The Black Rose (54 page)

“… Hear that? We don’t want no trouble!” the boy shouted after her.

Well, if I find what I
think
I’ma find up there, you got some trouble whether
you want it or not,
Sarah thought. Or maybe she said it aloud. She didn’t know.

Room ten was the third door on her right, at the end of the second-floor hallway. There, as if frozen by the sight of the black number painted in the center of the door, she stopped and caught her breath. Her chest heaved. Then, with her head strangely silent, she wrapped her hand around the butt of the gun, gingerly massaging the trigger with her index finger.

The whole thing was simple, really. If it was the wrong room—and it could be, really, her brain rattled, because there was a chance this was all one big mistake, that it wasn’t
Charles
Walker in this room but someone else entirely—she would apologize to the occupant, make her way back down to her car, and go home to bed. But if she opened this door and saw C.J. inside, and if he was in there with that scheming little Tuskegee whore, well, she would—

Sarah’s stomach dropped as she heard a low laugh float from beneath the doorway. Warm honey. Like a memory from a dead woman’s life, she heard the sound of her very own warm honey, and yet it wasn’t meant for her ears this time. That laugh had been for Dora.

Just go
, a voice inside her pleaded.
Stop this foolishness and go back home
.

She didn’t want to fit the key into the lock and open the door. She didn’t want to see the lamplit, startled faces in the bed, or the quiver of the woman’s plump, bare breast before she flung the bedsheet over her nakedness. She didn’t want to see C.J.’s shamed, trapped eyes. And she didn’t want to inhale the stench of their mingled sweat.

But she did. In one swift motion, as her body defied what was left of her mind, Sarah walked into that room and saw exactly what she didn’t want to see. A glimpse of the skin she had caressed. A flash of his sloe-eyed tramp’s perfect, heavy breasts, the slender waist that had never borne a child. She didn’t even remember why Dora was cowering behind C.J. with a fit of screams until she looked down at her own hand and saw the gun.

“Now b-baby … what you gon’ do with that?” C.J. said, his voice weighted down with fright. He held both palms out toward her as if to push the sight of her away. “What you bring that here for? Huh?” His voice was part cooing and coaxing, part panic. His handsomeness slapped her face, and in that instant she truly hated him.

“Why you look so surprised, C.J.?” Every word tore a hole in Sarah’s throat. “Look like you must’ve wanted me to know. Didn’t you? You got it so everybody in town knows. Well, ain’t this what you wanted? You wanted me to find you with your yellow bitch. Ain’t that right?” She prodded at him with the gun, and he flinched back. “Ain’t that why you made it so easy for me?
Ain’t
it?”

Struck dumb, C.J. could only shake his head back and forth. He mouthed the words
No, Sarah
, and tears sprang to his eyes.

“You’re a goddamn liar!” she screamed at him. “You
know
you did!”

At that moment, C.J. uttered what Sarah would later remember as both the most courageous and damnable words she had ever heard come from his lips. Not blinking despite his tears, he lowered his chin and met her gaze dead-on. “Woman,” he said in a soft, shaking voice, “since when do you care what the hell I want?”

Dora screamed again, as if she was certain C.J. had just become a conspirator in her murder. “This ain’t nothin’!” she cried through her screams. “M-madam, this ain’t n-nothin’!”

Sarah’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Since when do you care what the hell I want?

Once again, as she had on the train earlier, Sarah felt something in her head go
pop
. But this time it wasn’t the prelude to a headache—although her headache was alive and well. This time she felt as if she’d suddenly snapped back into herself, and she could see the scene in the hotel room from a detached place high above. C.J. was lying in this tiny bed with some ninny. And Sarah Breedlove Walker was standing before them with a gun in her hand, aching to end his life and her own by firing it.

It was a sad, absurd sight.
Almost like something from Shakespeare himself, ain’t it?
Look at that fine woman
, the
Madam C.J. Walker, so exquisitely dressed, about to throw away her own name and anything good that had come to be associated with it. Her company. Her freedom. Her whole life, potentially. What would Booker T. Washington say? Or Mary McLeod Bethune?
It’s such a shock! I’d just met Madam C.J. Walker, and I thought she
was a fine example for the race!

And over what? Sarah suddenly realized that this man with a laugh like warm honey lying in this strange bed had nothing at all to do with her and her name. Madam C.J. Walker belonged to her now. Only her.

