A Series of Mere Household Events
“On the night of the day on which this most cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant (1), and myself, made our escape from the conflagration.”
- “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allan Poe
“The negro (2) met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.”
- “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner
(1) Marcus Esquire, B. 1809; D. 1908
(2) Robert Esquire, B. 1875
I.
If you’d told me there was no value in the words of the negro, I would be remiss not to remind you of their great Black thinkers, the speeches of which I had the privilege of listening to before settling into the university after haggling with the anthropology department for a small pittance of a room to conduct my work. There is the subdued and dignified Frederick Douglass, Mr. Booker T. Washington — a fine, fine man — and Ms. Ida B. Wells, with whom I once dined. These are great men and a woman who are champions of their race, and who will no doubt go down in history as alleviating the suffering of their people and advancing their cause. As for me, I will have to be content with this room and the opportunity to investigate history in parts hitherto unknown — primarily in the lost words of our country’s former slaves.
It was not until I met Marcus that I was struck by the mysteriousness of the negro, his pulse, his ability to survive, his light that shines from deep within the darkness he holds. Marcus appeared to be a highly superstitious, nervous man who I met over a few days in the course of my research. He refused to meet anywhere near campus, owing to the fact that the brick buildings reminded him of his former employ. He was prone to being sensitive to smells, and had a most strange story to tell involving a cat and some gin. He wanted me to help him find his family that he had since been disconnected from due to their being spread out all over the country, and account of his dying, so he said, any day now. The contents of his letter to his grand-nephew Robert — the only family he could say for sure was alive and who he had tried for decades to find and meet — I will list here shortly. We met three times only until I learned he had died the best death — that of old age and general tiredness.
II. Letter to Robert
Dear Child,
Now that the man has gone to jail, I have run away. If the police had questioned me more, I swear they would have taken me away as well. I was all too ready to get away from that house, filled with dark spirits, and that cat — especially the one they found after he kilt the first one. If it was up to me, that cat, along with all the other animals I had to clean up after, would have never been brought into the house in the first place, but for what she ended up doing for me, I suppose I have to think differently. The monkey was my friend, though, and would sit on my shoulder when I went to get after the other animals. He’d give me bread and whisper things in my ear, and I’d whisper back to him. And the rabbit would also speak to me in her own way. When the man was in town, worrying the mistress and drinking up his gin, the rabbit would get real still — like she knew trouble was heading our way — when she sensed he was on his way back home. She wouldn’t move towards the mistress for nothing. But that cat….
Before I tell you my story, let me tell you how I came to it in the first place. When the man got me from his neighbor, my sister — your grandmother — had just been sent somewhere by the man’s brother the day before. She’d just told me she was with child but wouldn’t say who the father was. That was the last time I saw her. She gathered all that she had — a bag with a comb from her mother, our grandmother’s herb bag, and a book with a red cover (I don’t know what the book said) — and got on that cart. When the man came to buy me the next day, I held my head up high but she was stuck in my chest — your grandmother. I coughed a few times, and the man said I was a weak nigger and that was why I ended up being the last one sold that day. Said I was only fit for picking up plates and dishes and dust. Well that was fine for me. I’d had enough of that field life and working outside from dusk to dawn. The cotton, the sugar, the beans — all sweet things for them to put on them and in them, and nothing for a negro but rough sacks and entrails.
I want to tell you about your mamma in case you never met her. She was my sister’s first child, and she couldn’t hear out of one ear. She could sense things, though, see spirits and talk to them. On account of this, she was keen on shadows and noises in the dark outside our place. She got that from my father and his father — so we were told from those who knew them. They passed when we were little. Once your mother helped me fight a demon who tried to put a hurting on my body. The monster came to me while I slept. I ran to her place, and scared Miss Jane in the process ’cause she thought I was a ghost ’cause I hadn’t bothered to wash the cane dust from myself that day, I was so tired. The demon had taken up in my head, and made me cough and shake. Your mamma, who wasn’t more than fourteen, fifteen at the time, gave me a potion and stroked my head. The shakes passed, and I went to her from then on when they came. She said they came from the other side, and that it was a sign that they were trying to bring me back to them. I just laughed at her. Other side where? But she just shook her head and said not to talk too loud about them otherwise they’d get upset.
