The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [78]
“Gosh.”
“Isn’t it something that I’ve remembered those names? Germans, I think, or maybe they’re Frenchmen.”
“They’re the ones that are fighting now,” Mary said. “Why’re they doing that?”
“I don’t know, honey. They’d be better off playing the piano.” That’d quit all the killing, I thought. That’d keep Al McKee, our neighbor, from thinking he had to go over there and straighten them out.
“Anyway,” I said, “on summer nights in Chicago, when it was too hot to sleep, Mr. Brandon, a little tipsy, would come out on his front stoop and play that fiddle of his. His music pulled us to him; we couldn’t help ourselves no matter how tired we were. We’d get out of our sticky, hot beds, make ourselves decent, and go outside. That man made us forget who we were.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we’d forget what we’d done that day and what was waiting for us the next. We’d forget about the slaughterhouses or about cooking and cleaning up after other people. Mr. Brandon lifted our spirits. He got our feet tapping and our hearts pounding until someone would let out a whoop, grab themselves a girl, spin her around, and before you knew it, we had ourselves a dance. A dance on a city dirt road. Trains came through; we couldn’t hear a note, but we just kept on dancing, keeping time in our heads until the trains were gone and the music came back.”
“And you danced?”
“My, yes.”
“But just with Daddy?”
“Oh no, honey, this was before I even knew your daddy.”
“Oh,” Mary said, sounding shocked. Then her voice took a lonesome turn. “Wish I could’ve seen you dancing.”
“Those were good times.”
Mary swatted at Jerseybell’s nose. A knot of flies flew out.
A low feeling came over me. A young girl like Mary should know something about dancing. She should have socials and dances to go to, and she should know what it was like to have friends what lived a door or two down the street. But with Isaac working the gold mine in Lead, I’d need Mary at home. She wouldn’t be going to school.
I was a few months short of fourteen when I quit school. I did it so Johnny could keep going. Mama had backed me on this, and Dad hadn’t fussed all that much. He didn’t see that a girl needed much schooling, and even if he never said it, Dad was proud that Johnny was smart. He might have said that he wanted Johnny in the slaughterhouse, but Dad paid for piano lessons and he let Johnny earn a high-school diploma.
Mary was smart enough to be a teacher. Or a nurse like Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s daughter. Isaac’s father had started a nursing school for Negroes. That was where Mary should go. It was her grandfather’s school; it was where Mary belonged. I pictured her in a starched white uniform. I imagined sick people turning to Mary as she walked through a hospital ward. They’d call her Nurse DuPree.
It wasn’t right that she’d have to quit school this winter. I tapped my foot. It was wrong what Isaac was doing to us, leaving for the winter. I tapped harder, willing Mr. Brandon’s fiddle music to find its way to me in a barn buried in the heart of the Badlands.
“What’re you doing, Mama?”
“Listening.”
“To what?”
“Fiddle music.” I cocked my head and put my hand behind my ear. “Hear?”
Puzzled, Mary drew her eyebrows together. I sang.
Get out the way for old Dan Tucker
He’s too late to get his supper.
She grinned, her fingers keeping time on Jerseybell’s flank.
Supper’s over, dishes washed,
Nothin’ left but a piece of squash.
“Sing it again, Mama. Please?”
“Only if you’ll dance.”
“Dance? By myself ?”
“No.” I used the stall rail to pull myself up. “With me.”
“But we’re both girls.”
“Nobody’s looking.”
Mary giggled and stood up.
“Come over here,” I said, “where we’ve got some room. Now, face me like this and give me your hands. When I start singing, we’ll slide a few steps that way, and then we’ll slide a few steps the other. Can’t do like I used to, can’t