The monsters we defy, p.1
The Monsters We Defy, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Leslye Penelope
Excerpt from The Ballad of Perilous Graves copyright © 2022 by Alex Jennings
Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover illustrations by Arcangel and Shutterstock
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Author photograph by Valerie Bey
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Penelope, L., 1978– author.
Title: The monsters we defy / Leslye Penelope.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Redhook, 2022.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021058428 | ISBN 9780316377911 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780316378024 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316388467
Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3616.E5387 M66 2022 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20211203
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058428
ISBNs: 9780316377911 (trade paperback), 9780316378024 (ebook)
E3-20220624-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
1: The Crossroads
2: Miss Louise Wyatt
3: The District Rumblers
Ghost Girl
4: The Monroe Boy
5: The Empress Requests
6: Searching for Samuel
7: The Reanimated
8: Madame Josephine
9: The Fairy Ball
The Actor
10: Booted and Suited
11: The Luminous Four Hundred
The Musician
12: A Garden in the City
13: A Possible Alliance
14: The Pullman Porter
The Thief
15: The Speakeasy
16: Soul Food
17: The Garage
18: The Afflicted
19: The Grays
Haints
20: Source of Legends
21: The Saturday Nighters
22: The Queen of Sheba
23: Breakfast for Heathens
24: An Unexpected Visit
25: The Scrying Jar
26: A Reckoning
27: A Trip to Jail
28: Cinderella
29: Shave and a Haircut
30: The Whitelaw Hotel
31: The Ball
32: A Destiny of our Own
33: A Flare of Tempers
34: Our Precious Blood
35: The Ring of Makeda
36: Bargains
37: Negro History Week
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Discover More
Meet the Author
Interview
A Preview of The Ballad of Perilous Graves
Also by Leslye Penelope
Praise for Leslye Penelope
For Carrie and Della and all the women who,
when pressed to the wall, fight back
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If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
—Claude McKay
We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.
—Marcus Garvey
1
THE CROSSROADS
Some folks say it wasn’t just being born with a caul that made Clara Johnson ornery as a red hornet, it was being born at the crossroads. Her spirit, unlike most, had a choice to make right there at the beginning. Cold or hot, salty or sweet, lion or lamb. She came into this world through one of the forks in the road, and Clara being Clara, she chose the rockier way.
See, her mama and daddy was migrating up North from Gastonia, North Carolina, riding in the back of a wagon with her grandmother and two other distant kinfolk from down that way, when her mama’s water broke. They was about to cross the Virginia state line, just outside a place called Whitetown, which didn’t give nobody in that vehicle a good feeling, when they had to pull over to the side of the road—one of those roads that no Colored person wanted to be on at night—just so that gal could push that baby out.
Her mama was hollering up a storm and her daddy was holding a shotgun in one hand and his woman’s hand in the other when he first caught sight of his baby girl—a slippery little thing covered head to toe with the birthing sac. Mama Octavia pushed her son aside and did what needed to be done, freeing the child so she could breathe and making sure to wrap that caul up in a sheet of newspaper and put it in her satchel.
Everybody was breathing a sigh of relief that mother and child were healthy—for a first baby she came out smooth and quick without too much bleeding or tearing or anything like that. And then that baby got to screaming. It was like to wake the dead. In fact, it did shake loose a few spirits who’d been hovering over yonder, waiting on someone like Clara to come round. And they’re more than likely to do their hovering closer to a crossroads than not.
Mama Octavia sat back as her son’s common-law wife tried to hush the child, and the menfolk watched the darkened road for signs of trouble. She scanned what little she could see by the moonlight and the lantern-light and caught sight of a pile of ashes and wax someone had left in the center of the crossroads. A shiver went down her spine like someone walking over her grave.
She realized her mistake, that precautions should have been taken when a child was born this close to a fork, but it was too late to do anything about it, and she didn’t have the working of things the way her own grandmother had back there at Old Man Johnson’s plantation, so she said a prayer for the soul of her grandbaby, hoping the child’s little spirit had chosen well.
It wasn’t long before she, and everyone else, found out exactly what Clara Johnson was made of. Or just what else her birth had awakened.
Clara Johnson paced the sidewalk in tight, agitated circles, trying in vain to release some of the pent-up anger welling within. “That pompous, arrogant sonofabitch,” she muttered under her breath.
Her fingers coiled, pressing almost painfully against her palms, taut as the head of a drum with a tempting rhythm of rage beating against it. Like the thump, thump of fists meeting flesh.
