by Lois Leveen
She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Even our dear teacher carries on that way, always saying her name as ‘Sarah Mapps Douglass,’ so you know who her uncle was, as well as her father. Her cousin does the same, ‘David Bustill Bowser,’ holding connection to the Bustill family, even though his mother married a man without a nickel to his name or an ounce of standing in colored Philadelphia society. My daddy always says, nothing’s more trouble than a three-name negro—except any two-name white man.”
Hattie carped on about the elaborate family trees of colored Philadelphia, Bustills and Douglasses, Fortens and Purvises. The revelation that there were negro families who could trace their genealogies to way back before the War of Independence, just like the FFVs, flabbergasted me.
“Are all the girls in Phillipa’s set descended from Revolutionary War heroes?” I asked.
“Heroes, hunh. Profiteers and toadies more like—Cyrus Bustill made his coin selling bread to Washington’s troops, and James Forten was a powder boy for a privateer during the War, earned his money later by shimmying up ship masts to repair the sails. Phillipa’s own grandpappy wasn’t any more than a waiter in a rooming house, till the cook took sick one day and he stepped up to the stove. Now her father proclaims he’s got the oldest catering house in the city, bragging how white people throw money at him to make their parties go just so.”
I could tell from Hattie’s tone she didn’t mean for me to be impressed by those families, but I couldn’t help myself. “To think colored folks can be so rich.”
“Rich isn’t always the case—most of those families don’t have a tenth of the wealth they pretend they’ve got. You think Miss Douglass teaches school out of the goodness of her heart?” She kicked a cigar stub someone had tossed on the sidewalk, sending it tumbling into the street. “How are you enjoying our colored girls’ academy?”
“Seems like Latin and all that will be fun, like knowing a secret cipher. But history was awful dull. I never thought about any of that stuff, and I don’t know why I should start now.”
“History’s not so bad, once you get past who’s who and start learning what they did to each other. Those whites can be as nasty to one another as they are to us, if they’re kings and queens and whatnot.” She paused to spoon up the last of her stew. “Maybe you’ll like the afternoon lessons better—though mathematics and the sciences make my head ache. We best hurry, or Miss Douglass will have our hides.” Leaving our empty bowls in the pepper pot vendor’s pile, we headed back to Arch Street.
Five
My dearest Mama & Papa
I am fairly bursting with news I almost cannot write fast enough to tell it. After we recited our lessons today Miss Douglass assigned us new places. Guess what? I moved up two whole rows! Miss Bet got herself so pleased when I told her she even gave me extra toward my pin money as a model of the rewards for hard work. I did not contradict her of course but studying my lessons is not nearly so much hard work as waiting on her & her family & cleaning their things.
The truly hard part is finding a place to study. Mrs Upshaw does like to chat at a person & Mama you understand that a person cannot read very well if someone is chatting at her the whole time. Also if I leave my books out Dulcey or Ducky as I think of her the way she quacks & quacks at me she scatters them every which way around the apartment & I have to hunt them up. Sometimes she tries to hide that she has gone through my things but she leaves my written pages in all the wrong order so I must lock everything in my trunk the very moment I am done with my studies.
Another thing I am studying in my own way is Philadelphia. Where do they keep the negroes I wonder every time I am out. So few colored faces compared to Richmond. Hattie has been living here so long she must have forgot the South because all she can say is Philadelphia has more colored people than any other city in the North. Maybe so but more is not near enough by my count.
You are ever loved & missed by
Your devoted daughter
Mary El
Writing home was all the comfort I had, yet never comfort enough for all the ways I missed my parents. Even the things that nettled me all through my childhood—how Mama’s muttering in her sleep would wake me some nights or the way Papa’s Sunday shirt itched me when he hugged me tight each week—now were things I longed for. Whether I scribbled my missives out fast or took my time crafting every curve of every letter of every word, still they couldn’t seem to say near what I would share with Mama if I could talk to her first thing when I woke up and last when I went to bed, like I always had. Looking down at those pages before I sealed them and sent them made me all the sadder, realizing how impossible it was to lay out in writing everything I was doing and thinking and feeling, when Mama and Papa never had the chance to do or think or maybe even feel anything quite like it themselves.
