Inventing Victoria Page 5

  “She seemed nice when she came the other day.” Binah paused. “Can she read?”

  “Don’t know,” replied Essie. “But you can sure ask her when she comes for training on Saturday.”

  Essie was daydreaming of a splendid garden in her future when she realized Binah was no longer by her side. She looked back.

  Binah was huddled beneath a bay tree as if seeking shelter from a storm. The look on her face wasn’t quite worry, wasn’t quite fear.

  “Binah, what’s wrong?”

  Binah hung her head. “Been itchin’ to ask you …”

  “What is it, Binah?” Essie thought one of her worst fears was upon her. What if Binah wanted to come with her to Baltimore? How could she tell her that Dorcas Vashon was not interested in her, didn’t see in her a young woman of promise?

  Binah gave Essie a sidelong glance.

  “Binah, what is it?” Essie nudged again.

  “Well, it’s … I been wonderin’ now that you got a new fairy godmother in Miss Dorcas, if I—if maybe I can have Miss Clara for mine.”

  Essie was so relieved. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind, Binah, not at all.”

  “Think she will allow for me to call her Ma Clara?”

  Miss Abby had been good to Binah, but she was not a warm woman, didn’t have Ma Clara’s heart. “I’m sure she won’t mind one bit,” said Essie.

  Binah brightened. “Nice to have someone to call Ma somethin’.”

  As the girls walked on, Essie eased back to past saunters around Forest City, to her long stares at mansions, imagining what it would be like to live in a big fancy house.

  Like haunting Green Mansion on Madison Square. Pretty soft pink walls and all that fanciful ironwork …

  Like the brick and brownstone Davenport House on State Street, a soaring house with a wrought-iron double-entry stairway …

  When she passed by the fountain in Forsyth Park she used to toss in an imaginary penny and whisper a wish for a better life.

  The girls had just passed Liberty Street when Essie let herself dream about the wonders she’d find in Dorcas Vashon’s home in Baltimore.

  GONE

  Queasy. A touch faint. That was Essie entering the house on Minis Street. It smelled like death and horror.

  She headed for the spittoon near the piano, made it a doorstop, then had Binah follow her into the kitchen. “Any food in the larder, throw it out. I’m going around back to make a fire.”

  Fire pit alive with licking, hungry flames, Essie headed for the house. Along the way, she grabbed a large galvanized tub that sat upside down on the porch. Once inside, she had Binah follow her upstairs.

  Essie’s face fell when she stepped into what had been Emma’s room with its loud green wallpaper, a jamboree of purple petunias.

  No bedclothes. No pillows, rug, curtains, kerosene lamp, wall sconces, pitcher and bowl from the washstand, candlestick holders that used to sit on the mantel … Gone. Everything but the bedstead, chest of drawers, dressing table, nightstand.

  Maybe it wasn’t Emma. Perhaps a neighbor.

  Katy’s room, with its bright-pink wallpaper, had been looted too. Would she find the same thing in the third bedroom? Essie took a deep breath before opening that door.

  “Goodness, what a fancy room!” Binah exclaimed.

  Essie hurried to open the window. “Strip the bed, will you, please, then take down the curtains. Dump it all on the back porch.” Essie didn’t want Binah near the fire pit by herself.

  While Binah did her part, Essie tackled the dresser drawers, dumped clothing—underthings, stockings, blouses—into the tin tub.

  Next, the wardrobe. Dresses, skirts, robes, shoes—into the tin tub.

  When Binah went downstairs with her lot, Essie reached under the bed, removed a floorboard, brought out a cigar box.

  A gold flower-shaped ring with a cluster of diamonds around a stone the color of whiskey … gold necklace … pearl necklace … earbobs like tiny chandeliers … bank notes. That’s what Essie remembered seeing inside the cigar box years ago.

  All gone. Like the dressing table’s silver vanity set—comb, brush, hand mirror, powder jar, rouge pots.

  Essie remembered another hiding place. She reached behind the chest of drawers, felt around for an old hemp drawstring bag taped to the back. Found it. Brought it up. When she looked inside—

  Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

  She counted them.

  Twenty-two coral beads.

