Tananarive Due

by The Black Rose

  Next year they’ll all know who I am, Sarah promised herself. Every single one.

  “It’s a shame C.J. didn’t come,” Sarah said. “He’d be struttin’ through this place like a rooster. I heard a man just now saying he wants better ads. C.J. would’ve talked his ear off.”

  Lottie nodded quiet agreement. After a moment she said, “What was his excuse for staying at home, Madam?” Her inflection was carefully neutral.

  “C.J. said he had things to do,” Sarah said, hating the defensiveness in her own voice.

  C.J. had just shrugged and mumbled something about being tired, saying he was ready to stay at home a while. Granted, they’d already had an eventful year together; while they’d been staying in Jackson, Mississippi, for several months to train culturists and agents, C.J. had actually been arrested for selling products without a license. He and Sarah had been outraged about it, but Mr. Ransom had advised them to pay the fine and forget the matter, lest they be taxed in Mississippi. There were so many pitfalls to doing business! Besides, Sarah couldn’t help feeling the law had been exercised so freely against C.J. simply because he was a Negro. I’m ’bout done with bein’ on the road, Sarah, C.J. had said. Except she knew there was more to it than that.

  C.J. had been tired a lot in the past five months, but when she tried to broach that subject he’d changed tactics, accusing her of chasing after Dr. Booker T. Washington’s coattails. Well, perhaps that wasn’t entirely wrong.

  Sarah had been thrilled to meet Dr. Washington and his wife at Tuskegee in January. The great man, the league’s president and founder, had sent her a gracious letter thanking her for her $40 contribution to the school, appropriately signing it Principal. But it had maddened Sarah to know that the best-known Negro in the country was going to be only a few hundred miles from Indianapolis for the NNBL Convention and would not come to town to see her company. She’d written him twice, first offering to pay his way to Indianapolis on his way to Chicago, then asking to host Dr. Washington on his way home. Sorry, he’s too busy. Polite words on neatly folded sheets of fine paper, signed by Dr. Washington’s secretary, Mr. Emmett J. Scott. In his second letter, Mr. Scott had said he admired her persistence, but she wondered if it amused him instead.

  C.J. had cautioned her to stop pressuring the renowned educator everyone called the Wizard because of his power in building coalitions. Lord have mercy, Sarah, he’s got everybody and his mama running after him. Why you have to push so hard? But that was always C.J.’s problem, not being able to put two and two together and see what it added up to. The way she saw it, if Dr. Washington was sufficiently impressed with the company, he might one day agree to offer the Walker method as a part of the curriculum at Tuskegee. And if that happened, Tuskegee itself would certify untold numbers of women in the use of Walker products and hair preparations. What a boon that would be!

  Sarah had seen that potential as clear as day when she visited the Alabama school, but she couldn’t approach Dr. Washington with such a proposition based on her mere say-so. For all she knew, the Washingtons might have viewed her as just another two-bit traveling salesman. No, Dr. Washington needed to see the company for himself. That would make all the difference.

  And that was one of the biggest reasons Sarah was here.

  Even though she hadn’t yet been able to get close enough to Dr. Washington to even catch his eye or say hello, the NNBL convention itself had surpassed Sarah’s wildest hopes. What a golden opportunity this was, hearing the stories of so many Negro businessmen! She wished Lelia had come, too. But Sarah had known full well from the nonchalance in her daughter’s letter from Pittsburgh a week ago that Lelia had no interest in a business trip. I’ll think on it, Mama. Not likely! Now, if Sarah had invited her to a dance, maybe . . .

  “Morning, Madam Walker.” Someone squeezed Sarah’s shoulder warmly, and she turned to see George Knox behind her grinning, his wild tufts of white sideburns sticking out from the sides of his hat. He leaned over to give her cheek a peck, then he did the same for Lottie. His breath smelled of coffee. “You aren’t nervous, now, are you, Madam?” He winked at her.

  “Not until you said that, no.”

  “Don’t mind me; that’s just teasing. Why are you sitting way back here? How do you expect these folks to hear you?”

