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On Anger

My white therapist calls it my edge, I hear
Angry Black Woman. She says, Strength
of Willful Negative Focus. She says, Acerbic
Intellectual Temperament. I copy her words
onto an index card. She wants
an origin story, a stranger with his hand
inside me, or worse. I’m without
linear narrative and cannot sate her. We
perform rituals on her living room floor. I burn
letters brimming with resentments, watch
the paper ember in the fireplace, admit
I don’t want to let this go. What if anger,
my armor, is embedded in the marrow
of who I am. Who can I learn to be
without it? Wherever you go,
there you are. She asks what I will lose
if I surrender, I imagine a gutted fish,
silvery skin gleaming, emptied of itself—

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Yellow Flowers

The yellow flowers reminded her of the fever. Anna had watched her mother’s eyes fill with the same dreaded yellow color overnight, and now the flowers that dotted the Pennsylvania countryside through the coach’s rolltop window brought the memories back. To a seven-year-old girl, the blood from her mother’s mouth and stomach had been shocking, but the image of those jaundiced yellow eyes, so empty and lifeless, is what would forever haunt Anna.

She’d been living with her family in the nation’s capital, bustling Philadelphia, in the summer of 1793, when the fever struck. Her father—a sailor at Arch Street Wharf, where thick swarms of mosquitoes and the stench of waste permeated the air—succumbed after only three days, but not before bringing the devastation into their home and plaguing Anna’s mother and two infant cousins. The babies, their insides so fragile, died quickly; but her mother held on for a while.

Anna dripped wet cloths over her mother’s forehead for two days before the young girl was whisked away by a neighbor, enclosed in a lightless root cellar until she’d lost track of time, and finally stuck on a coach headed away from the city and into the countryside. The yellow flowers caught her attention again. The buds reminded her that she’d never know what her mother had looked like when she’d died, never hear her last words.

“Remember, don’t tell them you’re from Philadelphia,” a voice spoke over her shoulder as the coach approached the Maryland line, “or they won’t let you in. They’ll think you’re diseased.”

The voice belonged to a black man from the Free African Society, but Anna hardly knew him. Thomas: that much she did know. He’d been sent in to help at the request of President Washington because the black men of Philadelphia were immune to the fever, she’d heard. Thomas was the one to find her in the root cellar after her neighbor had disappeared—died, more likely. Anna still had several roots and canned meats from that cellar in her overnight carrier; she’d been thankful her hiding place held provisions, and Thomas had been thankful that she’d shared the meats with him. Touched by her plight, he took the great risk of escorting Anna out of Philadelphia before the fever could claim them both. Apparently, he hadn’t been so convinced that black men were any more immune to the fever than whites.

Just over the Maryland line, families gathered to find their panicked loved ones and to band together to build shelters for any unaffected evacuees. Thomas knew this, but insisted they pass by this camp to avoid detection. The bordering states quarantined refugees and refused to let them cross the state lines. Many of the evacuees were infected, spreading the fever, so traveling farther onward would keep Thomas and Anna alive.

More yellow flowers sprinkled the meadows as they passed, and the sun blazed violently, blinding Anna. Her forehead felt moist; was she sweating? Her eyes fuzzied. When she could see clearly again, a figure moving among the camp stole her attention. She knew that figure. She knew those arms, the height of those shoulders, even that floral apron she’d seen for all her life.

“Stop the coach!” Anna cried. “It’s Mama!”

Thomas squinted in the sun, contemplating. To stop the coach could mean death. He looked back at the little girl, knowing this, but knowing that if he didn’t stop, then that also meant death. He’d risked life and limb to bring them this far, but. His heart sped up, and he worried his bottom lip with tight teeth, a tight jaw.

“Stop the coach!” he called out, pounding the wood behind his head. “We’re here.”

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Every Step Counts

Rose Mercaida—the Rose Mercaida of the renowned Henningberg Estates—ran her thumb back and forth over the chipped piece of gilt porcelain until the flesh reddened, then tore, then bled. Absently, she moved her forefinger over the teacup’s rim in the same fashion until that finger, too, bled. The dainty porcelain cup was from her mother Estabelle’s set—the Estabelle Catherton of the renowned Henningberg Estates. As the drops of blood formed on Rose’s fingers, she threw the teacup at the wall, shattering the fragile thing into pieces.

