The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (62 page)

“Indeed.”
Miss Anthony turns to her quizzically. “Are you a working woman, Miss Malone?”

“Hmph!
You bet!” Jessie jabs her elbow into Mariah’s ribs. Mariah ignores the jab, and
Zhu wonders how many times Mariah has ignored Jessie’s intrusive elbow.

“May
I ask what line of work you are in?” Miss Anthony inquires, taking the cup of
tea Madame De Cassin has served her.

“I
own whorehouses, Miss Anthony. A high-class parlor and some lousy cribs.”
Jessie tosses her blond curls defiantly, eagerly seeking a shocked look on Miss
Anthony’s craggy face. “I’m what they call a madam.” She raises her voice in
case the elderly suffragist is hard of hearing. “A whore, Miss Anthony. They
call me the Queen of the Underworld.”

Zhu coughs,
and everyone else at the table coughs, cringes, or blushes. But no shocked look
appears on Miss Anthony’ face. On the contrary, she leans forward, her eyes
sparkling with interest. “And how, may I ask, did you get started in that line
of work?”

Donaldina
Cameron rolls her eyes, Madame De Cassin pats Cameron’s arm sympathetically,
Lucy nervously sips her tea, Mariah gazes stonily into the distance, and Daniel
circles his arm around Zhu’s shoulders protectively. No one is joking. Not now.

“Line
of work! The biz is the biz.” Jessie brays with laughter. “You really want to
hear my pitiful sob story, Miss Anthony?”

“Indeed
I do!”

Jessie
pulls a flask from her purse, uncorks it, knocks back a swallow. Zhu smells
expensive brandy.

“Once
upon a time, I was a little girl,” she begins sarcastically.

But
the table hushes, the meeting seems to hush all around them, too, and Jessie’s
eyes glisten.

Oh!
Zhu
thinks, holding her breath.
The story I’ve never heard.

“Once
upon a time, I was a little girl with a littler girl to take care of. My sweet
innocent Rachael was younger by a year and a half, but Mum liked to say we was
twins ‘cause we looked so much alike. ‘My sweet angels,’ Mum called us. ‘My
little mermaids.’ We lived at Lily Lake on the Oregon side of the border. Sure
and we swam in that lake every chance we got from the time we could stand up and
walk. That’s the way I thought of us.
We
walked,
we
swam,
we
ate,
we
slept, Rachael and me. Like two sides of a coin. Like one
person, you might say.” Jessie sighs. “She may have been younger, but she was wilder
and stronger. Rachael could hold her breath and dive down deep and swim halfway
across the lake under the water. Her skinny arms and legs a-pumpin’ like a frog.
And Mum and me, we’d get scared. ‘Rachael, Rachael,’ we’d call and hug each
other. ‘Mother of God, she ain’t comin’ up this time, Mum,’ says I and cried.
And then she would. She would just pop up from the water, gasping and laughing,
and wipe the water from her eyes. ‘You a-cryin’ for me, Jessie, you silly girl?
You thought I ain’t comin’ up this time? Huh? Did ya?’”

“And
then Mum died, didn’t she?” Miss Anthony says.

Jessie
nods, surprised that the suffragist is following her story. “The fever took
many a soul that winter. It’s a wonder Rachael and I didn’t up and die, too. Pater
was a smithy, that’s how I get my special touch with the nags. Pater’s business
had been slow, the house was an ice box, and he and Mum both caught the fever
and died. I was ten years of age, Rachael eight going on nine. There must have
been some money, you know? Pater owned our house and our stables, least as far
as I knew. But a lawyer came to settle their accounts and sent me and Rachael
to an orphanage in Portland. Maybe some money went with us for our keep, I don’t
know. All I know is we never saw one red cent of it.

“Sure
and we hated that place! I took it into my head that the orphanage had murdered
Mum and Pater. That Mum and Pater would never have gone off and left me and
Rachael alone without a penny.” Jessie pulls from her flask. “So we turned bad.
We ran away from that place every chance we got. There’s a great big ol’ river
winding through Portland, and down to the river we’d go to swim. Oh! How we
missed our Lily Lake.

“One
hot summer we’d run away to swim, and Rachael was a-swimmin’ underwater the way
she did, divin’ down and breachin’ up and spoutin’ water from her mouth. Kickin’
up her legs, sassy like. Showin’ off she was. And me a-cryin’ and a-wringin’ my
hands. Beggin’ her to come up, don’t drown! My sweet innocent Rachael, she was all
I had left in the world.

“Suddenly
a strange gentleman with silver hair stood beside me on the riverbank.

“I
was never shy, but as I stood dripping wet in my cotton shift, I could see how
his black eyes looked me up and down. I think that must have been the first
time I got a notion about the lust of men. I remember how I found my crumpled
dress on the riverbank and clutched it to myself. As though a dusty piece of
cotton could hide my body from his eyes.

“But
it wasn’t me he wanted most, he wanted Rachael. He made small talk, all polite.
‘Can you swim, too?’ says he. ‘Sure I can,’ says I, all boastful. ‘Like a
mermaid.’ I got real mad when I cottoned on that it was Rachael who had grabbed
his eye. ‘We grew up at Lily Lake. We swum like mermaids before we could walk.’

“’Mermaids,’
says he. ‘How charming.’

“Like
a damn fool, I spilled our whole story. ‘Orphans?’ says he. ‘Would you like me
to spring you and your sister loose of that orphanage?’ ‘How?’ says I. ‘Come
with me,’ says he. ‘I own a circus.’”