Child, I want to tell you about the forces that are out there that live in people and live in animals, and why I ran away in case one day you get around to doing the same thing. Before I ran away, I worked for the man and his wife, like I mentioned. They were poor, and we lived in a house with a cellar. The man took to drink not too long after he got those animals, and treated his woman like an animal too sometimes, mistreating her and calling her names. Dinner time, I’d set the table for two knowing he wouldn’t be around to make it most of the time. And that cat — Missy I called her, but they had some other kinda name for her that I never paid attention to. She took a liking to the man but he stopped being soft on her real fast. “Tobe,” he’d say to me sometimes when he’d come home late and want to mess up the place and wake everyone up, “That cat has it out for me, I swear.” Now mind you, the cat was all black, and was probably a witch or something, come to work her powers on the man for some reason I could never quite figure out.
When he kilt her because he thought she was mocking him and had had enough, it’s almost like she knew her time had come. She told me shortly before she went that she’d return for her revenge. I looked out the window before the fire she brought on us came and saw her swinging out there. She’d fought something terrible when she died. It was cold that day. The apple tree in back was naked, and the building across the court from us was dark from top to bottom — I remember — like the world around us had taken leave to let her pass alone.
When he brought that new cat home, I swore it was Missy come back. As I cleared the table at night, she told me she’d help me get away. She’d marked herself with a noose to let me know she meant it, and that’s how I knew it was really her. What cat would show a negro like me a lynch rope except one that was smart enough to know what can lie ahead when a crazy man has lost his ever-loving mind to the bottle? She warned by fear, I tell you. I trembled sometimes when I looked at her but I had to trust her or she might get me too. Her eyes would glisten in the night when I went to relieve myself or when I got up to start the breakfast. Cold morning, hot morning — she didn’t care, but Lord Jesus didn’t she always remind you that she was there.
Soon it came to pass that I would have to leave soon. The man was getting real careless with who he loved and how he loved, and I knew he didn’t love me ’cause I didn’t mean that much to him. When we had that fire, I wasn’t someone he’d looked for; it was the mistress who asked me if I was alright when I was found. The man was too busy explaining to inquiring folks about why Missy had appeared like a ghost painting on the wall that didn’t get burned down. She had him spooked, I tell you.
When the man kilt the mistress, I knew I wasn’t long for this world. The gin had made him restless all the time and lose his temper all the time. At first, it looked like the mistress had disappeared for a few days and hadn’t said nothing to no one, which was strange. She usually asked me, fo’ instance, to get some sweet biscuits from the store for her family in Connecticut if she went traveling to see them. After three days had passed, I tiptoed down to the cellar to tell the man that her sister had come to the house to see her but he was too busy. And Missy Number Two — she’d stay on him like boll weevil — had crept down to the cellar too ’cause she knew he wasn’t up to no good. Mistress had been wearing her crepe beige skirt and her ruffled silk blouse the last time I saw her, God rest her soul. She was going to a friend’s for the day due to a funeral, and had asked me about the meaning of a dream in which her teeth had fallen out of her mouth while she was sitting in a canoe in the lake they liked to visit in the summer. “Tobe, what does that mean?” she’d asked me that morning as I collected the dishes for cleaning. Well everyone knows that teeth falling out means death but instead I said “Could mean it’s time to go see about yo’ teeth, ma’am, or that company is coming that you’re not expecting. But Miss Epcot, you too young to be worrying about yo’ teeth.” I knew I couldn’t tell her the truth, and slipped away to dip some of the snuff I’d stolen when the man had spilled it one night when he’d come home.
