The Black Rose (23 page)

Mrs. Parkerson patted her hand. “No need to feel ill at ease, Mrs. McWilliams. I just thought it best to advise you. I’m very fond of your landlord, and while I don’t think he’s been privy to the same suppositions, it could be very unfortunate for you if he ever were. As I said, I’ve learned better than to pay any mind to idle talk. But he may feel differently, you see.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” Sarah said dumbly. To her, it felt as if her friend Etta were sitting in the parlor with them, her face covered in paint, her lips drawn up in a lascivious smile. As though Mrs. Parkerson could see her there plain as day.

The next morning dawned with thick, dark clouds, matching Sarah’s mood. She’d barely slept that night, puzzling over the dilemma Mrs. Parkerson had laid at her feet. What could she do about Etta? Lelia loved Etta like an aunt. Besides, Etta had been a good and loyal friend for four years, keeping Sarah’s spirits up with her wit and stories, sometimes even paying her rent in advance when Sarah was in a fix. If only other people could get to know Etta the way Sarah did, if they could talk to her …

But Sarah knew better than that. A whore was a whore, folks would say. She’d been a fool to rent Etta a room in the first place, and a bigger fool to grow to care about her so much. From now on, she would have to be much more careful about her
associations
, she thought, noting Mrs. Parkerson’s word.

How could she ever ask Etta to leave? But how could she not?

Bleary-eyed, Sarah climbed out of bed before dawn, dressed in the near darkness without waking Lela, and began heating the tub of water she’d left waiting on the stove in the kitchen. Once the fire was burning hot, she shuffled outside into the warm summer air to check on the dozens of clothes hanging on the lines in her backyard.

As usual, working made Sarah feel better because it kept her mind occupied. Her whole life, it seemed, she’d always had plenty of work to keep her from dwelling on her misery. There were times work had been her best friend, and today was one of those times. Sarah was concentrating so hard on the clothes, testing them for dampness and collecting the ones that were dry, that she barely noticed the sunlight growing brighter through breaks in the clouds.

Then, from the house, Sarah heard the unmistakable sound of her daughter’s scream.

The shrill, terrified sound pierced Sarah’s skin, bones, blood, and heart. She’d never heard Lelia make that sound; it came from the house like a chilling promise that nothing in her life would ever be the same again. Sarah dropped the clothes in her hands and nearly stumbled over her basket as she ran toward the kitchen door. “Lela!” she shouted.

The scream came again. This time Sarah heard something else inside the house: the low timbre of a strange man’s voice.

Her eyes wild, Sarah flung the kitchen door open and barely had time to grasp what she saw: Lela was standing on one side of the table, her arms wrapped around herself to cover her near nakedness in the thin slip she slept in during the summer. And on the other side of the table, not even three feet from Lela, stood a hulking white man in a half-buttoned shirt and trousers. His head, face, and chest were covered in wiry red hair. Seeing him, Sarah let out an outraged cry.

“Okay, now hold on there—” the man began in an accented voice, maybe German. He took a step toward Sarah with a grim smile.

Sarah’s instincts acted where her thoughts failed. Her hands flew to the stovetop, grasping the hot handles of the tub heating there, and she had all but lifted it to heave at the intruder when she realized that someone, not Lelia, was screaming her name.

“Sarah,
no
!
Don’t
, Sarah!” It was Etta, wearing a ruffled nightgown, her face drawn with alarm. She stood between Sarah and the stranger. “Put it down! Please, Sarah.”

Sarah’s bare palms flared with pain, but she didn’t let go of the tub’s hot handles. She turned around to look at Lela. “He touched you?” she demanded of her frightened daughter.

Wide-eyed, Lela shook her head. “I j-just got up, and this m-man was here—”

“Come on, now. I never laid a finger on her, Auntie. I was on my way—” the white man began, and Sarah cast him such a poisonous look that his tongue fell silent.

“I ain’t axed you. You jus’ hush,” Sarah hissed at him, and she turned her eyes back to Lela, who appeared to be calming. “You tellin’ the truth, Lela? He ain’t touched you?”

Lela’s head bounced up and down as she nodded. “It’s the truth, Mama. He only scared me.”

For the first time since she’d heard the scream, Sarah felt herself breathe. She quickly pulled her hands away from the washtub, rubbing her singed palms and fingers on her skirt. Her joints were shaking, and she felt weak at the knees. “Git on outta here,” she told Lela. “Go back in the room, put on yo’ clothes. Don’t come out ’til I say.”

“Yes’m,” Lela said, staring at the floor, and she ran out of the kitchen.

