The Black Rose

  “You’ve got a look on your face to beat the devil, Sarah. What’re you thinkin’ about?” Sadie asked her.

  Sarah didn’t hear her friend’s question immediately. “Jus’ the future, that’s all,” Sarah said softly. “Thinkin’ ’bout the future.”

  “Yeah,” Etta said, folding the newspaper. “We’d better all start thinking about that.”

  The small, square piece of plywood had been waiting for a practical use in the backyard for weeks, and Sarah nailed it up on the wall in the bedroom she shared with Lelia, then stood back to decide whether she’d nailed it straight or crooked. Then she scrubbed at a muddy spot in the corner with a rag until it was clean. She was tired and ready for bed, but her mind was abuzz the way she remembered it had often been when she was a child, and the way it had been when she’d been designing her laundry pulleys. She knew she couldn’t rest until she was finished.

  “Mama, what is that?” Lelia said, standing in the doorway. She would be eleven years old in less than a month, on June 6, and she was only half a foot shorter than Sarah, with sturdy limbs. Year after year, Lelia’s use of language became more precise and practiced. She constantly brought home grammar corrections from her teacher, and she had tried to ban Sarah’s use of words like ain’t, cain’t, and axe. (“My teacher says an axe is what you chop wood with,” she’d told Sarah many times.) Sarah even noted that Lelia had adopted a few of Etta’s mannerisms, imitating their boarder’s stage-influenced speech patterns, too.

  “A Wish Board,” Sarah said, thinking of the name as she spoke.

  “But it’s ugly! How come we can’t have pretty pictures in here like in Miz Etta’s room?”

  “Because this ain’t … isn’t … s’posed to be purty, that’s why. It’s for wishin’.”

  “Wishing for what?”

  “Fo’ whatever we want,” Sarah told her. “Don’t you got nothin’ you wanna wish for?”

  “Plenty!” Lelia said, bounding beside Sarah to gaze up at the board. “How do we do it?”

  Sarah smiled. “Easy. We take pitchers an’ stick ’em up on the board. Then we look at ’em ev’ry day ’til we figger out how to git ’em.”

  “Get,” Lelia corrected her. “It’s an E, not an I.”

  “Get,” Sarah repeated, mostly to humor her daughter, but in part because she enjoyed the coaching. After a while, she figured, she would start remembering Lelia’s lessons on her own, and she wouldn’t feel so selfconscious around the more refined women in her church. She hardly wanted to open her mouth in their presence. “Now, the first thing I’ma do is draw me a pitcher of a schoolhouse, ’cause I’m goin’ to night school like I been sayin’. I’ma take me some bizness classes. An’ I have to look at it ev’ry day ’til I do it. Now you can wish for somethin’, too.”

  Lelia bit her lip, considering her wishes with wide, shining eyes. “Can I use Miz Etta’s Sears and Roebuck pictures of pretty clothes and hats and gold necklaces?”

  “If she say you can.”

  Lelia squealed, sounding exactly as she’d always sounded as a much younger child. “Ooh, Mama, I like this Wish Board! Who told you about it?”

  “Ain’t nobody tole me. I jus’ made it, that’s all.”

  Sarah was warmed by the raw admiration in her daughter’s eyes. She’d seen it often when Lelia was young, but these days most of Lelia’s admiration was saved for Etta. Sarah hated feeling envious of her well-traveled friend, but sometimes she did. “How do you always know how to make things, Mama?” Lelia asked. Her straight permanent front teeth gleamed white, making her look even more like a little adult.

  “Guess God must be whisperin’ in my ear,” Sarah said, gently tugging Lela’s earlobe.

  “What’s he saying?” Lela whispered.

  “Well, first thing … he’s sayin’ we gots lots of wishes to make.”

  “What else?” Lela giggled.

  “Well … next thing … he’s sayin’ I best take this jar of rod wax Miz Etta done give me an’ scratch out yo’ head ’fore you go to sleep.”

  At that, Lelia’s expression soured. She hated to sit still for her mother to scratch the dandruff out of her scalp. Sarah was nearly religious about the ritual, hoping Lelia would have healthier hair that would grow longer than hers. Sarah was eager to try Miz Etta’s newest gift on her own hair and scalp after Lela went to sleep. “God didn’t say that!”

