A LADY NAMED ROSE
Chapter Fifty-Four
March, 1918
Darling, I have great news. I have met an
officer in a French regiment who knew my mother...
Rose read and re-read Sebastian's letter a
dozen times. He'd penned his great news January eighth, but it had taken a
month to travel to Meg and Gabriel's doorstep, and yet another to reach her,
due to the premature delivery of Meg's baby girl. The shock of her cousin
Teddy's death in the trenches in Belgium had caused Meg to go into early labor.
The baby was healthy but had to be removed by Caesarian section. Naturally,
Gabriel all but forgot about Sebastian's letter--not that he would have brought
it to Rose anyway, considering his fear of Harlem--but remembered when she took
a day off to see their daughter, named Brigid after Meg's sister. Meg was still
in bed, recuperating; she expressed her concern over Rose's new living
arrangement, but Rose stated that she was very satisfied, and she was telling
the truth.
She read the letter again on the el train.
There was more excitement contained in this note than in any of his previous
correspondence, and it was all over the elusive Elvira. Though he did enclose
the usual stipend for the upkeep of the Bay Shore house, not once did he
mention their wedding plans, or offer an explanation as to why he'd taken so
long to write back this time. He did say that he didn't know when he'd be able
to write again. Rose felt a twinge of anger recalling the many nights she'd
lain awake in terror that she'd never see her fiancé again, especially after
Teddy's funeral service.
"Look, Ma, a parade!"
A little boy of about eight stood at the
window, pointing down at Fifth Avenue. Rose glanced outside to see a contingent
of blacks in full military regalia marching up the street, some carrying red,
black, and green flags. At their head was a large and proud man bearing a
sword. Rose had seen him before--the marches had become a Sunday ritual
here--but he never failed to stir up excitement wherever he went.
"That's him, that's Garvey right
there," a young Negro man indicated to his female companion. "I went
to hear him speak Sunday last."
The conductor announced the 145th
Street stop. Rose stuffed the letter back in its envelope and got off the
train. The Negro passengers barely gave her a second glance, but the few
whites, seeing her exit a colored car, shook their heads and clucked their
tongues. Rose thought segregation was silly and paid it no heed.
She descended the stairs and crossed the
street to her landlady's favorite market. No one was on duty this afternoon, as
the grocer and his family were all outside watching the festivities. In the
window there was a notice about Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement
Association (U.N.I.A.). Rose read it with interest.
"All right, Red, how can I help you
today?" the shopkeeper, one of Yvette Griffiths' oldest friends, asked
when the parade had gone.
All members of the household were expected to
take turns doing the shopping and he'd already gotten to know Rose, but never
called her by name. Rose loved the Caribbean market and didn't mind going out
of her way at all. In Miss Yvette's rooming house she was treated to some of
the best meals of her life: jambalaya, red snapper Creole, oxtail, collard
greens, candied yams, and bread pudding with rum sauce. She commented once that
her landlady's shrimp gumbo tasted a lot like Arnolde's; Miss Yvette shot back,
"He's one of us, y'know...don't look so surprised, girl, there's many
Creole passing where he from. His wife be one, too."
The four-story brownstone was deserted when
Rose arrived. She hadn't a clue where the other tenants were, but she knew Miss
Yvette was attending a social at her son's Baptist church. She went in the
kitchen and set the bags down beside the icebox.
"Need help, ma'am?"
Rose nearly jumped out of her skin and
clutched her chest. "Hosiah, you scared me!" she cried.
She should've known he'd be at home. The
solemn college student seemingly had no family or close friends in New York,
and spent most of his spare time studying in his room.
"Sorry, ma'am. I'll take care of them
for you." He indicated the packages, but made no move to enter the
kitchen.
"It's all right. I just carried them
uphill from the trolley. I can put them away." Hosiah shrugged and turned
to walk away. Rose called out to him. "Please, for the tenth time, don't
call me ma'am. I'm not that much older than you are."
"Force of habit," he replied, and a
minute later she heard the door to his second floor room close with a
definitive click.
So far he was the only one of Miss Yvette's
tenants who hadn't warmed up to Rose, despite her best efforts. The others
urged her to give up, explaining only that Hosiah was from Mississippi and
didn't trust white people, but Rose liked him and refused to be deterred from
trying to make friends.
She found a pear in the icebox and brought it
upstairs to what she jokingly referred to as her suite on the top floor. There
were two spacious bedrooms at either end of a long hallway, with a full bath
and small kitchen in between--Rose often took her breakfast in the latter when
she was in a hurry. Parquet floors and strategically placed potted plants
catching warmth from a stained glass skylight added to the charm of the house.
When Marie brought her around after Christmas to introduce her, Rose didn't want
to wait until Diana returned from her holiday to break the news to her. That
weekend she left a note with her share of January's rent on the kitchen table.
She felt no remorse whatsoever; it was a month-to-month lease, and Diana would
have plenty of time to find someone else to steal from.
Rose sat on her bed and gingerly unfolded the
letter from Sebastian.
Darling, I have great news...
*****
"I see the Garveyites were at it again
today." Rev. Griffiths spoke, derision creeping into his voice despite his
effort to sound neutral. He sat on the chaise lounge in his mother's parlor,
examining a UNIA pamphlet while Miss Yvette prepared a sprawling Sunday dinner
in the kitchen. She'd offered to fix him a plate to take home; his wife, she'd
confided in Rose, was a terrible cook.
