Dora had been fired on the spot. Miss Tildie told her blankly, “Get your things and get out. I can’t have you around upsettin’ my guests. One of his nieces is my bridesmaid . . . Goddam it, Cole! Who’s gon finish my dress?”
All morning, Dora paced up and down the back stoop of the Bonneau house, until in the bright daylight of afternoon, she bit her lip, turned, and knocked on the door three loud times. “Somebody come to this door. Miss Mattie, Miss Tildie, whatevuh yuh name is, you gotta pay fuh the wuk I done. It ain’t right you don’t pay me nothin’.” Mr. McKinley finally agreed to see her.
“You bastard, Cole, juss smilin’ n lisnin to her complain.”
“Maddie, this woman says you owe her some money.”
“You pay huh. I don’t want huh here.”
“Let her finish the dresses and you never have to see her again.”
“All right. But I don’t want to have tuh look at huh.”
Dora sewed like a demon, cussin’ and fussin’, marching on her knees across the redwood floor. This all a ruse to git outa payin’ me what’s due. Just git the job done and git outta this madhouse. She forgot about the time. And worked well into the night until she finished.
She walked toward the shaft of light in the study and waited in the doorway. “Come in, Dora.”
“The outfits, I hope, are to Miss Matilda’s satisfaction.”
“I am sure they will be. What is it that we owe you?”
“Fifty-three dollars, Mr. McKinley, suh.”
“I shall give you thirty.”
“. . . Thank you, suh.”
“Last night of freedom, gentlemen.”
“Let the Regulators ride again!”
“Rise, Oh ancient Saxon Stag Kings!”
To impress and remove the irritation over the debacle dinner party, Cole had taken the groomsmen down to Little Mexico, to Pilar’s on one of the white nights. The loud, raucous music with the slurping beat intoxicated them. That and the liberties they could take for cheap and some healthy doses of Winrow’s moonshine and scuppernong wine. Anglo-Saxon Stag Kings, future presidents, senators, men of means, the bachelor party. Woodie, his best man, and two other frat brothers from the Ivy League campus that Cole had quit before he was expelled for nonpayment. Cole was to plan it. Drinking since ten, they were singing a blues they had heard at Pilar’s. “Ev’ since I been yo’ man/ I been yo’ dawg/ Well, I’ll be yo’ dawg/ But not be yo’ slave.” They found Cole’s grandfather quaint and would scramble and squat around the house with him, imagining the enemy behind the broom closet or under the table. Cole had taken them to Little Mexico to regain control, an upper hand with cockfights, niggah bitches, and music that vibrated inside their bones. What more? The best man still singing to a rag, the second passed out with vomit in his hair. Woodie, the groom, leaned over. “You had Agassiz for science, didn’t you?”
“Of course, everybody did. Freshman biology.”
“You ever go to his office?”
“Had no cause. That’s the only class I got an A in.”
“Not for grades, boy, for the pictures.” Cole sat quietly as Woodie explained what he presumed everybody knew. Agassiz had gone south to prove his theory that the Negro race was another species, inferior to humans. He also went at the behest of a certain gentleman farmer who was interested in his theories of maximum yield and who shared his love of the new camera arts. In exchange for his expertise in breeding, Agassiz was allowed to take photographs of certain subjects in hopes of substantiating his theory with physical evidence. The women were stripped to the navel and of their headdresses. They were made to sit thus and to be very, very still while Agassiz and his host huddled under a black sheet, fiddled with some knobs and exploded into white light and smoke. “I remember distinctly,” Woodie recounted, “ ‘Woman Weaver, Sweet Tamarind, home of Julius Mayfield.’ Was that the Mayfield who came to the house?”
“No, that was his son.”
The puke-haired youth sat up for a moment. “What kind of name is Agassiz, anyway?”
“Hey, Cole,” Woodie continued, “how’s the bachelor for a one-night favor? That girl? The one that made Tildie’s dress?”
Dora walked proudly down the path to the street. She strode with a country stride toward the gate. “Thirty dollars. Coulda been worse.”
“Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah/ Someone’s in the kitchen I kno-o-o-ow . . .” She paused, looked around, a big-eyed doe, ears distended . . . “Oh dem golden slippers, oh dem golden slippers . . .”
Dora grabbed her skirt and ran down the road, but an arm grabbed her by the neck and pulled her down, took hold of her hair and pulled her across the ground. Briars cut, briars cut her face—draggin’ me in the, where we—uh uh—my face! Uh—Pl—ease! They dragged her into a shed. Her head struck the door. She clung to the post and, groping, found a shovel handle and struck at something, him, them. Another took hold of her and pressed his walking stick onto her neck. He stripped her to the waist, clothes drawn up. She kicked and squirmed. The choke hold got tighter. “Goddam you, open your legs!” “Pour liquor down huh!” “Why you trembling? We got us a Shaker!” “Splittin’ a nigga woman.” “Suck my privates.” “Buck her down. Open your eyes. Open your eyes, yuh goddam yellah bitch! Shut your damned mouth or I’ll knock your goddam brains out!”
“Make a good girl of yuh,” a voice said calmly. It was husky, contemptuous. “Where you headed, fancy girl? Why fight your blood? I seen you walkin’ down the way. Why act so high n mighty when you come here? Buy you somethin’ nice. Bet you ain’t seen nothin’ nice like this. Where’s your charm? How come you ain’t wearin’ one? Let’s see.”
The dress, the patch, the tear. Finish the gown fore nightfall. Things tore up n nowhere to go. Didn’t know where to of went. Tears me all to pieces. Draggin’ me down, draggin’ me back. NO! Fight, kick, bite, scrape get up get up
Blanche was thinking of her new Harvest Ball outfit. No one else’s design would compete, she was sure, with cousin Dora’s—she insisted Dora call her cousin. Aunty sounded so . . . mature, old-timey. After a time, it was only right that she look after her less fortunate relation, especially since the girl didn’t charge her for the dresses. For this occasion, Dora had outdone herself. Gold embroidered panels over the most delicate shade of olive, lace pelerine, rhinestone posts, bustle tied tight around the waist, overlapped with frills and bound with steel. Blanche would be the envy of maidens and matrons alike. She sat in bed beside her husband, enjoying their Thursday evening reading for self-improvement, when Dora arrived at their home.
“Din’t know where to of went. Din’t want word gettin’ round. Couldn’t risk no doctuh.” She collapsed on the steps, her dress in shreds, blood crusted to her thighs. Blood run down to her heels, clear down.
Roswell Sr. fetched Bette to the house. He wanted no news of the incident to spread. When she saw Eudora’s bloodied body, swollen jaw with a studded ring emblem embedded in it, Bette threw up her hands, fell on her knees, and poured dirt on her head. Blanche kicked a watering can and folded her arms. “Get up off your knees, Mama! Where was all your powers and potions to see this coming?”
Mah Bette steeled her face and replied, “Dis no your affair. Was part my doin’. Mine to undo.”
Bette arranged with Roswell to take Dora back to the island, back to Tamarind. Aunt Sibby rode along silently. While Lijah-Lah docked in the twilight, Roswell carried the girl to the pirogue. In her delirium, Dora still fought, striking feebly at the air, at his chest with her fists and broken nails. As the oarsman pushed off the shore, the gentle waves seemed to bring comfort to her sleep.
Mah Bette threw off the brambles of her tabby shack and, still wise in the healing ways, she sent Lijah-Lah on a quest. “Tansy root rue enh, penny royal enh, cedar berries enh, camphor enh,” for herbs, poultice, and prayer. Aunt Sibby came in, white shirt round her head, veins in her brow in the shape of a great winged bird. The eyes, once large and almond, now narrow slits, lids heavy, almost forcing them closed. Deep furrows in her cheeks beneath her eyes and around her mouth, her mouth curled and upper teeth forgotten. Despite the heat, she wore white stockings with holes and runs, her top button tight around her neck, and a worn blue velvet waistcoat over her two skirts of wrinkled cloth, plaid over paisley. On her knee, one hand was folded over the other, fingers interlocking, odd twisted bends at the end joints, indigo veins visible through her skin, still soft as a newborn’s. Though you could not see her eyes at all, you could tell she was staring deep into Dora’s soul. “I cotched many baby, ax under the straw. Brought in many white as culled. Neber loss one.”
