by Amy Stewart
He took possession of himself so quickly that no one would’ve noticed, unless they were watching for it.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Who let the likes of you in here?”
Fleurette was already starting her introductions when he spoke. She didn’t seem to take in what he said.
“Mr. Bernstein, I’d like to present Miss Roxanna . . .”
Fleurette’s voice floated along, from somewhere far away, as Beulah bolted from the tent.
She never was much of a runner, but she was behind the barn, over the fence, and into the woods before Constance had time to make her apologies and chase after her.
34
IT WAS NOT lost on Beulah that she’d made something of a habit of running out of rooms lately. It was a miscalculation, of course: it drew attention to her at the very moments when she most wanted to disappear without notice. But if there was a way to vanish without actually leaving a room, Beulah didn’t know about it.
Besides, she wasn’t running away this time. She knew exactly where she was going.
By now, Freeman would’ve told everyone who she was. She’d be kicked out of the camp—Constance would have no choice about that, once everyone knew—and sent, penniless, back to New York.
Or, worse, if she couldn’t get as far as New York, she might drift back to Richmond. What would a man pay, on Mayo Street, to take a turn with Beulah Binford? She couldn’t pretend to be anyone else if she went back home. They all knew her there.
Whatever might happen next to her, Freeman would be to blame. It had always been Freeman. If he hadn’t turned up at that jail with his promises of a lawyer, and his talk of a stage career, and all his high-flown ideas about making a sensation of her in the paper, she might never have been more than a single line at the end of an article about Henry Clay, easily forgotten.
Beulah understood now that she would never get away from her reputation. No matter how many times she moved, or changed her name, or took a new job, or invented a new past, it would come creeping back to her.
Now her past was back in the very bodily form of Freeman Bernstein, Entertainment and Management.
And she could do something about that.
OF THE TRIAL ITSELF, Beulah knew only rumors and scraps from the papers. She was never brought into the courtroom or called to testify. The jail cell was her home for nearly two months that summer. She wasn’t permitted to see a newspaper, but the guards couldn’t resist telling what they knew.
Once, she heard, her sister, Claudia, had been seen among the spectators. A reporter must have recognized her or asked her name, because she was quoted as saying that she was curious about the goings-on but wouldn’t answer any questions put to her. She never went to see Beulah, nor did anyone else, except for Freeman Bernstein.
At the end of July, Claudia’s husband, Luther, was called to the stand. He testified only that he was aware that Henry Clay had paid to send Beulah away to school years ago, and that he knew the two of them had recently taken up with one another again. (How did he know that, when neither he nor Claudia had spoken to Beulah in years? Beulah could only guess that he must’ve gone to Meemaw for the whole story.)
She asked the guards every day if there had been a word in the papers about her mother. If she was still in Richmond—if she was still alive—surely she would’ve heard about the trial. Wouldn’t she come to see her daughter, even after years apart? Wouldn’t she at least try to speak on Beulah’s behalf, if she was at all capable of doing so?
But there was never a mention of Jessie Binford. She was dead, or she’d disappeared, or she’d deserted the family forever. Dead, disappeared, deserted. Those words went through her head in the hours after midnight, when she awoke and turned over on her side, away from the bars of her cell, so she might forget where she was and drift back into sleep. But the incantation would start again and kept her from any kind of rest. Dead, disappeared, deserted.
The police even managed to track down Henrietta Pittman, her chum from the old days at Monroe Square, and a couple of the other girls she knew on Mayo Street. They were expected to say that they overheard Beulah and Henry Clay arguing about how he would get rid of his wife, and how Beulah wouldn’t see him again until Louise was gone. It was a lie, of course: Beulah could only assume that they were testifying because they wanted to see their names in the papers. When they took the stand, it was apparent even to the judge that they had nothing to add to the proceedings, and they were sent away.
What hurt Beulah the most was not that her own family and friends were testifying. They had their reasons for saying what they did, and none of them helped nor hurt her situation.
