Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  There was a tiny little whimper, and the girl covered her head as if expecting a blow. ‘I had to do it,’ she whispered. ‘It was the only way.’

  Matilda wasn’t sure if the girl was trying to say she’d been raped, or if she was admitting to having had an abortion. ‘I don’t know much about things like this,’ she said gently. ‘But my maid will, so I’m going to get her. Now, just you lie quietly. I won’t be long.’

  Dolores listened while Matilda explained what had happened. She made no comment but immediately disappeared into her room, coming back with a covered basket, which she handed to her, and two old towels from the linen closet.

  ‘You go on down,’ she said. ‘Master Peter’s sound asleep. I’ll just get some hot water and rags.’

  ‘Do you think she’s done something to try and get rid of the baby?’ Matilda said fearfully.

  Dolores nodded, her proud face very grim.

  Matilda saw yet another side of Dolores in the hours that followed – kindly, soothing with not a word of reproach to Fern, or even shock when the girl admitted she had pushed a meat skewer up inside her. She stripped the girl of her clothes with Matilda’s help, made no comment about the weals from a recent beating on her back, or the marks on her wrists and ankles as if she’d been shackled. She washed her all over as though she was a helpless baby, and rubbed the girl’s lower back each time a pain came.

  Matilda might have helped with Lily’s miscarriage, and at the birth of her stillborn child, yet those experiences didn’t make the sight of so much blood and the girl’s pain any less terrifying.

  ‘Should I call a doctor?’ she asked Dolores fearfully.

  Dolores gave her a contemptuous look. ‘What doctor would come to a black girl?’

  Matilda looked from Dolores to Fern and wanted to cry for both of them. What sort of a country was she in that women were refused medical aid because of the colour of their skin?

  The noise from the saloon grew louder as the evening wore on, and Fern’s pains became almost continual. She wondered how someone so young could be so stoic, for the only sounds she made were little whimpers. Matilda could only collect up the soiled pads of cloth, fetch more water, and pray that the girl would survive.

  Finally the band stopped playing and they heard everyone leaving as the saloon closed. It was now so quiet Matilda even heard Sidney locking the doors, but he didn’t attempt to come in or even call at the door, perhaps guessing at what was going on. Only he, Mary and Albert slept in these downstairs rooms now, and Matilda thought he’d probably made the others stay away.

  Finally Fern screamed out for the only time that night, and passed a bloody mass on to the brown paper Dolores had slid beneath her.

  ‘It’s all over now,’ Matilda said soothingly, hoping this was the case, while Dolores quickly removed the brown paper and its contents. She wiped the girl’s face and neck with a cool cloth. ‘You’re safe with us, we’re going to take care of you.’

  Fern seemed to relax a little, the veins which had sprung up on her face and neck during her ordeal slowly receding. She turned her head slightly towards Matilda, her eyes full of tears. ‘Why did you help me?’ she asked in a whisper.

  ‘Why? Because you needed it of course,’ Matilda replied. ‘Now, suppose you tell me why you came into my saloon when you’d just done something like this to yourself?’

  ‘Anna, my friend, said gin would surely make it work. Anyways, I didn’t have anywhere else to go and it was raining.’

  ‘A fine friend she turned out to be, she disappeared when you fainted,’ Matilda said tartly.

  Dolores came back then with a fresh bowl of hot water and began washing Fern again. ‘You’s ain’t gonna be going nowhere for some time,’ she said sharply. ‘So you’d better be tellin’ us where you come from.’

  Fern looked anxiously from one woman’s face to the other.

  ‘Just tell the truth,’ Matilda said gently. ‘We aren’t going to tell anyone, we’re your friends.’

  She was just fourteen. Her mother was a housekeeper to a family in Philadelphia, and Fern had acted as a kitchen maid for them from the age of seven. A year ago she travelled out to California with nine other girls under the supervision of a Negro woman called Mrs Honeymead, who said she could get them all good well-paid jobs as maids. What she found at the other end of the long journey was a waterfront brothel.

  Matilda was somewhat surprised when Dolores told Fern that was enough for one night. She put a clean night-gown on her, dosed her with some medicine, and said she was to go to sleep, but she’d be checking on her during the night.

