House of Rougeaux

by Jenny Jaeckel

  When Mrs. Allison had gone he sat down again by the fire and looked at Eleanor.

  “Well, chère,” he said, “what do you think of all this?”

  Eleanor was speechless. Never had she dreamed that something like this was possible. When she found words she said, “I want to go.” After which her heart echoed, I must go.

  Papa turned to Auntie. “What do you say?” he said.

  Auntie, who was uncharacteristically silent during the meeting, did not alter her position in her rocking chair. “I say that was Fate knocking at the door,” she said, “dressed up like Mrs. Allison.”

  Eleanor watched Papa’s face. It shone with pride and glowered with concern. She loved him very much, and if she did go it would be hard to say goodbye. She watched him as he looked into the hearth. She was already imagining herself on a train.

  Papa would consider permission, but there was still the question of the various expenses. Eleanor’s older brothers were working now, but Papa was still the sole support of Auntie and three children, as well as aiding Eleanor’s Aunt Phoebe who was recently widowed. Funds were already stretched to their limit.

  But then Mrs. Allison let it slip to the church choir that Eleanor Rougeaux had before her an opportunity, and almost overnight a purse heavy with silver coins materialized. For Eleanor it was one wonder after another. Two months later she boarded the train for New York. She carried Papa’s valise packed with necessities and a headful of his and Auntie’s advice. Papa especially had warned her that she would soon be in the regular company of men they didn’t know, and that she must not let anyone take liberties. Eleanor was not known to be a great beauty, but she had a sweet face and an attractive figure, and Papa knew a thing or two about men. Still, he trusted his child. She had never been too interested in the boys she knew, tending to regard them as cousins, if she noticed them at all. She was very unlike Melody, whose open innocence and warm admiration of a series of boys gave a father cause for concern.

  Eleanor had only a vague notion of what exactly these liberties were that a young man might take, and those thoughts certainly weren’t foremost in her mind. She was leaving home with the dream of studying music at a conservatory. Papa and Auntie both told her that her Mama would have been proud, and to Eleanor that meant the world.

  The whole family accompanied her to the station, to board the train, a second-class car, that would be departing at 5:00 in the afternoon and arriving in New York City the next morning. Papa took pains to find another colored family traveling south, that Eleanor could sit with, and he came aboard to help her stow her valise and dinner basket, and fold her coat over the hard wooden seat. He stood with her as long as he could while those passengers of darker colors like their own, or native, or sunburned Chinese, crowded into the car. Eleanor clung to his hand, and then he had to go. She leaned out the window and waved to him, and to Auntie and her brothers and sisters, her heart brimming with goodbyes and more hope than she had ever imagined it could contain.

  * * *

  All newcomers to the great city of New York are awed upon their arrival, and Eleanor was no exception. Haggard from the long, hot, rattling hours of travel, she was swept up into the crowd the moment she stepped off the train at Grand Central Station. Eleanor felt the same kind of electricity that she felt in the piano when she played, but now it was all around her, in the air.

  It was just about ten in the morning. The family she had traveled with had taken their leave at a station an hour or two north of the city, and now she was alone. She tugged her valise along and sought out, again, the safety of other colored folks, such as at a small grocery with a lunch counter that served hot drinks and buttered rolls. From there she had directions to a boarding house called the Vance where she had arranged for a shared room. Auditions at the Conservatory were to begin that very afternoon.

  The National Conservatory of Music of America was housed in a grand five-story building sandwiched between two slightly taller ones, with a stairway on either side leading up to arched entryways. Throngs of young people with instruments filled the stairs and the sidewalk outside. Eleanor soon found herself seated and clutching her sheet music, on a bench in a large classroom on the first floor, having registered at a long table of Conservatory secretaries taking names. Prospective students were to have prepared a piece to play, and were to expect sight-reading and ear tests. Eleanor was relieved to see numerous dark faces in the crowd, including a pretty young girl around her own age hugging a violin case.

  “Hey,” said the girl, dropping down beside her on the bench, “mind if I sit here? I’m so nervous I could faint.”

  “That’s alright,” said Eleanor. The girl’s eyes darted around the room and she chewed a fingernail. Eleanor asked, “Violin?”

  “And voice,” the girl said. “You?”

  Her name was Alma. Alma Cole, just up from Kansas City and with nowhere yet to stay. The girls were soon ushered in different directions, but promised to meet later outside and see if there was room for Alma at the Vance.

  Eleanor waited for more than an hour in another classroom that was packed on one side with young people waiting their turn. Three judging professors sat at a large table near a piano on the other side of the room. While Eleanor waited she heard music played both clumsily and beautifully, and she found herself assaulted by waves of hope and despair accordingly. When her name was called she stood and walked to the piano as if facing her executioner. She placed her sheet music, a sonatina by Clementi that Mrs. Allison had given her, on the music stand of the piano and began to play.

  It was over before she knew it.

  The panel thanked her and called another name. How she had done, she couldn’t say. She had made one or two small mistakes, but thought perhaps it hadn’t gone too badly overall. Eleanor and Alma found each other later amid the thinning crowds leaving the Conservatory.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Alma said, seizing Eleanor’s arm. “How’d it go?”

