“I took the liberty, m’am.”
The words had surprised her. Changed her. The dress—the act of making it had changed her. Out of pieces that were bits of nothing she had made something beautiful, designed from her own mind a garment like no other.
Bit by bit they be leavin’, like sand eaten way from a tabby shack . . . She would not be sucked down. Taking liberty, she would seize it. Dressmaker! MISS DORA MAY’S FINE DRESSES AND MANTUAS, she envisioned the sign of her establishment. She went to check her spelling in the sisters’ thick, six-inch dictionary, the last of the books to be packed away. “Mantua: A loose-fitting gown or robe, open to show the petticoat.” She blushed. A fine seamstress, she knew nothing about womanhood.
Dora waited impatiently for the buckboard driver, Tom Winrow, to unload her purchases. Rose Tree Lane was the last of his livery stops he said, or made it so. He smelled of musk and sweat as he chatted. Clearly taking his time so that he could talk to her, he lingered still. He hulked in the doorway, then finally stepped back. Dora thanked him brusquely and shut the door. She had things to do and dawdling was not one of them.
All evening, Dora busied herself cleaning the small rented rooms. She swept the ceiling of spiderwebs, banished the motes of dust, then scrubbed the walls, mopped, scraped, and burnished. Bette followed her around, sprinkling salt in the corners. “Sure you don’t want me to do sumpin? You’ll tire yourself out. Save some for tomorrow. You coulda had that nice young man do some of dis.” Dora would have none of it. “I ain’t thinking bout no man, Mah Bette. I’m thinking bout that thing I seen this morning. That thing sews faster than I kin think. Cost more money than we ever seen. Cost more than a hunnerd dollah, I bet. And they won’t let no colored get it on the pay plan. I got to hab all the money up front.”
“Don’t worry bout dat. Money don’t mean much uh nothin’. I seen a hunnerd dollah, missy. Seen me a whole mess of money a whole bunch of time. One of Maas Julius’s frins try buy me fuh turty-tree hunnud dallah, but he say no mount worth what I give. I seent me a whole bunch of money a bunch of times. He come an hid all his loot when the Sesesh come. Pile upon pile of it. Not worth nuthin cuz it federate scrip. Dug it up and used it fuh kindlin, I did.”
Dora’s eyes rolled but she stayed silent. As much as Mah Bette talked of resistance, she had not left that time either. Dora was determined to get away, to get beyond that, to leave behind all that was painful, sordid, and ugly. Her mind awash with new thoughts, she intended to make her surroundings befit her ambition for herself. She assured Mah Bette she would rest, then waited for the old woman to drift off to begin the quiet tasks. Hit that woodwork again, sew some curtains, then start on these orders. Look at this place. What you gon do with uh ’lectric Singer, don’t even have ’lectricity? Dora glowered at the slop pot. Remembering Blanche’s indoor water closet with pearl tiles, she went looking for the outhouse.
Her skirts hiked over her narrow hips, Dora squatted in the dark and held her breath against the hot, fetid air. She didn’t inhale again until she got back to the second-story landing. Leaning over the banister, she drew in a gust of cool night air. “I will own me a house with a privy and a front door that goes to the street, I will run a respectable business with my name on it,” she declared to the one visible star, “and people will call me Miss.”
Only then did Dora become aware of the music. This was the first night in her life that she could not hear the water, the soft gentle rhythm of ocean waves. Instead she heard music drifting on the soft late summer winds, tingling her face like the sea mist rolling off the bay. Drawn toward the sound, she descended the stairs and entered a narrow arched alleyway. A lone singer perched in a low porch window crooned while indifferently caning a chair. His voice trailed from words to a holler to a wail, the song, an invisible reel cast on the breeze, the music’s changing arcs and pitch drawing her further down the darkened corridor.
The shadows gave way to a broad courtyard. The delicate pianissimo harmonies Dora had heard from a distance now pulsed with a ragged, raunchy rhythm. In the wee hours of the morning, the scene was loud as day. A motley pipe and drum team of children drilled in the dusty square, their bare feet marching in high, uneven steps. Quill and voice made two instruments—reed and horn—drums and feet, the rhythm. The young bootblack who had accosted her that afternoon was leading them. His taut black calves powdered with red dust, his face serious with pride, he pranced about with a piece of driftwood as his baton. Not wanting to repeat their encounters, Dora hurried in the direction of a tall shuttered building that sat across the courtyard, where the warm glow of lanterns beckoned from the windows.
