“Sir,” she said, as she grabbed up the bag containing the cake and moved in closer to him as they walked side by side, farther into the store.
“Ma’am?” he replied, stopping and turning so that he could focus on her completely with his working eye.
“I have a situation,” she said. “And I beg your indulgence as I explain it and ask for your assistance in a way that I hope you think not inappropriate.”
“Go ahead, please,” he encouraged.
She told him then of her attempts to purchase the scarf for her dear friend, told him how the clerk withheld the scarf. She focused on his working eye; it was a river shade of gray and flinched a few times during her recitation; otherwise his reaction was muted. “I do not profess to have vision into another man’s heart,” she said. “I can only assess his actions, and, sir, forgive me for saying, but his actions reveal his belief that a Negro miss is not worthy of a beautiful scarf, and so he chose to use his considerable power to deny me, when really the only thing that should matter is my ability or not to pay the price that the scarf commands.” She reached into her cape pocket and pulled out her silk purse. “I am fully capable of paying the price of that scarf.” She took a deep breath. “So my request of you, if you be so inclined, is to please purchase the scarf on my behalf.” She pulled a neat fold of dollars from her purse, but before she could count them out he raised his finger to stop her. He asked her to point out the clerk, and the scarf, which she did.
She hung back as she watched him walk in the direction of the counter. His limp was more pronounced, but still he managed to wave at the several people he passed who seemed to know him. She’d chosen well. The clerk held this gentleman in high regard, Sylvia noticed by the mammoth smile that tried to soften the harsh angles in the clerk’s face. He leaned in and spoke to the clerk, and Sylvia attempted to read the clerk’s face, but he turned too quickly and busied himself behind the counter. She shifted the bag containing the cake from one side to the other. She measured the time of day by the slant of sun pushing through the window. She would barely catch Nevada before Nevada left for her birthday night out on the town, if she caught her at all. She’d wanted to see Nevada’s expression when she opened Vergie’s card, and when she saw the detail on the cake Maze had crafted. Nevada worried that Maze thought her without the proper pedigree to be such a close friend to Sylvia, but Sylvia was eager to point to the cake as evidence that her mother did have sufficient affection for her. She stopped her thinking as she watched her well-chosen stranger walk toward her. He extended an expertly wrapped package, and Sylvia tried to exchange it for her neat fold of dollar bills.
He waved the money away. “The lad insists that you accept the scarf as his gift as evidence of his sorrow for his ill-chosen behavior.”
Sylvia gasped, but she didn’t protest. Her mother always told her to accept a kindness with a simple thank-you. To do otherwise would rob not only her of the benefit of the gesture, but would steal also the joy of the one trying to do a good deed. So she said thank you, and curtsied slightly, and he bowed and said good day, and just like that he limped away and Sylvia stood there for a moment and caught her breath. She placed the package in the bag on top of Nevada’s birthday cake and proceeded into the dwindling afternoon sun.
Her legs felt like blocks of ice by the time she reached Fitzwater Street. She was certain Nevada was long gone by now, but at least she could warm herself at Miss Ma’s fire before she started her journey back home. She walked up the few steps and was about to knock on the door, but there was a note on the door that directed any callers further down the street to Buddy’s house. She said “Drats” into the wind and checked herself from saying more. She hated to go down there. Her mother would be mortified if she knew that Sylvia dignified a gambling house with her presence. Even Nevada did not go there, though Nevada’s avoiding the place had nothing to do with the card games. “Too many women spruce around the dining room and kitchen for my liking,” Nevada had once told Sylvia. “And I do not know why my presence brings out the ugly in a bunch of women congregating and cackling. They sneer at me and shoot daggers at me with their eyes as if I am there to invite their husbands to knock skin with me.”
“Well, are you?” Sylvia had asked her, half-joking, which meant that she was half-serious, too.
She reluctantly started in the direction of Buddy’s house, since she couldn’t leave the cake out here on Miss Ma’s steps; nor was she was about to lug it all the way back home.
She held the cake close to her as she walked, cursing the clerk in her head for causing a simple purchase to take the better part of an hour, even as the thought of the glass-eyed man softened her. She concentrated on the house numbers so that she would not bypass Buddy’s. She’d been looking for the numbers when Meda passed her and she’d returned her greeting with a distracted “Good afternoon.” She’d had a delayed reaction, though. Something about the woman—her greeting, her demeanor—had made Sylvia turn back around, but when she did, Meda had already rounded the corner and was out of view. And, anyhow, Sylvia had finally located the house.
The door was cracked and she could hear men’s booming voices, and she thought, I do not think I am going in there. She decided to knock on the door and just hand the cake to whomever answered and tell them it was for Miss Ma’s granddaughter and quickly leave. But then she thought she heard a child scream; it was a terrible scream, so she did go in, she pushed the door all the way, and walked in—and gasped at the scene playing out.
