Tananarive Due Read online

  “Yes’m,” Sarah said.

  Mrs. Wainwright opened the crate, peering down at the fabrics, and Sarah felt no nervousness about the inspection. She’d worked hard on these clothes, staying up half the night to have them finished, and she prided herself on doing good work, just as Miss Brown had taught her back in Vicksburg. Happy customers were loyal customers, she’d learned. They were also willing to pay a little more for the peace of mind that came from hiring a reliable worker.

  Miss Wainwright’s thin, pointed nose drew more closely to the pile of clothes. “What in heaven’s name . . . ?” She flicked at the fabric with her finger, then gazed up at Sarah with unblinking eyes. “Is that blood?”

  Sarah’s heart stood still. Even Lelia, who had been chattering to herself in the cart on the walkway behind Sarah, fell silent.

  “I’m talking to you, Sarah. Tell me what this is!”

  Nervous and puzzled, Sarah took a step forward to gaze at the fabric Mrs. Wainwright was thrusting at her to examine. As Sarah moved closer to her, Mrs. Wainwright pulled her face back slightly, as if she expected Sarah to smell bad. Sarah’s eyes studied a crescent-shaped dark spot that had been invisible to her from a greater distance; sure enough, it was brownish red, the color of blood, almost like a fingerprint.

  Then, with a start, Sarah gazed at her fingernails. On her right hand, four fingernails were stained red beneath the nails. She tentatively sniffed at them, and the sharp scent did smell like blood! Then a flaring soreness on top of Sarah’s scalp reminded her of where the blood had come from: Her head had been itching like the devil all night, and she must have scratched it while she slept until it bled. Why hadn’t she noticed the blood before now? And how could she have allowed herself to muss Mrs. Wainwright’s tablecloth? She must have been in such a hurry to finish, she hadn’t washed her hands the way she usually did before folding the clothes!

  To Sarah, it felt as if all color was draining from her face. Her ears were afire.

  “Oh, Missus, I can ’splain . . .” she said, so mortified that her voice was whisper-soft.

  “Explain?” Mrs. Wainwright repeated, staring at her with venom that made her eyes flare. “I have guests on the way as we speak, and you can explain? Yes, I’d like very much to know how I should explain how my nigger washerwoman wiped blood on my best tablecloth.” Mrs. Wainwright’s bottom lip was trembling from rage. Suddenly, as if something new occurred to her, she dropped the crate, spilling the folded clothes to the ground. “Oh, my— Does someone in your house have tuberculosis or cholera? Did they spit up on this?”

  “N-no, ma’am,” Sarah said earnestly, shaking her head. “It ain’t like that. Ain’t nobody sick in my house!”

  At that, Mrs. Wainwright’s eyelids fluttered and she let out a sound that resembled a startled scream. Frantically, she began to wipe her hands on her skirt. “I should have known better! You seemed so neat, not like the rest, but it’s all in the papers how filthy niggers are. We’re inviting nigger diseases right into our homes. And we were going to eat on that!” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, my Lord, I think I’m going to faint!”

  “I’se so sorry, M-Missus,” Sarah said, flooded by equal parts of shame and outrage. “My head was itching me, that’s all. Ain’t no disease! Ain’t n-nothin’ like that—”

  Suddenly Mrs. Wainwright’s face contorted so severely that Sarah could barely recognize the woman standing before her as the polite, quiet client whose clothes she had washed for more than two years. “Get away from this house, you filthy nigger bitch!” she shrieked. Her features were pale from what looked like genuine terror.

  In twenty-five years, Sarah didn’t think she had ever hated herself and her life as much as she did at that instant. Why hadn’t she washed her hands and checked her fingernails that morning? She had no one to blame but herself, and yet Mrs. Wainwright’s words felt so unjust that she wanted to spring at her and choke the air from her lungs. She knew whites didn’t care for colored folks much at all, except a select few, but she’d tried to convince herself she would change at least a handful of opinions if she conducted herself honestly and well. The Wainwrights had given her two extra dollars at Christmas, and had never given her a cross word. Had Mrs. Wainwright always considered her nothing more than a nigger who washed her clothes?

