Miss Zelia had refused to clean them tile-lined back chambers where the unhappy “work” got done. “Ain’t enough money in all Falls,” she crossed her arms. Hearing this, the white owner’s spoilt son chose to play a trick on her. One night, he set up this freshly dead fat man on a parlor love seat, nude. About to clean in there, seeing the shape propped yonder, Zelia waited. From the hall, she finally screamed for him to wake right up, get some clothes on, go home. Or else. She finally used her broom with the longest handle. “You drunk? sick? what?” she prodded the sleeper. When he flopped forward onto the marble floor face-first with such a rancid smack, Zelia screamed, “Z knew it, Z been tricked again.” She grabbed all personal cleaning gear and, cussing, ran clear to the river, pulling along two little girls who squealed, “What happened? Tell, Auntie Z.” Next morning, the prank player was there rapping knuckles on a certain piano crate’s top. His daddy’d forced him to come apologize to a cleaner as good as Miss Zelia. Boy’s daddy had threatened to make him call on the distinguished dead man’s wife, personally explaining how a body, considered extremely deceased since last Wednesday, had hauled off and broke its nose. Z crossed her arms, “Never. Only if you was to ask me back extra nice.” “Okay,” the boy bent nearer, whispering. “Just don’t tell, ma’am.”
By day, The Lilacs’ children helped do wash. (Shirts 20, skirts 40, dresses with two or more darts and/or lace sleeves and collars 7¢. Not no exceptions, neither.) Girls strung clotheslines near the riverbank. They stood guard whilst white gentlemen’s ghosty business shirts took forever to wave dry. For now, ex-Marsden workers lived in the piano crate. They pulled a tarp over its leakiest end, they found painters’ drop cloths to serve as blankets and felt grateful that Freedom had seen fit to find them in mild April. Looking toward coming cold months, they were happy at least for each other’s warmth.
Every Saturday night, survivors of the Marsden fire pooled their coins, slowly counting change aloud, learning just what money meant. Most everything. They’d bicker over what to spend on what. Shouting matches broke out. Finally knowing how much the group had, each would slump out into the dark and bury her own wages, only each knew where.—You think these folks were going to stash their savings in a white man’s bank?
22
THE VERY first day Cassie migrated to Falls six weeks before, she turned up at a livery stable. It was yet owned and leased by the family Marsden. The blond fellow in charge had a shovel-shaped face and a enamel stickpin. Looked exactly like a shiny-green beetle that just loved grazing on this particular blue necktie.
Castalia squared off with the manager. “Mister, I blonged to Lady Marsden. All The Lilacs’ furniture’s yet hid a quarter mile off the farm road back due northeast among a poplar grove. It still mostly resting safe under canvas.” She ordered him to rush wagons out there before rain spoilt all that finery, hear?
Did Cassie mean to collect a ready cash reward? A starter nest egg for this, the un-world? Was she saving them nice things on behalf of Wee Willie Marsden, CSA, now walking home from a war that—church bells tolling mighty mournful—had just ended? If she hoped to peddle treasures, then why’d Cas come and reported these to family interests? Castalia won’t accustomed to driving no bargains. She’d never handled money—none past the two-per-year Christmas coins, plus a half-dollar onct found when raising a bucket out the well. So, after Castalia said her say for this dandy middle-aged horse boarder, she paused, solid shoulders squared—hoping that such information might could be worth something.
The fellow looked over a dark rangy young woman. Well built, a strong grooved neck, features smoothed like something steadily handled and—almost by accident—burnished nice. She won’t exactly beautiful but my she looked complete. Hers was a big face that yet expected to be satisfied and didn’t yet know as how, in some circles, that never actually happens. She was young. Years of asking permission made her seem younger yet.