  Essie was shocked, perplexed.

  Why had Mamma kept them?

  Did it mean that she—?

  “Get ahold of yourself,” Essie whispered. She put the beads in a pocket. She tossed the cigar box, the hemp bag into the tin tub.

  A blouse, a robe, a dress.

  “Why you burnin’ them clothes?” Binah cried out, shuttering like a leaf. Essie had never seen Binah so upset. “They could mean somethin’—”

  “No one would want any of it. Shot through with sickness,” Essie replied. “And so much sin,” she added under her breath.

  “Can’t give it all a good wash?”

  “No.” Essie dumped the rest of what was in the tub into the fire.

  Binah shrank back to the porch, where she stood biting her fingernails, shaking her head.

  As fire reduced Mamma’s things to ashes, Essie couldn’t turn from the flames. She willed them to burn away every foul, filthy memory.

  Of that closet in the room on Factors Row.

  Of sordid goings-on in that Minis Street house.

  Of being dragged, when little, to fortune-teller Madam Smith on York near Whitaker, where she was made to sit in a dark, smelly corner of a room while the grotesque Madam Smith, with her purple turban, flowing red robe, and corncob pipe, read palms or peered into tea leaves, then mumbled things. So embarrassing how loud Mamma and the aunties cackled about the grand lives they’d have as they sashayed out of Madam Smith’s.

  “Binah, bring on the bedclothes and curtains.” Essie didn’t even look over her shoulder.

  “You burning them too? You might could just—”

  Essie spun around. “Binah! Please, just do as I ask!”

  Binah obliged without a peep.

  “Thank you, Binah, and I’m sorry for yelling at you. I—”

  “It didn’t hurt that bad, Essie. Just a finger prick. Besides, I know you got burdens on you.”

  Guilt ridden, Essie wondered if she’d ever be as forgiving as Binah. “I just didn’t know that this would be so … so hard.”

  “I say you too hard on yourself, Essie.”

  How Essie would miss Binah’s grace, her calm.

  Billows of smoke conjured up times she had dropped to her knees, prayed for Mamma to change her ways just as Ma Clara had told her to do.

  “You see, as I heard it, she had a terrible coming up. In slavery her whitefolks abused her every which way, left her broken in mind. Because of things they made her do, your ma came to believe she had no talent for nothing except, well …” That was the sort of thing Ma Clara used to tell Essie.

  All that praying, all that pleading …

  She had stopped praying for Mamma years ago, after the summer yellow jack struck and Mamma reached death’s door.

  “My Essie …?” Mamma cried out as Ma Clara nursed her with quinine and mustard plasters. “Where my Essie … My Essie, she fine? … Tell her I said I love her. She all I ever had.”

  And the way Mamma called out to God, promising hard to change her ways if she lived. Then she rallied right around the time the fever left Forest City. By Christmas uncles were once again trooping in and out of that house on Minis Street.

  THREE CORAL BEADS

  Essie left the attic for last.

  “Used to be my room,” she told Binah as she brought the ladder down.

  Essie was shocked once up there.

  The room wasn’t done up in red. It was exactly as she had left it except for the missing bedclothes, kerosene lamp, pitcher and
face bowl, and other small features.

  Essie wiped a finger across the highboy. Two years of dust. She opened the window, looked around the room. In a dark corner down by the baseboard she spotted three coral beads. Picking them up, she felt a bit faint.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Binah.

  “From a necklace I had,” Essie muttered. “Birthday gift. I was nine.”

  “From your ma?”

  Essie nodded, pulled back to that day in Miss Viola’s dress shop on Liberty Street. Essie had spied the necklace in the shop’s window.

  “Oooh, that’s so pretty!” she gasped, pointing the necklace out to Mamma.

  “Uh-huh,” Mamma grunted, then went back to choosing fabric.

  A few weeks later Mamma surprised Essie with the necklace.

  “Used to hear old folks say coral keep you from harm,” said Mamma as she put the necklace around Essie’s neck.

  Rocking horse … ball and stick … limberjack … pocket doll … whistle. Random gifts over the years. Nothing as precious as the necklace. Never before had Mamma paid her such close attention. Never before had Essie seen such tenderness in her eyes as when she surprised her with that necklace.

