River, cross my heart (19 page)

They followed along a pathway that was merely a ribbon of bare ground pounded out by numerous feet. Pearl got winded and was breathing out of her mouth like Clara used to. Once, Johnnie Mae pulled up and turned around to face her with arms akimbo and chest stuck out. Pearl bumped smack into her because she had had her eyes on the ground. Pearl took the blow and stopped and looked at Johnnie Mae with alarm. Johnnie Mae didn't say anything, only stomped her foot. Pearl wondered if this meant she was to turn around and go back. But when Johnnie Mae resumed walking, she continued, too.

The path was filled with mud puddles and rocks of all sizes. Some of the rocks were sharp-edged and some smooth and slippery. Every kind of stick and board with splinters was calling "Step on me, I dare you!" And some whipsaw shrubs lashed their ankles. Despite the cold and the even chillier breeze blowing in off the water, Johnnie Mae peeled open her coat, perspiring with the exertion of cutting through debris. Pearl, struggling mightily to keep up the pace, was nevertheless chilled to the bone. She held together the place at the waist of her coat where a missing button left her abdomen exposed, and her gloveless right hand developed a white crust. She lubricated her lips with saliva in the face of the river wind lashing them and the wind quickly seized this moisture and dried her lips still more. By the time they reached the end of Water Street and continued down under the Francis Scott Key Bridge, both their faces were tight and ashy.

The brambles became ever wilder as they continued westward. The two, with Johnnie Mae leading, sidled past the Washington Canoe Club, a cozy clapboard structure perched on the riverbank with a fancy dock attached and stacks o{ canoes on two sides, members only and no trespassing signs sprouted here and there on the periphery of the club's property, and an irascible hound patrolled the fence to keep the hoi polloi to the public side of the path.

"That's the Three Sisters—those rocks out there—that's the top of their castle. That's where Clara is. But you know that 'cause that's where you came up from." Johnnie Mae pronounced all this as if there could be no doubt as to its veracity. People in Georgetown had always spoken of the Three Sisters as if it were both an identifiable trio of female spirits and a

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place in space and time. It was there and it was them. It was near and yet not at all near to the bank. All that was between the three boulders and the shoreline on either side for a span of perhaps a mile was the mysterious bailiwick of the female spirits who inhabited the Potomac.

Pearl had never been so close to the edge of the river. She could never have imagined herself at a point so close to the boulders. She shook her head briskly as if she meant to dislodge her confusion and struggled to figure out why Johnnie Mae was so convinced that she was a part of her sister's drowning. How in the world had she gotten hold of this idea?

Suddenly, Johnnie Mae ran up the embankment away from the river, turned on her heels, and ran fast back down to-ward the river's edge. Pearl expected that she would stop at the lip of the river, that this was some version of a game of whirligig. But Johnnie Mae continued into the river up to her waist, soaking her shoes and socks and most of her clothing.

Pearl backed away from this spectacle, afraid that she would be pulled into the frigid water by Johnnie Mae or by some force at work to grab young girls. For the first time she started to believe that some power could be at work around the banks of the Potomac. She wanted to beg Johnnie Mae to come out of the water, to just come out and let them go on home and never come back down here. But she didn't know how to get it said. Often she got plain disgusted with herself for not being able to say out loud what was struggling to get said. It was at these moments — and there were so many of them in a day — that she would shake her head from side to side. So many moments required this head-clearing motion that it was fast becoming a mannerism of the girl. She blurted

out, "You pushed your sister in the river! You're mean and you didn't love her and you pushed her down in the river and made her drown."

The words stopped Johnnie Mae's whirling. This was the most she had ever heard Pearl Miller utter. And this string of words was nothing less than a quiver of arrows fired straight at her. This was the test of her theory that Pearl Miller was in some way Clara come again. Because if Pearl Miller knew what actually happened, if she knew things about the events at the riverbank, then it was certain proof that she was some sort of haint.

