Sundance, Butch and Me

by Judy Alter

  Briskly she asked, "You wanted to see me?" Only after she'd said that did she look at me, and then her expression changed to one of surprise.

  "Yes, ma'am," I said, rising and holding out my slip of paper. "Mr. James Newsome of Ben Wheeler gave me this and told me to come to you when I got to San Antonio."

  She held the slip of paper at a distance, and I thought I saw the same twitch at the corners of her mouth that the man had shown when I first got there. "And what did Mr. Newsome think I would do for you? Why are you in San Antonio? Alone, I presume. And what should I call you?"

  Her questions were fired too rapidly for my tired brain, and I sorted them out. "My name is Martha—Martha Baird. And, yes, I'm in San Antonio alone. I'm... an orphan, and Mr. Newsome thought you would find work for me."

  "Oh he did, did he?" Now she looked angry and muttered almost under her breath, "The low-down scum...."

  Fleetingly I thought that I'd never heard a woman use such language—certainly Mama would never have thought of it. I didn't know whether to be shocked or impressed. But weariness was overcoming me so strongly that my knees nearly buckled, and I longed to sit again on that uncomfortable straight chair. I forced myself to stand straight before her.

  Mrs. Porter looked long and hard at me, saying nothing, until I wondered what she could possibly be thinking. But still I stood straight before her, my mind forcing my weary body to obey. Finally, she said, "I think you better sit down and tell me the whole story. You look exhausted, and I imagine you haven't eaten in a good while."

  I nodded. It had been a long time since Mr. Newsome had advised me to eat heartily, but until that moment I hadn't thought about food.

  She clapped her hands, and the black man appeared. "Hodge, what's for supper?"

  "Fresh vegetables, sliced roast chicken, bread, and custard pudding," he told her.

  "Bring this child a plate right away," she said, her voice pleasant but commanding.

  He gave his little half-bow and was gone again, only to return in minutes with a tantalizing plate of the promised chicken, accompanied by potatoes, green beans, squash, and fresh light bread. My mouth watered.

  "Eat first," Mrs. Porter said, "and then tell me your story. Here, let's take it to a table so you can eat more conveniently."

  She picked up the plate and carried it back through the curtained doors, motioning with her head for me to follow. We went down the entry hall into another hall that ran perpendicular to the first. Along the back wall of the passageway, a narrow staircase rose to the second floor. At the foot of the stairs, a doorway opened into the dining room. It was a good-sized room, but I was puzzled that it held not one long dining table, as I'd expected, but several small ones. I wondered who would eat at all those tables in this house, which now seemed quiet and empty.

  When we were seated, she again commanded me to eat, and though I was suddenly ravenous and wanted to tear at the food, I ate daintily, aware that she was watching me intently, and blessing Mama for the manners she taught me. It wasn't just that I was hungry—the food was delicious. Pa's vegetable garden had never produced green beans or squashes that large or flavorful. When I had licked the last of the custard off my spoon, she said, "You have good manners. Someone's taught you well."

  "My mother," I said, wiping my mouth carefully and folding the napkin. It was heavy fabric and crisply white.

  "What happened to her?"

  "She died. My... my little brother died of consumption, and I think Mama died of a broken heart. But she had it too... consumption, that is." In spite of myself, I could feel a tear or two in my eyes. It's just because I am so tired, I thought, and willed the tears away.

  "And your father?"

  I opened my mouth, but no words came. She waited patiently, her expression neither compassionate nor unkind. I tried again to bring up the lie I'd made up: Pa had abandoned me, just up and left one day, and after a week I went to the Newsomes for help.

  But the words wouldn't come.

  "I killed him," I said evenly, though I felt the words come against my will. Maybe I badly needed to confess.

  "He must have needed killing" was her only response. "Tell me about it."

  The story came out slowly. As deliberately as I could I told about Pa and a man's needs, and about my warning, and then back to the way Pa had treated Mama and bullied Ab and how what he did to me was the final insult on a long string of bad deeds. I managed to get through it without once ever seeing Pa in front of me. "I know it was wrong, and I guess I'll have to go to jail... maybe even hang... ," I concluded.

