The Black Rose

  “Well, I’se so glad we’s got chillen who ain’t scared o’ the old ways,” Nana Mae went on, turning toward Sarah and Moses. “Now Sarah, you take this here thimble and hold it in one hand. Take that chile o’ yourn in t’other. Then you walk with that chile to ev’ry corner o’ this here place—an’ that means some of y’all gots to move,” she added pointedly, bringing ripples of laughter from the guests. “Then you’s gon’ walk right through that front door an’ come back.”

  And so, with her heart pounding steadily from the importance of the moment, Sarah held her daughter to her breast with one arm and the water-filled thimble Nana Mae had given her in the other hand, making her way through her house: first through the bedroom where she and the child had spent so much time in her first month of life, then easing her way past the witnesses in the front room until she had left no corner untouched. After that, following Nana Mae’s instructions, she took the baby outside to the sunny front porch and walked back inside.

  A room of smiling faces was waiting for her when she walked back over the threshold. Sarah’s eyes caught Moses’, and he was beaming at her.

  “Well, then,” Nana Mae went on, “you can take a sip o’ that thimble for luck, then give it to the baby. Make sure she drink it, now!”

  Sarah took a very small sip of the tepid water—there was barely enough for one sip, never mind one for her and one for the baby—and then she tilted the thimble carefully toward her daughter’s mouth, pouring the dribbles of water into a corner. Much to her relief, the baby drank it eagerly. “What y’all namin’ this chile?” Nana Mae said.

  Sarah and Moses had considered so many names—Minerva after Sarah’s mother, Grace after his, and even Louvenia for her sister—but instead they’d agreed on a name Moses had heard a stranger call her child in town, and Sarah had liked it immediately when he mentioned it to her. It was the prettiest name she’d ever heard.

  “Lelia,” Sarah said, and she was even more certain of their choice when she heard how beautifully the name flowed from her tongue. “Lelia McWilliams.”

  After that, there were hugs and clapping, and Sarah thought the taking-up ceremony was finished. The table was full of food that Miss Brown and Moses’ family had brought, and her stomach was growling fiercely. But Moses gently took baby Lelia from Sarah’s hands. “I got one mo’ thing, Nana Mae. My mama taught me this one,” he said. “Come on outside, y’all.”

  Sarah was confused, but she followed her husband to the side of the two-story house where they lived; she and Moses had the bottom floor, and there were stairs running from the ground to their upstairs neighbor’s door. When Sarah saw that Moses was about to climb the rickety steps, she touched his elbow. There was no railing, and it had always looked like a precarious climb to her. “Where you goin’?” she asked, alarmed.

  “Just up these here stairs,” he said. “Don’t you fret, Sarah.”

  Shading her eyes from the bright late-afternoon sunlight, Sarah stood in the huddle at the bottom of the stairs and watched Moses carefully climb one step after the other until he stood at the landing twenty feet above them. He grinned, cradling Lelia in his arms, close to his chest. Watching him standing so high, Sarah realized that her husband was truly like a giant. She was also terrified he might drop their child in his giddiness.

  “See where we at?” Moses called down to them. “This the highest-up place we got!”

  “What you doin’ up there, Moses?” Sarah called back.

  Nana Mae chuckled. “Don’t git cross with ’im, now,” she said. “You carry the baby up to the highest place, that mean she gon’ be rich one day.”

  Rich! Her fears forgotten, Sarah’s face broke into a grin. Moses’ mother patted Sarah on the back, then hugged her close with one arm; the woman was so excited, Sarah thought she might do a dance. The others, too, laughed and clapped gleefully. The very mention of wealth so close to them, when they had so little themselves, visibly raised everyone’s spirits.

  “See how high you at?” Moses said to the baby, slowly turning around and around on the narrow wooden ledge where he stood. He spoke with his head close to the baby, as if the two of them were alone. “Anything Lelia McWilliams want, she gon’ have it. Hear me? Anything she want in this big ol’ world.”

  His face was so full of confident resolve that Sarah had to wonder if her husband was standing high enough to see God’s plans laid out before his eyes.

