The Banished Children of Eve (44 page)

“I must be going, Bill,” she said, “but I thank you for your note of caution.”

Wehman stood up and walked with her to the hotel lobby. “For all I know, maybe you
are
Santa Anna's daughter, but it's best to be on your guard. Be careful.”

Jack Mulcahey was the only white man Eliza ever met who talked as if color were of no consequence. He had told her several times the story of how when he was a boy in Donegal a man from his village had come running back from the coast, breathless and frightened. People gathered around and asked him what was wrong. The man said he had just seen the
Góban Saor
himself, Goban the Wright, his tongue a hammer, his eloquence a bellows, his skin as black as the grates on which he beat the red-hot irons,
fir dubh,
the dark man the storytellers described. The villagers said that the man must be drunk. But Jack and some other boys slipped away and went down to see for themselves; and sure enough, there he was,
Góban Saor,
standing in an alehouse, amid a crowd of sailors, in striped pants and blue jacket, his head bare, his hair tightly curled and glistening. The boys watched him through the window while he drank porter. A demigod from the land of the stories.

Jack said, “I don't think that black man
had ever seen such a collection of ragamuffins as he did that day. He gave us each a shilling. Paddy as the object of a nigger's charity. You don't get much poorer than that.” But like marriage, race was something Jack usually preferred not to talk about. For Jack it was as if his and Eliza's life were confined to the New England Hotel, as if this were all the past they had, the only future they should expect.

Eliza never volunteered anything. When Jack asked, she would tell him everything, from her childhood in Midian's Well until the day she met him, but only when he asked, only when he expressed interest. And she would tell only Jack. She would tell no one else. When Josie Woods had taken her to the theatre and told the manager that Miss Therese La Plante would be a perfect Eliza and would bring an element of exotic to the flagging stage version of Mrs. Stowe's novel, the stage manager had been skeptical.

“What is your background?” he asked.

Eliza said nothing. She knew he was looking for some reason to dismiss her, any excuse.

Mrs. Woods broke the silence. “What is
your
background?” she asked him. “Or
mine?
And what does background have to do with acting? Are you a parson or a stage manager?”

“I mean, what experience?”

Eliza spoke up for herself. “I studied under Mrs. Euphemia Blanchard at the Fulton Academy.”

The manager agreed to give her a try. When they left his office, Mrs. Woods said to her, “You never mentioned anything to me about studying acting. Is it true?”

“Yes.”

Eliza always considered it her first successful bit of acting, the authority with which she invoked Mrs. Blanchard's name, a bluff that neither the stage manager nor Mrs. Woods called. It wasn't a total lie. Mrs. Blanchard not only rescued her from the streets, clothed, and fed her, but taught her about the supreme artifice of the coloreds who lived among the whites, the necessity of dissembling, the acting required of those who would survive.

She had left Midian's Well on a Sunday, done it suddenly, although she had yearned to leave for as long as she could remember. She had gone to a dock a few miles down the road from Midian's Well, in the white folk's town. Her father and the rest of the community were in church, where they would be for most of the day. He would be looking back at the door, growing angrier by the minute, working himself into a rage that would explode once he came home.

A white man in an oyster boat that was pulled alongside the dock called to her. “Girl, here's a nickel, run up to that shed and fetch me some tobacco.”

She had been in the presence of whites before but had never talked to one. The men of Midian's Well were the only ones who did, and only when necessary. He reached up and handed her the nickel. She ran to the shack by the dock and asked the white man behind the counter for tobacco. Her heart
was racing with excitement.

“Ain't you from Niggertown?” he said.

“Midian's Well.”

“Yeah, Niggertown.”

The forbidden word. Sometimes, alone in their play, the children of Midian hurled it at one another.
Nigger, nigger, nigger.
The men of Midian never seemed to notice when the whites used it. Their faces were impassive. But the children got a beating when
they
used it.

The man took a canister from beneath the counter and asked her how much she wanted. She put the nickel down, and he poured some of the contents into a small cloth pouch and drew it closed.

“Don't go tellin' that head nigger up there what I done. I don't want him comin' here threatenin' to cut my ears off.” He put the pouch in her hand. She juggled it in her palm. The first purchase she had ever made, and in a white man's store. The Reverend Mr. Enders would make her stand before the pulpit and use her as an example of the wickedness and faithlessness that existed even among the chosen of the Lord. Her father would fall on his knees and pray. He would call out the name of his dead wife and hide his face in his hands.

