Tananarive Due Read online

  There was no singing in Miss Brown’s kitchen, only work. Miss Brown prided herself on finishing her wash assignments faster than any other colored washerwoman in Vicksburg, and she promised her customers that their clothes would never be borrowed or damaged. Some washerwomen were shameless about wearing their customers’ clothes to church or Friday-night fish fries, and Miss Brown had told Sarah and Lou that they would be dismissed on the spot for that kind of foolishness. Miss Brown’s policies had made her so popular that she had more customers than anyone else, but that also meant a long day for her four employees.

  “You lucky Miss Brown ain’t come back here an’ see how you was late,” Louvenia said, not looking at Sarah while she worked. “What I tol’ you ’bout that?”

  Sarah ignored her sister’s rebuke. “Know what I did today, Lou? At school, I read three words. Sky, fly, and mornin’.”

  At that, Louvenia glanced at Sarah sidelong. “You tellin’ the truth?”

  Sarah nodded, grinning. “Miss Dunn said I ain’t made no mistakes.”

  “Durn, Sarah,” her sister said, with real awe in her voice, “that real good, huh? You mus’ be learnin’ quick.”

  Sarah glowed. Louvenia was usually too tired or distracted to give her many words of encouragement, so the compliment from her sister carried weight. Lately all Louvenia seemed to care about was the man she’d started meeting behind their boardinghouse in the evenings, when Sarah could hear them laughing and talking through her window. Sarah had never seen the man, but his voice sounded old to her, like Papa’s. All Sarah knew about the man was that Louvenia had met him near the dock one day. Sarah asked questions about him, but her sister usually just mumbled in response. Ain’t nothin’ you need to worry ’bout, Louvenia said.

  “I’ma teach you, too,” Sarah said. “Soon as I learn my readin’ good.”

  At that Louvenia only shrugged, but Sarah knew her sister would like to read, too. Miss Brown read newspapers just like the fish lady, and Sarah had seen Louvenia gazing at her with envy. Lou envied a lot of things about Miss Brown, especially how she had money for clothes and owned her own house. Sarah had even heard white folks who came by call her Miss Brown, not Auntie-this or Mama-this or by her first name the way white folks talked to colored women.

  Miss Brown was a curiosity, and Sarah never tired of studying her, even if it meant stealing quick, shy glances when her back was turned or as she was instructing somebody on how long to soak the linens, which temperatures were appropriate for which clothes, how to properly make starch from wheat bran, and how to add bluing to the wash to make white clothes brighter. Oh, she knew something about washing, all right!

  Anytime Sarah tried to talk to Miss Brown, her mouth threatened not to work right, but she forced herself to speak anyway because her curiosity burned so strong. Louvenia accused Sarah of trying to win favor with their boss so she wouldn’t scold her the way she did the other ladies, but that wasn’t true. There were just so many things Sarah wanted to know about her, and the only way she knew to find out was to ask. Aft’noon, Miss Brown. That’s a purty dress—what you call that cloth it’s made of? (“Girl, you don’t know what cashmere is? Feel it, then.”) Miss Brown, how long was you washin’ clothes ’fore you got to hirin’ these womens? (“I was washin’ in my massa’s big house since I was younger’n you, and I opened my own business six years ago Monday.”)

  After three o’clock, Louvenia and most of the other women left to make deliveries in wooden carts. Miss Brown promised customers they could have their washing back in two days, so the deliveries were as important as the washing. The clothes were pressed, folded, and covered neatly in the carts so they wouldn’t catch any dust or dirt during the journey. Louvenia was assigned to deliver to a fancy section of town in the southeastern ridge tops, which meant she had to do a lot of walking before she got home for supper. Louvenia complained Miss Brown ought to hire some men with mule carts if she wanted the customers to get their clothes back so quick. Miss Janie had laughed at that, telling Louvenia they were lucky they didn’t have to carry the bundles of clothes on their heads like most washerwomen did. Louvenia said some of the white customers’ homes were quite a sight, bigger than Missus Anna’s in Delta.

