Inexplicably, she was only in her bedroom, and a muted morning light was shining through her curtains, across her bed. Sarah’s heart was racing from a quenching exhilaration instead of the awful grief she’d gone to bed with. Feeling groggy, she looked at her hand and blinked rapidly, honestly expecting to find the strange rose in her palm. But it was not there. No prick on her fingertip, either.
“Course not,” she said aloud, her voice scratchy. “It was jus’ a dream. But they were growin’ everywhere, jus’ growin’ so pretty an’ tall… .”
Her words sounded like nonsense to her ears, spoken in the delirium that comes from dreams. But even after she was wide awake and working, Sarah kept remembering the startling image of that lovely black rose in the hand of the African man. All day long it flitted back to her mind and made her smile.
Chapter Fifteen
OCTOBER 1904
THREE MONTHS LATER
“You listen to this,” Sarah said as she and Lelia made their way from the market with baskets of fruit and dried goods. She began to read from the newspaper in her hand. “Her name is Madam Mary McLeod Bethune, she’s down in Florida, and she just opened her own school … the Day-tona Normal and In-dus-trial In-sti-tute for Girls …” she read, hesitating with the more difficult words as she always did.
The fall wind whipped Lelia’s scarf around her face. “Mama, I’ll finish reading that to you when we get home. You’re going to run into someone if you don’t look where you’re going.”
“Just hush,” Sarah said, enthralled. The headline NEGRO WOMAN OPENS OWN SCHOOL had caught her eye, and she was too excited to wait three more blocks. “See here? She opened that school with a dollar and fifty cents and five students. And she raises money selling sweet-potato pies! You just imagine that, Lelia. After you go on to college next year, you could start your own school someday, too. I’m puttin’ this newspaper right up on the Wish Board.”
But Sarah’s excitement was forgotten as soon as their house was in sight. Her feet stumbled to a halt, and Lelia stood frozen beside her. Their front door was wide open, and even from where they stood, Sarah could see through the doorway that something inside was amiss. One of her pine chairs was overturned.
“Somebody been in the house!” Lelia gasped, holding tight to Sarah’s arm.
Sarah’s heart galloped. She dropped her basket to the ground, unaware of the apples rolling around her feet on the sidewalk. Her mind had been stripped of everything except one thought: Lelia’s college money!
“St-stay here, Lelia …” Sarah said, pulling herself free.
Despite Lelia’s pleas, Sarah rushed up the steps to the front porch and ran through the open doorway. As she’d feared, the front room was in disarray; small items, including her clock, had been knocked from the fireplace, and there were newspapers strewn on the floor. Sarah didn’t even glance toward her kitchen. Instead she ran straight to her bedroom.
Her father’s framed photograph was on the floor, the glass cracked. Her mattress had been pulled askew. And all of the drawers of her desk were open—including the one where she kept her mason jar. With a whimpered prayer, hoping for a miracle, Sarah peered inside the drawer to see if the money had somehow been kept safe from the thieves’ eyes.
It was simply gone. No money, no jar. Nothing.
The room seemed to wheel around Sarah, nearly making her lose her balance. She leaned on the desk for support, breathing hard, trying to make some sense of it. They had not been gone even an hour, and the money had been here when they left. She had counted it only the night before, as she sometimes did to raise her spirits; she’d had exactly three hundred dollars. They’d gone without clothes, without treats, without leisure, so she could save that money. That would have been enough money to buy a house of her own, or enough to buy a piano and suites of furniture for every room, or enough to buy her own horse and buggy. She could have used that money in countless ways, but it had always been set aside for only one thing—so Lelia could go to college. That was all Sarah had been working for since she’d brought Lelia to St. Louis.
Now it was gone. Someone had come into Sarah’s home and stolen her heart. Her violated house no longer seemed to belong to her. Her life no longer belonged to her. Sarah was too stricken, shocked, and despairing even to cry. She stood stock-still in her bedroom for several minutes, listening to her labored breathing, wondering when she would awaken from this cruel, unexpected nightmare.
