Free The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen Page B

mattress sagged badly on the bed ropes, making it difficult to sit upright. Perched on the edge of the bed frame, I could smell how musty the feathers were.
    “Quite a luxury,” my landlady said. “You believe I had that bed since I first married up with the late Mr. Upshaw?”
    “Yes,” I answered without thinking. “I mean, no.” Not wanting to seem rude, I searched about for a distraction. A wardrobe occupied the narrow space between the bed and the side wall. Its doors had been removed from their hinges, because there was no room for them to swing open. Two worn dresses hung inside. “What are those?”
    “Why, those is my Dulcey’s things. Won’t it be cozy for you girls, sharing this nice room? You never gonna get lonely with us.”
    Sharing a fusty bed with a stranger wasn’t my idea of company, or comfort. I followed as Mrs. Upshaw led the way out of my new quarters into the third and final room of the apartment, an awkward space in which an ancient cookstove, a wobbly table ringed by an assortment of chairs, and a dented wash-basin made up the makeshift kitchen cum dining room. “My Dulcey be along soon. She works for a nice family up on Prune Street—that’s over to Society Hill, you know. Why don’t you refreshen yourself while I get up supper?”
    She handed me the wash-basin and waved me through a low doorway to a rickety wooden stair on the back of the building. At the bottom of the steps I found a hydrant pump, from which I filled the basin. I splashed my face as best I could, nearly gagging at the stink from the rotting garbage piled around the tiny yard.
    As I carried the emptied basin back up the stairs, I could hear Mrs. Upshaw’s gibble-gabble overhead. Why, the woman don’t stop talking even when she’s alone, I thought. But then I made out another voice, low and bitter, answering her.
    “I’m sorry you couldn’t seen Miss Van Lew. She was some dignified.”
    “I see white people all day long. Nothing dignified about any of them when you got to wash their drawers. Or mend them, as you should know.”
    “No need to be nasty, Dulcey dear, we all wear drawers. Shouldn’t be jealous of wealthy people, just ’cause they don’t have to wash and mend their own things.”
    “Shouldn’t worship them ’cause they don’t, either.”
    “Why, I never said to worship anyone but the Good Lord. I’m just saying Miss Van Lew is very proper, and so is Mary. I’m sure we gonna benefit from sociating with her.”
    “Only benefit is the dollar a week the white lady paying you, which will go right to the butcher for ground meat that’s all gristle, the grocer for bread that’s already gone moldy, and the landlord for this rat-trap apartment, where I can’t even get a moment’s peace after working all day.”
    Mrs. Upshaw sighed. “We got to make a virtue out of necessity. We got the privilege to know a genuine schoolgirl, and her so far from home, only right to make her welcome.”
    “Don’t worry, I’ll make our Virginia pickaninny feel right at home.”
    Pickaninny . That was a word not even the Van Lews used. To hear the term called out by a negro and applied to me, that was past bearing. I was ready to turn round and run back down the stairs. But to where?
    As I looked down at the walled-in yard, I could hear Papa’s voice calling out, My free young la-dy . I was a free lady, no Mama and Papa to protect me. I told myself I had to show this Dulcey I was no pickaninny. I marched myself back inside, trying not to wonder whether my hands were shaking with rage or with fear.
    Dulcey was civil, though barely so, to my face. All through supper and after, Mrs. Upshaw’s prating kept either of us from needing to make much effort to speak. Dulcey muttered something about how tired she was and slunk off to the bedroom good and early. I retired an hour later, only to find her propped up in bed, arms crossed against her chest, glaring as I turned my back to her to remove my clothing and put