When it was originally decided I’d go North to be educated, everyone talked about the fine opportunity I’d have. But I was more fretful than grateful those first weeks of my formal schooling. Reciting was hard for me. I couldn’t forget that long ago morning on the Van Lews’ veranda, how my gut wrenched up over Mistress Van Lew’s threat to send me to the whipping post. Nobody could try that now that I was free, but standing up before the whole class, I stumbled over more than a few things I could say perfectly well when no one was around to hear. Phillipa caught me one afternoon on the way out of class, saying how she hoped I liked the view from the back row, seeing as it seemed I’d be there permanently. That set me seething and simmering. The next time I stood to recite, I said each word perfectly just to show her I could. After I finished, Miss Douglass beamed and Phillipa scowled. The smile and the frown, they urged me on, and I made sure to recite loud, clear, and steady after that.
Once I got over my nervousness, I discovered what a joy it was to be in school, even if I lagged behind in most subjects. Like when you think you’re not all that hungry but you sit down to a real fine meal and suddenly you realize you were ravenous after all. Though Phillipa called me Polly, saying I was no more than a poll-parrot repeating back what I read or heard, I was too eager to pay her much mind. I asked Miss Douglass for extra assignments to take home so I could catch up with the girls my age, and our teacher nodded her prim approval. That was as much fanfare as she ever seemed to offer, and I relished it.
Even more than that, I relished Hattie’s friendship. Right from my first week in Philadelphia, Bet set up an allowance for me on account with her cousin’s husband, who was an attorney. She made it clear he was to give me pin money aplenty, even after she finished visiting with her relations and returned to Richmond. It was generous of her, I suppose, but it was Hattie who gave what to me was real riches: companionship. Hattie walked me home from school each day and was waiting at the curb to accompany me back the next morning. Later, when Miss Douglass taught us about Lewis and Clark and how Sacajawea—a colored woman, she reminded us proudly, though not African—had guided them and interpreted for them, it made me think back to those first few months when Hattie was the Sacajawea of my Philadelphia life.
We’d promenade through the city, and she’d point out this or I’d ask after that, the two of us making up all manner of stories for what we saw and laughing over any nonsense that came into our heads.
“Miss Hattie Jones, prig, whatever is a humidor?” I’d ask, pointing at the sign on a tobacconist’s shop.
“Well, Miss Mary Van Lew of Gaskill Street, the better sort of colored Philadelphia worry that this heat will frizz their hair and make them look quite negro. This good gentleman secures them in his humidor until such time as the weather cools.”
“Why, I believe I see Phillipa’s parasol in his umbrella stand.”
It sure was humid. Summertime in Richmond, Lilly was out at dawn on laundry days, stirring the Van Lews’ clothes and linens in vats of boiling water before the day grew to its hottest. In Philadelphia, the air felt just as steamy as if you were standing over a row of laundry pots at mid-day. Heat radiated off the b
rick buildings and cobblestone streets, which stayed warm to the touch even after sundown.
“Hattie, I don’t think I can make it so far as Head House Square today,” I said during one sweltering recess. “It’s too hot for pepper pot anyway.”
She smiled slyly. “Then let’s get some ice cream instead.”
The only ice cream I ever had was what Zinnie snuck off from what she made up for the Van Lews. And given how wild her Daisy was for ice cream, there was never much left to slip to me. I fairly skipped as Hattie steered me down Arch Street.
We stopped before a low building midway along the third block. It was built right up against the stores on either side, no way to get around to the back. “Where’s our door?” I asked.
“That’s it, silly. Right in front of your nose.”
“We go in that way?”
