The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (6 page)

“Mrs. DuPree’s trying to find him a wife,” Trudy said as she swept the floor. “That’s what these socials are for.”

I looked up. Trudy was older than me by a few years. She was tall and skinny, and her skin was a deeper black than mine.

“Lydia Prather this, Lydia Prather that. That’s who Mrs. Du-Pree’s picked out for him. Her and the sergeant had an awful row last night. Tried not to listen, but I couldn’t help it. They must’ve been sitting right by the parlor vent. Woke me up, they were that loud.”

A wife. I put my hands flat on the table to steady myself.

Trudy said, “Mrs. DuPree doesn’t have one good word to say about this ranch the sergeant’s got fixed in his mind. She wants him to help her look after the business. That’s what she called it. The business. She’s got money for another boardinghouse, only this one’s going to be for out-of-town visitors. High-class people, that’s what she called them. Doctors and professors and suchlike. Once he’s quit of the army, she wants him to run it. Him and his wife. Lydia Prather. She went on and on about it, how rich they’ll get and she’ll buy more and more till she owns every Negro boardinghouse in Chicago.” Trudy stopped to catch her breath. “She wants grandbabies too.”

Married. To Lydia Prather. Or someone like her.

“But no, ma’am,” Trudy said. “Sergeant DuPree wasn’t having no part of it. Said he was his own man, he didn’t want to depend on his mother. Said he has to stand on his own two feet. The army’s been taking care of him all these years, time to go out on his own.” Bending, Trudy swept a pile of bread crumbs into her dustpan.

She shook the crumbs into the garbage pail, then looked at me funny. “You all right?”

I nodded and because she was still looking at me, I said, “He’s sure got nerve.”

“I’ll say, standing up to his mama like that. The things he said. ‘Didn’t you raise me to be an independent man?’ That’s what he said. He said, ‘Think about it, Mother. A hundred and sixty acres. This is an opportunity. Father would want me to do it.’” Trudy upended the broom and knocked down a cobweb in the corner. “I’ll tell you what. That set her off, crying and wailing like a baby with a filled-up diaper.”

I shook my head; it was all I could manage. It pained me to think of Isaac married. But it grieved me even more to think of him giving in to his mother. I wanted him to be different from the slaughterhouse men. I wanted him to be more than just talk. I wanted Isaac DuPree to have his ranch.

Trudy was saying, “It’s not like me to feel sorry for a man, but I sure do for this one.”

I looked at her.

“You ever know Mrs. DuPree to come out second? After all these years of working for her? No, ma’am. She’s not going to give up this easy; she’ll get him one way or the other. The sergeant might as well go on and marry Lydia Prather and do what his mama wants. If you ask me, he’ll save himself a heap of wear and tear if he gives up now.” Trudy plucked the cobweb from the broom’s bristles. “Lydia Prather sure will have her hands full. Mrs. DuPree will run her life, just you wait and see. Well, good luck I say. I say that to any woman what marries Mrs. DuPree’s son.” She rolled the cobweb into a little ball and threw it into the garbage pail.

I turned away and pinched the inside corners of my eyes to keep from crying.

 

 

 

Every morning during his leave Isaac was up early, his eyes puffy from all those late nights, just so he could have his bacon and eggs with the boarders. It was like he missed the company of men and how they talked when their women weren’t around. Each day he sent the men off to the slaughterhouses with more stories about the West and how there, most anything was possible if a person was willing to work. The land of opportunity, Isaac called it. The land of opportunity.

After the men had gone off to the slaughterhouses, Isaac settled into the habit of wandering into the kitchen. He wore a gray suit and a black tie—civilian clothes, he called them. I liked him as much in his suit as I did in his blue uniform. The first two mornings Isaac sat on the kitchen stool and watched me work. We talked about nothing much, usually the weather, or maybe the news from the daily paper. Sometimes Trudy was there washing down the walls or dusting the floorboards. By the fourth morning, he was lending a hand, drying the dishes and emptying the pan of dirty dishwater out back. He never talked about Lydia Prather, and I was glad for that. I didn’t want her in the kitchen with us.