Within moments, she’d walked, counting each step aloud, to the hutch beside the parlor table, swung open its creaky doors, and pulled from its perfect place the rest of the tea set. Rose eyed the pieces, counting each cup once, then again, the matching creamer and sugar bowl, pitcher, tongs, and tiny spoons. And then, she released her hands from the tray. The porcelain shattered along the hardwood floor with such a racket that she heard her husband, Errol Mercaida—the Errol Mercaida of the renowned Blester Park and now of the renowned Henningberg Estates—stir in his study. As the shards flew and rolled and rested where they’d landed, she noted each piece.

Counting the steps back to the sink—twenty-three, always twenty-three—she lifted the bar of lye soap and pumped the water until the rusted, brown liquid fell into the basin below it. Eleven pumps—it always took eleven pumps. She scrubbed her hands until the blood stopped, then counted her way to the broom closet. The way the broom sat on the floor, pushing up one side of its cornhusk bristles into a permanent lump, annoyed her. That would have to be fixed. She’d remember to tell Errol to fix it right away. It could not wait. No, it simply could not, she decided. The thought was broken when she looked down at her fingers and realized the blood had reappeared. She couldn’t touch the broom with blood on her fingers; that wouldn’t be right. So, she stepped the fourteen steps back to the sink, pumped the eleven pumps on the waterspout crank, and scrubbed with lye soap until the blood was gone.

Back at the broom closet, she lifted the broom, then swept the mess in both the kitchen and in the parlor before the blood could form again on her fingers. The blood had helped her concentrate, given her focus. Twenty-three steps back to the sink, and she’d scrub with lye again, then carefully put the broom into the closet in the opposite direction, curving back the bent bristles. That would have to be remedied. And soon. It’d be all she could think on, until Errol fixed it. He’d have to fix it soon.

Weaving through the kitchen and parlor, she looked for stray pieces, evidence of her distress. Oh, how her mother had loved that set! How had one become chipped unbeknownst? Surely Errol was to blame. The lout had never been careful. On her trail through the now-invisible disarray, she noted the nicks in the wall where the culprit cup had slain the early-Victorian fleur-de-lys wallpaper—that would have to be fixed!—and she ran her toe over the hardwood where the beautiful hand-gilt pitcher and teapot had collided with it, noting that it was two strips of the hardwood that required immediate replacement. Before the blood could start pooling again, she wiped a fingerprint from the hutch glass with her handkerchief, then peered inside to right anything that might have moved from the departure of the tea service. Only a Wedgwood bowl had been bumped, and she stoically bumped it back. Something would have to fill this space. She pondered what could possibly fill it, pleased that this thought took her mind momentarily from the problem of the bent broom husks.

Rose stood over the sink basin again, at count seven of pumping, when Errol meandered into the kitchen. She raised her unoccupied hand, warding him from speaking.

“There will be four more,” she spoke brusquely, and noted with respect how Errol calmly waited for four more thrusts before speaking.

“I heard crashing from the study. Is everything all right?”

“No. There is a nick here in the wallpaper. All of this wallpaper will need to be redone. There are two dented boards in the parlor that require replacement. The top hinge on the hutch needs to be oiled. It is creaking and moaning like an old biddy, but do be careful, Err, not to leave a smudge on the glass. And wipe the oil down so there is no trace of it dripping. I don’t like the smell of it, either. Maybe spritz the air with that French cologne I like—”

“Do you have blood on your fingers?” he asked indifferently.

“—I wasn’t finished. This one cannot wait. The broom, Err! I must have a hook installed in the broom closet so that its husks cannot be bent. Its husks are bent. You know we can’t have that.”

“No, no, we can’t have that,” he whispered, looking again over her shoulder. “Are you bleeding? Let me have a look.”

“A little lye will do the trick. Something must fill a space in the hutch,” she went on, staring out the window, noting the smudges along the sill. She counted them. There were four. Why had she not noticed them earlier? Errol must have put them there, the lout. He’d never been careful.

“Lye will only rip it open. Let me bandage it up.” He placed his hands cautiously on her shoulders and turned her toward the wash closet.

She held her breath. The smudges on the windowsill! She had to clean them. There were four of them. It would be all she could think on, until she could return to blot them clean, tidy, right again.

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In the Blood

“For heaven’s sake, Dr. Rower,” Antoine’s prepubescent shrill rang out. “You picked a mighty day upon which to be late.” The wiggling worm of a farmer’s bastard tugged Dr. Leofric Rower down the hall toward a room filled with loud cries juxtaposed with whispers.

“On the contrary, boy,” Leofric said, consciously toeing the tear his splintered wooden shoe had gnawed through his linen hose. “Seems good a day as any to be late.” He eyed the hourglass on the hallway table. “Not that I’m late at all. It appears our patient is early.”

