The Sound of Building Coffins Page 8

  Opportunities of employment for young girls in the Parish came down to whoring or factory and field work. Whoring paid better than the others—and wasn’t much dirtier all told—so the choice was bitter but obvious for pretty tan gals of color like Diphtheria Morningstar. So at the tender age of fifteen, Diphtheria had rented herself a crib on Marais Street and got busy.

  When a gal is working the cribs, it means she rents a tiny room in a shotgun row house at the dirty inner crust of the district, puts out a red lantern and pays rent to a landlord who doubles as pimp. The room is so small that her bed must be narrow, so narrow that it can’t hold two unless one is on top of the other, which is the idea anyway. A bed, a stove for heat, a washstand and two lanterns; one regular and one red. The red one to draw in flies.

  Most of her memories of that place were reduced to blur by now, but the wallpaper in that crib had remained etched in her brain with perfect clarity all these years. Still had dreams about that wallpaper. Curved burgundy lines joined by small x’s at the ends, making shapes that could pass for either edges of stormclouds or seagulls in flight or razor-wire fencing—depending on her mood and disposition. The paper itself was dingy yellow, curling brown towards the ceiling and warped from leaks. All the cribs had their leaks. “If it got no leak then it wouldn’t exactly be a crib,” Oscar the Pimp once told her by way of excuse for not fixing hers.

  Money is short but steady in the cribs. This is the low budget world of whoring where sailors can have a go for a dollar or less, usually counted out in the form of nickels and dimes. “Crib-nickels” they called them—sailors rarely holding paper money in their pockets. The higher class bordellos of Basin Street are for the mid-to-high society men who want more than just to fuck; they want music and atmosphere and a woman’s tender touch (along with tender lies) before their britches come down. It’s the tenderness and music that costs extra—you can’t expect such fancy things for no combination of crib-nickels.

  In the cribs, the pay is low and tenderness is dispensed at the whore’s discretion, but traffic is high and the nickels can really add up if a girl works long hours.

  Five solid years in that crib on Marais.

  Five years turning sheets over between customers because she didn’t have time to wash. Five years of watching other girls get sick, then die of flesh plague, wondering when her own turn might come up—hoping, on some days, that it might be sooner rather than later. Five years of being handled rough by sailors, listening to their nasty mouths and feeling their fists when they couldn’t get it hard after six months eating sea rations spiked with saltpetre. Five years wiping tears from the faces of women who had to decide between a “trick baby” and a visit to Doctor Jack for a “cure.” Five years of phony smiling, leaning half naked through a window saying, “C’mon pretty papa, come take a li’l nap with mama.” Drawing in flies. Needing their nickels. Hating their grins. Wishing them harm.

  Sometimes doing harm.

  During her time in the cribs, Diphtheria Morningstar had kept a knife under her mattress. Seven-inch blade with a four-inch wooden handle, a knife meant for gutting fish. Just in case, for self defense.

  Diphtheria knew better than to use a blade simply because a john might give her a smack on the jaw or skip without paying. Oscar would turn her over to the cops quick as a whip for cutting a john over something so small. But if her life was in actual and immediate peril, well, that was a different matter. A pimp can’t make a red penny off a dead whore, and so Oscar tended towards sympathy regarding humanitarian plights that might result in lost profits.

  The bruises around her throat had been proof enough for Oscar on the night she’d used the fish knife. The bruises were less from pressing than from the rub of rough, callused hands, but those hands had meant to kill Diphtheria Morningstar all the same. Oscar had been a real sport; dumping that sailor’s body in the Bayou St. John and bringing around a clean mattress with a new set of sheets that same night. Oscar had snuffed out Diphtheria’s red lantern while the night was still young, told her to rest up, feel better, don’t worry about the cops—and even gave her a dixie (a ten dollar bill) to keep her mouth shut. Oscar had taken care of everything the night she had killed the sailor—and by the next morning it was like it never happened. All gone except for the remembering.