Preparing to assist, Aunt Sibby rumbled through her medicine bag of jars and cans. “The gull hoverin’ tween the worlds. You kin call her back or let her gwon.” Bette nodded understanding.
On the fifth day Aunt Sibby told Dora to walk around the house once and come in. The sky was yellow white with sunlight. A gray-backed sparrow scratched his belly in the dust. When Dora returned, Bette was humming. Aloe had dulled the swelling, and steaming poultices of cider vinegar had made the scabs then fall away, leaving her skin once again smooth, if discolored in places.
Weeks later when Dora came back to the flat on Rose Tree Lane, she told her neighbors Bette had nursed her through a touch of the fever and shingles. She insisted on holding her regular reading lesson with Win. “Glad to see you is feelin’ bettuh.”
“Thank you, Mr. Winrow. ’Preciate it.” She seemed distracted. He could see where the fever had caused her skin to peel. He did not correct her on the formal use of his name, but began reading slowly from “King James, Saint Mark . . . You was working too hard, Miss Dora.”
To his surprise, she agreed. “I thought I might take some time to myself, thought I might like to see that farm you talk about. Mmm, a ride in the country where it’s quiet. Flowers. Lots of birds singing. Not so many people.”
He was somewhere between proud and embarrassed when they arrived. Seeing all of the flaws of his roughshod place, Win tripped over himself and his words, trying to impress her. “Don’t look like much. Of cose, I don’t git out here that often. But I would, I mean if I had a reason. I’m a hardwukkin’ man, I told you that. But I try to be smart about it.” He straightened up just like his father. Your name Winrow? He laughed awkwardly. “I have a confess to make, Miss Dora. I use them scuppernong grapes to make wine. I bottles it and sells it to Miss Pilar and a few other folk. Ain’t no hard likker, now, but it do make you happy.” She was acting peculiar, her face to the ground, smelling the soil. She touched the flowers with her fingers, examining them as if she had never seen one before, tilting her head to one side as if she were hearing something far away.
A permanent reminder of the grip on her neck, a sharp shaft of pain shot down her spine and inhaled her smile. “Might I taste some, this wine?”
“Who? . . . Why sure, cose. Uh, wait a minute. Lemme fine a cup or sumpin.” He rinsed a tin cup at the water pump, all the while talking to himself. “Woman say she want a taste, don’t mean nothin’. Maybe a full moon or sumpin.” He sat on the porch steps beside her. She wrapped her arms around her knees. He poured a sip’s worth and a little more. She took the cup in both hands like a child. He watched her swallow and react, a slight dart of her chest forward.
“Sweet.”
“Yes,” he laughed, “yes. Too sweet?”
“No, just takes some getting used to . . . I will be your wife, Thomas Winrow, if you will have me.”
He knelt down beside her and took her hand. “I will make you proud to be my wife, Dora May. Won’t be no reason for you not to hold your head up high.”
They were married in a simple ceremony at Azula Street, the small frame church Win’s preacher friend had managed to build. Dora packed up her things and moved out to Win’s small farm on Camden Road, and they began to make a home. Dora scrubbed, burnished, and polished and brought it into some order. She relished the solitude. Mah Bette explored the woods, hunting herbs and mushrooms. Win was patient. He thought to give her time. He thought a visit with Miss Sibby might cheer her. The old woman took one look at the young bride. “My dear, you is havin’ a baby.”
No, no, no, no. This couldn’t be. She had not thought, did not realize, could not believe. Win was delighted. He beamed, “Gon buy him a bugle.”
