SINGING WOMAN

By ADA JACK CARVER

From Harper’s

Little by little the Joyous Coast was changing.

The old rutted dirt road that fringed the Cane had been abandoned. The highways cut through the swamps and marshy lands and fields full of corn and refused to follow the whim of the river. It seemed to old Henriette relentless and terrible. It even ploughed its way through people’s dooryards, rooting up ancient landmarks: oaks and chinas and gnarled crêpe myrtles, their branches bowed to the earth with bloom—trees under which Henriette in her day had been courted and won.

Isle Brevelle, where the French mulattoes live, is not lonely and strange as is an island lost in the sea. With the river curving about it, it is like a maid in the arms of a lover who woos her forever: “Lie still, Adored One. Are my arms not around you? Do you not feel the beat of my heart? Behold the gifts I have brought, the fruit and the flowers I lay at your feet. You are round and shining like the sun, more beautiful than the day——”

The young people on Isle Brevelle liked the changing order, the feeling of unrest and impatience. Now, in the long summer evenings they could get in cars and go to town, to see the sights; or take in the coloured picture show up on the hill. “Mais non, we don’t speak to them niggers,” they assured old Henriette. “We don’t have nothing to do with them black folks.”

But all this saddened Henriette. For generations now her people had guarded the blood in their veins. Ignored by the whites, ignoring and scorning the blacks, they had kept themselves to themselves. But now there was change all about them. Something was in the air.... In her black spreading skirts, with her black kerchief about her head, Henriette sat on the gallery and watched the gravelled road that was straight and white and went on and on, taking the young folks with it.... People didn’t die, either, like they used to do, properly in their beds, with time to receive the sacrament and be shrived for their sins. They died just any and everywhere, bumped off by trains or the automobiles that ploughed by on the highway. No wonder the buryings were often hurried, unworthy affairs, without bell or book; to say nothing of singing woman!

Henriette and her crony, fat old Josephine Remon, were the only singing women left on Isle Brevelle. Time was when a singing woman was as necessary as a priest, when no one who was anything could be buried without a professional mourner. In those days Henriette and Josephine were looked up to and respected: the place of honour at table, the best seat by the fireside, the most desirable pew in the church. Finally, instead of being sought after, a wailing woman had to offer her services. Nowadays people seemed to have lost the fear, the dignity of death.

It was the same way with midwifery. Young women nowadays engaged trained nurses, or went to town to the hospitals to have their babies. Nowadays people didn’t care how they died or were born. They just came in and went out of the world, any old way.... All this troubled Henriette, and she sat in her corner and mumbled and grumbled to God about it, “Look like nothing ain’t right, not what it used to be....”

It had been nearly ten years now since Henriette had wailed for a funeral. Josephine had had the last one, when old Madame Rivet died, six years ago. That made ninety-eight for Josephine and ninety-nine for herself. She was one funeral ahead. How proud she was of her record! She, Henriette, had sung for more buryings than any singing woman in the parish. Of course, old Josephine ran her a mighty close second. Henriette kept an account of her own and Josephine’s funerals, in a little black memorandum book locked up in her armoire. On one page was her own name, Henriette; and underneath it ninety-nine crosses in neat little rows of five. On the opposite page was Josephine’s name, and beneath it ninety-eight crosses, in neat little rows of five. Well, they had served Death long and faithfully, she and Josephine; where Death had gone they had followed.... Time was, when, as a special treat, Henriette would take out her funeral book and name the crosses: “This one was Marie Lombard, and this one Celeste, her daughter. Here was Henri, what died the time the cholera come, in 1860.”

Now no one ever thought of Henriette’s funeral book. Six years, since Madame Rivet died, it had lain in her armoire. Sometimes she wondered sadly if she would ever wail again. For on Isle Brevelle there was but one person left who, when he died, would want a wailing woman. This person was Toni Philbert, the only soul on Isle Brevelle older than Henriette. Toni and Henriette and Josephine had been young folks together. Now it had got to be a sort of game between the two women as to who would get Toni when Toni died. “If I get Toni,” Henriette would say, “me, I’ll have two more crosses than you. I’ll have a hundred.” And Josephine, sitting fat in her chair, would chuckle, “Mais non, and if I get him, we’ll be even, Etta, my friend.”

Toni himself, an old, old man, sans teeth, sans everything, was pleased with the fuss they made over him. Sometimes he would joke with them when he met them at church. “Well, well, old uns. I’m here yet. Hee! Hee! I’ll outlive both you girls. Just wait—me, I show you!”