"Whatsa matter, Reverend, think they're
gonna steal your thunder?" That jab came from Robert Allen, a Pullman
porter home on weekend leave from the railroad.
"No," Rev. Griffiths scoffed,
"I don't think the NAACP has anything to worry about." He tossed the
handout on the coffee table. "What concerns me is the lengths this
character goes to to get young people's attention. Is giving someone a uniform
and having them strut up and down the street going to help them find decent employment,
or stop the discrimination and violence against us?"
"Looks to me like they're just scaring
people," commented another, soft-spoken tenant. Mr. Latham, a retired
widower residing on the second floor, was so old no one, not even Miss Yvette,
ever called him by his first name.
"So a few white women thought they was
being invaded and passed out," Robert said. "They didn't scare you,
did they, Rosie?" Rose, thus far only an observer to this conversation,
smiled and shook her head.
"Have you heard Mr. Garvey speak,
Reverend?" Hosiah, whom no one had noticed was in the room, spoke up
suddenly. "I have, and I'm joining his movement. My major is economics. I
know where he's coming from. We're pouring all our money into white-owned
businesses. The only way for our communities to thrive is to start our own
companies and get folks to invest in them."
"I'm with you on that, Country,"
said Robert. "I might join up, too, if I can get some more time off."
"I'll believe that when I see you in the
amen corner on Sunday," Griffiths remarked. They all had a good laugh at
that.
Robert approached Rose privately before they
sat down to supper. "I hope you didn't mind me putting you on the spot
like that."
"Oh, no, not at all. I wish more people
would ask my opinion."
"You leave Rosie alone now,
y'hear?" In her customary fashion, Miss Yvette inserted herself between
them. "I won't have her man accusing me of not looking out for her."
There really was no need for her to assume the role of mother hen. Robert may
have been the consummate player--he'd been trying in vain to court Marie for
years--but he knew there were boundaries he couldn't cross, one of them being
the color line.
On Sunday evenings, Miss Yvette, her tenants
and any guests who happened by would have coffee and gossip in the parlor.
There were no guests this week, Robert had to be at work at the crack of dawn,
Hosiah had to study, Mr. Latham's arthritis was bothering him, and a fourth
tenant, a traveling musician, wasn't at home. Rose tried to excuse herself as
well, but her landlady would have none of that. She wanted Rose to listen to a
blues recording by Ma Rainey that someone had given her. Rose had never been
exposed to this type of music before, but was fast growing to appreciate the
sultry rhythms and the often painful emotions expressed through the lyrics. She
settled into an easy chair beside an open window and lit a cigarette, while
Miss Yvette filled a pipe with tobacco. Rose found the sight of the tiny,
sixty-odd-year-old woman smoking a pipe rather amusing at first but was now
used to it. She idly puffed smoke rings through the window, watching passersby
in their Sunday finery.
"You gonna tell me what's vexing you,
child, or am I gonna have to find out some other way?"
Rose refused to look at Miss Yvette. "Nothing's
bothering me. I'm just...enjoying the music, that's all."
Miss Yvette was undeterred. "It's that
man of yours, ain't it? When's the last time you hear from him?"
How did she know? "Today," Rose
said finally. She told her about the letter. Her landlady nodded thoughtfully.
"You worry that he'll find this woman,
and forget to come home to you, no?"
"No," Rose said. "I'm worried
that he won't find her, but he'll just keep looking."
"Oh, yes, I understand. It be the same
way with my daughter, Martine. Always searching, never finding."
"What's she searching for?"
"Happiness." Miss Yvette leaned
over and tapped ashes from the pipe into the fireplace hearth. "Child was
always troubled. I hope she finds what she wants in San Francisco, 'cause she
can't get no further than that."
"I thought she was in St. Louis."
"East St. Louis," Miss Yvette
corrected her. "She had to leave when the white folks rioted, see. Her
house got burnt."
Rose recalled hearing about the riots the
previous summer. Rev. Griffiths had helped to organize a huge protest march in
Harlem afterward. "But to go all the way to San Francisco?" she
asked. "Why didn't she come back here?"
Miss Yvette smiled as if she were addressing
a small child. "You know my pigheaded granddaughter India. Imagine her in
twenty years. That's Martine."
The door chime, loud and persistent,
interrupted their conversation. The visitor didn't even wait a full minute
before knocking. Rose offered to answer it, as she was closest.
When she saw the Western Union uniform, even
before the young man asked for Miss Dawson, her heart rate nearly doubled.
"We had a hard time finding you,
ma'am," he informed her as he handed over an envelope and a clipboard with
a form to sign. "First I went to this house in the Village and they said
they'd never heard of ya, so we tracked down the lady who sent this and she had
to dig around for your new address, and off I went on another wild goose chase
to 18th Street..."
"I was just there," Rose murmured,
trying to place the sender's name on the telegram. At last she remembered:
Sebastian's elderly aunt. She lived with her daughter in Vermont and Rose
hadn't seen them since Alexander Garrett's funeral, but until recently she'd
kept in touch by mail.
"So they told me," the delivery boy
was saying. "You could've waited for me."
Rose read the telegram.
Two Army men came today...STOP...Sebastian
Missing in Action in France...STOP...Please contact me as soon as
possible...STOP.
"Rosie, who's at the door?" Miss
Yvette called from the parlor.
She opened her mouth to answer, but all that
came out was a scream.