Farewell to Storyville

by Mina Seymore

Storyville, New Orleans -- June 1904

The air is sticky hot against my cheeks, but at least it smells of rain clouds and not cigar smoke. Next door in the saloon, the Professor is really going to town on the keyboard. I can hear the sound of the piano floating up to my second-floor window.

I still can't believe I'm here working at the Hall of Mirrors when last week I was flat broke and flat on my back in a tiny crib on Iberville. I savor my new boudoir with the canopy bed and the red velvet drapes. It is even better than champagne.

While I might share my bed with three or four different men in a night, this room is all mine. I know I will come here to the window in the middle of the night, drinking in the rain-soaked air and listening to the Professor's jazz tunes every single night I live here.

Right now, though, I'd better go downstairs. The front doorbell just rang and that means a customer.

Bourbon Street, New Orleans -- present-day

June closed the diary with a thoughtful expression on her face. The owner of the used bookstore had been as perplexed as she was when she'd found it on a shelf in the back room. No price tag or anything.

"Somebody's old diary," he'd said, stating the obvious since the little blue book had "Diary" stamped across it in faded gold gilt letters. "I don't sell diaries, I sell books."

In the end he'd charged her three dollars and his suspicious stare had burned into her back all the way across the dusty floor to the street door. As if people reading other people's diaries was some sort of sin or vice. But this diary was from 1904, over a hundred years ago. The woman who wrote in it was long since dead and buried. Beyond caring. Beyond thought or feeling.

So she'd taken it to the bar on Bourbon Street, ordered a whiskey sour, and settled down to start reading it. The bookstore owner had cursed her, she thought, shaking her head. She shouldn't feel guilty, like she was reading her mother's or her sister's diary, but that's exactly how she felt.

Storyville, New Orleans -- June 1904

The call us "fellows," jolly good fellows, when they arrive at the Basin Street train station. "Where can I find a jolly good fellow?" they ask and they are always directed here, to the District. Some of them can afford the better places, like here at the Hall of Mirrors or Arlington, but I knew lots of them who preferred to keep it cheap and never ventured past the cribs.

A bed and a chair, that's all I had there. Three bucks a night to rent one of those dumps. 75 cents a customer. Well, that's all behind me now. The Professor fixed me up nice here. Of course he had to, considering what I know about him. I didn't ask for much really, just a place at Lulu White's. I knew he could do it for me. He plays here almost every night and Lulu's always looking for new talent.

Here in my boudoir I can pretend I am somebody. An heiress. A princess. A respectable woman. A girl needs her secret dreams, right?

Storyville, New Orleans -- July 1904

Of course most of us girls don't go by our real names. We like to flash them up some, make the men remember us. So we're Bayou Bettie, Naughty Nellie, Sugar Sweet, and me, Lady Eyes.

The Professor came up with my name. Everyone thinks it's on account of the fact my eyes are my prettiest feature--big and brown and all that, but the look he gave me when he suggested it let me know that it had a double meaning. It means I see things. Things that aren't my business. I laughed it off, but he really looked mean for a minute. He doesn't have to worry, he got me what I asked for and as far as I'm concerned I didn't see a thing, but maybe he's the type that holds a grudge? He's in the wrong city for that. Everybody is into everybody here. What else do we have to do?

Le Richelieu Hotel, New Orleans -- present-day

June looked at the small blue diary on her nightstand and then out the window of her hotel room. The French Quarter lay beneath her, all cobblestones and tiled roofs, stucco walls and wrought-iron lace. She really should be out there doing things; it was after all, why she came to the city in the first place.

When her mother died, June had been surprised to find postcards and books about New Orleans on her bedroom bookshelves. As far she knew, her mother had never set foot in Louisiana, let alone New Orleans, but apparently she'd had a fascination for the city. A secret draw she never told anyone about.

June had decided to use some of her inheritance to make a pilgrimage to the city in her mother's honor. The heat and molasses-slow pace of the Crescent City had made her impatient for the cool summer shade of her New England home, and she had all but decided to cut her visit short when she'd found the diary.

What better place to read it than here in New Orleans where it was written?

But first, a walk, she thought, grabbing up her room key and her purse.

Storyville, New Orleans -- July 1904

Mama says Anna is the smartest baby she ever saw. Smarter than me, smarter than my brothers. I go to see her as often as I can, which isn't much, but Sunday mornings when everybody goes to church at St. Louis Cathedral or one of the Baptist places, I take the streetcar to the Irish Channel and walk the blocks off St. Charles to my mother's house on Annunciation.

It brings back memories, that house. Mama, my brothers, and me on one side of the old shotgun cottage and my aunts and grandmother on the other. Always the smell of something cooking, the neighbors wandering in and out all afternoon long.

Nowadays when the neighbors see me they turn their backs and walk off, stiff with outraged pride. It's not so jolly for a fellow outside of the District.

