The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  A bouncer shouts like a carnival barker at the door leading up to a row of cribs called, according to the sign overhead, The Cow Yard. “Ten cents touch a titty, fifteen cents two titties, twenty-five cents plow a Mexican, fifty cents a Chink, Jap, or darkie, seventy-five cents a Frenchie, a dollar for an American beauty, all white meat.”

  Jessie seizes Zhu’s elbow, drags her onward. “My cribs is down the block.”

  “Damn it, Jessie, how can you keep an establishment in this hellhole?”

  “The biz is the biz, why can’t you ever get that straight?”

  “But, Jessie.” Zhu calculates. The girls at the Parisian Mansion earn five dollars a gentleman, sometimes more. “How can you clear a profit with a fee structure like that?”

  Jessie grins. “Now you’re thinking like a madam. Each of my Morton Alley gals clears eighty, maybe a hundred a night.”

  “Eighty, maybe a hundred dollars?”

  “Johns. Johns, missy. The Red Rooster has a reputation for the prettiest girls on this alley. A port of call all its own. This way.”

  And Zhu thought she’d seen the worst the Gilded Age had in store for women. She hadn’t. Her heart clenches with rage and pity, and her mind immediately turns to liberation, to assistance for these imprisoned ‘maidens’ forced to have sex eighty, maybe a hundred times a day just to earn their keep. Tenet Three be damned, she thinks for the thousandth time. But what can she do, even if she had authorization from the project directors? What can she do?

  Jessie leads her to the Red Rooster, also known among the denizens of Morton Alley by the bird’s more common name. The Rooster is housed in a ramshackle commercial building so old and so weathered, Zhu is hard put to call it Stick Victorian. Jessie slaps, shoves, and punches rowdies out of her way, pulling Zhu through the door of her nefarious lair.

  “Ber-THA!” Jessie summons the door maid, a black woman of tremendous height and girth. Not only is she brawny from years of hard physical labor, Bertha in her position as the door maid has eaten and drunk heartily. She surveys Zhu with eyes of black ice, a dour mouth.

  “She the chit aksin’ where that hunnert went?” Bertha means an unaccountable monthly shortfall Zhu discovered in the Rooster’s books. The door maid takes a cover charge of twenty-five cents from each john before he makes his choice; she takes the balance when he leaves. The bouncer also tabulates the number of johns for every twelve-hour period by logging in each visit to each maiden. The system is meant to keep tabs on the maiden, how much traffic she attracts. Zhu pointed out to Jessie that the system also serves as a cross-check on the door maid and other staffers. Bertha was Zhu’s number one suspect. But door maids as big and mean as Bertha are not that easy to find.

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Bertha,” Jessie says now and barges in.

  “Why doncha mind yer own business?” Bertha snaps at Zhu, the unmistakable smarm of guilt in her icy eyes.

  Before Zhu can protest that she was just doing her job, Jessie ushers her into a hallway awash in red light. From a plain wood plank that functions as a bar, a wiry old man sells shots of whiskey and gin. Zhu notices a stove, a bubbling cauldron of water. Two maids scoop hot water into basins and hurry down the hall, doling out water as each john finishes his business. More men, more barred windows, more cribs, more women leaning out, haranguing whoever stands there gawking at them. A bouncer oversees the mob inside, announcing the fee scale in a loud monotone.

  A drunken girl slumps over the ledge of her window. Slovenly blond hair, floppy breasts and arms, bruises dappling her plump neck.

  “Li’l Lucy!” Zhu cries and hurries over. Columns of figures in a ledger, that’s all the Red Rooster had been to Zhu. Not anymore. She peers in at the crib, a cubicle not much larger than a clothes closet. Against the back wall is a cot covered with a slick red cloth, a washbasin for the hot water, and a bottle of carbolic acid for douching. A framed placard on the wall over the cot reads “Li’l Lucy” romantically rendered in daisies.

  “’Lo, Miss Zhu.” Li’l Lucy grips the window with both hands, holding herself up. The ledge is padded with more of the slick red cloth. “Like my workshop?”

  Zhu runs a finger over the cloth. “Oilcloth?”

  “Yeah, on the cot, too. The johns don’t never take their clothes off or their boots. Them’s the rules. So the mud an’ all? I can wipe it right off. See?” Li’l Lucy demonstrates with a stained rag she pulls out from under the cot.

  Jessie looms behind Zhu and shoulders past her. “You’re jagged again, Li’l Lucy.” She seizes Li’l Lucy’s face, turns her chin back and forth. “You’re smokin’ hop, too, ain’t ya?”