  This last only then occurred to me, with a terror I can't describe.

  "They don't much hang young girls, especially not those raped by their fathers," she said dryly, "and I see no reason anyone else ever has to hear this tale... that is, if you can keep from telling it anymore. You say James Newsome knows? Will he tell anyone?"

  "Mrs. Newsome won't let him," I answered before I thought how that sounded.

  She laughed aloud for a minute. "I thought he was that kind. Now, you've eaten, and you're obviously beyond tired. I... have a spare room. You sleep, and tomorrow we'll talk about work for you."

  Hodge showed me to a room on the second floor, furnished with only a bed, a small chest of drawers, and a chair. "Chamber pot's under the bed," he said. "And lock's on the inside. You lock the door, and don't let any noise you hear bother you."

  I thought it was the strangest piece of advice I'd ever been given, but I did as he said and locked the door before changing into the one clean gown I'd brought. I crawled into the bed, between clean white sheets that smelled from having been hung on the line in the sunshine. Within seconds I was fast asleep, and through the night I was dimly aware of sounds—music from far away, laughter and voices coming and going closer to me—but I slept on. When I woke, the sun was high in the sky.

  Chapter 4

  "What kind of work can you do?"

  It was early afternoon, and I'd had a good dinner of chicken salad: yesterday's chicken, probably, with tomato aspic—a new taste for me—and more fresh bread and custard pudding. Julie, who was apparently Mrs. Hodge and who cooked for Mrs. Porter and lived with Hodge in a small building behind the house, had served all this in the kitchen. Once again the house seemed eerily quiet, and I remembered the vague sounds I'd heard during the night.

  Now I had been summoned to Mrs. Porter's bedroom—boudoir, Hodge called it—and I silently practiced saying the word to myself until I could make it sound as he did—"boodwahr." The boudoir was not upstairs where I'd slept but a large room off the rear of the parlor. It was in fact almost a separate apartment, with two other smaller rooms across a short hall.

  She was propped up by dozens of pillows, or so it seemed, in a great, canopied bed, with sheets that looked shiny pulled up over her and her lunch tray abandoned on the bed beside her. She wore a wrapper of the same material as the sheets—shiny and rich-looking, not feed-sack cotton like the wrappers I was used to. But even as she sat in bed, her hair was perfectly combed and it seemed to me there was just a hint more than natural color on her cheeks.

  I stood before her, dressed in one of the two cotton everyday dresses I'd brought, this at least made of store-bought calico that Mama had traded for with her eggs and butter.

  "What kind of work can you do?" she repeated without inviting me to take a seat.

  "I can cook, sew, and clean house. If necessary, I can weed, plant, hoe a garden, but I'd rather not."

  That loud laugh again. "I'm sure. I'd rather not too."

  Before she could say more, I told her, "I know that you have Julie and Hodge to do those things for you, but I thought perhaps you could refer me to some friends who need help."

  "Honey," she said, throwing the covers back and swinging her feet off the bed and into some sort of shoe with fur around the top of her foot, "I wouldn't trust my friends with you. What kind of a place do you think this is?"

  "I don't know," I admitted. "I'm puzzled. It's
a big house, but it seems empty... and it's fancier than anything I ever imagined I'd see."

  "Yeah, it's fancy," she said, rising to pace around the room. "But it's not empty. There are five other women living here, up on the second floor where you slept last night. They stay up late at night, and they sleep away the day." She paused a moment, bent to stare in the mirror at her dressing table and carefully smooth her hair.

  "This is a female boardinghouse. We entertain gentlemen here in private—for money. Do you know what I mean?"

  I nodded. Somewhere I'd heard about prostitutes. Surely not from Mama—maybe Papa threatening to visit one. I wasn't sure, but in the back of my mind I knew that some women let men do what Papa had done to me, only they charged money for it. I never thought, though, that they lived like Mrs. Porter. "It's a whorehouse," I said boldly, and then, even more boldly, asked, "You?"

  She eyed me. "Sometimes. Not often. I own this house, and I run it. The girls work for me."

