Suddenly she looks up at me with a wicked grin, kisses me on the forehead and says, “Next Sunday we’ll further discuss your acts of contrition.”
“Gracias, Padre.”
DIXIE BELLE THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
Kate Bornstein
May 26th, 1865
My Dear Friend Tom,
It has been nearly two months since General Robert E. Lee hanged up his fiddle, and it’s only today that the very last of the organized Confederate troops are turning their weapons over to Union soldiers. I am writing to you after so many years and on this particular day because for the first time since the war begun, there’s a good chance there ain’t no rebels in the hills to ambush the United States postal express, and so this letter may ackshully get all the way to your door.
I have addressed this to Tom Sawyer and I hope with all my heart it is Tom Sawyer who is reading this letter and that he ain’t dead and buried out on some battlefield. But whether it’s him reading or maybe some surviving relative, have you got any idea yet who’s writing to you with such fancy, fine and dainty handwriting? It’s me, Huckleberry Finn hisself! Not that anyone in the city of N’awlins has ever knowed me by that name. No, sir. I go by Miss Sarah Grangerford, of the Jackson, Mississippi Grangerfords, honey, such a pleasure to make your acquaintance. There are a very few folks know me as Elexander Blodgett, but the crawfish aristocracy and not a few soldiers and officers around town know me better as the Sassy Sarah from Madame Violet’s Parlor of Elysian Delights and I sure would appreciate if you don’t tell anyone that Huck Finn ever was my name.
Speakin’ of names, the illustrious Mister Twain and I have crossed paths again, right here at Madame Violet’s! I am sure you will see him soon yourself. He asks after you constantly. I am trying my best to persuade him to write stories about this new life of mine the way he done before, but he seems to have some misgivings, which doesn’t make sense because I heard that “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” made him some good money, more even than “Tom Sawyer,” how about that! I never read either of ’em all the way through. Have you? You tell Mister Twain to write us into another book of his. You was always the one who could sell arrowheads to injins and chains to niggers. Have you seen the old man since we knew him, Tom? He has the same tobacco smell and the same crow’s feet about his eyes only much deeper now and his hair is gone all snow. He always tells me to send you his warmest regards and hopes for your wellbeing should I ever see you again alive. I certainly hope I am being successful in delivering his message through this letter.
Well, I am bustin’ with all sorts of good stories to tell someone and they are the truth mainly with only some stretchers. So, if it ain’t Tom Sawyer readin’ this letter, then whoever you are, I hope you enjoy the tellin’. I’ll start back when I took my leave of Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas. Much as I appreciate those two god-fearin’ good women and all the charitable work they did on me, I reckon I was never cut out to be the well-behaved boy they expected me to be in return. So I let ’em kiss me good-bye and I set out down to the courthouse to collect the $6000 that you told me Judge Douglas was holding for me. You remember? My pap never did get his hands on it, you said, and the judge still had it? No hard feelings, Tom but it might’ve been better for all concerned if you’d hadn’t stretched the truth quite so far. The day I showed up to collect my ’heritance, the good judge instead made me the gift of bein’ a two years all expenses paid guest of the great state of Mississippi for what did he call it? Vagrancy and Public Noosance. He did it to self-improve me, he said, and if there ever were any $6000 I never did see a nickel of it. Sure enough though, I learned a great deal about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as a guest of hizzoner’s sheriffs. Soon as I was fully rehabilitated from being a public noosance and released back I high-tailed it as far as I could from respectable society, and headed down to the river which is the only place I ever felt free. I spent a year and some workin’ engine room on all sorts of steamboats, ferryboats and fish-boats. Tom, I was happy as any river snipe ever had a right to be. Did you know I love to tinker with engines? But when your time is up, your time is up or so they say, and I landed down here in N’awlins just three days before we heard that war had broke out between the States. From that time on, any sort of river travel got a whole lot harder to do without the Union interferin’ in your business, and it was clear to me that I was stuck to death in the largest city of the newly constitutionalized Confederate States of America.