“A man doesn’t choose what time his cousin runs him through, sir.”

“Nor does a man choose the time his body fancies slumber.” Leofric fiddled with his demi-worsted kirtle and pulled his jacket over it, wishing for buttons that aligned enough to fasten. “His cousin, you say?”

“Yes, see—”

“I do see.” He could ponder only briefly, when a meaty arm separated him from Antoine’s. He turned to the man at his heels who’d followed from the foyer. A twisty, hostile sot of a man with a mustache fresh from the carnival of commedia all’improvviso.

“I must request,” a meaty voice that matched the arm insisted, “that cause of death—”

“Has the fellow died, then?”

“Well, not yet,” the meaty man said. “But I pray it held discreet. For you see—”

“Yes, I do see,” Leofric said. “You are the cousin.”

“But he didn’t deserve the lady!”

“And I suppose she had no sword of her own?”

Leofric peeled the cousin’s fingers from around his arm and turned toward the hallway into the operating room. The whispers fell silent; the cries remained, though growing weaker. A woman scurried to the ewer, and two men took abrupt leave, Antoine turning with them. The meaty cousin followed Leofric into the room, but the doctor pushed the unwanted culprit back out and yanked Antoine back in.

“I wish only for my assistant,” Leofric said. “The rest of you, out. You, too, woman. Out.” All protests laid to waste, Leofric turned to the young, eager Antoine, then to the patient, now unconscious. “My, this fellow has lost a lot of blood.”

The doctor pursed his lips into a pucker, then twitched them from side to side, simultaneously twisting a jacket button in rhythm. A cluck of his tongue preceded a dash to the storage cupboard, where Leofric extracted two needles attached to the ends of metal tubes, rusted and pedestrian in construction, jointed together by the same clay cement that lined housing stones, and attached in the middle with an ineffectual tin cup and a pig bladder that was still crusted with the dried blood of previous patients.

“Antoine,” Leofric said, “that dog behind Mr. Snivel’s backhouse—have you seen it? Fetch that beast for me, will you?”

“The dog?”

“The dog, yes, yes, the dog.” He wagged a finger at creased eyebrows. “Aht-aht, no buts.” Then he clapped his hands together twice. “The dog.”

Within minutes, the boy returned with the procured dog, sneaking in through the rear door, and depositing the yapping thing into the doctor’s arms. A wave of ether found the cur’s nose and knocked it unconscious. Antoine’s jaw fell.

“The man needs blood,” Leofric supplied in response. “Dogs are like humans in mannerism. Both run warm with blood, walk on land, and whimper when hungry. Both long for naps in the afternoon and chase with lolling tongues the tails of unaffected ladies. A man may have once walked on all-fours, but even if not, he certainly knows how to do it when begging. Their blood, therefore, must be similar enough.”

“Is that a medical fact, sir?”

“Of course. Write it down.” He pricked the dog’s hind end with one of the needles, stuck the other needle into the patient’s arm, and suctioned the tin cup over the latter needle hole. “So, let’s give the man some blood, shall we?” A hint of a smile played across the doctor’s lips when he squeezed the pig bladder, drawing forth blood from the beast and injecting it into the man, while Antoine worked to suture the sword wound at the man’s ribs.

In moments, the patient was convulsing. His heart beat rapidly, and red splotches broke out around the needle in his arm. He shook without gaining consciousness, his eyes rolling back in his head, his tongue sagging out of his mouth. Strange wet gurgles left his throat, and his blood-receiving arm clenched into a curl from fingertip to wrist to elbow to shoulder. Then, everything stopped. After a pause, Leofric leaned his ear to the man’s chest, but all was still.

“That was fascinating!” he said.

“Fascinating?” Antoine squeaked. “You killed him!”

“Oh, blather, I didn’t kill him; his cousin killed him.” The doctor waved his hand in dismissal. “I can’t be held responsible for every sorry praddlebum who swings a sword around and sticks his cousin in the belly fat. Besides, I hear tell he didn’t deserve the lady.”

On inconvenient cue, the coroner’s heels clicked down the hall. Leofric, annoyed but astute, plucked the needles from the dog’s butt and the dead man’s arm, and dragged the unconscious animal over to the storage closet, forcing the cur into a space entirely too small for its furry bulk. He had gotten the storage hasp mostly latched when the door to the room opened, and the coroner entered. Leofric stepped in front of his patient.

“Dead, I presume,” the coroner said without looking up. “The family alerted me. This is my third stop here this week, Dr. Rower.”