Sarah gasped as her rage gave way to anguish. She could barely breathe. “Nigger,” she said, the hated word like poison in her mouth, “you ain’t even worth this bullet. Y’all go on and do what you want. I’ll pay you back every cent you ever lent me, plus interest, but if I find out you’ve stolen any money, you won’t get nothin’ else from me except another trip to jail, hear? I don’t care if you live or die, C.J., so long as you stay away from my company. And God help you if you don’t.” Still watching the scene from above, Sarah saw Madam C.J. Walker turn around and walk briskly away through the open door. She came to the stairs so quickly that she nearly stumbled as she descended. For the first time all day, tears streamed freely down her face and she didn’t give a damn who heard her sobs.

You were wrong. You were so wrong
, she thought as she wove in nearblindness through the carefree Saturday-night streets. A sob pitched so loudly from her throat that it sounded exactly like one of Dora Larrie’s begging screams.

Chicago and the National Negro Business League meeting seemed almost imaginary now, but Sarah suddenly remembered how the white woman, with the presumptuousness of wealth and racial privilege, had asked her whether it was more difficult to be a woman or a Negro. Like a fool, Sarah had been nearly rude to her, telling her the worst kind of flippant, awful lie to try to impress Booker T. Washington and all those fine colored folks. But Sarah hadn’t known any better then. She just hadn’t known. That night, driving away from her husband and his mistress with a fresh and bleeding wound in her soul, Sarah Breedlove Walker realized that being a woman was the hardest thing of all.

Chapter Thirty

OCTOBER 1912

(TWO MONTHS LATER)

“Mama?” Lelia called softly through Sarah’s door. “It’s official! Can we come in?”

Sarah’s room was nearly dark, as she’d kept it purposely in the weeks since she’d been at home. Her heavy curtains were always drawn, blotting out any light that tried to reach inside. Sarah had never been in such a strange state; she felt as if she were nursing a long fever, even though Dr. Ward assured her that her temperature was normal and she didn’t seem to be ill except for her blood pressure, which remained high. Often Sarah woke from naps in her grand bedroom and blinked several times as she glanced around the room and its regal furnishings, forgetting where she was. Then her eyes would find her father’s photograph staring at her from its frame on her nightstand, and she would remember:
Yes, I live here. This
is all mine
.

“Come in,” Sarah said, her voice sounding thin. When the door opened, Lelia walked in with her arm resting on the child’s shoulder. Mae was thirteen, and such a
lovely
child; she had a shy manner, a very pleasing brown face, and jet-black hair that grew so long she could actually sit on it. She’d been a Walker Company model for nearly a year, supplementing her impoverished mother’s meager income. Mae and her siblings practically lived on the streets.

But that had all changed for Mae now.

“Here she is, Mama, your new grandbaby!” Lelia said, clapping her hands together.

“All the paperwork’s done?” Sarah said.

“Yep! It’s all legal in the courts. This is Mae Bryant Robinson, my own little girl. And I made a change for me, too, Mama—I’m A’Lelia
Walker
Robinson now, named for my mama.”

Sarah sat up in bed, where she’d been reclining in her elegant robe. Again, she felt distant from herself, as though her daughter’s words were part of a misty dream. So Lelia had a child now, and Sarah had a granddaughter. Part of her must be overjoyed, she knew, but instead she still felt hollowed out. Another piece of paperwork had become final this month, too—her divorce from C.J. had been finalized as of October 5, only a few days before. Mr. Ransom, himself a newlywed, had helped her file for divorce in September. The court had finally made it real.

C.J. had been gone in spirit for months, and he’d been gone in the flesh ever since that last day she’d seen him at that hotel. But now he was gone by law. And she was still carrying his name, which sometimes felt like a wound, other times like a trophy. But Sarah’s moods didn’t matter; Madam C.J. Walker was the name people knew her company by, and it was a little too late to change it now, since the company had nearly 1,600 agents, and made weekly revenues close to one thousand dollars. The name had its own life, even on the days when Sarah went to bed with cramps simply after anyone uttered the word
C.J.
within her hearing, when her head whipped around, and she still expected to see him walk into the room.

“Come here, pumpkin,” Sarah said to Mae, extending her arms. The petite child walked slowly toward her with a shy smile across her face, hardly looking Sarah in the eye. When she was close enough, Sarah leaned down to give her a warm hug. “Welcome to the family, child.”