“We go in, we sit down, we eat our ice cream. Ain’t they got ice cream in Virginia? What’s all that Dolley Madisoning about down there, and no ice cream parlors?”
I explained that in Richmond, negroes calling at the confectioner went round to the rear of the building, where they’d buy a dish to carry away. Papa had never even tasted ice cream, because he refused to be served so.
“Now you’re in Philadelphia, you can come right on in the front door.” Hattie led me inside, looking as proud as if she’d invented ice cream parlors herself.
She ordered vanilla, though I couldn’t imagine why she overlooked strawberry. Bland as Mrs. Upshaw’s cooking was, I couldn’t order something as plain as vanilla once that man told us they had strawberry, too.
“This ice cream has positively restored my delicate constitution,” I announced as my spoon hit the bottom of the parfait glass.
“Pleased to be of service,” Hattie answered. “My daddy always says I’m practically made of ice cream, I eat so much of it all summer.”
By now, I’d heard my daddy says so many times from Hattie, it seemed I practically knew the man myself. Which always made me wonder why I never heard about her mother. “And what does your mama say?” I asked.
Her faced turned to stone. “Nothing. She’s dead.”
Dead—that’s just the way she said it, not passed on or gone to Glory like most folks did. The hardness of the word sank right down past all that ice cream to the pit of my stomach, the way a rock tossed off the wharf would sink deep into the James River. Not the James, I reminded myself, you’re not in Richmond anymore. Ought to say the Delaware instead.
“I’m sorry, Hattie, I didn’t realize.”
“Well, now you know.” She pushed her empty dish to the center of our table and stared at the wall above my shoulder.
Death was something I hadn’t thought much about. Folks we knew from prayer meeting passed away from time to time, but I’d never condoled the mourners much, child that I was. Now I wasn’t supposed to be a child anymore, and I struggled for something to say.
I remembered how after Old Master Van Lew died, Bet wove locks of his hair into a braid and wore it as a mourning bracelet. “Did you keep anything of your mama’s, after she passed?”
Hattie nodded. Reaching into her purse pocket, she pulled out a worn patch of pale green poplin, patterned with forest green flowers. The middle of the swatch was just about worn away from where her fingers had rubbed at it.
“It was my favorite of all her dresses. When Daddy told us each to pick something of hers, this was all I wanted, a piece I could carry with me wherever I go. Charlotte, my oldest sister, had a fit. She wanted the whole dress for wearing herself, but Daddy said no, I was youngest and got to pick first. He cut the piece right then, handed it to me with a kiss.” She blinked her eyes and frowned. “I can remember the cut of the dress, the way it swished around when she moved, like I saw her in it an hour ago. But I can’t remember a thing about my mother besides that. Try to call up her face, I just get the daguerreotype they took after she died, which everyone says doesn’t resemble her at all.”
My mind struggled for images of Mama and Papa, Josiah and Zinnie and the girls, Old Sam, too. I didn’t want to believe you could lose people like that, right out of your memory.
Hattie ran her thumb over the scrap of cloth. “The thing I most wish I remembered was her voice. She had a song she used to sing to me and my sisters, ‘Walk Together Children.’ Daddy sings it sometimes now, but it’s not the same.”
“What does your daddy say she sounded like?” I asked.
“Like me.”
I ventured out my hand to pat hers, even offered a half smile, the kind you can pull back down in case it isn’t met warmly. I saw her chest rise up and fall, one deep breath, and got the same half smile back from her.
As we strolled back toward school, arms linked liked always, I confided, “When Old Master Van Lew died, we were all supposed to go in and pay our respects, but I hid out in the smokehouse I was so scared.”
“My daddy always says we can do more harm to the dead than they can do to us.”
I looked at her sideways. “He some kind of Voudoun master?”
“No, silly, he’s an undertaker. I was thinking of inviting you over for dinner this Sunday, but if you’re so frightened of dead folks …”
The idea of visiting the undertaker’s ran chills up and down my spine, even in the mid-day heat. But I said, “Of course I’m not.”
