Peter stood behind me and began unfastening my dress. As the fabric fell away, I did feel free—free yet vulnerable. I had heard how far a woman could fall; illegitimate pregnancy, disease. How would Pearl protect me from disaster?
Whiskey Pete required urinary relief. He stood over the chamber pot. Pearl chastised him and told him to go outside. “Fresh urine wafting from the chamber pot makes pleasure tawdry. We are not alley bats!”
During his absence, she briefed me in the technique of fobbing. She said the younger and drunker the man the easier he was to fob, and since Whiskey Pete had both of those balls in his court he’d be easy game. She cautioned me about the appropriate time and place to use this technique.
When Whiskey Pete returned it did not take long for him to become aroused again. I reclined back on the bed and let him kiss me. He pulled his trousers off and tossed them onto the chair. Pearl gave me a signal. As I’d been instructed, I reached down, placed his member between my thighs, and squeezed them together as hard as I could. Sure enough he began a frantic horizontal folk dance on top of me.
An explosion of crashing and yelling erupted from downstairs. Johnny shouted, “Pearl! Pearl! Get down here!” Pearl straightened herself up and flew from the room.
Peter was working hard thrusting himself up and down. My inner thighs felt chafed. I also felt a little guilty for fobbing him. A drop of sweat fell from his forehead and trickled down my cheek into my mouth. It tasted like salty whiskey. Finally, he collapsed on top of me and I felt something wet on my legs. He rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. His muscled chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath.
I began to cover myself by pulling up my new black lace undergarments, but he pulled them back down and stroked my breast, squeezing it in his palm and kneading it like dough.
He looked down at my cooch and smiled. “You are a peach,” he said.
I smiled and tried to cover back up so he wouldn’t see where his seed had landed and put two and two together.
He jumped out of bed and hollered. “Oh, Peach, that was so good. You are so beautiful. Why, I’d marry you, take you up to my cabin, and put lots of babies in you if . . . if . . .” His smile disappeared.
I propped myself up in bed and stared at him, waiting for the caveat. I silently prayed, please, please, take me with you. I want to leave this place and live a decent life. I looked at him with the most innocent but sultry look I could muster and waited for him to continue.
“If . . .” his smile became wistful. “Well, if you weren’t an upstairs lady.” He looked bashful and somewhat ashamed for what we’d just done.
My insides shattered like a fallen china doll. An upstairs lady. That was probably the nicest term for what I’d become. Any chance at real love was lost. After young Whiskey Pete, it would be middle-aged railroad men and newly scrubbed strike-it-rich silver miners. I didn’t know if that was his first time with a woman or his hundredth. Since he delivered whiskey to saloons and brothels, it was hard to believe he was a first timer. I wanted to confess my fobbing and ease his sudden shame, but I couldn’t utter a sound because I knew I’d fall to pieces.
Perhaps he noticed my wounded look because he walked to the bed, picked up my hand, and said, “Can I see you again like this next time I’m in town, Peach?”
I nodded. He didn’t kiss my hand. He dropped it and then started putting on his trousers. My hand fell like a corpse’s. I had no will to move it or any other part of my body. I couldn’t focus on anything. In the corner, I sensed Red Farrell’s ghost rifling through Whiskey Pete’s coat pockets and examining his belongings. Whiskey Pete retrieved his coat from the back of the chair, slid it on, grabbed his hat, tipped it to me, and tiptoed out the door.
“My name’s Ophelia,” I whispered, wondering if that girl were still alive. I missed my family so much. My brother, Zeke, had always been there with an arm, a look, or a smile. Even though I was now surrounded by people, I was utterly alone without my family. I hoped there was no afterlife so my parents would never know how far I’d fallen. When the door was safely shut, I sobbed into the pillow, sobbed and sobbed until I feared mildew would grow on Pearl’s silk pillowcase.