She tossed the tobacco to the man in the boat.

“Where are you sailing to?” she said.

He motioned over his shoulder with his thumb. “The city.”

“Take me.”

“You got family there?”

“My grandmother. She's sick real bad, and my
poppa doesn't want me to go, but I got to see her before she dies.”

He stood with one hand on his hip and one hand shielding his eyes. “You ain't foolin' me, girl. I'll take you along, but you ain't foolin' me.”

“I ain't lyin'.” She looked down at the gray planks, the green sea visible between them. Speaking each line with the same tone of sincerity, brazenly, no fear in her voice, looking into their eyes: tricks she hadn't learned yet.

He held up a hand. “Get in,” he said. She took his hand and climbed into the boat. “We're goin' to the Fulton Market. After that you're on your own.”

Eliza hadn't eaten for two days when the vegetable seller found her poking around in the garbage and grabbed her by the neck. “Why, you little nigger,” the woman said, “what are you lurking around here for?”

It was early morning, and the market was filling up with customers. Eliza squirmed. She tried to shake herself loose, but the woman only tightened her grip, pulling Eliza along the stalls until they reached the end of the row. “You back there, Effie?”

A soiled blanket that served as a curtain parted, and a small, fierce-looking black woman with a bandanna tied around her head came out. “Who da sonofabitch makin' all dat noise?” she said in a loud voice.

“This belong to you?” the woman holding Eliza asked.

“Why you think every nigger in dis city belong to me? Every piece of white trash belong to you? Hell, no, but anytime some nigger be caught doin' anythin' at all, dey brings 'em right to Effie Blanchard like I'm momma to every livin', breathin' one of 'em.” She was talking at the top of her voice, and people were coming over to see what the fuss was about. She was as short as a child, and her eyes bulged out of a deep-brown face that was webbed with wrinkles. She put her hand under Eliza's chin and moved it back and forth.

“What mischief you up to?”

“She was rummaging in my refuse pile,” the vegetable seller said.

Mrs. Blanchard suddenly dug her fingers
into the sides of Eliza's cheeks and screamed in her face, “Stay outta other people's garbage, you hear?”

Eliza began to cry. She tried to stop, but couldn't. She was weak from hunger and filled with fear. From the moment she had landed at the bottom of Fulton Street, the recklessness of what she had done had overwhelmed her. She sat on a piling and watched the hubbub on the piers, white people everywhere, men cursing and groaning as they loaded and unloaded cargo, carts moving quickly up and down the street, their iron-rimmed wheels making an earsplitting noise. A man came over to where she was sitting and said, “Move it, nigger, we got a ship comin' in here.” She crossed the street and stood against the wall of a building. A man stopped and asked, “How much, sister?”

She smiled. “Sister” was what the Reverend Mr. Enders called all the women in Midian's Well. The man stood in front of her. “Well,” he said, “how much? I sure as hell know you ain't givin' it away.”

“How much for what?”

“Nothin' exotic. Just a straight lay.”

“A straight lay?”

“You got it, sister.” He took her by the hand. She pulled it away. “You're new to this business, ain't you?” he asked.

“I'm waiting for my mother,” she said.

“And I'm Jesus Christ.” He grabbed her hand again. “Listen, I'm gonna introduce ya to some people
who can help. Believe me, ya not gonna last long otherwise. They'll set ya up in a room, make it easy.” He started to tow her along.

She yelled so loudly she hurt her throat. He dropped her hand. “Hey, ain't no need for that.” She screamed again. Nobody stopped, but some people walking by turned and looked.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “You're gonna learn the hard way.” He left her there.

That night, Eliza slept in an alley. She didn't awake until the sun was already up and the noise of carts and voices was impossible to ignore. The sidewalks were so crowded that people walked in the street, dodging the growing crush of vehicles. Eliza walked out of the alley, unsure of which way to go. People bumped into her and pushed her out of the way. There were peddlers everywhere, and hordes of bedraggled newcomers walked up from the docks carrying bundles and trunks. These people were set upon by packs of boys with handcarts who took their possessions, often wrestling with them to do so, and led them to the rickety-looking boardinghouses that lined the side streets. Eliza wandered around the whole day, afraid to stand still, letting the flow of the traffic move her along. She wanted to strike out for some other part of the city, the marble and granite streets of her imagination, the porticoes she had seen in the frontispiece of the family Bible, Saint Paul preaching in Athens, the paving stones immaculately clean, tall, slender trees ringing the hills in the distance. But this squalid dockside was the only part of the city she had seen, and as terrifying as it was, it was at least familiar and less terrifying than what lay beyond.

