Tananarive Due

by The Black Rose

  As the steamboat began its journey along the lakeshore, dozens of passengers applauded. The hospitality banner from the church sessions had been strung across the railing, flapping in the breeze: WELCOME, NNBL. Sarah could also hear lively traces of string music being played from somewhere inside the boat’s cabin. There must be musicians aboard!

  “Now this is what I call style,” Sarah said to Lottie, who nodded her agreement with a wary eye cast downward into the foaming waters.

  At that instant, Dr. Booker T. Washington appeared on the deck, flanked by his secretary, Mr. Scott, and two other men Sarah didn’t recognize. Dr. Washington’s suit was still impeccable. With his hands clasped behind his back, he looked every bit the part of a solemn schoolmaster, his shoulders hanging slightly low, perhaps from weariness after the long convention. Dr. Washington’s gaze swept across the deck without taking any notice of her, and his lanky form was soon hidden from her view by a huddle of delegates.

  “I’ve seen that man smile only once in three days,” Sarah mused.

  “And when he does, it looks like it makes his face hurt,” Lottie added, strictly within Sarah’s hearing. Then her tone became more formal as she snapped to her official role: “Would you like an audience with him, Madam? After the way everyone crowded to you, surely he—”

  “Oh, no. He heard what I have to say. I think I’d best leave it at that.”

  I’ve already pushed so hard. Maybe too hard, she thought. If that were true, she could forget about any dreams of having the Walker method taught at Tuskegee.

  Sarah sighed, feeling out of sorts as she surveyed the lovely, calm lake from the boat’s deck. Her fingers twitched instinctively, again yearning to be held. Many of the men at the conference had left their wives at home, including Dr. Washington, but she noticed that almost all of the women present stood contentedly on the arms of their mates. These women seemed to actually glow with pride, exactly the way she had once made C.J. glow. And hadn’t she glowed for him, too? Every time she saw him dressed in his finest clothes, with his hair slicked back and his necktie looped into a crisp, perfect knot, C.J. made her glow. He could make her glow with the barest effort, just by noticing some crucial detail that had slipped her attention, or by squeezing her hand on a beautiful summer day like today.

  But you know what, Sarah? she thought. I think what really got your goat about the way Dr. Washington treated you today was how much it reminded you of C.J. acting like you ain’t even breathing the same air as him no more.

  When she’d met Madam Bethune last month, the educator had told Sarah how lucky she was to have a husband who believed in her mission. (And mission was exactly the right word, Sarah thought; Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing might have started as a business, but it had become something else to her.) I’m afraid my dedication to my school became too much for my husband, Madam Bethune had confided to her. Albertus walked out in 1908 after ten years of marriage, and I haven’t seen him since. Be glad Mr. Walker understands.

  But C.J. didn’t understand, and lately he didn’t seem to even want to.

  Sarah barely noticed a young woman who came to stand at her elbow, bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet. “Now, Madam Walker, my husband is a delegate, and I liked what you said about promoting yourself from the cookhouse into business. But you must travel so much. My husband would turn me out if I did that. Your husband doesn’t mind?”

  For a moment Sarah was dumbstruck. Had this woman been reading her thoughts?

  She collected herself. “My husband and I are building the Walker Company together. It’s his name, after all,” Sarah said, speaking the bald lie from habit. What should she have really said? Hell, yes, C.J. minded! If C.J. didn’t mind, he would be standing at her side this very moment. If C.J. didn’t mind, five months wouldn’t have passed since they had last touched each other as man and wife, and she wouldn’t have found that letter from Kansas City—

  No. No. Don’t think on that. Not now.

  But the thoughts came anyway. Right in C.J.’s desk drawer, in plain sight, she’d noticed a feminine script on an open envelope from Kansas City. She’d thought it was related to business, or at least that was what she’d told herself as she started to read it, but inside she’d found a love note so familiar that she could have written it herself. There was no signature at the bottom, but someone—a woman, no doubt—had written saying how much she’d enjoyed her time with C.J., thanking him for his “sweet and kind letter.” The correspondence had come in January, before the Tuskegee trip, but Sarah had found it only a few weeks ago. So he’d been running around with other women even during the time she’d thought everything was better between them, when they spent less time apart. He might still be running around now.