  Sarah’s task in the late afternoons was to stay behind and tidy up, or to press and fold the clothes that weren’t scheduled for delivery until the next day. It could be lonely, tedious work—Sarah missed Louvenia and the other women as soon as they were gone, because at least Miss Janie was prone to make witty comments about Miss Brown or one of the customers, giving everyone a soft, secretive chuckle while they washed—but working alone gave Sarah one advantage she cherished: She could sometimes talk to Miss Brown by herself.

  That afternoon, as Sarah stacked the washtubs neatly on their rims so they could dry, she heard the floorboards outside the kitchen creak and thump, which told her Miss Brown was on her way. To Sarah, Miss Brown didn’t walk, she thundered; she had footsteps Sarah could hear on the floorboards long before she entered a room.

  In she walked, perspiring slightly beneath her heavy clothes. Still, to Sarah she looked as noble as the pictures of the white women in the pages of the outdated magazines Missus Anna used to give them to paste up on their walls to keep the cold out of their Delta cabin in winter; she’d called the magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book. Miss Brown’s clothes weren’t nearly as fancy as those many-layered, frilly costumes in the pictures, but Miss Brown’s presence always made Sarah feel shabby in her own rough, home-spun dress.

  “I got pressin’ for you today,” Miss Brown said.

  “Yes’m,” Sarah nodded, not betraying in her face how much she hated pressing. More often than not, she singed her fingertips trying to keep the iron hot enough in the stove to smooth away the wrinkles in the clothes. But pressing was better than picking cotton, she reminded herself. She thought about the cotton fields almost every day, and how much better it was to work under a roof, at least.

  “You should be finished by six, and then you can go on home.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Then Miss Brown did exactly what Sarah had hoped: Instead of whirling back around to leave the kitchen, she sauntered inside, checking the room for neatness, making sure there weren’t any puddles of water on her floor. Watching Miss Brown’s inspection, Sarah worked up her courage to speak: “I read three words at school today,” she said.

  “Glad you learnin’ somethin’,” Miss Brown said, not turning around to look at her.

  That wasn’t the enthusiastic response Sarah had hoped for. Miss Brown walked past her, her hips bumping against Sarah in the narrow opening, and Sarah inhaled the woman’s sweet scent that was part rose-scented perfume, part powdery. Miss Brown never smelled like sweat.

  “Miss Brown, how long it took you to read good?”

  At that, Miss Brown stopped to look at her. Her skin was so dark her Papa would have called it blue, and her round cheeks made her look cheerful even when she wasn’t smiling, which she usually wasn’t.

  “They don’t teach y’all grammar at that school?”

  “Ma’am?” Sarah said, confused.

  Miss Brown shook her head as if Sarah had displeased her. “You don’t read good, you read well. There’s a difference, and I pray you’ll learn it one day. How long did it take me to read well? Years and years. Anything really worth doin’ always takes time. When the little missy where I grew up went to school, she taught me, too. When she learned, I learned. ’Course, when the master found out, that was the end of that.” Sarah saw a shadow pass across Miss Brown’s face, and she understood why. In school, her teacher had told them how much the slave owners were afraid of their slaves learning to read; then some of the grown folks in the class had told stories about things that had happened to them when they’d tried, how they’d gotten whippings or been sold away from their families. The oldest woman in Sarah’s class had said her baby son was sold away from her as punishment when her master, who was the baby’s pappy, found out
she was learning to read from a preacher.

  “That ol’ marse did somethin’ bad to you, Miss Brown?” Sarah asked.

  Miss Brown shrugged. “A few licks, and I couldn’t play with the little missy after that. But by then it was too late. I already had what I wanted. An’ I went back and taught my mammy and pappy both.” At that, Miss Brown smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile; it was a smile of triumph.

  “Miss Brown, how come yo’ mama name you America?”

  Miss Brown laughed merrily, a sound so loud and unexpected that at first Sarah was afraid she was in pain. Miss Brown took a deep breath and steadied herself by reaching for the table behind Sarah. “Named me . . . ?” Miss Brown said. “My mama didn’t name me America!”

