Then an attendant called her name from the doorway—one I hadn’t seen before, with muscles in his wiry forearms bulging like knots in rope—and Jubilee turned to go.
But Martha flung her arms around the other woman’s neck in a hug, with such energy that Jubilee reeled and almost fell but then closed her eyes and smiled, returning the embrace. Martha whispered something in her ear, and Jubilee nodded. No one witnessing their first meeting would have imagined they could become friends, yet Martha was the only one to offer anything resembling a goodbye.
Then Jubilee was gone, so quickly that the door was closed behind her again before I realized what I should have done.
I should have given her my message.
Jubilee didn’t come to the ward that night, nor did we see her the next day, and it became clear that she was right. She’d been released. Jubilee was gone for good.
That night, I drew the covers over my head and sobbed until my thin pillow was soaked through. My mind had been whirling with ideas ever since my failed confession to Dr. Concord—who could get my message to Henry? How could I motivate someone to be my messenger? But maybe Jubilee was the right one to do it and I had missed my chance, all because I hadn’t thought of it in the moment.
But I couldn’t very well tell every inmate of Goldengrove my secret in the hopes that one might eventually be released and make her way home, then stick her neck out to pass the word along. Jubilee had said the prostitutes always left, but there were none in our ward, not anymore. The girls from Clio would leave, but bound for Boston and Baltimore and the East Coast capitals, which would do me no good. Such a plan wasn’t a plan at all. Nor was I sure Henry would accept a message from a presumed madwoman—would he even have received Jubilee?—so I began to despair that path led nowhere regardless.
Instead, I wondered about the staff. Dr. Concord had warned me that the Sidwells had friends everywhere, and it wasn’t Henry he meant. I’d have to watch carefully for an opportunity, only striking when I was absolutely certain I’d found a trustworthy person. If the opportunity didn’t appear, at least there were Martha’s plans for revolution.
But would those plans bear fruit? Martha was a firebrand and a natural leader but hardly a fit campaign general. She was smart, probably even smarter than Nora, but undisciplined. I counted her among my assets but not my allies, even as I nodded along with her talk of revolution, listening to see what I could glean. Perhaps she would be my savior and Phoebe’s. Perhaps not.
The next thought came from my head, not Martha’s. With Jubilee gone, there was an opening on our ward. What if we could get Phoebe reassigned? Now that the matron had shown her power over my sister, would she continue to focus on her, or would she move on to other matters? If Phoebe were here with me, I would know she was safe, even while I plotted and planned how we might trigger our release. I would at least have her company.
I still hadn’t told Martha my secret. Nora knew and seemed to have said nothing. We were still on outwardly friendly terms, though I knew she could tell something was brewing, and she knew both Martha and I were involved. She was far too smart to not sense the whispers. I tried to be extra kind to her, but doing so only made her suspicious, so I went back to innocuous chatter. One Thursday, we spent an hour in the dayroom organizing the women of Terpsichore into an entirely pantomimed concert of chamber music. I played the silent piano, she sang a silent aria, Damaris contributed a merry, lively impression of an imaginary flute, and Irene had us in stitches sawing away silently at an invisible cello. There was fear all around us, but we still found our moments of joy.
The joy made a good cover for the stealth. And because I’d gotten my key from Nora before our falling-out, I didn’t need her help to go in search of Phoebe. On one hand, I would have felt better with company, as I was nervous about the realities of Euterpe, which brimmed with violent women whose crimes might on other days have gotten them sent to prison instead of the asylum. But two sets of feet would make more noise. One head might be easily explained away in a missed count but not two. We were all safer if I brushed aside my nerves and undertook the visit with no one else’s knowledge or help.
I was on my own.
* * *
The next day, as we returned from our hike, I slipped away to visit Phoebe in her new ward. I knew it was too soon for her to be lost in melancholy again—it would take at least a month, or at least it always had—but I feared she might already have entered a phase of mania, when she might be almost as useless. A giggling, bulletproof, arrogant Phoebe was dangerous to herself and others. She might confess the plans for revolution to an attendant who crossed her or undertake the plan before the rest of us were ready, believing herself too grand to be caught or punished.
Like Melpomene Ward upstairs where the false Phoebe, really Natasha, was held, Euterpe consisted of small, individual rooms inside a broader ward. This made sense given the violence of the inmates. A riot was less likely to break out when the women were kept separate, and they were less likely to hurt each other. There was little to be done, I supposed, to keep them from hurting themselves. I remembered Mary then, the inmate who dove from the roof shortly after I’d arrived at Goldengrove. I hoped never to see so much blood from a body again.
My key opened both the outer door of the ward and the individual rooms within. Just inside the outermost door, a scheme was posted on the wall with each inmate’s number scribbled on the room assigned to her. 100 was easy to locate. I let myself in, walked quickly across the silent space, and tucked myself behind the door of 14-E. It resembled my cell in Darkness more than it did the room I’d seen in Melpomene Ward, with a rubber floor and walls, obviously intended to keep an inmate from injuring herself in her violence. Again, I thought how ill-suited this place was for the gentle Phoebe. But I could see why the matron had chosen it. No one would question why a violent inmate was locked away. I had time to ponder this while I waited for my sister to return.
