The Black Rose (57 page)

Lelia

November 20, 1916

Dearest Lelia,

Excuse hand writing. Lottie is asleep and I am writing this myself. I have
been thinking over my last note and I think I have been to hard on you. I am so
happy this is my last tour in the south becuase I cannot stand the strain even in
my own car instead of those awful railroad cars. There is so much hard ship and
poverty every where and so many bad memories. I am gratefull I can give a
trade, but no matter how many new agents I sign there are all ways so many
people who seem helpless and hopeless.

I am not feeling well at all but I will go to Hot Springs to rest in a few
weeks. Could you join me for the holidays?

I was in a bad spirit when I wrote you, my darling but it was not your
fault. Some days I think you should be happy you never had a sister! After all I
have done for Lou and Willie you would think she would be more gratefull. I
have told Mr. Ransom I wish I could send them both to a small farm somwhere
to raise chickens and pigs and be on there own. The more I do the more people
want from me. Some days I wish I had less, except for the good I can do with
the money.

I know you are not like Lou, dear Lelia, so let me take back my harsh
words. I am only afraid you do not relize how easy we could lose everything we
have worked so hard for. There are many more hair formulas being sold than
when we started, and I fear it will only get worse.

And you would be horified by the reports I am hearing about the treatment
of Negroes in the south. We had word of another lynching only yesterday. No
wonder so many Negroes are fleeing to northern cities! I am treated like a queen
during my lectures and then like a vermin when I want to take a room, find a
meal, or have a bath. I can never forget that for all the good luck for Walker
Co. there is so much hardship for all the Negroes in these times. So many things
your father gave his life for are still held from us. I think sometimes I can hear
his sad angry voice in my ear.

With the talk of joining the war my spirits are gloomier still. But the one
good thing would be if Negro soldiers could fight and prove how brave and
patriotic I know we can be. Then the whites would have no choice but to give us
our respect at least that is what I pray. I miss you, my darling daughter.

With much love,

Mother

P.S. I did not want to be so mean when I wrote you about drink. But we
have both seen the result on C.J. and I would hate to see you fall the same way.
I want to write him but when ever I begin the words turn sour and I crumble up
the notes. I feel the C.J. I married is dead. I wish nights were not so long and I
did not have so much time to think. As usual I can’t sleep for thinking!

Chapter Thirty-two

JANUARY 2, 1917

HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS

The train.

Sarah’s eyes flew open and she heard herself gasping as she sat up in her bed. The image that had roused her from sleep was still as distinct as a photograph: the rear of a train car backing toward her, ready to crush her with its great weight and speed. She could feel her pulse fluttering in her neck, making it hard to breathe.
Just a dream. It’s just a dream, Sarah
.

But it wasn’t really just a dream, was it? The train had nearly taken her, and the image of the day still haunted her even all these weeks later. She’d just finished her engagement at a Clarksdale church, stirring the women in the congregation up into an enthusiastic fury, and she’d been looking forward to a home-cooked dinner that had been promised to her by a deacon’s wife. Her driver, Lewis, was taking a leisurely pace as he drove them across the railroad tracks, toward their host’s home. Then Lottie had heard a frantic shout.
Get out the way!

Sarah saw Lottie’s head turn suddenly, and so she followed her gaze, whipping her head around in time to see the terrifying sight: A train was backing toward them at a good clip, ready to snuff out all of them. She could see the flaking paint on the rear railing, the coarseness of the train’s wooden car, even a lone white ribbon someone had tied to the railing dangling limply. Sarah would never forget those details. She’d memorized that moment because it was the exact moment she had believed to her soul that she was about to die. She’d felt a certainty like none she’d ever known, even when she’d had her premonition that she had finally lost C.J. for good.

Thank goodness for Lewis’s quick reflexes! He sped the car forward, and Sarah’s eyes were riveted as that white ribbon on the train railing seemed to graze her nose just before the car flung her to safety. It had been hours before Sarah could stop shaking, and even the lure of the meal she’d been looking forward to couldn’t urge her from her room that night. To think that a train would have been at that precise spot when her car was crossing the tracks, without even so much as a bell to warn drivers to stay clear. Sarah couldn’t help feeling the train
had
been meant to take her that day, and only grace had saved her. Had she done enough to deserve her reprieve?

Sarah turned on her electric bedside lamp and reflected on everything she had done and still had left to do. Her business, it seemed, was charmed; every time Sarah thought the explosive growth might bury them all, good and competent workers came to her to help carry the weight. There were so many good women—Lottie, Sadie, Indianapolis forelady Alice Kelly, secretary Violet Davis Reynolds, bookkeepers Marie Overstreet and Mary Flint—and they had become a close team. Like any team, they had their quarrels, but all of them worked hard for Walker Manufacturing Co. And where would she be without Mr. Ransom and his family? Despite the formality of their address, since he always called her
Madam
and she never used his Christian name even though they had long become good friends, she knew they loved each other as well as any family members. Many days, in fact, Mr. Ransom’s family felt better suited to her than her own; Frankie, her godson, seemed more like a grandchild. And Mr. Ransom’s wife, Nettie, was more a sister than Lou could ever hope to be.

Together they had all created something that felt more and more like destiny. Walker Manufacturing Co. had a life all its own. That life was waiting for her in the little towns she visited, when people gathered so eagerly to see her and hear her speak. That life was pulsing in home beauty salons, where so many women were supporting their whole families because of
her
guidance,
her
inspiration. Oh, there were frustrations and occasional disputes with her agents—and some mean-hearted person had even begun circulating rumors that she’d made her fortune as the madam of a sporting house in Pittsburgh, such an outrageous lie that Sarah had cried when she first heard some people close to her actually
believed
it—but at the root of it all, the life was always there. She knew there were people now who looked at her with an admiration much like she’d felt for Booker T. Washington. And although she didn’t believe she deserved as much credit as he did, she’d grown to understand that people were desperate to have someone to believe in because that belief alone could stir up all the hard work and innovation inside
them
.