  Sidney, Mary and Albert were sitting drinking coffee in the saloon, and they all looked up anxiously.

  ‘The girl’s poorly,’ Matilda said. ‘But she’s sleeping now, you all go to bed. I’ll explain in the morning.’

  As soon as she and Dolores got back upstairs, Matilda asked her why she’d stopped Fern so sharply.

  Dolores gave her a withering look. ‘I didn’t want her gettin’ no bad dreams about that place,’ she said. ‘She’s bin through enough tonight.’

  ‘You know the brothel then?’

  ‘I sure do,’ Dolores replied shaking her head. ‘Its called Girlie Town and just about the worst place any girl could end up in. They gits little girls, niggers and Chinese mostly, and the beasts they let in on ’em ain’t even worthy of being called men.’

  Matilda listened in horror as Dolores went on to say that she’d heard many of the girls were chained up. ‘You saw those marks on her,’ she said. ‘That’s how men like to take their pleasure down there. And that Mrs Honeymead! She’s one evil woman, I heard tell she’s from Haiti, they say she casts spells to ruin folk who cross her.’

  It was astounding how much Dolores knew. Mrs Honeymead was a procuress and worked for a man called Gilbert Green, known as Big Gee. He owned a great many melodeon places down on ‘the Coast’, where for ten cents, a man could watch a woman performing with a donkey, or be raped by a man invited up from the audience.

  ‘All the girls who works for him get there like Fern,’ Dolores said. ‘Little innocents miles from home. In a couple of years he’s brutalized them so bad they don’t care what he makes them do no more.’

  ‘I can’t believe none of this has come to my ears before,’ Matilda said indignantly.

  ‘It weren’t happening when you first come,’ Dolores replied. ‘Back then the mining men just wanted a woman and that was that. But there ain’t no money in gold no more, so the bad men soon see a new way to make money and this is what we got.’

  ‘But how do you know about it?’

  ‘I’s a nigger,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Other niggers they tell me. I been called too, to fix up girls like Fern.’

  ‘You mean you’ve helped them get rid of babies?’ Matilda exclaimed, deeply shocked.

  ‘Don’t you go looking like that,’ Dolores said, her eyes narrowing. ‘There ain’t nuthin’ worse than a child to be born when it ain’t wanted, all they got in front of them is misery. Better for someone like me to do it than one of those dirty old crones who don’t care if she butchers them.’

  Dolores often slipped out at odd times, but Matilda had always imagined that the messages left for her in the bar which prompted her, had something to do with her church. But the rights or wrongs of what Dolores did weren’t something Matilda wanted to discuss now. ‘But Fern said she had nowhere to go. Do you think this man, Big Gee, threw her out?’

  ‘He ain’t one for throwing girls out, not when they’s as young and fresh as her. I reckon she escaped, and if that’s the case he’ll come looking for her.’

  Matilda found she couldn’t sleep that night for Dolores had put so many horrible pictures in her mind. Twice she got up and went downstairs to check on Fern, but thankfully she was sound asleep. She wondered what on earth she could do with the girl once she was better. She didn’t need any more waitresses, and even if she had if Dolores was right and this Big Gee came loo
king for Fern, she’d be right back where she started.

  Yet Cissie’s words just before she died, about saving girls like her, kept niggling at Matilda. She had to do something more than patch the girl up and send her on her way.

  Fern was very much better in the morning. She had no fever, and Dolores said the amount of blood she was losing was just normal, so she didn’t think there would be further complications. For safety’s sake, Matilda got Sidney to carry the girl up to Zandra’s old room; so many people had seen her collapse in the saloon, and it wouldn’t take Big Gee long to hear of it.

  ‘If anyone asks about her, tell them I let her lie down for a while, then sent her on her way,’ she told Sidney. ‘Don’t let anyone know she’s still here.’

  Sidney looked very worried. ‘I’ve heard about Big Gee,’ he said. ‘He ain’t one to mess with, Matty.’

  ‘Would you like to see Fern go back to that life?’