  “What happened to the rest of them beads—what happened to the whole neckpiece?” asked Binah.

  “Broke.”

  “How it broke?”

  “An accident.”

  “Couldn’t be remedied?”

  “It’s a long story, Binah.”

  Essie stepped over to the small wall shelf, removed the books and magazines, laid them on the bed, then took the wall shelf down. “My prized possession.” She smiled. “First big purchase. Bought it from Miss Tansy’s. Twenty cents, I think. Five, six years ago.” Essie frowned. “It was red. Scared up some blue paint and a brush.” Essie had wanted only gentle colors in her life, colors like mint green, pale yellow, and what she called blue-sky blue, which she also used to paint her window frame.

  Money for the wall shelf came from change Mamma sometimes tossed her way and coins she got from Katy and Emma for running errands.

  “Git me some Old Baker Whiskey.”

  “Go be on the lookout for she-crab women and get me a dozen.”

  “Run and go git me a tin of snuff.”

  “Need a bottle of Old Carolina Bitters.”

  “Run over to Nolan’s on Bryan for a quart of oysters.”

  Essie had also earned money from Ma Clara, for helping her clean homes some days.

  Essie handed the bookshelf to Binah. “I want you to have it. The books, magazines too.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “But you can learn, Binah, and you should learn. Promise me you will.” Arms akimbo, Essie scanned the books and magazines. “Before the shelf came these. I used to like nothing better than to go to Miss Tansy’s shop and pick through books and magazines her daughter found in the trash when cleaning for whitefolks.”

  Essie whispered the titles. “The Raven … Great Expectations … My favorites were A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist.”

  “Fairy tales?” Binah was beaming.

  “Almost,” replied Essie. “In one an ornery old man with more money that he knows what to do with becomes like a godfather to a crippled boy. In the other, a vagabond orphan thief ends up with a princely life. Those stories kept me hoping that a miracle would come my way.”

  “Jesus-like miracles? Feed a whole mess of folks with just two fishes and a few loafs?”

  Essie laughed. “Like what Dorcas Vashon is doing for me.”

  Essie picked up an 1873 issue of Oliver Optic’s Magazine, Our Boys and Girls. She turned the pages until she came to—

  “ ‘The Youth of Queen Victoria.’ ” She glanced up at Binah. “I must’ve read this story a hundred and one times.”

  “Another almost fairy tale?”

  “No, not at all. When she was little Queen Victoria didn’t have a very happy life. Her father died when she was a baby young. She spent a lot of time alone as a child. No friends. Like me.”

  Binah went wide-eyed. “But I’m your friend.”

  “I mean before, when I lived in this house.”

  Seeing as how she hadn’t told Binah the truth about Mamma, Essie couldn’t very well now tell her about her days at Beach Institute where it had been impossible for her to have friends because Sarah Pace constantly called her gutter girl, chanted “Essie is messy!” even when she wasn’t.

  Then came the day when during recess Sarah Pace walked up to her, stuck out her tongue, and shouted, “Your ma is a—”

  The word burned like acid. Hot tears lined Essie’s face. “She’s not!” she shouted, then shoved Sarah Pace with all her might.

  “She’s too!” whimpered Sarah Pace from down on the ground.

  “She’s not!” Essie shouted again, then ran to the other side of the yard, plopped down by the fence, and cried herself a river.

  Shunned. Teased. Some boys tried to drag Essie behind the school or into the bushes, whispering, “I’ll give you candy.”

  “Get off me!” Essie screamed that day Michael Mack grabbed her by one arm, Jimmy Mason by the other. Thank goodness Miss Purdy heard her cries and came racing from the building with ruler in hand.

  Your ma is a—!

  Essie had given up school, it got so bad.

  “I will teach myself,” she had vowed, made up her mind to forgo candy, whirligigs, and whatnot and save whatever money she came by for trips to Miss Tansy’s Odds-and-Ends Shop for books, magazines, and half-used copybooks so that she could practice her penmanship. It’s why she never tossed a real penny into the fountain in Forsyth Park.