Her grandmother’s voice chided in her head, You know you ain’t about to fight no grown man. Which might have been true, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t fantasize about kicking him in his family jewels and bruising up the face that the other girls in the office seemed to think was so handsome.
Footsteps sounded behind her, but wisely kept their distance. “Miss Clara?” a cautious voice called. She took a breath and turned slowly, grabbing hold of the trickle of calm that accompanied this distraction.
Young Samuel Foster stood watching her, more worry than wariness in his gaze. “Thought you’d left without me,” he said, breaking into a grin. Tall since his recent growth spurt, with an ebony complexion, the boy would be a heartbreaker in a few years.
Clara smiled back and shook out her clenched fists. “And deprive you of the pleasure of my company?” She let out an unladylike snort. “Let’s get going. Happy to leave this place behind for the weekend.”
Samuel chuckled and fell into step beside her, heading toward Rhode Island Avenue. “Dr. Harley nearly made you blow your top back there. I thought for sure you was gonna let loose on him.”
“Nearly did.” Thoughts of the man in question and his smug, punchable face almost made her turn back. “Still might.” Though higher on the food chain in the office than she, Harley wasn’t really her boss, but he took great pleasure in ordering her around with his nasally whine and treating her like warmed-over trash. And while he had a good foot of height on her and probably one hundred pounds, he didn’t know how to fight dirty like she did. “I’m sure I could take him. He’d probably be afraid to scuff up his shiny br ogans.”
Samuel shook his head, watching her carefully until the light changed, as if anxious she might really go back and start a fight. “Can’t let folks like that get to you none, the ones always trying to tear you down. Nothing gets built up that way.”
Clara turned sharply to look at him. From the mouths of babes.
That boy has more sense at fourteen than you do, her grandmother’s voice lamented.
Blinking under the force of her scrutiny, Samuel changed the subject. “Big plans for the weekend, Miss Clara?”
She exhaled slowly, her fit of pique now almost completely dissolved, replaced with a welling sadness she refused to show. “A stack of library books is waiting on me. What about you?”
“Shifts at Mr. Davis’s drugstore and making deliveries over at the print shop.” His chest puffed up with pride.
“Didn’t you hear, weekends are for resting?” She bumped him on the shoulder.
“Dead men can rest, until then I got to work. Got me some big dreams, Miss Clara.” And a handful of younger brothers and sisters all relying on the paychecks from his various jobs, but he didn’t mention that so neither did she.
“I ain’t forgot,” she said instead. “You gonna own one of these businesses on U Street. You figure out which one yet?”
He scratched his chin, considering. “Not quite yet. But I will.”
“You keep going the way you are and you’ll be working at each and every one of them.”
That infectious grin returned. “I’ll have one heck of a résumé, then.”
Clara admired the boy’s drive and determination—she wished she could borrow a little of it for herself. She was happy enough to have the one job. The big dreams she’d leave to him.
They chatted as they walked through the edge of the Washington, DC, neighborhood once known as Hell’s Bottom. The intense poverty and crime had faded to the edges. Now the streets were well maintained and safe, filled with a wide range of Negroes battling the August heat. Here were folks coming home from a long day of work whether in an office or labor yard, going to change, eat, and rest a bit before heading over to U Street for the evening. Maybe they’d take in a picture at the Lincoln or a band at Café De Luxe or maybe go dancing at the Palace. None of which Clara had ever done.
As usual, Samuel insisted on walking her to her door, though it took him several blocks out of his way. But he was resolute since it was the gentlemanly thing to do. After they said their goodbyes, he turned and ambled off, while Clara dug her key out from her purse.
The billiard parlor she lived above was still shuttered until later that evening. Miles, the owner, took Fridays off to “sleep in”—probably a good idea seeing as the place wouldn’t close again until Monday morning.
Miles was a friend of her daddy’s, and before he’d gone back down to North Carolina a few years ago, he’d asked the man to keep an eye on her. Miles owned the whole building and charged her a fair price for two rooms with heat and hot water, and though living here was often noisy, Clara had long ago been forced to learn to sleep through just about anything. The workweek was over and she wanted nothing more than a bath and her lumpy mattress. The heat and her receding anger had left her bone-tired. She turned the key in the door, ready to shut out the world for the weekend.
“Miss Johnson? Miss Clara Johnson?” Her shoulders tensed at the lilting voice calling her name. All she had to do was twist the doorknob and slip inside, pretend she hadn’t heard.