One shutter on the third story hung on one hinge, others missing lattices. A piece of wrought-iron fencing, a section of the second-story balcony, leaned against the wall, chipped, rusting, and stained with lime. Suddenly, a quartet of dock workers burst out the door. Fresh from loading a harvest of timber logs, they celebrated with stevedore gusto, the gravel call of the lead man, three harmonies alone. “All Righty! Join the band! Huhn! All Righty! Join the band! Huhn! Come round and join the band! Huhn! Bo Bo-Boah, Bo Bo Bobo! BAM! Huhn! Bo Bo-Boah Bobo, Bo Bo Bobo! BAM! Join the band! HUHN!” The crew, their interlinked arms propping each other up, marched right toward her. The one on the end had gone to relax, win some money, and have him a woman. He had a little whiskey in him now and crashed into the wall. Before Dora could move, he spun out from the group and grabbed her. That “legomania” got him, the hip action. He was getting that Ashanti quickstep that would one day take on the city’s name, Charleston. Needing a girl’s hot waist in the cup of his hand, he danced a fast, furious scissors move around Dora’s knees, bringing her dangerously close. The music, spilling out of the salon doors, rose into an up-tempo genuine grind, a percussive, poppin’ brass horn drivin’ the song to a frenzy. Her self-appointed partner’s hard-soled boots shook the planks of the sidewalk and rattled the few panes of glass in the window, just when somebody’s fist went through one. Dora pushed herself away. He lunged for her but fell into somebody else. The whole line of burly men went crashing to the ground. “Fight!” the bootblack yelled. Dora May flew back to her rooms.
She sat down on her sewing trunk, her hands between her knees and her feet turned on their ankles. Ringlets of sweat cascaded down her face, drenching her stiff round collar. She watched Mah Bette asleep on the single pallet. Her grandmother’s breathing was heavy and deep, the mouth partly opened, gasping for the night air. Dora buried her face in her hands, then swept off her scarf of muslin and wiped her brow. Some of everybody’s colored folk, and some of everbody else livin’ next doah. “Stomp down, baby!” No, this was not the beginning Dora had imagined.
Opening her sewing trunk, Dora pulled out two of her patchwork quilts. She placed one over her grandmother, then folded the other into a cushion. She knelt wearily and began to pull Lijah-Lah’s hand-carved tortoiseshell pins from her hair. Defying gravity, it spiraled out of its own accord into a crown of abstract auburn peaks, her mind still astir. In instruction and construction is God’s grace, spider-fingers. Dora could lose herself in the movement of her hands, whirling together something whole out of random threads. A pattern, order, design. Her hands were strong, solid, and muscular, with no daintiness or fat. They were smooth and tough like the bark of a young elm. She grabbed random locks to make her plaits for the night and considered her plans for the future.
A gash of light from the hot orange sun pressed against her eyelids. A sliver of light was shooting through an opening in the curtains she had just made, the hem of one panel a full half-inch shorter than the other. Dora did not realize she had fallen asleep, and she could not remember when she had so miscalculated a measurement. Mah Bette had risen at dawn as usual, banjo and herb basket in tow. Somehow the old woman had not let this strange new life alter her rhythm or her own way of doing things. Marching to the window, Dora snatched the fabric down, nails, dowel, and all.
Even through the bustling sounds of th
e Charleston weekday morning, music still wafted from the alleyway. “Dog-bite-it, they still at it!” The music was not stomping anymore, but a slight, low honky-tonk pick guitar. This was the last indignity. Roswell Diggs Jr. had told her, “Charleston’s not like other places. White and colored always lived intermingled. Papa got this block for a steal after the earthquake in ’86. That’s when it turned colored, when they thought the ground was going to give out underneath it. The place has a lot of history. That’s the Heyward-Washington house across the street, one of the oldest in the city, from before the War of Independence. Aaron Burr’s daughter lived over there.”
And round the corner is a bawdy house, don’t you know? She understood now why Roswell had called the area Little Mexico. Just down the alley and through a trellised gate was a world outside the bounds and rules of the nation. Black men could be kings at music or cards or raising proud killing birds, and white men could excuse themselves from dinner and step out with the boys, south of the border without even leaving the city.
