by Cari Lynn
“Whew,” Mary gasped, trying to catch her breath. “I just had me a moment.” Her heart pounded in her ears and she lifted herself to her elbows, needing to make sure she was still present in the same tiny room, on the table. Eulalie met her gaze. Catlike, Eulalie’s focused eye watched her carefully.
“You been to Eulalie Echo afore,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“N-n-no, ma’am,” Mary stammered. “Never even been on Rampart Street before.”
Eulalie cocked her head, looking as if she knew better. But Mary was certain she hadn’t ever been on Rampart Street before. Why on earth would she have come here?
Eulalie studied her for a moment longer, then her face softened and she helped Mary sit up. “No worry, child. Eulalie’s remedy clear the gleet.”
Relieved, Mary nodded and swallowed back the lump in her throat. She silently watched as Eulalie concocted a tincture, pouring and pinching different-colored powders and twigs and leaves from various wooden bowls. From her hair, she unwound a small medicine bottle and added a drop to the mixture. She corked the bottle, then rolled it back up in her tresses and tied it against her head.
“Come,” she announced. “Let Eulalie look at your destiny.”
“Oh . . . I mean no disrespect, Miss Eulalie Echo, but I don’t want to be temptin’ no Devil spirits.”
A smile crept across Eulalie’s thin lips. “That bit o’ Devil in your belly’s gonna serve you well.”
Mary suddenly felt queasy again. “I’ll just be on my way with the remedy if that’s all right,” she said feebly.
Eulalie made no argument and handed her a brown glass bottle. “Pour half in tonight’s bath. Half in a bath tomorrow morn,” she instructed. “Till then, the gleet’s fleas’ll infest anything that dare comes near, so you prig yourself up.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mary moved to take some money from her boot.
“Keep that money to yourself, child,” Eulalie said. With a quizzical look, Mary shimmied off the table. “But promise Eulalie you’ll return at the waning moon . . . Mary.”
Mary opened her mouth, but nothing came out. This room was doing strange things to her head—she certainly didn’t remember having ever been to Rampart Street, and she also didn’t recall telling Eulalie, or anyone else here, her name. She pocketed the medicine bottle and with weak knees stumbled across the room, past the jars and the flailing turtle and the Virgin statues. She opened the door and nearly smacked full into the round, violet, bustled bottom of a woman waiting in the narrow hallway.
“Quel culot!” the woman cried, startled. She pivoted, and Mary’s eyes grew wide at the sight of her. She was the most stunning woman Mary had ever seen, with mocha skin paled by a thick layer of white powder and contrasted by a frame of fiery red hair. She sparkled with diamonds in her ears, at her throat, and on her fingers. From a thin chain around her neck, the woman lifted a monocle and brought it to her right eye to give Mary a quick up and down scan. “Hmm,” she announced.
Eulalie’s crackly voice interrupted Mary’s trance. “Come, Countess.”
Countess? The satiny layers of her skirts rustling, the woman swept past. Eulalie’s door clicked shut. Dumbfounded, Mary remained in the hall, the musky-sweet scent of jasmine perfume lingering. A countess, Mary continued to marvel. A real, live countess! Miss Eulalie was right, the gleet ain’t partial.
The air felt good on Mary’s flushed face as she hurried toward home. She found herself looking close at Rampart Street, trying to see if anything struck her as familiar—the children, the side-by-side buildings painted bright colors, the gingham-clothed cala seller. She grew confused as her mind started tricking her into not knowing if she’d passed these sights coming here or if she’d seen them sometime long ago. Damn black magic! Getting to her already! She quickened her steps, but something was eating at her. She traced the sequence of events that just happened, from start to finish, how she’d left Beulah at the crib and headed straight through town. As she went through each moment, she reached the exact same notion: Eulalie knew her name, yet she was sure as her own shadow she never did tell it to her.
As Mary approached her house, she made out the scrawny shape of Lobrano waiting out front. “Wretch,” she muttered aloud. Her head was achy and spinning, and just the distant sight of him drained her. What she wouldn’t give for this man to leave her be tonight.
“Where ya been?” he called out, squinting into the setting sun.