  Lelia had warned Sarah before her very first supper with C.J. Walker, hadn’t she? A woman in every city, she’d said. And Lelia had been right.

  Sarah shook her head sharply, fighting off tears. The woman who’d sought her out was talking on about a business idea, but Sarah could no longer hear her. At that instant, she became fixated on the simple feeling of knowing. A clarity came to her that was different from the others that had visited her throughout her life and yet the same; gentler, somehow, but just as certain. She had to go home. If she cared about C.J. and she wanted her life with him to be the way it had been ever again, she had to go home right now.

  But it’s too late, said an even quieter, calmer voice in her head. It’s much too late.

  “Madam? You’ve made some more new friends,” Lottie told her in a singsong voice, and a small congregation of wives enveloped Sarah in smiles and admiration.

  “Madam Walker, I hope I can sign up my daughter to be one of your agents—”

  “My husband and I enjoyed your speech today soooo much.”

  “—love your idea to open a school in Africa!”

  Finally, the nagging voices in Sarah’s head vanished, whisking away her anxieties, too. She took another deep breath, and she felt replenished. She touched something in strangers it was so difficult to touch in C.J., and it helped soothe the ache. But she had to remind herself it wasn’t her these excited people loved so much—they were not “friends,” as Lottie had called them—they didn’t know her in flesh and blood, after all. They loved the idea of her. When they looked at her, they saw a future. For their daughters. For their race.

  And why not? Anyone could do what she was doing, and maybe do it better. All they needed was to believe in it. Before she knew it, as usual, Sarah found herself speaking her thoughts aloud to her growing audience: “Sure the white folks have advantages, but we can’t use that as an excuse not to do for ourselves. We don’t need to start out with a lot of money. Don’t even need to start out with a fancy education, although you always keep educating yourself along the way. I bet I don’t have half the schooling most of you ladies have, but I try to learn something new every chance I get. This month my companion, Lottie, has been teaching me Hamlet. That’s right! Do you think I’d ever studied any Shakespeare before? See, I’m not ashamed to say when I don’t know something. How else would I ever learn it?”

  Sarah’s skin itched with adrenaline as she could feel the impact of her words coursing through the dozen attentive women, who looked so elegant in their brightly colored summer dresses, hats, and parasols. Sarah was very careful with her diction, still branded with the memory of how society ladies exactly like these had been so quick to dismiss her in Denver and Pittsburgh. She’d seen how quickly a single misplaced “ain’t” could turn someone’s face to stone.

  “If I was afraid, I’d still be bent over a washtub. That’s the biggest thing working against us, just being afraid. Afraid to look foolish. Afraid to try something new. Afraid to stand up. If we keep being afraid, our race will never have anything.”

  “Madam, tell them about the Isis,” Lottie prompted gently, with pride.

  “That’s right!” Sarah said, and she told the women that she’d sued the Isis Theater in Indianapo
lis because of its policy of charging Negroes a higher price for tickets than whites. Sarah loved pictures, and she’d been so angry after seeing the price difference when she arrived at the theater with Lottie and her visiting niece Anjetta that she hadn’t attended one since. “I won’t be treated like I’m in a segregated Pullman train car every time I go to the movie house.”

  One dark, pretty young woman gasped aloud, then looked embarrassed that she’d drawn attention to herself. “Madam, down where I’m from, you’d get lynched for talking like that!”

  “Well, some folks tried to say I’d get lynched in Indianapolis, too. But I tell you what, I’ll see my moving pictures for a dime just like white folks, and not a penny more!”

  The women laughed, and Sarah realized she had caught someone else’s ear. The crowd around Dr. Washington had thinned enough for her to see his eyes, and they were resting on her like shining onyx stones, assessing her. When he began walking toward her, Sarah felt both nervous and electrified.

