She couldn’t make herself stop repeating the awful, unbelievable words no matter how hard she tried. Somehow, she did know. And she refused to push past the deputies to look down at the corpse that was her husband’s, disfigured and flung into the water like useless fish innards.
Rather than seeing Moses broken and bruised, Sarah would not lay eyes on him again. Float on away, Moses, whispered the part of Sarah’s mind that was not frozen in grief and shock, as the skies flooded across her face. You done in this place now, my big ol’ angel-man. This world don’t deserve you nohow. You jus’ float on away, then.
For the rest of her life, Sarah would remember nothing else about that day.
For two weeks, Sarah battled the terrible cold she brought home with her from the levee the day Moses died. Lou moved in with her, sleeping at her side in the bed Moses had built, and in her feverish sleep Sarah sometimes awakened believing the covered figure sleeping beside her was Moses. When she touched Lou and saw her sister’s face instead of her husband’s, the finality of her new life shocked her anew. She would stare at Lou with blinking, uncomprehending eyes. He was gone. And the sobs racked her weak body anew.
“Ma-ma … where Daddy?” Lelia asked every day, as she had when Moses was away picking. Lela had been to the funeral, but her father’s body had not been there for her to see, so she had not understood why her grandmother was so beside herself, screaming until she was hoarse, and why there had been so many tears in the house since the day of the rainstorm.
Sarah didn’t know how or what to tell her, so she gave her the same answer she had the month before: “In the fields, Lela. Daddy’s workin’.” Her voice was thin.
“When Daddy … comin’ home?”
Sarah stroked her daughter’s face, peering at her more closely for the features that were Moses’, her blunt little nose and closely set eyes. She remembered Moses carrying Lelia up the stairs for her taking-up ceremony, and the joy in his face as he had proclaimed to her that she would have anything she wanted. What could Lela have now that her father was dead?
“I don’t know when, Lela,” Sarah told her. “I jus’ don’t know.”
As she slowly recovered and her hacking cough began to subside, giving her more time to think, Sarah made the simple realization that she could not salvage anything of her old life. She could not bear to walk past that levee or see Moses’ men friends on the street, reminding her of what she’d lost. She could not live in fear that someone Moses had angered might seek to harm her and her daughter. She was already a month behind in her rent, and she could not afford to keep their house without Moses’ income. And she could not move back to Lou’s, not even for a day, as long as Mr. William Powell was there. In her present frame of mind, she was afraid she might kill that man just for the sake of it, whether he ever touched her again or not.
Sarah felt her spirit sinking even lower, until it seemed that her body was literally turning to stone, pulling her toward her own grave. They didn’t jus’ kill Moses that day, huh? They done kilt me, too, she thought.
Then the answer came. One morning, as she sat at her table and sipped a cup of sassafras-root tea that Lou had brewed for her, Sarah announced she was going to leave Vicksburg.
“You gon’ do what?” Lou asked, stunned.
“I gotta go, Lou. I ain’t got nothin’ here. Not no mo’.” Sarah was wrapped tightly in a shawl to ward off the growing draft in the house. She was only twenty years old, she realized, but she looked and felt like an old woman. “If I stay here, all I’ma think of is what I ain’t got. What Lela ain’t got. I need to go somewhere an’ git somethin’ else.”
“Sarah, you can find a new man here, too.” Lou’s words sounded nearly cheerful.
Sarah stared at Lou with disbelief, and she wanted to slap her sister’s face. Was that all it would mean to Lou if Mr. William Powell died, that she would just find a new man? Or would she be relieved? Suddenly Sarah felt pity for Lou, who was living with an unloving man who frightened her because she could not imagine living any other way.
“I ain’t talkin’ ’bout a new man, Lou,” Sarah said. “I’m talkin’ ’bout a life. If I can’t make no life for myself, then what I’m s’posed to give Lela for hers?”
