Forgiven

by Janet Fox

  I thought I knew. I thought I knew so much, about Miss Everts, about the girls . . . about everything. I’d seen ugliness and conniving and tricks and ways to manipulate, and I thought I’d understood. I thought my world was a harsh one, and if I just escaped my own life, it would all be so much better. Everything I believed was turned upside down and inside out, and ugly things were tumbling from its pockets.

  “I want to help,” I said.

  David spoke. “We have to get Yue out of here and across the bay. Wilkie knows Yue’s here, but I don’t think he’ll act, at least not yet. Still, we don’t have much time. William Henderson is managing a shipment of art that leaves here early on the morning of the eighteenth, and that’s our cover.” He turned to me to explain, and I saw the emotion in his eyes. “Miss Everts takes the art, stores it, and when she disperses it to customers, that’s when we smuggle the girls out of San Francisco with the art.” He brushed his hair back from his forehead. “It’s a tricky business. We use oversize crates to get them across the bay. Everything is done at the last possible moment. The last thing we want is for any of them to suffer further.”

  “And when they reach Sausalito? Where do the girls go then?”

  “We have connections,” said Miss Everts. “Thank the good Lord there are still decent people left in the world. They find employment elsewhere, where people will treat them right.” She watched me for a minute. “Your father, Kula. He’s recently become one of our connections.”

  I cried out. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t he tell me?” All of the lies, the betrayal . . . I could have helped them. I pressed my hand to my heart.

  She waved her hand. “I didn’t see how you could help. I’m concerned that your father’s current situation is a result of his involvement.”

  David said, “We think he was set up. He and a Quaker family just outside of Yellowstone Park were tending to one large group of girls we had traveling through.”

  “The Blacks,” Miss Evert said. “I imagine you could put the rest of the picture together.”

  I was right—Pa had been set up. And finally, I understood. Those girls were Pa’s unfinished business; that was why he hadn’t joined me at Mrs. Gale’s. Mr. Black: murdered, but not by my father. And murdered because he was helping the girls. “Then we have to uncover their scheme. Expose them all. It’s the only chance my father has. The only chance any of them have.” My voice was firm.

  David and Miss Everts exchanged a look.

  “What?” I asked. “I will help with this—you’re talking about my pa here.”

  David said, “We’ll try. Let’s get the girls out first. And Min.”

  Miss Everts reached for her fan. “Heavens, it’s warm for April. David, please open some windows.”

  I gripped my arms tight, hugging myself as if to keep my heart from exploding from my chest. Everything I believed in was shaken from me, even my old suspicions. Saving my pa had been all about me; now saving my pa was about something larger. I watched David as he unlatched and shifted the windows open, letting in the warm, moist late afternoon air.

  Miss Everts said, “Now, Kula. I do have something for you to do. Mr. Sebastian Gable has asked that you attend the opera with him tomorrow night.”

  “What? Me?” Opera? I was clueless.

  “Caruso is singing. It will be quite the event.”

  “I don’t know who that is. And really, I don’t see how that will help anything. It won’t help me find the box. And it certainly won’t help Min or those girls.”

  “Ah, but it will. Wilkie often acts as bodyguard to the Hendersons. And both father and son will be attending. They will all be at the Opera House on Tuesday night.”

  “But what has that to do with me? I don’t understand!”

  “My dear girl, you want to help. By attending and drawing the attentions of Mr. Henderson and his son and Wilkie, not to mention keeping an eye on them, you will afford us a window to get the crates ready for the next morning. Thanks to Min, we’ve learned that a ship with girls is due in during the night Tuesday and the girls offloaded into a warehouse. David needs to bribe the guard and spirit the girls out of the warehouse and out of the city at dawn on Wednesday. I must assist him. I shall not be missed at the opera if the Henderson eyes are upon you.” She raised her fan, beating it vigorously about her face. “I wonder if we shall have storms. This stillness and heat are unnatural.”