When at last the door opened, I secreted myself behind it, praying the nurse wouldn’t swing it all the way open and press me flat. It would be disaster if I were discovered here. But no one would be looking for me inside the locked room of another inmate, so I counted on their lack of awareness to save me. And indeed, it did. I waited until the door had been closed and locked behind the attendant, then looked at my thin, diminished sister and softly said, “It’s me, and it’s really me, and please don’t scream.”
She started at the sound of my voice but, to her credit, made almost no noise. By the time she turned toward me, she had herself under control, and then a broad grin appeared on her face. Her delight was my relief. It made me so happy, I almost couldn’t speak and was glad when she was first to find her voice.
“You found me,” she said.
“Yes. Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
I said, “We don’t have much time. I want to get you transferred onto my ward. It’s called Terpsichore. They call it the love ward, so you need to tell your doctor your real malady has to do with love. Can you do that?”
“Wait, wait,” she said, holding up her hands. “Too much at once. Start over.”
It was nearly impossible to be patient, but I forced myself to stop and approach the situation from Phoebe’s vantage point. She knew nothing of my plans. An hour ago, she had no idea I was even going to try to find her; ten minutes ago, she didn’t know I was hiding in her room. So I asked, “What about this: Who’s your doctor?”
“Quinlan.”
“Don’t know him.”
“Her.”
“Her?” I was genuinely taken aback. “There’s a woman doctor here?”
“She keeps to herself. The male doctors are awful to her. Whisper about her, burn her notes, call her Quim. She’s as miserable here as any of us.”
“Which wards does she manage?”
“I don’t know, Charlotte,” said Phoebe, a note of tension creeping into her voice. “I’ve been asking the women here their stories
. It seems to help them. They’re so hard done by. Every story makes me cry. I’m just trying to keep body and soul together.”
I was instantly contrite. “Of course you are. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said, expelling a breath in a sad, fast hiss. “I’m worthless.”
“No. Don’t say that. Never say that.” Yet I knew she would; in her dark moods, she always returned to that theme. But today, it wasn’t just her dark mood talking. It was the tension of living in this place, of not being free. Of waking one day in a locked ward, the next in the anteroom of the drunken superintendent’s office, then among inmates whose hard lives had driven them to bite, scratch, fight back. Nowhere else would have been less suited to Phoebe’s natural sweet temperament. I wondered if the matron knew that, or if she’d only intended to put Phoebe into a ring of bear-baiters in the hope one of them would tear her to shreds. If something bad happened to Phoebe here, the matron could claim she wasn’t responsible. Yet it was unlikely the matron would even bother thinking of blame. If she could make money for the investors, a few injuries or worse wouldn’t dim her star in their eyes.
Either way, the fact remained that all I could hope to do was get Phoebe out as quickly as I could. Through the walls, I could hear faint voices, teasing and shouting and snarling, and I thought again that this place might drive a woman mad even if that wasn’t how she started out.
I wrapped Phoebe in my arms and held her. She let herself sag against me, and I braced myself to bear her weight.
“The women here, in this ward, so many of them should never have been sent here,” she said. “I’m making myself remember all their names. The seamstress who snapped when her rich client changed her mind about a fancy-work dress and threw it in the fire for spite, that’s Jennie Murphy. The kitchen maid who defended herself with a knife against the cook who put his hands under her apron, that’s Louise Webb. The woman who took to the boxing ring when she didn’t have money to feed her children and no one would help her, that’s Ola Doggett.”
It struck me hard that my sister, even here, was thinking of others and not herself. I saw the same injustices but had looked away from them. Phoebe, bless her tender heart, would not look away.
“So full of anger,” she went on. “And the ones that aren’t angry are just. . .not there.”
“They’re probably drugged,” I said. “If the nurses try to give you something, anything, that looks like medicine, promise me you won’t take it.”
Solemnly, she said, “I promise.”
“You’ll be okay. But again, if you want to get reassigned to my ward, you should—”
Against my shoulder, she mumbled, “You should go. I don’t want you to be found here.”
We’d reached no resolution. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I struggled with choosing what message to leave her with. I had hoped to be inspiring, lively, heartening. Instead, I had only been present. But, I told myself, presence was something. “Just know I am working to get us out.”
“Darling Charlotte,” she said, putting her palms on my cheeks, then pressing her forehead to mine. “You’d better go.”
She was right. I dashed off, coral skirts swinging.
I left her ward in high spirits, but by the time I got back to my own ward, I worried that I had only replaced one dilemma with another. Would she try to get transferred to our ward? She hadn’t promised. And I wasn’t sure it would work if she didn’t come right away; someone else might take the slot. There was only one. And if the transfer required the matron’s approval, there was no chance at all. Still, I wondered and I hoped.
By the next night, the question was moot, but not for any reason I would have wished.