  Remembering his limp dick flop against her thigh, only getting harder as his fingers tightened around her neck, his eyes feeding on her terror, filling his terrible, handsome face with a look of cold confidence and dumb power, his complete control over her life and death being the key to his sexual success, to his defeat of the saltpetre in his veins. She remembered looking into those wide black pupils, eyes like a shark, and seeing death. A part of her beaten soul welcomed the sight.

  She remembered the ease of giving up, slipping into sleep, watching those depthless eyes fade and melt into the flickering gray of his face, a concrete statue come to deliver her from the crib. Was this man her knight in shining armor? Come to take her from this awful place, to show her something better?

  No, he wasn’t that. Wasn’t that at all. But it was true he had delivered her from the crib. At least for a moment.

  For a moment she was gone.

  Diphtheria remembered touching death with her fingertips, caressing its cheek, kissing its nose, swimming in its thick waters, its music tickling her ears. The music was familiar and telling, its voice gentle and firm. It was the sound of Buddy’s horn, the same strange sound it made the night her father died, the sound it made while Buddy’s fingers splayed and stretched above the instrument, impossibly; not touching the keys at all. The music spoke to her dying mind the night she touched death; said that love was life, not death. Not now, not yet.

  And so, before her heart had beat its last, she had reached beneath the mattress.

  The sailor’s grip on her throat didn’t loosen right off, had even tightened some as the knife dug in, as Diphtheria cranked the handle back and forth, tearing at the sailor from between and beneath thick ribs. His cold look of confidence had slowly yielded to fear as his insides ripped and mingled, and she felt him go limp inside her before any meaningful biological transaction could be completed. As crimson and black spread from between his shoulders to touch warm air, the color crept from his face. Still, his grip failed to loosen—and Diphtheria’s mind went black once more.

  In time she awoke, the sailor cold and motionless, his weight a vast, dead stone across her body. With much effort she rolled him off of and out of her—wedging his naked bulk between wall and mattress edge. Sat at the foot of the bed, thinking. Not crying, not afraid, not proud, not feeling lucky to be alive—not feeling much of anything. Just thinking.

  The sailor was still bleeding and therefore not yet dead, but she decided it would be best not to interrupt the dying process. She waited for the blood to quit its shimmering trickle, waited for its metamorphosis from shiny motion to shiny stillness. Watched him die there on the bed, watched the bright red life vacate his body and ruin her only mattress. When she was sure his life was done, she walked out slow and knocked hard on the door of her neighbor and crib colleague, Hattie Covington.

  Diphtheria’s pounding had caught Hattie in mid-trick. Upon opening the door Hattie looked mighty perturbed—until she saw the blood on Diphtheria’s skimpy fuck-me-silly-in-my-crib-for-pocket-change dressing gown. Hattie’s john had jumped up from the bed; riled as hell, buck naked, swinging his fists in the air and ready to let loose—when he too noted the bright red. Got quiet all the sudden—then got his pants on in a big hurry. Left a whole dollar on Hattie’s washstand before leaving.

  Hattie fetched Oscar. Oscar erased the night. Erased all but the remembering.

  She had killed the sailor during her fifth year working that Marais Street crib. And so five years in the cribs had added up to that. A series of close calls, a long train ride called misery, and a pitiful, endless stream of dirty crib-nickels.

  But in late 1896, before that fifth year was done, everythi
ng changed.

  Buddy’s band got booked out of Charley’s Barbershop on South Rampart Street and into John the Greek’s on 28 Franklin—right across the street from The Big 25, one of the most popular mid-priced sporting houses in the tenderloin. It was a good, solid gig that paid regular paper money—and Buddy’s strange, super-loud way of playing had become a stone sensation. Then, as if to confirm the good omen of Buddy’s big break, a miracle happened. Diphtheria got herself in a family way.

  Buddy’s first reaction to the notion of fatherhood was purest joy, but at the age of only nineteen there was plenty of room for waffling. As the idea sank in and Diphtheria’s belly grew, Buddy’s mind went wobbly and his eyes began to ricochet, returning the flirtatious glances given him by the almost-high-class whores of John the Greek’s; pretty gals, nigh high-yella, who bought him shots of Raleigh Rye and fought to hold his coat.

