She nodded. “It’s what they call me. I liked it so much, I kept it. Worse things in the world to be than a party.”
“Hope you don’t mind us,” Martha said. “I did say I would come here if they released me.”
“You didn’t mention bringing friends.”
“We weren’t exactly released either,” Martha replied, “but let’s keep that to ourselves, shall we?”
The other harlots were beginning to eye us with distaste, given our bedraggled condition. I didn’t blame them. We were muddy and reeking, and though Celia’s appearance no longer felt strange to me, I saw a young raven-haired strumpet’s hand fly to her mouth upon catching sight of the scarred side of her face. A house like this was a dream for men, a place they could pay to pluck whatever flower they liked and convince themselves she had chosen them freely. Our presence interrupted the dream. Best to usher us off the scene.
As if recognizing this, Jubilee said, “Let’s get you to the madam. She’s glad to have me back. Let’s see what she can spare for you.”
Careful not to show where my packet of bills was stored, I’d managed to peel off a few and held them out to Jubilee. “Food, at least,” I said. “And whatever else this might cover. Tell her we appreciate her generosity.”
Jubilee fanned the money out and raised her eyebrows. “For this, and considering, I think she’ll likely throw in some water for a bath.”
“I go first,” said Martha, and none of the rest of us disagreed. She was clearly our ringleader, and we’d realized she was the only one who wasn’t out of her depth. Phoebe and I would horrify our mother if we turned up at home looking disastrous, and Celia was worse off still, with nowhere at all to go.
We waited in a small bunkroom while Jubilee had the needed conversation, and she returned with the news that one bath would do for all of us. Martha marched off, grinning, to take advantage.
I was the fourth one to use the bathwater, if not further back in line than that, but even lukewarm water of a decidedly gray cast was glorious. And the soap! Rich and creamy, like rubbing my skin with the finest silk, a lush, velvety blessing. There was no stamp on it, but I wondered if this was what the soap we’d made in Goldengrove felt like. I’d made hundreds, thousands of bars, but I had no idea what it felt like to use one. And now I would never have to make another one again. I sighed happily and sank into the copper tub as the water cooled around me.
Phoebe had finished her bath before mine, and she wrapped herself in a spare bedsheet and sat on a small stool so we could talk while I finished up. She’d asked about Celia and Martha, and I told her all there was left to tell. She was aghast at what George had done and admitted she had never suspected him of such wrongdoing; her objection to him was based only on my love for Henry and the knowledge that George had no intention of loving me, only acquiring me.
“I won’t get to have love,” she said. “So it’s important to me that you do.”
“You have my love,” I said.
“I know.”
“Phoebe, you’re magical. You’re loyal and clever and strong. Whatever else you are shouldn’t matter.”
She fingered the folded edge of the bedsheet covering her knee. “Of course it shouldn’t. But you’re foolish to think it won’t.”
“Then I’m foolish,” I said. “I wasn’t going to leave you in there for taking my side.”
“I know. And I’m grateful. I just. . .” She looked wistful.
I thought I knew what she wanted to say. “You liked it in there with the superintendent.”
“He was kind to me.”
“But he’s in another asylum now.” I told her briefly what had happened to him and why he had disappeared, in case no one had seen fit to tell her. How his weakness had been his downfall, once the matron had decided to take action.
“Poor Leo,” she replied. “He didn’t deserve that.”
“He had a flaw. We all have flaws. It’s unfair that some of them get people locked up when they’re not hurting anyone.”
She smiled a little sadly and said, “I don’t think I want to be locked up. But in a sense, even before I went to Goldengrove, I always have been.”
“You were strong enough to fight for me,” I said. “Be strong enough to fight for you.”
“I’m not sure I am.”
I said, “Then let me be strong enough to fight for both of us.”
At that moment, Martha interrupted, walking back in. Behind her was Celia, like Phoebe draped in another sheet from Jubilee’s bunk. Oddly, it made her look like a goddess. We’d spent weeks in wards with the names of Muses, and Phoebe herself was named for a Titan, yet Celia was the one who could transform a bedsheet into a dignified, graceful garment worthy of a Greek divinity. Phoebe and I looked like what we were: pale, wet girls making do.