  “Now, Mr. Knox, you should know me and my mouth better than that by now.”

  The newspaper publisher sat beside her with a chuckle. “Remember, you get only three minutes. Did you write out a speech like I told you?”

  Lottie chimed in. “She sure didn’t, Mr. Knox, even after I offered to help her by transcribing it. She seems to forget that’s what I’m paid for.”

  “Well, I know sales, and sales is ninety percent mouth,” Sarah said. “Don’t you worry. You introduce me, Mr. Knox, and I’ll do the rest.”

  “She will, too. This lady here is a constant marvel to me,” Lottie said.

  “Marvel. That’s a beautiful word, Lottie—she’ll be a marvel to this whole delegation. High time the world heard about the best-kept secret in Indianapolis!” George Knox said. “Just be patient and trust me, Madam. You’re not on the program, so I have to find a way to work you in. I’ve sent a note up to the pulpit, but in case that’s overlooked I’m ready to pick my own spot. When you’re in the newspaper business, you have to know how to push.”

  Sarah felt a flutter of nerves in her stomach. The other delegates might not be nearly as impressed with her as George Knox was, she told herself. In the past two days, she’d heard remarkable addresses from bankers, publishers, and manufacturers who had been in serious business while she was still scrubbing clothes in a tin bucket. Why, Mr. Anthony Overton, who was based right here in Chicago, had a manufacturing business earning $117,000 a year! And her ears were still ringing with excitement from last night’s address by a man named Bishop Scott, who’d talked about business opportunities in Liberia, of all places. Like everyone else, she’d leaped to her feet to applaud him at the close of his presentation.

  By contrast, when a woman named Mrs. Coleman had spoken the first night about her hair-preparations business, Sarah thought the delegation’s response had been only lukewarm. True, Mrs. Coleman’s company wasn’t as big as Sarah’s, but she couldn’t help thinking this mostly male organization might not support Negro businesswomen as enthusiastically—or were they like so many others who didn’t think beauty and hair products deserved their respect?

  Well, she was about to find out.

  “There he is,” Lottie said. “There’s Dr. Washington.”

  Sarah didn’t need to glance in his direction to notice the respectful hush when the NNBL’s distinguished president entered the room. He walked with a deliberateness Sarah admired, neither hurrying nor lagging, a sheaf of papers tucked neatly beneath his arm.

  He was older than she was, she noticed, probably in his middle fifties. A man, like my papa. Just a man, she reminded herself. But she still felt light-headed, as if she were standing in the middle of a dream. “Mr. Knox, do you think you can bring us together at the end of the session? I’ll go home happy if I can get his ear for just five minutes.”

  “I’ll do my very best, Madam. Count on it.”

  “Oh! And Madam, I know how you like to say anything that comes to your mind . . .” Lottie leaned close to whisper, “but when you talk to him, please steer far away from politics. No matter how much you admire the NAACP and Mr. Du Bois’s Crisis editorials, don’t get mired in that bad blood between them.”

  The philosophical divide between these giants was well known: W.E.B. Du Bois believed Negroes should fight for every basic right, led by the black educated class; but Dr. Washington preached economic equality for the masses first, social integration second. Sarah didn’t share all of Dr. Washington’s conservatism, but she knew full well it was impossible to worry about fighting for seats at the opera when there wasn’t enough food on the table. “Well, Lord, Lottie, I’m not a complete fool,” Sarah whispered back.

/>   “Madam, I was just trying to help—”

  The gavel rang sharply against the podium, and the morning session was under way.

  Most of the day was consumed with banking. Stocks. Deposits. Interest. Despite her excitement over the past days’ sessions, Sarah found herself fidgeting like a schoolgirl, eager to stand up and tell the delegation about her own work. She watched George Knox’s face in silence as long as she could, waiting for some sign of movement, but he seemed absorbed by everything he heard, constantly writing notes. Finally, at the end of a banker’s address on how he gained the cooperation of his customer base, Sarah nudged Mr. Knox with her foot.