  ‘Well, no,’ he said, looking a little sheepish.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ she smiled. ‘You always did have a soft heart. So we have to protect her, don’t we?’

  Matilda went in to see Fern later, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Tell me how you got away,’ she asked.

  Fern looked even younger than her fourteen years as she lay in the big bed, her huge brown eyes full of fear. ‘Miz Honeymead kept us locked up all the time,’ she said. ‘Only time we got out was when she came to take us to a man, and we got locked in there too. But the day afore yesterday, she was taking me back from a man when Big Gee he came by. He was real mad about sommat, and she shoved me in a room and went away with him. I s’pose she was so rattled she forgot about lockin’ me up. I took the chance and run fer it. I ain’t never seen no place ’cept the ones I got locked in, but I went on down to the kitchen, hid behind a door till the woman in there turned away, and I ran out the back door and climbed up over the wall.’

  ‘This was the day before yesterday?’ Matilda asked to clarify it.

  Fern nodded. ‘It were in the morning, and all I had on was a shift. I come to a kind of yard behind a saloon, and that’s where I met Anna. She was just sitting out there having a rest. Anyways, I tole her I was runnin’. She said I wouldn’t get far with no clothes, and she took me up to her room to hide me. I stayed there all that day, and the night. I got to tell her I was carrying a child and she said best to get rid of it, or I’d be heapin’ more misery on me. I only knowed the way I heared Miz Honeymead did it to the girls, so that’s what I done.’

  Matilda’s stomach turned over at the mental picture of such a young girl doing something so barbaric to herself.

  ‘I thought it would come right away,’ Fern said in a matter-of-fact manner. ‘It hurt some, but that was all. I guess Anna got scared ’bout hiding me too, ’cos she gave me a frock and boots, and tole me to get out of “the Coast” and wait up by London Lil’s for her. She said she would try and get me some money and meet me again. It started into rain while I was waitin’, and I didn’t feel so good then, but she come and met me, and that’s how I come to be in your place.’

  Suddenly Matilda understood. Anna had probably heard she was sympathetic to young street girls, maybe she even hoped that by sending Fern to wait by her place, she would see the girl and take her in. Clearly Anna had a heart, she had to come to check out what had happened to her new friend, and who could blame her for disappearing once she felt she would be in safe hands?

  ‘Please don’t send me back to Miz Honeymead!’ Fern said suddenly, her eyes pleading with Matilda. ‘I’ll do the dishes, scrub the floors, whatever you say.’

  ‘I certainly won’t send you back there.’ Matilda caught hold of the girl’s two hands and squeezed them. ‘But I can’t keep you here for ever, Fern, however much I’d like to, I don’t need any more help. But I promise I’ll find somewhere safe for you when you are better.’

  She let Dolores talk to Fern later, and through her maid she discovered that the girl had been subjected to sex with dozens of men in one day. Mrs Honeymead had advertised Fern to her ‘gentlemen’ as a little ‘hell cat’, claiming she was so ferocious she had to be kept chained up. Fern had been trained to buck and struggle and to spit at the men. If she didn’t put up a good enough show she was beaten and starved.

  Such utter depravity sickened Matilda, she couldn’t possibly imagine what kind of man could enjoy such horrible sport. But Dolores said darkly that far worse than that went on down in ‘the Coast’.

  Two nights later, Matilda was down in the saloon with Henry Slocum. It was a quiet night because there was no show, only the band playing. Matilda had been asking Henry what could be done about people procuring very young girls and keeping them virtual prisoners. His answer wasn’t encouraging, he thought it would be the hardest thing in the world to prove because while they were only using Mexicans, Chinese and Negroes, their word would hardly be taken over a white man’s.

  They had moved on to talk about the city in general, Henry telling her that Mr Meigg, a fellow alderman and famous for building the 1,600-foot-long Meigg’s Wharf, had run off after using city funds to support his own precarious business deals. He was just saying that the man was reported to be in Peru, building roads, when the doors of the saloon crashed open and in came a very big man in a loud black and white checked jacket and a black derby hat. Just the size of the man, well over six foot, and his irate expression, told Matilda immediately it was the infamous Big Gee.

