might result in lost profits.
The bruises around her throat had been proof enough for Oscar on the night she’d used the fish knife. The bruises were less from pressing than from the rub of rough, callused hands, but those hands had meant to kill Diphtheria Morningstar all the same. Oscar had been a real sport; dumping that sailor’s body in the Bayou St. John and bringing around a clean mattress with a new set of sheets that same night. Oscar had snuffed out Diphtheria’s red lantern while the night was still young, told her to rest up, feel better, don’t worry about the cops-and even gave her a dixie (a ten dollar bill) to keep her mouth shut. Oscar had taken care of everything the night she had killed the sailor-and by the next morning it was like it never happened. All gone except for the remembering.
Remembering his limp dick flop against her thigh, only getting harder as his fingers tightened around her neck, his eyes feeding on her terror, filling his terrible, handsome face with a look of cold confidence and dumb power, his complete control over her life and death being the key to his sexual success, to his defeat of the saltpetre in his veins. She remembered looking into those wide black pupils, eyes like a shark, and seeing death. A part of her beaten soul welcomed the sight.
She remembered the ease of giving up, slipping into sleep, watching those depthless eyes fade and melt into the flickering gray of his face, a concrete statue come to deliver her from the crib. Was this man her knight in shining armor? Come to take her from this awful place, to show her something better?
No, he wasn’t that. Wasn’t that at all. But it was true he had delivered her from the crib. At least for a moment.
For a moment she was gone.
Diphtheria remembered touching death with her fingertips, caressing its cheek, kissing its nose, swimming in its thick waters, its music tickling her ears. The music was familiar and telling, its voice gentle and firm. It was the sound of Buddy’s horn, the same strange sound it made the night her father died, the sound it made while Buddy’s fingers splayed and stretched above the instrument, impossibly; not touching the keys at all. The music spoke to her dying mind the night she touched death; said that love was
And so, before her heart had beat its last, she had reached beneath the mattress.
The sailor’s grip on her throat didn’t loosen right off, had even tightened some as the knife dug in, as Diphtheria cranked the handle back and forth, tearing at the sailor from between and beneath thick ribs. His cold look of confidence had slowly yielded to fear as his insides ripped and mingled, and she felt him go limp inside her before any meaningful biological transaction could be completed. As crimson and black spread from between his shoulders to touch warm air, the color crept from his face. Still, his grip failed to loosen-and Diphtheria’s mind went black once more.
In time she awoke, the sailor cold and motionless, his weight a vast, dead stone across her body. With much effort she rolled him off of and out of her-wedging his naked bulk between wall and mattress edge. Sat at the foot of the bed, thinking. Not crying, not afraid, not proud, not feeling lucky to be alive-not feeling much of anything. Just thinking.
The sailor was still bleeding and therefore not yet dead, but she decided it would be best not to interrupt the dying process. She waited for the blood to quit its shimmering trickle, waited for its metamorphosis from shiny motion to shiny stillness. Watched him die there on the bed, watched the bright red life vacate his body and ruin her only mattress. When she was sure his life was done, she walked out slow and knocked hard on the door of her neighbor and crib colleague, Hattie Covington.
Diphtheria’s pounding had caught Hattie in mid-trick. Upon opening the door Hattie looked mighty perturbed-until she saw the blood on Diphtheria’s skimpy fuck-me-silly-in-my-crib-for-pocket-change dressing gown. Hattie’s john had jumped up from the bed; riled as hell, buck naked, swinging his fists in the air and ready to let loose-when he too noted the bright red. Got quiet all the sudden-then got his pants on in a big hurry. Left a whole dollar on Hattie’s washstand before leaving.
Hattie fetched Oscar. Oscar erased the night. Erased all but the remembering.
She had killed the sailor during her fifth year working that Marais Street crib. And so five years in the cribs had added up to that. A series of close calls, a long train ride called misery, and a pitiful, endless stream of dirty crib-nickels.
But in late 1896, before that fifth year was done, everything changed.
Buddy’s band got booked out of Charley’s Barbershop on South Rampart Street and into John the Greek’s on 28 Franklin-right across the street from The Big 25, one of the most popular mid-priced sporting houses in the tenderloin. It was a good, solid gig that paid regular paper money-and Buddy’s strange, super-loud way of playing had become a stone sensation. Then, as if to confirm the good omen of Buddy’s big break, a miracle happened. Diphtheria got herself in a family way.
Buddy’s first reaction to the notion of fatherhood was purest joy, but at the age of only nineteen there was plenty of room for waffling. As the idea sank in and Diphtheria’s belly grew, Buddy’s mind went wobbly and his eyes began to ricochet, returning the flirtatious glances given him by the almost-high-class whores of John the Greek’s; pretty gals, nigh high-yella, who bought him shots of Raleigh Rye and fought to hold his coat.
Soon Buddy did the inevitable and convenient thing, doubting out loud whether Diphtheria’s child might be his own. This was understandable on a certain level-considering how she’d made her living for the past five years-but hadn’t there been love and promises between them? Hadn’t she stayed faithful to him (in her way) for all that time, five years in the crib? Didn’t he owe her child a father and a good life-even a trick baby, if that’s what it was, now that the good life had finally showed the crown of its head?
Diphtheria quit crib-whorin’ just as soon as that baby stole her figure away, but she couldn’t help but wonder if having that baby was the best thing to do. And she wondered what God might think of such thoughts, these thoughts of Doctor Jack and his cure.
When the pregnancy did end, Buddy disappeared entirely. But even without him, she’d managed to make it up from the crib on her own steam. By age twenty-five, she’d made it to the big time, a featured girl on Basin. And now, at twenty-nine, she had a regular customer base, a Blue Book listing of her own, and ten pairs of six-dollar stockings.
Still, she wondered if she’d made the right decision about Doctor Jack and his cure, that decision she’d made back when times were so hard.
Chapter sixteen. Malvina
“Goddamn shoes.”
Malvina Latour loved her sister with all of her heart, but after more than a half century of living together she’d still not gotten use to Frances’ habit of leaving shoes strewn about the floor. Frances’ typical response to her sister’s grumbling was nothing like an answer, but something like a question.
“Mother? Where my little Maria at?”
And so it went.
When their own mother died from cholera with Frances less than a year old, Malvina had found herself in the role of mother for the first time at age twelve. Frances had always called Malvina that, “mother”-it had been her first word.
Raised Roman Catholic, Malvina turned away from her parents’ God by age twenty. By the time she hit thirty she was a full-fledged mambo in the Vodou religion. And when you are a mambo, you are a mother to many.
Now, at age ninety-nine, Malvina found herself still mothering Frances, now eighty-seven. Their relationship had turned bitter long ago, but neither ever considered leaving the other.
Frances’ eternal response to her sister’s ire (nothing like an answer, something like a question) was regarding this: In 1853 (fifty-three years previously), Frances’ teenage daughter and only child had died during the worst yellow fever epidemic the city had ever seen. Maria’s death had placed a pain in Frances’ heart, the kind that stays long term. She gave her soul over to pain and resentment then-and never let go.
