Tananarive Due Read online

  The Black

  Rose

  TANANARIVE DUE

  ONE WORLD

  THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP · NEW YORK

  Contents

  Title page

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Yellow Jack

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Epilogue

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright

  To my grandmothers

  Lottie Sears Houston

  and

  Lucille Graham Ransaw

  (1911–1992)

  (A Madam C.J. Walker School of Beauty Culture graduate, 1941)

  for planting the seeds

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This project was a tremendous opportunity and gift, and for that I must thank the Estate of Alexander P. Haley and my agent, John Hawkins, of John Hawkins & Associates. Also, thanks to my editor, Cheryl Woodruff, for her encouragement and her role in bringing this book to life.

  During the time that Alex Haley was researching the life of Madam C.J. Walker, his special research assistant was A’Lelia Perry Bundles, Madam Walker’s great-great-granddaughter and biographer. Although she was not involved in the preparation of this manuscript, the interviews, letters, and research she provided to Alex Haley during his lifetime were invaluable.

  Special thanks to the Indiana Historical Society, where the Madam C.J. Walker Collection is housed and open to the public, and the Madam Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis, which is definitely worth a visit. Thanks also to Bethel AME Church in Indianapolis and the Vicksburg and Warren County Historical Society. For small favors that meant a lot, I also thank E. Ethelbert Miller and Charles Johnson.

  For teaching me to cherish my history, I thank my parents, John Due and Patricia Stephens Due. And for much-needed emotional support, as always, thanks to my sisters, Johnita Due and Lydia Due Greisz, and my dear friend Luchina Fisher. And lastly, thanks to my wonderful husband, Steven Barnes, for believing in me even during those moments when I forgot to believe in myself.

  Yellow Jack

  O my body’s racked wid de fever

  My head rack’d wid de pain I hab. . . .

  —SLAVE HYMN

  Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile,

  Far, far away from home,

  A long, long way from home.

  —NEGRO SPIRITUAL

  OCTOBER 29, 1916

  DELTA, LOUISIANA

  No one had seen a car like it.

  Delta was not a rich town, mostly an assemblage of weather-beaten country stores, banks, and feed shops beneath faded, hand-painted signs. Residents sat on barrels in the shade and engaged in their cheapest town entertainment, which was watching the episodes of the day: a hitched horse trying to rear up, the parade of cotton growers’ wagons on their way to market, or a motorcar owner cursing in the middle of the street, working up a sweat as he cranked furiously, trying to coax the engine of his stalled Tin Lizzie back to life.

  So when a long, sleek black convertible touring car glided its way into Delta that day, driven by a somber-faced colored chauffeur in black cap and uniform, the entire street took notice. The car seemed to stretch forever, with room for at least seven or eight people to sit. And who was the primly dressed colored woman in a black suit and white shirtwaist who sat in the backseat with a smile fixed on her face, waving to people as she passed?

  Before long, colored and white children, and a few older people, were chasing the car. When the car slowed and the woman inside invited a few children to climb in beside her for a ride, excitement rippled through the town like fire through a field of summer wheat; colored people began to pour toward the car, clamoring for a ride themselves. Soon there was no room on the street for passing traffic, and whites could only stare at the scene with bafflement. Was this woman the wife of a king or chief somewhere in Africa?

  Virtually unnoticed, another colored woman walked through the crowd passing out yellow notices to any of the colored onlookers who would have one: MME. C.J. WALKER HAIR PRODUCTS, the advertisement said, and careful observers noticed right away that the likeness of the woman affixed to pictured products called Wonderful Hair Grower, Glossine, and Vegetable Shampoo matched the face of the woman inside the beautiful car. This was Madam C.J. Walker!

  “That’s her?” A barely concealed, excited whisper.

  “Reckon so. That’s her face, all right. Seen it on the shampoo box!”

