Sapphire's Grave (8 page)

HENDERSON, NORTH CAROLINA

SEPTEMBER, 1900

The house, it turned out, was just what Vyda Rose had expected: large but unimposing, with a dignity worthy of its inhabitants. All of the houses along this road were sturdy and well-kept, set back some distance from the road, with carefully tended gardens beside or behind them. Lilly Cheeks’ house was the one at the end, just east of William Street, closest to the white folks. It was a flat board structure painted white, with a bed of geraniums on either side of the door. Real gingham curtains, not flour sacks, graced Lilly’s windows which, Vyda Rose noted, were real glass windows, not wooden-shuttered crude holes.

A well-behaved child sat quietly on the short steps that led to the front door. He stood as Vyda Rose approached, a boy of about ten, built as sturdily as the house, and equally as well-maintained. His hair was neatly cropped, and enormous ears stood out on each side of his well-scrubbed face. He was meticulously dressed in short pants and an open-necked shirt, and he regarded Vyda Rose solemnly.

“Evenin’, Ma’am,” he said, his voice startlingly mature.

“Evenin’,” Vyda Rose replied. “My name is Miss Vyda Rose. I’m lookin’ for Miz Lilly Cheeks. I reckon ’at would be yo’ mama.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” the boy answered, turning and opening the door wide. “Mama!” he called as he led Vyda Rose inside. “Miss Vi’let Rose here to see you!”

Vyda Rose, hesitating just inside the door, surveyed the spotless room. A combination living, dining, and bedroom, it was slightly over-decorated with dried flowers in pastel painted vases, photographs in wood frames, and pillar candles decorated with lace. But everything, Vyda Rose observed, was coordinated and immaculate. In fact, she noted as Lilly entered the room, this place fairly glowed. One could easily have eaten from the gleaming wood floors.

“Miss Vi’let Rose—” Lilly was saying, wiping her hands on her apron. Vyda Rose turned to face her. Lilly’s eyes grew wide with surprise and—fear? Vyda Rose peered at Lilly questioningly. Lilly was a tall woman, like Vyda Rose, with long hair neatly braided and piled high at the top of her head. She was wearing a brown dress—a day dress, but fancy by Negro standards—and shoes on her oiled feet, even though she was indoors and had not been expecting company. Vyda Rose glanced behind Lilly to the kitchen, which shined as Vyda Rose had suspected. Her eyes next fell upon a portrait on the wall just above Lilly’s head, a handsome portrait of a handsome man and woman, poised and unsmiling. Lilly sat erect in a high-necked dress, neutral-toned and otherwise nondescript. The man stood just behind her, his manner reserved, his enormous ears lending a certain ridiculousness to his otherwise dignified appearance. They did not touch.

Lilly was, Vyda Rose decided, frighteningly, perhaps obsessively, sanitary and
neat,
the kind of woman who bade her guests remove their shoes before walking on her rug, and scooped up cups and plates to wash them almost before you were through; the kind whose children could not play in the mud, or talk to children who did; who could not stand nappy or ashy or musty or sweat.

Vyda Rose wondered if Lilly enjoyed sex.

Lilly, meanwhile, was taken aback, cut short in midgreeting by this woman whose hooded hazel eyes and long lithe body were much like her aunts’, too much like her daddy’s sisters for Lilly to ignore. And the
spirit
of this woman—daring and stubborn and free, strong and nonconforming, like the women who had nurtured, taught, and helped to raise Lilly, women whose proud necks and strong backs made others bristle with outrage and fear. Lilly wrinkled her brow, trying hard to remember: Had there been the mention, during the raucous extended family gatherings of her childhood, of a long lost and errant baby sister; or a daughter or auntie shamed and disowned, recalled with regret or in wistful tones, whose lineage may lately have produced this woman-girl? Nothing came to mind. Lilly remembered her manners.

“Miss Vi’let Rose?” she began again tentatively, disturbed by this woman so haunting, sensuous, and familiar.

