Tananarive Due Read online

  “Wonderful Hair Grower!” Sarah said quickly. She’d been thinking about that for some time, and she liked the sound of it.

  C.J. considered it, pursing his lips with a nod. “That sounds good. Folks will remember it. But you know what? I say it needs to be more personal, more about you. It’s your face we’re selling in the ads, remember, and you’re the one who’ll be doing demonstrations.”

  Anjetta, who had been knitting quietly in a corner as she listened, startled Sarah when she spoke suddenly: “Aunt Sarah’s Wonderful Hair Grower,” Anjetta piped up. “Like that lady Aunt Jemima who has that flapjack batter!”

  Sarah made a face, shaking her head. Anjetta wasn’t old enough to have been called “Auntie” by whites, so she wouldn’t understand how insulting that sounded to Sarah’s ears. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I ain’t tryin’ to be nobody’s aunt but yours,” she said. “No, thank you.”

  “Madam Sarah’s Hair Grower?” C.J. suggested.

  Sarah wasn’t sure. She liked the sound of Madam, all right, because it reminded her of Madam Mary McLeod Bethune, who had started the school for colored girls in Florida last year. The word definitely had an air of dignity, and she’d played with it herself. But somehow . . .

  Sarah sighed. “Madam Sarah sounds like I’m some kind of fortune-teller, don’t it?”

  “Well, you better think about it. Maybe we don’t need the whole name when we’re just starting out, but it makes a big difference if people know what to ask for.”

  Sarah smiled to herself. C.J. certainly used the word we a lot, she had noticed. He considered her a project and an investment, since he’d been kind enough to give her a few dollars to buy supplies she needed, but the word we had a sweet ring she hadn’t heard from a man’s lips in what seemed like a lifetime.

  Again, C.J. was gazing at her as if he knew exactly what was in her mind, and then his gaze vanished. “I guess that’s enough business for tonight,” he said, standing up as if on cue. He straightened the creases in his pants. “Just think about what you want your name to be, Sarah.”

  “I sure will, C.J.,” Sarah said, trying desperately to ignore a persistent voice in the back of her mind already playing with a name she might not mind writing on the new Wish Board she’d nailed over her bed: MADAM C.J. WALKER.

  It sounded like the most perfect name in the world.

  “Get in the wagon, ladies! We’re goin’ to church.”

  C.J.’s arrivals were rarely announced and somehow always unexpected. Some days he wanted to take her for long walks, and sometimes he hurried her to social events to show her off like a prize. This time he pulled up in front of the Breedloves’ house with a horse-drawn wagon with seating for six. The wooden wagon was much older than the buggy he’d appeared in when he first picked Sarah up in St. Louis, and Sarah guessed he must have borrowed the buggy from a friend with more means.

  C.J. was dressed in a sober black suit and tie and a black derby, looking like a preacher himself. She almost didn’t recognize him.

  “Since when do you go to church?” Sarah asked. The Sunday-school picnic was the closest she’d ever known C.J. Walker to come to a church. She and her nieces Anjetta, Thirsapen, Mattie, and Gladis had gathered on the porch, ready to begin their walk to services. “You goin’ to Shorter Chapel AME? That’s where I belong.”

  “Not today you don’t. We’re goin’ across town to Shiloh Baptist. Come on, or we’ll be walkin’ in late,” C.J. said.

  Her nieces gave her questioning looks—and Anjetta complained loudly that she’d been looking forward to seeing a young man at Shorter—but Sarah convinced them to climb into C.J.’s wagon. “Hold on, ladies,” C.J. warned them, then, with a high snap of his horsewhip, his two horses seemed to nearly gallop down the street. Thirsapen, younger than Anjetta and more excitable, let out a startled yell as their seats jounced across the cobblestones.

  “I still don’t know what we’re doin’ here, C.J.,” Sarah hissed after they’d arrived at the distant church, their hair slightly mussed and their hats askew from the ride. Groups of strangers filed into the brick structure, gazing at them with curiosity.

  “You’ll know soon, my dear,” C.J. said, patting her hand the way he always did to assure her that he knew what he was doing. So far he always had known, so Sarah held her tongue.