“Mama?” Sarah barely heard Lelia’s voice when her daughter ventured into the room. “Who would do this, Mama? Wh-who would do something like this?” Lelia kept repeating as she walked through their house, gazing at the intruder’s careless damage. Her eyes were also free of tears, but they were bloodred. “I d-didn’t know people did this.”
Sarah felt her insides heaving, and she ran for the back door. As soon as she was standing over the grass in her backyard, she vomited. Hot claws raked through her trembling body.
She felt Lelia stroking her back. “Mama, don’t you worry. It’s all right, hear? We don’t need that money. I’ll just wait and go to school when it’s saved up again, or maybe I’ll marry and I won’t need to go at all. We’ll be fine, Mama. You and me both, we’ll be just fine.”
Lelia’s cheerful encouragement sounded painfully naive to Sarah’s ear, and she retched again. Didn’t Lelia understand? If something happened to Sarah tomorrow—if she got kicked by a horse, if she slipped and hit her head, if she choked on her food, if the Lord called her home while she slept—Lelia would have nothing. Sarah wouldn’t leave her daughter anything more than Moses had been able to leave her when he was killed, or any more than her own parents had been able to leave when Yellow Jack took them. Mosquitoes. They’re sayin’ in the papers how the fever ain’t carried by nothin’ but those li’l ol’ mosquitoes. My mama and papa didn’t live long enough to give me nothin’ ’cause of damned mosquitoes. And now it’s the same with me.
“Mama, it’s all right. Stop shaking. It’s all right,” Lelia said soothingly. “I don’t care anything about that money. I don’t care one whit.”
Even Lelia’s lies couldn’t make Sarah’s shaking go away.
For the first few days, Sarah avoided even Sadie and Rosetta, since her two best friends were among the barest few people who’d even known the money was in the house. Together she and Lelia made a list of everyone they could think of who might have known—people from church, people from school, people who lived on their street—and they could not find a single suspect they believed could actually have done such a thing.
“After this, I’ve gotten so I’m thinkin’ I better lock my door when I leave my house. But my door in back ain’t got no locks nohow,” Rosetta said, shaking her head. “ ’Fore long, I guess we’ll all be locked up tight like the whole street’s nothin’ but a row o’ prison cells.”
Sarah never found out who took the money.
But not even a week after the theft, another shock made Sarah nearly forget their loss. She and Lelia were washing in the kitchen in a despondent silence. Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah saw Lelia reach across the stove. The next thing she saw was a startling flash of flame, and suddenly the sleeve of Lelia’s dress was on fire.
Lelia shrieked, flapping her arm in the air to try to extinguish the flames. Instead the fire seemed to celebrate, growing brighter. “Mama!”
The stupor that had clouded Sarah’s thoughts since the theft was magically gone, and she felt more alertness in her mind than she had in days. She grabbed a damp bedsheet she’d just wrung out and wrapped it around Lelia’s burning clothes, patting the fire down while she tried to hush her hysterical daughter. Lelia’s face was tear-streaked, reminding Sarah of the way she’d looked when she cried as a very young child.
“Lemme see, Lelia. Shhhh,” Sarah said once the fire was out, pulling the singed sheet away so she could examine her daughter’s injury. The fire seemed to have caught near her elbow; the dress was almost completely burned away across her fo
rearm, and she could see raw, red skin peeking through. The burn was bad. Not as awful as it might have been, thank the Lord, but probably too bad for a little butter and a homemade bandage. “I’ll get your coat, baby girl. We’re goin’ to the doctor. You know that colored doctor, Dr. Wells, just bought that house over on the next street? We’re goin’ over there right now.”
“We don’t have any money for a doctor, Mama,” Lelia said softly, barely audibly. Her tears and shrieking had stopped, but now she looked crushed. The fire had broken through the facade she’d tried to put on for her mother to soften the pain of the theft.
“Don’t you worry,” Sarah said, confident again. “Just come on.”
It was suppertime at the Wellses’, Sarah realized when his wife opened the door to their well-lit, two-story home; the thin, neatly dressed woman was carrying a serving spoon coated in some kind of gravy. Their parlor floor was covered with a lovely Oriental rug, which Sarah couldn’t help noticing despite her worry for Lelia. There were also shelves of books visible, and even some sort of bust displayed within her sight. This family might live only a block away, but their home was a glimpse into a much better life, she thought.