“Vyda. Vyda Rose.” Lilly seemed confused, but Vyda Rose could not guess why. “I’m sorry to just stop in like this—”

“Oh naw. Naw. Please. Have you some siddown.” Lilly motioned toward two arm chairs arranged on either side of a small ornate table at one end of the oblong room. Vyda Rose sat on one of them, resting her purse on the table. “
Harvey?
Git Miss Vyda Rose some tea, won’t you honey? I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Vyda Rose. I’m Miz Lilly Cheeks. You must be new ’roun’ here.
Harvey!
”

“Oh, no! I’m from ’roun’ Inez. I stay out near Warrenton now.” Vyda Rose flushed, then added quickly, “My mama, she name Queen Marie Fields,” she disclosed. Lilly was nodding, smiling. Her smile froze. Her eyes widened again. Queen Marie—the brazen young whore who with fire in her eyes had stood proud and defiant in a roadhouse beside her daddy years ago, her fingers curled around his arm, her touch intimate.
Daddy’s girlfriend.
A lump rose in Lilly’s throat. Again she challenged her memory, trying to recall having heard that Queen Marie had had a child, or her father mentioning that she, Lilly, had a sister. Surely such a tale could not have eluded the rumor mill in Warren County. Yet the girl’s mysterious eyes and level stare were all Yarborough and Alston, all Daddy and Queen Marie. Lilly felt a wave of sickness threaten to overcome her.

Oh, Daddy. Why you wanna do this . . .

Lilly could only stare at Vyda Rose, who stared back.

“Miz Lilly Cheeks, I b’lee you know my daddy people,” Vyda Rose whispered. She had not intended to shock or upset Lilly with her revelation. She had had no idea that her disclosure would engender such consternation; for Lilly was in fact more than merely surprised. She was troubled, staring absently toward the kitchen now, as if Vyda Rose was not present with her in her pristine home. Anxious and impatient to know what Lilly knew about her father, about
her,
Vyda Rose fidgeted on the edge of her seat, fighting the urge to scream at Lilly, to reach across the table and
shake
her until her teeth chattered and she spilled the secrets that her composure, regained now with effort, concealed.

Finally, Lilly sighed, a deeply tired sigh. “Girl,” she said quietly. “I b’lee I
is
yo’ daddy people.”

WARRENTON, NORTH CAROLINA

MARCH, 1901

His first visits were sporadic and, ostensibly, fortunately timed: He was just passing through, he explained that first night, his hat in his hand; dropped in and no one was in the waiting room, so he had just come on upstairs. Yes, he understood that she worked by appointment, but there was no one down there—she could check for herself. He had been told that she took walk-ins, and he would be much obliged if Vyda Rose would take him as a walk-in, Ma’am, as she was looking mighty pretty over there on that bed in her baby-doll pajama top and bloomers, with her lips and cheeks rouged a deep red, and her eyes just a little angry and annoyed and suggestive of a passion he could surely satiate if she would allow him the opportunity. She asked him flat out if he had any money.
Why yes Ma’am
I do
he replied, pulling a roll of bills from the pocket of his overalls and identifying himself as a railroad man, gainfully employed and staying over for the night en route to Charlotte from Brooklyn. And long as he was staying, he might just as well enjoy the company of a refined and well-reputed lady such as herself—this proposal delivered with a broad and confident smile of gleaming white teeth and round, glimmering eyes. He was a black, black man, the way Vyda Rose liked them, tall and stocky and powerfully built. He had the speech and self-assured manner of a city Negro, from The North—she supposed that Brooklyn was up North somewhere. And his hungry-eyed, libidinous appraisal of her told her it had been some time since his no doubt considerable appetites had been attended to. While she paused demurely, a prelude to a clever response Vyda Rose was preparing to deliver, she felt, suddenly, a lightness and breathlessness and was surprised to realize after the fact that she had been lifted bodily from her position upon the bed and was resting comfortably in his able arms, her legs wrapped around his torso, and he was kissing her, so gently that this, too, took a moment to sink in. She forgot to explain her rules and negotiate her fee, and soon forgot her surroundings and her name and all other distractions as the taste of expensive scotch mingled with the smell and feel of his smooth skin the color of strong coffee and isolated her in this place with this man/god who was erasing her equanimity and the practiced aloofness with which she usually won her captives’ hearts before fixing their loyalty with open attentiveness and esteem. And then, he lifted her dexterously to his stalwart shoulders, sucking her greedily and noisily and making her shudder with surprise and delight before she felt herself this time flying with grace and surety as he swooped her with one fluid downward motion of his arms and his body and hers; moving together onto the bed and onto and into each other. And she felt that they had been here before and had done this together and he belonged here fitting her perfectly and touching all at once all those places that needed to be touched but seldom were. And even when their coition came to an unhurried end he held her still counting her heartbeats and measuring others of her internal rhythms as they lay still, surprised and even frightened, afraid to move and afraid to break their solemn silence with the sacrilege of mortal speech.