Dessalines returned from his voyage to Montreal. He had found a small community there that spoke French and English. Though the weather was fierce, the frozen St. Lawrence Seaway locking him in port for months, he believed he could make a living there and live free. Now that they had no imperial aspirations in the New World, the French let you breathe. The British enjoyed their moral superiority, and the colored were strengthened by a core of families who had risked death to escape their enslavement. Fishing was good, and in the spring and summer months the skiff would make a healthy business of lessons for leisure-class sailors. He returned to Charleston full-chested, with a new song for Dora.
He found her flat empty. New people were moving in. He went to Pilar. “She got the fevuh, then up n marry Tommy Winrow,” she said. “Married tree munt ahgo. They livin’ out by he farm up Camden Road the way.” Dessalines turned and marched back to his ship, his boot heels digging in the ground. “You say you want Charleston, well now you have it.” Determined to leave the city as quickly as possible, Dessalines offered spring pleasure outings and racing on L’Heureux while his captain bartered goods from the main ship.
Cole thought to make up to his cousin with a jaunt down to Savannah. Abandoned at the altar, Matilda Bonneau months later was still salty that her whole carefully orchestrated political arrangement had fallen apart. Woodie’s family had whisked him out of town and married him off to a New York debutante. Ben Tillman managed to get himself elected to the U.S. Senate without the influence of Julius Mayfield, wrestling the seat of power from the tidewater families permanently. While Julius Mayfield and his class of planter statesmen retreated from public life, Ben Tillman took his brawling ways to the halls of Congress and remained in the Senate seat he had stolen well into the First World War.
None of Tildie’s former bridesmaids was speaking to her. “Oh for Chrissakes, why didn’t you take bettuh care of him, Cole? He looked terrible, his face all blanched and scratched up. You bastard. What happened? He said he didn’t remember a thing. What’d you do?”
To make amends, Cole brought home a new batch of Robber Baron sons looking for social connections, and Tildie soon tired of her anger. She turned the debacle of the prior summer into entertaining chatter. “No more dinner parties,” Matilda chirped in her best bawdy voice. “Last summer’s was absolutely awful. The bunny died. The servants took sick. My guests hated each other. The guest of honor was two hours late and turned around at the threshold cuz my maid was his relation.”
They had rented the sloop and were eating fresh clams on the deck. “All because Cole wanted to show them a good time.” Cole seduced the new recruits with his songs of the South. “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah, Someone’s in the kitchen I kno-o-o-ow . . . The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice, gentlemen, but, you ain’t tasted nothin’ till you had yourself a sweet Geechee peach, ripe for the pluckin’, ready to pop out its skin.”
Yves Dessalines veered the boat on a sharp angle. It keeled to the side. The pleasure passengers toppled onto each other, almost falling overboard. Yves hollered, “Storm’s comin’,” and despite their protests and threats, he headed back for the harbor.
Back in Charleston, Yves rode straightaway to the Winrow farm. There he found Dora, her apron wide around her bulging stomach. “Mr. Dessalines . . . so nice to see you . . . I finished the dress . . . would you like to see it?” He slammed his hand on the porch in aggravation. “I took young Master McKinley on a boat ride. Your boyfriend’s got a loose tongue.”
She flew at him, a fury of unleashed ferocity. Her teeth bared, screaming and growling deep in her throat, she overturned tables, benches, the cooking pot. He caught her by the wrists. Her clawed fingers balled into fists and drew blood from her palms as she struck him and struck him again in the chest, then sank to her knees, sobbing in great rolling heaves. “Please, go away. Go.” Her hands shook and she stammered, “It don’t matter what you do. We’re all the same. No better than dirt . . .”
Yves instantly moved toward her. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“Where was you? Do not speak of it again, to me or anyone. You must promise me that.”
“Something must be done.”
“Nothin’ to be done, but go on. It is forgotten.”
“When are you due?”
“In three months or so.”
“May I call again?”
“I do not believe that would be ’propriate.”
