by Ami McKay
“You’re to go right to bed,” Mrs. Wentworth announced as the carriage wheels rolled to a stop. “I want you rested for tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, startled out of my dreaming by the sharpness of her voice.
As the door to the cab opened, cool night air rushed in and clung to my skin. Clutching the pillowcase Mama had given me, I followed her from the carriage to the house. Shuttered and dark, the building looked nothing like Miss Keteltas’ mansion. It most certainly was not a home to cheerful gardens and sweet-faced lovebirds.
Inside, the place was dimly lit, with only a few lights flickering on the stairs and in the hall. Even so, I could see it was a house made from great fortunes: the floor of the entryway was tiled in marble, and the ceiling, piped with plaster ribbons and roses, soared far above any practical height.
We were greeted by a man dressed in a fitted coat and handsome silk tie. He was a proper-looking gentleman in every way except for the terrible scar that ran across his left cheek. Long and curved like a frown, it looked as if whatever had caused it had also come close to cutting the man’s lip in two. Gone white and catching light, it spoke of another life, of knife fights and bloodied ears. It reminded me of the knots the roughs around Chrystie Street all sported on the bridges of their noses. “Billy bumps,” they called them with a puffed-up sense of pride, because they’d gotten them as the result of tangling with the police.
I bowed to the man, assuming he must be Mr. Wentworth.
Looking down at his shoes, the gentleman cleared his throat and waved me up.
My face went red with embarrassment. I hadn’t even considered Mrs. Wentworth might have a butler.
“Nestor,” Mrs. Wentworth said, as she motioned for him to assist her with her cloak. “This is Miss Fenwick. Please show her to the servants’ quarters, and make certain she’s comfortable.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded.
No sooner had he taken the cloak off her shoulders, keeping a polite distance from the sweep of her skirts, than she was making her way towards the wide staircase that curved up from the entrance hall.
The banister that graced the stairs was made from handsome, polished wood and was decorated with aloof-looking cherubs that stood guard at every landing. Six angels in all, they balanced frosted globes of gaslight on their chubby shoulders. It was all I could do not to reach out and touch the cherub closest to me, to stroke its smooth, perfect toes. Appearing and disappearing as she passed them by, Mrs. Wentworth’s tired face glowed turnip yellow in the lamplight.
After she was gone everything was still, except for the ticking of a tall clock in a nearby alcove, its pendulum glinting as it slipped back and forth. According to the clock’s face it was quarter past one. I imagined there must be an army of maids asleep somewhere under the roof, and I was glad I’d soon be joining them.
“This way, Miss Fenwick,” Nestor instructed, as he lit an oil lamp that was sitting on a marble-topped table. “Time for you to get some sleep.” The lamp sputtered when he took it up, giving off a trail of greasy smoke.
Following the butler down a long corridor, I did my best not to brush up against the thin-legged stands and scallop-edged tables that lined the walls. Each one held a delicate-looking vase or some precious object that needed to be kept safe under a glass dome. Paintings of gentlemen and ladies from days past hung on the walls, their dour faces making me feel as if they’d caught me walking on their graves.
“Watch your step,” Nestor instructed as we came to a second staircase at the rear of the house, this one unadorned, narrow and steep. He held the lamp to one side as he went up the stairs, so I could better see the way.
The shadow of his figure crept beside us—a looming, faceless version of himself. It made me think of all the frightening stories I’d heard that summer, told on front stoops and in back courtyards, of girls being snatched up and dragged away by strangers. They were true tales that had happened right in the heart of the city, printed in the newspapers and weeklies for all to see. It was the fair-haired, well-off girls gone missing who’d made the headlines of the New York Times and the Evening Star, but there were plenty of poor girls with immigrant blood who’d disappeared as well. (Of non Americanized parentage, the papers said when referring to them, hushing them away in the tight, distant columns of Police Briefs and News From Neighbours.)