  Soon Buddy did the inevitable and convenient thing, doubting out loud whether Diphtheria’s child might be his own. This was understandable on a certain level—considering how she’d made her living for the past five years—but hadn’t there been love and promises between them? Hadn’t she stayed faithful to him (in her way) for all that time, five years in the crib? Didn’t he owe her child a father and a good life—even a trick baby, if that’s what it was, now that the good life had finally showed the crown of its head?

  Diphtheria quit crib-whorin’ just as soon as that baby stole her figure away, but she couldn’t help but wonder if having that baby was the best thing to do. And she wondered what God might think of such thoughts, these thoughts of Doctor Jack and his cure.

  When the pregnancy did end, Buddy disappeared entirely. But even without him, she’d managed to make it up from the crib on her own steam. By age twenty-five, she’d made it to the big time, a featured girl on Basin. And now, at twenty-nine, she had a regular customer base, a Blue Book listing of her own, and ten pairs of six-dollar stockings.

  Still, she wondered if she’d made the right decision about Doctor Jack and his cure, that decision she’d made back when times were so hard.

  Chapter sixteen

  Malvina

  “Goddamn shoes.”

  Malvina Latour loved her sister with all of her heart, but after more than a half century of living together she’d still not gotten use to Frances’ habit of leaving shoes strewn about the floor. Frances’ typical response to her sister’s grumbling was nothing like an answer, but something like a question.

  “Mother? Where my little Maria at?”

  And so it went.

  When their own mother died from cholera with Frances less than a year old, Malvina had found herself in the role of mother for the first time at age twelve. Frances had always called Malvina that, “mother”—it had been her first word.

  Raised Roman Catholic, Malvina turned away from her parents’ God by age twenty. By the time she hit thirty she was a full-fledged mambo in the Vodou religion. And when you are a mambo, you are a mother to many.

  Now, at age ninety-nine, Malvina found herself still mothering Frances, now eighty-seven. Their relationship had turned bitter long ago, but neither ever considered leaving the other.

  Frances’ eternal response to her sister’s ire (nothing like an answer, something like a question) was regarding this: In 1853 (fifty-three years previously), Frances’ teenage daughter and only child had died during the worst yellow fever epidemic the city had ever seen. Maria’s death had placed a pain in Frances’ heart, the kind that stays long term. She gave her soul over to pain and resentment then—and never let go.

  For her own reasons, Frances had blamed her sister for the tragedy. Or so it seemed.

  For her own reasons, Malvina blamed herself as well. And so it was, in fifty-three years, not a single word had passed between the sisters. Which isn’t to say there’d been no talking.

  “Shoes.”

  “Maria?”

  Frances talked to herself. And Malvina talked to herself. Always for the other’s benefit, but in no way acknowledging the other’s presence. Not directly. Talking under breath, between teeth. Sometimes whispered, sometimes howled.

  Frances refused to look Malvina directly in the eye, but Malvina often looked into Frances’—and in those eyes she saw the baby she’d once raised. Remembered feeding Frances warm goat’s milk, calming away tiny tears and goosing laughter from that frowning little mouth with funny sounds, impressions of swamp frogs and crickets. Remembered how that little baby would crawl up on her lap as she sat in their dead mother’s big oak rocker, would speak in the wonderful fragmented language of babies, pleading for a song. “Chanson tanpri, Mer.”

  “Song please, Mother.”

  Such sweet memories. Malvina kept these vivid in her mind and close to her heart, always, always.

  And she would sing:

  Mo pap li couri la riviere,

  Mo maman li couri peche crab

  Dodo, mo fille, crab dans calalou

  Dodo, mo fille, crab dans calalou

  Which translated approximately to:

  My papa has gone to the river,

  My mamma has gone to catch crab,

  Sleep, my daughter, crab is in the river

  Sleep, my daughter, crab is in the river

  The daily penance paid by Malvina for the last half century, the penance of her sister’s eyes, had succeeded (somewhat) in soothing her own sense of guilt. But even so, what was done could never be undone, and so she’d wondered. Could she have done more to save her sister’s child? She wasn’t exactly sure. In any case, she knew Maria had not died from yellow fever as she’d led Frances to believe. The truth was something she’d protected her fille from. The truth, she believed, would have killed Frances.