  Chapter Eight

  OCTOBER 1887

  “Ma-ma … wha’s that?”

  Lelia had a favorite phrase, which she recited endlessly, questioning Sarah about everything that came into sight of her wide, wondering eyes. Her stubby index finger pointed in every direction, never satisfied. Lela, as she and Moses had begun calling her, was two years old, and Sarah watched with amazement as she became a more finished person every day, with her own particular tastes, likes, dislikes, and moods. Lela had adopted a self-assured walk as she made her way around their house with questions about their belongings: Moses’ boots, Sarah’s straw hat, the banjo, the whisk broom, the crude wood carving Moses had fashioned for Lela’s birthday in the shape of a bear, the chopped wood Moses had stacked in the corner for the fire. She filled up so much of Sarah’s time that it was hard to imagine when she had not been.

  Like Lou, Sarah had begun doing the washing for Miss Brown’s customers at her own home because she needed to watch Lelia, so their kitchen had been overrun with washtubs and hanging clothes, leaving little room for her cooking pots and foodstuffs. Since Lela could no longer be counted on to take long naps after her feedings, Sarah had found that the only way she could keep her inquisitive daughter still was to stand her in a washtub too high to climb out of. But Lela was already getting so tall that Sarah feared she would topple herself over at any time, and Sarah was especially nervous that her daughter might injure herself in boiling water or swallow some lye soap when she wasn’t paying attention, since any objects that made their way into Lelia’s pudgy hands were likely to end up in her mouth. Today Lela had given Sarah a headache because she was amusing herself by banging on the sides of her metal washtub with the wooden spoon Sarah had given her to play with.

  “Ma-ma … wha’s that?” Lela repeated.

  With a weary sigh, Sarah turned around to try to see where her daughter was pointing this time. If she ignored Lela’s questions too long, her daughter would get irritable and cry, and Sarah didn’t need the extra aggravation when she was already so far behind. Lou had offered to help her by taking Sarah’s clothes to Miss Brown’s to dry on the indoor lines in her kitchen, but Sarah had to finish washing them first. Like most of the other washerwomen who lived on her street, Sarah had been hindered by the past two days’ rain showers, which meant that the clothes she’d hung to dry between the trees alongside her house had stayed damp and gone sour. She’d been forced to wash the entire load again, and Miss Brown had already sent Sally by to ask after it once.

  Lelia pointed straight up, toward the ceiling. “Wha’s that?”

  Sarah didn’t see anything, but she heard the steady drumming of raindrops on the tin roof. “That’s rain, Lela. You hear it? That’s the sound rain make.”

  That’s the same rain that’s making my life a misery today, Sarah thought with a surge of irritation, tightly wringing the end of the bedsheet she’d just pulled from her tub of rinse water. As she worked, Sarah’s fingers and knuckles ached from the monotonous wringing motion she’d been repeating for the past two hours in her hurry to finish the clothes. Wringing out a bedsheet was arduous work, second only to the stubborn denim fabric so many men were wearing now in their Western-style blue jeans. But Sarah knew that if the clothes weren’t carefully wrung before they went back to Miss Brown’s, she would raise the devil.

  Thunder growled across the sky, a sound like heavy footsteps.

  “Wha’s that?” Lela said, sounding delighted rather than frightened.

  Sarah sighed. “Thun-der, Lela. It’s up in the sky. It come wi
th the rain.”

  “Thun-der!” Lela repeated. She squealed, obviously pleased with herself. The next time the sky thundered, Lela answered by pounding against the rim of her washtub. Despite her weariness, Sarah couldn’t help laughing as her daughter tried to make her own thunder. “Well, chile … I’m sho’ glad one of us is makin’ some fun with this rain today.”

  With that, a thought about Moses brought a new crease across Sarah’s brow. The storm clouds had worried him that morning, too, since he’d been counting on making extra wages on roadwork this week. The weather probably ruined his plans. So where was he, then? Maybe he was off looking for another job to make up for what he’d lost, she thought, or maybe he’d been able to salvage some time working on the road, after all. Sarah hoped so. The past two months had been hard on them. Employers were finding more ways to bar Negroes from jobs, and Moses was in a foul mood.