She would have to move, of course, find respectable lodgings on her own, but then how would she purchase the sewing machine? She had not the money to do anything but go back, and she would never do that. Never go backward. Always be movin’, movin’ forward. Life is in front of me, not behind.
5
“Half the cost. And if you’re not satisfied, you don’t pay.” What had possessed Dora to say that? “I am not a mere fittuh, m’am, but a dressmaker of such a quality you have never seen. Whatever you are havin’ done, I can offer at half the price, twice the value, and three times the beauty.” Dora had not only offered to make the dress alterations at half the cost, but to have it completed in half the time! “You must be outta your mind. Sometimes you just say things that are ridicullous,” she fussed aloud to herself, mispronouncing the word as she would for the rest of her life. She pressed the wrinkles in her frock with her fingers, walked to the tin basin, splashed her face twice with water, pausing long enough to let the drops set on her cheeks and the metallic taste grace her tongue. Then she spread her comforter on the floor and the material upon it, then the pattern, one of the delicate paper stencils she had fashioned so she could cut the cloth as she had seen it in her mind. On her knees, she began to pin each cutout to the fabric. Dreaming of the Singer, she worked in silence.
The mystery of her mother Juliet’s death hung over her. The memory of her mother’s voice—every now and then Eudora thought she caught the memory of her voice in the morning birds or in the mists of the trees at dawn. Odd she remembered a woman singing, but she could not remember the sound, the melody. She did not understand how the sensation could be so vivid while the sound itself stayed hidden, lost.
“Oh, yo mama was a sanguh,” Lijah-Lah would say. “Woo! She could sang! Song would come out. No words—and somebody say, ‘Ma! That purdy.’ An she face would turn all red all de time. An she not know she be singin’ and no remember eben what’t sound like. But don’t yuh know, fuh long, she make up nuther un. A sweetness, too sweet for Tamarind. Too sweet fuh dis wuld she wuh, uh angel own stay wid us uh shoat time.”
Since she had been a child, Dora had been aware of every sound—the rustle of her skirt as she lifted it to climb the stairwell, stifled giggles of plump children following her, “Outhouse, she asked for the outhouse,” the soft friction of fabric as she prodded her gloves onto her fingers, the straw snapping in her hat, the crackle of her hair as she pushed it back in place. The contempt in Roswell’s voice that had seeped beneath the crack in the door to his study as she passed. “Your sistuh run off with a field niggah for sure. That’s the first burley-headed Mayfield I ever seen.”
Aware of every sound, Dora never sang. She shut out the soundlessness with the whir of industry. When one is idle, one is farther from God. Silently she tacked across the floor on her knees, prodding the fabric with straight pins. Like teeth, they jutted from her lips, pursed in pure determination.
“Who could have such hands but a hummingbird?” The bold baritone voice startled her. Dora almost swallowed a mouthful of straight pins. Thomas Winrow, the driver her grandmother had insisted on calling a gentleman, laughing deep in his stomach, rested his elbows on the windowsill of her room, two arms’ width from her. A pewter cornet, slung over his shoulder, nestled in the slant of his back. Instantly Dora knew that he had been the one leading all that ruckus last night. She snatched the pins from her mouth. “What you doing at my winduh, suh? No one ask fuh you to look in hyeah!”
“Whoa, sorry, m’am. You know I surely mean you no disrespect.” He stumbled over his words. “I look out here just bout every mornin’, yet I must say, never did I saw such busy hands with a face that did not eben look up. But now that I looks upon the face, I see that it be the most beautiful thang I seent in a long while! You truly is a dressmakuh?”
“Course I am. Now if you’ll scuse me, I got work.”
“Woman like you shouldn’t have to woyk, shouldn’t be on her knees.”
I should have left those curtains up. Arms akimbo, Dora walked to the window with the dowel in her hand.
“Tom Winrow, leave that gull alone! Leave that gull alone, I say. Ain’t nuttin but a chile.” Dora looked down the narrow alley. A woman had strolled up, her lips painted, her eyes lined with charcoal, her dress showing far too much skin. A thick coat of powder nearly hid the red clay Cherokee color at her temples.
“Ain’t nobody’s chile. She uh dressmakuh.”