The days on Isle Brevelle were long and filled with the drowsy chatter of ducks and fat red hens. Henriette’s prayers for those in purgatory took up part of the time. But a person can’t pray forever! Nothing to do but sit and think of the past, and of death and dying. Henriette had always, even when a child, known something lovely and secret about death. What it was she could not have told; but her knowledge made her a good wailing woman. She minded the time, long ago, when the husband of Rose, Toni’s daughter, died and left Rose a widow. Such a pretty slip of a thing and so white in her sorrow! Henriette had, of course, done her duty to the dead; she had wailed and sung and beat the earth: “Under a tree by the river I saw them digging a young grave. Stricken one, desired of Heaven, your eyes that will not look at me—what do they see? How long before I can go to you, as I used to go?... down by the water where the reeds are singing....” But after the funeral (Mother forgive her!), she had gone back to comfort Rose, and unsay all she had said. “Look, Rose, honey, don’t take on so. A girl as fresh and sweet as you! Look, he is happy. And the world is full of lovers....” At Rose’s door grew the lily called “widow’s tear”—“widow’s tear” because the drop of dew in its heart dries so quickly when the broad, warm sun comes out....

Well, who should know more about death than she, Henriette ... she who had buried three husbands?

Sometimes when the weather was fine, and the sun not too hot or too bright, old Henriette would put on a clean “josie,” and take her stick and hobble down to Josephine’s house to sit and talk of old times. She would get one of her grandchildren to help her down in the ditch, beside the highroad, where she insisted on walking to avoid the automobiles. When there had been rain Henriette got her feet all wet and muddy, down in the ditch that way. When the weather was dry the automobiles, shrieking by, sprayed her from head to foot with a fine white dust. Sometimes she got into nettles, or cockleburs or ants. And once a rattlesnake had glided across her path. Her grandchildren, who loved her, were dismayed and indignant. “Ain’t you ’shame, Gran’mamma, walking down in the ditch! How come you don’t let us take you to Josephine’s in the car?” But Henriette was afraid of cars. “It ain’t far. I ruther walk.”

Josephine was always glad to see her. She would grunt and grumble and fetch out another shuck-bottomed chair. Then Josephine would make coffee. Josephine was rich. She owned her house and a little store that her son-in-law managed; and her married children lived with her, not she with them. She was very, very fat, what with easy living. How the two old women would gossip, the pleasant air stirred with their palmetto fans. Now in “American,” now in French; talk, talk, talk, talk. “Ain’t your tongues ever run down?” Josephine’s daughters-in-law would ask, laughing but respectful.

What grand living and dying there used to be, back in steamboat days! It was like recalling a wedding festival or a Mardi Gras to look back to the yellow-fever scare of 1890. A funeral every day, and sometimes two. She and Josephine had had their hands full.... Shucks! the land was too healthy now, what with draining the swamps and such. The people were getting too uppity, outwitting death like that. Good thing after all that the automobiles bumped some of them off, else they never would quit the earth. What if some day folks should rise up and simply refuse to die! Well, what would God the Father have to say about that?

Sometimes Henriette and Josephine would crack mild little jokes, slapping at the flies with their untiring fans. “I seen Toni last week, at the church. He’s looking feeble.” “Mais non!” (A cackle.) “He ain’t here for long.” Sometimes a shrill and sudden chorus of locusts swelled out of Josephine’s trees, and was gone. A sure sign of death. And the two old women would cross themselves. “I wonder who it is this time!”

But after all, what did it matter? Some young fool or other run down by an automobile. Some boy shot at the dance hall, over some girl. Whoever it was wouldn’t want them. The only person on Isle Brevelle who would want a singing woman was Toni, old Toni Philbert, who for nearly twenty years, had had one foot in the grave. Looked like he meant to hang on to the earth forever and ever, amen. He had always been like that, a lover of life and living. Heylaw! What a lad old Toni used to be!... What a way with the girls!

It was on a sultry August day that Toni Philbert had a stroke. Henriette’s grandson came in and told her about it. “I hear tell down at the store that Toni is mighty low. He can’t last very long, they tell me.”

