The Black Rose (29 page)

The stupor that had clouded Sarah’s thoughts since the theft was magically gone, and she felt more alertness in her mind than she had in days. She grabbed a damp bedsheet she’d just wrung out and wrapped it around Lelia’s burning clothes, patting the fire down while she tried to hush her hysterical daughter. Lelia’s face was tear-streaked, reminding Sarah of the way she’d looked when she cried as a very young child.

“Lemme see, Lelia.
Shhhh
,” Sarah said once the fire was out, pulling the singed sheet away so she could examine her daughter’s injury. The fire seemed to have caught near her elbow; the dress was almost completely burned away across her forearm, and she could see raw, red skin peeking through. The burn was bad. Not as awful as it might have been, thank the Lord, but probably too bad for a little butter and a homemade bandage. “I’ll get your coat, baby girl. We’re goin’ to the doctor. You know that colored doctor, Dr. Wells, just bought that house over on the next street? We’re goin’ over there right now.”

“We don’t have any money for a doctor, Mama,” Lelia said softly, barely audibly. Her tears and shrieking had stopped, but now she looked crushed. The fire had broken through the facade she’d tried to put on for her mother to soften the pain of the theft.

“Don’t you worry,” Sarah said, confident again. “Just come on.”

It was suppertime at the Wellses’, Sarah realized when his wife opened the door to their well-lit, two-story home; the thin, neatly dressed woman was carrying a serving spoon coated in some kind of gravy. Their parlor floor was covered with a lovely Oriental rug, which Sarah couldn’t help noticing despite her worry for Lelia. There were also shelves of books visible, and even some sort of bust displayed within her sight. This family might live only a block away, but their home was a glimpse into a much better life, she thought.

Dr. Lincoln Wells was a bearded man in his mid-thirties, nearly as tall as Moses had been. Graciously, he insisted their visit was no inconvenience to him. He led Sarah and Lelia into the kitchen, where he brought out a black bag.

“Let’s look at your burn, dear,” he said, cutting away what remained of Lelia’s dress with a small pair of scissors. While Lelia winced in pain, he cleaned her arm until the visible raw patch looked much less alarming than it had at home. Still, the burn was as large as a soda cracker. The doctor examined it with a furrowed brow. “I’ve got something for this.”

While Sarah and Lelia watched, Dr. Wells opened a box marked
sulfur
powder
and mixed it with heated oil. Then, very carefully, he applied the mixture to Lelia’s wound. Lelia screwed her eyes tight, her teeth gritted against the pain. “That should fix it up, Mrs. McWilliams,” the doctor said. “You take this sulfur home and mix it just like I showed you, then you reapply it every few hours. You’ll be amazed at how well sulfur heals. You’ll hardly see a mark. The skin will grow back fine. Even these fine little hairs on her arm will grow, I promise you.”

“Well, I shouldn’t mind if they didn’t,” Lelia told him, smiling for the first time.

Dr. Wells refused Sarah’s offer to wash his laundry in exchange for his medical services.
It’s nothing to me except a few minutes away from my table,
Mrs. McWilliams. Pay me when you can,
he said.
I’m only happy the burn
wasn’t more serious.

So that night at her own dinner table, enjoying chicken stew, yams, and collard greens with Lelia, Sarah felt a wave of gratitude. A thief had entered her house and given her a taste of evil, but God had answered evil with grace. Thank goodness Lelia would be all right, and thank goodness Dr. Wells had been so close by to help. Life
was
just fine, after all.

After a special prayer of thanks, Sarah retired to her bed and felt a smile on her lips as sleep began to wash over her. She’d been restless and angry the past few nights, but she knew tonight would be different. Tonight, at last, she would sleep peacefully.

But just as she began to doze, Dr. Wells’s words came back to Sarah’s mind, snapping her eyes wide open.
You’ll be amazed at what sulfur can do
for injuries. Even these fine little hairs on your arm will grow back, I promise
you
. She held her breath, excited.

Sulfur! If sulfur could heal a burn, could it also heal her scalp? What was it she remembered about sulfur … ?