And so they neither moved nor spoke until the indigo sky had given way to gray, and the sun peeked over the eastern horizon before it began its ascent. He kissed her once, their mouths open only slightly, both urgently and languorously before he stood to walk into his overalls and don his hat and look back once before closing the door softly behind himself.

He had not paid. She knew he would be back and he was, when nearly a month had passed, pressing a bundle of bills into her hand and calling her his baby he had come back to take care of. And again and again he came, always on Saturday nights. She was aware by now of his habit of scaring away her scheduled clients with his bellowing and barrel chest. She did not mind. They always returned on their next-scheduled date, and he never failed to make those nights well worth the cancellation. And even at the midpoint between her menses she allowed him to delight and enrapture her, thinking that nothing unintended could result from their union.

And for many months, nothing remarkable, other than his visits themselves, occurred. Vyda Rose thought, on those rare occasions with him when she thought at all, that perhaps those unhappy trips across the creek had wrought some damage to her inward parts. She had suspected this, not without some sadness, for some time now. But Vyda Rose had never had much time, or much use, for regrets. Life rolled on. She could not go back and undo. And even if she could, the wisdom of this would not be clear. She had made her choices, for reasons that seemed good at the time that they were made.

And she was making a choice now: to brave the uncertainty and unfamiliarity of love, much ballyhooed love, heretofore unexplored by Vyda Rose. She had, until now, preferred the certainty of uncertainty, the comfort of multiple and occasionally new faces and bodies, each of with whom she shared a lukewarm intimacy for as long as the arrangement suited both parties involved. These intimacies were neither uninterrupted nor everlasting—she knew this, and it was the knowing that made these trysts not only bearable but comfortable. They stayed at her will and for as long as it pleased them. Things never became nasty or boring.

But this—this longing and need that stretched from the mornings of his departures until the evenings of their reunions—was made worse by the near-certainty of The End, that period of nastiness or boredom between man and woman, preceding those relieved and mutual farewells, often heard of at houses of pigs’ feet and blues; or that period of mourning and loss and regret sung of at rites of eternal homegoing. She began to dread The End. Visions of herself in black soon marred his bittersweet early morning departures, and she fought the urge to fling herself to the floor and beg him to stay. The weeks or months of worrying that he would not return had begun to wear on Vyda Rose, and she was often irritated when he arrived, all smiles and cheer, bearing chocolates or nighties or fur-trimmed suits from New York, entertaining her with stories that he swore were gospel truth—stories of gang warfare in the streets, of union disputes, of white ladies from the South sent North to bear colored babies before returning to Dixie all innocence and uprightness.

The folks in town were all a-prattle over Vyda Rose and her new man. Much was left to speculation, for Vyda Rose—

sho’ kep’ him to herse’f, locked up in that upstairs room wit’ de headboardjes a-knockin’. And Queen Marie all happy and smug that her
baby done caught herself a fine man from
New York
wit’ plenty
money . . .

“Long as my baby is happy,” was all Queen Marie would say when pressed for details of the affair. In truth, it was all that she knew to say, other than his name: Julius. Vyda Rose had not been around the Feels Good Inn to speak with Queen Marie since she had learned of the longtime proximity of her family. Whether her absence was related to this discovery, Queen Marie could not tell. Vyda Rose had never been much for visiting.

But tongues had wagged when the townsfolks’ speculation as to Vyda Rose’s paternity had at long last been confirmed. Vyda Rose had been seen, and had admitted to visiting, with her
sister
Lilly, shooting the breeze with her
brother
Prince Junior. And couldn’t anybody just
see
Prince all over that child anyway? Just look at those eyes. Hm hm hm!