My brothers haven't spoken to me since the day I brought Anna wrapped in a blanket to my Mama. I sure couldn't care for her in the three dollar a night crib, and that's no life for a baby anyhow. I've seen what happens to trick babies in the District; they grow up and become whores. My friend Nellie has a daughter and at seven years old that child is already making tip money by helping her mama with the customers. Wandering in and out of her mama's room, watching with her big, velvet-brown eyes. She won't be anything but what her mama is and I don't want that for my Anna. I want her to finish school and make something of herself someday. I want Anna to have better. Maybe someday she can move out of this town and live someplace nice. Someplace with a cool breeze and a shady tree or two.

The corner of Basin and Bienville, New Orleans -- present-day

June stared at the building on the corner. She was disappointed to discover that there was nothing left of the House of Mirrors, and only one story left of the saloon. People told her that Lulu White's Mahogany Hall had been torn down long ago and that the building that had housed the saloon had been damaged in Hurricane Betsy in 1965, but she hadn't wanted to believe them. Somehow she had expected to be able to walk backward in time and round the corner to see everything as it once was. She walked on this street, June thought. She walked through that saloon door and listened to the Professor playing his jazz tunes on the piano. She was here.

Somehow that thought made her want to cry. As if this long-dead prostitute were somehow connected to her. As if this whole experience were somehow personal.

Must be the heat, she decided, turning away and walking back toward the heart of the Quarter.

Storyville, New Orleans -- August 1904

I'm starting to build up a decent stash of cash. I'm not like the other girls, spending it on mail-order clothes and champagne. I don't dress up to the nines and walk along Canal Street on Saturday afternoons turning up my nose at the provincial dresses for sale in the Krauss department store windows while the respectable matrons cross the street to avoid me. I'm saving most of my money for Anna. Mama can talk about the wages of sin, but the wages of sin have made me more in a year than Mama made in five, scrimping and saving, taking in washing and hiring herself out as a maid to the rich ladies in their mansions on St. Charles.

I had a dream last night about what happened back at the crib. I haven't let myself think about it much since it happened. Maybe it's because I see the Professor so often here at Lulu's and that reminds me. He doesn't like me, I know that, but he doesn't have to worry. I would never tell. A deal's a deal.

Le Richelieu Hotel, New Orleans -- present-day

June hung up the phone and realized suddenly that her husband seemed less real to her somehow than the woman in the diary. Time seemed wispy, unsubstantial. She felt as if she were walking through a dream, or maybe she was the dream.

Storyville, New Orleans -- August 1904

I had the dream again last night. It was just like what really happened. I was between customers, but I was tired. I didn't feel like standing at the door again just yet. So I sat in the chair and rested. Just as I was about to get up and go back to work, I heard the first moan. First just one and then another and another.

Things were moving around in the crib next door. It didn't sound anything like Emma entertaining a customer. For one thing the sounds were going on far too long. And the moans didn't sound like passion or even faked passion. They sounded like pain.

I pressed my ear to the wall and I heard a man's voice. I only caught a couple of words here and there, but they weren't good words. I heard "too much blood" and "can't make it stop" and "shut up, damn you."

I debated running for a policeman but I knew he probably wouldn't pay much attention to me, a whore. Nobody did unless it was a customer wanting some action. Emma wasn't really a friend, but she was a sister in a way. If we didn't look out for each other, who would? So I crept to the door of my crib and peeked out. That's when I saw the Professor running down the street.

I recognized him from Pete Lala's Big 25 Club where I sometimes go late at night to drink Raleigh rye whiskey and listen to the music. After hours we go there to give our P.I.'s money or just to listen to all the music.

He didn't see me.

It took all the courage I had to walk through the door into Emma's crib. I knew what I would find.

Emma was on the bed. Blood was dripping off the mattress and down onto the hardwood floor. Her eyes were wide open and sightless. She was dead.

She didn't want a trick baby and I didn't blame her, but something had gone horribly wrong in trying to get rid of it.

Storyville, New Orleans -- August 1904

Two nights after Emma died I went to the Big 25. Jelly Roll Morton was rocking the joint, and I saw the Professor standing by the bar looking pretty calm and cool for a murderer.

I knew a whore dying wasn't of much interest to the police, but an abortionist was another thing. There had to be some sort of payback for what had happened to Emma.

I went up to the Professor and asked to speak to him. He and his pal made some remarks about me that weren't exactly charitable and he turned his back until I got up on tiptoe and whispered seven words into his ear:

"I know what you did to Emma."

He grabbed me by the arm and dragged my ass out the door of Pete Lala's, people laughing themselves sick at the sight of us. Like we were in some sort of lovers' spat or that maybe he was my P.I. and he thought I was holding back some of my trick money.

"The police don't care about some dead whore," he spit into my face when I said I would tell.

I just smiled at him. He wasn't stupid and neither was I.

"I could drag you down this back alley, bitch, and make you dead. Why shouldn't I?"

I stared at him defiantly. I couldn't show any fear or it would be over. He probably wouldn't kill me, but he wouldn't respect me either.

"What do you want? Money? I ain't got no money," he sighed.

That's when I told him what I wanted. And who I would tell and how I would go about it if he didn't come through for me.

He threw back his head and laughed at me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me and then he really seemed to see me for the first time.