  Reading was her second rescue, second refuge. Out back in the arbor covered in yellow jessamines on balmy days, cuddled up in the attic on days of chill or rain. Caught up in a story she shut out the chaos.

  But not always, like the day Emma cussed out Katy for using up her rouge.

  “Youse a liar!” yelled Katy.

  “You step foot in my room one more time and I will cut you to ribbons!” Emma threatened.

  “If you think—”

  “Both y’all shut up!” Mamma shouted. “Tole y’all I got a sick headache.”

  No friends to be had on Minis Street. The few girls around her age gave her odd looks, steered clear, just as she avoided Alston Rakestraw, a bookbinder’s apprentice. His leers made her tremble.

  “Before you, Binah, my only friends were these books and magazines—and the Tribune, a colored paper that used to be put out right here in Savannah. Owned and operated by John H. Deveaux, who lives on Duffy near Habersham, the one who has that important job at the Customs House.”

  Binah squinted as she often did when trying to remember something.

  “Anyway, you should have seen Ma Clara when she showed me that first issue. Beside herself with pride.”

  Pride was exactly what Essie had felt as she read that first issue: Saturday, December 4, 1875. The whole front page was devoted to a sermon by a Reverend H. M. Turner. He took as his title “Thou God Seest Me.” It was from a Bible story about a woman thrust out into a wilderness without a crust of bread. But God kept watch over this woman.

  “Thou God seest me,” Essie whispered as she read the rest of Turner’s sermon. “Thou God seest me.” She also remembered how she puzzled over the words “elevation” and “exalt,” then figured out that they had to do with reaching for higher heights, having a better life.

  The hunger of her heart.

  Thou God seest me.

  “You used to read that paper like how you now read the white paper?” asked Binah.

  “Oh yes! After Ma Clara finished an issue she passed it on to me. I learned so much from the Tribune. Like about how all over the Southland our people were building churches, building schools, having conventions, menfolks trying to vote. From the Tribune I also learned of a colored woman in Connecticut who had been a slave in Georgia. That woman left in her will $750 to be used for religious instruction of color
ed people in Georgia.”3

  “You seem sad.”

  “I miss the Tribune.”

  “Where it went to?”

  “Mr. Deveaux had to shut it down because white printers made a pact, said they would no longer take work from a colored man.”

  Essie decided to spare Binah the tragedies the Tribune carried. Accounts of outrages against colored folks by white men, like the two who shot an old man named John4 near Cochran—and right in front of his wife—because he wasn’t moving fast enough in getting their cart unstuck in a rut.

  When articles in the Tribune made her stomach hurt, Essie read advertisements instead.

  James Jefferson’s Barber Saloon on the corner of State and Whitaker … JP Kendy’s grocery store … Eugene Morehead’s Forest City Bar and Restaurant … Her favorite was for Clapp’s 99 Cents Store on Broughton. “See what 99 cents will buy,” it began. “Ladies’ Trimmed Hats, Hair Braids and Switches, Shawls, Skirts, Kid Gloves, Silk Ties, Hose, Handkerchiefs, Leather Traveling Bags …” The list went on and on.

  And now, thanks to Dorcas Vashon, Essie had a reason to go to Clapp’s and buy a leather traveling bag.

  A WIDER WORLD

  “Promise me, Binah, promise me you will learn to read,” Essie urged again as the girls left the attic, Binah with the wall shelf under her long arm, Essie carrying the books and magazines.

  Binah, pretty pliant on most things, had repeatedly refused to let Essie teach her to read, to write.

  “With half the boarders being teachers you have a golden opportunity,” said Essie as the girls made their way to the kitchen.

  “Now, Essie, please don’t start that again. You make me nervous. I just know that if I learn to read my head will hurt. I don’t know how you hold in all what you read. My head fill up more fastly than yourn.”

  “Don’t you want me to write to you?”

  Binah nodded.

  “Well, how will you—”

  “Will get Miss Abby or a boarder to read your letters to me.”

  “What if they are too busy?”

  Binah had her thinking face on. “I’ll just look at the words and conjure up what you likely wrote. Besides, nobody be busy forever.”