The girl’s eyes narrowed perceptibly, and her mouth seemed to take on a sardonic set. She shifted her weight to one foot, staring at him thoughtfully now. He noted the slight bulk of her hips, barely discernible beneath her loose cotton dress. Finally—“Thank you—” she said in a near-whisper, her voice sweetly husky and sultry. “But I can do ’thout yo’ protection.” And her eyes slid past him, around him, and over his head, then down to the pile of bills on the table. He felt insignificant, belittled, dismissed. Without another word, she turned and left the lonely man in the lifeless room.
When he saw her next, she was coming into the house, arm in arm with the young man in the handsome suit. Neither of them seemed to see him, much less acknowledge him, even though they had to step around him to pass through the vestibule; even though he bowed his head and uttered a grudging greeting, barely audible, as they passed. Their laughter drifted down the stairs as they ascended to her room, mocking and reducing him to nothingness.
She would scramble across the room on hands and knees, he imagined, when he slapped her and made her bleed, knocking her to the floor. She would crawl toward the door, and rise with effort to her knees to open it. But he would slam it shut and kick her in her mirthful mouth, no longer laughing. It would widen in pain as the somnolent eyes swelled with tears; and he, moved with compassion, would stand before her, allowing her to kiss his boots, to wash them with her tears and with her hair.
And then he would have her, gently but assertively; and she would submit herself to him, offering oblation for having mocked and disregarded him. From then on, she would be his servant. He consoled himself now, each time the Negro girl passed his open door en route with some new stranger to her room on the seventh floor, with this figment of his mind’s concoction; each time she laughed at him behind her firmly shut but ineffectual door. She would pay for this. He would make her pay, reduce her to the humble status nature had conferred upon her kind.
HARLEM, NEW YORK CITY
APRIL, 1903
It was dusk when she arrived at the brownstone on 139th Street, carrying her baby wrapped in blankets and a man’s coat. As usual, the door had been left ajar, despite the early spring chill. Vyda Rose pushed it open further with her toe.
MUZZLE NOT THE OX THAT TREADETH OUT THE CORN, a large handwritten sign warned in the semidark vestibule.
THE WORKWOMAN IS WORTHY OF HER HIRE, proclaimed another on the door that led into the first-floor apartment. M. STOKES, a small label announced quietly beneath it, just above the buzzer, which Vyda Rose ignored.
“Magnolia!” Vyda Rose cried, annoyed that the door was shut. There was no response. Vyda Rose shifted the baby’s weight and kicked the door softly. “Magnolia! Come an’ get the do’!”
It opened suddenly, startling Vyda Rose. A squat woman stood on the other side of it, her hands on her wide hips, and expression of feigned annoyance on her heavily made-up face. She had once been voluptuous, in a long ago past that she rarely discussed. Once, Vyda Rose had been told, Magnolia had been a looker, a gifted prophetess and healer of questionable virtue. Magnolia, of course, had always dismissed such slander as the affliction of the righteous, and its proponents as conspirators to blacken the name of the Lord. But Vyda Rose liked to think that there was a kinship between herself and Magnolia, who had accepted her without judgment or recrimination, nodding conspiratorially, and without asking questions, when Vyda Rose had indicated that she “worked nights” and needed an able surrogate to look after her child; even hinting, now and then, her approval of Vyda Rose’s association with Hiram, and her hope that Vyda Rose would take greater interest in her son.
But Hiram remained Vyda Rose’s friend, and only occasional lover. Vyda Rose had no wish for emotional entanglement. She cared for her child. Her lovers could care for her, if they wished, at their own risk. In Hiram, she had found friendship without obligation. In his mother, she had found a ready familiarity and mutual esteem.
Magnolia regarded Vyda Rose with mock disapproval, her heavy eyebrows knit. “Girl, must be you done lost your mind, kicking on doors and carrying on. This a civilized house. You better mind your behavior.”