There is much talk, even today, about what it means to be an “American girl.” One well-known English writer defines her as: “a little under medium height; hair the colour of spun gold to golden brown; eyes a violet blue; cheeks and lips rosy; teeth whiter and brighter than pearls; hands and feet extremely small and well-shaped; figure petite, but exquisitely proportioned; toilette in the latest mode de Paris; and above all, bearing that marvellous bloom upon her face, which American girls share with the butterfly, the rose, the peach and the grape, unequalled by any other women in the world.”
Sentiments like these may seem flattering, but they have also served to fuel the denigration of many an immigrant’s daughter. Are they, too, not American?
Eliza Adler was thirteen years old and lived only two doors down from Mama and me. She’d been gone for three days when her body was found floating in the East River. At first they thought she might have done herself in, but her mother swore that she was a happy girl who had never wandered far from home. After the police took a close look at her body, they saw she’d been beaten and strangled to death. One week after Eliza was found, another girl’s remains turned up, this time buried in a haystack at the stables in Central Park. She’d come from some town in Pennsylvania to be a servant girl on Fifth Avenue and now she was dead.
In both cases, there were signs the girls had been spoiled by a man just before they were killed. There was the tearing and bruising and blood to prove it.
“Everything all right?” Nestor asked when we were halfway up the stairs, nearly causing me to miss a step. “You’re awfully quiet back there.”
“I’m fine, sir,” I answered, hoping he hadn’t seen me flinch.
In August of 1871, a man was caught attempting to drag a young girl away near her home on Delancy Street. He later confessed to murdering four other girls, including Eliza Adler.
It was common knowledge that newly hired servant girls were often taken aside for personal indulgences—by the butler, or the footman, or even the master of the house. It was assumed it was their right to have the girl, a natural part of the domestic economy, but I hadn’t given up anything to anyone yet. I hadn’t had my first blood or my first kiss, wasn’t sure of how to meet a man’s expectations outside of Mama once explaining to me, “All you need to know about men is this—they have a great need to put their cock into whatever holes they find fitting. The more you’re grown, the less it’ll hurt. So, until you’re ready, stay out of their way.”
I can trip him, push him down the stairs if I have to. I can run away.
Mama would never forgive me.
More and more, I’d felt men gazing at me, licking their lips when they thought they might get me alone. Mr. Goodwin, the grocer, made no secret of his fondness for little girls. Mr. Cowan insisted on calling me “princess” every time he came to collect the rent. Pensioner Peter Rutledge was kind and had a roaring laugh, but he was thirty-three and had no legs or prospects because of the war.
Unsettling as their attentions were, I understood (as most girls in my circumstance did) that I could, if careful, get quite a lot from a man before having to give any of myself away. A look, a word, a nod was an invitation to a game. What’s in it for me? I’d learned to ask myself. How far can this go before it’s too late?
I’d smiled at Mr. Goodwin, let him run the back of his rough hand across my cheek so he’d give me half-a-dozen eggs instead of the three or four Mama’s pennies would buy. A winning smile and a lingering nudge of my shoulder against his arm, had, on occasion, meant a new ribbon for my hair. There were dangers to such games of course—one false move and I might end u
p ruined, or worse, like poor Eliza—but the rewards that came when I moved cautiously and correctly were too tantalizing to resist.
This was the sort of path Francine Grossman had taken all the way to London, and then to Paris, and then back again to New York. Now known as the Baroness de Battue, she’d once been a Chrystie Street girl herself. She’d played her cards right and become a courtesan rather than a whore, a woman of consequence rather than a corpse. All the girls from Five Points to Rag Pickers Row had, at one time or another, tied strands of oyster shells around their necks for jewels, waltzed in the dust with broomsticks for princes, and pretended to be her. Every ten-cent whore on the Lower East Side cursed her existence, insisting that should’ve been me. Eliza had planned to follow in Francine’s footsteps, but had somehow lost her way. I wasn’t about to let that happen to me.
Nestor’s voice was gentle, and he’d struck me as a thoughtful man, somewhat like Reverend Osgood, the minister who came on Sunday afternoons to say prayers with troubled souls in the slums. I wondered if perhaps Nestor had been his own man in his youth, but somewhere along the way had fallen on hard times, leaving him to depend on serving others for his livelihood.