  “Always under foot.”

  “Where my Maria?”

  In 1853 Maria had been the toast of Rue Dumaine, a star attraction at Auntie Jin’s Sporting House. But she’d given her heart to a common man, a lowly cemetery worker. The gravedigger left Maria brokenhearted and heavy with child, making things easy on himself—and so Malvina had seen to it that he paid for his crimes. Among other things, it was hard to be handsome minus a nose.

  The gravedigger’s son had died during childbirth and Maria fell gravely ill shortly after. Malvina had tried desperately to save her niece—had done everything she could think of. Conjured cures of the body, cures of the heart—

  ground cinnamon, 8 parts; rhubarb, 8 parts; calumba, 4 parts; saffron, 1 part; powdered opium, 2 parts; oil peppermint, 5 parts; macerated with 75 parts alcohol in a closely covered percolator for several days, then allow percolation to proceed to obtain 95 parts of percolate, in percolate dissolve the oil of peppermint, dissolve the oil, dissolve the oil, the oil, the oil, powdered opium, 2 parts; dissolve, powdered, dissolve, powdered

  dissolve…

  None of it worked. Nearly out of hope, she’d turned to otherworldly methods. A ritual of the spirit meant to mend Maria’s heart, body and mind—and something more, something special for the gravedigger.

  Malvina would always remember that night. That strangest of nights. That black, black night in 1853.

  “Pickin’ up other people’s shoes.”

  “Where my Maria?”

  dissolve…

  Chapter seventeen

  Blackest Night

  As Maria lay withering in the fall of 1853, Malvina had discovered her own bruised heart lacking in its former capacity for faith. As she prepared for the night’s ritual she was unsure if she possessed the strength required to bring Maria back from death’s edge—but she was quite sure she possessed the skills and wherewithal to ruin the one who had done her harm, the lowdown good-for-nothing gravedigger known as Marcus Nobody Special. Real faith, she determined, was easier to conjure from a heart bolstered by rage than from a heart damaged by sorrow. To fortify her faith, she must focus her rage.

  Discarded corpses were plentiful in the killing season of fever, so it hadn’t been hard for Malvina to locate one suit
ably resembling the gravedigger. The mulatto corpse now lay face-up in an open pine coffin near the foot of Malvina’s altar. The altar itself was a beautiful collage of dried flowers, fine jewelry, gold coin, keepsakes from long-dead ancestors and bones of the dead collected up from the crumbling, shallow-bricked tombs of the poor—all artfully arranged around molded statuettes of Catholic Saints. Other various and appropriate amenities for the lwas (tenants of the Spiritworld) included a fine red rooster, omelets prepared with corn and hot peppers, a honey mixture of corn and black pepper, dried corn mixed with gunpowder, raw tafin liquor, pepper jelly, and a red candle intricately carved into the shape of a woman holding a heart.

  With all preparations in place, the big door of the tall, box-shaped coffee warehouse shut with a hollow boom; signaling the drummers to begin their slow, steady rhythm. Brands held by the dancers were lit aflame, then used to light the many candles of the crowded altar. The rooster responded by squawking and flapping nervously, its plumes bathed dimly in flickering light. Long shadows brushed gracefully up the twenty-foot ceiling’s thick beams, painting various shades of radiant gray on wood.

  The guardians of the Spiritworld gladly protect their earthly children from its more destructive tenants, but these same guardians must be specifically invited and given proper respects before such protections can be enjoyed. First was the evocation of Legba, who holds the key to the gateway. Then of Loco, who will sound a warning crow to alert Legba of any malevolent beings at his back. And lastly, Loco’s wife Ayizan—who will hold at bay any dark being who attempts entry into the world of the living. However, with the gravedigger in mind, chaos and vengeance were not things Malvina wished to avoid on this occasion, so tonight Ayizan, the protective mother of the living, was not to be called—leaving unknown possibilities.