“I ain’t stutt’in you,” Vyda Rose laughed, pushing past Magnolia into the crowded, gaudy room. Everything in it was brown: brown velvet curtains, couches, and upholstered chairs; mahogany tables and desk; bearskin rugs on a brown-tiled floor; and rich coffee-colored walls. The walls were covered with gilt-framed pictures of brown people: Magnolia’s mother and father, her brothers and cousins and friends.
Jewell seemed to love this brown room and the woman who was this apartment’s sole resident. She always seemed content here, nestling against Magnolia’s bosom as Vyda Rose left her here on Fridays and returned to retrieve her each Monday.
Vyda Rose served her clients only on weekends in New York, and rested during the week as much as Jewell would allow. She had wearied of her fruitless searches for Julius, finally placing adds in local newspapers, and was waiting for a response. In six weeks, no respondent had appeared. But as her daughter grew more and more like him, reminding Vyda Rose each day of her mission, she began to lose hope of ever finding Julius. This worried her.
Magnolia was of no encouragement. She smiled sadly when Vyda Rose spoke of Julius, and occasionally told her what she ought to do. Today, she offered this advice unsolicited and unprovoked: “Get you a man, a good one, and have you some more babies. I know you got needs in that direction. Now, Hiram, he’s a good man. Little on the wild side, but once he get settled, he’ll make you a good husband—”
“Magnolia,” Vyda Rose sighed, lowering the baby onto a couch and unfolding the man’s coat. “Now why would I want a husband, good or bad? I’m too free for that. I jes wanna keep doin’ what I’m doin’ and make good for my baby.” She unbuttoned her coat and sat next to her child, unwrapping the layers of blankets.
“But what you gonna do when she ain’t no more baby? What kinda mother you gonna be living like you is now? And what’s gonna happen when you old and ain’t got no more zip in your dip?”
Vyda Rose frowned. “I got my whole life to think like a old woman. Now, I jes wanna do what pleases me, and find my baby’s daddy. One day at a time, dass all I can take. Dass all I want to right now.” And her mouth took on the stubborn set of a child who had raised herself and was supremely confident in her own wisdom. Magnolia knew this meant that as far as Vyda Rose was concerned, the subject was closed, or ought to be. Yet she could not stop herself from persisting.
“But Vyda Rose, life ain’t long like you think it is. It don’t stop goin’ ’cause it’s more than you want to take, and it don’t wait ’til you ready to make plans. It just keeps on goin’, with or without you. You wake up one day and you saggin’ in places you hadn’t noticed. Your hair is turnin’ colors, you all by yourself, and don’t nobody want you. It’s a fright’nin’ thing, and an end nobody deserves.”
Vyda Rose opened her mouth to point out what a lot of good Magnolia’s marrying had done her, but thought better of it. “The end,” she said evenly, “is jes the end, dass all. Don’t make no difference how you live—we all leavin’ here by ourself. In the meantime, I’m jes livin’ the best I can, doin’ what I like doin’ and do the best. I don’t bother nobody, long as they don’t bother me. And I’m gon’ do better for my baby than somebody did for me. Don’t you worry.” She handed Magnolia the fretting child. “Here,” she said. “You mind my baby, not my business.” And she gave the older woman a brief hug. Fear knifed through Magnolia’s body, making her stiffen in Vyda Rose’s arms. She watched uneasily as Vyda Rose buttoned her coat.
“ ’Bye now, Baby,” Magnolia mumbled. “You look after yourself, you hear?”
Sometimes, Vyda Rose passed his room at night, and as she climbed the stairs, alone or with a client, he would open the door slightly and peek out at her, like a child spying on his parents, or hoping for a glimpse of Santa at Christmas. Later, he began swinging the door open wide, staring obnoxio
usly, with scorn and, yes, judgment—the thing she hated most—on his pasty face, leering and derisive and condescending. She found his implicit criticism of her ironic in light of his earlier proposition; and at least she was not closeted, as he clearly was, living vicariously and only occasionally in those brief glimpses outside his room and into the lives of others.