Anyway, Missy Number Two saw what the man did in the cellar and so did I. He had sweat on his big forehead, and was talking to himself, saying what a good job he’d done and such and such. Missy Number Two went closer. I looked at her. Her eyes flashed, and she opened her mouth and her little red tongue seemed to be a wave of fire. She told me to go to the police about the man killing the mistress and putting her in the wall like that but I told her she was crazy ’cause they wouldn’t believe no negro and might even lock me up for telling a tall tale just ’cause. I went like she said, though, and said a few words about my mistress being missing and I’d been sent to tell them that. Said my master was too tore up to come himself and tell them, and that we were all mighty worried about her. They came the next day, a Sunday, and I heard the man bragging to them about the house and how strong it was — he’d turn to peace now that the mistress was gone — as he sipped his gin slowly like he was someone with a lot of money and nothing to do that morning. Missy Number Two had left me, and I couldn’t find her worth a nothing. I thought she’d failed me about my freedom but she called out to me when the man knocked on the wall like the police asked him to. She called real loud, and they ran to her, and set her free. “I kept my promise,” she said as she looked from side to side to side. Then holding her head up she screamed, “I helped you. Now run.”
In the same hole that Missy Number Two came from, they found the mistress. Her eyes were still open but it looked like she was sleepy. The axe had sliced her head diagonally from the left side of her face to the right. The top half of her teeth hung out her mouth in the two parts and so did the bottom half, and the meat from inside her face that had come out the cut hole was starting the turn brown. The blood from that cut had trickled down her ruffles and her skirt and onto the floor of the hole he’d stuck her in with its cobwebs and the cold, and what was dank and leaked. The policemen said the man was under arrest, and would be taken away. I helped them move the bricks to get the mistress out, and her head fell to the side and she looked like she’d been wronged. We found another axe mark on the top of her head, too, that had cut through the bone and brain meat, and made a gap you could slip four fingers into and wrench up. It was an awful, awful thing to see, child.
I said I would bring a shovel to help pick up the bricks we’d moved to get her out. I went upstairs, grabbed a few things, and went out the back — past the apple tree and through the courtyard — and kept on walking.
Child, when you have a chance to run, go. Follow the signs that God gives to you.
The train to you runs just South of me. I hope to get on it one day and meet you real soon.
Yours in Christ,
Marcus, your relation
III.
Robert put the tray down and took himself back to the front door as Miss Emily had requested. She’d been nicer now that she’d started having the girls come back again to do china painting. The company perked her up a little and took her away from the plate after plate of food she’d been asking for and eating keeping Robert moving as fast as he could. He couldn’t stand washing her drawers now, with those stains, and the way she carefully put on her black clothing, as if she had no other clothing that could fit.
The White man he’d let in moments ago was still standing in the vestibule when he got there. The man was smiling with his head tilted to the side like he had good news. His pants were rumpled, though, as if he didn’t have enough respect to look decent in coming to the house for the first time. Robert had seen the daylight slip out the door as he’d closed it and returned to the parlor before Miss Emily had called to him again. It had felt good to have the house get some light.
Was the guest leaving already? Robert got a closer look at him. His teeth were long and narrow. He had a black leather bag strapped across his body, and rough-looking hands. His hair had not seen a comb in a long time. Robert did not recognize him, and thought about the men in town who whispered about Miss Emily and her boyfriend — past boyfriend — when he walked by them as he ran errands. Had the man come to finish the job by taunting them both directly in their home?
The man had stopped talking to Miss Emily when he arrived. Robert thought carefully about what he could be wanted for, and retraced his steps outside the home recently, thinking of who he’d interacted with.
“Are you Robert Esquire?”
“Yessuh.”
“Well, then, this is for you.”
The man pulled a letter out of his bag after fiddling with its buckles and gave it to Robert.
“Do you know who Marcus Esquire is or Josie Esquire?”
“Josie Esquire was my mamma, suh. Can’t say I know a Marcus Esquire, suh.”
The man seemed to take pleasure in Robert’s lack of familiarity. Robert was confused and wanted to leave but the man continued.
“Marcus Esquire was your grand-uncle. I met him five years ago when he was ninety-five, and I was doing some research about black domestics or servants. He told me he’d learned of your birth when he was seventy and written that letter to you at the time but hadn’t known exactly where to send it. He’d been hoping to meet you ever since then but he can’t now because he died not too long after we met.” The man paused for a reaction. Miss Emily stared at the man sharply though not meanly.