They never did call me Ruby. They called me Peach, Miss Peach, Peach Pie, Peaches and Cream, Peachie. After weeks of strange men, and sometimes even women, performing humiliating syphilis inspections over every inch of my body, I was declared a perfect peach, clean and syphilis-free. The humiliations would have continued, but Pearl finally said, “Enough!” And for the next decade, I was known and addressed as some variation of Peach, formally Miss Peach. I even signed my name Miss. O. Peach.
TWENTY-FIVE
Despite the railroad boom, Fifth Street didn’t change much during the 1870s. The panic of 1873 and bickering between the Mormon People’s Party and the non-Mormon Liberal Party in Corinne slowed construction. The Mormons wanted the junction in Ogden and the capital in Salt Lake. The non-Mormon Liberals had a stronghold in Corinne, and told the federal government that unless state government was located there, the Mormons would take complete control. For many years, uncertainty reigned. As a result, most of the buildings remained timber shanties. The Ogden train depot was an embarrassment. For a few years during the early 1870s, the federal government planned to construct a fancy depot way out in Harrisville, which was the middle of nowhere, and far from a water source. Both parties agreed that was ridiculous. When the panic of ’73 struck, those plans were abandoned.
Brigham Young won the battle against the Corinne Gentiles by ceding land around the Ogden railway depot to Union Pacific. Ogden officially became known as Junction City. Pearl’s hunch became a reality. With the jewels as collateral, Pearl had secured funds for our parlor house. Johnny Dobbs didn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do.
Even though Brigham Young won the battle over the location of Junction City, he could not stop the flood of brothels, saloons, dance halls, and gambling and opium dens that began to prosper on Fifth Street. Hostility grew between the Gentiles and the Saints because the Saints were allowed to sell all manner of items, even liquor, to the Gentiles, but the Saints were prohibited from patronizing Gentile businesses. While the Saints were appalled by Gentile liquoring and whore-mongering, the Gentiles were equally appalled by polygamy, which they likened to male prostitution. The Mormon newspaper constantly dueled with the Gentile-controlled newspaper over the issues of polygamy and prostitution.
When the morning papers came out, we gathered at the breakfast table over steaming cups and listened as Pearl read the articles. The Mormons claimed that the practice of polygamy rid their society of the evils of prostitution. We all had a good laugh over that because we had plenty of Mormon customers. In fact it was commonly said that Mormon women had the curious habit of “playing dead” when their husbands wanted to bed them. Even polygamists would sometimes patronize brothels so that they could hook a live one.
The Doll House was a darling three-story Victorian on Sixth Street just a block south of the White Elephant Saloon on Fifth Street, which locals at the time just referred to as “The Street.” Fourth Street was mostly a respectable affair with brick buildings, the Zion Cooperative Mercantile Institution, and two banks: one Mormon owned, and one Gentile.
Johnny and Pearl had bought up a few parcels of land on Fifth Street before the panic of 1873 dried up credit. They were the royal couple of the Junction City underworld, and I was their bastard child. Men would pay a fair sum to ravish the young, orange-haired Miss Peach. It was amazing how many times I could pretend it was the first. Luckily, Pearl chose my patrons and protected me from bullwhackers, buffalo skinners, and other vile types of men, the kind I’d been acquainted with that first night when I was locked in the tank. Those types of men smelled worse than a pigpen. They were usually covered in vermin and months of accumulated sweat, mud, blood, and tobacco juice. Some didn’t even have the decency to bathe before seeking a women’s comfort. I was thankful to Pearl for sparing me their
patronage.
From the time I was very young, my life had been full of physical hardship, from trekking across the Overland Trail, to tending livestock and obstinate crops in the desert. My nails had always been dirty and my hands callused. As long as I could remember, each evening my muscles had ached and my stomach had growled with hunger.
As a strumpet I was well fed. I was well dressed. I had a bath whenever I wanted. And all I had to do was forget everything I’d ever learned about morality, and give myself up for the pleasure of men. It should have been easy. My back didn’t ache from labor. My stomach was full. But I harbored a pang, a deep invisible ache inside that split me in two.