“I couldn’t wait,” Martha said. She was the only one of us dressed in clothing, and what a dress it was—a lush violet silk with a tight waist and a neckline scooping low enough to show the swells of her bosoms, which I had not seen so clearly since she stood naked on her first day in Terpsichore. She’d clearly borrowed it from Jubilee. She wore it like a challenge, with a chip on her shoulder—no more comfortable than you were but blazing with a confidence that dared you to comment.
From the tub, I said, “I’m not decent.”
“Get decent. This’ll help.”
She held a dress in my direction, and I stood, dripping, to retrieve it. I recognized it instantly. Matilda’s rust-red dress, which I had stolen to wear on the day of my drowning.
Next, she extended a dress to Phoebe, a sprigged green day dress, which I’d seen my sister wear dozens of times. I felt a twinge when I realized it must be the dress my parents had committed her in. Phoebe held out her arms eagerly to take it.
“I brought these for you,” said Martha. “You’ll need them to go home in.”
Then she turned to Celia and said, “Yours is different.”
Gingerly, she held out a folded packet of fabric, and I gasped when I saw what it was. A delicate nightdress of a rosy, pale pink, like the inside of a scallop’s shell. Once, it had been lovely, clearly sewn and ornamented with care, but it was now blackened in huge patches, smeared all over with ash. Our dresses were still a bit damp from the rain, but this one was dry. She must have swaddled it at the center of her pack like the treasure it was.
Martha said, “I know you can’t wear it. But I hope you can use it.”
Celia flung her arms around the other woman and held her tight, whispering something in her ear none of the rest of us could hear.
I realized then what Martha had been carrying all this way in her pack. Nothing for herself, only for us.
“Thank you,” I said.
She said, “We all owe each other more thanks than we can express, don’t you think?”
“I see no harm in making a start of it,” I replied, and she smiled.
Martha then produced a second dress for Celia, the blue plaid she herself had been wearing when she entered the asylum. It was modest and becoming, with a folded collar and a row of tin buttons up the front. For all their other differences, the two women were about the same size.
Celia extended it back toward her with an expression that clearly asked whether Martha was sure.
Martha gave a firm, sharp nod. “I want nothing on me that was bought with my father’s money ever again. From here on out, every dollar’s mine.”
We climbed quickly into our dresses, nearly giggling with excitement. In a world more just, I thought, Martha and not Mr. Sidwell would be the one making a fortune in the railroads. She’d be good at it if she could.
My red dress felt unbearably sumptuous. It was somewhat worse off from my dunking in the Bay, but someone had washed it carefully since I’d peeled it off my body nearly a month before, and many of the stains I’d never seen it without were now gone. The fabric was far thicker than our flimsy uniform dresses. I wasn’t sure I would ever want to wear coral again. While Ma
tilda’s dress hardly fit like a glove, the sleeves covered my arms to the wrists, and the skirt brushed the tops of my shoes, so I felt more human, more finished, than I had in weeks.
My sister too looked like she felt herself again. She smoothed down the front of her dress and picked at a loose thread on one of the sprigs, a smile rising to her face, almost irrepressible.
“Now,” said Martha, raising her hands in a motion of bounty, “let’s go eat our bloody fill.”
The harlots ate in shifts, crowded around a slab of a table, and there weren’t half chairs enough, but now that we were presentable, no one seemed upset to have a few extra mouths to feed. The fare was plain—ragged hunks of cheese and bread, washed down with wine—and utterly delicious. I tried hard not to wolf it down. I noticed Phoebe coughing when she tried to eat too large a piece of bread and pounded her on the back, which set her laughing.
“It’s so good!” she exclaimed and laughed again.
Though I was glad to hear her happy, I did not truly relax until her chuckle died down to a sigh. I wondered if I would always be expecting, dreading, that hysterical edge. I feared I would.