Lou stared at Sarah, shaking her head. “No matter where you at, you jus’ gon’ be takin’ in washin’. May as well wash where somebody know you.”
“Papa wanted to leave,” Sarah said, suddenly excited by the memory. “You ’member? He was ready to go, right ’fore he died. And Moses was, too. I know it, ’cept he was so damned stubborn, set on makin’ things right here. I wish we’d of gone. Alex was smart to set off like he did. I hear tell there’s higher wages in St. Louis, an’ lots of folks with rooms to rent. Well, that’s where I’ma go.” Sarah was making the decision as she spoke, and she felt a gratifying relief awaken within her, as if she could breathe again after having a strong hand clamped across her face. Moses, she knew, would be proud of her if he could hear her words from heaven. Sarah felt a comforting sense that Moses was speaking through her own mouth. “That’s where I’ma go make a new life.”
“Unh-hnh.” Lou sounded skeptical, gnawing on the edge of her fingernail. “You talk mighty big for somebody who ain’t got no money. How you gon’ pay to go to St. Louis?”
“I’ll save ’nuff for a train ticket. An’ even if I don’t have but a dollar an’ some left after that, it don’t matter. Least I’ll be where I want, away from this damn place.” At the end, her voice cracked, but she stanched her flood of sorrow.
Lou sighed, gazing at Sarah incredulously, then with sympathy. She leaned over and gave Sarah a tight hug, rocking back and forth with her as if she were trying to call out a demon. “You talkin’ out your head cuz of Moses passing on, girl. You know you can’t go to no big ol’ city like that all alone with a baby. How you gon’ feed her? It git cold up there, too. In yo’ heart, you know you can’t do nothin’ that crazy.”
This time Sarah didn’t answer. In truth, she’d barely heard her.
Sarah had tea with her sister on a Thursday morning. When Lou came back by Sarah’s house to see about her that Sunday, only three days later, Sarah’s house was neatly swept, her bed was made, her dishes were washed, and their meager furniture was neatly in place. Even Moses’ banjo stood in the corner exactly where he’d always kept it, waiting to be played.
But true to her word, Sarah Breedlove McWilliams had taken her daughter and was gone.
St. Louis Woman
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven, he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!
—PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might
be a diamond in the rough.
—MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE
OCTOBER 29, 1916
DELTA, LOUISIANA
There were no markers on her parents’ grave sites. Sarah had found the way to the field behind her cabin from memory, remembering an old oak stump that still stood about twenty paces beyond it, even though the stump had been overgrown with tangling weeds and crabgrass. The fall breeze riffled the branches of nearby trees. Sarah knelt on the grassy ground, running her palm along a small mound of earth that might or might not be her parents’ resting place. But she knew their spirits were close.
“Well, Mama, I can’t stay long … but I made you a promise,” Sarah said, reaching into her pocketbook for the tiny leather traveling Bible she always carried with her. “You’ll forgive me if I can’t sit and read the whole thing. But I’ve picked out a passage I know you’ll like. You, too, Papa. Y’all just listen.”
Sarah flipped through the book’s tiny pages until she came to the Book of Matthew. She squ
inted at the tiny numbers to try to find Chapter Thirteen. When she did, she began to read, pacing herself the way she’d rehearsed, delivering the words as if she were addressing a crowd: “The whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, ‘Behold, a sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up.’ ” Sarah paused here, feeling a stone in her throat, because suddenly she realized that was what had happened to her parents, and to Moses. “ ‘Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But others fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.’ ”
You’re the seed, Sarah’s mother had told her on her dying bed, and it had taken her years to understand what her mother had been trying to tell her. Or had she somehow known all along? Today it seemed to her that she had always known.
Sarah had nearly forgotten the two onlookers who were watching her from a polite distance while she visited her parents’ burial site. Once she bowed her head and thanked her parents for the love they had shown her, Sarah stood up and began to walk toward the two women, who stood in the field beside Sarah’s car, their skirts whipping in the wind. One was Anna Burney Long, and the other was her daughter, a spinster in her thirties named Lillie with a wide, girlish smile. “Madam Walker, ma’am,” the younger woman said, “Mama and I just want to say again how thrilled we are to spend this time with you.”
