Some Sing, Some Cry

by Ntozake Shange

  Dora had got it into her mind to be a dressmaker, to open up a store as fine as the white ladies’ on King Street, to be “une modiste,” a maker of fine women’s dresses and hats and to run a school to go with it for the young girls who had started collecting around her window when she worked. Thomas Winrow watched her pursue these goals with the same straight-backed determination that distinguished her walk. Every Thursday, Eudora marched up and down King Street with her head held high. She never let things stand in her way, never let things hold her back. Still, her quest was not without frustration. When Dora found out that Miss O’Malley, the wiry Falk and Bentschner clerk who had initially thrown her out of the store, was passing on the praise, but keeping Dora’s tips, Dora promptly asked for her proper earnings and was fired from the Custom Order sewing department. Hair oiled, pulled, twisted, and tied down, her lips pursed and drawn in, Dora responded to an advertisement for a new position the very next day: WANTED—YOUNG LADY TO OPERATE SEWING MACHINE. SHIRTS MADE TO ORDER. 348 BUELER ST.

  Mr. Yum Lee initially stood right over her shoulder, watching to see if she knew how to operate his equipment. Although this machine was not a Singer, she figured it had to work with the same principles. Her first try, she placed the spool on the top spindle and wound the thread through the cat’s cradle of gears. When she pressed her foot to the pedal, joy graced through her body as the thread spun round the bobbin. She went into hire, doing piecework and tailoring on a steady basis. By night Yum Lee allowed her to use the machine for her own clients. Dora might have lost her tips, but she took all of her Falk and Bentschner customers with her. And Yum Lee’s Custom Laundry had electricity and lights.

  Before long, Dora had bought her own sewing machine, then a second for embroidery stitching, expanding her booth in the laundry to her own room. She soon had a mess of clients—white and colored—and was working for herself. Instead of taking orders from Miss O’Malley, she placed them. “I’m ’spectin’ several bolts of satin from New York for Miss Bonneau’s wedding next week, iffen you please, Miss O’Malley, thank yuh. And I’ll have some of that pipin’ trim today, thank yuh.”

  Win admired the way she talked to white and colored alike, but he worried about her boldness. A colored woman could get away with things he couldn’t dream of doin’, but still! Not allowed inside the store, he paced in the service alley and waited beside his red-chipped buckboard with Mr. Lee, a mule thought he was human. The moment Dora emerged from the store, Win jumped aboard the wagon and snapped the reins. “Lessin you fixin’ on bein’ sombody’s gluepot, Mr. Lee, you better git, gitty-up.” He tugged the straps to the right and forced a sharp turn at the corner, then bounded from his seat and scooped up Dora’s parcels.

  “Why is it, Mr. Winrow, every time I come out a stoah, I run into you?”

  The sun at his back, his shadow engulfed her. His chest barreled out with a deep rounded laugh. “Just lucky, I told you. Although I don’t know whether that luck be yours or mines. Most me, I guess. Figure a lady needs escortin’,” he said, holding his hat so as to conceal the hole in it.

  “I am much obliged, Mr. Winrow, but waitin’ on me like this gon keep you from gettin’ your other fares.”

  “I don’t mind. I takes the time for what I thank important. Sides, most of my folk get picked up sunrise when the market open and sunset when it close.” He dusted off the seat with his jacket elbow and hoisted her by the waist like a sack of grain. “You should ride up front. Mo comf’table.”

  She was flattered by his attention, but she did not intend to like him. She disapproved of his music and card playin’. “Least let me pay you something for your trouble,” she demurred as he slid into the seat beside her.

  “Ain’t no trouble. Long as I’m back to cart Aunt Sibby, I be fine. Most folk don’t pay me no money no way. Aunt Sibby fix a meal uh okra stew, put a hurt on yuh. We figure somethin’ out.”

  “Playing that honky-tonk every night, I don’t know how you find the time to haul no one at all.”

