Read Online The Black Rose by Tananarive Due - Free Book Online
Authors: Tananarive Due
Tags: Biographical fiction, Fiction, Literary, Historical fiction, Historical, Biography & Autobiography, Cultural Heritage, Cosmetics Industry, African American Women Authors, African American Women Executives, Walker, C. J, African American Authors, Businesswomen, African American women
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tending the clothes in the tub of boiling water they used to clean the huge bedsheets and tablecloths. She also hated the stink of lye soap, which stayed on her hands and arms for hours after all the washing was done.
Sarah missed the naps she used to take. She missed sitting in the shade watching the riverboats pass with all their majesty. Now, when riverboats went past on washing day, Sarah glanced at them for only the barest moment, watching their paddles churning the water white and the steam hissing from their long smokestacks. They were no longer magical; they were an annoyance. The boats made her angry now; she envied the people she could see on board whose lives on a Saturday afternoon afforded them the luxury of a boat ride. She envied that they could go anywhere they chose, when she could go nowhere at all.
Then, mysteriously, as if God had heard Sarah’s complaints, one day the river simply went away. In April of 1876, in the midst of rainstorms, the Mississippi River flooded over portions of Missus Anna’s lands and retreated from its bank as if it had been sucked out of sight. When Sarah, Louvenia, and their neighbors emerged the next morning, they all stood in huddles staring up and down the sandy, deserted landscape with fear and wonder in their eyes. The river had left behind only ridges and deep puddles in the damp ground, hills of sandy soil and dead fish whose scales glinted in the sunlight. No more steamboats, no more washing place, no more fishing.
No river.
“Where’d it go, Lou? Where’d it go?” Sarah asked her sister in a panic, tugging on Lou’s arm. Louvenia shook her head, unable to speak. During that first impossible instant, as she surveyed the land that had been a riverbed only the day before, Sarah’s young heart once again tasted the lonely realization of how small and fragile her life was, how little she could control the world around her. I wanna leave this place, Sarah thought fiercely, clinging to her sister. If even the river’s done left, how come we can’t, too?
Sarah realized later that the mighty Mississippi River had simply changed its course, flowing a few miles away. But her desire to go somewhere else, anywhere else, remained firm.
A little more than two years after her parents died, Sarah thought her wish was about to be granted. Alex came to visit them, clean-shaven, wearing a fresh Sunday shirt and pants with suspenders. Sarah thought maybe he’d met a girl and was getting married, but he said he’d decided there wasn’t enough steady work in Vicksburg. Life had changed dramatically since the previous year’s flood, he said, since Vicksburg had been cut off from river traffic, too.
“Durn river’s lef’ Vicksburg high an’ dry,” Alex said. “Them wharfs where people was workin’ ain’t nowhere near a drop o’ water. You should see ’em now, ’bout a mile an’ a half inland when the water use to come right up on ’em. They done built a new pier, but there’s so much mud the wagons is gettin’ stuck. So them boats is passin’ us on by, an’ all them crews an’ travelin’ folks is goin’ someplace else. I ain’t never seen it so quiet at the hotel I work at, Chamber’s. Time was, the place was full of folks. The boss man say he can’t keep all us porters on when he got so many empty rooms.”
Sarah had also heard Missus Anna complain about how Delta had been cut off from the river, leaving the former river town hidden behind a sandbar and wildly growing young willow trees. To Sarah and Lou, the change meant they had to struggle to fill their tubs with water from the shallow bathing creek not far from their cabin, which seemed shallower all the time, or else beg a ride on Missy Laura’s mule-drawn wagon to travel several miles to the river.
“So I’m leavin’ today,” Alex announced brightly. “Goin’ west like Papa wanted to.”
“We goin’ out west?” Sarah shrieked, no longer the least concerned with the Mississippi River
Sarah missed the naps she used to take. She missed sitting in the shade watching the riverboats pass with all their majesty. Now, when riverboats went past on washing day, Sarah glanced at them for only the barest moment, watching their paddles churning the water white and the steam hissing from their long smokestacks. They were no longer magical; they were an annoyance. The boats made her angry now; she envied the people she could see on board whose lives on a Saturday afternoon afforded them the luxury of a boat ride. She envied that they could go anywhere they chose, when she could go nowhere at all.
Then, mysteriously, as if God had heard Sarah’s complaints, one day the river simply went away. In April of 1876, in the midst of rainstorms, the Mississippi River flooded over portions of Missus Anna’s lands and retreated from its bank as if it had been sucked out of sight. When Sarah, Louvenia, and their neighbors emerged the next morning, they all stood in huddles staring up and down the sandy, deserted landscape with fear and wonder in their eyes. The river had left behind only ridges and deep puddles in the damp ground, hills of sandy soil and dead fish whose scales glinted in the sunlight. No more steamboats, no more washing place, no more fishing.
No river.
“Where’d it go, Lou? Where’d it go?” Sarah asked her sister in a panic, tugging on Lou’s arm. Louvenia shook her head, unable to speak. During that first impossible instant, as she surveyed the land that had been a riverbed only the day before, Sarah’s young heart once again tasted the lonely realization of how small and fragile her life was, how little she could control the world around her. I wanna leave this place, Sarah thought fiercely, clinging to her sister. If even the river’s done left, how come we can’t, too?
Sarah realized later that the mighty Mississippi River had simply changed its course, flowing a few miles away. But her desire to go somewhere else, anywhere else, remained firm.
A little more than two years after her parents died, Sarah thought her wish was about to be granted. Alex came to visit them, clean-shaven, wearing a fresh Sunday shirt and pants with suspenders. Sarah thought maybe he’d met a girl and was getting married, but he said he’d decided there wasn’t enough steady work in Vicksburg. Life had changed dramatically since the previous year’s flood, he said, since Vicksburg had been cut off from river traffic, too.
“Durn river’s lef’ Vicksburg high an’ dry,” Alex said. “Them wharfs where people was workin’ ain’t nowhere near a drop o’ water. You should see ’em now, ’bout a mile an’ a half inland when the water use to come right up on ’em. They done built a new pier, but there’s so much mud the wagons is gettin’ stuck. So them boats is passin’ us on by, an’ all them crews an’ travelin’ folks is goin’ someplace else. I ain’t never seen it so quiet at the hotel I work at, Chamber’s. Time was, the place was full of folks. The boss man say he can’t keep all us porters on when he got so many empty rooms.”
Sarah had also heard Missus Anna complain about how Delta had been cut off from the river, leaving the former river town hidden behind a sandbar and wildly growing young willow trees. To Sarah and Lou, the change meant they had to struggle to fill their tubs with water from the shallow bathing creek not far from their cabin, which seemed shallower all the time, or else beg a ride on Missy Laura’s mule-drawn wagon to travel several miles to the river.
“So I’m leavin’ today,” Alex announced brightly. “Goin’ west like Papa wanted to.”
“We goin’ out west?” Sarah shrieked, no longer the least concerned with the Mississippi River
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