Marching to Zion Page 2

  To celebrate her success, she stopped at a Negro café for sweet tea and a slice of sugar cake. She lingered over her treat as if she were a lady of leisure with all the time in the world to spare instead of a country bumpkin in search of a rooming house before night fell. She sat at a table by the window to watch the swells go by. She listened hard to the other customers, trying to decipher their citified speech. They spoke of snootfuls and pitch-ins and chewing rags. By the time she stepped back into the street, she felt she might have been in Europe or Asia. Every detail of life was exotic to her. Faced with diversions everywhere, she found it difficult to pay attention to the route she’d been told to take. Two or three times, she got lost.

  At such a pace, it was several hours’ walk to the new bridge over the river into East St. Louis and with all the sights and people to see there, Mags took another half hour to cross over. It wasn’t until she reached the desired address that her high-flying confidence collapsed. The first indication she might have fallen into a pot of trouble was when a blond-headed white woman wrapped in a flimsy duster of some kind answered the door, a tired-looking woman with paint smudges under her eyes, plenty of powder, and twin red splotches on her cheeks. She greeted Mags as if she were the coal man or a rag picker. My front door? she barked. What are you doin’ at my front door! Go to the back, you. ’Fore I boot you down these steps.

  The door slammed in Mags’s face. Heat came to her cheeks as she trudged around the back with her head down. She muttered to herself. The neighborhood hadn’t looked like it changed from Negro to white by any means. What’d that Magnus Bailey do? Send her to the very edge of the color line ’round here? It plain didn’t make sense. A rooming house that didn’t house her kind. Why would he lend her good money then send her on a fool’s errand? Maybe he’d writ the address wrong? With no place else to go and darkness coming, she knocked on the rear door, then backed down two steps in case an angry man or a mad dog jumped out. The same washed-out blond-headed woman answered. This time she smiled and asked what could she do for Mags, sweet as you please, as if their previous encounter had never occurred.

  Magnus Bailey sent me here, Mags said, looking up at her with features guarded by suspicion. I hear you got lodgin’.

  Maybe it was the name Magnus Bailey that worked the charm.

  Well, why didn’t you say so? Come in, come in, the woman said in a sugary voice, holding open the screen door for her.

  Mags trudged up the stairs slowly, hugging her belongings to her chest. She still half expected someone to pop out at her, steal her bundle and her ten-dollar bill, then send her back down the stairs with a well-placed foot. She entered a large kitchen with a pantry and buttery both at the back. She did not know what to call either room and wondered at their purpose. There was a large six-burner, gas-powered stove with the gas bottle attached to its side by a web of iron fittings, along with a cast-iron drawer that allowed the additional fuel of coal or wood. Mags couldn’t smell which. An ice chest marshaled the space to the left, and a sink with a pump-handle graced the right. The remainder of the kitchen was taken up by a long dining table, large enough to sit fourteen people, the chairs of which were occupied by ten women of a class and style similar to the blond-headed one, except that they were Negroes like Mags, women of a variety of ages and shapes, in hues ranging from pitch-black to butterscotch brown. Though it was late in the afternoon, they also wore dusters or silk robes. Their feet were in slippers or bare, and they drank coffee and pecked at plates of eggs like so many disinterested birds.

  Mags’d learned plenty from the old handbills, newspapers, and penny dreadfuls she scavenged wherever she could, so that the scene before her caused her no small distress. Lord, o Lord, o Lord, she thought, I am landed in a bawdy house. She turned to run out the door, but it was blocked by the smiling blond woman. Trapped, she thought, I am trapped. Her eyes welled.

  What’s your name, gal?

  Afraid to meet the gaze of whoever asked the question, Mags kept her head down. Her voice went soft. Margaret Preacher, she near whispered. Back home they call me Mags.

  Well then howdy-do, Mags Preacher. I’m thinkin’ you’re a Bible thumper’s child with a name like that. Must be, must be. I’m Charlene, called Charly, and this here is Bethany, called Tawny because, well, look at her, and you’ll know. Come on, child, pick up your head, we’re friendly here.

