Each of Bette’s daughters—Elma and Blanche, then Juliet—had left Sweet Tamarind, never to return. Mah Bette, whose silken strands circled her face like sea waves at dawn, kept a lock from each of the children born to her, stiff ash blond, auburn, and black-purple curls kept in a sack between her breasts. The old woman had made it all sound like music, a romance, made it seem that each daughter had been running toward something and not away from it. She painted Dora the prodigal grandchild, drawn back with a past scrawled on a scrap of paper. Swaddled in a bundle of rags, she had been carried back in an old fruit basket. A small yellowed picture of a mother and child was pinned to the corner of a tiny quilt wrap, dirty and singed at the corner. A note was attached to the basket handle in an uneven but bold script, Eudora means happiness.
“Sent back wid a huckster peddlin’ pans,” Mah Bette would tell her. “A white man walked up the way wid a carpetbag in one hand and a peach basket in th’other. Lijah-Lah brung him up from the way. I didn’t believe you was no gran’baby of mine, till you opened them eyes. Like two pieces of sky, two little bits of heaven, changin’ color with the wind,” Bette mused. “My girl was lost, but you come back to me.” Dora could almost hear the clanking of miscellaneous pots as her bearer ambled up the stone-strewn path to Mah Bette’s tabby shack. Dora swayed, still hearing the syncopated stroke of pirogue oars against the low white-capped top currents of tidewater, where Lijah-Lah kept his small craft idling. The remembered sound calmed her. She missed the island already. How stupid!
“How stupid! Dora May!” The refrain danced in her head as she winced at the streak of pain across her palm. At the Normal School, the sisters had often slapped her. “How stupid! You can do better,” one would say, while the other wagged her head in agreement. The sisters, missionary teachers, had come to the parish after the soldiers and stayed. Miss Highgate was a colored lady from Niagara Falls, “A slight admixture of negro blood in my veins.” The other, Miss Stubbins, had been an abolitionist, her zeal now transformed into a passion to uplift, to make righteous citizens of the slave population in one generation, “Bring them from the edges of savagery to the threshold of civilization in one mighty stroke, just as we have toppled the Confederacy!”
Shakers, they called themselves. Dora thought this was because of the way they shook the children who did not behave or perform to their standards. Or for the way they smacked their hands with the flat of the ruler. Or used the pointer as a whipping stick. Or the way the children would shake when the two women walked down the aisles of wood-crate desks each Friday, with fists balled up, ready to pound an unsuspecting youth in the soft part of the spine between the shoulders. Each Friday, Eudora would huddle in her seat, her back hunched, trying desperately not to tremble. They took special interest in her.
“Child of sin threefold, they say.”
“Odd colors to mark her.”
“But clever. Bright.”
“Maybe she’s a Shaker, too.”
Eudora Mayfield, or Dora May as she was known then, had been one of fifty parish children who had crowded into the barren main room of what had been the overseer’s cottage. O’Brien had been killed on the stoop where he had attempted to hold his ground, defending his right to possibility as a white man. It was the children’s habit to spit on the stain of blood where he had fallen. Barefoot and already wearing hardship on their faces, the children and grandchildren of Sweet Tamarind slaves had come in all ages. On that first day when the sisters opened the newly hewn door of the shack and stood, their two hands clasped, the setting orange of the afternoon sun aglow behind them, seven hundred and two prospective pupils gathered, their silence heavy with expectation. By the time Dora May strode in, book learning had lost to the fields and the necessity of extra hands to meet the growing crop liens that bound most families as tightly as a trader’s knot. That or the wanderin’, the lure of freedom’s illusive call, drawing folks away from the island toward destinies unknown.
Dora had the same wild, nappy head tamed into plaits as the other Geechee children on the island, but she was distinguished by her unusual colors, the surprise encounter of genes that made her eyes the shifting hues of sky in a face the ruddy color of Sea Island topsoil.