  Sarah’s heart ripped even further when she heard the sound of Lelia’s muffled sob behind her. In these horrible moments, she had forgotten her daughter was there.

  “Missus,” Sarah said quickly, “I’se sorry ’bout that blood. My head was bleedin’ las’ night from where I itched it, an’ I didn’t know it. It’s the worse thing I ever done since I been washin’. You know you been washin’ with me all this time, an’ ain’t nothin’ like this happen before. I own up when I done wrong.” Sarah took a deep, trembling breath. “But you ain’t got no call to talk to me like this in front of my li’l girl. You got no call.”

  Mrs. Wainwright’s eyes narrowed as she stared at Sarah with disbelief. “What did you—”

  “Axe yo’self how you would feel if I was you and you was me,” Sarah said. “White or colored, you got young’uns, too, an’ you know that ain’t right.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah saw the woman’s hand lash toward her, and Sarah caught her tiny wrist before her palm could reach her face. Sarah was not going to allow Lelia to see her mother’s face slapped by this white woman, even if it meant going to jail. Sarah was strong enough to break Mrs. Wainwright’s wrist in two if she wanted to; and from Mrs. Wainwright’s eyes, she must have known that, too.

  A man’s voice came from one of the upstairs windows. “Elise . . . ? What’s wrong?”

  “Get your goddamn hands off me,” the woman said, spittle flying from her mouth. Then she turned over her shoulder to shout for her husband, and Sarah instantly dropped the woman’s shaking wrist. Leaving the pile of spilled-over clothes on the porch, Sarah walked quickly to her cart, took the rope she pulled it by, and began tugging her daughter away from the house. She was actually fleeing, she realized. Just like a criminal.

  She could never come near this house again, she knew. She had been making at least six dollars a month washing clothes for the Wainwrights; through her own stupidity, she had just lost a quarter of her income, and with winter right around the corner. Despite her efforts to keep her emotions hidden for Lelia’s sake, Sarah felt herself sobbing in a way she hadn’t since Moses died. She could barely see through her tears.

  “Mama, don’t cry,” Lelia begged after a moment, swallowing back her own tears for her mother’s sake. “That’s a stupid lady. You don’t need her stinky clothes nohow.”

  This time, crossing the huge bridge to go back toward home, Lelia didn’t sing a peep as the cart bumped across the cracks.

  Sarah almost decided she wanted to go straight home, but as she hurried along Chestnut Street and approached Leffingwell, every step she took seemed to pull her closer to St. Paul A.M.E. Church. She’d had enough money to ride a streetcar up to the bridge on her way to Mrs. Wainwright’s, but without her pay she didn’t have enough to ride back, so she had no choice but to walk. Instead of feeling tired after walking more than twenty blocks just since crossing the bridge, Sarah felt herself waking up. She needed something at church today. She couldn’t put what she needed into words, but the need was as real as the hot breath wheezing through her lungs. It wouldn’t matter if her face was puffy from tears or if she was winded and sweating when she walked through those doors, she decided. She was going to church exactly as she’d planned.

  When Sarah passed within a block of the grand stone structure of Union Station on Eighteenth Street, which was already hissing and clanging with life from arriving and departing trains, Sarah knew she had only about eight blocks more to go. Her face set in determination, she ignored the cramp in her arm from pulling Lelia behind her and walked faster, passing piles of barrels and large sacks on the sidewalk awaiting delivery, nodding at the colored hostlers tending the horses wh
o pulled dray wagons and trolley cars along the city’s streets, and avoiding muddy puddles that had gathered at dips in the road. Lelia, who was ordinarily full of excited observations during journeys through the city, remained noticeably silent.

  Po’ child, Sarah thought. Guess she learnt ’bout colored an’ white today.

  No white woman would ever speak to Lelia the way Mrs. Wainwright had spoken to her today, she vowed. Lelia was going to school, and Sarah was saving every spare cent she had in a mason jar to make sure she would go to college, too. Lelia wasn’t going to be anybody’s servant.