Dr. Lincoln Wells was a bearded man in his mid-thirties, nearly as tall as Moses had been. Graciously, he insisted their visit was no inconvenience to him. He led Sarah and Lelia into the kitchen, where he brought out a black bag.
“Let’s look at your burn, dear,” he said, cutting away what remained of Lelia’s dress with a small pair of scissors. While Lelia winced in pain, he cleaned her arm until the visible raw patch looked much less alarming than it had at home. Still, the burn was as large as a soda cracker. The doctor examined it with a furrowed brow. “I’ve got something for this.”
While Sarah and Lelia watched, Dr. Wells opened a box marked sulfur powder and mixed it with heated oil. Then, very carefully, he applied the mixture to Lelia’s wound. Lelia screwed her eyes tight, her teeth gritted against the pain. “That should fix it up, Mrs. McWilliams,” the doctor said. “You take this sulfur home and mix it just like I showed you, then you reapply it every few hours. You’ll be amazed at how well sulfur heals. You’ll hardly see a mark. The skin will grow back fine. Even these fine little hairs on her arm will grow, I promise you.”
“Well, I shouldn’t mind if they didn’t,” Lelia told him, smiling for the first time.
Dr. Wells refused Sarah’s offer to wash his laundry in exchange for his medical services. It’s nothing to me except a few minutes away from my table, Mrs. McWilliams. Pay me when you can, he said. I’m only happy the burn wasn’t more serious.
So that night at her own dinner table, enjoying chicken stew, yams, and collard greens with Lelia, Sarah felt a wave of gratitude. A thief had entered her house and given her a taste of evil, but God had answered evil with grace. Thank goodness Lelia would be all right, and thank goodness Dr. Wells had been so close by to help. Life was just fine, after all.
After a special prayer of thanks, Sarah retired to her bed and felt a smile on her lips as sleep began to wash over her. She’d been restless and angry the past few nights, but she knew tonight would be different. Tonight, at last, she would sleep peacefully.
But just as she began to doze, Dr. Wells’s words came back to Sarah’s mind, snapping her eyes wide open. You’ll be amazed at what sulfur can do for injuries. Even these fine little hairs on your arm will grow back, I promise you. She held her breath, excited.
Sulfur! If sulfur could heal a burn, could it also heal her scalp? What was it she remembered about sulfur … ?
Still only half awake, Sarah recalled a hazy image from childhood: sitting between her mother’s knees with a winter cold, during the months when it was so cold she got sick when she bathed, while her mother used a comb in her head. But it wasn’t just a regular combing; this time her mother had stuck a fluffy wad of cotton in the teeth after treating the cotton with … sulfur. Don’t want you gittin’ wet, Sarah, but this sulfur will clean yo’ head without no water.
Yes, sometimes Mama used lye in the comb, and sometimes she used sulfur. Was that a real memory, or some strange sort of dream-memory? And if she put sulfur in her scalp now, could it help the hair on her head finally start growing back? Tomorrow, Sarah thought, feeling her weary mind tugging against her. I’ll ask Dr. Wells tomor …
Sulfur was the last thing on Sarah’s mind before she went to sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
DECEMBER 1904
TWO MONTHS LATER
While the smoke fanned away from her face in snakelike wisps, Sarah held her breath, waiting for her image in the handheld looking glass to become clear. The oily scent of the smoke irritated the lining of her nose, and the swath of hair at her forehead was hot and uncomfortable, but Sarah didn’t flinch or move. She simply stared, waiting.
She heard Lelia breathing hard beside her. “Ooh, Mama …”
Then, instantly, the smoke was gone and Sarah could see. The hair at her forehead was gleaming black, and a tiny section lay in a limp bang, warm and light, hanging nearly to her eyebrows. And it was straight. Not straight and thin like a white woman’s hair, but straight and thick, with gentle waves. Sarah blinked several times as she stared, barely able to trust her eyes. The hair looked almost like one of Etta’s old stage wigs. When Sarah swallowed, she realized there was no moisture in her mouth.