Leofric draped a corner of the bedding over the gaping sword wound at the patient’s side in the time it took the coroner to remove the parchment and charcoal nubbin from a well-fitted linsey-woolsey pocket.

The coroner asked, “And how did this one die?”

“The Dyspepsia,” Leofric replied. “Seems it took him early, the poor fellow. You know how it is this time of year.” A scratching and whimpering came from the storage closet, and Leofric coughed loudly, clearing his throat to cover the sound. The coroner looked at the storage closet, squinted, then added, “Best see you don’t come down with the Dyspepsia yourself, Doctor,” before he quit the room with a curt nod.

“Well, that was easy enough,” Leofric said, dusting his hands together.

“The Dyspepsia?” Antoine asked disbelievingly.

“Sure, why not?”

“Is that a medical fact, sir?”

“Of course. Write it down.”

“What if his family finds out?”

The doctor unlatched the storage closet, and the simpering cur leaped out, cowering in the corner and licking its rump. “I’m sure this poor chap’s meaty cousin would heartily agree that the Dyspepsia is a fast killer of fine men. Faster, on occasion, than murder.” The doctor looked at the dog.

“But—”

“Take this down.” He waved a hand at Antoine until the boy lifted a feather and a parchment. “Dog blood not compatible. Next time, use a sheep. A lamb is calm. That might run in the blood to gentle a thrashing man.”

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One Night, When the Breath of August Blew Hotter

               “It isn’t as if you liked him. I hardly think you can feel sorry that he’s lying six feet under.”

               “He’s not exactly six feet under,” Richard said to the haughty woman, as he tugged on her dead husband’s limp arms and battled to keep the overcoat sleeves from slipping free. The battle lost, the dead man’s arms dropped from the sleeves, and a pocketwatch fell from the pocket, bouncing off Richard’s polished wingtip, splattering mud droplets up his spats. Its tick-tock-tick-tock amplified in the darkness, the sound thudding against Richard’s chest like Elda’s heartbeats.

               Elda. What a dame. Any man would die for her, and one did. What a dame; what a shame, Richard had always said. Yet, here he was, lifting Elda’s fourth husband into an early grave without the bravery of questions. He watched her clench the shovel like she would a man’s heart, twisting its handle, jabbing it into the ground with repeated blows. His heart hurt from the careless repetitions, hurt like a heart would hurt if she squeezed it or drove a shovel through it.

               As he turned, he glimpsed a flat object leave her hand and wing through the air and land with a soft thud inside the grave. He squinted to make it out, a shadowy square, then looked at her, and one eyebrow rose on the face that lit like a hovering star.

               “What was that?” he asked and threw a shovelful of dirt on it, then another.                “A souvenir.”

               Dawn creased the horizon by the time he’d kicked the last batch of dirt and leaves over the hidden grave. Streaks of light parted the trees like physical fingers, and Richard panted, wiped his brow, and could see the sweat on the back of his hand. They had to leave. The spot had been carelessly chosen, he saw now, the road rather closer than he’d remembered.                “You didn’t like him,” Elda whispered again.

               “No.” He mopped his face with his cuff. “No, I never liked the man.”

               There again, the tick-tock-tick-tock repeated like a creature scratching initials into tree bark, and Richard eyed the timepiece resting near the toe of his shoe. “Might I have this watch?”

               “For memories, Rick?” she chuckled coldly. “Old times’ sake?”

               “For payoff,” he returned. “Lord knows I’m not getting what was promised from you. So you oughta think real hard about keeping me quiet.”

               Elda raised a brow and her pretty lips curled. Void of thought, her hands clenched tighter on the shovel. She liked that pocketwatch.

               “I’m going for my coffee at the Depot. Have to keep routine.” He dropped the watch in his coat pocket and patted it, then patted his pockets further. His face scrunched. He felt his breast pockets, then his inside pockets, then his outer ones again. Only the outline of the watch, but not … Where was … It was empty. He dipped back into the pocket where it should be, then looked up at Elda.

               She winked, then dropped the shovel, turned, and stepped lightly through the woods until her form disappeared. He stared at the mound like it would awaken, so much more obvious in the brightening light, and the blue of an Amilcar passed through the mouths of trees along the road. He stared and stared down at the grave. A souvenir.