“I’m so proud I could bust,” Mrs. Long said, her face flushing. “I never thought less of nobody just because they cleaned house or washed clothes, Sarah. To me, you felt more like family. And I worried for you and your sister so… .”
“It’s true,” the daughter said, wrapping her arm around her mother protectively. “She’s read me newspaper accounts about you, Madam Walker, and she’s always so tickled. Why, you’re a real-life famous person. And it’s like you were one of our own.”
Sarah had grown so accustomed to praise that she often had to remind herelf of how awe-inspiring her life must seem to outsiders. It really was a blessing, wasn’t it? “Well, you’ll both have to visit me sometime in New York,” Sarah said. “I have a grand four-story town house there and a beauty parlor like you’ve never seen. I would be very happy to host you. Then you can meet my daughter.”
Anna Burney Long’s eyes shone with sadness. “Oh, I don’t know if these old bones could take that long trip, Sarah, but Lillie would love to go. Just let us know when she’s welcome.”
“Madam?” said Lewis, the chauffeur. He had climbed out of the car to open the rear door for them. Lewis enjoyed the formality of his role when he drove Sarah, especially when they were driving through the South, and she didn’t doubt he was playing it up just a bit more because of the Longs’ presence. He’d been giving Sarah strange looks all afternoon, no doubt because he couldn’t understand how she could be cordial to a family that had once owned hers.
“Ooh, I can’t get over it!” Lillie Long exclaimed. “Riding with a chauffeur!”
Missus Anna looked slightly embarrassed at her daughter’s outburst, but Sarah smiled at her gently to let her know it was all right. “Some days I don’t believe it myself,” Sarah said. “ ’Specially back here in Delta.”
“Sarah, you just have to tell me about your hair tonic,” Missus Anna said. “How in the world did you come up with it? Was it as soon as you moved to St. Louis?”
Ruefully, Sarah shook her head. She gazed back peacefully at her family’s old cabin as Lewis drove the car toward the Longs’ home. “Oh, no, Missus Anna. When I moved to St. Louis, I didn’t have a thought in my head except tryin’ to feed my baby girl. Believe me, I had a long set of trials that had nothin’ to do with hair tonic. I was still a washerwoman for the longest part of my life, Missus Anna. I wish the change hadn’t come to me so late in life, I really do, but then again, I tell myself I should just be grateful it ever came… .”
For many years, Sarah reminded herself, she hadn’t believed change would come at all.
Chapter Nine
SEPTEMBER 1892
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
As Sarah pulled her wooden cart over the ridges on Eads Bridge with a rhythmic chunk-chunk sound, the monotone note Lelia was holding with her voice wavered with every bump. Lelia’s mouth was open in a yawning “O” to amuse herself as she rode in the cart. The Sunday morning light was faint, the air still hadn’t lost its night chill, and only a handful of horse-drawn carriages made their way across the bridge alongside them, easily passing their pace. “Mama, you hear how funny that sounds?”
Seven-year-old Lelia was wrapped up in a thin coat and hat, sitting atop the covered crate of freshly pressed clothes Sarah had promised she would deliver to the home of Mrs. Elise Wainwright, who was hosting a breakfast and needed her tablecloths right away. Usually Sarah delivered Mrs. Wainwright’s laundry in the afternoons, once church was finished, but the woman had insisted on having the clothes early today. She was one of Sarah’s best customers, so Sarah didn’t dare argue with her even though it would take her two hours to deliver the clothes, then walk back across the six-thousand-foot length of the bridge to St. Paul AME Church in time for the eight A.M. service. Never mind that she’d have to make the trip all over again to bring out her other Sunday-delivery clothes after church, once she finished pressing them. If Mrs. Wainwright had planned better and sent the tablecloths out for washing earlier, Sarah thought, she wouldn’t have to do all this extra running around on the Lord’s day.