Henriette was excited. So Toni was sick, very low! She gulped down some coffee and got her stick, and set out for Josephine’s house, walking down in the ditch. She was so heavy with news she could scarcely breathe. So Toni was on his deathbed.... Thoughts of Toni came to her from the long-ago years.... The August sun was veiled in a mist from the river. Already the cottonwoods were changing colour, and the goldenrod was in bloom. Henriette crowded close into the dusty bushes as an automobile flashed past above her on the highroad. So Toni was dying! Well, sometimes she might forget how many grandchildren she had; sometimes she forgot her age, or what year it was, this and that. But she would never forget the time that Toni had kissed her, nor the dress she had worn when he did it, long, long ago. Little enough she had thought of death or singing for death in those days, sitting under the trees by the river in a pink-sprigged challis. What a gallant, insolent lad he had been, old Toni! Of course, he had kissed every girl on the island. But hers was a sort of a special kiss, she had always felt. She was a slim, pretty, green-eyed thing, just turned seventeen.... Old Henriette groped along, catching against the bushes and the tumbleweeds at her feet. That was in 1852, long ’fore the war.... Old Henriette had warts on her cheeks. “Frogs put ’em there,” she sometimes croaked to curious children. “Toadfrogs, out in the swamp.” But in those days, when Toni had kissed her, her cheeks were yellow and smooth. Toni had led her down to the river to look at herself. “A minute ago, Henriette, your face was a yellow lily. And now—look!—it’s a rose!”

Ah, well, poor Toni was dying! Which one would he want to sing for him, herself or old Josephine? Henriette wondered if Josephine had had any “news.”... She stopped, heavy with fear. Suppose Josephine had been “asked?” She began to hurry a little.... Heylaw! Who was that a-coming, a-coming through the weeds? She screwed up her eyes and peered. It was Josephine, hobbling along down in the ditch, so fat she could scarcely wobble.

The two old women began screeching at each other when they were yet a great way off, and waving their palmetto fans. “Toni, he’s very sick! They say that this is the end!” They found a nice spot by the roadside, among the weeds and overgrown summer flowers. It took them a minute or two to get settled. How Josephine grunted and took on, trying to sit! How her hips spread all over the place! Well, Henriette was glad she was thin and could get about some.... Butter-and-eggs and Jimson weed grew all around them, giving off rank summer odours. A giant cottonwood reached its arms between them and the sun.... “Is you heard from Toni yet?” Henriette asked, all a-tremble. And Josephine said, “No. Is you?”

Just so, when they were young, they had sat and talked of Toni. “Is you heard from Toni yet?” What a boy he had been for love!... Love? Death, the enchantress, was after him now. “If I get him,” Henriette cackled, “I’ll have two more than you.” And Josephine laughed, sitting fat in the weeds till their purple juice squashed on her clothes. “Mais non! And if I get him, we’ll be even, Etta, my friend.”

A week went by, and another; and it began to look as if old Toni didn’t mean to die after all. It was just like Toni to keep death waiting, to flirt with death like that. He always was a tease: “Well, my beauty, my proud one—all in good time. Don’t chafe and paw at the bit....” And not a word had Toni said about getting a wailing woman! That was just like Toni, too, keeping everyone guessing up to the last.

Every night now Henriette got out her funeral book: ninety-nine crosses for herself. A record any singing woman might be proud of! If only she could get one more, to round out her final five! If only she could get Toni. How she would crow over Josephine then: “Me, I got one hundred crosses. One hundred funerals I’ve sung for....”

One night in early September Henriette, sleepless, lay in her bed. Against her window the trees, uneasy with autumn, pushed and drew away, sighing a little. The moon was up, looking drunken and sodden. It was very warm—good funeral weather, Henriette thought; a fine night for death, with cape jessamine still in bloom and baby owls in the trees. Henriette loved hoot owls. She felt they were kin to her, sisters under the skin. They plied the same trade, she and they. She loved owls and bats and all webfooted creatures, things that live in a green underworld. There were sounds on the highway, the chugging of cars; and into her window flashed the light from an automobile; it sought out the Virgin Mary, wheeled through the room, and was gone. Up and down the roads they went, the automobiles full of young folks—clatter-chug, clatter-chug!—past the unnoticed glory of river and moon and swamp. How little they considered death, the boys and girls on the highway!