The trouble was that Johnnie Mae herself hardly knew what had happened. The girls were swimming, cannonading, swimming in circles around each other. Johnnie Mae was pearhdiving. Clara was sitting on the back end of a log and there was a big splash and Johnnie Mae thought it was her own body slicing the water. But it had been Rat. Rat had hit the water with a big splash. Rat and the log—and Rat had never come up again. And she never saw her again—never saw Rat alive again.

She had bobbed up to the surface of the water and didn't see Clara. Clara sitting on the log on the bank was a marker— a place on the shore that placed the swimmers, that showed where they were in the water. Then Clara was gone from the log. Johnnie Mae looked and counted the other heads above the surface of the water. They were all there giggling and laughing, but not Clara. Johnnie Mae dove down below. She opened her eyes to see beneath the water. Everything was green and cloudy. She couldn't see a thing beneath the surface. She came back for air. She sucked in air and dove back down. Her chest was on fire. She couldn't see Clara when she

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came back to the surface. She saw the white ribbon that was on Clara's plait — that she had tied to Clara's plait. She thought momentarily to be angry that the white ribbon was off the plait and floating and going green in the slimy water when it should have been fastened to Clara's hair. She went down again and forgot to close her mouth. Water came in her throat and through her nose.

She duck-dived to retrieve Rat, but Rat never came back to the surface until she was dragged up bv the men from the city. Johnnie Mae hadn't actually seen it, oi course. She hadn't even been told about this. Her mama and papa hadn't thought it was appropriate to tell her how Clara's body had come up out of the river and been prepared for burial. Snow Simpson—his skin was dark and glossy like a ripe eggplant— was mad about being always called Snow. One day — for meanness, because Johnnie Mae had not let him have one of her pencils — Snow Simpson had told her all about the men pulling Clara from the Potomac. He sidled up to her ear in the school yard and said that the men from the city had come up and stood around and had dragged lines in the water and had finally snagged Clara like a big old carp and hooked her and reeled her in and started to throw her back tor being too small. This last he'd said over his shoulder, gliding past smirking. And Johnnie Mae had hit him in the back so hard the bones in his back stung her hand.

At the river now, the cool water coursed through her legs, sloshing her labia, chilling them and causing a shiver. Warm urine let go and streamed down and warmed the labia. The cool water was less cool, then cooler again. The coolness called her back to herself and the freezing cold water slapped her out of her reverie. She barreled out of the river. Out oi the

water, the freezing water seemed to burn her skin. Mad at herself for peeing on herself like a baby, she ran up the embankment to Pearl and pushed the girl's chest.

"I didn't. I didn't push nobody. I didn't push Rat." "You musta pushed her like you're pushing me!" Pearl Miller heard a girl yelling and could feel her heart in her rib cage fluttering. Standing toe to toe with Johnnie Mae she had a sensation of floating. She could hear a lot of angry talking and she could see that Johnnie Mae's lips had ceased to move and so she concluded that the girl yelling into Johnnie Mae's face must be herself. She felt a thing taking hold of her, trapped as she was with the river ahead of her and her feet mired in all kinds of debris on the riverbank. And Georgetown was up the slope and people were walking by on their own business and not many o( them even noticed her. And Johnnie Mae, the only person who seemed to take a notice of her, was badgering her about being a haint and seeming to threaten her with drowning. Was Johnnie Mae pulling her out to the Three Sisters, offering her in exchange for Clara? Or maybe she was just working in concert with these mystery forces in the river that wanted to pull down somebody foolish enough to come out here—someone who could never match her curiosity with enough courage to take any daring action. "I didn't push Rat!" Johnnie Mae said it loud. She said it hard. She was telling herself more than she was telling anybody. Her soul was leaping with happiness that someone had challenged her on the point. Somebody was so mad — so involved with this tangle — that they'd confronted her and asked her if she was responsible. And now she could insist and hear herself say it. "No." She had not pushed her sister. She did not drown her

sister. She did riot even realize until too late that she had lapsed in her caring for her sister and let the Three Sisters, the Potomac, or whomever take her away.

There was her mother, herself, and her baby sister. And on a day when she had the care of her sister, a day when she chewed down on her mother's responsibilities, she had failed. She'd been trusted as she'd always been trusted—with Clara. She had failed. She had been a little mother countless times. It was her duty.