  The car came to a stop, and the Negro woman expelled a huff of air as she stepped down from the car, betraying her bone-weariness, but the crowd of onlookers didn’t hear it. Sarah Breedlove Walker had been traveling for months. In the past three weeks alone, she had visited five cities and spoken to hundreds of Southern agents and customers. Last night she’d stayed up in her boardinghouse writing letters long past midnight. On mornings like this, she awakened with leaden arms and legs, her back aflame, restful sleep a distant memory. Headaches seemed her daily companions, and at times her heart raced in her chest for no good reason at all. Her doctor’s nagging words plucked at her memory like prophecy: You’ll work yourself to death, Madam Walker. Your blood pressure’s sky-high.

  But as usual, when Sarah saw the huddled people waiting to greet her, their faces glowing with anticipation, energy suffused her bones and flesh, lifted her spirits, cleared her mind. Especially here, and especially today. She was home.

  Sarah’s heart fluttered with a strange mixture of exhilaration and dread as she stared at the pebbled roadway beneath her delicately laced shoes. This wide clay street had once touched her family’s feet, long ago. The road now carried shiny automobiles alongside the horses and buggies she remembered from childhood, but many of the same clapboard homes still stood, older but little changed. She’d been born here nearly fifty years ago, and now she was back.

  And there was so much work to be done! The folks who used threepenny words like ostentatious to criticize her fur coats, diamond jewelry, and fifty-dollar shoes just didn’t understand. She wasn’t putting on airs. In fact, truth be told, in this Louisiana sun she’d just as soon be wearing the threadbare cotton dresses she’d worn in her days as a washerwoman, without her starched white shirtwaist and heavy skirt to trap the heat against her skin. But she had more to think about than her own comfort. How many Negroes in towns like Delta had ever met one of their race who spoke, walked, and dressed as she did? How often could someone stir their imaginations into thinking they might make a good wage working for themselves instead of cleaning house
s or sharecropping for white folks? Who could believe that a woman, born poor like them, might grow wealthy selling products to other Negroes?

  Well, if ideas were bread, Sarah figured she could feed her whole nation. And if the good Lord would just keep firing her words with inspiration, or let her capture her people’s attention through the finery of her car, then, Sarah decided, yes, sir, it was all right. The travel and the fatigue, the long years, the work and the sacrifice . . . it was all worthwhile. Only one life that soon is past. Only what’s done for God will last.

  Sun or no sun, bone-tired or not, she was going on. Especially today, in Delta. And especially now, when the Lord had guided her to more fortune than any other woman of her race in the world.

  “Lady . . . you got a million dollars?” a boy blurted out. “Lemme see it!”

  The boy’s mother swatted him across the cheek, too hard. Sarah’s aching back tensed when she saw anyone strike a child, and her heavy arms grew taut in anger. All too easily, she recalled the beatings from her brother-in-law, when she was just a child herself.

  “Who you talkin’ to?” The boy’s mother shook his arm. “This ain’t just no lady. This is Madam.” Sarah could hear her parents in the young woman’s country accent and cadences, and for a moment the woman’s features blurred into her mother’s, a long-ago dream. “ ’Scuse his manners, Madam Walker, ma’am. I mean, if chirren ain’t got a mule’s sense!”

  Sarah nodded at the woman, smiling. Not a happy smile, just bittersweet and knowing. I’ve got my own mule, by the name of Lelia, she thought. She knew that mother’s fear of balancing too much love with not enough discipline, and the dangers only increased with money and status. That thought, the first hint of self-pity, was banished as the crowd penned Sarah in, flurrying for her attention. There were even some white folks vying to shake her hand. Oh, yes. White folks had even come to hear one of her lectures in Jackson last week, praise the Lord, and those were some ornery, Negro-hating folks over in Mississippi! Seemed like her skin color mattered less all the time, so long as her money was green.

  “Please, Madam, you just sign me up, an’ I’ll be a good agent!”