  It all made sense to me now, and, uninvited, I sank down onto the fainting couch next to the dressing table. She seated herself before the array of bottles and brushes and waited for me to speak.

  "Mr. Newsome thought you would hire me to do that," I said. There was no question in my voice.

  "Yes, he did. It was a damn fool thing to think of, but that's how men's minds sometimes work. Long as your father had done what he did, you'd been 'initiated,' you might say, and you might as well make a living at it. Is that what you want to do?"

  I stood up. "No, ma'am, I don't. I'll just be leaving now. And thank you for the meals."

  "Sit down," she said in a voice that was almost a roar. "I wouldn't hire you even if you wanted me to. You're too young, and no one's ever going to say that Fannie Porter lured a young girl into the life. But we've got to figure out something for you."

  "I can cook and clean," I repeated, feeling a surge of despair.

  "Do you want to spend your life cooking and cleaning?"

  Not Pa, but Mama, floated into my vision—Mama scrubbing old board floors on her hands and knees, poking at dirty clothes in a washpot over a fire, baking bread when she was too exhausted to knead. "No, I don't."

  "How much schooling have you had?"

  I shrugged. "Mama taught me at home. I can write a good hand, and I know mathematics. I have read some of the Bible, but we didn't have any other books. Mama used to talk to us about Shakespeare and things, but I've not read much."

  "Your mother was a remarkable woman," Mrs. Porter said, "and I think I want to make one of her dreams come true."

  Puzzled, I waited.

  "I'm going to send you to school, make a lady of you."

  I opened my mouth to protest, but she waved a hand for silence. "No, I'm not going to take you on as a daughter or try to mother you. You're near grown, and you'll have to do the rest of it on your own. But I'm taking you on as a project... I want to show the world that Fannie Porter recognizes class."

  Too stunned to speak, I watched her pace the room, her head bent as though she were deep in thought. "The Ursuline Academy," she muttered, "but first clothes... and a place to stay.... She's got to meet the girls, and I've got to lay down the law." Then, looking at me, she announced, "We have a lot to do to get you ready for school in the fall."

  She clapped her hands, and Hodge appeared. "Hodge, I want my second sitting room fitted into a bedroom for..." She turned to look at me. "We can't call you Martha Baird. What shall we call you?"

  "Martha Baird's my name," I said in protest. I wanted a new life—but the thought of a new name was unsettling.

  "Well, that won't do for reasons you and I both understand. We'll call you... how about Etta?... I've always been partial to the name Etta. Nicest girl ever worked for me was named Etta—-not that that's an omen or anything, mind you. And a last name? Porter? No, sounds like my daughter, and that would give you a burden to bear. Newsome? We could make it a wry joke on that slimy... How about Place? Because you've found yourself a place. Etta Place."

  She looked at me for agreement, and I nodded, silently repeating to myself, "Etta Place, Etta Place." It sounded all right on my tongue, and I knew I couldn't go around admitting to being Martha Baird, the girl who stabbed her father to death.

  "It has a fine ring to it," Fannie concluded. Then she was back to business. "And, Hodge... bring me the morning newspaper and send for Mrs. Carrera, the dressmaker. Right away. And tell the girls we'll meet at four this afternoon in the parlor. Oh—and I'll need the carriage in thirty minutes. I'll drive myself."

  Hodge, apparently having no trouble sorting out all those orders, bowed and disappeared.

  "Now, we have to have a background for you. Logically, you'll be my niece... let's see, the daughter of my recently deceased brother. Oh, don't look so startled—I don't really have a brother. It's not as though I were wishing bad luck on a real living person. Where would you like to come from? Someplace far away."

  "Up north," I said promptly.

  She shook her head. "We're going to erase East Texas from your speech, but right now there's just enough of it to convince anybody you're from somewhere in the South. How about Atlanta?"

  "Georgia?"

  "Right. Atlanta, Georgia, but in the country nearby, not in the city. That'll give you leeway to be a little bewildered about city ways." She went to a chifforobe and began looking through the dresses hanging there, holding out one and then rejecting it, taking another out for inspection. At last she threw a gray crepe dress on the bed. "My respectable clothes," she said, and laughed.