His eyes had gone soft when he’d looked back at me, sympathy held like a pearl in the furrow of his brow. I hoped he was the kind of man whose heart could be touched by pleading. Please, sir, not now—I’d beg, if he approached me. I’m too young.
Reaching the top of the stairs, he shone his lamp into the gloom of a small, dark room where it revealed the figure of a woman stretched out on a mattress in the middle of the floor. Her breathing was steady and low, her mouth agape. Our footsteps echoed on the wooden floor, but she didn’t stir.
“That’s Caroline,” Nestor said. “She cooks and keeps house.” Shining the light in the far corner of the room he added, “And that’s your bed, Miss Fenwick. Good night.”
“Good night, sir,” I said, sighing in relief.
After he was gone, I lay down on the mattress, still in my clothes, holding fast to Mama’s old pillowcase. I could feel the lonely arm of my ragdoll through the thin cloth. So many times I’d patched her up, plumping her again with sawdust and peanut shells I’d gathered from the doorstep of a beer hall, sewing her together with thread made from my hair and the needle I kept hidden in her belly.
Staring at the shadow where the slant of the roof came down to meet the floor, I put my nose to the pillowcase, breathing through the cloth like a baby nuzzling the sleeve of her mother’s dress. It smelled of rosewater, Dr. Godfrey’s cordial and money-drawing oil. Mama had taken to anointing herself with the latter, believing that the musty-smelling concoction would bring customers to our door.
Before taking me away, Mrs. Wentworth had placed a small, velvet bag in the middle of Mama’s fortune-telling table. Tied up with a drawstring, its contents had sweetly jangled as it came to rest. It was Mama’s payment for letting me go, a sum of good faith.
I wondered what the weight of the bag would feel like if I held it in my hand, and if any coins had spilled on the floor when Mama untied the string. Had a penny rolled into a crack between the boards, causing her to curse? Had she put the coins to her face to feel their coolness on her cheek?
By the age of five, I was stealing buckets of coal and bundles of sticks for Mama’s tiny, rusted stove. I’d pumped bucket after bucket of water in the middle of our muddy, stinking courtyard, scrubbed other people’s clothes and hung them up to dry—all the while hoping I’d wake up one morning to find my father had come back to us and Mama had turned into the lady on the side of the Pure and True Laundry Flakes box. She was a round-faced mother dressed in calico, with a clean white apron around her waist. Her eyes smiled as she puckered her lips, forever kissing the top of her little girl’s head. Along the hem of her skirt a slogan was written: Mother, if you love her, you’ll keep her clean.
Mama must’ve had an amount in her head she wanted for me, a sum she considered right and fair—more than she’d got for my boots or her tortoiseshell combs or the trinket she wore around her neck, enough to buy the largest bottle of Dr. Godfrey’s Mr. Piers had locked away in the old sea chest he strapped to the back of his cart.
How much did you get for me, Mama? I whispered in the dark.
I woke to see Mrs. Wentworth’s housekeeper, Caroline, pouring water from a pitcher into a deep, waiting bowl. She glanced at me when she heard me stir, but didn’t say a word.
Setting the pitcher aside, she stared at her reflection in a mirror that was hanging in front of her on the wall. The silver backing was cloudy and pitted, so that one half of her face—her neck, her mouth, her nose—was a streaky blur. One eye, steely and clear, blinked back at her, one cheek blushed ruddy in the morning sun that shone through the room’s narrow skylight. The calico kerchief on her head wasn’t nearly as fetching as the silk scarf Mama always wore, but the field of tiny cornflowers suited her, their cheerful blue petals making a welcome halo of softness around her stern countenance.
Thin-lipped and flat-chested, she bore all the signs of a woman whose labours had added to her years. Her hands were wrinkled, her nails ragged, her neck veined with impatience.
I watched as she scrubbed her face, as she slipped a drippy sponge under her skirts and up between her legs. After she finished, she gave a short nod in my direction indicating my turn at the basin.
“Thank you,” I said, smiling and hoping for a smile in return. I wanted to get on her good side, since I was all but certain she’d be the one ordering me to scrub floors and polish silver.