What little money I had saved ran out. I was a fine mess with not even two bits to pay a barber to cut my hair, which by thist time had growed down to my shoulders, as long as my pap’s but nowhere near as greasy. I had the choice of stayin’ in the city, or livin’ out in bayou territory, shootin’ possums and Union soldiers. Well, I was never very fond of eatin’ possum nor have I ever shot a human bein’ in my life, though if I was to, it would be a Union soldier rather than a rebel. So I stayed in the city and took myself whatever slop jobs I could find on the waterfront where everyone worked long hours for not one penny, but for two tasteless meals and a sweltering bunk-room filled with too many hard-working newly ’mancipated niggers, Creoles, and no-account tars like me. I was beginning to reconsider my thoughts about possum.
Then came April, 1862, a dark month for the Confederacy but a darker month for N’awlins. The Union admiral Fraidy-Guts invaded the port like it was no more than a mud castle made by children. He fit an almighty battle, sinking eleven of our ships, and clearing the way for the soldiers to march in and take the city which they wasted no time in doing. The Occupation dried up most of the river trade and most of us dock rats found ourselves out of work. Both armies were lookin’ for fresh meat for their cannons so they sent recruiters down to the waterfront every day. The Rebel recruiters were sly. They had to be. If they was catched, it was prison and certain death as traitors. Still, some niggers and bums sided with the rebs and resisted by all means the Occupation. The Union recruiters on the other hand were full of themselves and with good reason: they was holding all the cards in this game, and they offered us positions in their army like they was offering us a place in heaven, which is a place I have never been very anxious to visit.
Well, I reckon you are about all out of patience wondering what a boy like me is doing calling hisself Sarah and writing you with handwriting so like a girl’s. Well, wait jest a minute more because I’m getting to that part.
I suppose I owe it all to the papists. There sure are a whole mess of ’em here in N’awlins, and most of ’em residing in the Frenchy Quarter. A couple years back, they built themselves three entire new churches in that part of town. Well, I heard tell Our Lady of Perpetural Sorrows would feed the poor, and none bein’ so poor as me and since I hadn’t had a bite to eat for nearly two days, I saunters my way down to the Frenchy Quarter. It were a summertime sabbath morning. I never been inside a Catholick church and I didn’t figger on spending so much time on my knees. I was beginning to wonder when that perpeturally sorry lady would make an appearance and start feeding us poor folk when all of a sudden this priest feller in skirts commenced ringing a bell and eve’body in the place gets up off their knees quick enough and marches up to a little fence they got inside the church, right up front. Then this fancy-dressed priest pours hisself about the biggest cup of wine I ever seen and I’m wonderin is he going to share it or drink it all hisself.
One by one each of them Catholicks dropped to they knees, turned up they faces, and opened up they mouths like baby birds waitin’ fer worms. My turn at the little fence came soon enough and I dropped to my knees like I been a Catholick all my life. The Frenchy priest looked down at me and muttered something or other and it wasn’t even in the French language, but I closed my eyes and opened my mouth. Durned if he didn’t drop a insignificant crust of bread on my tongue which I chewed and swallowed even though it was dry and dint particularly taste much. Naturally, I opened my mouth for more.
“Move alo
ng, my child,” says this priest to me.
“Well, sir,” I say perlite as I can, “I’m still hungry.”
“Well I ain’t a-feeding you,” he says, “I’m a-blessing you.”
“Priest,” says I, “ef this is a blessing, then I’d ruther have a curse as it would likely leave a better taste in my mouth.”
He made to push me away and I think I took a swing at him. I’m not all that sure what happened next because I fainted dead away from hunger right there at the little fence. I know I didn’t get any more bread. The next thing I do know is I’m flat on my back out in the middle of some dusty road in the Frenchy Quarter at high noon, and I’m lookin’ up at the prettiest angel I ever did see. She was lookin’ down at me and the sun was behind her head, all halo-like.
“Ma’am,” I inquired perlite as I could, because the Catholicks had jest showed me how ornery they could be if a feller wasn’t perlite enough, “Are you Our Lady come to feed me?” She jest tosses her head back and laughs.
“I may feed you, boy,” she says, “but first you come with me out of that awful hot sun.”