  “Okay, I guess,” said Eleanor. “How was yours?”

  “Just awful,” Alma said. “Let’s go get something to eat. Are you hungry?”

  First they went back to the Vance and found that another shared room was available.

  “Oh, thank Goodness,” Alma said, dancing Eleanor in a quick hug. “Someone is watching over me, I know it.”

  “Me too,” said Eleanor. “Let’s take it as a good sign.”

  Around the corner they found a small eatery that served great plates of potato salad and beans with pork, a place that would become their regular haunt. Eleanor was amazed at how much Alma could eat. Elbows on the table and cutlery waving she swallowed slice after slice of bread with her meal, guzzling it all down with glasses of milk. Where it all went in that thin frame Eleanor couldn’t guess, though she did learn that Alma had arrived from Kansas City that very day, and hadn’t had a bite since the day before. So Alma had come to the city alone, just as Eleanor had, and from even farther away. She also had been encouraged by her church, the pastor’s wife in her case. Alma’s greatest fear was not making it in and letting her mentor down. Eleanor was not so much afraid of disappointing another as she was of having to return to where she started. Now that she’d taken flight, the plain old ground looked awfully dry and bare.

  After their meal the girls walked to a nearby park. The sun hung low in the sky. Eleanor had watched the sunrise that morning through the dusty windows of the train. It seemed ages ago.

  “Do you know Home, Sweet Home?” Alma asked.

  Eleanor did not. “Let me hear you sing it,” she said.

  Alma looked up and then down, as if gathering her voice, a gesture Eleanor would quickly come to know.

  “Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,” Alma sang, her voice soft but so clear it seemed to arc in the air.

  ...A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there

  Which seek thro’ the world, is ne’er met elsewhere

  Home, home

  Sweet, sweet h
ome

  There’s no place like home…

  And exile from home splendor dazzles in vain

  Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again

  The birds singing gaily that came at my call

  And gave me the peace of mind dearer than all

  “That was beautiful!” said Eleanor with feeling. “Oh, you are sure to get a place.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  A pang struck Eleanor as she imagined all her family back at home, so far away. But just as quickly the shadowed, white halls of the Conservatory rose up and she was filled with a terrified longing. Music played her heart, a powerful instrument to be sure.

  * * *

  Early the next morning the girls dressed and readied themselves to return to the Conservatory. The list of names for the second auditions would be posted on the doors. Folks were lined up again on both staircases when they arrived, huddled together in front of the lists. There were cries of joy and indignation and sorrow as people found their names, or didn’t. Eleanor now had a friend to hope for, and was elated to see both her and Alma’s names on the list.

  When the heavy oak doors opened a group of some two hundred prospective students were allowed inside and divided into six large classrooms. Cole and Rougeaux being near opposite ends of the alphabet, the girls went in different directions, but not before gripping hands and whispering “Good luck.”

  The panel of judges behind the table introduced to Eleanor’s group were four black professors–three men in long coats and a woman in a charcoal dress–and a beautiful, young-looking white woman of regal bearing who turned out to be the founder of the institution, Mrs. Jeannette Meyers Thurber. One by one the auditioners took their turns, playing their prepared pieces and performing sight and ear tests. There was no clumsy playing this time, with more than a few auditioners playing brilliantly. When it was Eleanor’s turn she began the piece with her customary quiet attack, and found the sight and ear tests not too difficult. When she stepped up to the table to return the sheet music to the leading professor, she saw that Mrs. Thurber smiled at her approach, gave a little clap of her hands and murmured, “Un diamant brut!” Eleanor’s hope rose a notch. She prayed that she had enough of the diamant and not too much of the brut to make it in.

  She found Alma in the hallway looking dejected, certain again her audition was terrible.

  “That’s what you said last time,” said Eleanor, “and it wasn’t true.”

  And indeed it was not, as they learned the next morning when both their names appeared on the short list of the one hundred new students accepted.

  Eleanor sat, disbelieving, in the Conservatory’s auditorium, together with Alma and the other lucky young musicians, as they listened to words of welcome and instruction from Mrs. Jeannette Thurber, two of the senior professors, and the somber, gray-haired Conservatory Director. When the new students were dismissed, the group milled about making acquaintances. Among the new students, Eleanor counted some twenty other colored folks, besides herself and Alma. One of these, a young man with large, kind eyes approached and introduced himself as “Sam Higgins, clarinet and oboe.” He was from Baltimore, and just like that their duo became a trio. They found a place nearby to celebrate with dishes of ice cream, swapping stories about their audition moments, in order to relive the magic of the day.

  * * *

  Soon enough their days were packed with all things music: theory, technique, harmony, history, repertoire. Eleanor lay down in her bed each night feeling as if her mind could not contain one more thing. Her body and her hands ached in a whole new way. She felt exhausted, but so alive, and aware that it was a rare gift to be immersed in one’s own element. The new students, and Eleanor among them, looked upon the senior students with great admiration, and toward the professors with reverence. The latter held the keys to a vast kingdom that, despite all her natural talent, Eleanor was just beginning to know.