The fellow noticed her wild-fox country air, noticed them elbows jammed partway out—ready to help side-jump whatever trick tried hopping her. Her breasts would be pert sour-apple high-riders, thighs round as milled black-walnut logs. She had on men’s work boots. At her homespuns’ top button, Castalia wore a brooch: some dog’s-head painting. The man saw furrowed rows of braids, this crop of loops—a tenant farm of a hairdo. Her bright black asking eyes met his and—after a tussle—his backed off the first. He’d seen others like her, too innocent to be ashamed yet. It made them pitifully attractive. You wanted to help out. That in itself brung them harm. A gent hoped to screen such a girl’s decency from other gents’ wanting some. He would protect his ward from men even worse than him. There always were some. “I’ll keep her innocent while getting her a bit readier for the next ones, afterwards.—Broke in good.” Oh, don’t get me on this subject, honey, really. Neither logic nor kindness got invented by horny small-town bachelors mid-April. You can quote me.
Hands on hips, Castalia cleared her throat and stayed put, breathing, right aware of breathing. The spiffy little manager touched his tiepin, risked winking at her. Man said, “I got a little office in here, little cot back in here. Welcome to Falls, gal.”
Castalia give no sign of having heard, none beyond a extra-bored look. Then—in a trick learnt off Z—Cas crossed her arms. The fellow found her all the finer-looking for this show of toughness. And even while trying to get whatever he might off this girl, the man did partly pity her. Complicated, ain’t it? Even among con artists, you find all these seasick degrees of fellow feeling.
The manager figured: This slave girl might be basically sharp and stubborn, but she sure had lots to learn. If only she’d walked in here saying, “I know where Lady Marsden’s treasure’s hid, you maybe interested?” He would’ve stepped to the till (in a little office with its stained cot). He would have gone, “Let’s talk turkey here, miss. I got something you need, you got something I want. You might be free now, but everything else cost money. How much it seem worth to you?”
But Castalia hadn’t said that. Ain’t transactions interesting? I sometimes think that Business is the business of the world. We’re all of us negotiating toward something twenty-four hours a day. Poor Cas was still behaving like a good servant, still expecting rewards for doing things now considered honorable by owners only. She guessed this, but hadn’t yet understood the newer rules. And, child, won’t nobody exactly rushing out to teach her. So the fellow grinned, rewinked, thanked her. When she still didn’t budge, her right foot tapping like a pendulum, the man asked her name, promising she’d someway be rewarded. “You best to remember Castalia here,” it was all she could think of.
Finally, she did turn, she did leave. She knew she’d just given away her life’s one advantage. First she stalked around Meadows’ Pasture then she stepped into the alley behind Falls’ row of stores. Castalia stared at a wooden wall. She had just handed over thousands of dollars’ worth of goods, she’d failed the friends what’d picked her as their talker. “Seem like I just being born, I doing so silly,” she struck dry boards. “Ain’t rightly fair.”
THE LIVERY manager believed her enough so he buggied out that same afternoon, checked. After a little stumbling about, feeling uneasy while touching his beetle stickpin, he found the first floor’s loot stashed under poplars in a streamside huddle. He eased canvas off one blond Biedermeier desk, it had more boxes and columns and niches than does many a hillside city. Nearer the brook, one clear-glass life-sized swan curlicued like some ice carving just done. Under the tarp hunched a weirdly real-looking ceramic pug-dog doorstop, goggle-eyed and smug. But here, right within reach, our stable manager saw gleaming on a red red velvet footstool beside a hill of greenest moss: the all-time masterpiece.
One enameled emerald frog rested: its eyes were of beaten yellow-gold, each spot along its back had been lovingly tooled with glimmering copperish ridges—the thing was detailed down to its separate ball-tipped toes. For the visitor, a great admirer of the enameler’s art, this frog seemed about the mo
st stealable and splendid thing he’d ever viewed in either Carolina. Breath fusing, the man slowly crouched for it—it hopped straight up in air, plunked into the stream, paddled off. Darling, like to scared that man to death. He needed to sit down. Lucky for him, seventy-odd chairs waited right out here in the woods.
He never glimpsed the other human being yet hid in the uphill quarter—owner of his leased stable, a woman setting cross-legged chewing greens with a great reasoned slowness. Same day, the livery fellow summoned three rental wagons to collect the bounty and he already had it stored in his dry hayloft when a ruinous May downpour broke. The downpour proved to Cassie and the others where their crate home dripped its worst. Somebody joked, “Good day to hie indoors for a fine long game of Catacombs.” Relations and friends sat bunched against each other at the carton’s driest end. Under their awning, a sour little fire sputtered. Its fumes, timid about getting wet, curled back under, causing all eyes here to water without much noticing.