Still only half awake, Sarah recalled a hazy image from childhood: sitting between her mother’s knees with a winter cold, during the months when it was so cold she got sick when she bathed, while her mother used a comb in her head. But it wasn’t just a regular combing; this time her mother had stuck a fluffy wad of cotton in the teeth after treating the cotton with … sulfur.
Don’t want you gittin’ wet, Sarah, but this sulfur will clean
yo’ head without no water.

Yes, sometimes Mama used lye in the comb, and sometimes she used sulfur. Was that a real memory, or some strange sort of dream-memory? And if she put sulfur in her scalp now, could it help the hair on her head finally start growing back?
Tomorrow
, Sarah thought, feeling her weary mind tugging against her.
I’ll ask Dr. Wells tomor
…

Sulfur was the last thing on Sarah’s mind before she went to sleep.

Chapter Sixteen

DECEMBER 1904

TWO MONTHS LATER

While the smoke fanned away from her face in snakelike wisps, Sarah held her breath, waiting for her image in the handheld looking glass to become clear. The oily scent of the smoke irritated the lining of her nose, and the swath of hair at her forehead was hot and uncomfortable, but Sarah didn’t flinch or move. She simply stared, waiting.

She heard Lelia breathing hard beside her. “Ooh, Mama …”

Then, instantly, the smoke was gone and Sarah could see. The hair at her forehead was gleaming black, and a tiny section lay in a limp bang, warm and light, hanging nearly to her eyebrows. And it was straight. Not straight and
thin
like a white woman’s hair, but straight and thick, with gentle waves. Sarah blinked several times as she stared, barely able to trust her eyes. The hair looked almost like one of Etta’s old stage wigs. When Sarah swallowed, she realized there was no moisture in her mouth.

“Mama, it
works
…” Lelia whispered, although her voice was edged with disbelief.

Could it be? All from a steel comb?

True to her promise to herself, Sarah had been busy. Since the theft, she’d put her mind on her plan, thinking of little else from the moment she woke up in the morning until she drifted to fractured sleep at night, if she slept at all.
Hair cure
. She’d written the words on a clean white sheet of paper, taking everything down from her Wish Board except that.

She’d easily won a job as a Poro representative, using her persistence and apparent enthusiasm to impress the woman hiring for Miss Malone. Sarah tried to bring the same enthusiasm with her when she knocked on her neighbors’ doors, but her secrets made her a poor saleswoman. She tried to sound bright and convincing to women who opened their doors to her, but Sarah knew that the few sales she made were
despite
herself. After all, when customers commented on how lush and healthy Sarah’s hair looked, she could only chuckle.

That
wasn’t from the Poro, no, sir. Sarah had a formula of her own.

She was finally convinced she had refined the hair-growing formula she needed, using variations of familiar ingredients, both old and new. First, there was the rod wax Etta had introduced her to, petrolatum, that served as the base; then burdock (by soaking burdock roots in olive oil the way her mama used to when she soothed their bug bites and skin infections), rose hips (taking a sign from her dream, since she’d heard the old-timers say for years that rose hips could be good medicine), and elder flowers (following a suggestion from Rosetta, who said her mother swore by elder-flower water when her skin was irritated).

But the biggest piece of the puzzle, by far, was the sulfur.

After consulting with Dr. Wells, who told her he believed sulfur would work just fine in a hair grower, Sarah bought a one-pound bag for twenty cents. Then she began mixing it into her hair formula, just to see what would happen. Within only a week, she noticed that she was itching even less than she had using Poro. Then within three weeks after that, Sadie and Rosetta confirmed for her that her hair seemed to be growing back. Just a little, but
growing
.

By now Sarah was
sure
of it. Her hair was thicker and fuller than it had been in years, and it was no longer retreating at her temples. And tonight Sarah felt a giddy premonition that another puzzle had just been solved. Gazing at her treated tuft of hair in the mirror, Sarah felt a growing sense of disbelief: Everything might be about to change, and all because of a steel comb!

“Mama, who told you about this comb?” Lelia asked her, examining the strange comb.

“I saw one a long time ago, baby,” Sarah said, speaking in a faraway voice, mesmerized by her own hair. “I was just a young li’l gal, runnin’ after this Cajun witch lady to see if she could save my parents from yellow fever. An’ this witch lady had a colored gal jus’ settin’ between her legs, an’ Mama Nadine was runnin’ a hot comb through her head. I ’member seeing all the steam an’ smoke rise up, an’ I thought she was doing magic. So it stayed in my mind, but I hadn’t really thought nothin’ of it since that time. Seems almost like it was a dream.

