The ladies stare only for a moment, their lips puckered and their arms crossed, and then they remember their real concern should be for Elizabeth and not the Negro women or what the husbands may be up to. Reminding themselves of the finer things in life, they tug at their gloves, check the clasps on their handbags, smooth their curls, and head off to the deli or the cleaners or the drugstore. In twenty minutes, they’ll all meet at the bakery. On the bus ride over, the ladies agreed that if Mrs. Nowack insisted on keeping her doors open on payday, they’d be patrons no longer. Together, in twenty minutes’ time, this is what they’ll tell Mrs. Nowack.
Next door to the warehouse, the factory’s parking lot is only half full. Most of the men, Mr. Herze included, have gathered again at the church. Once Malina is certain Mr. Herze’s sedan is not among the cars parked there, she swivels on one heel and walks toward the river. For the next twenty minutes, the ladies will scurry from store to store. They’ll not notice Malina’s whereabouts. Twenty minutes is certainly enough time. If Mr. Herze’s girl is still alive, a block or so down Chamberlin is where Malina will likely find her.
“I’m quite certain it’s true,” Doris Taylor had said after the ladies of Alder Avenue boarded the bus. She sat on the edge of her seat and spoke loudly so her voice would carry over the air rushing through the open windows. “Mrs. Nowack has no intention of closing her doors on payday. What are we to do?”
Though it was Doris who spoke, the ladies scooted about in their seats to look to Malina. It was a reminder she was one of the oldest among them.
“I really haven’t any opinion,” Malina had said.
The ladies, a few with their mouths dangling open, stared at Malina, waiting, obviously thinking she had spoken in jest. Again, resenting the ladies for thrusting her into a matronly position, Malina snapped her own mouth shut so the ladies might realize their rude behavior and flicked a hand at them, urging them to turn away.
“We should all go to Mrs. Nowack,” Doris Taylor had said. Doris brought cinnamon rolls to the bake sale every year even though they always sold poorly. She used too few pecans and consistently overcooked them. “All of us together. As one. We’ll tell her we’ll not shop in her store if she refuses to close her doors. One of our ladies might be tempted to go to Willingham on payday if the bakery remains open. It’s for our own safety. Malina said so herself just the other day.”
Again, the ladies looked to Malina. “Of course,” she said, letting out a long sigh, and smiling. “It’s a fine idea. You should listen to Doris.”
Malina had worries of her own, more than enough, and no desire to take on the worries of others. Laying her head back so as to avoid any more gaping mouths, Malina had stared at Grace Richardson sitting across the aisle. Looking straight ahead, her eyes seemingly focused on nothing, Grace had rubbed her two bare hands in slow, steady circles over her round stomach. Every so often, her eyelids slowly closed and took so long in opening again, Malina wondered each time if Grace were asleep. She didn’t wake from this stupor until Julia Wagner boarded the bus.
“Maybe those women will leave now that one of them is dead,” a lady had said as the bus pulled away from its stop outside the thrift store. “And you know, don’t you, that men have been fired. If there are no men left who will open a pocketbook, those women will all but vanish.”
“We shouldn’t be talking about this,” said another. “Think of Elizabeth. It’s all so unseemly. It’s disrespectful to her, don’t you think?”
And then the conversation turned to Jerry Lawson. By now, everyone knew, even those who lived blocks from Alder, that Jerry had been fired. What a shame for poor Betty Lawson. What was she to do now that she knew such things about her husband? What was that poor child to do? What was her name? Cynthia, wasn’t it? Poor Cynthia, all but abandoned. Jerry would be able to make no sort of living. The ladies next wondered aloud if it was only one woman for Jerry Lawson or if he took several. One would be worse than many, they all agreed, because if it were only one, that might mean he actually cared for her. My God, it might mean he actually cared.
“My Harry said the woman was killed with a hammer.” The lady’s name escaped Malina. She lived somewhere just north of Alder and rarely attended services. “Can you imagine? The police could tell, just by looking at the woman, that it was a hammer, or something much like it. How do you suppose they know such things? How does one look at a hole in the head and know what caused it?”
“What do you know of the dead woman?” Malina said, still watching Grace rub her hands lightly over her stomach as she chatted with Julia Wagner. The two were not listening to the ladies talk but were giggling among themselves.
“Why on earth would you ask?” several of the ladies said, one echoing another.
Malina gripped the seat in front of her, bracing herself as the bus neared its stop at Willingham. What must it look like when a person is hit in the head with a hammer? “Have you read anything? Have your husbands told you what she looked like?”
Doris Taylor pulled a tissue from her handbag, folded it, and blotted her fresh lipstick. “She was one of them. What more could possibly matter?”
There must have been a time when Mr. Herze’s girl looked like Grace Richardson. The girl probably rubbed her hands over her stomach and stared at nothing, her thoughts filled with dreams of a healthy, happy baby and a man to love her. If Mr. Herze’s girl were the dead one, what had become of the baby in the carriage? Malina had leafed through every newspaper that landed on her doorstep since the day that woman, some woman, was killed. She studied the papers until the ink stained her fingertips and the paper had torn at the fold, not certain why it mattered to her or why she craved any hint as to which woman had died. But every day the craving grew. Even if she knew, it wouldn’t help her predicament. No matter who died or who killed her, Malina had still told a lie.
“It’s no never mind,” Malina had said as the bus slowed to its stop at Woodward and Willingham. “I’ll see you ladies at the bakery in twenty minutes. What a fine idea you’ve had, Doris.”
As Malina nears the alley where the woman was killed, she walks mostly on her toes so her red leather heels don’t slap the concrete and give her away. At the alley’s entrance, she stops and tugs on her three-quarter-length sleeves. The saleslady at Hudson’s said not everyone could wear the new length but Malina, being as tiny as she is, would carry it beautifully.
For so much to have transpired since the woman was killed, the alley looks no different, except perhaps it appears smaller in the daylight, less foreboding. Seeing it again for the first time since that night, the alley isn’t so long and dark, and what had seemed like quite a distance when she was following that woman and her carriage is really no more than a few steps. For an instant, Malina is tempted to travel those few steps and look for the hammer she dropped. It would be a relief to have the proper tool hanging on Mr. Herze’s pegboard again, but that is foolish thinking. The police will have found that hammer, or possibly someone else found it, and whisked it away. Before temptation can again overwhelm her better judgment, Malina continues toward the river.
The colored women stand in a small group. A few of them sit on the curb, their long black legs stretched before them. Others sit cross-legged on the same curb, picking at blades of grass or their own unkempt nails. Still others stand in the middle of the street. There was a time, not so long ago, those women wouldn’t dare show themselves on Willingham Avenue. But the highways have pushed them west and north, and now every day they inch closer. Often they are seen lounging, waiting, biding their time until the ladies finish their shopping and leave for the day. They’ll all but take over on paydays, some of the ladies say, and that is likely the beginning of the end. Soon the ladies will be chased from Willingham just as they were chased from Beersdorf’s Grocery. Already some of the ladies have begun traveling to Hamtramck to do their shopping.