When we sat down at dinner the next evening—half a potato, a small, hard pear with a sizable bruise, and a knob of meat that might have been mutton—I noticed a gap where Damaris should have been. Ever since she had come back from Darkness, she had sat across from me, next to Martha, at the evening meal. And now, she wasn’t there. Martha and I exchanged a significant look, but there was little we could do in the moment. Nor did she appear back at the ward during the night or the next morning.
Martha asked Nurse Piper about her, and the nurse said she’d been released. We had no choice but to take Piper at her word. But as we arranged ourselves for the morning hike, I maneuvered into the line behind Martha. Jubilee had left with little warning. Now Damaris was gone with no warning at all. I had to ask the obvious question.
“What do you think is happening?” I asked Martha.
“Happening?”
“You don’t think it’s a coincidence, do you?”
She eyed me, and I didn’t think she could possibly not understand what I was talking about, but her face was so inscrutable, I was forced to state it outright.
“Jubilee gone. Then Damaris gone. No indication that they were near release, but they were both working with us toward revolution, and all of a sudden, they’re sent back home again?”
“Aw,” Martha said, almost sweetly. “You said ‘us.’”
“That isn’t the point.”
“I know that’s not the bloody point, for Christ’s sake,” she said, her voice thick with exasperation.
“Sorry.” I realized too late she’d just been trying to keep the mood light, given how dire everything felt otherwise. Next time, I would try harder to appreciate her humor.
Piper called out from the front of the line, “All right, ladies, look sharp!” but not everyone had quite come to order yet, and she did not push right away.
Martha edged closer to me and went on, “I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not. More to the point, it doesn’t matter. What would you do differently if it were?”
I thought about it. “Nothing.”
“Aces. Then stop asking what’s happening. Start asking where we go from here. If Damaris has gone home, and we have to assume she has, is there someone else you trust to take her place? In the ward or out of it?”
A kernel began to form in my mind. It grew. “I might.”
She said, “We need to be sure every woman we include is absolutely the right one. Do you trust her with your life?”
I owed her a debt, and I did trust her, though I was going mostly on gut feeling. I hoped I wouldn’t regret it. “Yes.”
“What ward is she in?”
“Thalia,” I said.
“But she speaks?”
“A little. When she chooses to.”
“Then go tell her what to say. She can tell them she wasn’t a good wife to her husband, he grew tired of her, and she strayed. That should be enough.”
And almost as easily as that, it was done.
* * *
Celia was exactly as I remembered her. From the one side, she was striking, her profile a perfect cameo. From the other, her shining pink skin stretched tight over her bones, rippling and puckering where her eye should have been. When she came walking into the ward, she reached out for both of my hands with both of hers. I took them gladly. Her smile, alone among her features, was equally lovely on either side.
“It’s so good to see you,” I said. “Welcome to Terpsichore Ward.”
She bobbed her head, seeming glad but saying nothing. No words were needed. Celia clearly said little, but every word she said counted. She alone had warned me back in Thalia Ward, telling me not to drink the night medicine, knowing its effects. She had deduced for herself that she was being drugged, and she was smart enough not to reveal what she knew except by choice. And somehow, she was able to stand the daily torture of the benches without going mad, which to my mind suggested she was able to withstand almost anything.
I introduced her to Martha, and Martha told her where things stood: how we’d talked revolution, all our options, all the things we might try or not try. We’d talked about how many women we really needed, what we needed them for, how many would truly be enough. There were so many uncertainties, Martha
admitted, but one thing was sure: things could not go on the way they had been. Revolution would break the rotten pumpkin of this place wide open.
Celia said, quietly but forcefully, “No revolution.”
“What?” Martha said.
I was wondering if I’d spent my chit for nothing when Celia clarified, “Bugger revolution. Escape.”
Chapter Twenty-One
We all took in a collective breath.
“Escape to where?” I asked. It seemed so impossible, even more impossible than a revolt. If it were possible to escape, why had no one done it? Then I realized, maybe someone had done it. It would hardly be publicized by the staff here, and the successful escapee would certainly have no reason to come back. We’d seen Damaris disappear twice, once into Darkness and once back home, or so the nurses told us. What if they’d lied? Escape was not impossible. And if it wasn’t impossible, we might find a way.
“There are so many places,” Martha volunteered immediately. I could see how eager she was, even more eager than she’d been about revolution. Celia had opened a whole new door for her. “San Francisco, for one. It’s a wild enough place we could make our own way. Set up a restaurant perhaps, or a laundry. We’ve got the skills for it.”
“The neighborhoods in San Francisco that would welcome women like us aren’t safe for women like us,” I said.
Martha repeated, “Us?”
I’d forgotten, of course, our situations were quite different. Goldengrove had done that to me—made me forget what things were like back in the world of society, the rigid lines between what was allowed and what was forbidden. If those lines hadn’t mattered, Phoebe would never have been sent here, and I never would have come after her. The fit over my engagement alone wouldn’t have been enough, but people knew about the rest. The teacups at Maddie Palmer’s. How she’d humiliated Jack Burdick. All the outrageous things she’d done to avoid marrying someone my parents saw as suitable. I understood why my parents had made the choice they had. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t go to the limit and beyond in order to undo it.
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