  Gerard Batiste was one such ambassador, a young assistant professor, light-skinned with a devilish smile. Originally from New Orleans, he was known not only for his skill and good looks but as a composer, which at the Conservatory had earned him a particular respect. He had twice won a prize in their yearly competition of new composers, which led to his appointment to the faculty. He taught the introductory class in piano theory and technique to the new summer students, as well as leading their individual lessons. As an instructor he was exacting. He strode around the classroom emphasizing points in a sonorous voice, while his hands flew in large gestures, painting the air with the great concepts of music.

  Among the Conservatory’s colored students, Professor Batiste held a special kind of status. Though they earned the support and esteem of a number of the Conservatory’s white faculty, they counted on Batiste to understand the added challenges they faced in the music world, to defend them in the face of insult or condescension, and to champion their right to be there. They flocked around him outside of class, eager to ask questions and hear anything he had to say.

  A week into individual lessons, Professor Batiste was impressed with Eleanor’s facility on the piano, noting her near-instantaneous incorporation of new information, and her razor-like focus. He began calling on her to demonstrate various techniques for the other students, and gave special attention to correcting any bad habits he spotted in her playing. Eleanor was deeply flattered, drawn by the intensity in him she recognized so well. At last someone understood the fire that lived within her. And this, together with his voice, his eyes, his beauty when playing, and of course the music, set over her like a spell. When the third week of May concluded he asked if she would help him with one of his compositions the next Saturday morning. The Conservatory was closed on weekends, except for recitals and children’s lessons on Sunday afternoons, but as an assistant professor, Batiste had keys and access. The school encouraged its teachers to work on their own projects after hours.

  That Saturday he asked her to meet him at nine and she was there by eight, clutching her handbag and the sheaf of sheet music he’d given her days before. He was working on a scherzo he called La Flor de Mai and she already knew it by heart. In the first hour they sat side by side on the bench, with Batiste demonstrating and Eleanor echoing while he either nodded or shook his head. She was conscious of the warmth of his arm when it grazed her shoulder. Then he had her play alone while he paced behind her, intent on listening, and leaning over her intermittently to make notes with a pencil on the sheet music. “Let’s try it this way,” he said now and again, as if his project had become mutually theirs.

  There was a central problem to be solved in the piece, the resolution of which remained frustratingly elusive. Four hours flew by, and then he thanked her. She returned to her room at the Vance, heart aflutter. Eleanor had told Alma that she had an extra lesson that morning, and when they met later that day and Alma asked about it, she said only that it went well. She didn’t say she was working together with Professor Batiste. Or that she was aflame with something for which she did not yet have words. She wasn’t sure why she was suddenly keeping secrets from Alma, but maybe it was because she didn’t want to appear boastful. Or foolish.

  The second Saturday, addressing the same problem in the music, Batiste asked her to listen while he played a slight variation. Considering the variation, Eleanor thought the piece was a little flat, perhaps if there were more contrast in the middle? Batiste stared at her a moment and then gave something a try. He played it over again, changing a few notes here and there, and then jumped up. “That’s it!” he cried, laughing out loud. “Damn it, that’s it!”

  And then he was embracing her. The warmth of his body pressed against hers, flooding her senses with the heady smell of sweat and aftershave lotion. His lips grazed her ear. Never had anyone held her so close. She was moved, touched in that empty place in her heart that had been with her ever since her mother had died and left her, despite all her family, so very alone. Perhaps he felt it too
.

  But then, flashing over this tenderness came a wave of alarm. She felt his lips, his breath on her cheeks and at her throat, his hands running over her breasts, and then down under the hem of her dress and underskirts, traveling up her legs. She did not have a clear idea of what a man and a woman might do together, only something that occurred in secret after marriage, and that preceded the birth of babies. She didn’t know what could happen in a music room, but whatever was happening now was surely a liberty not to be taken. And yet she didn’t want it to stop.

  Somehow Batiste knew just how to maneuver around Eleanor’s elaborate corset and underlayers. Her arms moved as if by their own accord to circle his strong neck. She clung to him as he fumbled with his belt. He leaned her against the wall of the studio, then lifted and entered her, thrusting desperately, then moaning, “Oh, God,” before going still.

  They remained like that for some minutes, catching their breath. He drew away and they rearranged their clothing. Eleanor was not entirely sure what had just happened and was momentarily overwhelmed by the throbbing, stinging sensations between her legs. Batiste picked up the sheet music from the piano and closed the fallboard over the keys.

  “That’s enough for today,” he said. “I’ll see you home.”

  * * *

  Monday in class, and all that week, he did not single her out as he normally did. He did not ask her to work with him the coming Saturday. His addresses to her were cordial, even kind, but gave no hint of the intimacy that had transpired. Eleanor did her best to focus on the lesson. What had she expected? She didn’t know, but, whatever it was, the lack of it left her crushed and confused. During the lunch break Alma noticed her downcast state and asked her if something was the matter. What could Eleanor possibly say? Only a concealing half-truth, that she wasn’t feeling quite well. Alma asked her if she was homesick, and she said yes, because perhaps that was also somewhat true.