  “No, Miss Malone, I would never… .”

  “Yeah, you are, I can see it in your eyes.”

  Li’l Lucy’s blue eyes are all dark pupil, the flesh around them dark, too, and mottled as if she has two black eyes. Zhu swallows hard, then glimpses blood dappled down Li’l Lucy’s arm. “Jessie, what’s this? She’s got blood on her arm.”

  Jessie waves a maid over. To Li’l Lucy, “The creep come in here again?”

  Li’l Lucy nods. Jessie lets the maid into the crib with a key from the outside, and the maid wipes Li’l Lucy down with hot water and a rag.

  “’s okay, Miss Zhu,” Li’l Lucy says, smiling at Zhu’s look of horror. “Some gentleman always come here with a chicken, a live chicken. He likes to cut its head off after he spouts hisself off and spray the blood all around. He’s what we call a creep.”

  “Let’s go, missy.” Jessie takes Zhu’s arm and drags her down the hall.

  “You take care of yourself, Li’l Lucy,” Zhu calls to her, feeling helpless and outraged.

  Li’l Lucy has two years left on her contract. “Oh, I ain’t long for this world, Miss Zhu. Don’t you worry about me, ‘s okay.”

  “How can you do this to her?” Zhu shouts at Jessie. “She was your girl at the Mansion.”

  “The biz is the biz. She got the pox, you know that.” Jessie swipes a shot of gin from a maid’s tray, knocks it back. “Where’s the new girl?”

  “Number forty-two,” the maid says, scurrying away, fear of the Queen of the Underworld plain on her face. “She got her boyfriend with her.”

  “Does she, now.” Jessie storms to the crib, Zhu following reluctantly. She doesn’t want to stay in this hellish place one minute longer. Jessie unlocks the door and strides inside, Zhu dogging her heels.

  The new girl turns. Round face, golden skin, her cheekbones deeper. Her dark eyes rimmed in red, her black hair unraveling from its queue. The apple-green silk is crinkled, the embroidery unraveling, too, the fabric ruined by a scrubbing in hot water and soap. Her hands are raw, the knuckles red, perhaps skinned by a washboard or a brush. She wears the same straw sandals over big knobby toes, her feet bare.

  “Wing Sing!” Zhu cries. The girl’s feet are as big and broad as paddles. But is it really her? “Wing Sing, what are you doing here?”

  “’Lo, Jade Eyes.” No longer the compliant parlor girl in her mask of makeup, she’s got a sharp edge to her now, a hard glint in her young eyes.

  “Say, you know this chit?” Jessie takes the girl’s face in her hand like she took Li’l Lucy’s, turns it this way and that. Pries open her mouth, peers into her eyes. Pokes a finger in her ribs, pinches her breasts, her thighs.

  Panic rises in Zhu’s throat. “Wing Sing, you’re supposed to be staying at the home.”

  A tough young sailor with white blond hair lounges over by the crib’s window. He turns, looks Zhu up and down. He’s a handsome boy with bright green eyes and a deep sunburn. Wing Sing says to Zhu, “This my boyfriend, Rusty, from Selena’s.” To him, “This my friend Jade Eyes. See why I love your eyes, honey?”

  “You. Scram,” Jessie says to the sailor. He shrugs, blows Wing Sing a kiss, and slouches out.

  “Bye bye, Rusty honey,” Wing Sing calls to him.

  “Fed you pretty good at the home, did they, them Bible thumpers?” Jessie know
s exactly what Zhu is talking about, apparently, and she’s smiling. Calculating, calculating. Zhu can practically see the numbers dancing through her head. Fifty cents a john? Maybe seventy-five?

  “Damn it, Wing Sing,” Zhu says, a sick feeling in her gut. This is not supposed to be happening, not supposed to happen. “You better tell me why you’re not staying at Miss Cameron’s.”

  “She make me wash, she make me sew, she make me scrub floor,” Wing Sing says with supreme contempt. “She make me serve her tea at her fine table.”

  “Where were you workin’ before them Bible thumpers rescued you, kid?” Jessie asks, her eyes sparkling with avarice.

  “At Selena’s on Terrific Street,” Wing Sing says. “I not go back there. Chee Song Tong kill me for sure.” She glares at Zhu, accusation burning in her eyes. Then she leans close and whispers, “I carry Rusty’s child.”