We heard the sound of a doorbell far off, and every harlot in the room sprang to, cramming a final bite into her mouth or gulping down one last swallow of wine. They pinched their cheeks and bit their lips, and then they were gone, leaving only the former inmates together.
“Jube, before you go,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
Jubilee squeezed my hand and then disappeared as well, her shoes clicking softly against the wooden floor of the hallway, down the stairs, fading into silence. Then we were four.
We had a decision to make. I feared it might be a hard one.
I turned to Martha and said, “Thank you for bringing us here. For everything. From the bottom of my heart. But I need—we need—to go,” I said.
“Of course you do.”
Then I turned to the burned woman. “Celia, I hope you’ll come with us. I want you to tell your story. Will you?”
“You tell it,” she said. “But I’ll come.”
“Yes. Yes.” I turned to Martha. “And you?”
“Not coming.”
Phoebe asked, “You’re going to stay here?”
I couldn’t help but ask, “You’re not going to turn harlot, are you?”
“I’m not,” said Martha, “though you shouldn’t say it in that tone of voice, considering how kind Jubilee’s been to us.”
I bowed my head, ashamed again at my own narrow view of the world. I had learned a great deal, and I still had more to learn.
Phoebe added, “I’m sure she just imagines you have your sights set on other horizons.”
Martha grinned at that, showing all her teeth, her cheeks as round as peaches. She had a dimple I’d never seen before. “Yes, I do. I’m headed to Alaska.”
“Alaska!” Phoebe and I exclaimed in unison.
“When my father came to San Francisco during the Rush, it was so impossible to get a good laundress, people sent their clothes to Hawaii. All that way! It took months. But desperate people do foolish things if they don’t have options. A skilled laundress could’ve made her fortune in those days.”
I saw what she was saying straightaway, and it made me smile. “And you can’t go back to those days here, so you’re going where those days are now.”
“Exactly. The Juneau Peninsula’s paying out gangbusters. And I know what I’m worth.”
“No one’s got enough to pay you that!”
The tilt of her chin told me she agreed. She said, “They can make a good start of it.”
I said, “I’ll miss you.”
“Yes, you will.” She grinned.
* * *
We did not take the cart in which we’d arrived, choosing instead to hire a coach to our destination. We left the horse as payment for Jubilee, in gratitude. I gave Martha a substantial chunk of Nora’s money. Who knows where we would have ended up without her help, and while Nora hadn’t been friends with Martha, I think she recognized a fellow fierce spirit. I let myself believe she would have approved.
I looked out the window of the coach, watching everything about the city change as we traversed the miles. The land soared and dipped, the sounds of voices softened, the buildings changed from tilting wooden shacks to modest brick and then mansions of stone. Only the sky above our heads and the Bay at our backs remained the same. We listened to the jingling of the horses in their traces, the crisp hoofbeats, measuring our progress toward home.
Thirty minutes later, the three of us stood on the steps of the house that I’d entered a thousand, two thousand, three thousand times. The portico was the same, the columns flanking the doorway, the paving stones my mother had added along the walk. But I was not the same girl I’d been the last time I stood here. The house seemed false somehow, less substantial, like it might blow away in a stiff wind. But it was the only home we’d known. I could no more have walked away from it than I could’ve sprouted wings and taken flight. I would reconcile what my parents had done to dispose of my sister with what I’d done to get her back, whatever the price.
I raised my hand to the knocker and rapped sharply three times, staccato. We all heard the footsteps approaching, and we clasped hands to brace ourselves in the wait.
When Matilda swung open the door, she couldn’t hold back a gasp of shock.
“Good evening,” I said cheerfully. “You needn’t announce us to our parents. We’ll just go in. I imagine they’re at dinner?”
“Yes. But—” She struggled for words, glancing behind her and then back to us. Her gaze lingered on my dress, which was, of course, really hers.
“I’m sorry about the dress. I’ll buy you a new one, I promise. There will be time to explain, but not now.”