“Wait, I’ma do it again!” Lelia said, and raised her voice into a droning oooooooohhhhhh before Sarah could respond. As before, the bumps from the cart sliced into Lelia’s voice, chopping it up. Sarah longed to tell Lelia to hush up, but she didn’t. Why not let the child have some fun? No sense in both of them feeling miserable today. Besides, Sarah could remember the time when her own playful spirit struggled to find distraction in the monotony of a long working day. Like playin’ slave-kitcher with Lou, she thought, and smiled.
The smile didn’t stay on Sarah’s lips long. Sarah hadn’t seen her sister once in the five years since she’d left Vicksburg, and she missed her. The only responses Sarah received from the crudely written letters she sent to Lou were even more crudely written responses from Mr. William Powell, accusing her of owing him money. She crumpled his letters and tossed them away as soon as they reached her mailbox. The nerve of him! If he was going to take the time to write, at the very least he could bother to mention whether her sister and nephew were well.
Strangely enough, it was Alex Sarah had been in most contact with in the past few years. He was married now, with his own children, and he’d even visited her for three days last year with his young daughter, Anjetta, in tow. Sarah knew time had changed her appearance, too, but she’d still been shocked to see Alex for the first time since his departure when she was eight. He’d been little more than a boy when he left, but when he came to see her he’d been a thirty-three-year-old man with a slight paunch, a weathered face, and a recurring cough he blamed on the pipe smoking he’d taken up in Denver. Seeing his eyes reminded her of Papa for an eerie instant, but when she blinked he was only Alex again. He was still a porter and said he made a livable wage; they both laughed over his boyhood dreams of digging for gold in Indian country.
Alex’s visit had been a blessing—and little Anjetta, who was younger than Lelia, had been a pure delight—but Sarah had felt a deep sense of sadness after she rode a streetcar with her brother to the train station and then watched him wave good-bye, feeling as if she no longer knew him. Would she ever see him again? Desperation had scattered all three of the Breedloves, and they had gone their own ways. Sarah felt the growing fear that time would keep pulling her and her sister apart until t
hey could no longer remember facing the world together, on their own. Maybe that’s jus’ what growin’ up feels like, Sarah thought, reflecting on her sister. But it gave her heart a dull ache just the same. No one was left. In some ways, she realized, Lelia was the only true family she had.
Riding behind Sarah in the cart, Lelia was laughing again in shrieks that seemed to bounce down to the water of the Mississippi River flowing wide beneath them. The sound of her daughter’s mirth lifted Sarah’s spirits, as it always did.
The Wainwrights lived in a two-story colonial-style house with regal columns at the end of a long block on a street in the midst of an affluent all-white area. The only Negroes who ventured into this neighborhood were domestics, like Sarah, easily recognizable from their maid uniforms, carriage-driver’s caps, or baskets of laundry balancing on their heads. Today, dressed in a Sunday hat and her best gray fall church dress, with a real lace collar, Sarah felt like less of an intruder as she made her way along the well-kept street. She’d saved for eight months to buy the dress, and she felt reborn every time she wore it. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if she was dressed better than Mrs. Wainwright herself this morning, which would be a rare pleasure.
Leaving Lelia in the cart at the end of the walkway, Sarah took the crate and carried it the last few feet to the steps leading to the Wainwrights’ glossy-painted white double doors. Standing at her full height, Sarah knocked loudly to announce her arrival. Wouldn’t Mrs. Wainwright think she was a sight!
But when Mrs. Wainwright opened the door and peered down at Sarah, she registered no notice of Sarah’s Sunday dress. Her hair a bit unkempt, the woman barely looked at Sarah, hurriedly taking the crate. “Yes, it’s about time. The guests will be here in two hours, you know,” she snapped. “They’re all pressed?”