  “Never say I don’t like to have some fun, now, Miss Dora. Playin’ that honky-tonk is paying the note on my daddy’s farm.” This surprised her. He chuckled to himself. “You think a niggah make a livin’ on day woyk, you livin’ in another country.” Seeing that he had offended her, he countered, “It’s up past the Neck a way, a bit up King’s Highway, then take Charleston-Camden Road . . . Got greens, tomatoes, mulberry trees, Japan plums. Three hogs, five pigs, and a sow, two sheep, a cow, and four old goats.” His laugh was thick and raucous like a crashing wave. “Naw, it ain’t all that, but it got promise. Ain’t no forty acres, now, but I do got the mule. Ain’t that right, Mr. Lee?” The mule whinnied and snorted, taking two steps forward and back. “Ain’t that somethin’! Got me a dancin’ mule! Thought perhaps you might like to see it someday. Got me the sweetest scuppernong grapes inna country.”

  “You got property, Mr. Winrow. Don’t that mean you kin vote!”

  This was not the response he had expected. “I stayin’ out of that now, ain’t not none of my affair. They mix up the ballot when you do go. Find you ain’t got no credit at the stoah when you git back. Any niggah what go down there is marked fuh trouble for damn sure.”

  “I don’t need you to cart me around if you gon cuss, Mr. Winrow.”

  “Fuss at you? I ain’t doin’ that, Miss Dora. Don’t never want to . . . Maybe another way uh doin’ things is all. Make a way my own way.”

  “I just ax a simple question.”

  “Well, lemme ax you one, Miss Always Goin’ Somewhere, where we goin’?”

  “Fifty-three twenty-five Everett Road. Wisdom Hall.”

  Win slowly drew the figures on his paper bag ledger. He took great pleasure in demonstrating that he could write numbers.

  “Fifty-three,” she repeated more slowly.

  “Five . . . three . . . Oh, look at that. Just bout made him uh accident. Not lookin’ at all where he goin’. Five . . . what was it?”

  “Five, three.”

  “Five . . . three . . .”

  “Two, five. Twenty-five.”

  “Two . . . five, twenty . . . five . . . What should I do when I git there?”

  Let’s juss get there fust.

  Coleridge McKinley’s unflawed hands moved across the keys playing a gentle rag. With ease he blended standard parlor tunes with the new Negro sounds he had been hearing in his habitual visits to Pilar’s house of pleasure. He intended later to delight his friends, classmates from Princeton, one of whom was soon to be family. Gazing out the upstairs window, Coleridge watched the weathered buckboard pull up to the alley entrance of what was left of the family estate, Wisdom Hall. “Cousin, I think your seamstress has arrived.”

  His cousin turned slightly. She had almost no chin, and her hair was pulled far off her forehead, suggesting an impish and suspicious nature. “You got relation with this gal?”

  “My dear cousin Tildie! Such an unbecoming question! Do you want a wedding dress or not?” He poked at her slightly rounded belly.

  She swatted at him as he passed. “Don’t mess with me, Cole. I said is she one of your whores?”

  “She’s expert at alterations. Fastest seamstress in the city.”

  “She will have to do the cleanin’ also. You know Mama.”

  Dora could now boast that she had secured employment at the home of Miss Matilda Bonneau. Through Pilar’s intersession with one of her clients, Dora now worked for bona-fide quality white folk. A little down from the olden days, but quality nonetheless. She told herself it mattered not how she got the job, just that she had it. Despite being Blanche’s relation, Dora had not been invited to any good colored Charleston homes yet. Good enough to make they dresses but not to grace they parlors. When word spread that she was designing the wedding party for the Bonneaus, one of the oldest of Charleston’s white Huguenot families, Dora firmly believed she would surely gain entry to the higher class of colored Charleston society. There she could begin the next phase of her ambit
ion, finding a suitable husband. Thick brick walls, sprouting azaleas, shielded the house. The iron gate stood open as Win’s wagon pulled up.

  “Miss Dora, I was fittin tuh ax—”

  “You, boy, you! Git down from there and help!” An ancient white oversized, musty black suit stood before them, shrouding an odd old man, his angular face overpowered by a sculpted silver mustache that twitched with irritation.

  “Yessuh. Tenkee, suh,” Win said, shifting his being into someone else. “Scuse me, Miss Dora.”

  “Come on, boy, come down.”

  “Yes, yes, yessuh.”

  “Damned stutterin’ fool.”