  “Madam Walker, I’m a washerwoman jus’ like you was—”

  Sarah touched as many as she could, distributing handshakes and hope with equal measure as she walked through the crowd. “That’s right,” she said, her voice pitched to rise above the din. “I started out just like you. My sister and I were here without a thing to call our own, in a shack not far from where we’re standing now. The Lord showed me a way through hard work and faith, and he can show you, too.”

  One old white woman caught Sarah’s eye, standing in the shade of the awning of the church where Sarah was scheduled to speak. The woman’s bright eyes watched Sarah’s every move, a smile lighting up her gently wrinkled face. Recognition eluded Sarah, but not the conviction that she had met this woman before.

  Seeing Sarah’s hesitation, the woman stepped toward her into the bright sun, her smile widening. “Sarah?” she began, then quickly corrected herself. “Madam Walker. Do you know me?” Her thin lips were trembling slightly. Sarah guessed she must be at least sixty-five, but it could be so hard to guess with white folks, what with the way their skin aged so fast.

  “I’m Anna Burney Long,” the woman said. The name resonated straight to Sarah’s soul, momentarily stealing her words. “Your parents . . . worked for my father.” There was a world of meaning within that carefully inflected word. Sarah flinched, but hid it well. “I remember you when you were an itty-bitty li’l thing, out on the farm. I’d like to invite you out to the house for a cold drink today, if you have the time. That cabin where you grew up is still on the land.”

  Now the memory of the woman’s face was clear, washed of the years in between. Yes, Sarah had known this woman. Before the war, Sarah’s parents had belonged to the woman’s father.

  “Mrs. Anna Burney Long,” Sarah said, drawing out the name. Without being obvious, she evaluated the scuffed shoes, the dull purse, a dress worn at the hem, and realized that the Longs were poor folk compared to her. The people who had owned her parents did not have nearly what she did. Sarah had to conceal a smile. She would have loved to know what her father would have to say about this. Funny this woman being named Long, because Sarah’s journey had been long, indeed.

  “Lord, Lord,” Madam C.J. Walker said, squeezing the white woman’s hand. “I accept your invitation, Mrs. Long. We’ve got lots to talk about, and a cold drink after my speech would do me good.”

  From the beatific smile on the woman’s face, Sarah knew Mrs. Long felt honored. “How did you do it, Sarah . . . ? I mean, Madam. All the Negroes I see seem to have such a hard time, but you! How did you ever come so far?”

  Sarah smiled sadly. “To tell you the truth, Missus Anna . . .” Sarah said with a sigh, naturally lapsing into the form of address she had used as a child, “some days, I don’t know myself.”

  Already, as the years began to blur away, Sarah could scarcely believe her journey.

  Chapter One

  DELTA, LOUISIANA

  SPRING 1874

  The slave-kitchers couldn’t get her. Not so long as she stayed hid.

  Stealthily, Sarah crouched her small frame behind the thick tangle of tall grass that pricked through the thin fabric of her dress, which was so worn at the hem that it had frayed into feathery threads that tickled her shins.

  “Sarah, where you at?”

  Sarah felt her heart leap when she heard the dreaded voice so close to her. That was the meanest, most devilish slave-kitcher of all, the one called Terrible Lou the Wicked. If Terrible Lou the Wicked caught her, Sarah knew she’d be sold west to the Indians for sure and she’d never see her family again. Sarah tried to slow her breathing so she could be quiet as a skulking cat. The brush near her stirred as Terrible Lou barreled through, searching for her. Sweat trickled into Sarah’s eye, but she didn’t move even to rub out the sting.

  “See, I done tol’ Mama ’bout how you do. Ain’t nobody playin’ no games with you! I’ma find you, watch. And when I do, I’ma break me off a switch, an’ you better not holler.”

