The Black Rose (20 page)

Po’ child
, Sarah thought.
Guess she learnt
’
bout colored an’ white today
.

No white woman would ever speak to Lelia the way Mrs. Wainwright had spoken to her today, she vowed. Lelia was going to school, and Sarah was saving every spare cent she had in a mason jar to make sure she would go to college, too. Lelia wasn’t going to be anybody’s servant.

Finally St. Paul A.M.E. Church appeared at the corner, sunlight reflecting against the colorful stained-glass windows. Just the sight of the church made Sarah’s heart float. As she got closer, she could hear the piano and organ playing inside, the voices of the congregation raised in song, and powerful clapping in rhythm to the music. The sound seeped through the walls and doors and onto the street; it spilled over Sarah like bright sunlight.

“Mornin’, sister,” the white-clad female usher said at the door, squeezing Sarah’s hand with her delicate white glove. As Sarah made her way inside the church, which was packed tight with worshipers in the pews, she felt hands brush over her shoulders and arms, as if she were being bathed, accompanied by whispered greetings beneath the song:

“G’mornin’, Missus McWilliams.”

“Bless you, sister.”

“It’s all right, Sister Sarah, it’s all right. You’re home now.”

Sarah’s hat was slanted to one side, her nostrils were damp, and she felt large wet spots beneath her armpits and across her chest, marring her beautiful gray dress. But suddenly Sarah felt no concern at all about how she looked, enveloped in the love and song in the church. Her chin held high, Sarah joined the swaying and clapping of the other worshipers, feeling her spirit soar as if it no longer belonged to her alone, but to every other man, woman, and child in the room. Sarah’s slightly flat voice was raised so loudly that she was nearly shouting the song “My Lord, What a Mornin’,” and Lelia sang with growing rapture alongside her. As the congregation sang, their voices blended like a wind that lifted the entire room from the floor.

For the first time since her husband’s death, Sarah felt true joy.

“If one o’ those white bitches tried to hit
me
, it’d be the last time, too,” Sarah’s friend Sadie Jackson said, tugging on the pulley rigged between the trees in Sarah’s backyard. Like Sarah, she had changed out of her church clothes and was now wearing a work dress and apron, with a white headwrap. As Sadie pulled, the row of hanging white shirts lurched closer to her so she could check them to see if they were dry. Ropes and pulleys were strung throughout the yard like Christmas-tree decorations, a system Sarah had devised and paid workmen to install so she could fulfill the next-day service claims that had helped her build her clientele in St. Louis.

When Sarah first arrived in the sprawling city, she’d walked from door to door with no luck attracting customers, who either said they already had someone washing for them or didn’t want anyone. She couldn’t even entice anyone by offering lower prices. The first two months, Sarah had felt so discouraged that she thought she and Lelia would starve just as Louvenia had warned. Many nights she’d had nothing more than warm milk for dinner. Only pride, not a lack of desperation, had kept Sarah from rooting through the garbage in search of food. The woman she roomed with at the time, who was a cook, finally began bringing her and Lelia table leavings from the white family she worked for to help her get by. Sarah had eaten cold rolls and half-eaten chicken parts with a glad and grateful heart.

Then Sarah had come up with an idea: She began offering a free washing with next-day service. A few people took advantage of her offer and then never used her services for pay, but several had been so impressed that they agreed to let her wash for them. Sadie, who had her own customers, worked with Sarah two days a week for extra money, sharing equally in profits for the work she did. Sadie hadn’t been scheduled to work today, but Sarah pleaded with her to come home with her after church and help her because she was so far behind. Sadie was a few years older than Sarah, rounder in the hips, with two sons at home who were nearly grown. She had been reared in St. Louis and been schooled through high school, but she still hadn’t been able to find any work other than washing.

“I wish you’d hush that cussing in front o’ Lela,” Sarah said crossly, casting a quick glance toward Lelia, who was on the back step dutifully folding clothes into a basket, the only part of the washing she enjoyed. The fascination Lela used to have for soapy water had worn off by the time she was five; now she hated to get her hands wet. “She done heard an earful from Missus Wainwright already.”

