Speak Through the Wind

by Allison K. Pittman

  Lord, she prayed, You have brought me here. Help me now.

  She closed her eyes, hoping that blocking out some of the chaos would help her focus on what direction to take. The steadying arm of Captain Weathersby had helped ease the transition from so many months walking the deck of a ship, but now Kassandra felt herself on the verge of collapse. She reached out her hand to try to regain her balance, but drew it quickly back as it encountered something soft and fleshy.

  “If you was a fellow I’da charged you ten bucks for that.” The voice was deep and husky, almost like a man’s.

  “I am so very sorry,” Kassandra said, opening her eyes to the largest woman she had ever seen. Not tall, as Kassandra stood nearly a head taller, but wide. From hip to hip she was the width of three women, and her depth was no less impressive. Her hair, an unnatural shade of red, was piled haphazardly on top of her head, and the highest frizzy mound of it threatened to tickle Kassandra’s chin as she leaned in close.

  “You’re lookin’ like you lost your best friend.”

  “I haven’t got a best friend,” Kassandra said.

  “Well, that ain’t no surprise, smellin’ the way you do,” the woman said, wrinkling her powdered nose after a brief, too-close inspection.

  “I just got off a boat,” Kassandra said, wondering why she was so quick to confide in this woman.

  “Well, didn’t nobody tell you this was San Francisco? California? If you’re lookin’ for Ellis Island, you sailed the wrong ocean.”

  Kassandra laughed despite herself, despite the dizziness and the-strangeness of the city. She felt an eerie ease with this woman, something she hadn’t felt since her first year with Ben, and the realization caused her to catch her breath up high. The painted face, the tinted hair, the plunging neckline. She knew exactly what this woman was. Certainly God didn’t bring her halfway across the world just to drop her in another brothel.

  “Oh, now come on, girl, don’t look so scandalized. I ain’t gonna eat you up. Hiram pointed you out to me. Told me to help you out.”

  “Captain Weathersby?”

  “The one and the same. My name’s Jewell, by the way Jewell Gunn.”

  “I am Kassandra.”

  “Good. I got the right girl. Now,” she reached over and took Kassandra’s bag before Kassandra had a chance to protest, “what’ll it be? Bath, then dinner? Or other way ‘round?” Jewell started walking up the street, leaving no choice but to be followed.

  They passed one building after another advertising every kind of good and service imaginable. Just like the city back home, every other establishment boasted liquor and women. This far from the docks, there weren’t many street vendors, but the air was alive with every kind of scent pouring from the restaurants lining the street. Pungent noodle shops, savory roasting sausage, yeasty baked goods—all seemed to vie for Kassandra’s palate, practically pulling her from the path she followed behind Jewell’s voluminous skirts.

  “You’re prob’ly pretty hungry,” Jewell said, glancing over her shoulder without breaking stride.

  “I am,” Kassandra said, already near breathlessness after what she estimated was merely half a block.

  “Well, tell you the truth, the shape you’re in, you wouldn’t be welcome in none of the establishments I care to frequent.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m just thinkin’ it would be best to get you cleaned up a bit. Don’t you worry, the food’s not goin’ anywhere. Our first stop needs to be a bath.”

  Kassandra followed without question, already feeling inextricably linked to the waddling woman in front of her. The crowd was such that if she lagged behind one step or took one to the left or the right, she would be swallowed up. There was a strange sense of comfort in how every third person they passed saluted Jewell—men tipped their hats, women called out greetings—like she was the flagship of the San Francisco Armada and Kassandra the tall tugboat behind.

  They came to a stop in front of an impressive-looking four-story building with arched windows along the top story. Several well-dressed men loitered at its doors, and Jewell pushed through them with good-natured ribbing and an open invitation to visit her later in the afternoon.

  She led Kassandra through an ornate front door and into the most sumptuous room she had ever seen. The grand, open floor was a checker-pattern of different carpets. No fewer than a dozen chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling, and groupings of overstuffed sofas and chairs were scattered throughout.