It could just be one of her neighbors—the voice was unfamiliar, but she had more of a “nod as you pass by” relationship with them than a speaking one. Ruth Anne, the woman who ran the beauty parlor next door, often looked like she wanted to start a conversation. And it wouldn’t be too unusual for folks to know her name—every Negro in the city knew her name at one time.
But the questioning, halting tone to the voice made her almost certain this was no neighbor. The urge to slide inside the narrow vestibule and slam the door in the face of her would-be questioner was strong. However, the husky voice whispering in her mind minced no words. Gal, you better turn your narrow tail around and see what that young woman wants!
Clara sighed deeply, and pressed her forehead against the wood of the door.
I know you hear me talking to you, Clara Mae. Best not ignore me.
“Yes, ma’am,” she uttered under her breath and turned around.
The girl standing on the curb behind her looked like she’d been cut from the pages of a magazine. Her chestnut hair was smartly pressed and curled—immune, it seemed, to Washington’s formidable humidity—with a fashionable cloche hat perfectly positioned on her head.
Her face was somewhat plain, but you’d never know it from the way she carried herself. She looked several years younger than Clara, maybe eighteen or so, wearing a green silk dress and shiny patent leather oxfords.
“Miss Johnson,” she said, holding her hand out. “I’m Louise Wyatt, and I need your help.”
A stinging sensation nettled Clara, uncomfortable and insistent, locking her into action. It wasn’t due to the heat or the traffic; this was pure magic. She could not deny someone who came to her for help, that was the deal she’d made when she was about Louise’s age—and one she could never ignore. Guilt for something that hadn’t even happened yet attached itself to her like a suit of armor.
“Come inside, then,” she grumbled and pushed the door open.
2
MISS LOUISE WYATT
Miss Louise Wyatt chattered all the way up the steps to the second-floor apartment. She apologized for calling at the end of a workday, but this was an absolutely urgent situation and it just couldn’t wait for the weekend. Clara unlocked the door, a headache already blooming. She ushered the girl inside and set her purse down on the table. Next to it, a wooden folding cot rested against the wall, draped with a dirty apron that would need a good bleaching to be white again.
The owner of the apron stood at the stove, measuring coffee grounds into the percolator. Louise entered and took a slow look around the small space, then froze at the sight of Zelda. “Oh my!” she said, blinking rapidly.
Used to reactions far more severe, Zelda struck a pose at the stove with her hand on her hip. She was dressed in a pair of sports knickers buttoned below the knee, with striped socks and a man’s button-up shirt. Her shock of fluffy, pale golden hair had been wrangled into a braid circling her head.
“Miss Wyatt, this is Zelda Coleman. I agreed to let her stay on my couch until she found a place of her own. That was six months ago,” Clara said wryly.
“Y-you have a white roommate?” Louise actually took a step back.
Zelda, taking perverse glee in this assumption, bared her teeth in a frightening smile. “Why, I’m just as Colored as you are.”
Clara slipped off her shoes and wiggled her pinched toes before taking a seat on the couch. “She ain’t white, she’s an albino.”
Zelda crossed the space and sidled up to Louise to give her a good look. Her skin was pale as milk, but her broad features were unmistakably Negro. Brown eyes ringed with blonde lashes glittered with amusement. Zelda held out her hand and Louise stared at it for a moment before blinking rapidly and offering her own to shake.
“Oh, how… interesting.” Louise’s complexion, a cool buttercream with plenty of warm undertones, was much closer to Zelda’s than to Clara’s. Her bearing and manner shouted a so-called better class of people than either Clara or Zelda could lay claim to. She probably ran in the same lofty circles as that jackass at work.
“What was it you needed help with, Miss Wyatt?”
It took a moment for Louise to extract herself from Zelda’s firm grip. She smiled nervously before perching on the seat of the wobbly armchair. “Please, call me Louise. You see, I—” She looked back toward the kitchenette, but Zelda had slipped out silently to give them privacy.
Louise took a deep breath. “There’s a young man. Robert.” A dreamy smile overtook her face. “And he was courting me.”
The air next to her shimmered and a diaphanous figure began to take shape. Clara ignored the spirit, focusing on Louise’s words. “He told me how much he loved me, and, well, I believed him.”
“That gal gave up the goodies is what she did,” a slightly hoarse voice announced. A sturdy body began to take shape, with arms crossed in disapproval.