"Who's Rat?" Pearl asked in a pleading tone.

"My sister," Johnnie Mae answered, exasperated with Pearl's pretending not to know about Rat.

"You call your sister Rat? How your mama let you call her a name like that?"

"She doesn't know it. She doesn't have to know everything. They don't have to know every thing."

"Eventually they find it out."

"She don't have to know."

"She's gonna know you've been up to something. Your clothes're all wet."

"Shut up! It's none of your business, scaredy-cat. You're scared of your own shadow — just like Rat. You're scared o( everything. Being a scaredy-cat draws trouble like a magnet. Being scared draws a mad dog to you like a magnet."

The angry petulance that had Johnnie Mae in a tangle with Pearl was familiar. Often she had been so angry with Clara. The scaredy-cats were always standing back with their hands folded meekly, hoping to grab fun on the go. They were always hoping to pick up what fun and adventure somebody else would make. They could pick it up like lumps ot coal

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fallen from the back of a coal truck. They got their fun and adventure by accident. Johnnie Mae wanted to make the fun —make the adventure—pull something down into her lap.

The girls stood there on the embankment with arms folded across their chests, mad at each other. Johnnie Mae felt wet and stinky. The river water and her own urine had made her clothes a mess. Pearl was right. Her mother would notice and would demand to know where she'd been and what she'd been doing. They'd better leave right away. She'd better get back to the house and change and rinse out these things and make up some story about it.

"Come on, scaredy-cat," she said, turning her back on Pearl, who was still facing toward the Three Sisters. Over her shoulder she flung a threat. "If you tell, I'll put my foot in your butt."

Alice, Ina, Miz Iola Perryman, Mi: Hattie Miller, Miss Elizabeth Boston, and Miss Clementine Chichester boarded the streetcar at Wisconsin Avenue and P Street in a fluttery state of excitement to travel to Union Station to meet Miss Gladys Pern-man's train. Gladys Perryman, the niece by marriage of Miz Iola Perryman, was arriving from New York to settle with her aunt and uncle in Georgetown. Miz Iola's endless bragging at church about her husband's brother's girl, who was attending Madame C. ]. Walker's school for beauty culture in New York City, had whipped up anticipation oi her arrival. According to Miz Iola, Georgetown was getting a true artiste of the hot comb. Here was someone who'd surely raise the standards oi taste among the tasteful women. Miz Iola gathered up an eager committee o{ women and girls to meet Gladys's train at Union Station.

Johnnie Mae thought the whole thing was a silly waste of time. Mama insisted upon dressing up in her Sunday things, and Johnnie Mae was made to dress up too. Aunt Ina, who had

been going on and on about Miss Gladys Perryman, insisted upon going to the station to meet her. She said she'd invite Miss Perryman to join their penny-savers club and Mama said she thought Miss Perryman might hold herself a bit above such activities.

Riding downtown on the bus and walking through the streets with Mama and Aunt Ina and Miz Iola Perryman and the other ladies, Johnnie Mae slunk back a bit. She tried to lean into a place of shadow created by her mama's body standing against the outside world o{ Washington. She knew she was too big a girl for this. She knew that this feeling belonged to a time when she was a much younger child and had walked through the streets or ridden on a bus with her parents. When they ventured out into the larger Washington city world, some inexplicable thing, a force or something, was out there that Papa and Mama and Aunt Ina had to buffer against. Their faces and torsos anxiously breasted a tide of strange looks and behaviors. The thing was amorphous, was an ill-defined, unsure feeling that the adults had when they left Georgetown. Mama was always fussy about their clothes and hair when they got aboard a streetcar. Several times on this trip Johnnie Mae brushed off the front of her dress and smoothed her hair.

Mama had insisted that Johnnie Mae ask if Pearl could go along. Upon hearing of the outing, Hattie Miller included herself. Like Johnnie Mae, Pearl was acting sullen on the bus trip to the station.