  His size alone was enough to make Matilda quake, and just the way he looked told her he was exceptionally dangerous. A big square face, the colour of raw liver, with black stubble on his chin and mean pale, eyes. The kind of man who looked like he would enjoy killing or maiming anyone who crossed him.

  Clearly the man had learned a great deal about Matilda, for he strode right up to her, elbowing Henry out of the way.

  ‘I hear you’re harbouring one of my gals,’ he said, looking menacingly at her. ‘I want her back, right now.’

  ‘Excuse me, I don’t know what you are talking about,’ Matilda retorted. ‘I’m not harbouring anyone.’

  ‘Now then,’ Henry said. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what your business with Mrs Jennings is, but that’s no way to speak to a lady.’

  The big man gave Henry a scathing look and pushed him roughly aside as if he were an irritating insect. Henry, perhaps thinking he could help better by not interfering further, backed away.

  Matilda had always supposed no one would dare hurt her in her own saloon, but she sensed this man would have no scruples about attacking anyone, man, woman or child, wherever they happened to be. Close up he was even more formidable – so very ugly, with black hairs sticking out of his large nose, and the few teeth he had left rotten, but it was his eyes that scared her most, for they were pale blue, and they had a mad look in them, like a rabid dog’s.

  ‘Don’t you go messin’ with me,’ he snarled at her. ‘I got ways of sortin’ out folk who stick their noses in my business. Get the girl now.’

  The band was still playing merrily, but everyone in the bar had fallen silent, and the tension was palpable. Matilda could see he had a gun tucked into his belt, his jacket gaped open enough to see the shiny stock. She had no doubt he would not hesitate to use it.

  She felt sick with fear. She didn’t dare order anyone to go and get help, for he would surely round on the first person who moved. All she could do was try to talk him round.

  ‘I’m sorry I don’t know your name,’ she said, trying to defuse the situation with a little charm. ‘And I can’t imagine how you came to think I was keeping one of your girls here. I’m not in the brothel business, the only girls here are my waitresses.’

  ‘The name is Gilbert Green,’ he said with a sneer, as if just the sound of that name would send her running for cover. ‘I know all about you, I makes it my business to know everything about folk in this town. So if you don’t want any trouble, just get her.’

  Scared as Matilda
was, she had her position to maintain, and she wasn’t going to allow anyone to think they could talk to her like that.

  ‘Will you kindly leave, sir,’ she said, drawing herself up as tall as she could, but even so she was barely to his shoulder. ‘Like I said, you are mistaken. And I don’t like people making threats to me.’

  He scowled at her, and he did move, but back towards the door which led to the rooms where Sidney slept. Clearly he’d heard this was where Fern had been taken.

  ‘You are welcome to look in there,’ she said. Sidney was moving towards them and she shot him a warning glance to stay away. ‘Here. I’ll show you myself.’

  She moved in front of the man, unlocked the outer door and led him from one small room to the other. ‘You see!’ she said triumphantly. ‘They are just rooms where my staff sleep, nothing more.’

  ‘But you took her in here,’ he said as they came back to the door. ‘I know you did.’

  Every pore in her skin seemed to be opening up in fright. She could feel sweat on her face, her chest and even down her back. ‘A young Negro girl did faint in the bar the other night,’ she said, as if only just remembering. ‘Yes, I did bring her in here at the time, just until she recovered, but she left at closing time. I haven’t seen her since.’

  He appeared to believe her and as he began to walk away, Matilda felt a surge of relief. But he stopped suddenly at the foot of the stairs and looked up at the doors on the balcony.

  ‘What’s up there?’

  At that Matilda panicked. Not only was Fern in her apartment, Peter and Dolores were there too.

  Before she could think of anything to deter him, he was up the stairs taking them two at a time. All she could do was chase after him.

  She let him look into the first rooms, which were private gaming rooms, and there was no one in either, hoping that someone downstairs would have the sense to run and get help. But if anyone did move, she didn’t hear them, and he was now approaching her apartment door.

  He tried to turn the knob, but it was locked. He turned back to her, a leering evil grin on his face. ‘Open this,’ he ordered her.