Chilled wind blew in, clearing the dense blanket of fog, and I hurried our steps. A hurricane lantern burned in the back window of one of the little shotgun houses off Maple Street and we headed toward it, avoiding the backyards because of the dogs yowling, torn between the need to protect their territory and their fear of the dead. I tapped on the closed screened door with a ragtime rhythm and after some scrabbling and heated whispers, it opened.
“Oh, thank you, Jesus.” The woman inside, young-looking with old eyes, sagged against the uneven doorframe when she saw the pair of us. Her man stood behind, large and silent and watchful.
“You got a place for her to be?” I asked. The effect of the tea wouldn’t last forever and having a dead body lying around wasn’t good for no one, especially not Colored folk.
“Baby?” the woman asked.
The girl turned toward the voice. “I’m so sorry, Mama.” The words came out thickened and slow, pushed past the decaying tongue. The girl’s mama broke down, sobs wrenching from her throat as she pulled and tore at the scarf covering her head.
Her man came to her, took the woman and her daughter each by an arm and led them to a sturdy, homemade table. He set a kettle on the stove to boil, then slid my cape off the girl’s shoulders, folded it, then returned it to me. As he pressed coins into my hand, he said, “Reb Fielding got a special little place for her to rest in the St. Matthew graveyard now that she home.” His eyes skitted away from mine. “How long we got?”
I reared back to look at the sky. The moon hadn’t reached its high point yet, still a ways to go before sunrise. “Till day clean. ’Round five or six hours.”
“Thankee now.”
I nodded and headed off home. Cold was creeping in on the evening, and I pulled my cape tighter. Time for my own cup of tea.
The sandy-haired Negro boy gave me the signal. Casual-like, I turned to notice the street cart where it sat with its hand painted sign—P’nut Man & Hot Fried—and made my way over.
“How much for a lil bag?”
“Half penny, Miz Prosper.” He shook his head slightly as he said it and I knew there was news. “Got some hot fried that’s good today, though.”
“Please for some.”
I watched as he dropped a scoopful of chicken gizzards coated with seasoned corn meal into the hot grease and set the lid back on the cast iron kettle. Sun was blessing the day with warm breeze, but the heat coming off the cart felt good in my bones. He sold a couple steaming bags of boiled peanuts to some longshoremen, who clomped away to put in their time loading and unloading the ships, leaving empty brown shells sucked dry of briny juice to litter the walkway. The boy fished my hot fried out, sprinkled them with salt, then placed the crispy bits in newspaper, folded real careful-like. I handed him five pennies and he started to refuse, but I pressed them into palm. He looked at me with damp eyes and closed his fingers around the money, the back of his hand marked with scattered grease burns in circles and lines, a dark Morse Code on his light brown skin.
“Keep that. If you get the chance, you look out for me, hear?”
“Yas’m. Thank you, ma’am.”
I knew he already did, like most of the other Coloreds ’round here. If they didn’t, I mighta been caught long ago. Even though most church-going Negroes claimed to be scared of me, saying what I did wasn’t natural, I eased their minds by returning their kin to them so they could rest on blessed ground. Whispers about me had been going around the city for years, in the parlors and in the paper mills, on the farms and in the ironworks. If you can find your dead, then you better next find Miss Prosper.
Most of my work was from lynchings—Negroes dragged off to their ends for talking back, for having a business that started to cut into the white man’s, or for having independence of mind. Sometimes an unwelcome suitor who after the fire of passion died, dug a shallow grave to hide his shame. Might think it gets easier over the years, but no.
Even though my customers welcomed their dead back, I could see their deeper thoughts—anybody messin’ with life and death can’t be right with God. Of course, I ain’t evil, but what most minds can’t get a grip on…they call the devil’s work. I don’t work for Old Scratch, though I expect I’ll meet him one day if talk makes things true.
I turned my attention to the paper as I walked away, popping a steaming hot gizzard in my mouth. The chewy meat split as it bit into it, letting a stream of rich juice coat my tongue. Searching for the line that spoke directly to me, I found the young man had kept it just out of reach of the grease splashes.
A remover for a large number of fragile items is promptly needed. On the main street of this city, a few doors down from the courthouse. The terms may be known by applying therein.
The word courthouse was run through with two lines, striking it out. Next to it, written in lead pencil was the word blacksmith’s. After reading, I rolled the rest of the chicken onto the marked paper, letting the grease cover up the pencil marks. Then I finished my lunch and headed home to make the Life Everlasting.
Big Mama taught me how to make the Life Everlasting when I was a girl. It was from a recipe brought over here from Senegal, or somewheres. Like their jollof rice became our red rice, the recipe changed from family to family until nobody really knew which one was the first. I’d heard her and my gran, both strong root ladies, talking about it when they was making other teas to keep away fellas the ladies didn’t want, to keep bosses sweet, to win at the numbers… But I’d had to prove myself time and time again before they would teach me this blend.
“Never use this ’less you have to, hear?” Big Mama told me before she lay out all what went in the tea. “Little glug, Prosper… Only little glugs ’til you’s sure how much to take. And make it weak at first.”
I still lay out the ingredients for the tea like she taught me that first day so long ago. What was it? Ninety years or so now? I wondered what they would think of me using their tea to move the dead. Shoot, maybe they already knew what I used it for.
It was getting harder to find everything now, but I found I could make small changes and have the tea work just fine. Long as I could get pepper berry and sun gold root, it’d be okay. The redbush tea leaves and kola nuts I grew myself.
I steeped everything in my clay pot, no metal could touch this blend, then left it to cool. Once I strained it through two layers of muslin, it would be ready. I stoked the flames in my fireplace to warm the room and keep my hands from shaking. I had to fill the jars careful-like, not wanting to waste a drop of my hard work.
A knock came on my door, gentle like it was scared, but firm like it had run outta choice. If they stood at my door, they likely had.
I opened the door to see a wide eyed boy, not more than eight or ten, on the step. He was breathing hard, musta been running like a bat outta torment. His high water pants with no socks told me all I needed to know.
“Come on in here now, chile.”
He was scared, and I couldn’t blame him. No idea what kinda stories he heard about me. But I knew what I looked like, right ’round forty or fifty some odd years old—old enough to command like a wise woman but spry enough to do the job. When the cold got in these bones, though, I felt every one a my hundred years. I never was pretty, but that was a blessing my mother had given me. Pretty women caught too many eyes. And hands.