  “You’re pregnant?” Zhu whispers back, horrified all over again. What about her prenatal care? What about her diet? What about a hundred johns a day? Then she realizes—of course, Wing Sing is pregnant. She’s supposed to be pregnant. Green-eyed father, green-eyed daughter. The elderly green-eyed Chinese woman pushing Donaldina Cameron’s wheelchair in Golden Gate Park, circa 1967. Wing Sing’s daughter? Is it her?

  Well, it sure can’t be me, Zhu reassures herself, also for the thousandth time. Trying to deny the dread beating in her heart ever since she viewed that holoid.

  Jessie glances back and forth between them, a knowing look rising in her eyes. “Sure and I’ll take you in, kid. The rent is five bucks a day, your draw is ten percent, and tips are all yours.” To Zhu, “Told ya I was fair.”

  “I want new dress,” Wing Sing says imperiously. “New undergarments, new stockings, new jewelry.”

  Jessie picks at the frayed embroidery on her tunic. “Sure and them Bible thumpers ruined your duds, all right. I’ll have Miss Wong draw you up a contract today. And Miss Wong?” Rubbing it in. “Maybe you could lend the kid one of your dresses till she can buy her own. You look like you’re the same size. Give her that old gray rag of yours, you’ve worn it too much, anyhow.”

  Zhu could strangle Jessie. “Wing Sing, I’m begging you, don’t stay here. She can’t make you stay until you’re under contract.” Not supposed to happen, not supposed to happen like this. “You’ve got to go back to Miss Cameron’s home. You’ve got to. Think of the child.”

  “I not go back there, Jade Eyes. I not wash, I not sew, I not scrub floor.” She spits on the floor of the crib. Her face is so cold, Zhu wants to weep. Where is the scruffy waif she found in the Japanese Tea Garden? “I not serve fahn quai.”

  The crowd begins to twitter down the hall.

  “Where is she?” calls out an aristocratic female voice. “I just know my girl is here, Mr. Andrews, and I shall find her, if we have to tear this abomination down, board by board.” Crash of glass, the clatter of a washbasin and a maid’s tray. Screams, laughter, a roar of manly curses. “Out of my way, you filthy sinner.”

  Donaldina Cameron stands at the door to the crib, all crisp gray cotton and scowling rage, the policeman Andrews behind her, his ax in hand. She raises her eyebrows at Zhu. “So, Miss Wong? A distant cousin, is she?” She circles around Wing Sing, who glares back at Cameron. Zhu cringes. Cameron doesn’t need to articulate her accusation of treachery and deceit. Zhu knows exactly what she must think.

  Jessie is mightily amused. “You wanna go back with the Bible thumper, kid?” she says with heavy sarcasm.

  “I not go,” declares Wing Sing.

  “Sure and I guess that’s that, Bible thumper. She ain’t your girl no more, she’s mine.”

  Cameron turns her full fury on Zhu. “And I thought you were just the bookkeeper. I thought you were a decent, educated young woman. How can you let her take this girl to work in this den of sin?”

  Zhu sputters, humiliated. “It’s not my fault,” is all she can whisper lamely.

  Jessie chimes in, “I hear you got your girls workin’, too, Bible thumper.”

  “Yes, working,” Cameron says, bristling. “Work, real work. We teach our girls to love God and to work. To work hard at fruitful tasks, clean tasks. Idle hands and idle heads lead to the path of wickedness. Good work is the way these young souls can be saved from the heathen deviltry that enslaves them.”

  “Oh, I see.” Jessie takes another shot of gin from the tray a trembling maid has brought in and knocks it back. “I hear your holy home looks like one o’ them—what do they call it, Miss Wong?—a sweatshop. All them little orphan girls a-scrubbin’ and a-polishin’ and a-sewin’ and a-washin’. Why, I hear them Snob Hill mansions send down their dirty silver and clothes to you. Ain’t that so, missy?” She claps Wing Sing on the shoulder. “Just like a sweatshop in Tangrenbu.”

  “I not polish silver,” Wing Sing says.

  “This is outrageous,” Cameron says, flushing deeply. “We depend on charity, you hussy. Charity often promised, seldom delivered, and stingily paid. So, yes, we must generate revenue to pay for the home. We manage the girls’ earnings for their education and upkeep.”

  “For your upkeep, too, eh?” Jessie says, plucking at Cameron’s pristine leg o’ mutton sleeve.