I couldn’t risk striking out on my own to search the territory for Zeke. But I never stopped praying that we’d be reunited. I had a way of asking all my customers if they’d seen him. I’d start with a compliment to the man’s eyes. Depending on the type of man, I might say, “I’ve never seen such fearsome eyes, or intelligent eyes, or thoughtful eyes, or serious eyes, or mischievous eyes, or bright blue eyes.” And then I would say, “The most haunting eyes I ever saw were deep blue eyes on an Indian boy of about seventeen. Isn’t that strange? Did you ever see an Indian boy with deep blue eyes like that?”
I figured Zeke’s eyes were the one characteristic that really set him apart. I hoped I might hear word of his whereabouts. I got a variety of unhelpful responses. “No place in this world for the half-breed male.” Or, “Stay away from them Injuns. A blue-eyed savage is still a savage.” Those responses only increased my worry over Zeke’s lot.
Each month, I eagerly waited at the parlor window for Whiskey Pete’s mule wagon to arrive. Pearl granted me two free days and one evening to spend with him. In order to forget the shameful truth of our relationship, I fantasized he was a sailor returning from sea, or a soldier returning from battle. In my fantasies we were husband and wife. But in reality, I was a whore and he was a philanderer. We were fallen Saints, apostates, and if the Mormons ever found out, they’d kill us both.
None of that mattered when we were tangled together on the bed up in the attic of the parlor house—my private quarters. With the cozy slanted ceiling sheltering us, we embraced on a bug-free bed under a lavender quilt. Shelves with my favorite books lined the walls and a porcelain basin sat on a table next to a plush upholstered Eastlake platform rocker. On hot summer nights, when the attic air was stifling and unbearable, we’d climb out the window onto a flat spot on the roof to feel the cool air, watch the sun set, and spread a bedroll under the stars. I lived for those times.
For a while, it took a fair amount of ale and spirits to dissolve my embarrassment and the boundaries of my flesh. I finally learned to satisfy my customers without abiding shame. My customers passed through me. But I held Whiskey Pete in my heart. His steady affection kept me from whiskey and laudanum dependence—a dark hole many of the girls fell into. The belief in his love sustained me.
With Whiskey Pete I experienced intense pleasure. It was perhaps a crude, momentary, release, but it helped me understand what my customers were seeking and enabled me to see beyond the sin. Man was born from the sin of desire. I came to see it as natural, much different from the impulse to kill.
One night after sex we lay in bed and Whiskey Pete talked about his wife. He told me about her strong constitution, described the girth of her hips, the fullness of her milk. He told me how she was back in the field only a day after giving birth. “She bears work as well as a mule,” he said. “But she closes her eyes and grits her teeth when I bed her. Not like you.” He licked my nipple and squeezed my breast in his hand. “She has no nature for pleasure and passion like a woman of your profession.”
I told him it was not my profession. It was he alone who aroused my pleasure and passion. I told him with the customers, I had to pretend to like it. I told him it took all my will not to grit my teeth. After hearing him compare his wife to a beast of burden, I was thankful we weren’t married. But I wondered about my true nature. Was I born to be a whore?
Pearl was a busy bee. If it weren’t for the nature of her business, I think the Saints would have admired her industry. She managed the upstairs girls over the White Elephant Saloon as well as at a few other establishments on The Street. The rumbling trains brought a steady stream of customers wealthy enough to travel by rail. As the trains came and went, whores working The Street close to the station were prodded and pumped with mechanical regularity. In contrast, customers of the Doll House paid more, stayed longer, and took their time.
As the old Indian woman had predicted, the iron horse, which brought previously unknown comforts to the frontier, marked the end of the great buffalo herds and the Indian tribes who depended upon them. Most people saw this as a victory. Not many mourned what was crushed and banished in civilization’s westward march. They were only grateful for their comforts and didn’t see what was lost.
Thanks to the railroad, during the early 1880s small towns like Ogden began to grow and prosper all across the West. Civilization could not tolerate wilderness. Sadly, by 1882, the buffalo, those immense clumsy looking beasts, had almost completely vanished. Crossing the plains, I’d once seen a whole heard stampede and plunge into a river, so many swimming for their lives with grace and stateliness. I’d also seen countless Indians in their primitive grandeur riding like the wind without saddle or bridle, clinging to their horses as if part of them. Most of their race had been slaughtered like the buffalo, or rounded up and corralled onto reservations.