No, what cut her most deeply was the way the judge cleared the courtroom of women before any mention of Beulah could be made.
The most dreadful moment came in the middle of August. Beulah could still remember how unbearably hot and muggy it was in that jail cell right then, how sticky and damp she was, how the toilets stank and the men in the other cells all reeked of stale sweat. Right about then was when Louise’s mother took the stand.
The judge announced that the women in the courtroom must be escorted out, because the testimony to be given by the mother of the pretty dead wife wasn’t fit for a woman’s ears.
But hadn’t it happened to a woman, and wasn’t a woman about to tell about it?
The guards never could bring themselves to tell her specifically what Louise’s mother said in court, but Beulah overheard them talking. It was the most sensational moment of the trial. There was no keeping it from her.
Mrs. Owen testified that Louise ran to her, crying, over Henry Clay’s infidelity. He’d been seen around town with another woman (presumed to be Beulah, although Henry Clay always went with other girls, too, and Beulah would’ve been happy to explain that if she’d been given the chance). When Louise confronted him, Henry Clay denied any wrongdoing.
But Louise knew better. She brought the proof to her mother: the evidence of his sin could be seen in his underclothes.
Beulah had never heard of anything so filthy being said in a courthouse before, or anywhere, really, where the public might hear it. That her name could be attached to something so vile—that she could be the very cause of it—well, Beulah could’ve died of shame right then. She wanted to.
At the time, Beulah didn’t know, precisely, what the stain on Henry Clay’s underclothes implied. She’d spent a lifetime scrubbing stains out of britches, and they were all a horror. Nothing was more disgusting than the old, dried evidence of some unmentionable filth that had issued, unchecked, from a body and made its mark. At May Stuart’s house of pleasures, it wouldn’t have been unusual three times a day for Beulah to soak, lather, scrub, or even cut away and patch a stain, be it from wine, mud, sweat, blood, or any other excretion. But whatever remained in Henry Clay’s underclothes was, Mrs. Owen implied, far worse. It pointed to his infidelity, to his wickedness. And to Beulah’s.
This set Beulah to paging, in her mind, through a catalog of stains and splotches and wondering what, specifically, Mrs. Owen might have been referring to. It was months before anyone had the gumption to put it to her plainly (bless Mabel for her forthrightness!), but that was after the trial, when it was all over, when Beulah was already trying to forget, and didn’t want to know anything more.
As loathsome as the story was, the public had a bottomless appetite for it. The newspapers couldn’t print their extras fast enough. They sold out by mid-morning and had to run off another batch just to keep up with the demand. Soon there were pamphlets in circulation, reprinting the whole story so much as it was known. Hundreds of spectators arrived every day, hoping to be let into the courtroom. They came by wagon, on foot, and by trolley, so many that the trolley lines ran extra cars and farmers made folding money ferrying people back and forth from the train station. Although Beulah had no window in her cell, she could glance through a window in the hall whenever she was taken out to the shower room or the interviewing room. All
around the courthouse were lemonade stands, lunch carts, and other such small endeavors as one might see at a carnival.
“They’ve come to see the famous Miss Beulah Binford,” the guards would say. “I could charge a hundred dollars to let one of them have a look at you.”
They ran a hand up her arm when they said that. Beulah would flinch and jerk away.
As far as she could tell, Freeman Bernstein wasn’t doing anything to keep her out of the papers. He wasn’t trying to protect her good name. He allowed the reporters to make their own label for her, that of the siren, the scandalous woman who shocked and riveted every American that summer. The mere idea that women had to be escorted out of the courtroom so as not to hear of her degradation only made everyone want to see her more. Mr. Bernstein wasn’t trying to put a stop to it. He was adding fuel to the flames. That was his only aim. Beulah simply didn’t understand that at the time.
“I have good news for you, Miss Beulah,” he said one day in August, bustling into the interviewing room.