  Then she was serious again. "You'll have to amuse yourself for a few hours," she told me by way of dismissal. "I have to dress and go out. You best wait in the kitchen with Julie... you can use those cooking skills to help her. I don't want you meeting the other girls, though, until four o'clock. I'll do the introductions."

  "Yes, ma'am," I said.

  "None of that 'ma'am' business. You call me Fannie."

  I nodded.

  * * *

  Three hours in the kitchen was not nearly as endless as I'd expected, with Julie filling me in on the various residents of the house. Someone called Juniper had been there the longest, she said, "near on to ten years, and that's a long time for a girl to be on the line. She must be near thirty year old, time to be gettin' herself a different line of work. 'Course," and she shook her head, snapping a green bean extra hard, "ain't much else she can do." She rinsed the beans with a dipper of water, put them aside, and picked up several ears of corn.

  "Here," I said, "I can do that."

  "All right, honey, then I be starting some biscuits. Now, that Lillie Davis, she's new and right smart, knows she doesn't want to stay here forever. She's from somewhere in East Texas... ah, Jerusalem—no, Palestine, that's it."

  "Palestine!" My voice rose in spite of myself. It was too close to home. "How long has she been here?" I cursed myself for a fool. Did I think she'd just arrived yesterday?

  "Been about a year now. Miss Lillie must be... oh, twenty-one. How old you be?"

  "I'm sixteen," I said.

  She rolled her eyes heavenward. "And you're gonna work here? That don't sound like Miss Fannie."

  Hodge came into the kitchen then. "Don't be talkin' so much, woman, when you don't know nothin'. Miss Etta, she's going to school. The Ursuline Academy, Miss Fannie tells me."

  "Well, I'll be... I don't know what's goin' on in this world."

  "Miss Etta," Hodge said, "your room is ready for you. I got that no-good Juan to help me move a bed in—we've always got extra beds—and I put in a nightstand, a chest of drawers, a dressing table, and an upholstered chair. Miss Fannie says you'll be needing a desk, but I'll have to do some bargaining to get that."

  A bedroom of my own, with a desk in it, was a dream beyond belief. I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying or gushing or doing something silly, but it worked. I was amazed at the self-control I'd learned in the last two days. "Thank you, Hodge. May I go look at it?"

&
nbsp; "Yes, ma'am. I put your things in there, but I 'spect you'll be havin' new things before long."

  The room was not large, but to me it was as big as a ballroom, the bed the softest I'd ever felt. I put my few belongings in the drawers, lay down to test the bed, and was instantly asleep, exhausted by the rapid turn of events in my life. I wondered, as I drifted off, what Mr. Newsome would say next time he came to visit Fannie. A horrible thought struck me: Maybe he'd been planning to ask for me to "entertain him." The idea of his disappointment made me giggle.

  * * *

  I must have slept only minutes when Fannie shook me awake. "Sorry, Etta, but Mrs. Carrera is here to measure you. I told you we had a lot to do."

  As I slowly sat up and rubbed sleep from my eyes, she waved a hand at the room. "We'll get a throw to match the curtains—Mrs. Carrera can see to it—and a rug of some sort. And I told Hodge to get a desk...." Just the littlest bit of impatience crept into her voice.

  "He said he'd have to bargain for it," I told her, feeling myself rush to Hodge's defense.

  She nodded, apparently already dismissing the desk as a problem, and led me into the third small room in this wing of the house. It proved to be her sitting room, and a short, smiling Mexican woman waited there, tape measure in hand. She said something in Spanish to me, and Fannie immediately translated, "Buenos dias. It means good day. It's the way you greet people. We'll have to get you some everyday Spanish right away."

  As I stood still in the middle of the room, Mrs. Carrera measured and Fannie ordered. Told to strip to my camisole, I'd been forced to admit that I owned none and had nothing on beneath the cotton dress I wore. Camisoles—seven of them, trimmed with eyelet lace—were first on Fannie's list, followed by wrappers in a variety of fabrics and prints—flannel for winter, cotton and muslin for summer, one good wool. Then came a bewildering variety of dresses with only one thing in common—they were to be either black or dark gray.