But Vyda Rose, oblivious to the murmuring touched off by her newfound paramour and kin, moved about in a confused state of fear and excitement, her moods controlled by his comings and goings and the length of his absences; his gifts and his mere presence bringing luster to her otherwise bleak days. Once he was there with her, she dared not attempt to extract from him dubious promises of faithfulness and soon returns. In her profession, she had learned that men are often quick to abandon their allegiances. She did not wish to demand or coerce. She wanted his visits to be unconstrained, not obligatory, and any commitments on his part must be of his own volition, and not of her urging. So she kept her fondness for him concealed and prayed against the day when he would confirm her fears of the impending End.

A year had passed since he had first appeared at the doorway to her room, so charming and beseeching, when he disappeared without warning. It took Vyda Rose some time to realize this. He was gone. She felt the finality of this after a time, and it filled her with sadness. This was The End.

She resolved to let him go in his own way—wordlessly and without ceremony. She would not seek after him. He had kissed her softly before leaving that last morning, as he had on many other mornings, mornings that had looked and felt no different, no less tragic, than this one. He had saved her the memory of a painful, lingering good-bye. She appreciated this. She preferred to grieve in solitude.

For a while, she struggled against hoping that he would return, laughing deep within his barrel chest, to sweep her from her bed again. Vyda Rose knew that it was best not to hope, not to love if this could be avoided. She could cherish her memories—she allowed herself this—but she could not allow herself to love, or hope.

Yet hope insisted, urging itself into the cycle of her body’s menses, into the sway of her back as she walked with Lilly to the creek.

“Yo’ skin so clea’ and purtty.” Lilly stopped, her arm stopping Vyda Rose, to examine her face closely. “Yo’ eyes so sad, but you’s jes a-glowin’ like a gal in love.” Vyda Rose did not answer Lilly, only began to walk again, her eyes now worried, Lilly noted. “You know,” Lilly began quietly, catching up to her, “I ain’ judgin’ you none, Vyda Rose. You’s a fine gal and a good person, an’ I’s glad to know you.” She ventured a peek at Vyda Rose from the corner of her eye. “An’ if you need any he’p, I’m yo’
sista.
” Still, Vyda Rose did not respond, would not even look at Lilly. “You hear me, Vyda Rose?”

Vyda Rose sighed. “What kin’a he’p you talkin’ ’bout, Lilly?”

“I mean whatev’a kin’ you need. You need money? Or the name of somebody who can ‘fix’ thangs . . . ?”

Vyda Rose rubbed one eye with two fingers, and stopped in the middle of the road. “You think I don’t want my baby?” She had not, until now, acknowledged her pregnancy to anyone other than herself. She had never mentioned her abortions directly to anyone; not her lovers, to whom she had communicated her condition with opaque references to the moon or the rag or to buns in unspecified ovens; not to the woman who lived in the creek, who had simply looked at her and known, as Lilly had known. It hurt her that Lilly thought her capable of what she had done on several occasions in a past unmentioned to Lilly; that Lilly, while acknowledging her good, had sensed also Vyda Rose’s terrible and shameful evil.

But Vyda Rose wanted to have this baby. She wanted this child for her own sake and for the sakes of all the others she had destroyed. She needed to make it up to them, her dear dead babies, to redeem herself and show that she
was
good, that she
did
deserve this gift. And she needed something—someone—permanent in her life; just one somebody to hold on to with the ferocity that she had felt when she had held him in her room in their world inaccessible by others. Vyda Rose had never thought so before, but she knew now that she needed, more than anything, this child to love free of charge, at whatever cost to Vyda Rose, and whether or not she was loved in return. And she needed to give this child the best possible chance at as charmed a life as a whore from the backwoods of Warren County could give her. Suddenly—

“I know what you can do to he’p,” Vyda Rose told Lilly, excitement in her expressive eyes. “I got to go to Brooklyn, Lilly,” Vyda Rose said earnestly, clasping Lilly’s hands in her own. “He’p me get to Brooklyn.”