  Kassandra stopped dead just inside the door, her eyes opened so wide she felt she’d never close them again. “What is this place?” she asked.

  “This is the finest hotel in San Francisco,” Jewell said. “They got a public bathhouse downstairs. Hot water, imported soap. Just ten dollars.”

  “Ten dollars? I do not have ten dollars to spend on a bath.”

  “How much you got?” Jewell asked with a sly wink.

  Kassandra reached down to pat her skirt pocket. Just a few dollars there. Mrs. Hartmann had given her a soft leather wallet with fifty dollars cash. It was snugly wrapped within a pair of stockings. In her bag. In Jewell’s hand.

  “Let me tell you this,” Jewell said with a conspiratorial air. “They got huge vats of steaming water ready to fill up a porcelain tub. Perfumed soap imported from France, make you smell like the sweetest woman you ever hoped to be. Soft towels, big enough to wrap you up like a baby.”

  “Please give me my bag back,” Kassandra said, reaching for her case, amused at Jewell’s juvenile attempt to hold it out of her reach.

  “Oh, come now. Wouldn’t you like the chance to take off them rags, have ’em washed at a Chinese laundry?”

  “I simply cannot—”

  “Then they’ll give you a fine silk robe—not to keep, you understand—and let you wear it upstairs to the softest bed you’ve ever set your bones on.”

  The images swam in Kassandra’s head. Her skin grated against the fabric of her filthy dress, and she could feel the prickling grime at the back of her neck, exposed by her greasy, upswept hair. More powerful than the vision of such an experience, though, were the disdainful looks she drew from all who walked past her. At first she thought maybe the disgusted glances were more for Jewell and her ostentatious display but the upturned noses and muttered insults were proof enough that it was she who offended. For just a moment, she wished to be invisible again. But certainly such luxury must come with a price. If a bath cost ten dollars, she couldn’t imagine the price of a bed.

  “Now if it’s just a matter of the money,” Jewell said, her voice taking on a teasing quality, “don’t let that bother you. I’m more’n happy to help out a new girl in town.”

  This was it. Seduction. Rather than being fifteen and poised for love and adventure, she was twenty and tired from unwanted battles. The lure of luxury, the promise of protection. She closed her eyes. Surely God had some other plan for her. She sent up a silent plea for rescue. A four-piece band struck up a lively tune somewhere in the recesses of the main hall, and a group of men raised their voices in a cheerful toast. She heard the clink of glasses and opened her eyes to see Jewell’s face, oddly comforting in its multitudes of painted, folded flesh.

  “Why would you do this for me?”

  “Why, you’re nothin’ but a poor little lost sparrow, ain’t you? Blown in from the storm. Come on, let’s get them feathers cleaned up.”

  She nudged Kassandra toward a stairwell to their left above which a sign read, Public Baths for Hotel Patrons Only. Kassandra followed a few steps, then stopped.

  “Why are you doing this for me?”

  Jewell smiled, a big grin that showed her teeth to be small and yellow framed by her crimson-smeared lips. “This is a big ol’ scary world, darlin’ A girl oughtn’t go through it without her mama. And if she ain’t got her mama, she at least needs a friend. And if she ain’t got a friend,” she winked, “at least she got me. Now, come on, Sadie, let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “My name is
Kassandra.”

  “I like to name my girls myself.” Jewell transferred the bag to her other hand and took Kassandra’s arm to lead her through the stairwell door. “No better way to start off a new life than with a new name.”

  As they took the stairs down into the dark basement, Kassandra had the feeling of her life being a book, flipped back to its first page to be lived again. Another tainted savior, and her with no doubt what the price of such salvation would be.

  ot three days after her rescue in the street, and Kassandra was wearing new clothes, had been given a new name, and occupied a moderately sumptuous room on the second floor of Jewell Gunn’s red-roofed brothel. The modest bit of cash she’d arrived with wouldn’t have supported her for a day in this city, and Jewell had been more than happy to extend her credit.

