The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [50]
She said, “Your father . . . didn’t you say he came out of the fields? In Mississippi?”
I wanted to tell her that my mother had once been a housemaid. I wanted to say that my mother could read and write, and that my mother did not think she had married down when she married my father. Instead, I had said, “Louisiana. We’re from Louisiana.”
The Circle of Eight ladies arrived a few minutes early that day; most of them brought their mothers, aunts, or daughters as invited guests. Mrs. DuPree’s friends, members of Chicago’s high Negro society, were at least four generations removed from slavery. They were smooth and their voices were like music. Their gloved hands fluttered while they made parlor-room talk. Some of them had gone to what Mrs. DuPree called finishing schools. The ladies were proud of their husbands what were doctors, lawyers, or merchants. They were a cut above the rest of us, and I had overheard enough to know that the ladies didn’t approve of Southern Negroes. Southern Negroes’ grammar left something to be desired, and they shuffled their feet and bobbed their heads when in the presence of white people. The ladies did not appreciate Southern Negroes coming to Chicago and embarrassing them this way. But since they were there—and the ladies really wished they weren’t—it was their responsibility to set an uplifting example.
And that, I couldn’t help but think as I trimmed the crusts from the tea sandwiches, was the funny thing about today’s guest of honor. Ida B. Wells-Barnett had been born a slave in Mississippi.
I kept the kitchen door half open so I could listen and watch the Circle of Eight. It was a strain; the dining room was between me and the parlor. But if I stood just so, I caught a glance now and then of the ladies in their crisp white blouses with pleated sleeves puffed high at the shoulders and lacy collars that held their necks tall. Wide satin sashes, every color of the rainbow, showed off their waistlines pulled tight by corsets. Their dark skirts flared from their hips. Petticoats rustled when they walked. The ladies wore brooches pinned to their collars. Earrings of colored crystal beads dangled from their ears. Their broad-brimmed hats dipped, throwing shadows on their faces. Their maids, I knew, had worked hard to make the ladies look that good.
I couldn’t imagine wearing fancy clothes on a Tuesday afternoon. I didn’t even have anything half as fine for Sundays. I put a hand on my collar. No brooch for me. Instead I had on the black dress with the starched white apron that Mrs. DuPree made me wear when special guests came. Trudy liked wearing hers. She was proud of it and especially liked how the apron strings made a crisp bow in the back. But I thought it was the kind of dress you’d expect to wear if you worked for a white woman.
In the parlor the ladies talked, their voices high with excitement. I tiptoed into the dining room, stood close to a side wall, and peeked out. There was Trudy, standing to the side of the sofa, waving the fan, her face wet with sweat. Some of the younger women circled around the room looking out the windows, unable to sit still for more than a minute. They were as excited as I was about Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
“I just don’t know what to call her,” Mrs. Fradin said. Her husband was a lawyer and had an office on the edge of downtown. Mrs. Fradin snapped open a fan. On it a picture of a pasty white woman with slanted eyes dressed in a long black narrow dress flashed before Mrs. Fradin’s coppery round face. “Should we call her Miss Wells, or is it Mrs. Wells-Barnett? Or Mrs. Barnett? I’ve heard it all three ways.”
“She’s a married woman with two babies,” Mrs. DuPree said. “I’m calling her