She didn’t have the energy to call back an answer. He leaned himself against the door, biting his dirty fingernails and spitting them at her doorstep.
“Where ya been?” he asked again as she neared.
“To the French Market,” she said flatly.
He looked to her empty hands. “You gettin’ too high and haughty to turn tricks?”
Mary gritted her teeth. “Ain’t feelin’ too good is all. Went to get a remedy.”
He studied her, a look of disgust creeping over his face. “You ain’t gone and got yourself in a bad way, have you?”
“No,” she said, insulted. “I always use the French preventative.”
“Good, ’cause you my little cash cow.” He moved toward her, his wandering hands trying to pick up where he’d left off the other night.
“Can’t, Lobrano,” she said forcibly and stepped into the house, only he wedged his foot so she couldn’t shut the door. He followed her inside, already having scoped the place to know that Charlotte and Peter weren’t home. Coming up from behind Mary, he rubbed himself against her like a feral cat. She could smell the drink on him, a constant smell these days. Her fingers traced the outline of the remedy bottle in her pocket, and she could hear Miss Eulalie’s voice warning of the gleet’s fleas.
“Ain’t a good idea, Lobrano.”
He grunted and pushed Mary onto the cot, onto the clean white blanket where pregnant Charlotte slept. She had tried to warn him, but since he wasn’t willing to listen, Mary stopped resisting and let her body uncoil. She planned how, not a moment after he left, she’d strip the bedclothes and boil them in a kettle of water. Leaning back, she tried to hide the little smile playing on her face—Lobrano deserved exactly what he was about to get.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dauphine Street
The moonlight began to dim over Venus Alley. It was difficult to tell time here—dusk and dawn didn’t feel much different. There wasn’t the hustle and bustle of early risers carrying out morning chores or hurriedly heading off, freshly scrubbed, to the business district. There was no ritual in the Alley, nothing got closed down and locked up or unlocked and flung open. No signs were taken in and put out. No one washed windows or swept entranceways. Nothing smelled clean here in the morning—nothing smelled clean here anytime. The doors were always open, the noises always the same. The street sweepers didn’t much bother to come around the Alley, and neither did the vendors. Only Sam the Buglin’ Waffle Man would roll his painted wagon by and occasionally pipe out a bugle call and a song, knowing it didn’t matter the hour—a hot waffle was good after a romp, day or night.
The Waffle Man is a fine ol’ man,
Washes his face in a fryin’ pan,
Makes the waffles with his hand,
Ev’one loves the Waffle Man.
An old woman with matted hair and missing teeth dumped a chamber pot into the gutter, sending a large rat scurrying. Snitch—eyes and ears ever present—took chase, following the rat. He splashed through the murky gutter water, and the rat screeched as Snitch gleefully stomped on its tail. He quickly released, then gave chase again. The game continued until Snitch heard a pounding sound, growing louder and louder. He turned to look up, then froze. There in the distance, becoming clearer by the second, was a horde of mounted policemen and paddy wagons charging up the street.
“Lawd,” Snitch said aloud. He filled his lungs with as much air as he could suck in, then let out a piercing wail, the Paul Revere of the Alley: “Po-leeece! Listen up, all yous, the police are a’coming!” Th
en he darted out of sight, taking cover beneath a stairway.
His warning was of little use. By the time the whores who were not otherwise engaged in compromising positions sauntered to their doorways, the police were already dismounting, pulling batons from their belts, and storming the Alley. They kicked open crib doors as high-pitched screams tore through the street. From doorways and behind corners, partially clothed whores and trouserless johns made mad, frantic dashes in every which direction.
Secluded in his hiding place, Snitch took it all in. He’d witnessed a lot of strange things on the Alley before, but never had he seen anything like a full-out raid. But why now? Had someone high and influential contracted the gleet from this place? Or maybe that fat dead body turned out to be some important muckamuck? Or, Snitch thought, excitedly, maybe the president of the United States was coming to New Orleans for a visit and this was an early spring cleaning?
In the midst of the chaos, Snitch spotted Police Inspector O’Connor. He knew the inspector’s ruddy face well, since he was a frequenter of Anderson’s Saloon, where he’d sit for hours, knocking back whiskeys on the house.