The flower dust and pollen that had come into the house with the opening of the door had landed in slivers on the floor. Robert glanced down at them and then to the man’s chest. He could hardly write his name and here he was with a letter. What would he do with it? If he had other kin, he wouldn’t know how to begin to find them. He’d come to the house when his mamma had died. He knew he could leave Miss Emily — the Proclamation said he could — but he was a careful man. He never bought fruit or meat for the house until he’d carefully inspected it, and didn’t take to new items in the store that Mr. Barnes cared to offer. He was content with what he knew and had studied for a period of time.
“Thank you, suh,” Robert replied, not knowing what else to say.
The man appeared to be waiting for Robert to say more. Receiving nothing, he spoke.
“My name’s Jensen Frandsen. You can find me at the university in the anthropology department in the building located just east of the Old Houses if you’re looking for me. Now, I don’t know if you can get anything out of that letter besides the fact that your grand-uncle talked to cats and helped a dead woman but I think you should have it all the same.” He chuckled. “After all, family is family.”
Robert nodded. Why would he find Mr. Frandsen again?
The man looked at Robert again, and stated he would be going. He put out his hand to shake Robert’s gloved one. “Good to have met you, and I’m sorry about your loss.”
Loss?
The man opened the front door for himself and Robert perfunctorily put his hand on the knob to close it after him. The light in the house again added a sort of magic. Robert’s eyes rested briefly on the portraits of Miss Emily’s family in the parlor. Her family was all dead too, and she hadn’t known them well, like Robert and his family. Robert had heard stories about them, some of which he hadn’t believed, and some the town whispered about when they forgot he was a negro but not hard of hearing.
The man had interrupted the time but had not delayed it, and the girls wouldn’t be coming to paint for another two hours.
Robert put the letter in his pocket and turned to Miss Emily.
“Shall I meet you upstairs, Miss Emily?”
“Yes, Robert.”
He went to the linen cabinet and gathered a fresh monogrammed towel, a washcloth, a porcelain basin and soap, and ascended the stairs to Miss Emily’s bedroom in a trance. The pictures on the stairway wall were of flowers, large and violent — almost as if they would jump out and snap at you. Robert always wanted to remove these pictures. The one with the red flowers reminded him of his mother — her hands and the power in the them — while the one with the violet flowers reminded him of Mr. Barron.
Today they would be changing Mr. Barron’s pajamas after a sponge bath. At Miss Emily’s request, Robert had bought some satin blue ones with a dark blue piping for this purpose. Mr. Homer Barron had been there on the bed, decomposing, for the past four years. Robert hated this day — the second Tuesday of the month — and was always afraid the dead man would put his arms out and beg him for help. When he’d been alive, Mr. Barron had sunned and funned with Miss Emily. He was a creamy white, like tea with too much milk but still tea, and when he’d come back from their outings in the summer especially — Miss Emily in her lilac-colored dress smiling from ear to ear and Mr. Barron all sweet on her — he’d colored like he had some negro blood in him. From that day on, it was like they’d shared a bond between them — Mr. Barron as someone Robert swore to protect — though the man was no kin to him.
Great care was taken to wash around Mr. Barron’s disappearing eyes and lips. The teeth, still strong, were quite visible through the mouth. Mr. Barron had died as he was getting up, as if he had figured out the internal strangulation that came from a poisoning and wanted to tell someone but had been caught right in the middle.
Robert’s hand shook as it always did unbuttoning the clothes.
Miss Emily cooed at Mr. Barron. “Good afternoon, my love.” She caressed his bony stomach and kissed his scant forehead. Her dress brushed against the quilt, and cleared off some of the dust; Robert had been given strict instruction not to touch the bed unless asked. Mr. Barron was always under that quilt, no matter the temperature outside. It was his gilded tomb resplendent in a royal red brocade.
The pajamas went on Mr. Barron easily enough but they didn’t fit, as they were too long at the pants hem and wrists respectively. Miss Emily stood admiring the outfit for a period of time before Robert pried it off carefully as she combed his disappearing hair with her hands.
“Robert, try them all to see if we can see about getting them altered.”
“Miss Emily?” Robert was petrified. Had he seen the man’s mouth move, his arm stretch out towards him?
“Put on the pajamas so I can pin them up to fit Mr. Barron.”
“Yes, Miss Emily.”