The sickly moon went out; and there was lightning in the south. That meant the rain was ’way off, hiding in week after next.... Henriette arose very stealthily and crept outdoors to sit on the gallery, where it was cooler. Maybe right now old Toni was dying.... Once while she was sitting there her grandson came and poked his head out the door. “You better come to bed, gran’mammy. You’ll catch cold out there in your nightclothes.” But she shook her head and mumbled, “Let me be.” She began to sing, very low, “He will die, my beloved, my friend, when the good round fruit is ripe; when the time of courting is at an end; when the fields are bare, and the sky is black with the low, long cry of the heron....”

Two weeks later old Toni passed away. And Toni’s son came to bid Henriette to the funeral: “Papa, he told us to get you. The funeral’s to-morrow at ten.”

Henriette, who had moped long ago whenever Toni went off to town, could not shed a tear now he was dead. She was so excited she could scarcely speak; she could scarcely put on her clothes. “Come help me fasten my josie!” she called to her children.... So he had wanted her, after all, poor old Toni. She had her grandson help her down in the ditch. “Granny!” her grandchildren cried, shocked. “It rained cats and dogs last night. For shame, a old lady like you, walking down in the ditches.”

But they couldn’t do anything with her. She couldn’t rest, she said, until she had seen Josephine. “I must go tell Josie,” she said. “Poor old Josie——”

When Henriette neared Josephine’s house she began to cackle, her voice like a reed. But Josephine, sitting in her chair, cut her short. “I done heard a’ready. You needn’t bother to tell me.... Well, me, I’m glad for you, Etta.”

Old Josephine sat heavily in her chair, sagging over. How fat and sloppy she looked! And Henriette wondered what memories passed behind her lidless old eyes.... Presently Josephine got up and went and made some coffee. “One hundred for you,” she muttered, “and ninety-eight for me. Well....” To-day old Josephine laced the coffee with anisette, peering at Henriette disapprovingly. “You’ll need your strength,” she said gruffly, deep in her throat. “Getting your feet all wet that-a-way. You ought to be ‘shame’, at your age.”

But Henriette smiled. She knew Josephine was trying to dull her own disappointment; she knew that Josephine was low in her mind. Henriette drank of the hot, fragrant coffee. On either side of Josephine’s steps the bunched-up rosettes of the altheas were very pink in the sunshine; and the red yucca shook out its pretty, globular, rain-filled bells.... Henriette didn’t stay very long. “I got lots to do. I got to be up bright and early,” she said.

But in the morning, when Henriette awakened, she found that something terrible had happened to her voice. It was gone; she could not speak. Her grandchildren crowded about her bed, concerned and anxious—an old woman is frail as glass! “You see what we told you, Gran’mammy! You got no call yesterday, getting het up and excited just because old Toni is dead and they want you to sing for his funeral. And didn’t we tell you stay out that ditch? Walking around in water, just like a duck, at your age.”

They scolded and fussed and fumed and put warm flannels on her throat. They gave her a toddy. But it did no good. Her throat hurt, and when she opened her mouth she croaked like a frog—she who in her wailing had had as many stops to her voice as a sounding organ.... “Poor Gran’mammy,” her children said. “Now she can’t sing. And Josephine’ll have to go and wail for old Toni’s funeral.” Henriette lay and moaned a little. If she could only cry as children cry, in her disappointment. But the tears wouldn’t come. They had all dried up long ago.

At dusk the family returned from the burying. But out of respect for her feelings, as Henriette knew, they forbore to talk of the funeral and of how nice Josephine had sung and “carried on.” They merely said, “Josephine was so fat they had to hold her, to keep her from tumbling down in the grave.” But when she thought no one was looking Henriette took her funeral book from under her pillow and made a crossmark under Josephine’s name. Now they were even. Her old hands shook and one yellow tear rolled out of one eye. “Poor Gran’mamma,” her children said, in whispers. “Poor old Granny....”

Sleep did not come to Henriette until nearly daybreak. It began to rain about midnight, a steady rain, long and full of the secrets of autumn. And Henriette lay in her bed and thought about death and dying. She thought about her grandchildren, how good they were. Somehow she always felt sorriest for young people when anyone died. Not for little children, or the very old; but the ones in between. The ones between eighteen and forty, say. They took it hardest. How terrible death was to them, how everlasting! If only they could know what she knew, she and the little children.... Of course, she wailed and carried on; that was her business, her calling. But how often, right in the midst of a funeral, even as she stood and gazed in the grave, she had longed to go and whisper to youth’s white, impassioned grief, “There, there, chère ... don’t sorrow so hard. Me, I know. I tell you, I know.” But what she knew she could not have said.... Henriette stirred in her bed, sought a new place for her pillow. How often she had longed to say to some bereft mother, she who had buried six, “Do not grieve overmuch, little Mammy. He is not here. See! He is dragging a little tin can for a train, across the white courts of Heaven.”

