At the word serious, all thoughts of C.J. vanished. “Go on, then,” she said softly.
Dr. Kennedy exhaled slowly, searching for words. “Madam Walker, you probably travel on trains a lot. Imagine you’re a train conductor—and as a doctor, I’m a bridge engineer who’s seen what’s ahead on the tracks. Now, if I somehow managed to reach your train in time and I told you the bridge ahead won’t hold you, and that the whole train was going to fly into a ravine in a short time, what would you do?”
Sarah’s heart pounded with dread. She hadn’t expected a good report, but she hadn’t expected one to begin so gravely, either. “I’d … stop the train,” she said slowly.
Dr. Kennedy nodded. “That’s right. That’s what common sense would tell you to do. But for some reason, when it comes to health, a lot of folks have trouble living by common sense. I hope you won’t take offense… .”
“Go on, Dr. Kennedy. Just say what you need to say.”
Dr. Kennedy tapped his pencil against his notebook. “Dr. Ward wrote me you have high blood pressure, and he advised you years ago to slow down. Instead you’ve kept that train going full steam, and he’s been worried about you. Well … I think there’s a good chance now you might have a kidney inflammation, what we call nephritis. I can’t say for certain in an exam like this—you’ll need to see another doctor. But when kidneys don’t work the way they should, they slowly poison your blood and cause the symptoms you’ve been experiencing. There may be a day when we’ll have a pill to cure it, but for now the only weapon you have is to start taking very special care of yourself. First, I’m going to recommend you spend some time at the Battle Creek Sanitorium in Michigan and see a doctor there. Booker T. Washington used to spend time at Battle Creek. I’m afraid he was probably given much the same advice I’m giving you … but he couldn’t make himself stop that train.”
Sarah glanced quickly at her bedroom window to make sure it wasn’t open, because she suddenly felt as if a cold wind were blowing across her face. In her mind she could see that white ribbon tied to the back of the train car that had grazed past her in Clarksdale. Hearing Dr. Kennedy’s words, she felt as if the bad omen were finally coming to pass.
“I can stop it,” Sarah said firmly, genuinely frightened.
“Even if it means giving up control of your business to someone else?”
Sarah sank back against the wall, stunned. Everyone from Lelia to Lottie to Mr. Ransom had advised her over the years to delegate more responsibility, but to give up control entirely? That thought had never occurred to her. It won’t survive without me, she thought.
“Pardon me if it isn’t my place to say … but you have a lovely and lively daughter, Madam Walker. And she’s certainly of an age to take the business from your shoulders.”
Sarah was shaking her head before he finished his sentence. Lelia in control! That fickle child couldn’t be trusted to take control. Lelia had flourished for three years in Pittsburgh and then lost interest suddenly; now she put her mind on business only when the mood struck her. The rest of the time she seemed to be dazzled by Harlem’s social life. To Sarah’s mind, any existence built on pure socializing was fragile and temporary. Sarah loved parties, too, but she wasn’t afraid of work. That, more and more, seemed to be the biggest difference between her and her daughter. And she sure as hell hadn’t worked so tirelessly all these years just so Lelia could spend the company’s hard-won money on champagne and jewelry.
“Lelia’s interests don’t lie in that direction,” Sarah said simply.
Dr. Kennedy patted her hand. “Well, Madam Walker, I’m no expert in business, but I’m almost sure your business can live without you—and I’m very sure that the only way you can live is without so much worry over your business. Dr. Ward has told me about the Wish Board you have and how you make those wishes come to pass. It must be mighty powerful if it’s brought you this far, and now it’s time you put up a wish for yourself and your health. I’m just trying to wave you down on those train tracks. I can’t make you stop, but I have to try. Dr. Ward gave me direct orders.”
Sarah nodded again, her throat suddenly feeling clogged. For once, someone was telling her the stark and utter truth instead of only what they thought she wanted to hear, and he was a virtual stranger. Or had she just refused to listen to everyone’s warnings before now? Even back in Denver and Pittsburgh, C.J. used to warn her she’d ruin her health by working so hard. She’d thought he was lazy and lacking in vision, when maybe he’d only been trying to save her life.