They called her a Mustee and, in the hierarchy of colors from when the chain of Low Country manor houses had required a maintenance corps of servants, she would have been assigned the task of duster. The system had long broken down, had not recovered from the war, but the terms remained. Duster, meaning second-tier house slave, too dark to be a lady’s maid, but bright enough to clean the banister. She resented the word, but not the placement. “Anything but field hand.” She loathed putting her hands in the dirt, even, to Mah Bette’s dismay, tending the old woman’s small garden. Still, the girl was industrious and clever. She could make things and sell them at a fine price. When Lijah-Lah loaded up his catch of fish for the mainland market, Dora could be counted on to add some new bit of ambition. SWEET TAMARIND WILD HONEY, JARRED AND LABELED, TEN CENTS. STRAW MATS WITH PICNIC BASKET, BEST OFFER.
She preferred the potential peril of bees or the eyestrain from the intricate weaving of palm baskets and mats to laboring on the land, but neither enterprise held her attention like needlework. What began as small mending jobs and neighborly favors—a rag-doll, a hem, an alteration—soon became her primary industry. After she mended the itinerant preacher’s frock so the stitches couldn’t be seen and fashioned Miss Emma’s daughter a true wedding dress, with a delicate eyelet making the calico look like lace, word spread. Taking note of her creativity and industry, the sisters taught her to use their Eldridge B sewing machine. It was a petite model, barely six inches across, and it was already twenty years old, but with its spidery filigree legs and floral decorations, it was a wonder to Dora every time she used it, the hand crank and feed occupying every muscle and all of her concentration. She would often work until the light failed. The sisters would find her hunched over, squinting, racing with the setting sun.
Her ambition followed the path of her shoes. She had a bold, sure walk. Whether on the island’s brambled forest paths or the wet sand at low tide, she always wore shoes. She wandered the island, bartering her skill. Along with jars of honey she soon didn’t have to gather herself, baskets, jams, clay pipes, tortoiseshell combs and buttons—all made their way across the stretch of sea to the city and returned as coins that she secreted away. The heavy imprint of her gait belied her size but befitted her purpose.
She and O’Brien’s half-caste boy were the only children on Sweet Tamarind with shoes. Oversized and old, scuffed and run-down in the heels, hers had “belonged to one of the little misses.” Mah Bette had given them to her, bestowed them upon her as if part of some pirate’s trove. “Weren’t hardly worn.” Though the pointed toe squeezed her foot, which always slid down to the front, Dora wore them with a confused pride of inheritance. She had grown into the shoes, had mended them many times. Sealing the soles with tree sap and stitching the instep with heavy thread, she replaced the tie-string with twine coated in wax, a small cowrie on the ends.
Soon she wore them only on Sundays. Now she had even put them behind her. With her sewing handiwork Dora had earned enough to buy her own. “A decent pair of work shoes.” Ordered from the Sears Roebuck catalogue, they arrived in a box wrapped and addressed. “To: Miss Dora May. To The Care Of: St. Simon’s Island. Parish Normal School. Sweet Tamarind, S. C.”
She had hesitated when placing the order. What name to use? Mayfield? Certainly not Field. Chisholm, maybe, for that after-the-war wanderer, the fiddler who swept my mama up in a dance? What name? When the package arrived she stared at the label. “May. Hope that don’t sound too familiar.” May, the month my mama run away, May, the first month after the fall, the first month after the war, the first month of freedom. New life. I think it’ll do juss fine. When I get me a huzbin, I’ll make it the middle, she thought to herself as she sniffed her new shoes and folded back the stiff, new tongues to try them on. They were
brown and solid shoes with real laces and the smell of new leather and glue and they bore no history except the one that she would make. “Yes, May. Dora May.”
“Real freedom must be earned,” the sisters said. “Must be deserved.”
“The way to freedom is to uplift!” Alas, these shoes also pinched her toes. Still, they pointed her in new directions.
“Mind, gal! Cain’t sweep under ma feet. Gimme chance to move. Might take that broom and beat you wid it. I said, move way from hyeah!” Dora moved about the cabin in a frenzy of sweeping motions. Dirt specks danced in the air around them. Reading Dora’s humiliation in her doggedness, Bette sucked her teeth. “My daughter Blanche think mighty much of herself. I ’member when I walked away from better than that!”