Referencing a list of some sort, the inspector directed his officers to certain cribs, where their first order of business was to empty them of any whores; next, to barricade the doors with splintery boards.
At the sight of their cribs being boarded up, several pimps who’d been watching from the windows of nearby saloons came racing over. The pimps hadn’t bothered to dash over as their whores were being dragged out, but the moment their property was being threatened, well, that was an entirely different story.
“This crib is mine!” a pimp yelled, and the two policemen nailing the boards turned to him and smiled. Before the pimp knew what was happening, he was handcuffed and shoved into a paddy wagon. This sight stopped all other pimps in their tracks, and they skidded and flailed as they reversed their direction. The not-so-dumb ones kept running, but the really dumb ones ducked back into a saloon, or took shelter in an outhouse, or dove into a ditch—only to be quickly forced out by police batons.
Beulah was one of the unfortunate whores dragged from her crib. Her husky voice boomed up and down the Alley as two officers wrestled her to the ground.
“The hell if I know where Lobrano’s bony ass be!” she shouted in response to the officers’ questioning. “He better pray to Jesus y’all find him ’fore I do!”
“Should we take her in?” one officer asked the other. He grimaced at Beulah.
“The ugly stick sure likes you,” he said to her, and for once she had the sense to keep her mouth shut. “Let her go,” he instructed his partner. “Don’t want to be lookin’ at that all night.”
“Ya heard him, get on now!” the first officer ordered, kicking dust at Beulah. She stumbled away as fast as she could.
From a safe distance, another watchful eye took in the chaos: Kermit McCracken, senior reporter for the Mascot. On his head an ever-present bowler hat, and in his hand an ever-present notebook. It was his personal mission to expose corruption in this city, especially on Venus Alley; given his high calling, he barely ever slept. And now he was practically licking his lips—this was the type of story he lived for. Writing furiously, he recorded how many people had been rounded up and how many cribs had been boarded. After only ten minutes, he’d tallied a dozen cribs barricaded and two paddy wagons packed full, filthy fingers clasping the bar windows as pimps’ bruised and confused faces peered through.
After the screaming and commotion died down, the Alley seemed oddly still but for the whimpering of a few wandering, snotty-nosed children, their mothers having run off to save themselves. A sweaty Inspector O’Connor stood in the middle of the Alley, surveying the destruction with a series of prideful nods. “This constitutes a public service to the city of New Orleans,” he announced, even though the only Alley inhabitants left were tightly packed in the paddy wagons. “Today,” he continued, “we’re throwing out the trash.” With that, he motioned to his men to head onward.
McCracken scrawled a headline in his notebook: “DISGUSTING DEPRAVITY SILENCED ON VENUS ALLEY! BUT FOR HOW LONG? DOZENS OF DEVIL WORKERS IMPRISONED!” before hurrying after them. He couldn’t wait to meet them at the police station and begin his onslaught of questions—this was going to be the story of the year!
Snitch, however, waited until the last officer had disappeared before gingerly emerging from his hiding place. He surveyed the damage. The Alley looked like a battle site with broken glass and debris strewn everywhere; even the rats had taken cover. But Snitch wasn’t sidelined for long—oh no, he had his own agenda to pursue. He dutifully ran off, straight to Anderson’s Saloon.
Snitch found Tom Anderson alone at the bar, calmly sipping a glass of orange juice, reading the front page news of the Picayune. Snitch couldn’t believe his fate—could it be that Tom Anderson himself, lord of the Underworld, hadn’t heard about the raid, and that he, little Snitch of the Alley, was going to have the privilege of telling him? Nearly giddy, Snitch’s chest heaved so quickly he could barely get his words out.
“Saw it all, Mistah Anderson! Scared the bejesus from me! Whole bunch of cribs . . . all boarded up . . . peet daddies hauled to jail.”
Anderson sipped his juice and nodded with feigned concern. “Is that so? Sounds horrible, just horrible.”