  Obedient by nature, Mags kept her head down but peeped up at the assembled open-eyed as each recited her proper name followed by a moniker won by physical nature or personality. It wouldn’t be difficult to remember the nicknames, as they seemed particularly well chosen. Bobsy had hair tamed into a pile of ringlets on her crown that jigged and jumped with her every move. The shape of Cat's eyes was decidedly feline. Legs was very tall. The corners of Rain’s mouth and eyes had a downward slant, so that she looked perpetually sad, even when laughing, and so on. By the time the women were done introducing themselves, Mags had to admit they were a kindly, welcoming bunch given to sweet gestures and gentle jests among them, reminding her of the cousins back home when they all got together for Sunday supper after church. Against her better judgment, she began to relax.

  The woman at the table’s end, a big woman, one of the darkest in skin, a woman with breasts like bed pillows, soft, high, and large, a woman called, with little poetry, Chesty, patted the empty seat next to her and said, Sit, gal. You look hungry and tired. Miss Emily will get you somethin’, won’t you, Miss Emily?

  The blond woman took a thick slice of bread from an enamel breadbox, dropped it in a skillet greasy with the afternoon’s scrambled eggs, and broke a couple fresh ones that hit the iron surface sizzling.

  Hunger and exhaustion have a way of rendering even suspect surroundings appeal. Making the most of things, Mags thanked Chesty and the blond woman called Miss Emily, took a seat next to the former, and ate greedily with her hands. The half-dressed city women sitting around the table raised amused eyebrows and nudged one another with powdered elbows. Chesty draped an arm around the back of her chair much as Magnus Bailey had done back at his office.

  Child, you remind me of a baby sister of mine, Chesty said, her tone as warm as the heat that radiated from her considerable mass. You got the same round eyes, and she was a skinny li’l thing, just like you. That’s right, you just eat up. Then Miss Emily’ll show you a room, see if it’s to your likin’.

  While Mags ate, various of her tablemates stretched, yawned, and announced it was time to get ready for work. Watching them leave the kitchen one by one, Mags ate faster, thinking that if the house was one of ill-repute, she’d best fill her belly and get the heck out. Better to find an alleyway or a lonely stoop to sleep on than a place that might catch her in an everlasting trap. Miss Emily, whom she saw now was not white but a much-diluted black with dyed hair, filled her plate a second time. Mags found herself perched on the horns of a practical dilemma. Should she push away her plate and leave rather than risk degradation and indenture, or consume as much as she could when tomorrow’s bread might be too dear for her to manage? Determined to eat very, very fast, she set to. After she finished, she accepted another cup of coffee thinking she needed it. A night without a roof over her head would be long indeed. Then one by one, the ladies of the table reappeared, dressed for work, and her mind took a turn.

  Most were in uniforms with thin wraps thrown over. Each uniform was different in some way, either in color or cut. Judging from their attire, a woman more knowledgeable than Mags would see night-shift kitchen help, waitresses, hospital drudges, and hotel maids. Mags did the best she could with new information and fancied they might be costumed actresses in a theatrical revue as she’d read about on privy paper similar to the one that led her to St. Louis and Magnus Bailey. She was relieved that at least her housemates were not employed at the same address as the one where they slept. She hoped they kept whatever indiscretions they might commit private and out of the realm of monetary
enterprise. This is the city, she reminded herself. I need to open up my mind.

  After she finished eating, Miss Emily showed her a small, narrow room without a window. A radiator spit steam just outside in the hallway. Miss Emily vowed its proximity would keep her warm during the worst of winter. The room was furnished with a made-up bed and a washbasin on a stand, which looked like opulence to country eyes. Mags gladly gave Miss Emily a dollar from her ten, counting the change twice to be absolutely sure she had it right. The dollar bought her a week of room and board, a fair price as far as she knew. While the proprietress showed her the communal convenience, Mags thought to ask her where she might find work, mentioning her desire to train at a beauty salon for ladies. Miss Emily said she’d have an overnight think on it and let her know where her best bets for employment might be in the morning.