Linc had disobeyed Meda’s instructions to remain in the dining room and sit under the sketch of Abraham Lincoln. Once Meda was out of sight, Buddy winked at Linc, and Linc ran to stand beside him as he shuffled the cards. Buddy had Linc point to which card he should play next, and the man they all called Splotch suffered a hard-to-take loss that hand. Splotch squinted at Linc, then told him, “Commere, lemme show you something.” When Linc did, Splotch grabbed him by the collar and with a quick move produced a switchblade. “You lil cheatin’ white sumbitch, I outta slit your throat,” he said.
Linc screamed and the room went quiet as the women sucked in their breaths and the last note of the harmonica hung and then fell to the floor with the thud of a body dropping, and Linc could feel the chill of the blade against his neck. That’s when Sylvia stepped through the door, though nobody noticed her as Buddy pushed back from the table. He spoke to Splotch in a measured voice. “Turn him loose, Splotch. Right now.”
“He cheatin’.” Splotch spit his words. “He passing signals cross the table, I seen it.”
“You saying cheatin’ going on in my house?” Buddy said. “Then you got a dispute wit me, not him. Now drop the blade and fight me like a man.”
Sylvia’s total focus was on the knife against the child’s neck as she watched a trickle of blood drip between the fingers of the one holding the knife. She gasped as she readjusted the cake and lifted it and held it against her chest as if it were a piece of armor, a breastplate. She did the only thing she could do. She threw the cake in their direction. She grimaced at the sound of her mother’s good crystal cake plate shattering, though the sound it made did certainly have the intended result of distracting the man for an instant, enabling Linc to pull away from him.
Linc ran to the dining room, clutching his neck, and sat in the chair under Meda’s sketch of Abraham Lincoln. He was shaking as Sylvia followed quickly behind him, calling for a swath of cloth, and some brandy or gin or rye—“Any sort of spirits will do,” she said. She pressed her handkerchief against Linc’s neck, relieved to feel no gallop of blood pushing back.
“Beg your pardon, but who are you?” Nola asked, as she produced a jug and a wad of cotton and Sylvia asked her to please douse the cotton with the alcohol.
“She friend to Nevada, aspire to be a nurse,” Miss Ma said. “Do what she askun of you. She siddity from way up there on Addison Street, but she know her trade.”
“I was hoping to deliver Nevada’s birthday cake,” Sylv
ia said, concentrating on exchanging the handkerchief for the alcohol-soaked rag.
“Well, that was one smashing delivery,” Miss Ma said as Linc let out a little yelp at the feel of the alcohol.
“Stings, I know,” Sylvia said to Linc as she pulled back the cotton and leaned in to peer at Linc’s neck while Buddy’s wife held a lamp over her to give her more light.
“It appears to be just a flesh wound,” she said, as she closed her ears to the profanity-laced tirade emerging from the living room, the sound of a table turning over, of grown men wrestling.
“Well, thank the Lord for that,” Nola said. “Just like my Buddy is in there right this instant whipping Splotch’s hind parts, I do believe Buddy’s sister woulda killed Splotch by now with her bare hands had Splotch done for-sure harm to this shere boy.”
“Say it true,” Miss Ma said.
“Does she take care of him?” She tilted Linc’s neck from side to side to inspect the wound from different angles.
“In a way, I suppose,” Miss Ma said.
“Though it appear to be more complicated from what I gather,” Nola said. “The people who employ Sister allow her to cart him and another little white boy back and forth. Befuddling to me, but I do not speak much on it ’round Buddy. He sensitive ’bout his sister.”
Sylvia continued applying pressure to the cut on Linc’s neck. Then she told Linc to open his mouth and motioned for the lamp again as she looked inside. “Can you swallow for me, sweetie?” she asked Linc.
Linc nodded and swallowed, and she asked if it hurt to swallow, and he shook his head no, though his attention was really trained on the living room. Buddy had just stood from where he’d been on top of Splotch, pummeling him, and Splotch picked himself up from the floor; his mouth leaked blood and he cupped his hand under his mouth as he spouted off his attempts at an apology. “I never said you cheated, Buddy, I just cannot figger how you lall this white boy in here anyhow. Like to raising a baby monkey. One day it not gon be so cute. It’ll be a full-grown ape that’s gonna snatch your balls off right from between your legs and eat ’em for breakfast, and then make you watch while he turn your woman into his wench.” He had backed all the way to the door and in one swift move pieced through the broken glass of the cake platter to retrieve his switchblade and what was left of his dignity and then was out the door.
Miss Ma had just let go a stream of laughter as Buddy’s wife went into the living room to survey the damage. Linc held himself stiffly and choked back sobs. Sylvia could tell that he was trying not to cry. “Can you count from one to one hundred?” she asked Linc.
He nodded, and she lifted his hand and put it against the compress she was holding firm against his neck. “I want you to apply steady pressure just as I am doing. I want you to count very slowly from one to one hundred while you do. Keep the cloth right there until you get to one hundred. Are you able to do that?”
Linc nodded again, grateful really for the distraction. He wanted Meda to be back, he wanted to lean his head against Meda’s shoulder. But now he squared his shoulders because Buddy was walking toward him. Buddy was the next best thing to Meda, though in a different way. “How you faring, partner?” Buddy asked him.