“Yes, Madam Walker,” she said, nearly whispering.

“Don’t you call me Madam now. You can call me Grandmother.”

Mae was silent. Sarah glanced up at Lelia’s beaming face, then back at Mae’s. The sadness in this child’s eyes was unmistakable. What was wrong? Was she sad her mother had agreed to give her up? Or had she carried this sadness her entire hard life? Gazing into Mae’s eyes, Sarah remembered well how it felt to be tossed to and fro as a child, helpless. But Mae would be better off as part of the Walker family, Sarah knew. God willing, Lelia would begin setting a better example and try to be a good mother.

“Why don’t you run down to the kitchen, Mae?” Sarah said. “There’s fresh biscuits in the kitchen, and I’m sure there’s one with jam waiting for you.”

“Yes’m!”

Once Mae had marched out of the room, Lelia twirled around, giggling. “Mama, isn’t it
great
? I’m a mother! And that hair of hers is so pretty, folks go wild for her. Wish mine grew that long! I can’t wait to take her for demonstrations down in—”

“Did you really adopt that child, Lelia? Or did you adopt her head of hair?”

Lelia’s face fell. “Well, that question’s an insult, Mama. But I guess if you’re feeling well enough to insult me, you must be back to your old self. I should think you’d be more grateful—”

“Oh, Lelia, please hush, child,” Sarah said, weary. She patted the bed, and Lelia climbed up to sit next to her. Sarah leaned against her daughter. “Don’t go having a fit. No, I’m not back to my old self. I can’t hardly get out of bed one day to the next. And I
am
grateful, baby—I don’t know where I’d be without you. I’d have cried myself to the grave, I expect.”

“No, you wouldn’t have, Mama,” Lelia said, kissing her cheek. “I know you better.”

For a moment Sarah just enjoyed the feeling of resting her head on her daughter’s firm shoulder. Lelia had been such a big help these past two months! Sarah had been so humiliated by the disaster with C.J. that she’d nearly felt ashamed to show her face in her new city. Just as she’d begun to make inroads into the colored social circles, her personal life had overshadowed her; now, she heard, many of the monied families had dismissed her as trash. And could she blame them? It was all so torrid! C.J. had cashed some checks made out to the Walker Company and pocketed more than a thousand dollars of company funds he’d planned to use to start his own company with Dora Larrie. Mrs. Larrie, apparently, had plans to divorce her husband so she could marry C.J. Vaguely, Sarah wondered if C.J. still had his little honey up in Kansas City, too.

Well, that was Dora Larrie’s problem now, not hers. Sarah shook her head, sighing.

“I thought having a granddaughter would cheer you up,” Lelia said, stroking Sarah’s head.

“Oh, it does, Lelia. I just worry, that’s all,” Sarah said. “It’s a big responsibility, raising a child. And that one’s so reserved, like she was born grown!”

“She’ll get warmer toward us, Mama. It’s a big change for her.”

“Don’t I know it!” Sarah said. She’d married Moses when she was just a little older than Mae, she remembered. “You take care to give that girl lots of love, and don’t just put her to work. It’s a blessing to raise a child, Lelia, but it’s not a substitute for a man.”

“Mama, I’m surprised at you! After the horror you’ve just been through …”

“Yes, that’s right. Just because … I feel like I do about C.J. doesn’t mean I expect you to give up on marrying, too. I made mistakes, Lelia. I had a hand in this thing, just like you had a hand in what happened with John Robinson. So it’s not sour just on the men’s side. That girl Mae should have a papa, too. I’d give anything to have had mine for even a year or two longer. And God knows I think you’d be better for it if you’d had Moses… .”

Cheerfully, Lelia pinched her mother’s cheek. “But I didn’t, Mama, and I turned out fine! So let’s stop all this talk about marriage. I don’t think matrimony agrees with either one of us, and we’d better just accept that fact. Any men we meet now would just be sniffing after our money anyway. You know that, don’t you?”

Sniffing after her money! Sarah paused, momentarily struck by the truth of her daughter’s words. She’d never thought of it before now, and it was so hard to believe! She, Sarah Breedlove, had enough money to draw undesirable men who preyed on women with fortunes. After C.J., she’d begun to fear that perhaps a woman could have
too
much money!