  The sloping sides of the estate driveway still held pools of water, reflecting rain from the night before. The carriage leaned to one side; the family jostled within. The frantic horse pranced and sputtered, threatening to ply his harness from the axle. Chewing on his bit, Mr. Lee looked warily at his owner, then over his shoulder haunch at the frantic mare. The anxious black coachman tried to soothe the old man. “She a race horse, Maas Bonneau, not use to livery.”

  “Go and get another horse from the stables, then.”

  “Ain’t got another horse, Genrul.”

  “Don’t tell me Wisdom Hall ain’t got another horse!”

  Voices spilled from inside the carriage. “Your grandfather’s going to get us all killed. I told you not to let him have the reins. Oh, Mama, please. Look, he’s frightened Brunetta!”

  Win calmly approached the horse with tongue clicks and the stroke of his hand. He took the animal’s face with both hands, leaned his forehead in till his brow was touching, and exhaled into the horse’s nostrils, exchanging breath for breath. The animal flounced its head and quieted. Win opened the carriage door for the women inside to disembark. “There, there, Brunetta,” said the younger one, holding a small brown hen. The old man barked at Winrow, “Don’t even think bout hitchin’ that filthy mule to my carriage. Get back there and push when I tell yuh.”

  Embarrassed for Win, angered for him, ashamed and infuriated at once, Dora darted her eyes away, only to be met by another pair. Gray and bemused, they were watching the scene through an upstairs curtain. Dora knew nothing of womanhood, but she knew what a look like that meant from a young white man. She shifted the angle of her seat and straightened her back in a defiant pride, her eyes lowered to conceal her raging contempt.

  With the coachman looking on, his arms protectively folded over the one dress waistcoat he had left, Winrow fixed his shoulders beneath the rear bumper of the carriage chassis and in three heaves succeeded in releasing the vehicle from entrapment. The skittish horse bolted a few yards, then came to a stop, the cab without the driver listing to the side. Voices swooned in unanimous laughter as the cluster of young women resumed their seats. The old man waved his arm and angrily hobbled back toward the house in his shiny riding boots, dusted red with rage. The colored coachman nodded a perfunctory thanks to Win and snapped his whip. Two bits flew out the window of the carriage as it passed him. Feed to a chicken. Win brushed the spattered mud from his trousers in casual strokes. Small brown speckles dotted his dark face. “Tenkee, tenkee, m’am. Right smart, tenkee.”

  The coach disappeared out the gate. Winrow’s broad smile faded. With one leg stiffened, he bent over and picked up the loose coins, examined them, and put them in his pocket. “I’ma walk like that someday. Walk knowin’ everyone gon move out my way.” Clacking his jaw, Win walked back to his wagon. He patted Mr. Lee on the neck and began to check the bit and harness as Mr. Lee bristled and backed into the wagon. Win jerked the bit sharply and held the reins tight. “Watch out now or might get some Broken Bone Fevuh. Johnnie Reb gon find out niggahs won’t die so fast . . . I sorry, Miss Dora, I forgot muhself.”

  He extended his hand to help Dora step down. She thought to wipe his face with her handkerchief, but she did not want him to consider her forward. “What were you fittin to ax, Mr. Winrow?”

  “Some other time, maybe.”

  Promising to return before dark, Win had left her standing in the pockmarked driveway. Sesesh leftovers—the shattered Confederacy put back together, peculiar and misshapen. Still riddled with mortar holes from the siege, the garden a riot of jonquils, bluebells, and weeds, Wisdom Hall wore defeat like a garland.

  The interior was no better. A Parisian clock with silver bells graced the mantel, the hour hand frozen, the minute hand darting forward, then back at the quarter hour. A crystal chandelier hung low, its golden brackets empty of candles. Velvet couches, worn on the arms, were covered with doilies that were ratty at the corners. The portraits and photographs that lined the hallway hung crooked and covered with dust in their gilded frames.

  “Are you the stand-in maid? Regular gal say she took sick, don’t believe it a minute.”

  “M’am, I’m the dressmaker. Come for the custom alterations for Miss Matilda.”

  “Let all the servants enter and see.” Wearing a cap with black feathers and a garish plaid jacket over a shirt and trousers, Miss Matilda jumped on the kitchen table, dressed as a man. “I am she. But don’t call me that! Call me Miss Tildie or Mattie, but never Matilda, or this is what I shall wear to my wedding!” The young woman squatted down so her face was even with Dora’s. “Don’t look so startled, gal. I’m not serious. That yo’ boyfriend who dropped yuh?”