“Oh, please don’t start! I doan wanna hear nun uh yuh stories!”
“You bettuh look see who you think you talkin’ at, gal. I put my fist down your troat, I will, you gib me mo uh dat soss.”
Dora never liked to display anger. She feared that if she let loose of it, the feeling would consume her, that fire would fly from her mouth if she spoke. How could she be mad at the woman who had cared for her and raised her, taken her in? She watched Mah Bette from the corners of her eyes. Alternately gloating or moping, the old woman mechanically fluffed the bed tick made of straw and settled in. To Dora, more like “settled fuh.” Mah Bette sat heavily on the cot’s edge and primed her pipe. Dora could see that her grandmother was winded. Mo from sweepin fuh haints n fuh dust.
Through the narrow curls of tobacco smoke, Mah Bette watched her granddaughter with bemused eyes. Dora wilted under the elder’s silent, cryptic assessment. She pulled off her headrag to wipe her face and snatched up her bonnet. “I goin’ for a walk.”
“Suit yourself, city gal. Bring back some saltfish and a sense of humor while you at it.”
Life is in front of me, not behind. A good walk always helped Dora to think. She emerged from the small flat into the warm salt air of Charleston. As she followed the trail of day workers, noise assaulted her from every direction.
“Seconds!”
“Got brooms!”
“Pee-eEECHezEHsuh!”
“Porgy walk. Porgy talk. Porgy go wid uh knife an fork.”
The crowd’s movement gave her direction. The narrow, short, dusty streets of Charleston Neck gave way to the busy thoroughfare of King Street and Market, two blocks from the harbor. On the island, she could walk for hours with only bullfrogs and rice birds for company. Here in Charleston, the mixing of whites and colored on the street startled her. Eudora was used to seeing one or two people at a time, and—except for Miss Stubbins, the storekeeper, and the yearly census taker—all of them colored. In Charleston, the races mingled in swarms and waves. Careful never to touch, coloreds stepped off the sidewalk without losing stride. Watching the delicate reel, Dora felt clumsy and unsure, her head light from hunger and agitation.
A cacophony of market smells—saltfish and earthen yams, fresh berries and woodsy cane strips, encircling currents of musk, talc, and plump tobacco leaves—mingled with wafts of dank harbor water. A quartet of turkey buzzards, hovering over a feast of cast-off produce and horse dung, flung their gullets and rattled their wings at her. As she backed away, a centaur on a broomstick with goggles on his eyes, white silk scarf flapping round his neck, careened toward her. The young man blew furiously into the high-pitched whistle clamped between his teeth and honked the shiny goose horn on the handles. Dora froze. The bicycle zigzagged around her, throwing the rider into the squawking crew of scavenging birds. “Dumb country bitch! I oughta smack you upside yo haid!” Dora hesitated, not knowing whether to assist the young white man or run. She backed away and rounded the corner onto an even wider boulevard, where, clanging its bell, bellowing smoke, and spitting sparks from the rails, the King Street trolley screeched to a halt right at the tip of her newly bought shoes.
Her wobbly knees stepped to the side of the tracks, her shaking hand holding her country hat. A tiny bootblack, made to shine from tallow and sweat, dancing for pennies from passersby, set his workbox down and began to circle her, the metal bottle caps in his shoes in heated conversation with the wooden planks of the sidewalk. He mirrored her consternation with trembling hands and eyes popped wide, then turned in a pirouette and doffed his hat in flirtation, his sparkling eyes two black marbles of delight and mischief. The ebony cupid courting the pretty bronze lady in a swoon—a circle of pink speckled faces formed and bombarded them with laughter. As magically as he had appeared, the boy spun away from her and tapped his way around the perimeter of their audience, who tossed bright coins into his cap. He turned to her, preparing to go another round. A serious furrow formed across Dora’s brow, a low-hanging cloud above her eyes. She hurried away as fast as she could. He followed her in pantomime, flexing the muscles in his buttocks to mimic the flapping bustle of her skirt, the crowd’s laughter trailing.