Henriette slept, and after a time a bell tolled in her dreaming. It awakened her. A gray light had come into the room, and the rain was gone. Well, and who could be dead? Somebody old and rich was dead, the bell had been tolling so long. The light about her bed grew brighter, and the ceiling shone with rose. She dozed again; but when she again awakened the bell was still tolling.... It must be an old person dead.

Suddenly Henriette became aware of a flow, a movement in the house. The windows rattled; a door was opened somewhere and shut. And then there was a swishing of skirts, a running of feet. Her grandchildren! They crowded about her bed, three-deep, tense and excited. The cheeks of the littlest ones glowed, the way they did when there was bad news to be broken; when the sugar was out, or the cat had fallen down in the cistern. “Granny, what you think is happen? Old lady Josephine’s gone!”... They crowded closer, to see how Henriette “took it.” “Poor Josephine, she got sick in the night and she passed away early this morning.”

Henriette sat up against her pillow, blinking. She looked like the kind of old woman children make out of their knuckles, with black-headed pins for eyes. And now the older ones, her daughters, stole into the room on their tiptoes. They took her hands. “How you feel, Gran’mammy? Is your throat all right? Well, they’ve done sent for you, honey. They said Josephine asked for you in the night, to come and sing for her funeral.... Well, le bon Dieu is love you, sho’, Mammy.”

All day her children were busy, getting Henriette ready: her best alpaca cleaned and pressed; her mourning veil laid out, her gloves and her shoes. Shiny and speckless they must be, to follow the honoured dead. “Mammy,” her daughters said, “you stay in bed and rest, so your voice will be good to-morrow.” They were nice daughters; they were trying to make her feel prideful again.... All day long Henriette lay and gazed out at the white gravelled road, stretching away, on past Josephine’s house. Looked like she could see Josephine, sitting there on her gallery, the fat running over!

Well, she would miss Josephine, her old crony. Toni and Josie both gone. It would be queer, a sort of joke, wailing for Josephine’s funeral. It would be like singing beside her own grave.

The next morning, at the first peep of day, her children came in to help her. “How you feel, Gran’mammy?” They looked at her and shook their heads. She was so thin and so old. With her friends all gone she seemed like something from some other life.... “Well, we won’t have Mammy much longer,” they said. They crowded about her, solicitous.

Old Henriette sat up in bed. “Fetch me my specs,” she grumbled.

They brought her specs, her false teeth, her rosary, and her snake-oil. They washed her feet and rubbed them, and helped her to dress. With her mourning veil on she looked like a little black bride. And when she was dressed and ready they brought her the funeral book. “Now, Mammy, look! Mark it down—one hundred funerals. You’ve sung for more buryings than anyone else in the parish.”

But Henriette stared at the funeral book; she seemed mad about something, offended. “Don’t meddle so much,” she cackled. “You wait till I come home from Josephine’s funeral.”

She set out in the ditch, holding tight to her little black bag and her glasses. The grandchildren, who were to go on in the car, stood and watched her sorrowfully. Once she turned back and waved.... She was so little, so little and thin, so perverse! She hobbled along in the ditch. Her funeral shoes felt stiff and heavy, and caught in the Queen Anne’s lace; and whenever an automobile thundered by on the highway, Henriette, terrified, put her hands to her ears.... Once, half fainting, she stopped and clutched at the branch of a cottonwood tree. And a loneliness passed over her, a loneliness and a heartache.... “Josie,” she called, hopelessly, “Josie.... I’m a-coming....”

But when she got to the turn of the road where the willows grew, she faltered, distressed and alarmed. She could get no farther down in the ditch. A freshet poured from a hole in the side of the road, and the ditch in front of her was flooded with water. The black water boiled and licked at her feet, treacherous and angry; and Henriette shrank and backed away. For a moment she stood, trembling, uncertain; and she stared at the road above her that stretched away in the sunlight, on past Josephine’s house. Then, tottering and dizzy and sick with fright, she pulled herself up the embankment, and with her face turned toward Josephine’s house, began to hobble along on the highway.

“Josie—” she whispered, and a numbness, a darkness took hold of her—“Josie.... I mind as how, after all, my friend, you and me ull quit even....”