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Corner to Corner, End to End

           I walk across this street exactly thirty-four times a day, dodging a dozen brougham carriages, curricles, and runabouts, carrying exactly twenty-two duffels of linens, thirteen wooden slat-crates of pewter dinnerware, and well over a hundred odd articles in need of cleaning or repair. Tad Bellingham’s iron-gilt rocking horse is the heaviest item in recent memory, and Mary Drader’s brass lapel pin with the New Orleans Greys flag is the smallest. Her grandpappy died in the Alamo, and the pin came from his coonskin cap. Or so she always says through a haze of tears. But then, heck, everyone’s grandpappy died in the Alamo these days, and it doesn’t seem like there were that many soldiers in the siege, so there’s that niggling feeling when Mrs. Drader cries that maybe, just maybe, it’s simply a plain, old pin from nowhere and nothing at all. But who am I to tell Mary Drader, daughter of an English earl and founder of the Ladies Sewing Circle of Baltimore, that her grandpappy never saw day one of the Alamo? No one. I am no one to say that to her. My only job is to make that brass sparkle, and sparkle I make it.

               I will never live among the richest families in Baltimore, but I know what it is to be among them, to see their fine pine balustrade staircases and their handcarved mahogany hutches, buffets that span the width of a wall, to watch them wind their expensive music boxes and pick at the ruffles of their fancy dresses like they’re embarrassed that I’ve seen them wearing such frippery. I will wash that frippery clean uncountable times, in all its stages of embellishment, as it receives new sashes and fabric-covered buttons and lowered, raised, lowered, raised, lowered, lowered, lowered necklines that go in and out of fashion—anything to let society think each iteration is an entirely new frock. I’ll show up without shame at the rear door in the same clothes I wore yesterday and each day before that, and I’ll collect those frocks and scrub them spotless in all their reincarnations.

               Mary Drader particularly likes me to take her linens. She has an endless supply of them, that woman. Just as all the fine ladies of Baltimore, she prefers the linens scrubbed until they’re soft, never starched, as white as new snow, and folded very meticulously from corner to corner, then end to end, then corner to corner again. Unlike some laundresses and seamstresses, I’ve learned that the sun at noon will bleach gone the darkest stains in wet fabric—that baking soda and borax dry too stiffly, vinegar leaves a potent stench, but hydrogen peroxide is virtually undetectable.

               Jefferson Mooring particularly likes me to take his copper. He says I make it shine as no one else can. Lately, I’ve gotten his pewter, too, beating out Elizabeth Ward to take on the entire dinnerware collection of one of the most prominent families in Baltimore. I’ve learned, unlike some of the girls, that a mere kiss of lemon can scour the dullest copper pot to a brilliant luster worthy of kings, and that a strange paste of flour, vinegar, and salt dried onto polished pewter will make it at least worthy of a king’s guests. Ma taught me all she learned from her aunts before they lost their home and belongings in the Reconstruction. What I do, I do well.

               Today, I have to knock on a new door. I’ve heard from Baltimore’s gossipy laundresses that it is a hard door to knock upon, for the man behind it has a scowl that would curdle milk. I think I know what this means, but since I have only ever drunk curdled milk for the entirety of my life, this does not sink in as perhaps it should. When Mr. Bateman—the Mr. Enoch Bateman—opens his door, I am instantly scrutinized. My black hair is too out of place here. Buoyant, yellow curls and fair, unblemished skin is the fashion. I am leathered from the sun, and I imagine he would not like that my high cheekbones and dark eyes descend from the blood of the Mohegan and not from the breeding of a Yankee gentleman. He thinks me too unkempt, too scrawny. But there are things I have come to learn, and though his scowl is undoubtedly received by all the young maids who approach his elegant silver doorknocker, I know his scrutiny stems not from my scrawniness or my pockmarks, but rather … from the fact that I am a boy. A boy laboring at what Mr. Bateman considers woman’s work.

               The disgust he shows me is surely the disgust he shows all creatures, but there is new derision reserved for a boy resigned to what this man has decided a station for women. Not even women: girls. Mr. Bateman thrusts a duffel of linens at me, certain I cannot possibly fold them corner to corner with any expertise. Next follows jangling oversized pewter spoons crashing into my arms and a spavined copper cuspidor requiring polish to a shine. His smirk says he expects the thing never to shine again and gives me a cold good-luck. Then there are coins, very few of them. Far too few of them. I’ll give the coins to Ma and abide the silent appraisal she’ll comb over the pitiful lot and then over her cheated son, just as I’ll abide Mr. Bateman’s silent glower that states plainly that a woman’s station is for a woman to learn; and it is for a man to learn a different place.

               But he will not be so haughty when his linen is folded corner to corner, end to end, bleached with the wrath of the sun at high noon, when his pewter gleams for kings’ guests, when his copper shines with the kiss of lemons.

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