Perhaps the white people seemed so numerous in Washington city because the colored people were so few on the downtown streets. When Johnnie Mae had gone across town

to the Howard theater tor a musical show or over to Griffith Stadium for a baseball game, the streets there were thronged with black and brown and yellow people, as well as whites. The U Street thoroughfare was thick with people. But on the streets of downtown, dark faces were scarce.

Gladys Perryman descended from the train and seemed to glide through the station without touching the marble floor. Her tall, willowy frame, outfitted in a chic white wool suit of recent fashion, caused the welcoming committee to sigh and adjust their clothes, smoothing and patting themselves. Miz Iola drew up with pride, pulling in her derriere and hoisting her breasts high with dignity. Asa Perryman's girl was already a sensation and she had not yet set foot in Georgetown!

All eyes went to Gladys's head. On it she wore a jaunty, crescent-shape cloche stuck through with a low-hanging turkey feather. The hair that was visible beneath the hat was arranged in shiny, frothy curls. Touching a white handkerchief to her throat, Gladys said, "How do you do." The committee giggled and answered with a round of "How do." A small, enigmatic smile came to rest on Gladys Perryman's lips. Miz Iola stepped forward and, looking upward into Gladys's pretty face, took her by the shoulders and kissed each oi her cheeks. Each woman stepped forward as she was introduced and smiled warmly. Johnnie Mae and Pearl curtsied.

Gladys was pleased with her reception. It had been worth it to drain her savings for the new suit and hat. A stunning appearance was worth every penny it took for a woman in the business oi making other women beautiful. As Madame C. J. Walker herself said, "Meticulous grooming is a beautician's best advertisement."

The women allowed Miz Iola to take Gladys's arm while several of them grabbed up her luggage. Johnnie Mae and Pearl tussled over a small train bag and ended with Pearl relinquishing it to Johnnie Mae when her mama chastised her with her eyes. Flanked by her coterie of admirers, Gladys crossed Union Station's waiting room floor with head held high and ambitions soaring.

Gladys had certainly caused a ripple among the women who came to welcome her at the station. She took this to mean that the Negro women of Georgetown were ready to buy the magic she could let loose from jars and combs. She would set the tone! She, Gladys Perryman, graduate of Lelia College in New York City, would lead them out of the backwater of beauty culture and into the promised land!

Gladys Perryman was a marvel to Johnnie Mae. It would be silly to say that the turkey feather was the thing that had done it. But it was the thing that had captured her attention, that made an impression on her. That large turkey feather, sticking through the hat at such an angle, was so lovely and daring. Johnnie Mae had never seen a woman so vibrant. Her own mother was pretty — everyone thought so. And there were other pretty women in Georgetown. But no one of them had the look that Gladys Perryman had when she first appeared at Union Station. She was striking and she looked as if she'd planned it that way. That was it! She wasn't just pretty by accident. Gladys Perryman was beautiful on purpose. And Johnnie Mae could tell that all of the women in the welcoming group were envious of Gladys Perryman's fine clothes and bearing. The whole of the ride home on the streetcar, Gladys could well have been the queen of Georgetown for the fawning attentions she got from the committee. And she sat

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straight and dignified, wearing white gloves with pearl buttons on the delicate hands that rested one atop the other near her left knee.

Dr. Marvin Tyler could have sent his daughter Sarey to Miz Jackson or someone or other to get her hair pressed. Or he certainly could have sent her across town in Washington city to a hairdresser. But there was some feeling akin to shame that washed over him when he considered it, and he reproached himself for feeling shame in connection with so small a thing. He was further ashamed of feeling ashamed of Sarey's hair. He knew that some portion of this feeling sprang from Sarey herself, who seemed so aware of his feelings and stoked the flames of this shame with her eyes and her manner.

The new hairdresser, or "beautician," as she advertised herself, gave the impression of being bound by a professional ethic of secrecy. The neatly lettered sign said simply Gladys perryman, beautician, and conveyed a sense of confessional sanctity, a solemn code of confidentiality. She would work her magic and not tell her tricks.

