, because once she opened that floodgate of rage, it was hard to shut it. She had too much work left today for that. Etta reached across the room to where Sarah stood at the stove, squeezing her hand.<
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“Man told the truth, Sarah,” Sadie said.
“Yes, he did,” Etta added. “There’s some hard days for Negroes ahead. No doubt.”
At that there was silence in the kitchen. Sarah felt a hopelessness welling inside of her, reminding her of a painful shame so deep she hadn’t dared reveal it even to her friends: Lou had sent word that her son, little Willie, had been sent to prison for manslaughter! The boy was only fourteen years old, and Lou said he might spend the rest of his life at Parchman State Farm in Mississippi. Sarah still couldn’t believe it. She did not know her nephew well enough to say for certain whether he could be guilty; but she was certain he had not received a fair trial. What poor colored boy in Mississippi could?
Sarah hoped Sadie was wrong about what Mr. Plessy’s case might mean for Negroes, but she couldn’t ignore her growing feeling that as the days of Reconstruction drew further behind them, Negroes would face more hardships from whites. They weren’t still slaves, but they were a long way from truly free.
It was 1896, Sarah thought with some disbelief, only four years from the year 1900. Here she was coming up on a new century, and she was still washing clothes just as she had been since almost the time she could walk. Just like her mother and grandmother had before her, and maybe even her great-grandmother before that.
Sarah was proud of her business, which had kept her so busy she hadn’t had time to catch her breath, and she’d even paid a painter to make a neatly lettered sign for her front window—MISS SARAH’S LAUNDRY—NEXT-DAY SERVICE—which made her beam every time she walked past it. Like Miss Brown, she even had a lady or two, including Sadie, who came to work for her on a part-time basis when she needed extra help.
But washing was washing. Her joints still ached, her fingers and hands still shriveled like prunes after being in water all day, and she still singed herself on those hot irons, just like always. Was she only fooling herself to think she could give Lelia anything better? And to think Moses had not died for nothing, in the end? The idea of it filled Sarah with a terror that she knew would make it hard for her to go to sleep that night.
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