House of Rougeaux(59)
“All that is needed,” Mrs. Allison concluded, “is train fare to New York and back.”
Papa folded the letter carefully and handed it back to Mrs. Allison. He thanked her again, promising to give the matter his thorough consideration.
When Mrs. Allison had gone he sat down again by the fire and looked at Eleanor.
“Well, chère,” he said, “what do you think of all this?”
Eleanor was speechless. Never had she dreamed that something like this was possible. When she found words she said, “I want to go.” After which her heart echoed, I must go.
Papa turned to Auntie. “What do you say?” he said.
Auntie, who was uncharacteristically silent during the meeting, did not alter her position in her rocking chair. “I say that was Fate knocking at the door,” she said, “dressed up like Mrs. Allison.”
Eleanor watched Papa’s face. It shone with pride and glowered with concern. She loved him very much, and if she did go it would be hard to say goodbye. She watched him as he looked into the hearth. She was already imagining herself on a train.
Papa would consider permission, but there was still the question of the various expenses. Eleanor’s older brothers were working now, but Papa was still the sole support of Auntie and three children, as well as aiding Eleanor’s Aunt Phoebe who was recently widowed. Funds were already stretched to their limit.
But then Mrs. Allison let it slip to the church choir that Eleanor Rougeaux had before her an opportunity, and almost overnight a purse heavy with silver coins materialized. For Eleanor it was one wonder after another. Two months later she boarded the train for New York. She carried Papa’s valise packed with necessities and a headful of his and Auntie’s advice. Papa especially had warned her that she would soon be in the regular company of men they didn’t know, and that she must not let anyone take liberties. Eleanor was not known to be a great beauty, but she had a sweet face and an attractive figure, and Papa knew a thing or two about men. Still, he trusted his child. She had never been too interested in the boys she knew, tending to regard them as cousins, if she noticed them at all. She was very unlike Melody, whose open innocence and warm admiration of a series of boys gave a father cause for concern.
Eleanor had only a vague notion of what exactly these liberties were that a young man might take, and those thoughts certainly weren’t foremost in her mind. She was leaving home with the dream of studying music at a conservatory. Papa and Auntie both told her that her Mama would have been proud, and to Eleanor that meant the world.
The whole family accompanied her to the station, to board the train, a second-class car, that would be departing at 5:00 in the afternoon and arriving in New York City the next morning. Papa took pains to find another colored family traveling south, that Eleanor could sit with, and he came aboard to help her stow her valise and dinner basket, and fold her coat over the hard wooden seat. He stood with her as long as he could while those passengers of darker colors like their own, or native, or sunburned Chinese, crowded into the car. Eleanor clung to his hand, and then he had to go. She leaned out the window and waved to him, and to Auntie and her brothers and sisters, her heart brimming with goodbyes and more hope than she had ever imagined it could contain.
* * *
All newcomers to the great city of New York are awed upon their arrival, and Eleanor was no exception. Haggard from the long, hot, rattling hours of travel, she was swept up into the crowd the moment she stepped off the train at Grand Central Station. Eleanor felt the same kind of electricity that she felt in the piano when she played, but now it was all around her, in the air.
It was just about ten in the morning. The family she had traveled with had taken their leave at a station an hour or two north of the city, and now she was alone. She tugged her valise along and sought out, again, the safety of other colored folks, such as at a small grocery with a lunch counter that served hot drinks and buttered rolls. From there she had directions to a boarding house called the Vance where she had arranged for a shared room. Auditions at the Conservatory were to begin that very afternoon.
The National Conservatory of Music of America was housed in a grand five-story building sandwiched between two slightly taller ones, with a stairway on either side leading up to arched entryways. Throngs of young people with instruments filled the stairs and the sidewalk outside. Eleanor soon found herself seated and clutching her sheet music, on a bench in a large classroom on the first floor, having registered at a long table of Conservatory secretaries taking names. Prospective students were to have prepared a piece to play, and were to expect sight-reading and ear tests. Eleanor was relieved to see numerous dark faces in the crowd, including a pretty young girl around her own age hugging a violin case.
“Hey,” said the girl, dropping down beside her on the bench, “mind if I sit here? I’m so nervous I could faint.”
“That’s alright,” said Eleanor. The girl’s eyes darted around the room and she chewed a fingernail. Eleanor asked, “Violin?”
“And voice,” the girl said. “You?”
Her name was Alma. Alma Cole, just up from Kansas City and with nowhere yet to stay. The girls were soon ushered in different directions, but promised to meet later outside and see if there was room for Alma at the Vance.
Eleanor waited for more than an hour in another classroom that was packed on one side with young people waiting their turn. Three judging professors sat at a large table near a piano on the other side of the room. While Eleanor waited she heard music played both clumsily and beautifully, and she found herself assaulted by waves of hope and despair accordingly. When her name was called she stood and walked to the piano as if facing her executioner. She placed her sheet music, a sonatina by Clementi that Mrs. Allison had given her, on the music stand of the piano and began to play.