  “Of course, there are times a little discrimination is good, Madam Walker,” called an older, silver-haired woman who looked to be in her sixties. She spoke with great gentility, and Sarah hoped she wasn’t about to be goaded into an argument with an old-timer who believed Negroes should be happy in their place. The woman went on: “What did the fighter Jack Johnson say? When he tried to board the Titanic, the steward told him, ‘This ship doesn’t haul coal!’ That’s the kind of discrimination against coloreds I don’t mind one bit.”

  “Amen. And you see how it came out,” said another woman. “Fifteen hundred dead!”

  “Just goes to show, you don’t tempt God,” the older woman said again, with a prim nod.

  The listeners agreed, making sympathetic sounds. The fascinating newspaper accounts of the Titanic’s survivors had helped Sarah and Lottie pass many hours on their train journeys since April. In fact, Sarah had wondered in the back of her mind if it might not be bad luck to take a steamboat tour so soon after that tragedy, but she’d dismissed that concern as pure superstition. Even if the boat sank, no one would freeze to death in this heat, that was for sure.

  “I don’t know if I believe Jack Johnson set foot anywhere near the Titanic,” Dr. Washington spoke up, arresting the group’s attention. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was such a striking baritone that his words seemed to leap from his throat. “If Mr. Johnson tells you the time, I suggest you seek out a second opinion.”

  Everyone laughed, even though he’d spoken with a completely deadpan face. What was the word for him? Stentorian. Lottie had taught her that word, and it suited Dr. Washington perfectly. “Mr. Johnson likes to bring himself attention,” Dr. Washington went on, his eyes still on Sarah. “But as I’m sure you can attest from your own experiences with your company, Madam Walker, excellence speaks far more eloquently than words.”

  Sarah felt a blush of pleasure at the compliment.

  “Well, thank you, sir. I always tell my agents and culturists that exact thing! But sometimes excellence needs a little help, and a few words don’t hurt.”

  “Well, I’m not at all surprised you started your business with so little and it grew so quickly each year, Madam,” Dr. Washington remarked. “My wife has told me how energetic you were when you were at Tuskegee. All told, I’d say you’re a perfect example of ‘casting down your bucket where you are.’ ”

  Sarah caught her breath, her heart dancing. She was ready to pour out her heart to Dr. Washington, to tell him how inspired she’d been to hear him say those words in St. Louis, how she’d been crossing the bridge with a load of laundry and decided to change her life. She was poised to frame the words when an unfamiliar hand touched her arm.

  She turned to face a middle-aged white woman who had made her way through the crowd. Sarah recognized her as the wife of a man from the Chicago Association of Commerce who had welcomed the convention to town at the first session. Mrs. . . . Trask?

  “Madam Walker? It’s so fascinating to hear you say how we shouldn’t be afraid, because I’ve been very interested in women’s suffrage. May I ask you a question?”

  Sarah looked down at the hand resting on her arm in a way that felt too familiar, like countless other white women who had felt free to touch her like property when she was washing their clothes. Lottie gave Sarah an irritated glance, and Sarah could almost hear her secretary’s thoughts: Just as soon as you have a chance to talk to Dr. Washington face-to-face, that white woman has the nerve to speak up and interrupt as if you’re talking to any Joe Blow on the street.

  Mrs. Trask raised her voice slightly to be heard over the hissing steam engine. “Which has made your life more difficult, Madam Walker? Being Negro, or being a woman?”

  The deck seemed to fall under a hush, except for the music and the boat’s engine. Suddenly Sarah felt like a politician instead of a businesswoman, searching for the right words. On the one hand, she could well understand why this woman would try to make a comparison. But on the other hand . . .

  As Sarah noticed the diamond earrings dangling from Mrs. Trask’s ears—earrings that had almost certainly been bought with her white husband’s money—the question struck her as insulting. Had this woman ever lost a husband in a race riot? Had her parents ever been bought and sold? Would she ever live in fear that her son or brother might be lynched? Or that she might be casually raped by any drunken white man who considered every Negro woman’s private parts his own birthright? Lottie was breathing so loudly beside Sarah, bursting to speak, that she was afraid Lottie would blurt out something that might not serve her well in the eyes of the Chicago Association of Commerce.