  I would hear Caruso, whoever he was, sing opera, whatever that was. I had twenty-four hours to learn what I could from Miss Everts about both so I would not appear foolish. I had no time to find another gown; I’d have to wear the scarlet-colored gown again. Perhaps it would remind Will of a time when he looked on me with favor. But after our argument at the beach, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to look at me at all—not after what I’d learned today. Not after knowing that he had my father’s box, that he might even be involved in the slavery of Chinese girls.

  But still, perhaps I could help draw his eye. Maybe I could confront him and shame him into revealing the location of the box. More than anything, I wanted to help David. I knew now what I wanted, who I cared for. I had two deeply intertwined goals: to help David help the girls, and to save my pa before time ran out.

  Chapter THIRTY

  April 17, 1906

  “I had sung in Carmen that night, and

  the opera had one with fine eclat. We were all

  pleased, and, as I said before, I went to bed

  that night feeling happy and contented.”

  —Interview with Enrico Caruso about

  his experience of the Great 1906 Earthquake,

  The Sketch, London, reprinted in The Theatre, July 1, 1906

  THE HEAVY SCENT OF ORCHIDS WAS OVERWHELMING. As was everything else about the lobby of the Grand Opera House in San Francisco: the enormous cut-glass chandelier that descended in three tiers from the ceiling, the jewelry that adorned the necks and wrists of the society matrons in silks and satins who were escorted by their overstuffed husbands, the blood-red carpet covering the stairs in a velvet nap so thick my feet nearly disappeared.

  Mr. Gable led me to his personal box, where a chilled bottle of champagne and several flutes waited next to the tufted chairs. On one seat cushion lay a set of gold spyglasses—opera glasses, as I’d been instructed, the better to see the singers from the refined heights of the expensive box seats. Mr. Gable was so solicitous and kind, I finally relaxed a bit. I no longer cared what the other patrons thought of me, of why I might be his companion. Their petty snobbery disgusted me.

  I declined the champagne; I’d learned that lesson, thanks to Will. My interests lay in finding the Hendersons, not in dimming my wits. I picked up the opera glasses and scanned the boxes for the one that Mr. Gable said belonged to William Henderson. It was empty.

  Rustle and chatter and soft laughter filled the hall. Every few minutes someone knocked on the door behind us, and Mr. Gable admitted yet another member of polite society who had come to converse with the artist and also ogle his companion—me. I felt like a piece of artwork myself, expected to smile and utter polite nonsense while strange men worked their gaze up and down my figure, and their wives bared teeth in forced smiles above their diamond-encrusted necks. This visiting and conversation continued even as the house lights dimmed and the orchestra struck the first stunning notes of Carmen, turning my body rigid with anticipation. I turned in my seat to find the Hendersons right across from me.

  They’d entered the box and been seated, Mr. Henderson and Will, with Wilkie standing behind in the shadows, his eyes shining like two pinpoints. A thin-lipped, blue-eyed blond girl sat to Will’s right, and Will was bent toward her, with his arm resting casually over her chair back.

  One little part of me seethed with jealousy. But then I thought of Will’s sharp words, and David’s kind eyes, and I smiled to myself as Enrico Caruso stepped to the front of the stage and, pulling a flower from his breast pocket, serenaded his love.

  Oh, my st
ars. What a voice. With his rich and wide-ranging tenor, Caruso commanded my full attention at once, and the emotion he packed into his plaintive love song brought goose bumps out all over me. When he finished the aria, I, together with the entire house, jumped to our feet in a spontaneous rush of cheering and applause.

  And so it was for the entire performance. When Caruso was not singing, I turned my attentions to the Hendersons. They remained in their box, and Wilkie, too, thank goodness. At least I did not have to worry about David, who was making arrangements to spirit girls out of Chinatown at that very moment. Once, while I was watching Will, his eyes turned toward Sebastian Gable’s box and met mine, and I quick lowered the glasses, but I’d caught his expression.

  He was sad. He was not smiling, not jovial, not flashing his blond companion that dazzling smile that had made me melt.

  I turned my eyes away and back to the stage, where Don Jose was becoming increasingly desperate for the unwilling Carmen.