She slept a second night in the same alley, and in the morning, while rummaging in a pile of half-rotted vegetables, was grabbed by the neck and hauled to Mrs. Blanchard. When Mrs. Blanchard stopped screaming, the vegetable seller walked away and left Eliza standing there. Mrs. Blanchard walked behind the curtain. She came out with a box of fish.

“Stop your cryin',” she said in a softer voice. “Go home to your momma, if you got one.” She adjusted a metal scale that hung by a chain from a rafter. She went behind the curtain
and brought out another large box of fish, their dead eyes open and fixed on some distant point. Eliza wiped away her tears.

“Where you from?”

Eliza didn't answer.

“You got a tongue?”

Eliza stuck it out.

“Don't be silly with me!” Mrs. Blanchard's voice rose again. She came out from behind the stall. “Now, I axed you a question.” She was at least three or four inches shorter than Eliza and had to stand on the tips of her toes to put her face into Eliza's.

“I'm from Jersey.”

“What you doin' here?”

“I ran away from home.”

“Well run back just as fast as you can, ‘cause you don't belongs here. Go back and stop worryin' your momma and pappy. Ain't nothin' here for you but trouble, and plenty of dat.”

Mrs. Blanchard went back to work. The market was flush with people, the aisles filled. She took a long sharp knife from a sheath beneath her apron and began cutting fish, chopping off head and tail with quick strokes, slicing open the belly and back, peeling out the fillets, laying them on a bed of salt, and spreading more salt on top. She had the last stall in the market, and Eliza stood in the space next to the wall to keep out of the way. Mrs. Blanchard ignored her.

Set into the wall was an iron grate that was lifted up and hooked to the roof like the hatch on a ship. Outside, in the street, stood a man on a box, his back to the grate. He had a Bible in his hand, and in front of him was another man handing out pamphlets.

A small crowd gathered. The man on the box began to preach. He had some of the same sentiments as the Reverend Mr. Enders but none of his eloquence, none of the fiery lakes and skies dripping with the burning tears of a merciful God forced by the wickedness of men to wreak acts of vengeance. The man raised his voice to imitate the anger of the Lord, but it conveyed only noise, not the soul-seated anger that
resonated in the Reverend Mr. Enders's speech or even the passionate annoyance of Mrs. Blanchard's. And then, suddenly, from inside the stall, came a thunderous explosion that startled Eliza and echoed across the market.

“Fresh fish!” Mrs. Blanchard said in a voice that seemed beyond the capacities of her slight build. “I gots dem all!”

The tract men, the retailers of the word of God, stopped their preaching and pamphleteering, and turned and looked. The rest of the market went about its business.

“Fresh fish, right from de water! No fresher anywhere ‘cept in the sea!” Mrs. Blanchard chopped and cut as she shouted, barely pausing to draw a breath.

“All de creatures of de deep! Speckled redmouths, long-finned harvest fish, blunt-noses, iron-skins, yellow mackerels, calico bass, bills, spots, shark suckers, mooneyes, gold-eyes, thimble-eyes, conners, siscos, chubs, shiners, pumpkins, yellow-fins, glasseyes, blennies, hair-fins, redfins, rounders, spots, spotted-fins, spotted threads, blows, puffers, horse mackerel, sheepheads, needlefish.” The poetry of fish: a monologue shouted at the rafters, the great bellows of Mrs. Blanchard's lungs going all day. She seemed to have only five or six varieties of fish, but she repeated the litany over and over, and the customers who came all seemed to know her and not be bothered by the small selection they found; some of them stood around just to attend to her litany. Eliza lingered by the stall. In the early afternoon, Mrs. Blanchard stopped pretending not to notice her and told her to go back behind the curtain and bring out a box of fish. Eliza jumped to the work. When the market was ready to close, she helped Mrs. Blanchard wash down the stall. Eliza scrubbed as hard as she could. Mrs. Blanchard stood back and watched.