  “Thought you’d have been called by now,” he told her, speaking over the applause.

  “Well, me, too, Mr. Knox. But it looks like no one’s paying your note any nevermind.”

  The room once again fell silent. Dr. Washington gripped the side of the podium. “Now, then,” he said, his voice reverberating through the packed hall. “Are there any further questions?”

  After one sidelong glance from Sarah, George Knox rose to his feet and boomed: “I ask this convention for a few minutes of its time to hear a remarkable woman. She is Madam Walker, the manufacturer of hair goods and preparations.”

  Her heart thundering, confidence buoyed as hundreds of eyes turned toward her, Sarah stood up beside Mr. Knox. Finally her long wait was over. The stillness in the room felt like a precursor to pure magic.

  But as Sarah cleared her throat to begin to introduce herself, her insides sank. Dr. Washington, at the podium, was not giving her the attention he had given all of the other speakers before her. He didn’t even glance in her direction. Instead his eyes were fixed to the program in his hand, and then his voice filled the church: “Our next scheduled speaker . . .” He was speaking much more loudly than he had earlier, probably to drown her out, she realized.

  Sarah was too confused to make out everything Dr. Washington was saying, but she heard him call on someone named Reverend E.M. Griggs. Helplessly, she watched as a man from the center of the room began to make his way up to the pulpit. The attention that had been focused on her wavered, and was gone.

  She stood speechless, numb.

  Urgently, George Knox tugged on the hem of her jacket. “You’d best sit down, Madam. He’s going by the program,” he said quietly.

  Sarah sat. All of her enthusiasm drained quickly away, replaced with a deep and almost crippling humiliation. Dr. Washington had simply ignored her. Her ears began to burn hot, and in that flame C.J.’s words nattered at her. Lord have mercy, Sarah, he’s got everybody and his mama running after him. Why you have to push so hard?

  Lottie patted Sarah’s wrist. “Don’t you worry, Madam. He just doesn’t want to break the order. I’m sure he’ll call on you at the end.”

  Sarah barely heard Lottie’s words. The Reverend Griggs’s presentation was a blur. She felt as if she were sitting on a mountaintop, their voices and forms far away, the warmth of fellowship a pale and distant thing. Sarah had to fight to keep from leaping to her feet while Dr. Washington asked the banker a few leisurely questions. Every time she heard the delegation laugh and clap during the exchange, her ears burned again.

  Why you have to push so hard?

  Her chest hurt.

  “Madam?” Lottie said. “Are you all right?”

  Where was C.J.? Where was her husband while she was “pushing too hard,” being shamed in public trying to build their common dream? Why wasn’t someone here to grasp her hand in comfort now, when the simple, loving pressure of a caring hand would mean the world?

  “Madam?”

  “. . . We thank Dr. Griggs for his splendid address,” Dr. Washington said finally, the words Sarah had longed for, “and we hope that sick man who deposited eleven hundred dollars in his bank got well.”

  The audience laughed. The room rippled with applause.

  Sarah stood, mindless of George Knox’s alarmed expression, ignoring Lottie’s touch on her arm. She pushed past them, into the center aisle, holding her chin high so her voice would bounce from the church’s ceiling.

  “Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face,” Sarah said, even more loudly than she’d intended. Suddenly every eye in the room was on her again. Even Dr. Washington stared at her squarely from the podium, lines of displeasure drawn across his face. This time the silence was oppressive, as if Sarah had stolen all the joviality.

  Sarah, why you have to push . . .

  Because there’s no one else, C.J.

  Sarah swallowed hard, the pressure in her chest increasing. Everything inside her screamed to stop, to leave, to end this now before embarrassment and humiliation escalated into social ruin. But she had come too far.

  Afraid of being interrupted or silenced, she hurried on, her words tumbling in a jumble. “I feel that I am in a business that is a credit to the womanhood of our race. I am a woman who started a business seven years ago with only a dollar-fifty. This year alone, I have earned over sixty-three thousand dollars.”