“Good. Come by about one o’clock. My sisters will all be there with their husbands, and a load of nieces and nephews. We’ll outnumber the spirits for sure, just in case you take fright.”
The shoes Bet outfitted me with before I left Virginia weren’t at all the fashion in Philadelphia. I noticed it myself, but when Phillipa made a comment about “certain people who drag their skirts through the streets, one can only presume to hide their most unfortunate footgear,” I counted over the coins I’d carefully accumulated from my allowance, eagerly anticipating the purchase of a fine new pair to wear to meet Hattie’s family.
A small wooden sign proclaiming MUELLER AND SONS, SHOEMAKERS hung from the second floor of a building on the Upshaws’ block of Gaskill Street. Though Mama and Old Sam often sent me to the cobbler in Shockoe Bottom on errands for the Van Lews, I was befuddled by what I found when I pushed open the Muellers’ door that Saturday. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior, and when they did, I saw about the oddest sight I’d ever seen.
There sat an older man and woman, four younger men, and two girls. They were all sewing shoes, even the females. Stranger still, they were sewing eight identical shoes. And only sewing the leather tops of the shoes together. In the corner of the room rose a high pile of these bottomless wonders, not a sole on any of them.
The older man nodded toward me and spoke to one of the girls in a guttural language. She set down her work and asked, “Have you business here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I need new shoes.”
“We do not take one order.” She seemed to grope for words. “No order from just one person.”
“But I am only one person, and I want to buy one pair of shoes.”
She looked at me as if I’d asked for a pound of butter or a carriage wheel. “We do not sell. The jobber brings pieces, and we sew.” She gestured at the pile in the corner. “Then he brings to the Schmidts to put on soles. Then takes to the stores on Chestnut Street. You go there to buy.”
“How does the store know which kind I want, and what size I need?”
She shrugged. “They have every kind. Pick what you like.”
Her father called to her in their strange language, motioning her to return to work. I thanked the girl and left.
As I walked toward Chestnut Street, I thought about how Bet always insisted the North was more advanced than the South. I couldn’t fathom what was so superior about having someone called a jobber drag pairs of half-finished shoes all over town, with no idea whether anybody even wanted to buy that size or style.
When I reached Chestnut, I walked up and down several blocks, eyeing the eleg
antly dressed white ladies who disappeared into the various storefronts. A five-story building, bigger than any I’d ever seen in Richmond and proclaiming itself BARNES AND CHARLES, PURVEYORS OF LADIES’ AND GENTLEMEN’S WARDROBE, BOOTS TO BONNETS seemed especially popular.
Stepping through the grand doorway, I found myself in a large salon, some forty feet across. Behind long counters on either side, clerks were selling a variety of wares for ladies. Rich carpet covered the floor, and way above my head protruded galleries of counters filled with gentlemen’s goods. In the middle of the salon stood a waist-high mahogany stall, topped with marble. When I told the woman inside the stall that I was in need of new shoes, she directed me to the far end of the room.
Mama always lowered her eyes and waited for all the white people to be served before she stepped up to the counter in a Richmond store. Even little children or people who came in long after her would push right by without a thought on their part or a complaint on hers. But when I stood before the counter that day, marveling at the rows and rows of shoes along the wall, the clerk smiled right at me in turn and asked what I would like.
I had just the shoes I wanted in mind, a half boot in light beige kid, something I could wear right through autumn. But before my mouth could explain all that to the clerk, my hand was pointing to a pair of silk slippers. They were pale yellow, with deep blue rosettes on the toes and a trail of glass beads around the tops.
I knew such shoes were not made for traipsing all over Philadelphia with Hattie. But I also knew they were the most beautiful shoes I’d ever seen, prettier than any Bet or her mother ever wore. Just looking at those slippers, I forgot all about kid and boot and sturdy walking heels.