“I tell you, she’d of lost that hand of hers. There’s just somethin’
wrong
with folks who’ll act like that on the Lord’s day. Guess the day o’ the week didn’t make her no difference, since it don’t sound like she had time for church. Not with all her
guests
on the way,” Sadie said, imitating a genteel accent. Then she laughed.

Sarah sighed, shaking her head as she pulled flapping, dry linens from the line. She’d scrubbed her fingertips with a brush until they were raw to make sure she’d cleaned away the dried blood. “I brung it on my own self, Sadie. That blood skeered that woman half to death. You shoulda seed the way her eyes popped out.”

“No, you didn’t bring it on, not to be called no names like
that
. I’ll never understand why white folks call
us
dirty, when you ain’t never seen a sight so pitiful as a bunch o’ raggedy poor white young’uns. They’re so black from dirt they might as well be niggers.”

“Oh, Sadie, stop,” Sarah said, but she couldn’t help laughing. All washerwomen avoided doing business with “white trash” families because they were notorious for not paying what they owed. Sadie had been shorted more than once, and complained about it loudly.

Sarah’s yard was equipped with at least half a dozen tin washtubs, and there were more in her kitchen; she’d made them herself by sawing discarded kegs from nearby breweries in half. Because she had so many kegs, Sarah had enough tubs to keep the water at different temperatures while she washed, instead of having to wait for one tub to cool or emptying them out to fill them again once the water was dirty. Besides that, she was lucky enough that her house was in front of a city water pump, so she could fill buckets of water without even having to leave her yard.

Sarah lived in a squat one-story brick house not far from the church. She was fortunate to have the house, since it was the nicest she’d ever lived in; the street in front was paved, the house was fairly new, and the hardwood floors still had some shine left in them. Of all wonders, her landlord was a colored barber who attended St. Paul. He wasn’t any less strict about getting his rent on time than a white landlord, but it tickled Sarah that in St. Louis she could buy her food at a colored grocer’s and pay rent to a colored landlord who owned two or three houses on her street. There were even colored doctors, dentists, and attorneys about. Negroes in St. Louis were leaps ahead of Negroes in Vicksburg!

Unlike the Southern houses Sarah was used to, the kitchen was attached to the rest of the house, with a door leading to the backyard, so she never had to travel back and forth from the yard to the table in bad weather. The kitchen was even big enough for a table with four chairs, so that was where she and Lela entertained friends and ate in addition to doing the washing. There were three other rooms—the living room, the bedroom that was large enough to share with Lelia, and a small room off the kitchen her landlord had used for storage; Sarah had been cleaning it out for several weeks because she’d gotten permission to take on a boarder. Boarding was another way to make extra money, and now that she’d lost Mrs. Wainwright, Sarah knew that finding a boarder would be more important than ever. That day, she’d posted hastily written notices at the church and at the market, advertising that the room would be available by the first of October.
CLEEN AND PRYVAT
, she’d written, relying on second-grade Lelia to check her spelling.

Something she’d done must have worked.

Sarah heard a rattle at her back fence and she looked up to see a tall, cinnamon-skinned woman standing just within her yard with a suitcase covered in colored stickers. And she wasn’t just
any
woman; she was lovely despite the gaudy powder and colors she’d painted on her face. Her curled, shiny dark brown hair hung nearly to her shoulders, and she was wearing a dress that would have been remarkable even if it hadn’t been a Sunday, since it clung to her so tightly and displayed the fleshy crack between her breasts at the low-cut neckline. Sadie and Lelia had also stopped working, simply staring.

“Mornin’, ladies,” the woman said in a singsong voice. No one answered her, but she went on anyway. “I hear there’s a room for rent at this address. Is it still available?”

“It ain’t ready ’til the first,” Sarah said. Unless she was mistaken, she could smell the woman’s sweetly scented toilet water even from several feet away. Sarah had seen self-directed, stylish women like this on St. Louis’s streets much more often than she’d seen them in Vicksburg, but she’d never had a conversation with anyone like her. She wasn’t like the women she’d known who worked in the fields and washed clothes, and she wasn’t like the fancy colored women at church, either. She was a different breed entirely. There was something worldly and intriguing about her, although Sarah could already feel her friend bristling beside her.

“Well, a bed’s all I need, if you’ve got one. I’ll pay full rent, ready or not,” the woman said. Again, she almost seemed to
sing
her words. Where had she learned to speak like that?