She stared, still speechless.
I was already walking forward, surging ahead of both Phoebe and Celia, and had reached the open doors to the dining room when I belatedly heard her soft voice behind me saying, “There’s guests, miss.”
Then it was too late to turn back. I stood framed in the doorway between the dining room and the front hall, staring at six well-dressed people at dinner, still holding their forks aloft.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Our parents were there, yes, but so were four others. To my father’s left were Mr. and Mrs. Sidwell, the latter with a goblet of wine raised to her lips. But my gaze skimmed over them, and my heart stopped at seeing their sons in the two remaining chairs. George hadn’t seen me yet, but Henry’s head was up, his eyes alight. It was all I could do not to run forward into his arms. But his arms were down at his sides, unmoving. His gaze was puzzled at first. Then there was something else to it, an anger, which took me by surprise. He looked away.
My father rose, saying, “Charlotte! What a welcome surprise! I confess we hadn’t expected you until tomorrow. I would have come to the station. . .”
And then his voice trailed off as Phoebe arrived behind me, the two of us standing in the doorway together.
Mrs. Sidwell swallowed her wine in haste and coughed, sputtering, as she tried to master herself. Mr. Sidwell’s brow lowered. My mother remained seated, clearly at a loss.
My father’s face changed, the only one glowing with unmitigated joy, and held his arms out for us to rush into, which we did.
He said only, “My girls.”
His body felt solid and real. I released a breath I felt I’d been holding for a very long time.
Once embraced, we stepped back. His hair seemed grayer since we’d gone, with barely a trace of the original gold. His face remained radiant.
Mr. Sidwell thrust his crumpled napkin onto the table and stood, saying, “I was given to understand your eldest daughter was under excellent care at Goldengrove. And yet—”
“Wait,” I said, interrupting him heedlessly, and turned to look for Celia. She was right there but hanging back just out of view, her eye fixed on the husband wh
o had once tried to kill her. I reached out for her hand, asking her with my eyes whether she could stand it; the set of her mouth was tight, but she nodded. We clasped hands tightly, and I drew her gently across the threshold. Her chin went up. I needed to say nothing more.
George had turned by then, and the color washed entirely from his face in an instant. He was, after all, seeing a ghost.
Henry saw her too, from a different angle, and he was the first to say her name. “My God, you’re—that’s—my God, Celia.”
She squeezed my hand but didn’t move otherwise, all her attention on George, facing him as if drawn by a magnet. She had, after all, loved him once. But it had gone so horribly wrong. I could feel the tension building in her, as if she might still turn and take flight. I squeezed her hand more tightly, hoping to keep her in place, though there wasn’t much I could do to keep the powder in the keg. Her strength was astounding. In her place, I was not sure I would have done the same.
“Celia?” my mother said, struggling to understand even a portion of what was going on. “Who’s Celia?”
Mrs. Sidwell leapt forward then, her chair making a harsh scraping sound against the floor, to which she paid no heed. She crossed the room in a few swift steps to throw her arms around the burned woman. Celia let go of my hand and hugged her mother-in-law back, and her shoulders shook in silent weeping.
My mother’s brow was still creased with confusion, so I said, “This is George’s wife, Celia.”
“I thought she was dead?” said my mother.
“As did we all,” said Mr. Sidwell, his brow lowering. George remained in place.
“George!” Mrs. Sidwell exclaimed, raising her face from Celia’s shoulder. We could all see the tears on her cheeks. “Your wife is alive! Praise the Lord! Isn’t this an absolute miracle?”
Yet it was painfully obvious to everyone in the room that George was not only not rushing to embrace his Lazarene wife, he could not even begin to explain her presence. He didn’t make the faintest sound. He barely blinked. The longer the silence dragged on, the more uncomfortable it became, but he seemed powerless to act in any way. If I had ever wondered whether Celia might have somehow been mistaken, whether her husband really had schemed to burn down a house with her in it just to get rid of her, that uncertainty was gone now, wiped away by George’s unsurprised silence.
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