Snitch caught his breath. “Oddest thing, though, Mistah Anderson,” he said pointedly. “Inspector O’Connor, he had a list of pimps to arrest. Saw him lookin’ it over real careful and crossin’ off names. And all o’ them, they be the most delinquent peet daddies on the Alley. The cribs that was boarded up, they be the ones Tater and Sheep-Eye always waitin’ on to collect.”
For a moment, Anderson was caught off guard—but just for a moment. Then he chuckled to himself. He’d known the little pest was crafty, but this was rather impressive. He gave the kid a crooked smile. “Snitch,” he said, “you just might have enough gumption to be mayor of New Orleans one day.”
Snitch nearly burst with excitement. “Ya mean it, Mistah Anderson? Ya really mean it?”
Anderson reached into his pocket and took out a fifty-cent piece. “Now get on outta here,” he said, tossing the coin.
CHAPTER SIX
Mary didn’t exactly know why, but as she walked to work, she found herself straying from her normal route and turning onto Customhouse, and then onto Marais, and suddenly, she was standing outside of Pete Lala’s Café.
She craned to hear piano music, but there was none. Slowly, she walked by the windows of the café, watching the black folks inside eating and laughing. She spotted the piano, asleep in the back, its lid closed over the keys. She had a sinking feeling, but it was immediately followed by a touch of relief. It was just as well that she didn’t encounter that piano player again.
She turned back toward Venus Alley, but as she neared, she sensed something wasn’t quite right—the streets that were normally wide-awake were as quiet as that piano. By the time she stepped onto the Alley, it was clear a terrible thing had gone down, like a tornado had ripped through this street alone. Mary picked her way among the broken boards and shards of glass. A few other whores were doing the same, trying to see if they could make business today, though clearly the answer was no. Only the rats and raccoons were frolicking as they scavenged among the debris.
As she neared her crib, Mary saw Beulah sitting out front, smoking a corncob pipe. Beulah looked up, and Mary was surprised to feel a comfort in seeing that familiar face.
“We all doomed,” Beulah announced, and Mary’s gaze traveled to the knotty beams that crisscrossed their crib’s door.
“Worst raid these eyes ever seen,” Beulah said.
A shiver traveled through Mary as she digested what had happened.
“Lucky you wasn’t here, girl. Sho as shit, was it ugly! Johns gonna be too ’fraid to ever come back.”
Mary quickly tried to console Beulah, as much as her own self. “You know how short their memories are. You’l
l see. The next boatload of sailors ain’t gonna be wise to any of this. They’ll hightail it over with no care in the world.”
Beulah gave an empty, unconvinced shrug, then took some puffs from her pipe.
Some moments of silence passed before Mary timidly asked, “Where’s Lobrano?”
“Here,” Beulah said, and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a stuffed doll stitched from a potato sack, a red yarn X marking its heart. She’d pushed a straight pin into the center of the heart. “I put a gris-gris on you,” she hissed to the doll, giving the pin another twist to dig it deeper. “Feel this for ev’ry dollar I ain’t gonna earn, for ev’ry bite of food I ain’t gonna put in the bellies of my kin. Feel it, ya maggot, while ya rot in jail.”
Mary lurched. “Lobrano’s in jail?”
“That’s what Snitch told me. Said they dragged his bony ass from the Pig Ankle and won’t let him out till he makes the rent.” She pointed her pipe toward the other boarded-up cribs. “They be in the same awful fate as us’n.”
Mary plopped down on the stoop next to her and noticed that Beulah’s arm was scratched and bruised. “Did they rough you up?”
Beulah winced, then shot Mary a look that she should mind her own business. They sat silently again. Mary’s gaze came to rest on the black magic doll with the pin through its heart. Should be through his crotch, she thought, recalling the night before. She envisioned Lobrano sitting in jail and figured he should just now be starting to itch and burn, with the worst of the firestorm landing late tonight. She giggled at the thought of it.
“Law, you’re soppin’ mad!” Beulah said, inching her rear away from Mary. “You be laughin’ when we be sittin’ here like mites in a steamin’ pile of horse shit?”
Mites? The words knocked the laughter right out of Mary, and she bolted up. All this time she’d been spouting off how she didn’t need Lobrano, and now he was gone—for a bit at least. Here was her chance to fend for herself. Here was the opportunity she’d been waiting for.