Since most of the women worked nights, they usually rose around four each afternoon. Their breakfast was discounted day-old Harbison rolls and donuts, plus the tea presently being brewed. Today it had been made from sassafras roots dug by Venus downriver.
High tea had ever been Lady E. More Marsden’s favorite time of day. By 4:30 p.m. she was usually fully awake. “I believe warm baths and hot tea so help organize a person’s thinking, don’t you find?” Even when Lady played Catacombs, a teapot in its chintz cozy was slipped under the sheets’ hems. If she had no white company on a given day, she invited selected slave women—and young Xerxes—upstairs for “conversation.” Topics were assigned: Duty, Immortality, The Transforming Powers of Art, Duty. Rule number one: No giggling.
Lady, It, forever poured.
By now, for freed folks stooped around this fire, 4:30’s high tea had long since become necessary and ancient-seeming as any memory of Africa. Castalia’s busted Wedgwood gravy boat was well fitted with a new teapot lid bought at Lucas’ (employees’ discount). This mended piece has got further sealed with river mud. Under smeared brown, you could yet see the original sky-blue white gods gathered, partied, round its sides. Zelia supervised the sugar bowl—a chipped enamel cup. She used tongs fashioned from flat sticks joined by two lengths of leather shoelace Xerxes had brung home.
Lately, that boy didn’t sleep here much. He spent most nights on the itchy cast-off customer bibs wadded underneath his shoeshine stall at Stark’s. That offered a toastier nest than this. Paydays, Evidence Anne was sent to follow Xerxes everywhere till he shelled over his share of community food money. For fun, he sometimes flipped coins her way just like his clients rewarded him. White fellows had begun standing young Xerxes to drinks, asking him to “do” each of them: tones of voice, rollicking bowlegged walks. Odd, men felt both semi-ashamed and a good bit clearer thanks to the nervous boy’s mummery. “So that’s me, is it?”—a scratching of the scalp. “How long it take you to figure all that out, Slick? Been watching me right along, I bet.—Oh, I see you grinning, Xerxes buddy.”
Even when the child slept here in the home crate, even when his friends from Lilacs days begged him for imitations, even if he felt untired enough to give free samples, it just won’t the same. Xerxes’ new subjects, the big-time somebodies of Falls, were mostly strangers to these women and children living cut off in a box by a mud river. You can’t exactly ooh and aah at copies of folks you ain’t ever seen. This first audience lately proved right dull for Xerxes.
Finally, one night, bored and eager for some usual appreciation, he agreed to do a last turn as Lady. “Beg me,” said he. “Consider yourself begged,” Cassie snapped back, proud but eager. The boy had traded in his homespuns for a fine mended once-store-bought cotton shirt. He now slipped out into the night. You could hear him somewhere in the black, clearing his throat, hopping all around getting limber. Others braced, like they were about to once more see the ghost of It. Seemed it was part of the last century, out of date as cornstarched wigs, as boating parties come to view nice bushes.
IN THE low entryway, you-know-who playing you-know-what appeared. He entered the box just like she would, pretending not to notice how low-ceilinged, sad, and smoky it was. “Why … you-all have done so much with it! Why, it just so quaint. It so … you!”
On he went. But tonight, his accuracy only scared the others. Made them imagine her out yonder, haunted, busy being her own guard, her own slave, her own ghost.
Some folks setting here smiled, uneasy. Didn’t nobody laugh. Odd, during the months since Xerxes last tried doing Lady, he’d grown weirdly better at it. Being free of her made him more responsible to Lady More Marsden’s facts. If you watched him close, you’d of noticed his own pleased surprise at the improvement. That was always part of Xerxes in action, the steady joy his talent gave him! Even later, as a pro, backstage, Lady stayed his yardstick, he ofttimes loosened up by lovingly redoing It of Her.
A Falls dweller, the child now understood just how the mistress was like and unlike other rich white women. He saw how her living so isolated on The Lilacs had made Lady behave all the more flibbertigibbety. But—fine as Xerxes did it tonight—the more of a mirror he became, the stiller did his audience grow. They seemed sunk so far into their mixed memories. Finally the big-eared actor flopped down, worn out, hollering, “What good are you? Give you the one thing you done ever seen, and you all freeze like you scared to let on really knowing It.—You ain’t no fun no more, for me.” Then he stuck his tongue out and swerved into the dark and back to town.
