“Well, that’s a shit sandwich and no mistake,” Madame said.
* * *
It got worse by morning. Priya still weren’t home — I hoped somebody had sent her a message to stay away, and nobody seemed upset that she wasn’t there, so I expected she’d sent Miss Lizzie or Miss Francina a note — but when I went out for Connie’s eggs I could feel the eyes of strangers following me. I was wearing my plain walking dress — I wasn’t out trying to drum up custom, and my hair was barely braided, to tell the truth — so it weren’t my stunning appearance of beauty drawing the attention.
I reckoned word of the fight had gotten around and tried to ignore the stares and the heads bent in mutters, and I didn’t have to leave the neighborhood. So it was the corner grocer Mr. Mulligan who shook his head at me and said, “Have you heard what they’re saying about that Negro United States Marshal of yours?”
I almost said, He’s not mine, but Mr. Mulligan wouldn’t of understood it the way I meant it, and his misunderstanding would make me feel disloyal. So I fingered the lucky silver dollar that was in my pocket now and I said, “What are they saying?”
He sucked his teeth and added two extra eggs to my basket, tucking ’em well into the padding straw. Brown ones. I missed hens, but not as much as I missed horses. “The frail sisters started dropping dead of an overdose of horsewhipping right about when he and his pet Comanche came to town.”
A chill crept through my belly. Of course they were saying that. Because Peter Bantle was putting ideas in their heads.
“You know,” he continued, “them Comanche are savages. Things they do as a matter of course would chill normal folk. Skinning, scalping, roasting people alive. They cut folks up — babies, women — and torture ’em just for the fun. And word’s gotten around that those two have been coming and going at Madame’s place. You might want to pass the word to her that some people aren’t too pleased about it.”
He dropped his voice down low. “Some people is even saying that Madame’s a colored girl herself, what’s been passing, and that’s why she lets all these”—he flipped his hand back and forth, like there was a word he weren’t going to say in front of a lady—“scalawags come and go as they please. Course, old Mrs. Mulligan and me, we don’t believe that for an instant.”
I thought of the shiny healed burns on Priya’s arms, the dogfights down by the docks, and I held my peace, though what I wanted to say was, Does it seem to you that one race in particular holds the patent on savagery?
But I didn’t want to argue with Mr. Mulligan right now, especially if he was defending Madame in the court of gossip. What I wanted was to drop that basket of eggs and go running down the street shouting for the Marshal.
I didn’t do that, either. What I did do was pay for Connie’s victuals and smile nicely when Mr. Mulligan threw in some butter, too, and then I lifted my heavy basket up and went out to try to climb the ladder at the end of the block without spilling any eggs.
Made it, too. Without cracking any of the four dozen plus two. And once I’d delivered them to Connie, I went back out again, climbed up the ladder, and walked two more blocks to the telegraph station.
* * *
The telegram I sent was just: WE MUST TALK SOONEST DONT COME TO THE HOUSE, because I didn’t want to say too much where it would get around town. And I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in a sort of agony, twisted up left and right and inside and outside and upside down with not hearing from the Marshal. But of course I didn’t know if he’d gotten the telegram yet or if he’d even been back to his rooming house. All my wild imaginings of him clapped in irons or lynched from a lamppost were just that. It’s a real particular twisting razor, having a bad intuition and no news as such. At least Priya had returned by the time I came back, and she was hard at work sweeping the parlor carpet with Madame’s newfangled suction engine that didn’t half work half the time.
The good — or bad — news kept coming, in that the only visitor we had all night other than a messenger was the john we’re not supposed to know about, and he went upstairs with Pollywog and neither one came back down. So us girls and the Professor entertained ourselves in the parlor playing cards and playing piano. Bea told fortunes from tea leaves for half an hour — my leaves looked like storm clouds breaking, she said, and that meant good fortune out of bad, but what I saw in them was a herd of mustangs running. The Professor said he was going home, fooling no one, and wandered out before the witching hour to find a card game for money. Most of the Misses was in bed not half an hour later.
I crinkled the note in my pocket, not much more crumpled than when the messenger had handed it to me, and didn’t even bother to change my dress. I pulled on street boots and buttoned them, though, and fetched my heavy coat. It was getting on December by then, and the air through the door when Crispin had opened it earlier had been sharp. I wasn’t sneaking out, not exactly — I told Priya where I was going and why; she worrited at me, but she didn’t nag or naysay, and I had that good feeling again that I hadn’t had since Da was alive — that somebody sensible cared about me and wanted to help me on my path rather than bending me to their own. I collected a kiss from her for luck and good measure. I could still feel it tingling on my lips long after the cold should of wiped it away.
I slipped out the kitchen door, because Connie had sent the day girls home and gone to bed herself already and because Bea and Effie was still playing bezique by the parlor fire with cups of Miss Bethel’s best sherry, pretending — if I’m not mistaken — at being the ladies of their own homes.
When I clambered up to the street, the abject dark of the sidewalks gave way to flickering gaslight. I was nervous being out alone, no mistake — but I didn’t think I’d have to go far. The Marshal’s note had said he’d be waiting for me, and the Marshal hadn’t let me down once yet. Which put him right up there with Crispin and my da and Madame, and damn few anybodies else. I felt bad for telling him to stay away from Madame’s, but I had thought of what Mr. Mulligan had said about how folk were talking and I had realized that I had even more of a duty to Madame and Crispin and the girls as I did to the Marshal and Tomoatooah.
Being a growed woman, it turned out, was harder work than it looked. But that’s a thing, too, ain’t it? Them as work hardest get no respect for it — women, ranch hands, sharecroppers, factory help, domestics — and them as spend all their time talking about how hard they work have no idea what an honest day’s labor for nary enough pay to put beans in your family’s bellies is all about.
I got less and less patience for any of that talk, the older I get, lessen it comes from a miner or a picker or some such.
I was standing in the dark on the cobbles, knowing it was safer out of sight even though every scrap of my soul — if whores got souls — wanted to go stand under a streetlight where every robber or rapist for ten miles could mark me. The light would of felt good, but you see I knowed it wasn’t safe.
So I lurked in the dark, pinching my coat closed across my bosom with my left hand, and I waited for the Marshal to show.
Hoofbeats told me he was coming. I didn’t turn my head; if somebody was watching me, even here in the shadows, I didn’t want to look like I was looking. Or worried about anything. But I knowed Dusty’s hoofbeats from the other night, and I didn’t expect anyone else would be on her.