  And no matter how much money the Pullman porters made, Sarah didn’t want her husband to consider being away from her so long. That would be almost like having no husband at all. Lela stuck like glue to her daddy, and she was old enough to feel his absence. Two weeks before, Moses had come back home after spending a full month picking cotton with his family for extra wages, and Sarah had been relieved almost as much for Lela’s sake as for her own. During the time Moses was gone, Lela had been much more irritable than usual, and she’d let out a shriek of unmistakable joy upon his return, reminding Sarah of the way she’d felt when she saw her father making his way home in the distance after a long day in the fields.

  This time, the thunder above them was more a roar than a growl, and the rainfall grew so loud on the rooftop that it drowned out the sound of the water splashing into the washtub from the twisted fabric in Sarah’s hands. Glancing out of the open doorway, Sarah saw the misty sheet of driving rain that had enveloped everything in sight. “Lou won’t be comin’ out in this …” she muttered, shaking her head. “Guess the clothes just gon’ be late, then.”

  Sarah didn’t immediately notice the dark figure standing in her doorway, and even after she did she stared a moment without reacting because the unexpected appearance felt like a strange illusion. It took her some time to even realize that it was her sister, Lou, standing under a tattered umbrella in a long black coat that must belong to her husband. Lou didn’t move. Staring more closely, Sarah saw an indefinable expression written on her sister’s rain-drenched face. Lou had come after all? Well, why didn’t she come into the kitchen and out of the rain?

  “Lou? What you …” But the pinched, pained look on Lou’s face froze Sarah’s mouth. Something was wrong.

  “Sarah,” Lou said in a clipped voice, “you know where Moses at?”

  At the sound of her husband’s name, Sarah felt her chest begin to squeeze her lungs like fists. “He … went out this mornin’ after some roadwork …” Sarah said, virtually whispering. Her hands clutched at the apron across her breast. “What—”

  “Listen …” Lou said, and took a deep breath, “… you know a man name of Jake?”

  Jake. Sarah knew that name, and for some reason she felt a stab of alarm much deeper than she had only a moment before, when her sister’s face had arrested her so. When the thunder above her roared again, Sarah felt it rake inside her bones. “Jake work with Moses,” she answered slowly. Jake, a strongly built man who wore spectacles, came to the house several evenings a week to talk politics.

  “Sarah, his mama live on the same street as me, and they sayin’ Jake is dead. Her house full of folks right now.” Sarah couldn’t speak, dreading whatever words might come next, so Lou went on. “There was some kinda trouble out on the road, Jake an’ them fussin’ ’bout not gettin’ paid. They sayin’ it was some kinda riot. An’ somebody axe me ain’t I kin by marriage to Moses McWilliams, cuz maybe he was there, too.”

  Sarah’s strangled lungs let out a sound. She could not bear to hear her sister utter another word, or she was certain the earth would open up and swallow her whole, or at the very least her mind would leave her. Even though she didn’t fully realize it, the deafening pounding she heard now was no longer the thunder or the rain, but her own frenzied heartbeat.

  “Where it happen, Lou?” Sarah rasped.

  She heard Lou say a street name, Grove, and something about the levee, and those two words whirled around in Sarah’s head, which had become suddenly vacant of anything except the image of Moses ducking beneath the doorway that morning, half waving to her over his shoulder only a few hours before, when it had never even entered Sarah’s thoughts that she might never see him again. Now she tried as hard as she could to imagine Moses’ kiss, or even just his face, because that might make everything right. But all she could see in her mind was the suspenders crossing his back as he’d turned and gone through the doorway, taking long strides into the rain-gray morning daylight, walking away.

  Sarah had never been so drenched with rain. By the time she reached the corner of Grove and Washington, her clothes were so heavy with dampness that they had become a burden, her skirts nearly tripping her around her ankles. The cold fall wind had chilled her skin numb.

  On Grove Street, she saw only a few young colored boys kicking at large stones on the unrepaired portion of the road. As soon as they saw her, they told her how they’d heard the colored men shouting, and how the sheriff and some white men had come, but that everyone had run off in the direction of the levee. “We heard they done kilt some o’ them colored men, ma’am,” one of the smallest boys said, sounding giddy despite his morbid words.