  Once they were seated and C.J.’s hat was off, he looked uncharacteristically reflective, his head turned upward toward the pulpit with rapt interest. Occasionally he even closed his eyes and nodded. What had happened to him? Sarah wondered. Had he found Jesus overnight?

  She got her answer when a deacon mentioned C.J.’s name soon after the service began.

  “Of course, many of us know Brother Walker from his doings around town,” the deacon said, “and he has asked to speak a few words to us.”

  Slowly, soberly, C.J. brought himself to his feet. His hands were folded in front of him, and he hung his head slightly as the members of the church whispered to themselves and rustled in their seats to turn around and face him where he stood at the center of the church. Apparently his presence was a surprise.

  “Thank you for letting me speak today, Deacon, good Reverend—church family.” C.J. drew a long, choppy breath, and Sarah wondered for an instant if his eyes were misting with tears. “Like a wanderer who has been abroad and lost his way, I have been much too far from home.”

  There was a gentle chorus of amens.

  C.J. bit his lip, then he went on. “Some of y’all may know how far my travels have taken me from time to time, and Satan loves a man on the road, good folks. Every sin you can think of is waiting for any man right outside the train depot. But I’m so happy to come before you today to let you know that while I have fallen to too many temptations Satan has put in my path, I never lost sight of my way in the fog, and at long last I have come back home. Praise God.”

  This time, the amens were rousing and heartfelt. A few people even applauded, including Sarah, who was gazing at C.J. in awe. She was accustomed to his eloquence by now, especially when he spoke before groups, but she had never been allowed to glimpse so deeply into his heart. She still had a lot to learn about him, but why hadn’t she known . . . ?

  “We all came to hear God’s word and a song this mornin’, an’ I know you’ve all got your fine Sunday suppers waiting back at home, so I don’t want to keep you . . .” C.J. said.

  “Take your time, son,” encouraged an old man from their pew.

  “My heart is full today,” C.J. went on in a singsong voice, “and I just wanted to share my joy. Because God has blessed me. I mean, He has truly blessed me. He blesses me from the time I open my eyes in the mornin’ ’til I close ’em again at night. Any of y’all feel blessed today?”

  The congregation answered as one, the applause louder this time. The organist even played a flourish from the pulpit, giving his words more strength. Sarah’s heart danced. By now, she felt so awestruck that a small doubt began forming in her mind. Was he being sincere?

  “But family, I know I am blessed today because God has brought a special person into my presence, and it would be a genuine sin not to share my bounty with all of you. A woman has moved all the way from St. Louis, Missouri, to join us in Denver, and I believe God helped me find the right words to convince her to come to us. Family, this woman has a hair preparation that God whispered to her in a divine dream—a preparation that grows hair—and she has made a new home here so that all colored women right here in Denver can have the beautiful hair God intended. If I can just ask her to stand . . .”

  Sarah’s heartbeat, which had begun racing as soon as C.J. uttered the words woman and St. Louis, was now so loud in her ears that she couldn’t hear anything else. C.J.’s mouth was still moving, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She felt weak, grasping at the smooth wooden pew in front of her so she wouldn’t sway in her seat. What was he doing?

  C.J. pulled gently on her arm, bringing her to her feet. “That’s right . . . Here s
he is in person at our congregation today . . . the divinely touched Madam Sarah McWilliams!”

  If Sarah could have picked one moment in her life to suddenly disappear from sight, even if it meant dropping dead on the floor, it would have been right then. Her nieces stared at her in a row of four wide-eyed faces. Sarah practically had to lean on C.J. for support as she stood up in the crowded church. The only reason he’d stood up at all was to pretend to repent so he could advertise her hair product right in the middle of services! And he’d told an outright lie, at that. Why had he said her formula had come to her in a divine dream?

  He’s goin’ to hell for sure, and he’s about to take me down there with him, she thought.

  Sarah was mortified, angry, shocked. But all she could do was smile and nod at the worshipers, who were applauding for her with glowing, smiling faces.

  “I thank Jesus for giving Madam Sarah McWilliams her divine knowledge, and I know you all will, too. Good morning, y’all, and God bless,” C.J. finished with a small wave, and sat down.

