The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [49]
I licked my lips, tasting it all. I put the sheet of soda biscuits in the cookstove and checked the heat. I recalled another hot and sticky day when I had baked two devil’s food cakes. I hadn’t been working for Mrs. DuPree all that long, maybe four or five months. It was 1896. I had just turned eighteen, and I was talking to myself about how mean Mrs. DuPree was for not letting me open the kitchen window to catch a bit of air.
An open window meant flies, and even with the house closed up, the flies were thick that day. Of course, flies were nothing new in Chicago, especially as close to the slaughterhouse district as we were. But that day the flies were a personal insult to Mrs. DuPree. She was entertaining. Her literary club, the Circle of Eight, was meeting that afternoon in the parlor. This meeting, though, was not the usual book discussion followed by coffee and one of my fancy desserts. Far from it. Mrs. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, writer and owner of Chicago’s Negro newspaper, was coming to talk about her recent travels to England.
As soon as the boarders had left that morning for work, I started in on making fresh bread and a spread of olives, nuts, and creamed cheese for tea sandwiches. That finished, I baked the Circle of Eight’s favorite: two devil’s food cakes, chocolate rich, with sprinkles of coconut on top. I was starting to ice the cakes when I heard Mrs. DuPree in the dining room just outside the kitchen door. She was talking to Trudy.
“Flies,” Mrs. DuPree said. “They’re the bane of my life. Today of all days. Why me?”
“Flies are the devil himself,” Trudy said.
Mrs. DuPree clicked her tongue in a disapproving way. Then, “Of all days. Trudy, I’m warning you. Do not let go of that fan, I don’t care how tired your arms get. I don’t want the first fly to even think about landing on Mrs. Barnett. Or on her plate. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I want it so the ladies see nothing but a wicker leaf fan floating in the air, keeping the flies off, keeping us cool. Do not even let us get close to perspiring.”
“Perspiring?” Trudy stumbled over the word.
There was another disapproving click of the tongue. “Sweating.”
This was my chance. I went to the kitchen door. “Mrs. DuPree, I’ll do the fanning. My arms are good and strong.”
“Your place is in the kitchen.”
I knew that, but that didn’t stop the disappointment. There was nothing more in this world that I wanted than to meet Ida B. Wells-Barnett. I admired her; every Negro alive admired her. Her newspaper columns were bold and blunt, and she wasn’t scared of anybody. Whenever there was a lynching, even in the Deep South, Mrs. Wells-Barnett was the first one there, searching for the truth with her notebook and pen. That was why she had gone to England. In London she spoke out against lynching—she had said so in her newspaper. She wanted to embarrass the people of America. She wanted to shame President Cleveland into punishing the killers.
If Mrs. Wells-Barnett could go to England, if she could face Southern white sheriffs, I could stand up to Mrs. DuPree.
“Please,” I said. “Could I just say hello to her? Tell her how me and my family read the Conservator every Sunday after dinner? Please, ma’am?”
“Most certainly not. Mrs. Barnett has been invited to speak to the Circle of Eight. She does not expect to mingle with the help.”
That stung.
Later that day, Rose Douglas, Mrs. DuPree’s cousin on her mother’s side, arrived first. Rose wasn’t a member of the Circle of Eight. Her husband was an uneducated bricklayer. On special occasions, though, Mrs. DuPree invited her to help serve. It was her way, Mrs. DuPree once told me, of allowing Rose to stay in touch with the finer things in life.
“Rose married down, darker too,” Mrs. DuPree had told me then. “Jim Douglas was nothing but a field hand fresh off the train from some plantation