“Mama, it works …” Lelia whispered, although her voice was edged with disbelief.
Could it be? All from a steel comb?
True to her promise to herself, Sarah had been busy. Since the theft, she’d put her mind on her plan, thinking of little else from the moment she woke up in the morning until she drifted to fractured sleep at night, if she slept at all. Hair cure. She’d written the words on a clean white sheet of paper, taking everything down from her Wish Board except that.
She’d easily won a job as a Poro representative, using her persistence and apparent enthusiasm to impress the woman hiring for Miss Malone. Sarah tried to bring the same enthusiasm with her when she knocked on her neighbors’ doors, but her secrets made her a poor saleswoman. She tried to sound bright and convincing to women who opened their doors to her, but Sarah knew that the few sales she made were despite herself. After all, when customers commented on how lush and healthy Sarah’s hair looked, she could only chuckle.
That wasn’t from the Poro, no, sir. Sarah had a formula of her own.
She was finally convinced she had refined the hair-growing formula she needed, using variations of familiar ingredients, both old and new. First, there was the rod wax Etta had introduced her to, petrolatum, that served as the base; then burdock (by soaking burdock roots in olive oil the way her mama used to when she soothed their bug bites and skin infections), rose hips (taking a sign from her dream, since she’d heard the old-timers say for years that rose hips could be good medicine), and elder flowers (following a suggestion from Rosetta, who said her mother swore by elder-flower water when her skin was irritated).
But the biggest piece of the puzzle, by far, was the sulfur.
After consulting with Dr. Wells, who told her he believed sulfur would work just fine in a hair grower, Sarah bought a one-pound bag for twenty cents. Then she began mixing it into her hair formula, just to see what would happen. Within only a week, she noticed that she was itching even less than she had using Poro. Then within three weeks after that, Sadie and Rosetta confirmed for her that her hair seemed to be growing back. Just a little, but growing.
By now Sarah was sure of it. Her hair was thicker and fuller than it had been in years, and it was no longer retreating at her temples. And tonight Sarah felt a giddy premonition that another puzzle had just been solved. Gazing at her treated tuft of hair in the mirror, Sarah felt a growing sense of disbelief: Everything might be about to change, and all because of a steel comb!
“Mama, who told you about this comb?” Lelia asked her, examining the strange comb.
“I saw one a long time ago, baby,” Sarah s
aid, speaking in a faraway voice, mesmerized by her own hair. “I was just a young li’l gal, runnin’ after this Cajun witch lady to see if she could save my parents from yellow fever. An’ this witch lady had a colored gal jus’ settin’ between her legs, an’ Mama Nadine was runnin’ a hot comb through her head. I ’member seeing all the steam an’ smoke rise up, an’ I thought she was doing magic. So it stayed in my mind, but I hadn’t really thought nothin’ of it since that time. Seems almost like it was a dream.
“But last week I saw a comb that looked just like it, a comb with metal teeth, that one right in your hand. See, this one lady I wash for is from France, an’ this iron comb was jus’ sittin’ on her table. The lady’s name is Mrs. Bettencourt, but white folks from France ain’t like the ones here, Lelia, an’ she told me I could call her by her Christian name, which she says is Gabrielle. She said she used it to curl her hair. An’ I asked her where she got that comb from, ’cause I wanted to find one. She gave it to me! She laughed an’ said, ‘I’ll have my brother send me another one from Paris,’ an’ she put it right in my hand!”
Lelia’s voice trembled with excitement. “Mama … you think your whole head would look like this part here if I oil it up and run this comb through?”
Sarah’s heart leaped to hear the words spoken aloud. Her thoughts were spinning so fast in her head that she could barely catch one. “That’s what I’m sure enough thinkin’, Lelia. It works better than a fork, don’t it?”
“Mama, do me first!” Lela shrieked, grabbing Sarah by both shoulders. “Please?”
What Sarah saw in her daughter’s eyes—amazement, gratitude, even a little desperation—nearly took her breath away. Lord have mercy, she thought. Look how this child is actin’! There ain’t no money in the world she wouldn’t pay me to put this comb in her hair.