“I didn’t know you went in for dresses, Win. Thought you only went in fuh hats.” Dora could tell from the casualness that the two were friends and that she had already been the subject of some talk. The reference to a milliner, suggesting a woman of loose morals, did not escape her.
“Shoot, woman, you ain’t made no hats since you leff Jacksonville.”
“I aim not from Jacksonville. I aim from Storyville. I tole you dot.”
“Storyville, hunh? All y’all hinkty Creoles need to quit. Where my money at?”
“I already pay you, Tomás, and you turn roun’ and spend it. Way I figure it, you the one owe me. Tu devais donner moi d’argent.”
“Watch out now. I’ma have to hurt yuh. Put a hurtin’ on yuh, Pilar. Talkin’ that mess.”
“Don’t pay him no mind, gull. He tink he big and bad, but he just big.” The woman had a strong, lean face, with eyes black and sharp and angry at the sunlight.
Winrow laughed deep in his stomach. “Most women round here say they make somethin’, only make trouble.” He turned abruptly to Dora. “I mean what I say, m’am. No disrespect. Anything you need, I am here if ever you needs me. Neighborly, seeing as we neighbors and all . . . My, you got purty eyes. They almost purple.”
“They just look like that in the shadow light is all, but—” Dora by now had sheathed the straight pins in the cushion. She had forgotten his name. “Mister . . .”
“Thomas Winrow. Call me Win. Everybody do. Bring you luck.”
“If you are of a mind to be of assistance, Mr. Winrow, I would ’preciate a ride over to King Street on Thursday. I got three dresses to finish fo then and could use all the time I can get to make em—uninterrupted. A ride for the ’livery would greatly help.”
“You hear that, Pilar. She got three dresses to make by Thursday! And juss got hyeah.”
The woman below fanned herself with her handkerchief. “Ah, une modiste! Ma petite, tu travail trop. Gull, you wuk too hod.”
Dora’s back stiffened. “The colored must earn their way.”
The woman chuckled, “We done got some back pay already due on dot, je pense.”
Even Dora had to smile. Right then she made an agreement with herself never to treat anyone with the indignity she had been shown, kin or stranger. I don’t know her story. She don’t know mine. “My name is Miss Dora, Dora May.”
“I am Pilar . . . Madame Pilar to most. You can make me a dress, I fix you hair nice.” Only then did Dora realize that her hair was still in its plaits. After her m
oment of restless sleep and the frantic movements of the morning, the spires stood on their own like the outstretched branches of a tree.
“Fittin duh ax—fittin duh ax you sumpin, Miss Dora.” Winrow had overpowered many obstacles. With his livery and hauling, he had freedom of movement. Freedom of assembly when playin’ his music. He was welcome at Pilar’s as well as the Temple of God. He was a good gambler, reading cards and faces, quiet as he kept it, relying more upon skill than the luck he often advertised. Dealing for the white gentlemen who came on Pilar’s designated “society” nights or playing coon can with the brothers, he earned money easily. He had seen his share of the world, and railroad men, sailors, musicians still brought him news of it. With his cornet, Miss Lizzie, he could make music, pick up anything by ear.
He had everything, but the reading. He recognized some letters. If a storekeeper said, “Git down that flour!” he knew the “flour” sign looked like a bent cross, though he could not understand why ground meal had the same name as a daisy. The deficiency embarrassed him. He practiced getting up the nerve to ask Dora if she might tutor him. Then you might get the nerve to speak open for yuhself.
Win liked Miss Dora. The way she held her head up without treating people like they was less than her. The way she made things beautiful. Decorated her place with seashells and whatnots. Took care of her grandma, though that woman was a piece of work, he could tell. Though Dora had the face of a young girl, he could see that she was a good, strong woman. Win could spend the day configuring her in his mind. The shock of colors from hair to skin to eyes, reminding him of a spring meadow. He saw in Miss Dora May a drive and determination, a faith, “Colored people goin’ get somewhere!” He greatly admired her for that. “Don’t let that woman get an idea in her head!” he joked with Mah Bette. “Not that an idea belong most anyplace else, but don’t let her git one in her head—Lawd have mercy, cuz then it done happen. Whether it be a good idea or not. Whether it be possible or not. Whether it foolish or wise, whether she done told you or not, it done happen.”
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