“Just a nick,” Miss Ma gasped out, her laughter ending as suddenly as it began. “My granddaughter’s friend claims it, and she studying to be a nurse, so what she claims to be, is.”
Buddy glanced at Sylvia for confirmation. “It does not appear to be serious,” Sylvia said, as she watched Buddy’s expression spread out in relief. “It looks as if he was holding the child’s skin between his fingers so that avoided severing a vein.” She gathered her cape hood around her. “I apologize for the mess I made,” she said, as she started for the living room.
“I made a bigger one,” Buddy said. “And besides, I owe you. Feel free to call in your debt anytime you need sumpin, anytime, anything. My sister love that little boy.”
Sylvia was back in the living room. The musicians and the other card players were righting the turned-over furniture, and Nola began sweeping the debris. Sylvia leaned down and fished up the wrapped scarf. She slid it into her cape pocket and mumbled out a “Good evening, all,” and then pushed out into the air that was darker now, though suddenly not as cold.
LINC DIDN’T TELL Meda the truth of how he’d gotten the scar on his neck. Nor did Buddy or his wife, Miss Ma, the music-makers, or the men who’d been gathered around the card table that evening. Buddy concocted a tale of a fall, and Meda was satisfied that Linc seemed none the worse as a result. Linc did tell Bram about it, though, the way that Linc told Bram everything that happened at Buddy’s house. When Linc got to the part about Splotch talking about Linc growing up to be a full-grown ape who would snatch Buddy’s balls off, Bram gasped and grabbed himself between his own legs. “You said nothing in retort?” Bram asked him.
“I had no words,” Linc said. Then he added that he actually did have words, “but by then the miss who would be a nurse was having me open and close my mouth, and I was mad, I mighta woulda cried.”
“Ah, no, Brother,” Bram said as he lowered his head. “Crying in front of Buddy would not be good if he’s how you describe him.”
“But he is,” Linc insisted. “Buddy says that men never cry, nor boys who plan on becoming men.” He went on then to describe all else that had happened at Buddy’s that day, allowing Bram to feel as if he’d been there, too. Already he’d taught Bram how to curse the way the black men at the table did, showed him how to let a toothpick dangle from the corner of his mouth, how to tell if an opponent across the table was bluffing, how to throw a left hook.
The fighting instruction was particularly useful now at the orphanage, where they were constantly taunted by the other boys because they were favored by Ann, who’d never made a secret of her special affection for them. Ann had held them, after all, and they had not died. They’d been the reason that Meda had walked into that coal-stained foyer, walked into Ann’s life. Every time Ann looked at Linc and Bram, she was grateful to them for that. And though Ann was as quick to hug all of the boys as she was to reprimand them, she’d hug Linc and Bram more, reprimand them less. And they reciprocated in kind. If Meda was like a mother to them, Ann was like a favorite aunt. But then, she left.
MEDA HAD PREPARED herself for Ann’s leaving as much as she could prepare herself for saying goodbye to the person with whom she could shed all of the varieties of skin she’d wear in the course of a day. The only other adult person who’d even come close was her brother, but she’d had to keep that part of herself that had lain with Benin, the part of her that grieved the loss of her infant, hidden from her brother. Ann knew all of that, knew about her claiming Lincoln for her father, knew how’d she’d talk to her mother when she cleaned the penitentiary and her mother would be inside the cell sweeping the floor and Meda would be on the other side looking in and it would feel that one or the other of them was caged and Meda couldn’t tell which. “You both were, sweet lady,” Ann had said as they sat close together on the fainting couch in the parlor. And now, almost ten years later, she was telling Ann goodbye and they were both visibly shaken at the ordeal of it. Ann promised that she would send word when Meda could visit. Meda nodded, even though she understood how the world worked, North or South, it did not matter. There was no other space that would accommodate them like this parlor in this orphanage had: expanding and contracting the way Meda reasoned the universe likely did, forming stars out of vast gusts of nothingness to lend sparkle to the night, laughter, a swath of joy, whispers that glittered. A bolide’s gleaming fragments. And after that it was time for her to go.
9
ANN WAS NOT the only one leaving. Sylvia was, too. But Sylvia’s leave was cause for celebration, not heartbreak; a grand send-off, not secret kisses; accolades, not whispered promises that would be difficult to keep.
Sylvia had received an offer for employment to fulfill the position of assistant to the nursing staff at the Lazaretto, the cit
y’s immigrant processing and quarantine station that jutted into the Delaware River and connected to Philadelphia at its southernmost point. She thought the position beneath her abilities, she was a fully trained nurse after all, but the possibilities inherent in the position enthralled her. Since every ship hoping to enter the Port of Philadelphia had to be cleared through the Lazaretto during the summer months, she might see firsthand the exotic diseases she’d only read about. She would live there for months at a time. She especially welcomed that. The Lazaretto might prove an escape hatch from a conventional life.
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