THIS AFTERNOON’S tea yet steeped as rain got worse. Company was present—a child from the residence next door (seven pickle barrels and one slab of rusted tin nailed overtop). When the brew was judged ready, Cassie poured, such slow hostessy care. Portions threaded into green keepsake demitasses. Thunder made rude claims and counterclaims, rattling—lawyerish—along the river Tar. Big trees lashed nearby littler trees—and vice versa (though the littlest felt it most).
Sipping, the group hushed. Folks felt soothed by this old liquid ritual, but somewhat saddened by it, too. That was part of the pleasure: one pot, the many cups—it linked you. Lightning palsied overhead, children scuttled nearer each other—but slow, not liking to appear afraid of nothing.
“How you reckon she getting on in this?” Z nodded towards puddles darkening a Baby Africa invented of paperboard and branches.
“Bout like us,” Cassie answered. “Only worse. We got a future.”
Evidence Anne (who would be grandmother to my beloved orderly Jerome, and who’d live long enough to work on the line in a Detroit Chevy plant), she shared her cup with the little next-door neighbor. That boy, son of field slaves from outside Tarboro, considered this ceremony—with its slow cup-filling, with the women’s careful sipping—nearbout as strange as any religious rite. The child wouldn’t of been surprised to find that yonder gravy boat held molten gold or blood or some sky-blue liquid.
Little Venus looked up at adults, “Do this be our at-home day?” Grownups laughed, less because they wanted to—more because they couldn’t not, child. “Bout as good as any, I reckon,” Miss Zelia coughed, shrugging. The worse it rained, the steadier and louder did folks’ voices rise over this cloudburst.
They mentioned what might come next. How, onct it finally did happen, what they might get to wear, what they’d maybe finally know enough to finally feel. Each person here had already snagged a few first flirting wingbeats of it. For the visiting boy, it meant: this ritual. For Evidence Anne, the one yellow sour-ball candy bought from out of a great glass globe decaled with the world-map in Lucas’ Ail-Round store. For Cas, it was the freedom of going anywhere you liked along Main, of talking back while wearing a new dress printed with one hundred redbirds. Z felt the rustle of it in sudden shoes that scooped you more toward citizenship—the first high-stepping parade before blisters laid a tax on what’s too new.—You got one small thing first, then more, see, until these mosaic-like feathers overlapping, braiding, corn-rowi
ng, rag-rugged into being a body’s own personal wings. To let you finally fly free. Was that so much to ask? Did you want a Summit Avenue mansion, or the right to be a meadowlark and go anywheres, luggageless? Might a body request … both?
The Young Man Linking was yet semi-expected. Late, sure. But these things happen. Squatting under a tarp that kept filling with heavy rain—using a chopped broomstick to poke its belly-center and spill silver out the edges—their hands pressed cups’ warm sides, folks endured the smoke. Even in a storm like this, people canted a bit forward, seeming to half listen. Primed to welcome the huge Giant Him, they would shoehorn Him into this home crate—finally offer Him some tea. Today even the children sat with their chins half lifted—appearing to wait for something good.
Rain flopped, a greater frying roar. The river, having onct turnt red to impress Pharaohs over wrongdoing, now ran black from hundreds of upriver plantation fires. Marsh mist rolled past reeds to shore then snuck into a cramped piano crate.
In her choice back corner, Old Miss Zelia got the croupy shakes again. Venus and Evidence—with the neighbor boy’s help—just piled more drop cloths up around her. One night whilst taking a break on the funeral parlor’s portico, while cleansing the pince-nez with her apron then looking hard at nowhere like she owned it, Z’d caught some kind of ague that would take her off come August.
Castalia sat coiled nearby wearing a turquoise scarf, a butterscotch-colored shawl, and the rare redbird dress. Cardinals, her favorite, the future state birds of both North Carolina and Virginia. Good choice. Cas kept hoisting its hems up onto her lap, trying and keep cloth clear of mud.