  All in all, Mags figured she’d done real well for a first day in the wide world. Well fed and tuckered out, she slept sound as you please, never hearing the shouts and screams, the wail of sirens that sparked the quiet dark around her, night music as natural to East St. Louis as the shriek of bobcat and the howls of wolves in her own backyard.

  II

  Mags’s second day in the wide world told a different tale. Miss Emily sent her around to a variety of establishments looking for hired help. Mags had trouble figuring what any of them had to do with her ambitions. There was a chemist who informed her with winks and riddles the dimmest of hicks could comprehend that he specialized in helping women set down burdens they did not wish to carry and restoring their spirits thereafter. He needed someone to sterilize his bottles, mix his potions according to his recipes, and clean up the surgery he used whenever he came across a lady who was potion-defiant. The only connection Mags could make between that man and a beauty salon was the array of suffering females in his waiting room, each of them cinched in, pushed up, and lacquered over.

  The second place Miss Emily sent her was indeed a beauty salon but cross-river in a white neighborhood where Mags stuck out like a blackbird in winter for not being dressed in any kind of livery. The salon wanted part-time help cleaning and sweeping up. The proprietress told Mags straight out she wouldn’t be allowed in the front part of the shop until after everyone else had left for the day. Mags couldn’t see how she’d learn anything there except the workings of the indoor toilet and the washtub. With waning hopes, she headed back to the colored district and the final address Miss Emily had provided. Along the way, she endured the hostile stares and incomprehensible epithets of white people as down and out as any she’d seen in the heart of negritude. Their language was unknown to her, but their hateful spirit was familiar. Every step she took away from their enclave and closer to her own eased her.

  The signpost pitched in the rolling garden of her destination read fishbein’s funeral home. Fishbein’s Funeral Home was a rambling gray structure bordered by four-story tenements with no yards at all. It was half hewn stone and half wood, with enough gables and porches to accommodate a nation of ghosts. For the second time in two days, Mags stepped back into the street to stare at a building in drop-jawed amazement. The house was as grand as any she’d admired in the deeply white part of town. She looked up at the roof with three chimneys and double-, then triple-checked the address. Finally she acknowledged she had the right place although she questioned the words ‘funeral home.’ She did not understand their meaning. Where she came from, people waked their dead as soon as a passel of relatives washed and dressed the one gone. They waked them in the parlor if they had one, the kitchen if they had not. If time permitted, loved ones were buried in homemade coffins in the backyard, as the closest church was a distance and only easy to get to on a fair-weather Sunday. If the ground was about to freeze and time was of the essence, the dead were buried in sheets wound up tight. If times were especially hard, flour sacks stitched together sufficed. If winter made the ground unyielding to spade or shovel, the dead waited on ice until the first thaw. The idea that some poor soul without rest should have a home before flying off to the belly of hell or the bosom of Jesus struck her as so fantastical that Mags determined that ‘funeral home’ meant something of which she was completely unaware.

  Hoping for the best interpretation, she followed the signs for the service entrance around the back, climbed three steps, and knocked on the door. No answer. She rang the bell. Same thing. She knocked and rang together. Waited a bit. Turned to leave. Then, with a great creak and crash of noise, the right side of the bulkhead door to the left of the bottom step abruptly swung open, landing on the surrounding gravel bed in a rattling thump. Half a lean brown man in a spattered white smock and big black rubber gloves popped out the opening. His color was much like her own, a caramel just this side of burnt. His face was an assembly of hard, smooth planes. He didn’t have a nose so much as a beak. His brow looked as if a rectangular metal plate had been sewn beneath a scant layer of flesh that stretched over it so tight it seemed the skin would bust open if he chanced to frown. His cheeks were like two downward-pointing arrows, his black eyes bright but small, and his lips no more than straight lines colored a slightly redder hue than the rest of him. His hair was a close-cut helmet of black wool. He was a good ten years older than Mags, maybe more.