I didn’t know what fate had befallen my beloved brother, Ezekiel. As a half-breed, he walked a thin line between two worlds and didn’t belong to either. Was he condemned to wander like the Jew? Where would he find his place in the world?
During the late 1870s, rich men from the east traveled west to hunt buffalo. They were not like the mountain men and buffalo skinners of the previous age who had killed the beasts for income and survival. They were industrialists who killed only for sport. After their conquests, they came to the Doll House where they boasted of their exploits. Meanwhile buffalo carcasses and bones littered the land. These men’s hands were as soft as ladies’ hands, and I doubted many of them could even ride a mount with enough skill to hunt. They shot from the top of slow-moving railroad cars, which pulled up alongside the herds. Even though they sickened me, I smiled and provided pleasure.
By 1881, a network of canary wires began to crisscross Fifth Street. City officials planned to build a mechanized streetcar like the one that ran in San Francisco. The depression had ended, and speculation on Fifth Street led to another real estate boom. A whole block of timber-frame shanties was torn down and construction of the illustrious Broom Hotel began. The Street, however, was still dirt. Both children and small dogs could drown in its giant mud puddles.
My private sanctuary in the attic of the Doll House kept me sane. The world I created there had nothing to do with the Ogden underworld in which I operated. When Pearl and Johnny Dobbs weren’t working, they lived on a small farm on Washington Street north of town where they had stables and some livestock. The livery near Fifth Street was usually full and fairly expensive. In addition to her place on the farm with Johnny, Pearl also kept a private room at the Doll House.
Beyond a single strand of costume pearls hanging elegantly from the front door of the Doll House, and some cupid statues in the garden, there was nothing to mark the establishment. We employed a doorman who doubled as a bouncer. Customers came by invitation only and were required to check their weapons at the door. I don’t know how Pearl recruited our customers. Most of them were regulars. We never lacked business, and Pearl boasted of a long waiting list. Exclusivity built mystique and bred demand.
In the back of the house we had a small kitchen garden. I tried tending it for a while, but I couldn’t make anything grow. Once I’d seen a man walking down the street who had the same black hair as Ezekiel had. With great hope, I followed him for several blocks until he turned, and I realized it wasn’t him. I bega
n to doubt I’d ever find him. I tried my best to forget him. Yet I couldn’t give up the hope that one day we’d be reunited.
When I painted my face for the evening, I saw tiny little lines forming at the corners of my eyes and mouth. I wondered how long men would continue to pay for my favors. I stayed out of the sun, always wore a bonnet, and used copious amounts of powder and rouge. But I knew one day I’d be too old and withered to turn a head. Pearl planned for that day. As the years went by, she spent more time at her desk squinting and scribbling in ledgers. She stashed away money, bought property, and invested in other businesses.
I had more possessions and comfort than I’d ever dreamt of—fine dresses and bonnets, jewels, money, property, servants, even a bank account in my name. Yet I’d never forget my early life of poverty—the hunger and scarcity, which had forced me to eat Dolly’s stuffing. Before I was orphaned, I’d been rich in my family’s company. Since I’d become a whore and murderess, I’d be excluded from celestial reunion with them. And so I was truly damned. I felt empty and lonely. Each morning, I’d wake up terrified.
Pearl and Johnny were my only family. I counted myself lucky to have resembled Pearl’s dead sister. I became her chosen one and a true object of her affection. Sometimes she slipped and called me Annie, but I never corrected her. She saw the other girls only as a means to make money. The more money they earned, the better she treated them, and so a jealous hierarchy developed. Even though I was ashamed by her behavior, I never protested. The fact that she treated everyone else poorly increased my stature. I learned to be what other people wanted me to be, to take the shape of their desires, like a play-actor on an intimate stage. I shifted form so much, I’d lost track of my true self and my own desires.
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