  “Moses? Moses McWilliams?” Sarah asked the boys, and they shrugged their ignorance.

  As she walked, her face turned toward the ground to protect her from the cold droplets pelting her, Sarah searched for any signs of her husband along the way—a piece of clothing, a shoe, a familiar tool, anything she could claim and hold to her breast to ward off the despair she felt growing inside her. It ain’t nothin’, she tried to reassure herself calmly. He jus’ got in some trouble, prob’ly got took to jail. He be gone a few weeks an’ then he’ll be back. An’ ain’t he gon’ have a laugh, too, when he hear how you was out lookin’ for him in this storm ’til you was cold and wet to the bone.

  The voice gave her strength, and Sarah kept pressing uphill until she saw the levee ahead of her, with huddled people under rows of umbrellas. As she neared the crowd in a rapid walk that grew into lurching stumbles, she heard the babble of men giving orders and women wailing and shouting. Frantically, her eyes searched for one man standing above the others. She saw a very tall man in a coat and hat she knew were too fine to belong to Moses, yet she tugged on his arm and felt her heart leap when he turned his head—until she saw that he was only a freckle-faced white man she did not know, and who did not seem to even notice her wild-eyed, desperate gaze. Next, Sarah’s eyes were drawn to patches of bare Negro skin near the ground a few yards ahead of her, and after she pushed past the umbrellas blocking her vision, she saw that up to a dozen Negro men, most of them shirtless, were sitting on the ground with their wrists chained together. Afraid to breathe, Sarah’s eyes skimmed past their faces in search of the one she needed to find; past beards, noses that were too long or too flat, mustaches touched with too much gray, skin that was too light or dark. She knew some of the men, but she could not register their names, only the faces that did not belong to Moses. Then, even though she would not have missed him, Sarah searched those faces again. And again.

  Moses was not there.

  “Git back, now. You ain’t supposed to be here. You gon’ have to claim these boys at the jailhouse,” a white man in a sheriff’s uniform said to Sarah, taking her arm, and she allowed him to pull her away without taking notice of the roughness of his shove. Her eyes were finally satisfied; Moses was not among the prisoners. He had to be somewhere else, that was all.

  The onlookers’ conversations swallowed Sarah.

  “—tryin’ to cheat ’em again …”

  “—musta kilt three or four at
least …”

  “—near ’bout knocked that poor man’s head clear off …”

  There were three sheriff’s deputies standing at the edge of the bluff with their arms folded, looking down to where she could hear the shallow water breaking against the craggy rocks below. Sarah didn’t know why, but her feet were taking her toward the bluff as if they had their own mind. Her breath become hot and labored as she walked closer and her certainty grew.

  And then, as if she had been eavesdropping on the men’s words since the moment Lou first arrived at her door, she heard one of the deputies say what she had absolutely expected him to say, spitting out a wad of tobacco that fell into the water: “Hell, his own mama prob’ly wouldn’t know his face, not like that. And he’s so damned tall … how we gon’ haul him out? The water’s gon’ float him out soon.”

  “Might hafta just let ’im float on away, then,” the other man said languidly.

  That one’s so damned tall. The words stopped Sarah in her tracks, and she began heaving as she struggled to breathe.

  She had to look over that edge, to see if her husband was down there in the water. Yet her feet would not move any farther, anchored as if they were duty-bound to protect her from the sight. Sarah felt someone take her arm, and she expected to see an irate deputy ready to order her back to the other women in the crowd. But instead, Sarah turned and saw the bloodred eyes of the fish lady, whose face was wrenched with misery.

  “Girl … a bunch of white men done beat Moses and threw him down there,” the fish lady said. “They done kilt him. I seen it. Oh, you poor girl, your man is dead.” And then the woman began to sob as if the loss were hers.

  Sarah felt herself gingerly take the fish lady’s hand, patting it, trying to provide the old woman comfort. “I know,” she said softly. “I know they kilt him. I know.”