Sadie pulled at Sarah’s arm. “Sarah …” she whispered urgently, scolding.

“Yeah, I gots a bed,” Sarah answered the stranger, ignoring Sadie. “Room’s full of dust, though. An’ I ain’t swept up the flo’ proper yet.”

The woman laughed, flinging her arm dramatically in the air. “Oh, it takes more than a little dust to bother me. Do I get meals, too?”

“The rent ’cludes breakfast an’ supper both. One at seven, one at six.”

Again the woman laughed merrily. “Oh, I’m rarely up for breakfast! But I do like a home-cooked supper now and again. Is four dollars a month enough?”

“
No
,” Sadie spoke up suddenly, and Sarah gave her a harsh look.

“Well, how about six, then? I’d like a quiet room, and this street’s quiet as can be.”

“That’s ’cause there’s decent folks on this street,” Sadie said.

This time Sarah pinched her friend on the soft of her arm to hush her up. Six dollars a month! Would this woman really be willing to pay six dollars a month just for a tiny room, a meal, and a bed? “Here, lemme show you,” Sarah said, straightening up and wiping her hands on her apron. “It’s right on through the kitchen … Miss … ?”

“Just Etta,” the woman said, shrugging girlishly. “Everybody calls me Etta.”

“I bet that ain’t
all
they call you …” Sadie muttered just within Sarah’s hearing, and Sarah hoped Etta hadn’t heard the rude remark, too.

Lelia was frozen on the back step, gazing up at Etta with wide eyes. She and her basket sat directly in their path. “Well, who’s this princess?” Etta said, stooping over before Sarah could ask her daughter to move. “Ain’t you about the most darling little thing I’ve ever seen?”

Lelia grinned so wide that Sarah thought her daughter’s lips might crack from the strain.

“Go on, girl, let us by,” Sarah told Lela.

Instead of moving, Lelia blurted out, “Is that yo’
real
hair?” Sarah thought she would choke from the boldness of her daughter’s question. She was curious about the woman’s long tresses, too, and on closer examination she’d decided Etta must be wearing a wig.

“Oh, it’s somebody’s real hair, child. Is that good enough for you? I got it straight out of a mail-order catalog and paid for it with my own money. You wanna touch it?”

Lela nodded eagerly. She reached upward, allowing strands of Etta’s silky hair to fall between her fingers. Sarah had to fight the urge to ask to touch it, too. Just thinking about
hair
made her scalp itch again beneath her head-wrap. How much would a wig like that cost?

Lela pointed at Etta’s timeworn suitcase. “What’s that stuck all over your bag?”

“Well, I keep a memento of every place I’ve been! You see this one here? That’s from New York City. I just come from there. I been all the way to San Francisco, California. I been so many places ’til my head is spinning, and now all I want is my own bed.” Etta stretched her hand out to Lelia. “Why don’t you show me my new room, honey?”

Much to Sarah’s amazement, Lela stood up and clasped the stranger’s hand, still studying her with shining eyes. Lela was far from shy, but she had a tendency to be reserved with people she didn’t know. Lela had extended Etta her instant friendship. Behind her, Sarah heard Sadie suck on her teeth with irritation.

“It’s close to the kitchen, so it keeps plenty warm!” Lelia told the woman brightly.

“Oh, is that so?” Etta said, and she winked at Sarah over her shoulder with her thick black eyelashes. Sarah had seen plenty of men wink, but never a woman. The gesture looked bawdy, giving her pause. But then Sarah was drawn to the sincerity of the woman’s private gaze. “Something tells me you have big plans for this one, huh, Mama?”

“God’s my witness,” Sarah told her.

“Well, a little extra money never hurts.”

“Sho’ don’t,” Sarah said. Six dollars a month would make up for the loss of Mrs. Wainwright. She might actually be able to cut back on her washing and finally start going to night school like she wanted to; her reading and writing skills had diminished since the days in Miss Dunn’s class in Vicksburg, and Sarah was embarrassed to see her young daughter’s skills already beginning to surpass her own.

She prayed Etta would like the unfinished room.

“Now, I didn’t ask
your
name,” Etta said to Sarah in that engaging, syrupy voice of hers.

“Sarah McWilliams,” Sarah told her quickly. “I’m a widow.”