  “Sho’ did. Go fetch me the comb.”

  That night, sitting by candlelight at the edge of the bed with Lelia between her knees, Sarah carefully parted small segments of Lela’s hair, scratched out the white flakes of dandruff, then dabbed the glistening rod wax on the scalp with her fingertips. The jelly made Lela’s brown scalp shine, and Sarah smiled. We gon’ try this with a hot fork next fo’ sho’, she thought.

  “Can I say my wishes, Mama?”

  “You can say ’em, but they don’t count ’til they up on the Wish Board.”

  “Well, I want a house with a big, big kitchen for your washtubs… . An’ I want pretty clothes like Miz Etta, a whole wardrobe so full it can’t shut. Oh! An’ I want a puppy.”

  “A puppy, too? We ain’t gon’ have room on one board for all yo’ wishes, girl.”

  “Yes, we will!” Lelia said, and she continued reciting her list, counting off the endless things she wanted on her fingers while Sarah scratched her head.

  Scratch-scratch. Dab. Scratch-scratch. Dab.

  Working into the night, Sarah couldn’t have guessed how much closer petrolatum and pure imagination would bring her and her daughter to their wishes, after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  MAY 26, 1896

  Sarah was so nervous that she could barely keep from fidgeting in the plush cushioned mahogany chair. She folded and unfolded her hands in her lap, stealing quick glances around the pristine parlor so she could remember the details to share with Lelia and Etta when she got back home. The towering grandfather clock was so tall it nearly touched the ceiling! And all the books! One entire wall was nothing but neatly shelved books, within easy reach of an elegant foot-ladder. This was the parlor of Josephine Parkerson, one of the richest colored women in St. Louis, and certainly the richest colored woman Sarah had ever met. Sadie had whispered to Sarah at church one day that the Parkersons were worth two hundred thousand dollars. And Mrs. Parkerson would be back soon to serve her a cup of peppermint tea!

  Sarah’s heart pounded. Who would have imagined?

  Quickly, Sarah checked her dress to make sure it wasn’t wrinkled and hadn’t hiked up above her knees when she sat down, then she patted her head-wrap to secure it in place. She might be the most ragged-looking guest to ever sit in this chair, she thought. When she’d made the decision to walk past the Parkersons’ high, clipped hedges bordering their walkway and knock on their door, she’d never expected to be invited inside. She was taking a collection for her first charitable work with the church’s Mite Missionary Society, which she had joined days before.

  One of Sarah’s first acts since nailing up her Wish Board a little more than a week ago had been to pursue her longtime desire to get more closely involved with her church. Sho’ was a pow’rful wish, she thought. I’m here bein’ social with Josephine Parkerson, when she ain’t so much as said boo to me ’fore today.

  “Here we are …” the woman said, and she seemed to glide into the room with her buffed sterling silver tea service, which she set down on the table beside Sarah. Mrs. Parkerson was a pale-skinned mulatto in her forties, with streaks of gentle gray in the hair that was swept dramatically atop her head. “I’m sorry I was so long, Mrs. McWilliams. My help is off today, so I had to dither around in there for it myself.”

  “Don’t vex me none,” Sarah said, trying to match her gracious tone. But her words felt flat and heavy, and Sarah suddenly wished she had paid better attention to Lela’s corrections. How could she have imagined herself in this situation? After Mrs. Parkerson filled her teacup from a daintily curved spout, Sarah reached for the cup
with slightly trembling fingers.

  “You were saying earlier, dear?” Mrs. Parkerson said, her face rapt. “Something you read in the newspaper … ?”

  Don’t say ain’t. Don’t say cain’t. Don’t say axe. “Yes’m,” Sarah said, her throat dry. She sipped quickly from her cup, and was dismayed to hear herself make a slurping sound. She fumbled for acceptable language. “I done read it in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.” Mrs. Parkerson nodded with eager recognition, apparently a Post-Dispatch reader herself, though Sarah doubted this woman needed help from her ten-year-old daughter to read the more difficult words. “See, I done read ’bout this po’ colored man, an’ he havin’ some hard, hard times ’cause he got a blind sister an’ a invalid wife, and they both dependin’ on him.”