He began to reply. She placed two fingers on his lips. He turned them over and kissed them slowly, then walked away, his boot heels digging in the ground. When he had gone a few yards, he pirouetted and, looking toward her, bowed like a gentleman. “Perhaps I will have another dress made, or a fine waistcoat, madame.” Later in Charleston, he passed Tom Winrow unloading his buckboard across the boulevard. Dessalines doffed his cap to the victor.
Dora distracted herself from Dessalines’ visit by preparing a good meal for her husband—okra and rice with sweet corn and shrimp. Win came in with his weekly earnings and talk from the town. “One of them Bonneau servants, that stuck-up colored coachman, come in. You wanna hear somethin’ funny?” he asked as she heaped the stew from the okra pot over a steaming pile of rice. “Talk from the servants outside the stoah was somethin’. Word is, that cousin at the Bonneaus’ what keep company with the colored over to Pilar’s sometime, someone caught him on the wharf and toah his ass up. They say he got cut up wid a razor, got his hands stomped on.” Dora covered her mouth and started to gag. Tom caught her and eased her onto the kitchen chair, placing the plate on the table untended. “If havin’ a baby is gonna change you like this, we ain’t havin’ no more.”
“Win, I need to sit down. I cain’t be no longer on my feet these days.” She started to tell him but the words would not leave her body.
“Sure, baby, sure. I serves you fuh a change. I sorry, Dora, just talkin’ plain is all. That’s one rich crackuh won’t be camptown racin’ for a while. Police out lookin’ for the person what did it.” He rinsed his hands in the bucket on the counter and sat down to eat. “They pickin’ up niggahs for vagrancy just waitin’ fuh a fare.” Winrow reached over the table and hugged her. “But you not gonna have to work for white folks no more, you hear me? From now on, you my wife.”
He is so proud. She wished she could be like Mah Bette and hear voices in the thunder, spirits in the wind. She went into the forest, with her Sears Roebuck shoebox, and sat on a blanket of fallen leaves. She opened the box lid and fingered the locks of hair. Withdrawing the picture of Juliet with her newborn in her arms, Dora pleaded with God.
Mah Bette came upon her. The old woman counseled, “He a good man, you should tell him.”
It was a difficult birth. Panic made Dora sick with fever. The women kept turns on the watch. Blanche, Aunt Sibby, Mah Bette, Pilar. In the candor of the ritual, they traded stories.
“Married to a soldjah, I wus. Lousiana when he found me,” Pilar recounted, her legs splayed before her. “Had another wife by then. Next one I marry, come say ‘Stay home, cut de grass.’ I say, ‘Let it grow up under yuh, I leavin’.’ ”
“Those sistuhs—Miss Stubbins and Miss Highgate. Shakers and Movers of the World!” Mah Bette went on, “The brown gal, Miss Highgate. Said she was runnin’ off to Kansas. She say when she really messin’ with that Union Jack Bureau man’s son—one that wrote poetry. Humph. Runnin’ off to hide her shame she was. Din’t git fuh.”
Blanche filled in some of the missing pieces of Dora’s birth. “Your aunt Elma brought me to Charleston, told me, ‘I’ll come back for you,’ but she never did. Suitcase full of dreams we had. Elma went on over to white. Never saw her again. Mrs. Diggs took me in, treated me kindly. When she passed, seemed natural for me to take her place.”
Late into the night when the others had tired of their vigil, Mah Bette would tell her stories, curling through the spires of smoke from her corncob pipe. “Man come bring you, sayin’ a woman instructed him to bring you here. How was I to believe this was my daughter’s chile, when never seen he nor you before. You ain’t had no harr, no harr at all. An’ you was toasty. I could tell by your ears, you was gonna be golden brown like a fresh autumn leaf. Cryin’, eyes close tight, little fists flailing about and me an old woman. ‘What I’ma do wid dis,’ I say. He say, ‘That yo bidness, cuz I done finished wid mine.’ I went to look you over and seen the note. Ax the man could he read it and tell me what it say. Just then you stop crying and open up your eyes. Just then I know, before he even say, ‘Eudora means happiness.’ You was a pretty lil ol’ baby, but no harr at all. When all my babies had a whole mess of harr right out the womb. How was I to believe this was my daughter’s chile. Never seen no Mayfield sleep so. Eyes just as shut. I got to look you over. Sabina say tap you on your toes. Then you open your eyes and I know.”