  “Well, it’s true both groups have had their cross to bear. I’d say all women deserve to vote every bit as much as Negroes do, and I’ll be happy to see the day we can all cast our ballots freely,” Sarah told Mrs. Trask in an even tone, holding her eyes. Sarah went on, as politely as she could muster: “But I sure hope you won’t take offense if I speak frankly to you, ma’am. In my shoes, Mrs. Trask, it seems like only a white woman would even ask that question.”

  A collective sigh, nearly silent, rippled through her audience; Sarah had spoken their minds, men and women alike. The color seeped slightly from the woman’s face, her lips thinning, and her fingers slipped away from Sarah’s arm.

  For only the second time Sarah had noticed in three days, Booker T. Washington’s face had broadened with what was unmistakably a small smile.

  Sarah grimaced as the train car bounced along the tracks. Thank goodness it was only a fairly short trip between Chicago and Indianapolis, but the hard wooden seat was already chafing her because the porter hadn’t been able to find any spare pillows from the white sleeper cars, and the constant jouncing was irritating her ailment. As planned, she and Lottie had spent the day shopping with the wife of one of the delegates, who’d been so eager to show off the downtown department stores. But the adventure had tired her out, so Sarah had gracefully bowed out of their dinner plans with George Knox and the Newcombs. Despite the arguments from Lottie, who reminded her it was the first leisure time Sarah had spent in weeks, Sarah was ready to go home a day early. She couldn’t wait to rest in her own bed again, at last.

  Besides, the knowing voice in her mind had come back, urging her to go to C.J.

  Sarah had relieved herself at the hotel before she left, her stream burning in a way she’d learned to recognize as trouble—and she hadn’t been able to find any cranberries to help ease it before she and Lottie caught the train. The last thing she wanted was to have to relieve herself on the train, which would be that much worse with the bright, stinging pain. She hoped the tracks would smooth out and stop worrying her bladder.

  To keep from thinking about her body’s complaints, Sarah tried to concentrate on Lottie’s soothing tones as she read to her from the Shakespeare volume. Sarah could read it for herself if she wanted to by now, even if it might be a struggle at points, but Lottie insisted Shakespeare was meant to be heard, not read. And despite the d
ifficult language of Shakespeare’s time, Lottie’s inflections were so true that Sarah rarely had problems following the story lines as she had when the lessons first began; the meaning was crystal-clear in Lottie’s recitation, even if Sarah sometimes didn’t recognize the words.

  The play was nearing its end, Sarah knew, and Hamlet had some important decisions to make. She had a feeling the poor tortured boy was about to get himself killed.

  “. . . ‘Sir, in my heart, there was a kind of fighting that would not let me sleep. . . . ’ ”

  Lottie was speaking Hamlet’s lines, and Sarah understood exactly. Even after such a long day yesterday, between the session, the steamboat tour, and the lengthy evening banquet, she’d barely slept at all last night. But for once she hadn’t been thinking about the company. She hadn’t even been awake relishing the memory of how Booker T. Washington had promised to try to visit her headquarters someday, perhaps if he came to Indianapolis for the dedication ceremony for the YMCA. Even that wasn’t what had kept her awake.

  This time thoughts of C.J. had stolen her sleep.

  “Did you have any questions about that passage, Madam?” Sarah said, pausing.

  “I have a question, but not about Hamlet,” Sarah said, barely recognizing the thick hollow of her own voice. She gazed solemnly at the flat prairie land passing by the window, streaked in fiery shades of gold and orange by the twilight sky. The train felt like a hotbox.

  “What about, then?”

  “What time do they expect this train to get us home tonight, Lottie?”

  “It’ll pull into the station by ten o’clock, if it’s on time. Eleven at the latest.”