  She’d never before worn gowns tailored to her frame; she’d never had her hair arranged in painstaking curls, fussed and fretted over by some of the younger of Jewell’s girls. The first night she’d been primped for an evening in Jewell’s parlor, she stood in front of the full-length gilded mirror (the first of those she’d ever seen, too) and marveled at her own reflection. She felt beautiful. Looked beautiful. The décolletage made her broad shoulders seem anything but manly, especially with the single spiraled curl draped artfully over one of them. The redness brought on by so much exposure to the sun had faded to a healthy bronze, nothing like the ghostly pallor on every face in the sun-starved streets of New York. She used a bit of powder to disguise some of the darker blotches, and there was a definite new crinkling at the corners of her eyes. But with the tiniest dot of rouge applied to her lips and a brush of beeswax on her lashes, her face took on an exotic appeal she’d never anticipated.

  Jewell let out a long whistle the first evening Kassandra descended the stairs into the parlor. “Lookee here, girls,” she said in that deep, rasping voice of hers. “We got us a genuine Amazon.”

  Kassandra smiled, pleased at the admiring consent of the other women gathered in the room.

  There was a chorus of masculine laughter just outside Jewell’s ornate door. It opened, and a group of men—all in freshly laundered shirts and slicked-back hair—tumbled over the threshold. Once inside, they immediately took off their dust-covered hats and looked almost shyly about the room.

  Jewell sidled up to Kassandra and motioned for her to lean down.

  “You ready to jump in there?” she whispered into Kassandra’s ear.

  “Almost,” Kassandra said, taking a breath so deep it strained against her corset. “Maybe, though, I could get a drink first?”

  Her favorite restaurant came tö be a small German eatery tucked away on the eastern edge of Portsmouth Square. The thick noodles and tart cabbage made her think of how her mother would have cared for her if she’d ever had the chance. She liked to go early in the evening, before the streets were full of revelers. On many days she didn’t see first light until well after noon, and the early supper at Klausen Haus was the first food of the day. She always dressed carefully, and today the warm spring sun called for her new lavender silk gown, its neckline low and square.

  “Afternoon, Sadie.” He was dressed in a sage green broadcloth suit, a watch chain stretched across his ample stomach. The bright sun glinted off his spectacles when he looked up into Kassandra’s face, but she could well imagine the sprightly squint behind the glare.

  “Hello, Jimmy.” She offered the affected smile that brought a pink tinge to his broad, wrinkled neck. “Are you staying out of trouble?”

  “At least until later on tonight.” Jimmy made a clicking sound inside his cheek and reached a pudgy arm around to pat the cascade of ruffles at the back of Kassandra’s dress.

  “Well, then I guess I’d better go inside and have a good dinner,” she said, maintaining a flirtatious air as she wormed away from his grasp. “Get my strength up.”

  The man pulled out an impressive gold timepiece from his strained vest pocket. “Maybe we can make a go of it now. I’ve got a little time—”

  “Now, Jimmy, Jimmy.” She patted the top of his balding head. “A girl’s got to get some rest some time. You let me go get my dinner, and I’ll see you later tonight. The bank won’t run itself, you know.”

  The smile he gave her made it seem as if a twelve-year-old boy suddenly took possession of his mind as he fumbled putting the watch back into its pocket and pulled out a bulging leather wallet from the lining of his jacket. It was thick with bills, and his stubby fingers worked furiously to pull out an impressive pinch of cash. “Well, at least let me buy you your dinner. It’s the least I can do, knowing you’re fattening up for me.”

  She matched him in his laughter and offered a quick kiss to the shiny pate as she took the bills from his hand.

  “Thank you, Jimmy. I’ll be thinking of you with every bite.”

  He blushed beet red then and seemed suddenly in a rush to get back to his business. Kassandra kept the smile on her face until he had rounded the corner. Once inside, she headed for her favorite table—tucked into the back corner with a clear view of the street through the large plate glass window—nodding a greeting to several of her fellow patrons.