On the fifth morning, Isaac told me about his father, a man I didn’t know much about other than he’d been a doctor.

“Father never turned a sick person away,” Isaac said. “He practiced at Provident Hospital, helped start the nursing school there. Had this house built for Mother when they got married. It wasn’t so close to the slaughterhouses then or the railroad tracks. But everything changed when Father died. I was fifteen. Cancer of the lungs. He was sick a long time, and Mother spent all their savings trying to find a cure. Borrowed against the house. He knew it wasn’t any use, but you know Mother.”

That made me feel bad for Isaac; a boy of fifteen needed his father. But there was something else that made me feel even worse: the groove that ran between us. Isaac’s father was educated and had done important things; mine had been a slaughterhouse man. Isaac had finished high school; I had to quit after the eighth grade. He was fair; I was dark. Outside of this kitchen, Isaac would never look twice at a woman like me.

The thing he talked most about, though, was land. “Don’t get me wrong,” Isaac told me and Trudy on the seventh morning of his leave. “I’m not taking anything away from Booker T. Washington.” He sat on the kitchen stool, a cup of coffee in his hand. The kitchen smelled rich. The coffee was fresh, and there was raisin bread rising in the oven.

“Good thing,” Trudy said. She put linens to soak in a pan on the counter. “Your mama thinks the world of that man.”

“And so she should. But being a tradesman isn’t good enough, not for everybody. Booker T. Washington needs to understand that. A man’s got to have land. I’ve staked my hundred and sixty and nobody’s ever taking it from me.” Isaac paused. “Nobody.”

“Don’t think anybody’d dare,” I said. I was washing two mixing bowls. “But it’s the weather; it all comes down to the weather. I was raised on a farm and that’s what I most remember. Worrying about the weather.”

“Your father’s a farmer?”

“Was. Back in Louisiana before coming here. Sugarcane.”

Trudy said, “How come you never told me that?”

“How many acres?” Isaac said.

“Can’t say. I never heard. Dad tenant farmed.”

“How’d a tenant farmer from Louisiana end up here?”

“It was something Dad always talked about, coming north, how it’d be so much better. Everybody did. We lived on a plantation down there.” I picked up the coffeepot. Isaac held out his cup to show that he’d enjoy a little more. I poured it for him. I said, “The plantation was Mr. Stockton’s, and when he passed, his daughter didn’t want the place. It was falling apart, so she sold it. Mama called the new people white trash with money and said no good ever comes from mixing with that kind. We took a train bound for the North. Chicago was the last stop, and Dad said it was as far from Louisiana as we needed to go.” I put the coffeepot back on the stove and turned down the heat. “Dad figured it’d be better in a big city like Chicago.”

“Is it?”

“In some ways.”

Trudy said, “You couldn’t give me a hundred dollars for the South.” She kneaded the wet linens, working on a stain.

Isaac blew on his coffee, then had a taste of it. Thinking about Isaac’s question, I opened the oven door and stuck a toothpick in the center of the first loaf. The toothpick came out moist; the bread needed a few more minutes.

My school in Chicago, I recalled, was better than the one in Louisiana—there were more books. Jobs were easier to come by in Chicago, but rent was high. Still, a person could make a decent living. But the stink, it was bad. No matter which way the wind blew there was no getting away from the smell that came from the stockyards. Day and night, slaughterhouse fires burned carcasses. Black clouds of soot blocked the sun and there were no stars at night. For all that, though, I was glad to be here. Chicago was where I’d met Isaac.

I turned to him, smiling.

Our eyes met, and just like that, everything went still. The trains, Trudy sloshing the linens in the basin, the creaks in the house, it all stopped. Isaac’s eyes took me in. I stood before him, letting him admire me, me looking back at him, me taking pleasure in it all.

“Your bread,” Trudy said. “Mind your bread,” and that quick, it was over. Isaac took a long drink of his coffee, and me—my heart racing—I didn’t do anything. “Your bread,” Trudy said.