Bette talked to Dora, squeezing her hand. “We got nothin’ but to choose life. Find the honor in it. Make it so. Will it so. You a fighter, Eudora May—in life there is hope. In life—choose not to give up. New day mean a new day’s battle begun. This child is the child of your womb, and if she is born of this hell all the more power to deliver us from it. To the seventh generation.”
The old midwife Sibby motioned that it was time. “Git uh ax n put up unnuh duh straw tick, ease em blood flow.” She worked quickly, coaxing the reluctant newborn. “Think you fallin’. Not know where. Dat’s arright. Aunt Sibby gon cotcha.” The child came out the color of pound cake, hair straight and black as a crow. “Juss like the China doll I seen at Yum Lee.” The old woman grinned as she held the baby for the women to see.
“Like Elma come back.” Blanche sighed.
Winrow hovered at the door. Mah Bette beckoned him forward. “She may be a might bright fuh yuh, Winrow, but she a fine gal. Right smart.” Winrow took the tiny infant in his arms and sat down on the porch. Bette sat down beside him. “Mayfield blood is strong. Chirren come out lookin’ any which way.”
Before Elma Thomasine was even weaned, Dora was back at work. She went back to Miss O’Malley. Offered to work on consignment again. Her posture of pride became a rigid rectitude, an upturned chin which she could not move. Winrow also returned to his routine, struggling with the farm by day and hittin’ it at Pilar’s at night and on the weekends. They argued about it furiously on Saturday and attended the small Azula Street church together on Sunday. Dora preferred it to Emmanuel, where the wealthy colored attended. To be seen was not her goal. While others sunk further into dependency and borrowed lands, lent in shares, their combined income met the payments on Win’s land.
Win came home from Pilar’s drunk again, singing a tune bout romancin’ some woman. Three-year-old Elma ran from the porch and greeted him, a clothesline rope tied around her waist, she halted and pranced like a puppy when the rope went taut. Frowning, Winrow unloosed the tie and looked around. “Where yo’ mama?”
“She at service. Gettin’ Revival!”
“Where yo’ granmama?”
“She inna woods. Told me tuh stay put.”
“How’s my girl?” He smiled and tossed Elma into the air. She erupted with laughter. He tossed her higher, teasing her, asking, “Do you know where your daddy at?” Tossing her up, shouting, “Where could he be, I wonduh? . . . Can you find him in the dark?” Catching her, he smiled, “Here I is!”
Dora came from service and saw Win playing roughly with their child. “Stop it, this instant! Put her down!” Winrow gently set his daughter down and approached his wife. She turned her head away from the smell of liquor on his breath. “Got somethin’ fuh yuh. Postman give it to me at the stoah.” He pulled from his pocket a letter from Dessalines. It was torn in half. “You betrayed me with that high-tone nigga, come in here have the nerve to turn yo’ nose to me?” He pulled out three more and threw them on the ground.
“Where did you get those? Going through my things!”
“I got ’em in my house. In my goddam house! You think I gonna be a fool an’ let you keep this up on me? Huh?”
“Those letters three years old. Never opened.”
“If they so old, why you keep ’em? Where this one from, Paris? Where this one from, Havana? I cain’t read ’em, you tell me!” He hurled the letters at her chest. “Why you keep ’em, huh? An what’s this one? Keep it cuz you in love with him. Keep ’em cuz of this bastard yelluh chile!”
“Don’t you call her that! Don’t you call her that!” They fought. Little Elma began to cry, trying to get between them.
“You betrayed me, made a mockery of me. Tricked me into marryin’ yuh after that no-count nigga thew you off!”
“Is that what you think? How stupid!”
“What’d you say? What you call me?!”
Dora began to laugh. Before he could catch himself, the back of his hand had struck her face. “Damn, woman!”