“But last week I saw a comb that looked just like it, a comb with metal teeth, that one right in your hand. See, this one lady I wash for is from France, an’ this iron comb was jus’ sittin’ on her table. The lady’s name is Mrs. Bettencourt, but white folks from France ain’t like the ones here, Lelia, an’ she told me I could call her by her Christian name, which she says is Gabrielle. She said she used it to curl her hair. An’ I asked her where she got that comb from, ’cause I wanted to find one. She gave it to me! She laughed an’ said, ‘I’ll have my brother send me another one from Paris,’ an’ she put it right in my hand!”

Lelia’s voice trembled with excitement. “Mama … you think your whole head would look like this part here if I oil it up and run this comb through?”

Sarah’s heart leaped to hear the words spoken aloud. Her thoughts were spinning so fast in her head that she could barely catch one. “That’s what I’m sure enough thinkin’, Lelia. It works better than a fork, don’t it?”

“Mama, do me first!” Lela shrieked, grabbing Sarah by both shoulders. “Please?”

What Sarah saw in her daughter’s eyes—amazement, gratitude, even a little desperation—nearly took her breath away.
Lord have mercy
, she thought.
Look how this child is actin’! There ain’t no money in the world she
wouldn’t pay me to put this comb in her hair
.

And Sarah felt her toes curling, as if to anchor herself from floating away.

“Lelia? What in the world you doin’ standin’ out in this cold—” Sadie began, then she gasped as she opened her door wider and saw Lelia standing in the lamplight from her house. “Oh, my …”

Lelia clutched her side from laughing so hard. “Mama, come see her face!”

Sure enough, Sadie was staring at Lelia wide-eyed, her mouth dragging to her chin. Her eyes were riveted to Lelia’s hair.

After more than two hours, Sarah had finally finished combing through Lelia’s hair with the hot steel comb. She’d accidentally burned the top of her daughter’s earlobe (not once, but twice) and probably a spot or two on her scalp, but after her initial painful exclamations, Lelia hadn’t complained. She’d never once let go of the looking glass, so she’d watched every moment of her mother’s progress, seeing her hair emerge sizzling from the comb, lengthened and glistening, falling against her neck. After some impromptu barbering with the household scissors to even up a few places, Sarah had styled Lelia’s hair so that it had a bang in front and hung midway to her shoulders, jet black and as close to straight as it had ever been.

Sarah barely noticed the frigid air that turned her breath to fog while she waited for Sadie’s reaction. Lelia couldn’t contain her giggles, posing her head from one side to the other, dramatically tossing her hair back with her hand.

Tentatively, Sadie reached up to touch the end of Lelia’s hair. “Your hair grower did
this
?”

“No, this is different,” Sarah told her. “I jus’ put on some rod wax to grease it. Then I combed it out with a hot steel comb, an’ jus’
look
at it. It’s all pressed out! That hair won’t give her
no
trouble brushin’ through. An’ she could plait it, or pin it up… .”

“Sarah, you’re gonna put Poro to shame!” Sadie said, clasping her hands together tightly. “Ooh, Lord, where’d my coat go? We have to go show Rosetta, too. She’ll faint dead away!”

“I almost don’t believe it my own self,” Sarah said. Her cheeks were nearly numb from the cold, but she still felt them flushing. It was the day before her birthday, three days before Christmas, and it seemed that the world had just laid itself at her feet.

Walking quickly toward Rosetta’s house three blocks away, the group was like a miniature parade in the darkened street, with Lelia in the lead. Their chatter bounced off the houses they passed, lighting them up in their excitement. A wagon driver with a horse draped in blankets ambled past them on the cobblestone street, slowing as he passed them. “Merry Christmas, ladies!” he called, and they answered him in a heartfelt chorus.

It felt like a Merry Christmas, all right.

“First chance I get, I’ma quit Poro,” Sarah said, breathing harder from walking so fast.

“Oh, girl,
yes
. You’re through with that. Then we got to mix some more grower!”

“That’s right. An’ I’ll start tellin’ folks ’bout what that comb can do,” Sarah said.