  Invalid. That printed word had confused Sarah at the table that morning, and she pronounced it with special care. Mrs. Parkerson’s face fell with genuine concern, so Sarah felt encouraged. “Yes, ma’am, it’s a real shame, ai—isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “So since I done joined the Missionary Society, I said my first order o’ bizness is to try to do fo’ folks who’s got even less than me. An’ it sound like that man sho’ do, ma’am. So I figger I’ma go asssk all my friends an’ other church members, an’ see if I can’t raise them some money.”

  “Well, that’s a good deal of initiative on your part, Mrs. McWilliams,” the woman said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said, though she would have been hard-pressed to define the word initiative. It seemed to her that it meant the same thing as determination, but she wasn’t sure.

  Mrs. Parkerson leaned slightly closer to Sarah, lowering her voice. “I hope you don’t mind me asking this, Mrs. McWilliams, but … when did you learn to read? Weren’t you bonded when you were born?”

  “Ma’am … ?”

  “Weren’t you born a slave?”

  Sarah saw something vibrant and curious in Mrs. Parkerson’s eyes, and for an uncomfortable instant it reminded her of the way Lelia’s face had brightened when she’d taken her daughter fishing and Lelia finally pulled a trout out of the water. Had Mrs. Parkerson invited her inside as a guest or as a curiosity? But before Sarah would allow herself to get irritated, she decided she would assume the best of the woman and answer her questions honestly.

  “No, ma’am, I was born in sixty-seven, two years after the war. But I still been strugglin’ with my readin’, though. I took a class down in Vicksburg to git where I’m at now, but I done signed up for night school classes in June ’cause I gots a long way yet to go. I’ma take some bizness classes, too, see, ’cuz I gots a laundry bizness. I ain’t no way rich, but I makes ’nuff to tuck away so’s I kin send my daughter to college when she gits older. An’ she don’t ’member one single day goin’ without no food, neither, so she better off than me already.”

  “A-men,” Mrs. Parkerson said, her face lighting up, and she clapped her hands together. “Well, praise the Lord! That’s wonderful, Mrs. McWilliams. Just wonderful!”

  “Was there slaves in yo’ family, ma’am?” Sarah decided it was her turn to ask questions.

  “Oh, no, Mrs. McWilliams, I’ve been very fortunate. My grandmother was a Virginia slave, but my parents were born free. So were my husband’s. Believe me, I know the advantages we’ve had, and I thank the Lord every day. My husband got both his cattle-shipping business and his training from his father, and I know there aren’t many Negroes who can say the same.”

  “No, ma’am,” Sarah said.

  “It’s women like you who are the future of the race, Mrs. McWilliams,” the woman said, her voice so full of emotion that Sarah was startled. “People who came from nothing and build good lives for their children, with education as the basis. It’s that simple, really. I believe in us, you know. There are always unfortunate factors to point to, but I believe in us with all my heart.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said. “Else there ain’t no reason to git up in the mornin’ an’ stoop over them tubs all day.”

  “Amen,” Mrs. Parkerson said. The woman sipped from her teacup in silence, and Sarah noted the odd way she held her pinky away from the cup. Now this was a true lady, Sarah thought. How many hundreds and thousands of things did Josephine Parkerson know about the world that Sarah would never even learn? “Mrs. McWilliams, you’ve been noticed at the church,” the woman said suddenly. “Your industry. Your good nature. Some members remember you when you were all but destitute, and you’ve come so very far. That’s why I welcomed a chance to talk to you today.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said, surprised.

  “I’ll give you a dollar to help the poor man you read about in the newspaper. But I’d like to also give you something else, if I may … and that’s a gentle word of advice. There are those who would call me bold, and I hope you won’t take offense.”

  “No, ma’am,” Sarah said. “I ain’t learned nothin’ in life ’cept by either seein’ it my own self or somebody tellin’ me first.”

  “Good,” Mrs. Parkerson said. But her smile, this time, was thin. “Somehow or other, Mrs. McWilliams, there has been talk that you’ve made at least some part of your living by some means other than washing. By that, I mean to say, by means that are less than reputable.”