  A whipping! Sarah had heard Terrible Lou whipped little children half to death just for the fun of it, even babies. Sarah was more determined than ever not to be caught. If Terrible Lou found her, Sarah decided she’d jump out and wrastle her to the ground. Sarah crouched closer to the ground, ready to spring. She felt her heart going boom-boom boom-boom deep in her chest. “Ain’t no slave-kitcher takin’ me!” Sarah yelled out, daring Terrible Lou.

  “Yes, one is, too,” Terrible Lou said, the voice suddenly much closer. “I’ma cut you up an’ sell you in bits if you don’t come an’ git back to work.”

  Sarah saw her sister Louvenia’s plaited head appear right in front of her, her teeth drawn back into a snarl, and she screamed. Louvenia was too big to wrastle! Screaming again, Sarah took off running in the high grass, and she could feel her sister’s heels right behind her step for step. Louvenia was laughing, and soon Sarah was laughing, too, even though it made her lungs hurt because she was running so hard.

  “You always playin’ some game! Well, I’ma catch you, too. How come you so slow?” Louvenia said, forcing the words through her hard breaths, her legs pumping.

  “How come you so ugly?” Sarah taunted, and shrieked again as Louvenia’s arm lunged toward her, brushing the back of her dress. Sarah barely darted free with a spurt of speed.

  “You gon’ be pickin’ rice ’til you fall an’ drown in them rice fields downriver.”

  “No, I ain’t neither! You the one gon’ drown,” Sarah said.

  “You the one can’t swim good.”

  “Can, too! Better’n you.” By now, Sarah was nearly gasping from the effort of running as she climbed the knoll behind their house. Louvenia lunged after her legs, and they both tumbled into the overgrown crabgrass. They swatted at each other playfully, and Sarah tried to wriggle away, but Louvenia held her
firmly around her waist.

  “See, you caught now!” Louvenia said breathlessly. “I’ma sell you for a half dollar.”

  “A half dollar!” Sarah said, insulted. She gave up her struggle against her older sister’s tight grip. Louvenia’s arms, it seemed to her, were as strong as a man’s. “What you mean? Papa paid a dollar for his new boots!”

  Louvenia grinned wickedly. “That’s right. You ain’t even worth one of Papa’s boots, lazy as you is.”

  “There Papa go now. I’ma ask him what he say I’m worth,” Sarah teased, and Louvenia glanced around anxiously for Papa. If Papa saw Louvenia pinning Sarah to the ground, Sarah knew he’d whip Louvenia for sure. Louvenia and Alex weren’t allowed to play rough with Sarah. That was Papa’s law, because she was the baby. And she’d been born two days before Christmas, Sarah liked to remind Louvenia, so she was close to baby Jesus besides.

  “You done it agin, Sarah. Got me playin’,” Louvenia complained, satisfied that Papa was nowhere near after peering toward the dirt road and dozens of acres of cotton fields that had been planted in March and April, sprouting with plants and troublesome grass and weeds. Still, her voice was much more hushed than it had been before. “You always gittin’ somebody in trouble.”

  “I ain’t tell you to chase me. An’ I ain’t tell you to stop workin’.”

  “Sarah, see, you think we jus’ out here playin’, but then I’m the one got to answer why we ain’t finish yet.”

  Seeing Louvenia’s earnest brown eyes, Sarah knew for the first time that her sister had lost the heart to pretend she was a slave-kitcher, or for any games at all. Right now, Louvenia’s face looked as solemn as Mama’s or Papa’s when the cotton yields were poor or when their house was too cold. And Louvenia was right, Sarah knew. Just a few days before, Louvenia had been whipped when they broke one of the eggs they’d been gathering in the henhouse. It had been Lou’s idea to break up the boredom of the task by tossing the eggs to each other standing farther and farther away. They broke an egg by the time they were through, and Sarah hadn’t seen Mama that mad in a long time. “Girl, you ten years old, almost grown!” Mama had said, thrashing Louvenia’s bottom with a thin branch from the sassafras tree near their front door. “That baby ain’t s’posed to be lookin’ after you! When you gon’ get some head sense?”