  Sarah had collapsed back to her seat as soon as he released her arm, her heart still pounding. Unable to contain her anger, she stamped on C.J.’s foot. His muffled cry was drowned out as the choir stood and began to sing.

  “What’s wrong with you, woman?” he whispered in her ear.

  “What’s wrong with me? Why’d you stand up tellin’ those lies? You know good and damn well I didn’t have no dream—”

  “Shhhhh,” C.J. cautioned her, patting her hand before she drew it quickly away. “What you expect me to say, you’re a washerwoman who cooked it up on your kitchen stove? Trust me, I know how to get folks’ attention. Now, hush.”

  Trust me. No she wouldn’t either, Sarah thought. This would be the last time she’d jump blindly into C.J. Walker’s wagon and let him drag her across town. She was grateful for his help, but she wasn’t going to be humiliated again. And in God’s house! Sarah seethed through the service, gripping her hymnal tightly. She couldn’t wait for the service to end, because she was ready to finish telling C.J. exactly what she thought of his fast-talking, truth-bending ways.

  But she didn’t have the chance. After the service was over, Sarah was penned in by a dozen women complimenting her hair and asking about her divine formula. When Sarah caught C.J.’s eye, she saw him standing at the end of the pew with her nieces, smirking. He winked.

  “Madam McWilliams, could you tell me about your dream?” asked a beautiful brown-skinned young woman with dimpled cheeks. The hair visible to Sarah beneath the woman’s hat looked coarse and dry, exactly the way Sarah’s had once looked, and Sarah knew she could work wonders for this woman with her hair grower and pressing comb. If she had the chance.

  “Why don’t you let me show you instead?” Sarah said.

  Sarah traveled to a new church with C.J. on Sundays as often as she could; each week, as his testimony sounded more and more repentant, the crowds around Sarah grew. Soon she had to keep an appointment book for all the ladies who wanted her to press their hair, and she and her nieces had to work diligently in the kitchen to keep up with the orders for her Wonderful Hair Grower. Most of her new churchgoing customers confessed they’d been intrigued not only because of Sarah’s lovely hair, but because the formula had come to her in a dream.

  Remembering her long-ago dream about the African man who gave her a black rose, Sarah began to wonder if there was any chance she might have really dreamed her formula, just like C.J. said. She’d woken up from a dead sleep when she got the idea to use sulfur, hadn’t she? She often got her best ideas when she was trying to sleep, or when she first woke up in the mornings. Maybe the sulfur had been part of a dream, too.

  The longer Sarah heard herself repeating the story about God’s whispers in her ear, the more she believed it herself.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  As she slapped a cooling carrot cake with the last of her homemade cream-cheese icing, Sarah saw a shadow stretch across the table in the bright light from the electric lamps in the Scholtzes’ roomy kitchen. Sarah’s mind had been firing off lists of things she needed to do when she finished her hair appointment immediately after work, but she brought her full attention back to the cake when she realized someone was watching her. She was being too sloppy. She was so tired, she’d hardly been able to keep her eyes open while she waited for the cake to finish baking in the gas-powered oven.

  “What’s this? Cake again?” Mr. Scholtz’s voice grumbled from behind her. “I’m convinced of it now, Sarah: You’re on a mission to make me outgrow my entire suit of clothes.” Then he laughed ruefully and sat down at the kitchen table near Sarah, opening his Denver Post.

  “I guess you’ve found me out at last, Mr. Scholtz.”

  He ruffled the newspaper page as he read. “This Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity . . . the more I hear about it, the less I know what to make of it,” Mr. Scholtz said. “The man’s either a genius or a fool, and I’m not qualified to say which. What’s the use of it? But I suppose it’s all progress, like the Curies, or the Wright brothers and their flying machines.”

  “You wouldn’t get me up in one o’ them heavier-than-air planes,” Sarah said.

  “Yes, it’s hardly natural, men flying in the air,” Mr. Scholtz said, and went on reading. “Ah . . . now, look at all this talk about immigration! You know what, Sarah? I don’t give a hoot if there were more than a million immigrants to this country last year, or how many more are coming. Don’t we all come here from immigrants?”

  “In a way of speakin’,” Sarah said, although she would have liked to point out that Negro slaves could hardly be called immigrants. “Wasn’t anybody here at first but the Indians.”

