Minnie didn’t answer. As far as she was concerned, the SPC quarantined her the day they showed up on her doorstep.
Nonplussed, the attendant referred to her clipboard. “Now, I do have some good news. A new exterminator just started working today. Between you and her, you should be able to contain the stumps in the Bronzeville district, which current count is . . . twenty-three as of today. If you continue not to meet your quota”—here she gave Minnie a stern look—“we’ll have to find some other way for you to serve in Stump Prevention Control.” It was always “Stump Prevention Control” with these people, never the “SPC.” Like them uppity folks who go around insisting you call them Mister So-and-such, Esquire. Like the attendant insisting on always calling her Lizzie.
“Just gimme my pay.”
The attendant sighed and handed Minnie $20. “We are assigning another handler to you. It will take several days to find someone who can handle your . . . temperament.”
Fuck you and your eyebrows. Minnie picked up her guitar case and left.
A team of men in hazmat suits brushed past Minnie as they headed down the hall to the elevators that would take them to the lower levels. All of them were white. Her handlers had all been white. The weighing attendants, the office workers, everyone was white. The SPC sure liked their white folk, which was funny, seeing that the building itself was located on the South Side, where all the black folk had ended up.
When she first started, Minnie had tried to get Lawler as her handler—he had been a lousy recording manager, but he was great with his hands, inside the bedroom and out. The SPC said that handlers had to undergo a vigorous one-year training to learn how to manage the machines, the vacuums, the pumps, the brushes, et cetera. Minnie then asked why she even needed a handler. Seemed like she could learn to do all the work herself without some white man always watching her, making her nervous. The SPC said her job was to focus only on exterminating the stumps. Her voice was too important to exert herself on manual labor. Only handlers with the appropriate training could handle the equipment due to the extreme toxicity of the stumps.
In other words, no niggers need apply.
Minnie reached the large lobby. Posters provided some relief from the monotonous hallways and overbearing lights. On one side were pictures of bright smiling white families in front of tidy houses with the words KEEP YOUR HOME SPORE-FREE—BUY PERCY’S GRADE A FILTERS FOR YOUR WINDOWS—A FILTERED HOME IS A STUMP-FREE HOME. On the other side were posters of “famous” exterminators: Bing Crosby, Marlene Dietrich, two of the Andrews Sisters (but not all three). There was even a separate section of black exterminators in the furthest corner of the lobby: Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Marian Anderson.
As usual, the lobby was full of people, mostly black. Many stood in line for various windows to report a stump sighting, arrange for an exterminator, or pick up a free paper mask to filter out spores. A longer line of people snaked in front of a door that had a sign above it in bold yellow letters: DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME AN EXTERMINATOR?
In the center of the lobby was a television set displaying, in grainy black and white, a young blond woman singing into one end of a long glass tube. At the other was a jar of stump dust insulated inside a thick glass box. A chipper male voice narrated, “If this woman was just a normal person, nothing would happen. But she falls into that one percent of the population that has a ‘unique vocal resonance’ with the spores. Just look at that reaction!” And indeed, the camera cut to show the dust in the jar shimmering and swirling as it coalesced into tiny, indistinct forms. “All from the power of her voice!” the man pronounced in amazement.
The scene changed to show the woman, her hair and clothes perfect, striding into a building with a number of handlers. The narrator gushed about the exciting yet dangerous nature of the exterminator’s life. An exterminator’s voice raised in song could cause a stump to spawn, mature, and ultimately burst in a matter of seconds. An experienced handler was absolutely necessary in knowing when to stop the exterminator from singing to prohibit any more spawning. Inexperience could result in sloppy exterminations, respawning, or even immediate death. Despite the danger, the narrator enthused, exterminators and handlers were paid handsomely, for what they provided was a necessary civic duty for their country.
Minnie snorted. It was all bullshit. She was living proof of that.
She exited the SPC and headed to the bus stop just to the right of the entrance. Setting her case down, she pulled out her weekly copy of the Chicago Defender and flipped to the music section. As usual, there was no mention of her, her records, or the fact that she had been an exterminator for six months now. Count Basie was in town, though—that took up half a page. Big bands were becoming more popular as more singers were being recruited into exterminators. The other half was an ad for Ella Fitzgerald, who became an exterminator in October 1939. Now everyone was buying up her records. The SPC had released a statement that recorded voices had no effect on stump spores, so for some singers, becoming exterminators was their best publicity yet.
But not for Minnie. She could still sell her records, but they didn’t sell too well; she had always sounded better live. Unfortunately, the SPC banned her from singing lest she activated any stump spores that might be floating about. So no more concerts. No more tours. No more singing in clubs. She tried to do just guitar pickin’ at clubs, but it was annoying with her handler there, watching her every move.
A black Ford sedan pulled up in front of the SPC building. A white man with a derby got out, the words STUMP PREVENTION CONTROL stitched in yellow on the back of his gray trenchcoat. He opened the back door of the car and out stepped a young black woman in a long brown coat rimmed with fur and wearing short heels. She looked familiar.
Minnie glanced back down at the music ads. Ah, right there, toward the bottom: a photo of the same woman, holding a guitar, eyes cast upward in a heavenly gaze. The caption beneath read: “Cheers to Chicago’s very own Sister Rosetta Tharpe as she starts her new life as an exterminator on the South Side.”
So that was the new exterminator. Damn. Girl got a notice in the Defender her first day working at the SPC, while Minnie got squat. Ain’t that a bitch.
As the SPC man pulled a full storage bag that made Minnie’s haul look like a deflated coin purse out of the car’s trunk, the woman caught sight of Minnie. She minced over with eager steps—amazing a big girl like her could stay upright in those short heels.
“Why, hello!” Minnie caught a strong force in her voice held in check, like an ocean wave restrained by a dam. “They said that there was another exterminator who also played guitar just like me. I see you got a guitar. Are you her?” A mole graced her left cheek.
Minnie’s bus rolled up. She tucked the paper under her arm and picked up her case and told the girl, “Mind your own fucking business.”
According to the SPC, the first stump appeared in a corner of a Bronx apartment in April 1938. A German family who had just moved to the apartment assumed it was a statue left by the previous owner. They dusted it, hung clothes on it, and even allowed the children to play on it on occasion, until one day it burst.
By the time the police reached the apartment, two children lay dead, the parents alive but convulsing, bloody foam oozing from their mouths and nostrils. They died minutes later.