“Am I to be released?” said Beulah. “Because if I’m not to be released, it’s not good news. I don’t know how they can keep me in jail when I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“We’re working on that, darlin’,” Freeman said, but that only further annoyed Beulah.
“You can stop calling me darling and talking like you’re a southerner, because everybody knows you’re not. I thought you were going to get me a lawyer.”
“Well, I have, dar— Miss Beulah, and he’s filed a petition with the court to get you released. He’s done all he can.”
“Well, doesn’t he need to talk to me? Can’t I tell him that I’m innocent and I ought to be set free?”
“He knows all of that. Don’t worry, we’ll spring you loose the very minute we can. But you need to understand that you’re having more of a success of it inside this jail cell than you ever did out there on Richmond’s wicked streets. The press can’t get enough of you! Do you know how many of the actresses I represent—stage actresses, I mean, with names you would recognize—do you know how many of them would absolutely die to get the kind of free press you’re enjoying?” He waved a sheaf of clippings at her victoriously.
“Enjoying?” Beulah snatched the papers from him: they were the first she’d been allowed to see in some time. Every paper in the country ran the same picture of her, the one with the awful bonnet. “I hate this picture,” she sniffed.
“We’ll get new ones,” Freeman rushed to assure her. “They won’t let me bring a photographer in here, but I’ll find a way. Haven’t you had any other pictures made of yourself, a pretty girl like you?”
Beulah shrugged. “I can’t think why I would have.”
Most of the stories took up an entire page and were too much for her to read with Freeman standing over her. She was a slow reader and didn’t want him to see her struggling to puzzle it out. But one small clipping, folded in half, dropped to the floor, and it seemed to be all about her.
“What are they saying about me?” she asked as she picked it up.
Freeman tried to take it away from her. “Oh, don’t bother yourself with that one,” he said. “That’s just a little gossip rag. Nobody pays any attention to it.”
Beulah turned away to read it. She had to mouth the words to make sense of them. “They say I’m of a pronounced type of certain women who have caused men to become embezzlers and in many cases murderers.”
She looked up at Freeman in shock. “I didn’t cause Henry Clay to murder Louise! I didn’t cause any of this! Didn’t your lawyer tell them that I had nothing to do with it?”
“Now, what do you think?” he said, his voice low, trying to soothe her. “Don’t you know that’s why they haven’t called you to testify? They don’t want the jury distracted by you when the killer is sitting right in front of them.”
“You mean Henry Clay,” Beulah said.
“Yes, exactly,” Freeman said.
“Well, don’t call him the killer. He has a name.”
Freeman didn’t share Beulah’s sympathy for Henry Clay and went on as if she hadn’t said anything. “You weren’t the one out on the Midlothian Turnpike that night, that’s all I’m saying. The prosecutor wants that jury looking hard at Henry Clay. Either he pulled the trigger, or he wrestled the gun away from the man who did. You don’t come into it, except as a plausible explanation for why Henry Clay might’ve done the things he did.”
“But I didn’t even want to go with him anymore. I never—”
“Now, Beulah, this is just some nonsense in the papers. It’s really nothing for you to worry about.”
But she read on. “‘The woman who has attained such an unenviable notoriety seems to be devoid of sensitiveness or delicacy. Her deportment shows her to be one of the frivolous feminine gender who regard life as a round of frivolity, and have no idea of the responsibilities of existence or the value of money.’”
She threw the clipping down. “Are they talking about me? Do they mean to say that I’m that woman? That I have no—” She bent down and picked the clipping up again. “That I have no sensitiveness? That I don’t know the value of money? After what I’ve had to do to earn my keep?”
Freeman chuckled. “There’s a story for the front page.”
“Nobody knows a thing about me! I’ve done nothing but sit in this cell. They’ve never even seen my deportment.”
She slid her chair away from him and pulled her knees up under her chin.