“Yes,” I said. I opened the oven, drawing in deep breaths of the hot air, feeling woozy. Isaac had seen me in a new way. I fumbled with the hot pads, my hands shaking as I took out the three loaves. I ran a knife along the insides of the pans, then flipped them upside down onto the cooling rack. I felt Isaac watching me; I wanted to go to him. I wanted him to put his arms around me; I wanted his lips on mine.

I tapped the bottoms of the bread pans with the knife. The metal made a sharp sound. The bread loosened and dropped. Something had passed between Isaac and me. I kept on tapping, needing the noise to fill the kitchen.

Trudy wrung out a section of her wash. “Yes, sir, Sergeant DuPree,” she said. “The boarders sure do admire you.”

He put his cup on the counter. “That so?”

“You’re all they talk about,” Trudy said. “You and that homestead of yours, it’s turned their heads. And you,” she snapped at me. “Stop that tapping.”

Startled, I dropped the knife. It fell on the floor, clattering. I stared at it, heat rising in my cheeks. Still sitting, Isaac slid the knife toward him with the toe of his boot and picked it up.

“Give it here,” Trudy said. He handed it to her, the handle pointed out. “Now go on,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.”

“I can see that,” Isaac said, smiling some. Then he glanced at me and in that instant, I believed I saw a shine of admiration.

He wasn’t gone but a second when Trudy turned on me. “What’s wrong with you? Making eyes at that man. You’re nothing but the help and he knows it. You’ll get yourself in trouble this way, throwing yourself at him. He’ll forget you before he’s even through with you, and didn’t I tell you about Lydia Prather? There’s talk of a June wedding.” Trudy pointed a finger at me. “Watch yourself, that’s all I’ve got to say.”

I closed my eyes against it.

On the tenth morning of Isaac’s leave, he came to breakfast wearing his uniform. I’d been the one what had rubbed out the spots and set the creases right even though laundry was Trudy’s job. I had insisted, telling Trudy that I had spare time while she had so much to do. In truth, I wasn’t thinking about Trudy. I wanted to run my hands over Isaac’s clothes and breathe in his smell. Trudy knew that; I could tell by the way she clicked her tongue when she handed me his uniform. But what harm could it do? I saw her thinking that too. Isaac was leaving on the 9:45 A.M. for Nebraska.

It was hot for early May. The kitchen window was up, and between trains the birds sang. The robins were all back, and usually the sight of those summer birds made me smile. But that day, the day of Isaac’s leaving, tears blurred my eyes as I cooked breakfast. I was so sad and my heart so heavy that it was a wonder I was upright.

I wasn’t the only one grieving. Mrs. DuPree was in her bed, claiming a sick headache.

After breakfast, Isaac went with the men to the back alley and shook their hands good-bye. I watched from the kitchen window as I washed dishes. Jingling horse bells broke through my sadness. It was the coal man bringing his wagon from the other end of the alley. “Trudy,” I called out, my voice dull in my ears. “Mr. Jackson.”

In the alley, the boarders slapped Isaac on the back, and I imagined them telling him that they’d all meet up soon in South Dakota. He held his hand high in a wave as he watched them walk down the gravel road, their lunch pails swinging a little with their steps. When the men were gone, Isaac called out something to Mr. Jackson, the coal man, who said something back. Then Isaac came through the yard, stopped for a few moments as if unsure of his way, and came on toward the kitchen stoop.

My heart thumping, I dried my hands on my apron. The last two mornings he’d kept away. Trudy told me I should be glad; Isaac DuPree was doing me a favor, so I’d best stop looking so puny. For all of Mrs. DuPree’s faults, Trudy said, she had raised her son to know right from wrong, even if I had puffed myself up like a brazen woman. He knew to stay away from the help. His last morning home, though, he was heading to the back steps. He was coming to see me.

In the open kitchen door, Isaac stopped and looked again at the alley. “Poor bastards,” I heard him say to himself.