I was surprised to see that Our Lady was a quadroon beauty, tall, long of limb with skin the color of creamed-up coffee. I let her lead me across the road and through a pretty little wooden gate set into a row of nicely trimmed hedges and we come into a well-kept garden. A nice breeze springs up, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of all the flowers. Of a sudden, I remembered my manners and tip my hat and out spills all my scruffy long hair down over my face and shoulders which I think is gonna put her off, me being such a bum.
She laughs about the loveliest, deepest, richest laugh I ever did hear and says: “Better and better,” and smiles a smile like to break my heart she is so lovely. “Young man, you want to earn yourself a dixie?”
Well, that settled it for me: she was not Our Lady, for I had never met a Catholick willing to part with a nickel, let alone one of the famous ten-dollar notes writ on the back of them in French with the word “dix.”
“Ma’am,” I said to this beautiful woman, “I will do whatever it is you want for jest a little bit of supper being as how I haven’t et a bite for nearly a week now.”
She jest clucks her tongue and marches me into the house attached to the garden, and I find myself inside a cozy kitchen presided over by a fat, smiling Creole cook.
“Bon Mambo, please fix this boy a hot breakfast right away. I’ll go fetch Madame Violet. She’s going to like this one. Boy, my name is Miss Rosie, so how do you get called?”
“Elexander, Miss Rosie,” I says, Elexander being a name that has served me well in the past. Then I add for good measure: “Elexander George Phillip Blodgett.”
“Fine then, Elexander George Phillip Blodgett, you eat your fill and I’ll be back with good news by the time you’re done.” And with that, Miss Rosie sweeps out of the kitchen through a fancy beaded curtain, leaving me alone with Bon Mambo who has already begun to crack a couple of eggs and turn up the flame under a pot of greens. Now in case you don’t know, a Mambo is a lady priest of the voodoo people, whose priests ain’t nothin’ like the Frenchy Catholick priest I near brained over the street at Our Lady of Perpetural Sorrows. I heard tell that Mambos could turn you into a zombie ef’n they wanted to, and you’d have to do everything they tell you to. Bon Mambo set a plate of eggs and greens down in front of me, and I fell to it like a dog.
“Mistah Elexander,” she says to me while I devours the victuals, “you ain’t really no Elexander and if you stay in this house much longer, you ain’t gonna be no mistah either. But they’s good news for you, too.”
Now, the short hairs on my neck were standing on end but I kept silent and went right on eating. It’s best not to innerupt Mambo ladies who are tellin’ your fortune so she kept on a-tellin’ mine:
“Come tomorrow mornin’, you gonna be not one but two dixies richer than you are right now. An’ you gonna give Bon Mambo one o’ them two dixies as tribute, and fo’ me keepin’ you alive with these here eggs and greens.”
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Bon Mambo, ma’am” says I, for her greens were perfectly greasy and mighty tasty and besides I had no wish to be zombified. “Soon as I get me two dixies, I’m giving one of ’em to you.”
This was the rightest thing I coulda said, for she smiled real big and added some awfully good spoon bread and syrup to my plate and I fell back to breaking my fast. Bon Mambo and I had ourselves an understanding.
“Don’t you be wasting all my profits on every rag-tail scalawag what sets down in this kitchen, Bon Mambo.” And with that, the beaded curtain swooshes open and in marches the Madame of the house, followed close on her heels by my quadroon angel. Where Miss Rosie is tall and thin and long of limb, Madame Violet is short and stout and about as stubby a woman as I ever seen.
“Stand up, boy, and let’s have a look at you,” says Madame Violet. So, I do.
“Turn around.” I do that as well.
“Take off your shirt and trousers.” I don’t do that.
“Boy, this is not the sort of house to be shy in.”
I am at a loss for words, which as you know I am not often.
“Go ahead, Elexander,” says Miss Rosie. “We seen it all before.”
I finish chewin’ the bite of spoon bread that’s in my mouth, and look over to Bon Mambo who gives me a wink and a nod. So, I shrug my shoulders and in no time, I’m standing in this kitchen in my underwears.
“See, what’d I tell you, Madame Vi? Jest what the Major’s been asking for: right size, right face, even the right hair. Ain’t he perfect?”
“I wouldn’t call him perfect,” says the Madame, “and it depends how good he’ll look in a dress.”