“You’re a good young man,” Sarah said. “It takes courage to talk to a person like you just did to me. I don’t like what you said, but I sure appreciate you saying it.”
For the first time since the examination, Dr. Kennedy grinned. “Well … I’m just working up my mettle for war, Madam Walker. See, I figure that if I have the nerve to try to tell the Madam C.J. Walker how to run her own business, those Germans won’t scare me at all.”
Sarah took his hand and squeezed it tight. “Come back and see Lelia one day,” she said quietly. “I’d like both of us to know you better.” Dr. Kennedy smiled boyishly. “Yes, ma’am, I’d like that, too.”
Sarah knew, once again, that he was telling her the truth.
Chapter Thirty-five
APRIL 1918
FIVE MONTHS LATER
Even though the door was closed, Sarah heard the raucous laughter of men and women floating from inside Lelia’s card room on the upper floor of the town house as she stood in the carpeted hallway in her robe, her breathing strained from her exhaustion and anger. “I said a straight!” she heard a man inside the room shout, but his voice was swallowed by a chorus of taunts. Even from several feet away, the scent of tobacco wafting underneath the door was so strong that Sarah felt a sudden headache. And how could she mistake the sweet, sharp smell of whiskey? She could also hear the player piano in the room playing a roll of James Scott’s rags. It was three A.M. on a Sunday night, and Sarah’s home sounded like a barrelhouse.
Sarah was so tired she could barely stand up without leaning against the wall, but she was wide awake. She wasn’t feeling the kind of tired that came from not getting enough sleep, she knew. This kind of tired went to the bones, winnowing them out and then filling them up with lead. It was a tired that seeped from the body into the mind, or maybe it was the other way around, she mused. The kind of tired she remembered seeing on her papa’s face when he sat down at the table for supper.
Without knocking, Sarah flung the door open, and the room fell into silence. Sarah had prepared herself to see anything, but she still found herself shocked: There were at least ten young people in the room. A few were at the card table, but many of them were sprawled on the sofas. One young man was bare-chested, sitting on the floor between the knees of another man who had his arms draped across the half-naked man’s shoulders. And Lelia sat beside them, resting her head in the lap of a tall, lovely young woman Sarah had seen her daughter with many times before. The woman reminded Sarah of Hazel, her daughter’s friend from St. Louis, except that this woman looked more refined and glamorous—and dangerous, somehow. Her hair was bobbed almost as short as a man’s, and the playful smile didn’t vanish from her lips even as her eyes met Sarah’s with a heavy gaze. The woman was wearing a string of pearls that dangled down near Lelia, and Lelia’s hand was wrapped inside them. The bare-chested man beside Lelia was massaging her stocking feet.
“Mother!” Startled, Lelia sat up straight, nearly tangling herself in the woman’s pearls.
Seeing Sarah in the doorway, the bare-chested man quickly found his jacket on the floor and covered himself, and his friend jerked his hands away from him as if his skin had suddenly turned to fire. Most of the others looked like guilty children caught sneaking puffs of cigarettes or sips of gin behind the schoolhouse. Why, one of the boys here looked barely eighteen!
“I need to talk to you, Mrs. Robinson,” Sarah said to Lelia in a dull tone, not blinking or pausing. “Ri
ght this minute.”
After a quick look of irritation, Lelia sighed and stood up. She slipped her feet into her high-heeled shoes and mashed out a cigarette she’d had in one hand, which Sarah hadn’t noticed before. Since when did Lelia smoke? “Y’all count me out in the next hand,” Lelia said to the group, and then she closed the door behind them.
“We’ll go to your room,” Sarah said, not able to meet her daughter’s eyes.
“Mama, what’s this about?” Lelia said, trailing after her. She spoke with a slight slur. “Were we too loud? I can turn that piano off. I didn’t know you could hear it—”
As she walked toward Lelia’s bedroom, Sarah’s breathing felt more and more difficult, as if she were climbing a steep flight of stairs. She didn’t know if fatigue or rage was responsible for making it so hard to draw air into her lungs. “Who was that man touching your feet?” Sarah said at last, unable to contain herself. “I thought you were exchanging letters with Dr. Kennedy.”