He took the pajamas down to his room in the bottom corner of the house. The material in his hands was soft and soothing. He closed his eyes, and put the pajamas on with them closed. The dead man’s clothes were on him now, and he thought he could feel his presence with him too. Miss Emily had been so insistent about bringing the soup to Mr. Barron that last day, saying that Robert’s cooking — which he’d started doing for her when he turned twelve — hadn’t been right lately and that it suddenly needed more spice.
His breath nearly left him when the last button was done on the pajama shirt. It was bad luck to dress in the clothing of the dead, he knew. He and Mr. Barron were the same size, almost the same build, except Robert was sometimes slowed by the foot he’d injured when he’d checked for burglars that time. When he’d stepped timidly outside the house that night regarding the noise, it turned out it was men from town spreading lime around the house. He couldn’t tell Miss Emily they were doing it because of dead Mr. Barron laying up in the bed so he’d lied and said they’d come due to his casual remarks in town about rats in the garden.
Robert went back upstairs slowly. Miss Emily was sitting at the edge of the bed expectantly, her feet crossed at the ankles, a small cream tin with straight needles in her hand. Methodically, she pinned him up carefully. He stood looking straight ahead. He dared not breathe too hard or pass gas or sneeze less her hand slipped, and the pajamas shifted on him in a way that rubbed more of the dead man on him. He thought of a church tune he knew, about the teacup of whiskey he would have afterwards, and what he might make next with the bits of leather he had.
“There,” she said.
Robert saw himself in the standing mirror. He was thirty-four and already graying. He could see half of Miss Emily in the background in the reflection as well. Mr. Barron’s arm was visible too. Together, the three of them made an ungodly trinity. Robert stammered, “Looks real good, Miss Emily. You done a fine job.” He left to change without being told, and so as not to urinate on himself and risk punishment.
IV.
The neighbors rushed to the house not too long after Robert had returned from fetching the doctor about Miss Emily. She always wanted boiled eggs with ham and toast and cheese and coffee on Saturday mornings but had not responded to his knocks when he brought the tray to the door promptly at 7:30 am. Recently, she’d taken to sleeping downstairs in the parlor with her family around her, and a makeshift bed had been moved into the room for that purpose. Ever so carefully, he’d opened the parlor door, calling her name loudly as he did in case he was interrupting something, though what that could be, he didn’t know. The curtains in the room were still closed, and the room was stuffy as the windows had not been opened for their weekly airing. It smelled faintly of her perfume, and the unwashed dishes she liked to keep after she’d taken the food she saved on her plate to feed to Mr. Barron.
Miss Emily Livinia Marchelle Grierson did not look at peace when Robert got close to her. She looked like she was afraid of something. Some ill, some chill that she was unable to name. Though she’d stopped twenty-five years earlier, she’d taken up painting on china plates again the night before, and had spoken about how her mother liked it when she listened to her father. She had taken a long pause afterwards and asked Robert if he still had that letter.
“Miss Emily?”
“The letter from that anthropologist? The one who came the day of the storm that drenched Mr. Barron’s room that night?”
Miss Emily’s knack for details remained with her well into her seventies. Robert had forgotten the letter that night after getting buckets for the flood in Mr. Barron’s room, and then going up on the roof to fix the hole. Miss Emily had insisted it be fixed right away so the rain wouldn’t get to Mr. Barron’s remaining skin. Mr. Barron remained right where Miss Emily wanted him until he was no more than bones and air in her room — unable to move, never to leave her — as a way to show her father that she deserved a lasting love of her choosing.
“Haven’t you ever been curious about your family, Robert? Don’t you want to know what it says? Bring it here and I’ll read it to you.”
Robert had begun to think about family as the years passed, as his foot had gotten worse, and as the house had sagged in its own old age.
He went to his room and brought her the letter. He kept it close to his father’s pocket knife and cloth from his mother’s dress that had the names of his siblings on it.
Miss Emily waddled to the reading chair with the lace on each arm, sat down, and read the letter under the dim light of the lamp. They no longer made replacements for the ceiling lights in the room, and Robert was perpetually too achy to climb the ladder to change them anyway if they had.