The power of speech having returned to me, I reply: “Madame Violet, I look durned fetching in a dress, my hair cleans up real good, but I’m afraid nuthin’ can be done for this pug ugly face of mine.” All three women laugh out loud, and Madame Violet looks at me a lot closer then, pretty near to like a butcher who’s inspectin’ a not-too-rancid side of bacon.
“So you like to wear dresses,” she says, “but did you ever lay down with a man before?” Well, it all fell in place for me right then and there what they wanted from me and what I’d most likely be doing to earn myself that dixie or two.
“My pap brought me to his bed more than oncet or twice, ma’am,” I told her, “but layin’ there was all I did. Ef’n you mean did a man ever love me and did I ever love a man right back, then yes’m, I have and I find it to my liking. Might I put my shirt and trousers back on now?” Did I ever tell you that about my pap, Tom? I don’t think I ever did. I don’t talk about those times all that much because when I do, I pretty near always start in crying which is what I started to do right there in the kitchen all over my greens.
Miss Rosie leans down next to my chair and wraps her long arms around me and squeezes and squeezes. When she’d done with that, I get myself dressed and set back down to eatin’ and this madam lays out exactly what I am to do, with whom I am to do it, and what words to say while I’m a-doin’ it. She has plenty of time to tell me all the details because I am eating a great deal of Bon Mambo’s delicious greens and spoon bread.
What followed then was pretty near a day full of bathing and dressing and girl lessons. Pretty near every one of the wild women in that house took a whack at gettin’ me ready. They fussed all over me like I was they little sister gettin’ ready for her debyootant ball which in a way was what I was. One of’em curled my hair all up, and I ain’t never felt any thing softer against my neck ’cept once I spent a night with a cranky old tomcat who liked to suck on my ear. One of ’em sprayed me in parfum all the way from France, every part of me except my feet and my toes which they left all road-dusty and I’m sorry to say a bit ripe to the nose, but they explained that the Major perferred odoriferous feet. Next, a tall handsome nigger showed up. He is the piano player and barber of the house by the name of Perfesser, and he shaved me with a straight razor
but he didn’t stop at my neck.
By this time, I am feeling mighty fine. I am surrounded on all sides by scanty-clad women and they are touching me, stroking me, poking me and sponging me and soon enough, a part of me has come to attention. A skinny little thing named French Annie says: “Sugar-boy, you want me to take care of that little soldier of yours?”
“Miss French Annie,” I replied, “I would be most obliged.”
But instead of what I expected her to do, she flicks me across that very tender part of me with just one finger, and down I go to half-mast again and they bust out laughing all over again.
“You remember that move. It may come in handy some day.”
They were pretty much all generous and good-natured like that. I was a bit embarrassed. Not shy, I wasn’t shy. I was embarrassed I couldn’t pay them for all the work they were doing making me pretty and presentable. Madame Violet was giving me just one dixie for the whole night. Looked like Bon Mambo wasn’t that much of a fortune-teller, for with no second dixie, I couldn’t pay her tribute. But ef’n I did good enough tonight, and this Major who was from Massychoosets liked me and all, well I could move into the house. I’d be a regular, and I could work there and get the same pay as the other girls.
That’s what she said: “the other girls,” like I might could be one of ’em. I didn’t mind much the idea of lying down with the Major. Boys and men can be just as lovely as the ladies ef’n you’re lyin’ in their arms.
By now we was getting down to the finishing touches. Little French Annie places her palms just over my nippies and pushes’em one toward the other, giving me little boobies. And while she’s holding my new boobies in place like that, another of the girls applies a sticking plaster and some minutes later, I am the proud bearer of a fine set of womanly bosoms which shook like the real thing especially when I laughed. But then, they commenced to apply feminine underwear to me and this was truly torture. Tom, I have beared up with ticks and chiggers and fleas and skeeters. I have braved snakes and even once’t I faced down a mad fox was fixin’ to bite me. But I have never come to grips with any thing so diabolical as the womanly torture of hooks and eyelets. Hunnerts of them on one little piece of skimpy underwear and they helped me hook each and every one of ’em. I always been most comfortable with niggers, and these girls were just another kind of nigger so we all got along.
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