Next, Sarah turned her gaze back to the stranger, who was hastily buttoning his shirt. His smile, which had vanished when he’d seen the tub of water, slowly crept back to his ruddy lips. “See here, this is all a misunderstanding. I was on my way out—”

“An’ that’s where you best git to,” Sarah said, glaring. “ ’Fore I change my mind.”

The man sighed, glancing back at Etta. Then he stooped over and kissed Etta’s mouth, wrapping his arm around her waist. “ ’Bye, sweetheart,” Sarah heard him say.

But Etta didn’t even look at him, Sarah could see. Etta’s eyes were locked on hers.

After the man was gone, taking with him his scent of cigarettes, liquor, and perspiration, Sarah and Etta stood frozen in a silence so oppressive it could have made the room shrink. By now Sarah was breathing hard, her mind careening as she tried to make sense of the morning. A part of her was still struggling to believe what she had seen. In that one instant, believing a white man had come into her home and touched her daughter, Sarah had felt as if she had become someone new. She could easily have become a murderer.

“This may not help …” Etta began slowly in a soft voice, her eyes red from lack of sleep and sadness, “… but he’s not a customer. His name is Gregor, and he’s a friend. In all the time I’ve lived here, Sarah, I have never once entertained a man in my room, not until last night. I have too much respect for you. But last night I had a sip too much wine. I know I shouldn’t have, and I know it was wrong. I’ll tell Lela he was—”

“You ain’t got to tell Lela a goddamn thing,” Sarah said, speaking at last. The murderer she had very nearly become was still alive in the huskiness of her voice. “You already done told Lela you a no-’count harlot by bringin’ that white man in this house. An’ it make me sick in my stomach hearin’ you talk ’bout
respect
. You don’ know what the word mean. You don’ respect yo’ own self, and nobody else. But that ain’t my problem to fix. These the last words you gon’ hear from me, Etta, and you best listen good: Anything you got in this house that ain’t gone today gon’ be thrown out in the street tomorrow. I don’ wanna see you near me or Lela never again.”

Etta’s eyes overran with tears. “Sarah … ?”

Somewhere beyond her rage, Sarah felt hidden tears springing inside of her, too. Disgusted both by Etta and her own emotions, Sarah flung one of the kitchen chairs out of her way, toppling it over. Then she went to see about her daughter.

By late afternoon, Etta’s room was empty. Etta had found some men with a mule-driven cart and they had taken her clothes, her wardrobe, her bureau, her linens, her lamps, and the canopy bed she’d bought for herself. Once Sarah finished her deliveries, she’d spent her day washing clothes in the backyard with Sadie, avoiding the kitchen entirely because she didn’t want any contact with Etta. She stayed outside even though the dark clouds above had thickened, looking nastier than any she’d seen. When she left, Etta didn’t come to say good-bye, and Sarah was happy to be spared another painful meeting with her. When she remembered the sight of that man in her house, and the way he’d leaned over to kiss Etta so brashly in her presence, Sarah wished she’d doused both of them with that tub of hot water. The nerve!

“Sarah, child, I hope I didn’t bring you no trouble talkin’ about that woman around other church folks,” Sadie said. “It just got to the place where I couldn’t keep it to myself, the way she was taking advantage of a decent Christian family. I’ve been afraid this would happen, that there’d be menfolk in and out and you or Lela might get hurt. And it was a white man, too? I thought she had
some
shame in her, but I guess not. Ooh, I’m so glad she’s gone. I’m glad for you and Lela both.”

“Me, too,” Sarah whispered. “This ain’t nobody’s fault but mine.” Saying she was glad Etta was gone seemed to be a lie, because Sarah felt more like she was grieving. But for what?

“And you won’t have no trouble renting that room out. I’ll help you post signs, hear?”

Something made Sarah look up at that instant, and she saw Lelia standing a few feet away from them in the yard, her schoolbooks hugged across her chest. Lelia’s face told Sarah that she had overheard her conversation with Sadie. Lelia looked stricken, but there was nothing Sarah could say to her. Without a word to either of them, Lelia turned to march into the house.

Sarah sighed deeply. “Lord have mercy … this gon’ be the hard part… .”

“You just got to explain right and wrong, Sarah.”

“I knows it,” Sarah said. “But folks’ hearts don’t wanna hear ’bout right and wrong. Look at me! I always knowed I shoulda kept ’way from Etta, but my heart couldn’t hear it.”

Sarah heard rumbling thunder in the distance. She would have to hang the clothes she could in the kitchen, she knew, because it would likely rain tonight.
Damn it! Can’t git the first thing to go right today
, Sarah thought.