  Finally St. Paul A.M.E. Church appeared at the corner, sunlight reflecting against the colorful stained-glass windows. Just the sight of the church made Sarah’s heart float. As she got closer, she could hear the piano and organ playing inside, the voices of the congregation raised in song, and powerful clapping in rhythm to the music. The sound seeped through the walls and doors and onto the street; it spilled over Sarah like bright sunlight.

  “Mornin’, sister,” the white-clad female usher said at the door, squeezing Sarah’s hand with her delicate white glove. As Sarah made her way inside the church, which was packed tight with worshipers in the pews, she felt hands brush over her shoulders and arms, as if she were being bathed, accompanied by whispered greetings beneath the song:

  “G’mornin’, Missus McWilliams.”

  “Bless you, sister.”

  “It’s all right, Sister Sarah, it’s all right. You’re home now.”

  Sarah’s hat was slanted to one side, her nostrils were damp, and she felt large wet spots beneath her armpits and across her chest, marring her beautiful gray dress. But suddenly Sarah felt no concern at all about how she looked, enveloped in the love and song in the church. Her chin held high, Sarah joined the swaying and clapping of the other worshipers, feeling her spirit soar as if it no longer belonged to her alone, but to every other man, woman, and child in the room. Sarah’s slightly flat voice was raised so loudly that she was nearly shouting the song “My Lord, What a Mornin’,” and Lelia sang with growing rapture alongside her. As the congregation sang, their voices blended like a wind that lifted the entire room from the floor.

  For the first time since her husband’s death, Sarah felt true joy.

  “If one o’ those white bitches tried to hit me, it’d be the last time, too,” Sarah’s friend Sadie Jackson said, tugging on the pulley rigged between the trees in Sarah’s backyard. Like Sarah, she had changed out of her church clothes and was now wearing a work dress and apron, with a white headwrap. As Sadie pulled, the row of hanging white shirts lurched closer to her so she could check them to see if they were dry. Ropes and pulleys were strung throughout the yard like Christmas-tree decorations, a system Sarah had devised and paid workmen to install so she could fulfill the next-day service claims that had helped her build her clientele in St. Louis.

  When Sarah first arrived in the sprawling city, she’d walked from door to door with no luck attracting customers, who either said they already had someone washing for them or didn’t want anyone. She couldn’t even entice anyone by offering lower prices. The first two months, Sarah had felt so discouraged that she thought she and Lelia would starve just as Louvenia had warned. Many nights she’d had nothing more than warm milk for dinner. Only pride, not a lack of desperation, had kept Sarah from rooting through the garbage in search of food. The woman she roomed with at the time, who was a cook, finally began bringing her and Lelia table leavings from the white family she worked for to help her get by. Sarah had eaten cold rolls and half-eaten chicken parts with a glad and grateful heart.

  Then Sarah had come up with an idea: She began offering a free washing with next-day service. A few people took advantage of her offer and then never used her services for pay, but several had been so impressed that they agreed to let her wash for them. Sadie, who had her own customers, worked with Sarah two days a week for extra money, sharing equally in profits for the work she did. Sadie hadn’t been scheduled to work today, but Sarah pleaded with her to come home with her after church and help her because she was so far behind. Sadie was a few years older than Sarah, rounder in the hips, with two sons at home who were nearly grown. She had been reared in St. Louis and been schooled through high school, but she still hadn’t been able to find any work other than washing.

  “I wish you’d hush that cussing in front o’ Lela,” Sarah said crossly, casting a quick glance toward Lelia, who was on the back step dutifully folding clothes into a basket, the only part of the washing she enjoyed. The fascination Lela used to have for soapy water had worn off by the time she was five; now she hated to get her hands wet. “She done heard an earful from Missus Wainwright already.”

  “I tell you, she’d of lost that hand of hers. There’s just somethin’ wrong with folks who’ll act like that on the Lord’s day. Guess the day o’ the week didn’t make her no difference, since it don’t sound like she had time for church. Not with all her guests on the way,” Sadie said, imitating a genteel accent. Then she laughed.

  Sarah sighed, shaking her head as she pulled flapping, dry linens from the line. She’d scrubbed her fingertips with a brush until they were raw to make sure she’d cleaned away the dried blood. “I brung it on my own self, Sadie. That blood skeered that woman half to death. You shoulda seed the way her eyes popped out.”