  “No, Miss Tildie. A neighbor, is all.”

  “Your gentleman friend?”

  “He is a friend and a gentleman, yes, m’am.”

  “She’s not a m’am yet.” Her betrothed entered. Cigar in his mouth, he burped. Crab cakes, fried chicken, green peas, cakes, strawberries, ice cream, and beer. The house was a riot of smells, voices and people.

  The mother, thin-faced and bulbous-eyed with rolls of fat beneath sour strained folds of fabric, ignored her except to bark orders. “I say, girl, are you the switch maid? The carpet has not been swept, the mantel has not been cleaned. Look at the dirt on my fingertips. The doors throughout the house are smudged with many, many fingerprints. When I arrived home today, there was a chicken breast, a chicken bone right in front of the door. It was there yesterday, too. This is not acceptable.”

  The youngest collected pets—rabbits, guinea hens. The miniature menagerie pecked and poked about the room; an ancient white peacock stood sentry outside the chipped French doors. “My Brunetta has died. Oh my poor hen. Whatever shall we do?” The old man, oblivious to all but his own rage, paced and ranted, “Burning, bursting brain! What am I to do? What is Wisdom Hall without a master?” Tildie knelt on the table and conspired, tête-à-tête, with her future husband. “The Cozzens and the Sproles and the Bairds, I’ll seat them at table number six. They deserve each other.”

  “Matilda, get down off that table at once. Who’s goin’ to the ice house? And who placed flowers there? You, girl, put those things down and do somethin’ round here.”

  Dora immediately disliked them all. She did not see among them the one she had caught staring. She presumed he was the gentleman of whom Pilar had spoken, a gentleman in quick need of a seamstress for his cousin. She intended him to know right fast that, though she was a friend to Pilar, she was her own person and a respectable one. I am nobody’s maid. I am a dressmaker. Pilar juss my neighbor. My business ain’t hers.

  Pilar’s Palace of Pleasure was a ramshackle three-story French-style town house with two floors of gals for any type of persuasion and a dirt floor saloon, known for good music, authentic Chinese lanterns, raw whiskey, and honest gambling. Sullivan slapped the deck on the table and tapped the surface. He never did catch Thomas Winrow “carryin’ a cub,” stacking a winning card close to the bottom of the deck to draw it at his choosing; still, the wily railroad porter, pistol in the back pocket of his uniform, preferred to deal when playing against his friend.

  Win deftly triple-cut the cards with his cornet-fingering hand. Sullivan shook his head in silent marvel and dealt out ten cards each. “Deuces,” Win called out to Sullivan’s jack, knowing hi
s match cards would turn up first. The two friends played each other only for sport. When the cotton harvest was in, or when trade ships pulled into the harbor, the two of them were a formidable pair. Against the itinerant workers looking to stretch their earnings with a little luck at poker or skin, they were peers. But in the one-on-one game of coon can, Win was the best in the city, hands down. Already ahead with a pair, three queens, and a spread of diamonds, Win drew a redheaded jack. In disgust, Sullivan relinquished his hold card and threw up his hands, once again leaving his partner with the winning eleventh card. “Some coons can. Some coons can’t,” Winrow crooned. “I’m the coon that drug the can. Give it up, Sullivan! Less you wanna go nuther round?”

  Sullivan pushed away from the table, the lantern swinging overhead. “Caulkers and menders now got to give they pay to the owners. Brakemen used to run the railroad gettin’ fired. They be comin’ aftuh me next. Cain’t be throwin’ my pennies at you. You a magician, Win. Lucky you my friend.”

  “Lucky in general, Cap’n. It’s my nature. Doggone!” He jumped up, leaving his winnings of fifteen cents on the table. “I gotta pick up Miss Dora.”

  He needed little sleep, three, four hours tops. After the early morning farm chores, he would instantly fall into a black forgotten sleep. Awakened by the nine o’clock sun, he would check the new scuppernong bottles and drive into town to service his regular customers, the afternoon taken up with hauling and his jitney service. He then freshened up and was back at Pilar’s, playin’ music till three and cards between sets.