Madam (23 page)

“Leave!” Lulu ordered spitefully. “And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t step foot on Basin Street again.”

Trembling, Mary knew she must obey, but something fierce was burning in her. Maybe it was the opium, maybe it was the fire in her belly Eulalie spoke of, but whatever it was, it made her not want to take her eyes from the Countess. She would leave, would back her way out of this room and would be gone from this house, but not without Lulu knowing that no matter how ratty, how skint, how unlearned, Mary Deubler wasn’t going to look away in shame.

Lulu’s face was full of acid. The brazenness of this Alley whore was shocking. How dare she try to stare down the Countess? And yet here were these penetrating eyes, gray eyes, Lulu had noticed—who in the world had ever heard of gray eyes? She was usually quite adept at overshadowing people, yet this gray stare smothered her. Lulu flinched.

And Mary saw it. A crack in the Countess’s flawless veneer.

C
HAPTER FIFTEEN

Buddy Bolden (standing, second from left) and his band

F
erdinand had heard of the fancy-dress party on Basin Street and was disheartened that he’d not been asked to play—especially since he’d learned that it had been through a servant of Countess Lulu White’s that he’d been recommended to play at the judge’s party. He knew of the Countess, herself an octoroon—her skin as passable as his own. But he was coming to realize that sometimes folks hated in others what they most hated in themselves.

In an effort to take his mind off all he was missing, he decided to go hear some of the real masters. Only, he was stuck watching his little sister while Grandmère was with relatives for the night. After restlessly sulking about the house, he decided he couldn’t be held back by a seven-year-old. He needed to hear the music and wouldn’t be sated any other way. “Get your coat, Améde,” he declared. “We’re going out.”

“Where are you taking me?” Améde demanded as they ventured down Rampart Street into the all-black part of town.

“You ought to be thanking me,” Ferd said. “Where I’m taking you is a treat.”

“Grandmère’s gonna tan your backside for taking me ’round here,” she scolded.

“Oh hush, Améde. If you were old enough to tell me what to do you’d be old enough to mind yourself.”

Améde’s eyes widened as she noticed a pair of women with low-cut bodices lounging about the street corner. “You’re taking me ’round the ratty people?”

“Ratty? Little girl, this here’s flavor. There’s a whole big world you haven’t seen.”

She made a prissy face. “Ain’t my world.”

“Isn’t,” Ferdinand corrected. He shook his finger at her. “Hard head bird don’t make good soup.”

Améde pouted until she spotted Clementine, a colorful
tignon
wrapped atop her head, singing, “
Belles
calas!” in her operatic voice.

Améde and Ferd inhaled the aroma of hot fried dough.

“Please, Ferd, can I have one? Please?” Améde begged.

“Now, listen, Améde, we’re gonna make a deal. This evening’s gonna be our little secret. Grandmère doesn’t need to be wise to no calas and no nothin’ else about tonight.”

Améde eyed him suspiciously. “Only the Devil Man make a body lie.”

“I’m not asking you to lie. This is business.”

“Isn’t your business washing dishes?”

Evading the question, Ferdinand stepped up to the cala stand. “Miss Mouth will take one, please,” he said, handing over a nickel.

The woman passed a piping-hot fritter to Améde. “Clementine says be careful,
tou cho
! Quite hot!”

Ferd nudged Améde. “Act like you got some raising.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Améde said obediently. Clementine started up her song again as the siblings continued on, Améde’s face immediately decorated with powdered sugar.

They turned onto Perdido Street, where the saloons and honkatonks were ramping up for the night. Ferdinand came to a stop in front of Union Sons Hall, built some twenty years ago by a group of free black men. During the week the hall held association meetings and charity programs, and on Sundays it was used for worship by the First Lincoln Baptist Church, but on Saturday nights it was where legends were born.

“Here we are,” he said to Améde. Only, he hadn’t considered that he could hardly bring a little girl in there—at least not while it doubled as what the ragtime folks called “Butt Hall.” It wasn’t just the music that was rowdy, it was the dancing. Bodies rubbing against each other, steaming, sweating, to the point that “funky butt” became the call line for the time during the night—especially a sizzling, summer night— when one of the musicians would shout, “Open a window, the odor’s rising!”

With no other choice, Ferdinand took Améde’s hand and led her around to the alley, where he was relieved to find a back door half-open. Music spilled out—the sound of ragtime mixed with blues and played rough and fast, unlike any other band music.

Ferdinand peeked in to see, center stage, a handsome twenty-year-old dressed in a tailored mohair suit and looking as fitted out as a white society man—only, he held a tarnished cornet, a castoff from the Civil War that had landed in the hands of a poor black boy, as did many of the war band instruments. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief before bringing the horn to his lips.

“There he is,” Ferdinand said, shaking his head in amazement.

“Who?” Améde asked, but before her brother could answer, a horn rose above the din. Ferd broke into a wide grin.

“Buddy Bolden . . . King Bolden. Man, can he play loud!” Ferd watched as he played the cornet with the force of his entire body.

“He can’t read music, ya know,” Ferd told Améde.

“Even
I
can read music!”

“I know you can, and you keep at your violin, but that man isn’t like us. He was born to play that horn, he didn’t have to learn it.”

As the piano joined in, Ferd’s gaze shifted to a wrinkled man at the keys. “And look there, it’s Tanglefoot Robichaux! Older than sin and still manipulatin’ those keys.”

“Lemme see for myself,” Améde insisted, sidling up next to Ferd to peek in. Reluctantly, he moved aside to let her have a look.

