The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen Page B

harm to the dead than they can do to us.”
    I looked at her sideways. “He some kind of Voudoun master?”
    “No, silly, he’s an undertaker. I was thinking of inviting you over for dinner this Sunday, but if you’re so frightened of dead folks . . .”
    The idea of visiting the undertaker’s ran chills up and down my spine, even in the mid-day heat. But I said, “Of course I’m not.”
    “Good. Come by about one o’clock. My sisters will all be there with their husbands, and a load of nieces and nephews. We’ll outnumber the spirits for sure, just in case you take fright.”
    The shoes Bet outfitted me with before I left Virginia weren’t at all the fashion in Philadelphia. I noticed it myself, but when Phillipa made a comment about “certain people who drag their skirts through the streets, one can only presume to hide their most unfortunate footgear,” I counted over the coins I’d carefully accumulated from my allowance, eagerly anticipating the purchase of a fine new pair to wear to meet Hattie’s family.
    A small wooden sign proclaiming MUELLER AND SONS, SHOEMAKERS hung from the second floor of a building on the Upshaws’ block of Gaskill Street. Though Mama and Old Sam often sent me to the cobbler in Shockoe Bottom on errands for the Van Lews, I was befuddled by what I found when I pushed open the Muellers’ door that Saturday. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior, and when they did, I saw about the oddest sight I’d ever seen.
    There sat an older man and woman, four younger men, and two girls. They were all sewing shoes, even the females. Stranger still, they were sewing eight identical shoes. And only sewing the leather tops of the shoes together. In the corner of the room rose a high pile of these bottomless wonders, not a sole on any of them.
    The older man nodded toward me and spoke to one of the girls in a guttural language. She set down her work and asked, “Have you business here?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I need new shoes.”
    “We do not take one order.” She seemed to grope for words. “No order from just one person.”
    “But I am only one person, and I want to buy one pair of shoes.”
    She looked at me as if I’d asked for a pound of butter or a carriage wheel. “We do not sell. The jobber brings pieces, and we sew.” She gestured at the pile in the corner. “Then he brings to the Schmidts to put on soles. Then takes to the stores on Chestnut Street. You go there to buy.”
    “How does the store know which kind I want, and what size I need?”
    She shrugged. “They have every kind. Pick what you like.”
    Her father called to her in their strange language, motioning her to return to work. I thanked the girl and left.
    As I walked toward Chestnut Street, I thought about how Bet always insisted the North was more advanced than the South. I couldn’t fathom what was so superior about having someone called a jobber drag pairs of half-finished shoes all over town, with no idea whether anybody even wanted to buy that size or style.
    When I reached Chestnut, I walked up and down several blocks, eyeing the elegantly dressed white ladies who disappeared into the various storefronts. A five-story building, bigger than any I’d ever seen in Richmond and proclaiming itself BARNES AND CHARLES, PURVEYORS OF LADIES’ AND GENTLEMEN’S WARDROBE, BOOTS TO BONNETS seemed especially popular.
    Stepping through the grand doorway, I found myself in a large salon, some forty feet across. Behind long counters on either side, clerks were selling a variety of wares for ladies. Rich carpet covered the floor, and way above my head protruded galleries of counters filled with gentlemen’s goods. In the middle of the salon stood a waist-high mahogany stall, topped with marble. When I told the woman inside the stall that I was in need of new shoes, she directed me to the far end of the room.
    Mama always lowered her eyes and waited for all the white people to be served before