No, things had not gone as planned. Rays of heat rose up from the cobblestones, and the white sky seared her eyes. The tall brick buildings loomed like tombstones, but Dora May refused defeat. “This is Charleston,” she told herself. “Act as if ye have faith! Bound to be a few things of surprise. Take it in stride is all. If you never go back, you can only go forward.” In honor of Miss Highgate’s geography lesson, she bought a peach and placed it in her purse for later, repeating to herself, “The world is in reach of my fingertips.” Her confidence restored by the memory of her teacher, she lifted her chin and continued her walk, now a journey of discovery.
She turned onto King Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, and its row upon row of stores, each with unique signs, names, and merchandise—M. Lazarus Furnishings, Kerrison’s Haberdashery, Land’s Fine Linens—strings of kerosene lamps, suspended on invisible wire, arched across the boulevard, fine white ladies all equipped with parasols to shield their faces from the sun. At the corner of Ashmead, she stopped under the awning and attempted to adjust the brim of her bonnet to shield more of her face. Glancing to the side, she was startled, then fascinated by her own reflection in the display window. She had never seen herself, her full self. She had always felt herself to be large. Her shoulders were too broad for Miss Highgate’s old Butterick patterns. She routinely had to widen the neckline, lengthen the sleeves, and trim the waist. Bloomers, too, were too short in the seam. Even her hat never fit, but sat atop her abundant hair like a teacup on a saucer. She was shocked to discover that she was not as large as she thought, not large at all nor as tall. Only then did she notice the golden letters of invitation painted on the glass across the street. FALK AND BENTSCHNER, HOUSE OF FABRICS. SILKS. WOOLENS. LINENS. COTTONS. VELVETS. MEN’S SUITING. BEADED LACES. EVERY IMAGINABLE FABRIC LACE AND TRIMMING FOR THE ENTIRE BRIDAL PARTY. SHOP AT HOME SERVICE, INCLUDING CUSTOM LABOR.
Dora had bought shoes from Sears and Roebuck, and so she felt that she knew about such things. But here was cloth come already on the bolt, towers of it, and thread already on the spindle. Colors, textures, and patterns she had never imagined. “I will inquire on employment,” she said to herself with the stiff language of someone trying to be proper.
This time adjusting for the trolleys, wagons, pushcarts, and people, she strode boldly toward the entrance, only to be assaulted once again. Inside, a young white woman dressed in fine afternoon clothes was sitting in front of a delicate wasp-shaped machine mounted on a rosewood table fine enough to serve tea. The woman gently tapped her foot on an iron floor pedal between the curved cherrywood legs as if she were listening to music. Only the sound wasn’t music, but the whir of a sewing machine powered by a small cylindrical electric motor attached to the side. Dora watched in disbelief and amazement as the woman stitched the seam of two pieces of thick brocade together in seconds, then held the fabric up to the window. The simple running stitch was straight and firm and fast. Then the woman held up two yard-length squares of heavy brocade and, after adjusting the knobs on the machine, aligned the fabric swatches beneath the
machine’s feeder pedal. To Dora’s amazement the material seemed to move itself, needing only gentle guidance from the model’s hand. Again, the task was done in a flash and the stitch, a different stitch this time, was clean and solid. Such tasks with Miss Stubbins’s hand-me-down, hand-crank Eldridge B would have taken Dora a quarter of an hour. She had seen pictures of electric sewing machines, but until that moment she had no idea of their speed. Her mind a whirl of new possibilities, Dora floated through the brass-framed doors and reached over the tabletop to touch the instrument’s gold embossed letters. Singer. Ah, I could sing with this. I could make me a fortune!
“Git yo hanz offuh dat.” The store clerk had a tight nose and thin, withered lips that bespoke a natural parsimony.
“It says here, ‘Purchase Plans Available.’ What do that mean?”
“Nothin’ for the likes of you. That’s for white ladies. Where is yo’ Miss?!”
“I have no Miss. I am a dressmaker.”
“Not in here you ain’t. Git yo uppity ass outta here fo I call somebody. And leave out the back!”