  When Don Jose finally plunged his knife into his defiant, willful lover, I choked with sympathy. Even though I couldn’t understand the language, I was transported. The audience called again and again for Caruso to take the stage, and he was pelted with roses and wild cheers.

  The opera was over, but the Hendersons remained in their box, clearly enjoying the attentions from the streams of society types who filed in and out under Wilkie’s narrowed eyes. If Wilkie had seen me across the way, he didn’t acknowledge it. Of course, he couldn’t, not with so many respectable people around. Mr. Gable rose; it was time for us to leave. I turned one last time and found Will Henderson’s eyes on me. He gave me a wan smile. I stared coldly back, knowing that I’d been unable to confront him about pa’s box, vowing to do so the next day. At least I’d served Miss Everts’s and David’s diversionary purpose.

  It was past midnight, and I yawned, openmouthed, as Sebastian Gable escorted me from the Opera House and into his waiting carriage.

  “Only a few hours until dawn,” Mr. Gable remarked.

  “Yes.” I thought about how, at dawn, at least a few of those desperate girls would find a new and better life, thanks to Miss Everts and David. I thanked Mr. Gable for a lovely evening and, on arriving back at the house, wearily climbed the stairs.

  My room was now my own again, as Yue had joined Mei Lien in her room. I was exhausted, and yet I slept fitfully. It was warm and still, with no breeze coming through my open window. My miserable sleepless state and my open curtains had me up with the first dawn light.

  It was an eerie morning, silent. I’d spent so much of my childhood in the woods that I knew how the first light of day was always accompanied by the racket of rising birds. On this day, there was no sound of birds. It felt all wrong. The ticking of the clock in my room sounded like a hammer, pounding. Five o’clock. There was no more sleep for me; I got up and dressed. The scarlet gown lay draped over the back of my stuffed chair.

  I had just finished dressing, but with my hair still hanging loose in its single braid, when the world around me fell apart.

  Chapter THIRTY-ONE

  April 18, 1906

  “I was within a stone’s throw of that city hall

  when the hand of an avenging God fell upon

  San Francisco. The ground rose and fell like an ocean

  at ebb tide. Then came the crash. Tons upon tons of that

  mighty pile slid away from the steel framework

  and destructiveness of that effort was terrific.”

  —Fred J. Hewitt, San Francisco Examiner, April 20, 1906

  I KNEW AN EARTHQUAKE, THE JOLT WHEN IT FIRST HIT and the roll that followed. I’d experienced the rumblings of the earth a time or two in Yellowstone. But those little knockabouts were nothing compared with this. The floor began to heave, and I was thrown to my hands and knees.

  The house creaked and groaned, and the plaster crashed and framing wrenched and wood splintered to fragments. The portrait of my Blue Boy swayed against the wall like the pendulum of a clock. The clattering of bricks tumbling to pavement lifted through my open window and a rumbling noise like thunder that seemed to come from the belly of the earth itself.

  After a minute that felt like an eternity all motion stopped, and an eerie silence settled over the house. Thunder rumbled in the distance as walls—whole buildings, from the sound of it—that were shaken loose fell to earth. I stood, all shaky, and had just dusted off my knees when the second shock hit.

  This time I ran for my door and stood in the frame, clutching it tight with both hands, for this shock was far worse than the first. The house rose and fell like the ferry would on the roughest sea; porcelain crashed to the floor in the hall below. Outside, something close at hand—one side of the house?—fell with a violent rending and hammering. And the bells. Through my open window came a clamor of bells. Bells in all the steeples of all the churches in the city rang and rang, as if calling to heaven, pleading for help.

  When this shock was finished, I stood for a minute, getting my bearings. Then I ran down the stairs toward Miss Everts’s room. She clutched at her bedpost, her face drawn and tight. I pulled an evening coat from her wardrobe and threw it over her shoulders.

  “Come on,” I said to her. “We have to leave in case there are more.”

  She came with me, like a child, obedient and silent.

  In the downstairs hall we were joined by Jameson, Mei Lien, and Yue. Together we stumbled out into the small front yard.