“Oh, Lord, Mama, you sound like you did when I was sixteen years old. A few letters don’t mean we’re engaged. That man in there is just a friend, a poet. Believe me, he’s nobody for you to concern yourself with.” Then she laughed to herself, a laugh that sounded dark and salacious to Sarah, as though Lelia had told a private joke she didn’t believe Sarah would understand. But Sarah understood, all right. Ever since she’d come to New York, she’d heard rumors that her daughter kept company with men who were that way, who preferred their own kind to women. She’d heard other whispers, too.
“And that woman you were falling all over?” Sarah said. “She ain’t nobody for me to concern myself with neither?”
At that, Lelia stopped laughing. “Just tell me why you’re pulling me away from my own party at this time of night, Mama. It’s late and I’ve had a little bit to drink, so I don’t want to say anything improper. If you just need to yell at somebody about something, go on and yell. But you need to start minding your own business.”
Minding her business! That almost made Sarah laugh herself.
“Oh, I’m mindin’ my business,” Sarah said. “There’s nobody but me to mind it.”
Lelia was silent for the rest of their walk. By the time they got to Lelia’s bedroom, Sarah’s fingers were trembling. She virtually collapsed in Lelia’s bedside chair, her chest heaving noticeably. Her breath rasped in her throat.
“Mama, you know what … ?” Lelia said, more gently this time. “It sounds to me like you need to be in bed. The doctors at Battle Creek told you to rest, and then you turned right around doing all those NAACP speeches in one city to the next. It’s no wonder you’re not feeling well. You need to leave those people alone and just sit still like the doctors said.”
“You’re one to give anybody advice,” Sarah said. Now, finally, she did gaze directly at Lelia, and she lodged her gaze like a weapon. “You’re a goddamn disgrace.”
Lelia stared at Sarah impassively. Lelia’s face became stony whenever she tried to hide her feelings from her mother, and it had certainly turned to stone now. Whether it was shame, guilt, or anger, Lelia’s face was always the same. “What now?” Lelia said, sitting on her bed.
“Alice Tisem,” Sarah said simply, and Lelia’s mask melted. Now she knew.
Alice Tisem was an agent in Pittsburgh, someone Lelia had hired years ago, and now she was raising a stink about Madam C.J. Walker products, claiming the quality had diminished since Sarah had moved to New York because she was partying and allowing anyone to mix her ingredients in Indianapolis. In fact, now Tisem was marketing her own product, and some of the other Walker agents had begun using that instead. But the worst rumor was that Lelia had revealed the Walker Hair Grower formula to Tisem. She hadn’t wanted to believe it was true, but she could see it plainly in her daughter’s eyes.
“M-Mama, I …”
“You what?” Sarah said. “You were drunk? That’s the story. Is that your excuse?”
Lelia blinked hard. “No … it’s no excuse, Mama, but it’s the truth. She tricked me! I didn’t know she—”
“She tricked you?” Sarah said, mimicking her daughter’s whiny voice. “I’m sick and tired of hearing about gettin’ tricked! C.J.’s out there whining now ’bout how he was tricked, a full-grown man. But at least C.J. had the good sense not to tell that Larrie bitch my formula.”
“Oh, Mama, don’t make such a fuss—”
“It’s my name!” Sarah roared, suddenly overcome with emotion that surprised even her. She shook violently in the chair, her hands clenched into fists. “I been all over this country to make my name, and now you’re out there throwing it away like it’s one of your empty goddamn whiskey bottles! Don’t you have even a lick of sense, Lelia? You ain’t learned even one thing?”
Hurriedly, Lelia wiped away tears that had sprung to her eyes. “That’s not fair, Mama. I’ve worked myself silly for you! I admit it, I made a mistake with Alice. But—”
“But, but, but,” Sarah cut her off. “I’m so sick and tired of but. You always got some kind of excuse, always running to Mr. Ransom to cover your tail. Mae had more sense than you when she was just thirteen and you were grown! And don’t think she don’t know it, too. Everybody knows it, hear? Everybody!”