  “No, you didn’t bring it on, not to be called no names like that. I’ll never understand why white folks call us dirty, when you ain’t never seen a sight so pitiful as a bunch o’ raggedy poor white young’uns. They’re so black from dirt they might as well be niggers.”

  “Oh, Sadie, stop,” Sarah said, but she couldn’t help laughing. All washerwomen avoided doing business with “white trash” families because they were notorious for not paying what they owed. Sadie had been shorted more than once, and complained about it loudly.

  Sarah’s yard was equipped with at least half a dozen tin washtubs, and there were more in her kitchen; she’d made them herself by sawing discarded kegs from nearby breweries in half. Because she had so many kegs, Sarah had enough tubs to keep the water at different temperatures while she washed, instead of having to wait for one tub to cool or emptying them out to fill them again once the water was dirty. Besides that, she was lucky enough that her house was in front of a city water pump, so she could fill buckets of water without even having to leave her yard.

  Sarah lived in a squat one-story brick house not far from the church. She was fortunate to have the house, since it was the nicest she’d ever lived in; the street in front was paved, the house was fairly new, and the hardwood floors still had some shine left in them. Of all wonders, her landlord was a colored barber who attended St. Paul. He wasn’t any less strict about getting his rent on time than a white landlord, but it tickled Sarah that in St. Louis she could buy her food at a colored grocer’s and pay rent to a colored landlord who owned two or three houses on her street. There were even colored doctors, dentists, and attorneys about. Negroes in St. Louis were leaps ahead of Negroes in Vicksburg!

  Unlike the Southern houses Sarah was used to, the kitchen was attached to the rest of the house, with a door leading to the backyard, so she never had to travel back and forth from the yard to the table in bad weather. The kitchen was even big enough for a table with four chairs, so that was where she and Lela entertained friends and ate in addition to doing the washing. There were three other rooms—the living room, the bedroom that was large enough to share with Lelia, and a small room off the kitchen her landlord had used for storage; Sarah had been cleaning it out for several weeks because she’d gotten permission to take on a boarder. Boarding was another way to make extra money, and now that she’d lost Mrs. Wainwright, Sarah knew that finding a boarder would be more important than ever. That day, she’d posted hastily written notices at the church and at the market, advertising that the room would be available by the first of October. CLEEN AND PRYVAT, she’d written, relying on second-grade Lelia to check her spellin
g.

  Something she’d done must have worked.

  Sarah heard a rattle at her back fence and she looked up to see a tall, cinnamon-skinned woman standing just within her yard with a suitcase covered in colored stickers. And she wasn’t just any woman; she was lovely despite the gaudy powder and colors she’d painted on her face. Her curled, shiny dark brown hair hung nearly to her shoulders, and she was wearing a dress that would have been remarkable even if it hadn’t been a Sunday, since it clung to her so tightly and displayed the fleshy crack between her breasts at the low-cut neckline. Sadie and Lelia had also stopped working, simply staring.

  “Mornin’, ladies,” the woman said in a singsong voice. No one answered her, but she went on anyway. “I hear there’s a room for rent at this address. Is it still available?”

  “It ain’t ready ’til the first,” Sarah said. Unless she was mistaken, she could smell the woman’s sweetly scented toilet water even from several feet away. Sarah had seen self-directed, stylish women like this on St. Louis’s streets much more often than she’d seen them in Vicksburg, but she’d never had a conversation with anyone like her. She wasn’t like the women she’d known who worked in the fields and washed clothes, and she wasn’t like the fancy colored women at church, either. She was a different breed entirely. There was something worldly and intriguing about her, although Sarah could already feel her friend bristling beside her.

  “Well, a bed’s all I need, if you’ve got one. I’ll pay full rent, ready or not,” the woman said. Again, she almost seemed to sing her words. Where had she learned to speak like that?

  Sadie pulled at Sarah’s arm. “Sarah . . .” she whispered urgently, scolding.

  “Yeah, I gots a bed,” Sarah answered the stranger, ignoring Sadie. “Room’s full of dust, though. An’ I ain’t swept up the flo’ proper yet.”