“Mistah Bolden can play the blues on brass,” Ferd instructed. “What he can’t say in words, it comes out in his music. Ya hear it, don’t you?”

Améde listened hard. Then her face lit up. She nodded, smiling big. “I hear it, Ferd! I hear it.”

“It’s the gnat’s ass, ain’t it?”

“Isn’t,” Améde corrected.

Ferd playfully swiped the air, then took his sister’s hand and twirled her around. They found some crates to sit on and watched as a crowd of black folks poured into the hall. Whenever Buddy stopped playing to wipe his mouth with his handkerchief, the crowd hollered, “Blow, Buddy, blow!”

He responded with his horn, which he called Baby. Ferd noticed—but kept to himself—what a ladies’ man Buddy was. He always had a throng of women admirers and would pick two lucky ones to stand by the stage: one woman to hold his hat, and the other to hold his liquor. Of course, it was also part of the honor for the women to carry his belongings back to his bedroom after the show.

As the night went on and the temperature began to rise, Buddy called out, “I can tell my children’s here, ’cause I can smell ’em!” And at this, the crowd went wild.

Ferd decided it was time to get Améde home. The music trailed them down the block, and Ferd knew that the band would play and the whiskey would flow and the people would bawdily dance until the wee hours of the morning.

And then, when the last die-hards were shooed away at sunrise, the windows and doors would be thrown open to air the place out, the spills would be sopped up, and carbolic soap and scrub brushes would be taken to the floor. The empty bottles would be carted away and the cigar smoke beaten out of the rugs. All just in time for the preacher and parishioners to arrive ready to pray at 9:30
A.M.
, none the wiser to the clouds of sin that still lingered. Except, of course, for those folks who silently nodded to each other, having had just enough time to catch a few hours of sleep, bathe off the stink, and put on their church clothes.

C
HAPTER SIXTEEN

M
ary trudged home from Basin Street, face smeared, hair fallen. She felt like a penned-up racehorse who’d been so raging to get loose that she ended up washing out in the stall before the race had even begun.

To add to her troubles, as she approached home, she could see Lobrano pacing out front. No doubt he’d found out about the crib by now—and Lord knows he was drunk as a skunk, too. Her first instinct was to turn and run the other way, but she was too exhausted to go wait him out somewhere else. She just wanted to go home, to be in the same room with the only people on earth she cared about and who cared about her. One of these days she was going to have to confront Lobrano anyway. Might as well be tonight, when she was already so beaten there wasn’t much more he could do to her that would hurt.

She walked up to the house, and Lobrano locked his stare on her, taking in her fancy dress.

“You got some sweet daddy you’re fuckin’?” She tried to walk past him, but he blocked her way. “I heard some talk of what you done, but can’t be more than just ya-ya . . . ?” He paused expectantly, waiting for her to explain, but she said nothing. Cocking his head, he continued to wait, his beady eyes attempting to bore into her. Normally, she broke out in a sweat when Lobrano sized her up like that. But now she felt nothing.

And then from inside the house came a pained moan. Mary instantly snapped from her numbness. “Charlotte?” she cried out.

“Oh, she’s been havin’ it tough,” Lobrano said flatly. “Best for all of us that no baby see the light of day.”

Mary had no time for repulsion. She drew up all her strength and shoved past Lobrano, bursting into the house.

Peter jumped up. “Thank God, Mary,” he said, looking pale and drained. “She’s been laborin’ some hours now.”

With a reassuring nod to Peter, Mary rushed behind the drawn curtain. A black mammy, who was the closest they could afford to a midwife, mopped Charlotte’s flushed, sweaty face.

“Oh, Mary!” Charlotte cried, “I’ve been so scared.”

“Baby’s takin’ its sweet time is all,” the mammy said reas-
suringly.

An intense contraction hit Charlotte, and she arched her back.

Mary grabbed her hand. “Lottie, you’re doin’ real well. You’re gonna be just fine.”

“How can you say that?” Charlotte wailed. “Your own mama—”

But Mary quickly commanded, “Charlotte, now, you listen to me. Your baby’s gonna show us her face soon enough.”

Tears filled Charlotte’s eyes, threatening to overflow. Mary stroked her arm, trying to calm her. “There, now, the baby’s gonna be beautiful. I wonder who she’ll look like?”

From the other side of the curtain, they heard the front door open. “Get your soaked ass outta here, Lobrano,” Peter warned.

Charlotte looked to Mary, panicked.

“I promise,” Mary whispered, “he ain’t comin’ nowhere near you or this baby.”

“Mary!” Lobrano shouted. “How could you betray me, your own kin? You fuckin’ some dandy? You ridin’ some pete man?”

Mary looked apologetically to the mammy.

Another contraction washed over Charlotte. “Oh dear God!”

Back on the other side of the curtain, Peter clenched his fists with each wail from his wife. “Ain’t gonna tell you again, Lobrano,” he said staunchly.

“I’s a right to know why that cow betrayed me,” Lobrano demanded.

“My sister ain’t your property.”

“We’s all blood, but she took my crib and left me to starve! How’d you think I was gonna get by? The only reason you’re both alive is ’cause of me—”

“She’s the one been keepin’ you alive,” Peter stormed back.

“You ingrates,” hissed Lobrano. “I took pity on you pissants. That whore who was my sister couldn’t keep herself from gettin’ indisposed. Thank the Lord the next little brat didn’t make it, but curse the Lord for taking my sister at the same time. And curse Him for leaving me to deal with the both of yous! I should’ve let you rot. I could’ve, ya know. You owe me your life, and this is what ya do to me?”