  Up and down the street people in various states of undress were also outside, clutching odd belongings—a porcelain vase, a birdcage, a set of books—and everyone was silent in stunned confusion. The only noise came from animals. Dogs barked and horses screamed; birds flapped and squawked in every tree.

  The houses on our street had mostly survived, even if their chimneys had not; one house farther down the steep hill shrugged to one side, its front porch on the verge of sliding off like a layer on a tilted cake.

  Miss Everts’s house had held up surprisingly well. It lost its chimney, which must have been the noise I’d heard, and the bricks were scattered in a fan at the foot of the outside wall. Several windows on the ground floor were broken. An image of Sebastian Gable’s wall of windows came into my mind, and I was sure they could not have been spared. I wondered what had happened to all his paintings, and if he was all right.

  “Well.” Miss Everts seemed recovered. “What an alarming wake-up call.”

  Jameson stared down toward the city center. “Look.” Smoke billowed skyward from several places around the southeastern end of the city.

  There were no sounds now: no cable cars, no more church bells, no people; no one moaned or cried out; even the animals had gone quiet. We had all been struck with reverential silence at the awful power of nature.

  Mei Lien touched my arm, and I looked at her. “Girls, in cellars.”

  I started, and turned to Miss Everts. Her lips were set in a thin line. “Yes. In the cellars. We were to move them in half an hour. David might already be there. They would all be trapped if the buildings fell.”

  “I’ll bring round the automobile,” Jameson said.

  “I shall get dressed. Mei Lien, you and Yue stay here and help Kula—”

  “No! I’m going with you.” I would not be left behind, not knowing if David had been crushed in the midst of his rescue. I knew he thought I was silly and selfish, but I didn’t care; I could only think of him. “Miss Everts, you should stay here.”

  “Absolutely not,” she replied, turning on her heel and marching up the steps and inside.

  Within a few minutes it became clear that there were other problems to consider. No water came out of the taps, nor was there gas from the stove. And the automobile could not be brought round until the rubble of the chimney was cleared from the drive.

  Miss Everts, dressed now, put her hands to her hips. “There’s a hand-pump well at Simpson’s Grocery down at the bottom of the hill. Mei Lien, you and Yue will fetch water. We can’t survive
without water. Kula, you and I will stay here and keep the house safe.”

  “I’ll go find them,” said Jameson, meaning David and the girls.

  “Please let me go with Jameson,” I begged. “He can’t manage alone, and I can move fast.”

  Miss Everts pursed her lips, and then nodded once.

  Jameson had long strides, but at least we were headed downhill and I was able to keep up. Once we were out of the Nob Hill neighborhood and into the area of tightly packed tenements, the effects of the earthquake became clear. That’s when we began to see real destruction.

  Many of these poorly constructed buildings had collapsed entirely, falling in on top of people. We passed a man in nothing but a nightshirt sitting, stunned, upon a pile of rubble. Others were digging through the bricks in an attempt at rescue. Still others stared in the direction of Market Street, where several of the plumes of smoke had grown larger.

  Jameson knew just where to go; the girls David had been seeking were warehoused in the Barbary Coast. We threaded our way through people who now carried belongings away from the ruins, in a migration to nowhere, in a state of calm. It was eerie, that calm, broken only by the crying of infants. The adults and older children—it seemed we were all a blank.

  Shock, I thought. We’re all in shock.

  The Barbary, that refuge of all that was foul, was a ruin, her residents, in nightshirts or tuxedos or, most shockingly, nothing at all, drifting along the streets. I averted my eyes as Jameson gave his coat to one unfortunate man, who was naked as a jaybird and who only stared back blank-eyed and confused. Others sifted through the ruins calling after friends in this otherwise friendless place.

  Jameson stopped suddenly in front of a pile of rubble, and I realized why. It was gone. The evil building where the girls were imprisoned was gone. The buildings to either side had collapsed as well. I sank to my knees in the rubble. There was no one else here; no one seemed to care about this place. No one searched for loved ones. Only Jameson and I had come looking.