She became more adept at ignoring him; more consciously and obviously incognizant of him. He became smaller, progressively more transparent to her. She instructed her friends to ignore him—the voyeur pretending to live, with his hypocritical smugness—ignore him, she would say. And they would oblige, not seeing him, not hearing his door creak as it opened; their eyes fixed on Vyda Rose, fascinated and entranced by her; and the super would follow them with his eyes and then with his mind’s eyes, up the stairs and into her iniquitous room, in his mind sharing in their frantic carnal indulgence, hating himself for this, and hating her, for making him want and hate her in spite of himself.
LICKSKILLET, NORTH CAROLINA
JUNE, 1903
Sister awoke, summoned by the urgent pleading of a young woman she did not know—a young woman in a place she had never been, her heart pounding, struggling for breath, in desperation and fury kicking and thrashing with every limb. The young woman begged—demanded—strength and survival, her inheritance and just claim.
She demanded her legacy of faith.
But Sister turned her back on the woman, whose fight for survival seemed a threat to Sister’s own; crawling, clawing at the burlap sheets that entangled Sister’s arms and legs as the cornhusk mattress, now turned to violent waves that pulled and sucked at Sister, betrayed and delivered her into the clutches of this depraved young woman, whose face appeared to Sister both alien and familiar, twisted in an agonized grimace, distorted by the blue-green waters and floating detritus of a distant bay.
It was the face of a woman she had not wished to know; the face of betrayal and hope; the face of Sapphire’s daughters fallen from grace and indifferent to their state, struggling against a hateful and contemptuous tide, clinging for dear life to Sister’s feet, at the end of their mortal reserves.
The young woman relaxed her grip, surrendered to the tide.
And Sister awoke in her, surmounting the blue-green waters, carrying her daughters to their dwelling place, transcending the tide.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
JUNE, 1903
At night, Vyda Rose missed the stars. She missed the counsel of her mother, Lilly’s friendship and candor; even her grandmother’s forbearing and disapproval. She missed the lovers she had left in Warrenton; the neighbors and girlfriends she had rarely ever seen. She missed them, as she missed the rural homeliness of home, the sweet and simple cloudless, starry sky.
Her window opened into an alley. The building next door was much like the one in which she lived. If she leaned outside the window, twisting her neck to just the right angle, she could see a sliver of unfriendly, starless Brooklyn sky. She could hear, too, with her neck strained outside the window and her ear inclined, the sobbing of a woman, the mumbling of inebriates, the tantrum of a child. Living sounds, Vyda Rose thought, and evidence of a dread and frightening side of life, a deep despair she wished to avoid but felt, always, one step behind her, too narrowly outdistanced for Vyda Rose’s comfort, but avoidable if she maintained her focus on her lovers and her child.
The clouds parted suddenly, revealing a bright and beckoning full moon that filled Vyda Rose’s room with a rectangle of light so startling that it woke the baby as she rested on the bed.
Jewell stretched her arms and gurgled good-naturedly.
Vyda Rose scooped her up, following the lure of moonlight onto the living street.
It was late when Vyda Rose returned to the boardinghouse that night, invigorated by the long walk with Jewell. She supposed that her neighbors were soundly asleep.
The windows of the super’s apartment were dark. She was relieved that he was not at home to witness her arrival, and to follow her with eyes filled with ugliness to her room.
As she climbed the stairs, the baby began to cry. Vyda Rose hastened her steps, making the clucking sounds that seemed to calm her child. Carefully balancing the baby on her hip as she fished through her purse, she found the key to her room, and as she unlocked the door, she was shoved mightily from behind and nearly crashed into the footboard of her bed.
Spinning around, clutching her baby to her chest, she faced the super, his face twisted in a cruel mask of anger and insanity. He lunged at her, grasping her hair in his fists and tugging viciously. Tears stung Vyda Rose’s eyes, and she twisted away from him, intensifying the pain but enabling herself to toss her baby onto the bed and turn to face him again, her hands barbarous claws scratching and tearing at him. The baby began to wail in earnest. The super leapt upon Vyda Rose, knocking her to the floor and beating her with all of his might, months of frustration and humiliation in each blow, years of impotence and failure, losing himself in the rhythm of his blows as his fists fell brutal against her flesh.
