Madam (10 page)

“Hold,” she ordered, pushing Mary’s leg upward. Mary grabbed her own calf and held her leg in the air as Eulalie looked her over.

Even though she spent most days in this position, Mary was uneasy with this strange woman poking around. “I ’spect you can tell I make my business on Venus Alley,” Mary said, surprising herself by the tinge of shame in her voice.

“No matter,” Eulalie said. “Venus Alley or high-class mistress, they all come to Eulalie. The gleet ain’t partial.”

“Even a proper mistress gets the gleet?” Mary asked, thinking it was something that only ran its course among people in the filthy places.

“Half New Orleans got the gleet, child,” Eulalie said.

Wincing at a stab of pain, Mary could feel her eyes welling up. “This
is
just the gleet, ain’t it?” she asked, suddenly concerned.

“Hush, now. Deep breath.” Eulalie pinched a bunch of dried sage between her fingers and hovered the leaves over a lit candle. She trailed the smoke over Mary, and the intense scent stung her nostrils. Her head began to spin. The hazy figure of a man appeared in the room. Mary could make out a mop of dark hair and a scrawny frame. Squinting, she tried to discern details of his face, but he was mostly a blur. Just then, he spoke, and his screechy voice was eerily familiar:
Sign says you pay by the inch. She got thirteen inches there.
Mary squeezed shut her eyes and shook her head.

When she opened her eyes, the man was gone. She blinked, refocusing—he was still gone, as if he hadn’t been there at all.

“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.

C
HAPTER FIVE

Dauphine Street

T
he 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!” Then 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!”