  Sarah felt her joints stiffen. Mrs. Parkerson could not have shocked her more if she’d suddenly thrown her hot cup of tea into her face. When she didn’t speak, the woman went on: “I’ve been the subject of idle talk in my own past, so I’m never one to give such talk much credence. But if you do have any undesirable associations, it’s best to learn this now rather than later—in certain circles, Mrs. McWilliams, whether justly or unjustly, one is most often judged by one’s associations. I’m almost certain you’ll find the waters here a bit easier to navigate if you always bear that in mind. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Her tone was gentle, even kind, but embarrassment burned on Sarah’s face, and her eyes flitted around the room for something to gaze at besides the face of her hostess. “Oh, yes, ma’am,” Sarah said hoarsely. “I don’ know what—”

  Mrs. Parkerson patted her hand. “No need to feel ill at ease, Mrs. McWilliams. I just thought it best to advise you. I’m very fond of your landlord, and while I don’t think he’s been privy to the same suppositions, it could be very unfortunate for you if he ever were. As I said, I’ve learned better than to pay any mind to idle talk. But he may feel differently, you see.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” Sarah said dumbly. To her, it felt as if her friend Etta were sitting in the parlor with them, her face covered in paint, her lips drawn up in a lascivious smile. As though Mrs. Parkerson could see her there plain as day.

  The next morning dawned with thick, dark clouds, matching Sarah’s mood. She’d barely slept that night, puzzling over the dilemma Mrs. Parkerson had laid at her feet. What could she do about Etta? Lelia loved Etta like an aunt. Besides, Etta had been a good and loyal friend for four years, keeping Sarah’s spirits up with her wit and stories, sometimes even paying her rent in advance when Sarah was in a fix. If only other people could get to know Etta the way Sarah did, if they could talk to her …

  But Sarah knew better than that. A whore was a whore, folks would say. She’d been a fool to rent Etta a room in the first place, and a bigger fool to grow to care about her so much. From now on, she would have to be much more careful about her associations, she thought, noting Mrs. Parkerson’s word.

  How could she ever ask Etta to leave? But how could she not?

  Bleary-eyed, Sarah climbed out of bed before dawn, dressed in the near darkness without waking Lela, and began heating the tub of water she’d left waiting on the stove in the kitchen. Once the fire was burning hot, she shuffled outside into the warm summer air to check on the dozens of clothes hanging on the lines in her backyard.

  As usual, working made Sarah feel better because it kept her mind occupied. Her whole life, it seemed, she’d always had plenty of work t
o keep her from dwelling on her misery. There were times work had been her best friend, and today was one of those times. Sarah was concentrating so hard on the clothes, testing them for dampness and collecting the ones that were dry, that she barely noticed the sunlight growing brighter through breaks in the clouds.

  Then, from the house, Sarah heard the unmistakable sound of her daughter’s scream.

  The shrill, terrified sound pierced Sarah’s skin, bones, blood, and heart. She’d never heard Lelia make that sound; it came from the house like a chilling promise that nothing in her life would ever be the same again. Sarah dropped the clothes in her hands and nearly stumbled over her basket as she ran toward the kitchen door. “Lela!” she shouted.

  The scream came again. This time Sarah heard something else inside the house: the low timbre of a strange man’s voice.

  Her eyes wild, Sarah flung the kitchen door open and barely had time to grasp what she saw: Lela was standing on one side of the table, her arms wrapped around herself to cover her near nakedness in the thin slip she slept in during the summer. And on the other side of the table, not even three feet from Lela, stood a hulking white man in a half-buttoned shirt and trousers. His head, face, and chest were covered in wiry red hair. Seeing him, Sarah let out an outraged cry.

  “Okay, now hold on there—” the man began in an accented voice, maybe German. He took a step toward Sarah with a grim smile.

  Sarah’s instincts acted where her thoughts failed. Her hands flew to the stovetop, grasping the hot handles of the tub heating there, and she had all but lifted it to heave at the intruder when she realized that someone, not Lelia, was screaming her name.

  “Sarah, no! Don’t, Sarah!” It was Etta, wearing a ruffled nightgown, her face drawn with alarm. She stood between Sarah and the stranger. “Put it down! Please, Sarah.”