  “Exactly! So why shouldn’t new immigrants have the same chances our parents did? This is a big country, with room enough for everyone. One thing’s certain, without immigrant labor, big business would . . .” He stopped and sighed. “Ah, well, that’s just business talk. I won’t bore you with that, Sarah.”

  Mr. Scholtz spent long hours with his brother at their pharmacy and often came home too late to eat dinner with the rest of his family, so Sarah saw him only rarely. But every so often, whenever he did speak to her, she was grateful that he didn’t lord himself over her the way some of her other employers had, both white and colored. It was as though Mr. Scholtz did not see skin color, like the French woman in St. Louis who had given her the steel comb.

  “I like to know what’s goin’ on in the world, Mr. Scholtz,” Sarah said.

  Mr. Scholtz gazed at her over the top of his reading spectacles. “You’re not fooling anyone, I hope you know. Least of all me.” His voice, this time, was more somber. “You’re no cook, Sarah McWilliams. That’s for certain.”

  “Sir . . . ?” Sarah said, troubled.

  Mr. Scholtz waved his hand. “Don’t worry, I’ve no complaints. But what I said is true just the same. You’re no cook. Now tell me the truth. Who are you really?”

  Relief floated inside Sarah’s chest. Sarah knew from experience that, in time, long-term domestics often became woven inside the families of their employers, but their own personal lives were considered irrelevant, as if they existed only to serve the people they worked for. Their own families, their church involvement, and their troubles were a secret life, and whites seemed to like that just fine. Sarah had worked for people for years who knew no more about her than the Man in the Moon. Mr. Scholtz seemed to want to know more.

  “I’m a businesswoman, Mr. Scholtz,” Sarah said. She’d been waiting for the right time to talk to the respected pharmacist about her hair formula, and maybe she’d found it at last.

  Mr. Scholtz’s eyes glimmered with what might have been amusement. “A businesswoman, eh? An entrepreneur? What kind of business would you be in?”

  “I make a hair formula for colored women that grows hair. I’ve used it on myself, an’ now me an’ my partner’s gonna expand to a mail-order business. We’re buildin’ up our customer base here in Den
ver, trying to get more exposure and recognition.” Sarah’s business class in St. Louis, along with C.J.’s coaching in business terms, flowed easily from her lips by now. “Until that happens, I’m a cook. Supplies cost money, you see, so I need the income.”

  Mr. Scholtz couldn’t hide his surprise. His lips were pinched into an O, and he stared at Sarah as if he had never seen her before. He prob’ly ain’t heard no colored woman talk to him like that, Sarah thought. Maybe no woman at all.

  Slowly the pharmacist took off his spectacles and rested them on the table. Then he ran his fingers through his tufts of graying hair. She wondered when he had started out, and how long it had taken him to build his company. She would ask him one day soon, she knew. She had a chance to learn about business from someone who might be one of the most successful entrepreneurs she would ever meet. “This invention . . . how did you—” Mr. Scholtz began.

  “I dreamed some of it. The rest was trial and error.”

  “And the formula . . . do you mind if I ask . . . ?”

  Here, Sarah paused. She hadn’t discussed her secret ingredient with even C.J., and he had never pressured her to tell him. Should she trust this stranger? He’s a chemist, girl! He can show you how to make it even better, a voice inside her trilled. Then a glummer voice spoke up: Yeah, or else he could steal it.

  Mr. Scholtz noticed her hesitation. “You don’t have to say. I only thought I might . . .”

  “Sulfur,” Sarah said, after taking a deep breath. “There’s other ingredients, too, but I think the one that works best is sulfur.” Her heart was pounding, and suddenly her fingers didn’t feel quite steady. Would a man of science think she was a fraud?

  Mr. Scholtz gazed at her, blinking. “That’s good, Sarah,” he said, sitting up straight in his chair. The surprise had left his face, giving way to admiration. “Of course! Yes, with the poor nutrition and unhealthy scalps, sulfur could very well make the scalp healthier, encourage the hair to grow. I dispense sulfur soap for skin problems, and the powder is wonderful for injuries. And you sell this to grow hair! What else do you sell?”