After Sadie went home to start supper for her family, Sarah figured she’d better do the same. She wished she had enough money to walk down to the eating house and bring a couple of plates of food home for her and Lelia, but she knew she had to be more careful now that she wouldn’t have Etta’s rent money. She had some precious beef on ice, so she’d make stew.

Inside, Lelia was sitting at the kitchen table, her head resting on her books. She looked as though she must have fallen asleep while she was crying. Sarah began her supper preparations without a word, chopping the meat on a cutting board with a sharp rapping sound, and she heard Lela stir behind her.

“Help me with supper, Lelia,” Sarah told her, but Lelia didn’t stand up. Sarah was glad Sadie wasn’t there to see Lela’s disobedience, because Sadie had told Sarah many times she was spoiling her child. Sadie was a hard parent, just as Sarah’s parents had been, quick to find a switch. Sarah had taken a switch to Lelia a few times, but she could hardly bear to hear her daughter cry. She’d cried enough tears as a child herself.

After silence had stretched between them a few more minutes, Sarah said, “It don’t make no sense to you, do it? You thinkin’, ‘How Mama gon’ throw her own friend out the house?’ ”

“I understand,” Lela said, surprising Sarah with her straightforward response. She suddenly sounded much older than ten, like a grown woman. “You’re jealous, Mama.”

Sarah whirled to stare at Lela, shocked. “What I’ma be jealous for?”

“You’ve always been jealous, ’cause Miz Etta is so pretty, and ’cause she’s been places and done something ’sides washing white folks’ dirty underwear. That’s why.”

Sarah would never have believed her daughter could speak such hurtful words, much less that she could actually believe that. Suddenly Sarah wondered if Sadie wasn’t right, that maybe Lela had been spared the switch a few times too often. “Well, you wrong ’bout that, Lelia,” Sarah said, her anger surging. “I’d rather be washin’ shit out of white folks’ dirty clothes ’til I go to the grave than spend one night throwin’ up my legs like that ho.”

The words were too harsh, and Sarah knew it as soon as she’d spoken. Where had those words come from? They had been meant for Etta’s ears, not Lelia’s.

“That’s a
lie
!” Lela screamed at her, leaping from the table. “You’re
jealous
you don’t got a man, too!” Then, with grief-crazy sobs, Lela ran out of the kitchen.

Let her go
, Sarah told herself, tears streaming down her face.
She love that woman, an’ you ain’t gon’ say nothin’ now that can ease what she feelin’, so you best keep yo’ mouth shut
.

Lelia needed patience, that was all, Sarah thought. Time healed everything. In a few days, Lelia would be ready to hug her and climb onto her lap just like before. Then Sarah would be able to explain the rules of decency and indecency, and maybe they could shed tears together.

But Sarah wouldn’t have to wait nearly that long for Lelia’s next hug.

Within a few minutes, Sarah heard a train coming. Except, she realized after an instant, the train wasn’t running on any tracks she knew about; the monstrous sound was on the
street
just beyond her house. She heard her windows shaking, softly at first but then louder and louder, and the ceiling seemed to quiver. Sarah opened her kitchen curtain to peer outside, and she saw that the late-afternoon sky was pitch. The trees and lines in her backyard seemed to be dancing. Oddly, she saw a washtub lift from the ground and sail past her window. “What in—”

Then the glass blew in, spraying Sarah in a shower of cold rainwater and pricking pain.

For the second time that day, Lelia let out a scream. Shrieking herself, Sarah ran toward the bedroom, where she found her daughter crouched on the floor. “
Mama!
” Lelia yelled, her arms reaching out. Sarah nearly fell on top of her daughter, cradling Lelia as she tried to shield her from something she couldn’t see or name. She did not realize that she had bleeding scratches on her face; her only concern was holding Lelia, protecting her. The house trembled and groaned, windows crashed all around them, and she heard a howling, chugging sound outside that could have been Judgment Day itself.

Sarah had never experienced a cyclone to rival the one that ravaged St. Louis on May 27, 1896. When Sarah, Lelia, and their neighbors emerged from their homes, dazed and terrorized, they saw rooftops, buildings, and trees littering their neighborhood as if a giant had knocked them over and crushed them beneath his feet. Over the next few hours, they would hear about entire residential streets, factories, hospitals, mills, and railroad yards not far from them that collapsed in the sudden storm. A coachman named William Taylor, someone Sarah knew, had died trying to save his white employer’s horse. One hundred thirty-seven people died in St. Louis that day, and one hundred eighteen more died when the cyclone slammed across the river into East St. Louis.