So Sarah had tried to do her part. And she’d had her fun along the way, too. In New York she didn’t seem to carry any of the stigmas that had followed her in Denver, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis; at her beautiful town house on 136th Street, Sarah was considered among Harlem’s elite, and her dinner invitations were eagerly accepted. Sarah knew there was no black leader she could not reach if she wanted to; her days of desperately trying to get the attention of the likes of Booker T. Washington were over. Her money had bought her access anywhere she wanted.

And look at her now! Here she was at a resort frequented mostly by wealthy whites, living in luxury accommodations so generously provided to her by the Negro organization Knights of Pythias, which kept a bathhouse for its members. She, Lottie, and Lelia all had their own rooms, with fresh sheets, towels, gourmet meals, and the intoxicating hot mineral waters of the resort at their disposal.

But the price!

At that, Sarah sighed deeply, and she could feel weariness weighing down her bones even now, after a long night’s sleep. A kindly doctor in Mississippi had warned her before she came to Hot Springs that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and she didn’t doubt it. Even after all the soaking she could stand, sometimes she felt her breakdown was only biding its time. She barely recognized herself when she caught her reflection in her bathroom mirror; she seemed to have aged years in only a short time, and her tailored clothes sometimes struck her as so odd and different from the clothes she’d worn all the earlier years of her life, as if she’d borrowed them from someone else. Half the time she still expected to see herself wearing a rag on her head. She felt as if she were dreaming, and she was so easily confused now. She’d just complained to Lelia that she hadn’t received an expected letter from Mr. Ransom, but Lelia had patiently pointed out that she’d read a letter from him just the day before! What was wrong with her?

Sarah had felt tired before, but nothing to rival what she felt now. She sometimes felt so bored in this sedate place that she wanted to scream, but at the same time she was usually too weary to ask Lottie to dictate any letters for her. The minute details of her business that usually fueled her imagination now seemed to be clogging it, choking it. She was hungry for news from the outside—it seemed it would be only a matter of time before the U.S. would join the war in Europe—but any news she read always left her feeling low and empty. The world was marching on outside without her, and she was too tired to walk, much less march.

And each day felt like every other, with dreams of the train almost every night.

Later that day, sharing a hot bath with Lelia amidst clouds of steam in a private area of the resort, Sarah shared her thoughts with her daughter. “I just don’t know, child… .” Sarah sighed. “Your mama’s a mess.”

Lelia had taken to wealth like a duck to water. With her head wrapped tightly in a towel, she leaned against the tiles with the utter serenity of a woman who had been frequenting spas her entire life. “We told you about all this running around, didn’t we, Mama?” Lelia said. “My doctor says I need to get more rest too, but I know how to sit still more than you ever did.”

“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Lela… . Some days I feel like I ain’t done a damn thing.”

Alone with her daughter, far from the watchful eyes and ears of Lottie and the expectations of the crowds she spoke to, Sarah felt at ease lapsing into her less practiced ways of speaking, softening her enunciations, no longer monitoring herself for poor grammar. In her mind now, it was almost as if Madam C.J. Walker was someone wholly separate from Sarah Breedlove. She loved both sides of herself, but lately she was grateful she could be Sarah for a while. Madam C.J. Walker carried a weight on her shoulders that was harder for Sarah to bear.

Sarah admired the palm plants lining the baths in their colorful ceramic pots, creating the tropical feel she’d enjoyed so much while she was traveling in the Caribbean. Now
there
was a place that knew how to slow down and relax, Sarah thought. As hard as she’d been working during those months overseas, a part of her had still felt like she was on a glorious vacation. Those incredible beaches … and the pure ocean water, like liquid sky …

“You still having bad dreams, Mama?” Lelia asked her suddenly.

“I just look at those dreams as messages, Lela,” Sarah said. “Now that I think on it, I’m glad about what happened in Clarksdale. Helped wake me up. I won’t be here forever.”

All of the doctors were wrong about her, she decided. It wasn’t that she didn’t
believe
Dr. Ward and her other physician friends when they told her she would die if she didn’t keep her blood pressure down. She could feel differences in her body already: she urinated more often, but her stream was sometimes only a dribble and had an unusual foamy quality; she battled headaches and awful sore throats; and then there was this strange, new brand of fatigue, which was the scariest part of all. No, she believed them, all right. Perhaps she just didn’t believe she could help it, with so much left to be done.

Lelia had dark spots under her eyes, too, Sarah noticed, probably from the strain of trying to combine her business life and social life in New York. More social than business, according to Nettie and others who visited. Lelia liked entertaining a certain set of artists and writers, folks who lived fast lives and kept strange hours. Some days, she’d been told, Lelia didn’t climb out of bed until past noon. Sarah traveled too much to observe Lelia as much as she thought she should, but she didn’t doubt that her daughter’s perpetual debt problems were because she spent too much time playing.

Suddenly a concern loomed large in Sarah’s mind: What would happen to the company if she left it in Lelia’s hands? Mae already seemed much more prim and responsible than her mother, but she was only eighteen, and she’d just gone away to school at Spelman. Mae was too young to take over such a responsibility.

“Mama, you’re only forty-nine. Through pure stubbornness, you’ll be here longer than anybody I know,” Lelia said, smiling, as she took a sip from her tall glass of lemonade. The dripping glass suddenly made an image flash across Sarah’s mind, a longing for lemonade she’d felt as a child. She couldn’t remember the details, but she knew it had been an awful, hopeless time. The memory of that time felt so powerful, in that instant, that it seemed as if it could peel away Sarah’s new life and reappear at will.