Freeman said, in as soothing a voice as he could conjure, “Miss Beulah, I wish you’d let me show you how that’s not really a story about you.”
“Not about me? It has my name at the top!”
“Well . . . not really. You see, at the end they speak of how a story like this absorbs the attention of a certain class of readers. They’re criticizing the public for lusting after a seamy story, even when one doesn’t exist. Don’t you see, they’re only talking about—”
“They’re talking about me. I’m the seamy story. You’re supposed to do something about this, Mr. Bernstein. Isn’t that your job? To handle the papers? So far, you haven’t done a damn thing you said you would. I don’t believe I’d like to have another visit from you. How about you go on back to New Jersey and leave me be?”
He took a step away from her. She thought, with some terror, that he really might leave. He was the only visitor she’d had.
“I will go, Miss Beulah, if that’s what you want,” he said. “I have no need of a long rail journey to Richmond just to visit with a sullen girl in a jail cell. But neither can I leave you alone if I’ve no idea what’s to become of you. Can you tell me that, at least, before I go? What will happen when they release you—and they will release you, my attorney assures me of that—where will you go? Who will take you in? What kind of life do you imagine for yourself after this is all over? Do you intend to find work, or to marry? Everyone knows the name of Beulah Binford. What will you have to say for yourself when asked about the trial? How will you explain it?”
“I intend to go about just as I did before,” Beulah said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
But all at once, she knew why she wouldn’t.
Beulah hadn’t considered what might become of her upon her release from jail, if Freeman wasn’t there to look after her. She knew Claudia wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Her mother had disappeared. Her grandmother was almost bedridden and wouldn’t want Beulah around after the trial anyway.
Where did that leave her, especially now, when her name was on the front page of every newspaper in the country?
“Well, I suppose you could walk out of the jail a free woman and find out what happens,” Freeman said. “I don’t know about you, but I like to have a plan in times of uncertainty, and someone to help me through adversity. Don’t you?”
Beulah hadn’t a plan or a friend, and Freeman knew it. She didn’t bother to answer.
“Now, I thought I saw something special in you, Miss Binford. I saw a
pretty face, a fetching figure, and a high, clear voice. You carry yourself in a particular way that suits the stage, with your shoulders back and your chin up. You’ve got moxie, if you don’t mind me saying so. You’re a little thing, but you’re bold. You’d make quite a sight with the footlights shining up on you.”
Beulah sniffed. “But what would I do? I don’t know how to sing any songs. I’ve never been up on a stage. What would you have me do?”
“Oh, you leave that to me,” Freeman said. “If there’s one thing Freeman Bernstein can do, it’s to fill a theater. But first we have to make sure that your name is known. And this trial—whether you like it or not—is putting your name in the minds of every theater-goer in this country. Don’t you see what that can do for you? Don’t you see the crowds of people with coins in their pockets, just lined up to get a glimpse of Beulah Binford?”
“Am I to do nothing but stand on stage and let them look at me?”
“Oh, no,” Freeman hastened to reassure her. “We’ll put a show together for you. I’ll bring in my writers, and my lyricists, and my costume girls and scenery-painters, and we’ll make a show suited to your particular talents, and put you on the stage and let you reap a reward for all the trouble you’ve been put through. Why, Miss Binford—”
Here he leaned in, pressing his advantage.
“Miss Binford, don’t you see? Every story like the one you crumpled up and threw on the floor represents a hundred dollars to you.”
She startled and stared down at the wad of paper. “A hundred dollars!”
“More than that,” he said hastily. “A thousand dollars. One thousand dollars, every time they make up another scandalous lie about you. Because people will want to see for themselves! They’ll line up around the block for a ticket to see the real Beulah Binford, and to find out whether she’s that woman they read about in the papers or someone entirely different! Don’t you see? You can show them for yourself how wrong the papers were. Now, wouldn’t you like a chance to do that?”