  “Then, who . . . ?”

  “Let me tell you somethin’ ’bout white folks,” Miss Brown said, still laughing in her eyes. “The last thing in the world they wanna do is give colored folks any respect. You see how they talk to men and women old enough to be their own mammies and pappies, call ’em boy an’ girl, or Auntie, or call ’em by their Christian names like they were horses—‘Whoa, Mary!’ Now after the war, when I figgered I wanted to come out to Vicksburg with the little money I’d saved an’ start takin’ in wash, I knew I had to find a way to stand out from all these other washerwomen or I’d make nary a cent. An’ you think this child was gonna keep the name of the man that owned me? No, Lord! So I said I’d come up with a name for myself folks would remember. I looked down at my skin an’ said, ‘What color is that?’ Ain’t black, it’s brown! An’ the Christian name . . .” At that, Miss Brown began laughing again. Finally she paused long enough to go on. “Well, these folks were so mad at the Union Army, the way they marched in here an’ blew things to bits an’ freed up their slaves, and I named myself America after the U-nited States of America. What happened is, white folks couldn’t cotton to a Negro named America. Seemed to them like I didn’t have the right to it. So you know what they did?”

  Eagerly, Sarah shook her head. Miss Brown’s story had her mesmerized.

  Miss Brown leaned closer, practically whispering in Sarah’s ear. “They started to callin’ me Miss Brown rather’n have to say it! Lord’s my witness!” Then she shrieked with laughter, until she had to dab at her eyes to dry them. “I just stuck by the name after that.”

  Laughing with Miss Brown, with their voices echoing against the walls in the empty kitchen, Sarah was as happy as she could remember being in a long time. She felt a sudden longing to give the woman a hug, but she didn’t dare.

  After a moment, Miss Brown was silent, and she gazed back down at Sarah. Her smile vanished, and she slowly shook her head. “Oh, child, Lord have mercy . . .” She tugged gently at the plait hanging near Sarah’s face, then she flicked at Sarah’s scalp. Sarah saw a flake of dandruff float down, landing on the tip of her nose. “You’ve got all this dander showing. You don’t go out looking like this. Don’t you know how it shows up? It’s ugly.”

  “But it itches me, Miss Brown.”

  “So you scratch it out. Doesn’t your sister scratch your head out?”

  Sarah shook her head. She wanted to say her mama used to sit her on the floor and scratch the itching dandruff out of her head when she had time, since the dryness was so uncomfortable in the hot sun that Sarah had felt like her head was on fire, but that had been a long time ago. And Mama used to braid her hair, too, winding tight braids across her scalp that stayed neat for weeks and weeks. But Sarah felt too embarrassed to open her mouth, as if she were sinking into the floorboards.

  Miss Brown went on. “These plaits look like they ain’t been tended to since the days of Methuselah. You’re a right mess, Sarah. It’s a shame. There’s no need for all you colored children to be runnin’ ’round looking so homely. You aren’t monkeys in a tree. Don’t you know you’re gonna be a young lady soon? What man will want to look at this? Put some cornrows in here, or somethin’. Don’t you move, hear? I’ll be back.”

  But Sarah couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, hearing Miss Brown’s hurtful words ringing in her ears. A boy at school said hurtful things about her hair all the time, but it was far worse to hear the criticism from Miss Brown. Slowly, Sarah felt her eyes growing hotter until they began to sting. She prayed Miss Brown wouldn’t come back and find her crying.

  Sarah heard thumping and then the swishing of Miss Brown’s dress as she made her way back into the kitchen with several small white ribbons in her hand. “My little niece left these here,” Miss Brown said, and she began pulling on Sarah’s braids, grouping them together, then tying them with the ribbon. “Now, this won’t help much, but at least it’s somethin’. My niece is bright-skinned and got that good hair from her Creole daddy, so her hair doesn’t get like this. But that’s no excuse for you not to look neat. Why do you want to look like you got dragged headfirst through a brier patch? You have to work with what God gave you. You hear?”

  Sarah nodded, hoping her throat would loosen enough to make a sound. “Yes’m.”