Sarah gathered a ragged, scrappy breath, speaking in nearly a wheeze. “And … as if … that ain’t bad enough … then you got to be bringin’ those kind of people in this house, shaming me on my own doorstep. Playing poker all hours, sleeping all day, when you could be helping me build something that can last … forever …” Sarah couldn’t go on. Her words were stolen from her.
“Everybody can’t be you, Mama,” Lelia said in a clear voice, tears still shimmering in her eyes. “It’s about time you figured that out.”
Sarah heaved a few more breaths, and found her voice again. “Mr. Ransom is—”
“He’s just out to build his own name, Mama. Don’t be so blind.”
“You know that’s not true. And even if it was, at least he wants to build something,” Sarah said. “What do you want to build, Lela? Just tell me that. What do you want anybody to remember about you? You threw a good party?”
“We both want to throw parties, Mama. You’re spending a quarter-million dollars building that mansion so you can throw parties and show folks you’re somebody. You know the only difference between my parties and yours? You invite politicians, and I invite poets.”
“You think … that’s all I want?”
At that, Lelia’s face and voice softened. She sighed again. “I don’t know what you want, Mama,” she said, her voice aching with sincerity. “At first I thought you wanted to have a business, and you got it. Then I thought you wanted to get rich, and you got that, too. Now it seems like you want to be like Booker T. Washington, and I guess you’ll get that, too. You always get what you want. But I don’t want the same thing! Does that make me some kind of family disgrace, just because I don’t want the same thing?”
“I still don’t know what you do want.”
“I just want to live, Mama! What’s so god-awful about that? All you and Mr. Ransom ever talk about is the business. I can talk about it sometimes, but that’s not all I am! You think I want to end up like you? You—” But Lelia stopped herself, shaking her head. “Never mind.”
“No, you finish,” Sarah said, her bottom lip trembling. “Like me how?”
Lelia gazed at Sarah directly. “It seems like you don’t have nothing to say to me anymore if it isn’t about Walker Manufacturing. And no matter how much I do, it’s not enough for you ’cause I don’t do it like you. So I give up! I can’t be you, so I’m just gonna be me. And that goes for courting, too! I already told you how I feel about Wiley Wilson—I know you don’t like him, but he’s the first man I’ve thought about like this since John—and if I even look a man’s way, all I hear about is Dr. Kennedy. Dr. Kennedy is nice, Mama, but you don’t control my heart, too!”
“I don’t want … control… .”
“Oh, Mama, p
lease!” Lelia said, exasperated. “You think I don’t know you? That’s all you want! And anybody who tries to go against you knows that.”
Was that all Lelia thought of her, that she was some kind of monster? Sarah’s heart plunged. “Did you give Alice Tisem the formula on purpose, Lela?” Sarah asked, suddenly suspicious. “Did you do it to hurt me and the company? Tell me the truth.”
A light seemed to go out in Lelia’s eyes. The stony mask did not return, but Lelia was gazing at Sarah the same way she would at a stranger. Her jaw shook. “Everything I have is because of you and the company, and I love you both,” she said. “If you don’t know that, then you don’t know me, and you sure as hell don’t think anything of me. So if you don’t mind, I have some friends waiting who know me and like me just fine.”
Lelia got up and walked across the room in sweeping steps, then slammed the door hard behind her. Anyone who had slept during their shouting match would have certainly heard it.
With the door closed, there was suddenly no light in the room, and Sarah sat in the chair in an overpowering darkness. She heard a low moan from deep in her belly, and suddenly the sound had filled up the room. She was cramping, and she hugged herself, doubled over.
Madam Walker, the situation is very simple.
Lelia was right, she realized. She could not force her daughter to become someone she was not. Lelia would not sacrifice as much as she had. If she didn’t try to accept Lelia for who she was, she would push her daughter away. Who would she truly have left in her life, then?
Your blood pressure is quite high and your kidneys are probably failing.
So she would have to try to hold on to the Walker Company as long as she could. Mae was so much more serious than Lelia; maybe in a few years, when Mae was older …
It’s very good you came here to Battle Creek for some rest, but your situation calls for more than a visit. Do you understand my point?
The Black Rose Page 46