  Frederik, the owner, cook, and waiter to the more important clients, was at her table steps before she was, holding her chair out with a flourish and offering a slight bow as she settled in.

  “Fraulein Sadie?”

  “Hallo, Frederik,” she replied. Slipping into her native tongue had been awkward at first, after so many years of disuse, but now it came to her naturally, bringing with it an inexplicable sense of comfort. She asked him what was on the menu for the day.

  “Wurst-und Gerstensuppe” he said, indicating a sausage and barley soup that was a favorite of Kassandra’s.

  “Das klingt gut” Kassandra said, offering Frederik the remnant of her earlier smile.

  “Und ein Bier?”

  “Ja, bitte.”

  The second Frederik turned his back, Kassandra let her face relax, only briefly offering up a thankful grin when Fredrik returned with a mug of beer. “Danke” she said, sliding her fingers around the cold glass, lifting it to her lips, and taking a long, deep drink.

  Frederik brought her a second with her soup.

  aintaining employment with Jewell Gunn was tricky at best. Any sign of weakness, illness, or disloyalty, and a woman could find herself kicked to the center of Chatham Square with nothing but whatever clothes she’d arrived in and enough money to buy a week in a wharf-side flophouse.

  “You ain’t exactly a guest in my home,” she’d say whenever one of the girls declared she’d rather spend a quiet evening alone in her room rather than entertain the men downstairs.

  “I’m not aimin’ to be no matchmaker,” she’d say whenever she caught one of her girls sneaking around the city, offering her services to a favored customer free of charge.

  “Does this look like a hospital to you?” she’d ask whenever a lingering cough or unexplained rash overstayed its welcome.

  New girls were arriving in the city every day, she warned them. They hopped off the Sacramento stage or hit land from the passenger steamers making more and more regular deposits in the San Francisco Bay.

  “Now I’m not sayin’ I’m ready to stock the place with a bunch of Frenchies,” she’d say, rolling one of her cigarettes. “Just mind you don’t think you can’t be replaced.”

  Kassandra took her warning to heart. Never again would she allow the course of her life to be determined by her frailty of body or spirit. She would not cower in the corner, waiting for the scraps of acceptance to be tossed her way. Trying to recreate Ben’s easy way with people, she made every man who came into Jewell’s feel like he was a California sultan, greeting him at the door with a smile and cajoling him into buying drink after drink in the parlor before adjourning upstairs. Whenever the men weren’t around, she sharpened her verbal wits sparring with Jewell, swapping stories about the colorful life in the slums of New York for those about the adventure
of building an empire on the opposite coast.

  She kept her fashionable clothes neat and clean and varied, never allowing any former or would-be customer to see her looking slatternly. She maintained her figure despite all the culinary temptations of the city and, recalling Ben’s accusation that alcohol made her “puffy,” she avowed her limit to be no more than three drinks a day.

  If Jewell wanted her girls to be attractive, Kassandra made herself beautiful. If she wanted them to be friendly, Kassandra was effusive. No one had ever asked her to be strong, but if doing so would keep her in Jewell’s good graces, Kassandra was more than prepared to become a woman of power. When a seventeen-year-old chippie from a rival brothel accused Kassandra of stealing her favorite customer—calling her a stinkin’ kraut—Kassandra calmly grabbed the girl by her auburn hair, hauled her into the alley behind Jewell’s house, and hit her exactly once, breaking the girl’s nose.

  “Well, well, well,” Jewell said, surveying the scene of the fray with frank admiration, “what brought on this bit of inspiration?”

  “Today is my daughter’s first birthday,” Kassandra said, wiping the girl’s blood off the back of her knuckles on a silk handkerchief pulled from her pocket. “I was not in the mood for another insult.”

  “A year old? Now that’s some thin’, isn’t it? That merits a drink.”

  She held out her silver flask to Kassandra, who took it without question and offered a quick salute before tipping it to her lips.