He listened closely about the cat and her messages and the gin and the running away and the man finally going to jail. The whole thing sounded like a story a carnival caller would have told a crowd yet he was piqued by it.
When she was done, she placed the thin document on top the envelope and placed both on the side table. “Do you believe in spirit messages?” Miss Emily asked, turning her head to him.
“I suppose I do, Miss Emily. Seems like everyone I ever knew believed in them one way or another.” He did not want Miss Emily to think he was running away like Marcus so he was careful in his response. He’d remained troubled since the night of the pajama fitting and the flood all those years ago by Mr. Barron’s outreach to him. Had he been trying to bring him to the other side, save him from the endless toil in this house year after year after year? Hearing Marcus’ letter made him wonder.
Robert had not had time to process all his feelings when the ladies came the next day in the late morning. He was thinking what he would do, where he would go, now that Miss Emily was gone, and his own relation to death, his proximity. His grand-uncle had helped a woman be seen in death, and had he not come in when he had and run to the doctor, Miss Emily would have started rotting away like her boyfriend upstairs.
He would leave. There was no place for him now in the house. No need to serve death and Miss Emily and have long, silent days and take those trips to town. No more dreams where he would wake late at night, bothered by feelings of silk and Mr. Barron telling him that it had been the soup, and his face being touched with Mr. Barron’s bony hand with that onyx ring as he confessed that he’d loved Miss Emily because he was peculiar and had to and, besides, she’d had money.
As Robert went to open the front door for what would be the last time, he looked and saw his grey eyes and almost white beard in the hall mirror. He was fifty-five, and in no shape to keep fighting Mr. Barron.
Miss Nettles, Miss Rawlings, Miss Le Naye and others tumbled into the house after greeting him. He nodded, and went to the back of the house as if he was going to prepare tea or lemonade or petit fours on behalf of Miss Emily as the good and faithful servant he’d been for the past forty-five years. He put his things in a bag with Marcus’ letter on top. He glanced at it again trying to make out some of the words. He didn’t know when someone would be able to read it to him again but he would remember what he heard. His family dabbled with death. He would too once he had the right tools. What else could he do? What else did he know besides serving White folk? Hadn’t he instinctively known what herbs to buy to treat Miss Emily’s neighbor, bringing her back from death’s door after she was almost felled by some sort of pneumonia, and hadn’t he known immediately what was wrong with the White child at the doctor’s office when he’d rushed in, winded, dragging his lame foot, to report that Miss Emily was sick? The child was said to have had a fever of 103 degrees, and been languid all day. Mr. Barron’s harassment would be forgiven if Robert could talk to him and tell him to stop scaring him when he was trying to enjoy a quiet night or two. Robert would learn to talk to him, and help as many others as possible — the sick, the weak, the troubled — to delay death, which seemed miserable to Robert and especially if someone killed you. But not here. Not under the shadow of Miss Emily’s version of love. Even Robert knew love didn’t equal death. Death equaled death, and that was its own kind of life.
His bag in his hand, he walked the few steps to the back door, and went down the long steps that ran the length of the back of the house. He glanced at his garden which he’d let go to ruins in the last few years as he focused on his leather pouch making instead.
He stopped and looked back. People from town were spilling into the house like Miss Emily had something to show them. He knew they would go straight to her room like mosquitoes drawn to a child’s blood to see Mr. Barron. Robert thought of his grand-uncle, how he’d talked about running when you could. Robert didn’t know if he was running now but he was leaving, which was about all he could muster. He would take the same train route that Mr. Barron had arrived by and make his way North.
When he was several yards away, he turned to looked at the house again for the last time. It rose in the background like a massive dark church organ, uneven and decrepit, the paint in the back peeling off in slabs that took to the wind in the spring and winter. He looked to the rightmost window of Miss Emily’s bedroom. Just before the flood those years ago, a square piece of wood had been placed right in the middle of the pane to keep out prying eyes. There was just enough space around the top and bottom of the board for Robert to see the townspeople as shadows as they came in and then out of the room quickly, likely due to what they saw on her bed. After seeing someone take the board off, he turned and walked away.
The board was thrust through the opened window and dropped to the ground, leaving a square-shaped ring of dark around a core of light on the glass.
*First printed in Promethean.