Crouching helplessly against the wall, Vyda Rose bowed her head defensively, her arms covering her head, hoping, waiting for this torrent of injury and rancor to stop; not mindful of the pain, of her own inability to defend herself; conscious only of her weeping child, enduring only to survive this hellish episode, to comfort her daughter at its end.
She managed, once, to glance up at his eyes. They were vacant. He was mad, she realized, mad with hatred and fury having nothing to do with herself. And all at once she understood that she must bring to an end this depraved assault; that neither surrender nor endurance would accomplish this; for in his madness the super was not assaulting a woman, a worthy woman and fellow human being; a feeling, thinking, living woman with a mother, and a child, and a life filled with people who loved her. In his devastated mind, the super was assailing a thing; not a thing that Vyda Rose was, but a thing that she represented.
And although she could not discern exactly what this thing was that she embodied in the super’s mad mind, this thing so loathsome, perhaps in himself, that it drove him to slaughter a woman in the presence of her anguished child, she knew that she would always be It; would not cease to be It when his arms surrendered to weariness and refused to respond to his will. In a moment, she understood that surrender or endurance would not save her, that it could not counter hate; that in the face of his infernal madness, she must at once decamp, or stand and fight.
She stood, catching several blows to her ribs and stomach, and doubled over, reaching out toward a chest of drawers to regain her balance.
But she fell against it violently, its edge stabbing her stomach. A mirror crashed to the floor. And still, he pummeled her back as she stood braced against the chest. A cutting internal sensation, as if a scissor was gnawing its way through her viscera, sliced through her consciousness and made her aware that she was still alive, could still feel; but if she did not end this assault on her body and on her spirit, if she did not defend her right to feel and to be, she would most assuredly die. She knew this, and in that moment of cognizance Vyda Rose dove toward the floor, cutting her hand deeply as her fingers closed around a shard of glass twice the length of her hand. Without allowing herself a moment to think, she twisted her body around and stabbed upward at him. The glass sank into his belly.
His eyes widened, almost imploringly.
He toppled toward her.
Her baby was crying. The super had slumped half on top of her and she was aware that he needed help but her baby was crying. She scrambled out from beneath him and went to comfort the infant, and as she sat on the bed, lifting her baby to her lap, she met the eyes of a stranger—one of the many neighbors, she supposed, that she had never met. He was standing just outside the open door, wearing a striped nightgown, and his mouth was opened. No sound emanated. He glanced down at the super who lay bleeding on the floor, and he covered his open mouth with his hand. Vyda Rose comforted her child. The stranger hurried
away.
She began to hum—a tune she could not recall learning, or associate with a person or place or experience. But the baby seemed to understand. She gurgled contentedly and succumbed to peaceful sleep. And still, Vyda Rose continued her humming, murmuring, rocking the child restively. Moments passed. At some point it occurred to Vyda Rose that she could be in danger of some sort. Gathering her purse and a few of her baby’s belongings, she tiptoed down the stairs and took to the calm, deserted street.
It was cool and humid outside. Vyda Rose stood on the sidewalk for several minutes, shivering beneath the glow of a streetlamp, holding her baby tightly. She felt as if there was something she should be thinking about. A large house just down the street caught her eye—the only house lit from within at this hour. She began walking toward it, uncertain of why, oblivious to her surroundings.
LOWER MANHATTAN, NEW YORK
JUNE 1903
Hiram Stokes was not a man carried away by his emotions. He had never loved a woman, other than his mother, and had certainly never been in love. But Vyda Rose Alston had found a crevice in his heart that he had not known was there, and had crawled right in and filled it. She evoked in him a tenderness that surprised and troubled him, and he had always known that if the time ever came and the need arose, he would be there for her, asking nothing but that she trust him. And need him.
It was dark and the buggy was a block away from his stoop on South Street; but he could see that she was disheveled in appearance, an unusual condition for Vyda Rose, and clutching her baby stiffly. The driver of the buggy, a woman called Carrie, was visibly upset, her lined face conveying the urgency of their visit. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly 3 A.M.
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