  “An’ I don’t want to hear any cryin’ or foolishness, neither. Somebody’s got to teach you or you won’t know any better.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “See there?” Miss Brown thrust a hand mirror at her, and suddenly Sarah was staring at herself face-to-face. She saw her shame-reddened eyes, her face that looked older than she remembered, and, finally, the white bows Miss Brown had tied in her hair. Although her heart was still smarting, Sarah saw herself begin to smile.

  “That’s right,” Miss Brown said. “You’ve got a pretty girl buried down there somewhere. You’re not in the cotton fields anymore, Sarah. Out here in the world, folks try to look nice. An’ even if menfolk don’t, womenfolk better.” At that, Miss Brown patted her sharply on her backside. “Now, you better get to that pressin’. An’ don’t expect to leave ’til it’s done, even if you have to stay late. I’m not givin’ you any special favors.”

  “No, ma’am,” Sarah said, smiling more widely. Her eyes were still drawn to the image of herself in the little mirror, and the bows Miss Brown herself had placed in her hair.

  It was after dark when Sarah got home, and she found Louvenia sitting in their room with their lamp and several candles burning, making the room bright as day. Their room at the boardinghouse wasn’t nearly as nice as any of the rooms in Miss Brown’s house, which were so scrubbed and neat, filled with store-bought furniture and rugs. The furniture in their boardinghouse was ramshackle and dreary, only a table and one chair, shelves for their clothes, and a mattress on the floor hardly big enough for both of them to share. Louvenia called their boardinghouse a chinchpad, one of the city words she’d picked up from her beau, although Sarah was glad she’d never encountered a single chinch bug in their bed the way she used to in their Delta cabin. Besides, the roof didn’t leak, their window overlooking the alleyway had glass in it, and they always had plenty of blankets when it was cold.

  “How come you got all these lights burnin’?” Sarah asked.

  Louvenia grinned, holding up a letter. “They said this was for us, from Missus Anna Burney Long!” she said. “Alex sent us twenty dollars!”

  Alex was alive! With a shout of joy, Sarah ran to her sister and gave her a tight hug that nearly pulled Louvenia out of her chair. Twenty dollars would be enough for them to buy new coats and heavy clothes for winter. Maybe even shoes, too!

  “He sent a note?” Sarah said eagerly.

  “Sho’ did. Can you read this?”

  Lou thrust the folded piece of paper into Sarah’s hands. The letter was surprisingly official-looking, written on fancy printed stationery, but the handwriting was small and difficult to make out. Sarah saw the word L-O-U at the top, along with her own name, S-A-R-A.

  “It’s to me an’ you,” Sarah said, excited.

  “Well, we know that, dummy. Who else it gon’ be for? What else it say?”

  Your bruther Alex aksed me to write to you. He hopes this letter will find you well. He is fin
e. He has setled in Denver Colorado and is a porter at the Hamilton hotel which he says is bigger then any hotel you could ever beleive. Denver is very buetiful but he was sick all winter long and would have starved exept for friends. He is sorry it took him so long to find work but times are hard and he is geting on his feet at last. Pleas write back to him at the above adress and let him know if you are fine too. They say the cotton crop was not good and he sends this money to help pay rent.

  Prayers and love, Alex.

  Sarah shook her head, frustrated, as she studied the note in her hands. There were too many words she didn’t know, and the challenge scared her even though she could pick out words here and there—hhheee, iiissss, ffffiiiiinnnne. She felt pressure under Louvenia’s stare.

  “He say he doin’ fine,” Sarah said slowly. “He gone out west and say he done made some money. An’ he say he miss us both. An’ he love us, too, an’ think ’bout us every day.”

  “He tol’ us how to come where he at?” Lou asked eagerly.

  Again Sarah scanned the words to try to recognize anything familiar. Finally she shook her head. “Uh-uh. Not yet, he say. He say he ain’t made enough money to be feedin’ us. ’Sides, he say he fightin’ off Injuns with them Buffalo Soldiers. A tribe o’ Injuns tried to take off his scalp while he was diggin’ for gold.”