A single tear rolled down her cheek. “It is fit to punish me, but please, please don’t hurt Elma. Please.”
She took her daughter in her arms and carried the child inside. When she had calmed the girl to sleep, she returned to Winrow, who sat on the porch step, his world shattered. She leaned against the post. “I was too proud. I shoulda seen it. Shoulda knowed.” She told him of the dress and the walk and the tree with no bark. “I shoulda knowed, shoulda knowed when I seen it. So busy makin’ my future, I couldn’t see it.”
“Oh Dora, sweet Dora.” He took her in his arms and carried her to bed.
She wanted to show him love, wanted to comfort, to close her eyes and feel whole, but his hands were rough. When he entered her she was aware again of her separateness, the chafing of his skin against hers as he moved inside her, reminding her again and again of the ruptures in her flesh—the heat of his breath on her neck—sweat of his body dripping on her face—not like the sea but thick and sour. “Look at me, Dora. Tell me you love me. Tell me you love me. Look at me, Dora.” But she could not, would not open her eyes until he was spent, the chaotic rhythms of his heart knocking in spasms of longing and anger.
Just like a baby, wants his milk. A smile brushed her lips and she raised her delicate fingers to stroke the knobby waves of his hair, but before she could soothe him, he had turned away and rolled off her body, his back to her side. The sweat left on her chest and breasts turned cold. She marveled at her hand, still raised from the elbow, her fingers dancing in the shard of light cast from the amber moon, hanging low in the twilight.
Her tray of charms covered with a checkered napkin, Mah Bette attempted again to pinch Lizzie May’s nose, but the screaming infant, Dora’s second child, wasn’t having it. Before the old woman knew it, the baby had scrambled around in her arms and was nudging her in the mouth with her tiny feet, screaming for the whole neighborhood to hear. Bette turned little Lizzie over and roughly jostled the girl on her knees. “All right, Miss Nosey, time fuh some sleep.” Yum Lee looked on from the counter and called behind him for Dora to go to her newborn. Bette clucked her teeth at him. “I know how to do this. Had children, grandchildren, now greats.” She bounced the child hard with slight irritation as the screams subsided. A sailor approached and handed her a package. She slung Lizzie to her shoulder and went to where Dora was working in the back.
Little Elma sat on the stoop by the door, fanning herself with her hands and jiggling her knees. Outside the shop she could hear Deke, now a husky youth, leading his troupe of beggar children, dancing and doing their hambone routines. “All Righty! Join the band! HUNH! All Righty! Join the band! Come round and Join the band! HUNH! Bo Bobo, Bo Bo Bobo! BAM! Bo Bobo, Bo Bo Bobo! BAM! Join the band! HUNH!” She could hear the coins jiggle when white passersby tossed them into his old stovepipe hat. Elma tapped her foot to the rhythms and hummed along. “Elma, come way from there,” Dora cautioned without looking up from her needlework.
Bette patted the head of her first great-grand and handed the package to Dora. It bore the familiar mark of Yves Dessalines. Eudora turned the letter around in her hands and headed for the pier. When she got to the water’s edge, her dry, wide eyes the purple haze of sunset, she released the unopened letter to the sea. In a gentle call and response, the surf just grazed the tips of her shoes, in the echo of the waves, a faint dulcimer lullaby, “What kinda name for muh child is best? Eudora, I b’lieve, for happiness.”
Dora ran her fingers through her upswept hair and leaned against a weathered pylon jutting up from the sand. She thought of Tom. Funny, he used to be the one who sweat. Now, here I sit, a faucet in plaid. Sweatin’ and cryin’ alike. Get on back to work. The past is the past. The future, make somethin’ of that. She rose and headed back to her sewing station. Heavy heart, cloaked in sorrow, eyes downturned, she began again at the task before her. She would make a life for the girls. Respectable girls. Women of dignity, class, and ambition. Whatever her life had wrought, she had two fine daughters, her Elma and her Liz. They would have the life that she was promised.