  Cameron pulls away. “I am paid twenty-five dollars a month, plus room and board, madam. Truly, I do not know how much longer I can continue.” She aims a significant glance at Zhu. “Yet continue I do. I devote myself to this thankless task for the sake of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who died for us so that we may be blessed with life everlasting.”

  “You believe in Jesus, kid?” Jessie asks Wing Sing.

  “Jesus nice man,” the girl answers. “I like Jesus. But I honor the Lady of my people.”

  “And who is that?’

  “Kuan Yin.”

  Zhu gasps. “You honor Kuan Yin?”

  “Oh, yes! She see all, hear all. You honor the Lady, too, Jade Eyes?”

  “Of course. She is the Goddess of Compassion. I am a Daughter of Compassion.”

  Wing Sing claps her hands, delighted. “Compassion.” She tries out the word. “Maybe Kuan Yin bless me one day. I pray some more.”

  “You be strong, Wing Sing, and Kuan Yin will surely bless you.”

  Zhu catches Cameron listening, openmouthed, but Jessie is grinning, triumphant. “There, you see, Bible thumper?” she says. “They got their own religion, their own culture. What makes you think yours is better?”

  “‘Tis a religion and a culture that allows a little girl to be bought and sold, Miss Malone,” Cameron says. “’Tis a religion and a culture that allows a girl’s master to burn her with candle wax, beat her, starve her, and force her into drudgery. And then, when she comes of age, ‘tis a religion and a culture that allows her to be sold again to a crib in Tangrenbu or to this accursed place where she will prostitute herself till she’s dead at seventeen from disease, opium addiction, or sheer despair. So, yes, I say Christianity is the true Way and this Kuan Yin of theirs is heathen deviltry.”

  “Oh no, Kuan Yin doesn’t condone the exploitation of women, Miss Cameron,” Zhu says. “Kuan Yin is a protector of women. She offers sanctuary… .”

  “This is all swell,” Jessie butts in. “One day we can all sit down to high tea and chat about whose god is better than whose. But, really, Miss Cameron, do you really think this fine society of ours is any better when it comes to treatin’ women? Stick your fine face out that door and tell me it is.”

  The color drains from Cameron’s face and she presses her lips together. She doesn’t need to stick her face out the door. The clamor of drunken men outside assessing the maidens in their cribs, bargaining with the bouncer, bragging of their exploits is only too clear.

  “You got yourself a family, don’t you, Miss Cameron?” Jessie’s eyes sparkle with a fury Zhu has witnessed only once or twice. “And a fiancé, ain’t that right? But think about this. What if your folks died when you was a kid, and you got nothin’? What are you gonna do, huh? Go work in a sweatshop for a
dollar a day and the rent on a crummy room is seven a week? Work in a factory and lose your hand to some machine? Take in piecework? Beg on the street? You know what them fancy jewelry shops downtown pay their shopgirls? Do you know how many girls come to me because they can’t make enough dough to live on working in a factory or in a fancy jewelry shop? You think this fine society of ours don’t wink at the buying and selling of female flesh?”

  “The likes of you exist despite our best efforts to stamp you out like the vermin you are,” Cameron declares.

  “Yeah?” Jessie squares off with Cameron, and the two women look as if they’re about to come to blows. Zhu steps between them, her pulse pounding in her throat. “The likes of me, Bible thumper, gives them poor girls a chance. If they groom themselves up like I teach ‘em and stay shrewd and keep clean, they earn better pay than in a goddamn sweatshop, a nicer life than in a factory. My parlor gives ‘em a taste of a fine life they’d never know otherwise.”

  “This is hardly a parlor,” Cameron snaps.

  “Ah, hell, Bible thumper,” Jessie spits back. “Wing Sing, here, can earn more in one day even in this lousy crib than she could earn in a fancy jewelry store. She can eat. She’s not walking the streets. Who knows? She might even marry some fine young sailor who adores her and gives her a life when he comes a-sailin’ home.”

  “You are a scourge upon our society,” Cameron shoots back.

  “I’m the Queen of the Underworld, and don’t you forget it.”

  “You will perish. The drink or the drugs or the sickness or some hooligan will do you in.”

  Jessie seizes Cameron’s collar at the throat, tearing at Cameron’s Art Nouveau gold brooch. “What in hell do you know about hooligans?”

  “Jessie!” Zhu grabs her, pulls her away. Jessie is practically throttling Miss Cameron.

  “What do you know?” Jessie sobs. “My Rachael knew, but you? Miss Holier-Than-Thou, you don’t know a stinkin’ thing about hooligans.”