  A hush. But a different kind of silence this time. This was fascination. Respect. The pressure in her chest decreased, no longer a solid fist around her heart.

  Confidence growing, she went on. “I went into a business that is despised, that is criticized and talked about by everybody—the business of growing hair. They did not believe such a thing could be done, but I have proven beyond the question of a doubt that I do grow hair!”

  She paused, and realized that she was gulping for air, as if she had run a lone race carrying a desperate message. And just maybe she had. Suddenly the silence in the room was replaced by the friendly sound of laughter and clapping. She glanced at the strangers’ faces turned nearest her, and she saw only smiles of encouragement. Lottie beamed at her.

  With that, finally, Sarah relaxed. She told the audience about how her profits had grown from year to year, reciting the figures and details, names, history, and procedure from memory. No one interrupted. No eye left her, even Dr. Washington’s, although his expression was unreadable. A warm wave of applause fell across her like a summer rain shower.

  Sarah smiled widely, catching her breath. “I have been trying to get before you businesspeople and tell you what I am doing. I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South; I was promoted from there to the washtub . . .”—at this, her audience laughed—“then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. Everybody told me I was making a mistake by going into this business, but I know how to grow hair as well as I know how to grow cotton, and I will state in addition that during the last seven years I have bought a piece of property valued at ten thousand dollars.” The figure impressed them more than she’d expected, because that met applause, too.

  By God. I have them!

  “I have built my own factory on my ground, thirty-eight by two hundred eight feet; I employ in that factory seven people, including a bookkeeper, a stenographer, a cook, and a house girl.” Laughing this time, the audience clapped again. “I own my own automobile and a runabout.” The applause, this time, took so long that Sarah raised her hand slightly. “Please don’t applaud, just let me talk!” she begged them, and they laughed, but slowly grew silent.

  “I am not ashamed of my past; I am not ashamed of my humble beginning. Don’t think because you have to go down in a washtub, you are any less a lady!” Ignoring her earlier admonition, the audience exploded with applause again. But this time, instead of succumbing to frustration, Sarah felt a deep surge of pride that seemed to unburden a weary part of her soul.

  “Now, my object in life is not simply to make money for myself or to spend it on myself in dressing or running around in an automobile, but to use part of what I make trying to help others. Perhaps many of you have heard of the real ambition of my life, the all-absorbing idea which I hope to accomplish, and when you have heard what it is, I hope you will catch the inspiration, grasp t
he opportunity to do something of far-reaching importance, and lend me your support.”

  This was the moment, and she plunged forward. “My ambition is to build an industrial school in Africa—by the help of God and the cooperation of my people in this country, I am going to build a Tuskegee Institute in Africa!”

  Her voice rolled in the room, smothered only by the applause that followed.

  George Knox was on his feet, his face lively with a joy that seemed to erase a decade from his features. His voice rose above the din. “I arise to attest to all that this good woman has said concerning her business in the progressive city of Indianapolis!” He nearly waved his hat in the air in his excitement. “You have heard only a part; the half has not been told of what she has accomplished. She is a generous-hearted lady of our town who gave one thousand dollars to the Young Men’s Christian Association.”

  At the podium, Dr. Washington’s face was still unreadable. Pleasure? Displeasure? Curiosity? She couldn’t say. Once the applause had died to silence, he glanced at his program again. Without comment or questions, he called the next speaker, a banker from Birmingham.

  But all around her, Sarah saw nothing but smiles.

  The steamboat’s lurching motion forced Sarah to cling to the rail, lest she lose her balance in her high-heeled, awkward shoes. The wind nearly took her hat, but she held it in place with her left hand and took a deep breath, enjoying the bracing mist as Lake Michigan’s waters churned in the paddle wheeler’s wake. The late-afternoon sun lit up the city in a stream of golden rays, displaying before her the grand structures and their shadows like an etching by a fine artist. Only the new seventeen-story Merchants Bank building in Indianapolis could rival these buildings. She could hardly believe most of Chicago had burned to rubble only forty-odd years ago.