"Miss Lulu only take the prettiest octoroon gals in the District," he said.

"I could be pretty," I said bitterly. "In the right clothes, with the right hair. I got the figure for it." I tried to unbutton my dress to show him, but he stopped me.

"I'll take your word for it," he said, shaking his head and buttoning up my dress with quick, adroit, piano-player fingers.

I knew the Professor couldn't afford to doubt me, but I really did have the letter to the editor of the Picayune written and addressed and it really was with my Mama who would mail it only if I didn't show up on Sunday morning to see Anna.

The police might not care about a dead whore, but the people of New Orleans would be outraged to hear about an abortionist in the District. They would demand something be done. The Professor would be ruined or worse.

Sometimes a girl has to take a chance to better herself in this world. Sometimes it comes about through the misfortune of others. That's just how it is.

U.S. Mint Jazz Museum, New Orleans -- present-day

June stood in front of the Storyville exhibit and stared at the painted pictures of whores entertaining their customers. She read about famous madams like Lulu White and Josie Arlington. She learned some of the history of Storyville and how it came to be. A politician named Sidney Story had pushed a motion through the legislature which declared that no prostitute could live outside one specific district in the city--not exactly legalizing prostitution, but everyone knew what it meant. That's why it was called Storyville, because people began calling the District after him.

The little blue diary seemed to be burning a hole in her purse. June could feel it smoldering in there, begging to be read.

Storyville, New Orleans -- August 1904

I visited Mama this morning as usual. She told me that one of her ladies on St. Charles saw her walking Anna and thought she was a beautiful baby. She told Mama about her cousin who is moving to Connecticut with her husband and how sad they are because they can't have any babies of their own.

My heart seemed to stop a beat or two because I just knew what Mama was going to say next and she did.

Those people want my Anna. They would raise her as their own and never tell anyone she was a trick baby from the District. She's so fair she could pass and nobody knows about octoroons in New England anyway.

It's a chance of a lifetime, Mama said, looking around at the shabby kitchen and the plaster crumbling through the wallpaper and the gaps in the floorboards showing the dirt beneath the house. She looked really old, too. For the first time. What if she died before Anna was finished growing up? What would happen to her?

Before I left I kissed Anna goodbye and told her I would never forget her. Then I ran all the way to the streetcar even in the smothering heat and nearly fainted dead away on the tracks.

I will never see her again.

St. Charles Streetcar, New Orleans -- present-day

The wooden seat rocked gently back and forth as the streetcar clicked and groaned up the tracks. The mansions on St. Charles Avenue were breathtaking. Some were lavender, some were peach, many were white with Greek columns and wrought-iron lace balconies, and the live oaks made a canopy overhead through which the sunshine filtered down.

June clutched her purse with the diary inside and peered out the half-open window beside her. All of a sudden she felt as though she had ridden far enough up the line and she pulled on the wire over her head to signal the driver to stop.

Once she was off the streetcar, the summer heat enveloped her like sticky cotton candy. She crossed to the sidewalk and walked along the cracked and heaved pavement until she saw the street sign that said Annunciation. After a moment's hesitation she turned left and walked half a block.

The house before her was a double shotgun with glass transoms above the two front doors. A small garden bursting with pink and yellow flowers lay between the two staircases leading up to the doors on each side of the house. Bright mint green paint shone in the sunlight and a small wrought-iron fence enclosed the miniscule front yard. Through the transom on the right side of the house she could see a ceiling fan slowly revolving as if turning back time itself.

This is her house, June thought, even though she really could not know that for sure--the diary mentioned no street number. It just felt right somehow. She could almost see the small figure of a girl clutching a bundled baby slipping through the gate and moving up the steps to the door. Inside, an older woman was making dinner for her sons. She would look up and see the girl and the baby and her face would reflect only love, not judgment.

That's the way it was, I'm sure of it, June thought, lingering one last moment before turning away.

Storyville, New Orleans -- November 1904

It's getting a bit cooler now that November's here. I'm standing at my window listening to the Professor play jazz next door. I'm between customers and no matter how much I try I can't stop thinking about Anna.

She's been with her new family for three months now. She might even be walking. She won't remember me or Mama or anything about New Orleans. She won't ever know her Mama worked at Miss Lulu White's House of Mirrors in the District. She won't ever have to listen for the doorbell and run downstairs to greet a customer.

I wonder what it's like in New England. Cool and shady I hope.

If I had one wish in this whole world, it's not to have Anna back, but one day to know that I did the right thing. To know she grew up happy and got married and had babies and they grew up happy and they had babies. If one day her grandchildren or great-grandchildren would know about me. Would say my name out loud. Then I think I could be happy too.

Moonwalk, New Orleans -- present-day

June sat on the bench before the brown expanse of the Mississippi River. She stared straight ahead at the Natchez steamboat as it paddled by trailing calliope music in its wake.

It was all coming clearer now.

With trembling fingers she turned to the last page of the little diary. She saw the words: My name is Jessie written there.

Her eyes filled with tears.

"Jessie," she said and closed the book.