  You the one causin’ a ruckus, gal? he asked, clearly annoyed at the interruption of her presence. What is it that you want?

  Mags said, simply, A job.

  Goodness gracious me. Then come on in. If you don’t mind, come on in down here. Doin’ so will skip the niceties some’at but will prepare you for the employment on offer.

  Mags hesitated.

  The man said, If you’re not brave, then go on home. I need a helper not a child to train in life’s realities.

  She didn’t know how brave she was, but there was command in his voice, and Mags was accustomed to doing what people wanted her to do. Aurora Mae was not the only person in her ken who wore power like a cloak. She approached the bulkhead to walk down the stairs.

  No, no, the man said, not like that. Turn around and come down like you was on a ladder. Hold on to the wall there.

  She did as she was told and descended backward into the cold dark. Turning about, she found herself in an antechamber of the dead, a dim basement foyer lit by a single gas lamp flickering over a damp stone wall.

  My name’s George McCallum, the man said, holding up a gloved hand. He waved it around in exaggerated motion as apology for not shaking hers. She nodded and gave him her name and a pleased-to-meet-you with her eyes steady on his to convince him there was courage in her. For some reason she did not comprehend, it had become essential to her, vital even, from the moment her feet hit the floor, that George McCallum approve of her and offer her employment. Her chest heaved twice with determination as she struggled to combat a competing notion to flee.

  He nodded back, sharply, in acknowledgment. As a further test, the small, bright eyes bored into her in a manner that dared her to look away. She did not. He reached in a pocket of his smock, handed her two cotton balls molded into plug shapes, and stepped aside.

  Now brace yourself, gal.

  She did. He opened the door.

  The stench hit her nose like a fist. Sour, sweet, foul, choking. Her eyes teared from the sting of it. George McCallum tapped her shoulder and demonstrated the use of the cotton plugs by pushing two up his nose. She did the same and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. McCallum grinned encouragement and gestured for her to follow along a corridor lined by many rooms, each with a closed door sentried by silence.

  It’s not always this bad, he said, but there was a terrible accident last week. Roof caved in on a family of five. All dead. I’m waitin’ on the relatives to arrive from Arkansas for the finalities, which should occur tomorrow or the day after. Normally, I don’t advise waitin’ for the plantin’. Put ’em in the ground or ship ’em out, I always say, but these folks insisted. I’m workin’ on the mama and the baby gir
l together at present as they got the same skin tones and all. I don’t have to mix the face paints but once.

  They reached an open space with walls dominated by cabinets pushed up against cold, beaded stone. Many had drawers or doors open. There were tables on wheels rolled under them for convenience, and on the tables and in the cabinets were a multitude of bottles holding chemicals and powders, brushes, pens, and combs. There were full wigs and partial ones in a host of colors and textures hanging from hooks like dried fish.

  Finally, Mags knew what kept her putting one foot before the other when half her mind wanted to cut and run. There in the middle of the floor were two stretchers with dead bodies laid out upon them, draped mostly, but naked enough for her to recognize a woman fully grown, fat and loose like a baked brown betty that had not quite set, and a girl, a young girl, perhaps eight or ten, with long black braids that dangled over the table’s edge. The young girl was sewn and painted so skillfully that she looked, not alive or merely sleeping the way people sometimes said the laid-out looked, but like a china doll, the kind Mags always admired in magazines. She was an angel, a vision of peace and grace, more beautiful in her shiny nutmeg skin than any corpse had a right to be. Her appearance was almost an insult to death itself and certainly one to life. Her mama, on the other hand, had needles with weighted threads dangling from all over her contorted features.

  You see, that’s the first step to how we do it, George McCallum said, explaining how he’d labored to craft the daughter’s peaceful expression out of the agony that was the mama’s death throes.

  Amazed, Mags gestured from the girl to the woman and blurted out, You made this from that?

  McCallum smiled. I did, he said.

  Oh my, oh my, thought Mags. If such miracles could be worked on the dead, what splendors might be worked upon the living! Can you learn me how? she asked him.