Being used to his wife's light cream color, the doctor was surprised that he was enamored of Gladys Perryman's skin, which was the color of strong pekoe tea, the color of some leaves in autumn. Being used to the delights of his wife's long, straight hair, he was surprised that his eyes fancied Gladys Pern-man's glossy black hair.

Gladys ushered Sarey into the kitchen at the back of her aunt and uncle's house. "We'll take our time, Doctor," she said, turning to the doctor, who had started to follow his daughter into the kitchen. He stood looking directly into

Gladys's eyes, wanting to bring his hands up from his sides and touch her face. "She's a big girl, Doctor. I'll send her home when she's done," Gladys said as she accompanied him back to the front door. He paused just inside the parlor doorway and proffered a dollar bill.

"Children are only fifty cents, Doctor. I'll do my best."

"Yes, but please, I have no change."

"Then you won't owe me for the next time," she said, smiling sweetly and taking the bill.

Surprised at himself, Dr. Tyler rubbed the brim of his hat between his fingers like a schoolboy and wondered where the feeling of excitement in Gladys Perryman's presence could be coming from. His voice was scratchy and uncertain when he said, "Thank you, Miss Perryman. I have my calls to make." He turned and left.

Gladys gave Sarey's scalp a vigorous washing over a tub in her aunt's kitchen. However, the brushing and oiling and pressing was done with a gentleness to which Sarey was unaccustomed. Gladys encouraged the girl while she worked, chirping, "You've got a nice suit of hair. It just needs cultivating. We'll work on it." Sarey's hair was as close to a rat's nest as any she'd seen, but Gladys was excited by the challenge of creating beauty out of the mess on top of the girl's head.

Sarey flinched when she felt the heat of the hot comb near her ears. Gladys was careful, though, and no streams of hot grease slid down her neck or seared her ears. Sarey became relaxed after a while, and though she didn't hold out much hope that her head would finally look like Miss Perryman's, she prayed fervently that it would.

Sarey's hair looked perfectly presentable for the first time ever when Gladys Perryman finished with her that day. On

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subsequent visits — Sarey begged her father to be allowed to go every week — Gladys built upon the cultivation she had begun in the first visit. She pressed and brushed the hair away from the girl's hairline and plaited it tightly in two braids. After several months, Sarey's hair grew and thickened and became lovely. So much had been done with so little that other women and girls were heartened. If Gladys Perryman could work a miracle on Sarey Tyler's head, then she could fix anyone's. It was the best advertising Gladys could have wanted. Gladys built a clientele so quickly that she had work in her aunt's kitchen every day but Sunday. Within weeks she began to dream of having her own shop. Wednesday evening and all day Thursday, the kitchen mechanics' day off, were busiest. The muscles in Gladys's upper arms would be cramping on her by the time the last of Thursday's heads was done. But this schedule gave her the luxury of resting late in the morning, especially on Fridays. She relished this time when she could take a long, perfumed bath while her aunt and uncle were out working. She could spend time oiling her skin and pressing and curling her own hair. She could loll around and dream about having her own storefront on the avenue. She could put on a pretty dress and take a parasol and walk down Wisconsin Avenue in the late afternoon, coyly shopping for vegetables and fruit.

The breeze that was stirring was foul smelling and blew up from the Hoptenmeier rendering plant near the Potomac River's edge. The air was noxious. Alice felt like a rag doll as she walked up Wisconsin Avenue to the St. Pierres' house. When she reached the crest oi the hill at Wisconsin and R streets, she paused to huff" and blow and dab at her forehead.

A harsh truth had to be faced: the St. Pierres' household accounts were going unpaid. This was the pitfall of working for one family. When their fortunes turned sour, your bread was likely to go unbuttered.

Alice entered the house by the back kitchen door as usual. And as usual, she listened for Alexis's footsteps coming toward the kitchen. In happier times, Alexis was accustomed to coming into the kitchen as soon as Alice arrived. She would begin their day together with a cheery greeting. Alice had liked her for that. Throughout the day, Alexis kept company with Alice when she was not engaged in her club meetings and social obligations.

The house was quiet and dark when Alice arrived. The

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drapes in the front room were closed against the HOX10US air