As I went to the basin I introduced myself, but she ignored me, pretending to be busy with pinning a small tear in the hem of her skirt. When I asked how many other girls were in the house, she merely rolled her eyes and grunted.
“Lady’s got herself another green one,” she grumbled as she walked past me to the other side of the room.
Just by being here, it seemed, I’d already gone wrong.
Opening the door of a large wardrobe, Caroline brought out a maid’s dress. Practical looking but pretty, it had a row of shiny buttons up the front, and matching lace collar and cuffs. She inspected the garment front and back and then laid it across my mattress. Going to the wardrobe a second time, she fetched a pair of boots from the bottom drawer and then placed them on the floor next to my bed.
“Thank you,” I said again, making my voice as sweet as I could, hoping she’d forget herself and say something in reply. She did not.
Pulling the dress over my head, I caught the faint smell of sweat from the girl who’d worn it before me. Who was she? Where was she now?
Even second-hand, the dress was nicer than anything I’d ever owned. I couldn’t help but admire the cut of it, how the pleats came racing down the front of the waist, how the buttons sat in a straight, neat row after I’d fastened them. Caroline gave me a sideways look, clearly trying to discern if the dress would suit. I turned in place, smoothing the brushed cotton cloth against my belly. She needn’t have worried. The dress fit fine.
The boots, however, were another matter. Although they were polished and whole, the leather was stiff and unforgiving. As I slid my feet inside them, my toes poked through the holes in the ends of my stockings, rubbing against the boots, threatening to blister even before I stood up. Laces loose, they still felt tight. I took them off and put them on again, and then did it again, each time tugging at the ends of my stockings until the holes were tucked under my feet. Still, my toes found their way out to rub against the leather.
“Lady’s got to have her tea by eight,” Caroline said, heading for the door.
I gave up on the stockings and hurried to tie my boots. I followed her down the same flight of narrow stairs I’d come up with Nestor the night before, this time descending past the doorway to the main floor of the house and into the kitchen below.
Nestor was there, tending a fire in one of the three large stoves that lined one wall. “Good morning, Caroline,” he said, greeting the housekeep
er with a cheerful voice.
She responded with a distracted, “We’ll see.”
“Good morning, Miss Fenwick,” he said, now turning to me, “I trust you slept well?”
“Yes, fine, sir,” I replied, relieved to find he hadn’t changed his ways towards me because of Caroline’s attitude.
I looked around, thinking I might find at least one other maid preparing for the day, but there were only the three of us, Nestor, Caroline and me.
I watched as Caroline took a loaf of bread from a basket and began tearing it apart. She placed three metal soup bowls in front of her and put several hunks of bread into each one. When I stepped close and offered to help, she jabbed a sharp elbow into my ribs and shoved me aside. Wincing, I decided to act as best I could on her nods and shrugs until she saw fit to direct me with her words.
Once the bowls were filled with bread, Caroline went to the cupboard and brought out a large, heavy crock. After removing the crock’s lid, she took up a ladle and plunged it through the thick layer of fat that sat across the top of the pot. “One for you, one for you, one for you,” she whispered to herself as she deftly poured ladlefuls of broth into the bowls. The ragged pieces of bread melted with the weight of the liquid, turning moist and brown. Caroline looked at the last bowl with a great deal of satisfaction. She hadn’t spilled a drop.
“Have some, Nestor,” she called out to the butler, presenting him with his serving before I could get to it.
Nestor took the bowl from her hands and then sat down at the wooden table in the centre of the room. Catching my eye, he gestured for me to do the same. I hesitated, and shook my head, thinking I should wait for Caroline to take hers first.
The mere sight of food had started my belly rumbling. The thought that bread could be kept in a house with no danger of it summoning a pack of rats was nothing short of a miracle to me. How much food was there? It seemed to be coming out of every cupboard and corner and I imagined that if I could steal into the kitchen without anyone knowing, I could take whatever I wanted. Sitting in the middle of the floor, I’d eat until crumbs and grease were dripping from my chin.