“Oh,
my! You joined the circus, Miss Malone?” Lucy exclaims.

 “But
that’s wonderful!” Zhu says. After her skipparents abandoned her and she went
to live at the barracks, Zhu often fantasized about just such an escape from
the cruelties of her young life. Run off and join the circus!

Jessie
smiles wanly. “What seems wonderful ain’t always so wonderful, missy.”

“Sure
and we joined the circus, Rachael and me. Mr. Girabaldi—for he was the silver-haired
gent, of course—billed us as ‘The Water Princesses. See the Little Living
Mermaids!’ Rachael at nine was not so little, anymore. She shot up taller than
me. And at eleven going on twelve, I was not so little, either. After the cheap
grease and grits Mr. Girabaldi fed us, I was developin’ my bosom and hips, you
bet. Neither of us was such little girls anymore.

“Oh,
but you should have seen our act! Mr. Girabaldi dressed us in daring silver and
green sateen bathing suits. He had a glass tank made, it was as big as a whole
room. And he filled that tank with water, and tinted the water blue, and in
we’d slip, the Living Mermaids. Sure and I could hold my breath underwater, but
Rachael was the best. She would spin, she would roll, she would turn
loop-the-loops. Oh, was we grand! The audience loved us.”

“Then
you must have made a lot of money,” Miss Anthony says.

“Hmph!
Mr. Girabaldi made a lot of money and kept most of it for himself.”

“I
thought so,” Miss Anthony says.

Jessie
dabs at her eyes with her fingertips, and Miss Anthony hands her a napkin.

“We
traveled all over the West in a horse-and-wagon caravan. Mr. Girabaldi didn’t
care about us like our Pater, but he fed us and clothed us and gave us our own
little wagon and a big gray gelding. The company was respectful like. I had a
sweetheart, the son of an acrobat. Rachael didn’t give a hoot about boys at
that time. And then everything changed.

“We
toured through San Francisco, and a lady named Miss Hester saw our act and bribed
her way backstage. Sure and wasn’t she agog over us. ‘Mermaids,’ says Miss
Hester as she dried Rachael’s hair with a thick cotton towel. ‘So beautiful.’
We both took to her. I suppose we was missing our Mum, all the fussin’ and such.
Miss Hester started comin’ to see us every night. She brought us little gifts,
chocolate and fancy things to eat. She bought me my first diamond. A silly
worthless chip it was, but I thought it was the queen’s own jewel.”

“And
this Miss Hester,” Miss Anthony interrupts, “she was a madam, was she not?”

“Sure
and she owned a parlor on Terrific Street. A class joint,” Jessie says with a
toss of her curls. “One night after the show, she asked us out to dinner. No,
she didn’t take us to her parlor, not at first. She took us to the Poodle Dog.
The Dog was such a naughty place at that time, them Snob Hill ladies wouldn’t
be caught dead there, not even on the first floor. Miss Hester took us to a
suite on the wicked third floor. I was thirteen by then, Rachael going on
twelve, as skinny as a stick but developing her bosom. After the circus, we was
not stupid chits. Still, we was pretty young kids, and the circus folk had
coddled us. We was the Little Mermaids.

“We
did not expect to find several fine gentlemen waiting for us in that suite on
the third floor. Gentlemen who wanted to meet the Little Mermaids. Who wanted
to see us perform. In private, you see. One Mr. Heald, a young up-and-comer in
town, had taken it upon himself to build a tank. A glass tank like the one we
swam in for our act, only not quite so large. He had the water tinted blue and
everything. And Miss Hester urged us—no, she insisted—that we perform as true
mermaids do. Without our green and silver sateen bathing suits.”

“So
you swam in the nude for those men, you and Rachael?” Miss Anthony asks. “And
you went to work for Miss Hester? You were eleven and thirteen?”

Jessie
nods. And Miss Anthony nods as if she’s heard Jessie’s story a thousand times
before. “Ah,” Donaldina says softly and aims a look of deep sympathy at Jessie.
Everyone at the table does. Zhu doesn’t want to speak up, doesn’t want to say
that Jessie’s story, or something like Jessie’s story, will be told in the
future by a million children as the centuries pass.

“Sure
and Miss Hester tricked us out,” Jessie says wearily. “She set up a tank in her
Terrific Street parlor and dyed the water blue. After our act, we went upstairs
with the best gentlemen in town. The toast of San Francisco, we was. Made money
for Miss Hester and also for ourselves, so that seemed all right. I learned
most of what I know about the biz before I blew out fifteen candles on my
birthday cake. I learned the value of money young, so I didn’t blow it in. I
started a bank account, bought real estate.”

“But
Rachael is in the Summerland, is she not, Miss Malone?” says Madame De Cassin.
“She’s the one you always summon. She’s the one who always comes to you.”

Jessie
dabs at her eyes with the napkin, and Zhu holds her breath.

“She
was so beautiful at fourteen. My sweet innocent Rachael, the highest paid
sportin’ gal in town. Sure and she was wicked. She loved to pit her gentlemen
one against another. She loved to make them jealous the way she loved to make
me worry when she swam at Lily Lake. When I warned her that her games would
come to no good, she only laughed and said, ‘Make ‘em pay, darlin’, make ‘em
pay.’ She wanted more than gold, she wanted passion. She made a horse race out
of it. Who would come a-callin’ on Sunday morning before church. Who would
bring her the best diamonds. Who would surprise her with a mare or a sailboat
or a dress from Paris.” Jessie frowns, pulls at her flask. “I curse the day that
Captain Franklin Morrisey blew into town. He’d served under General Grant when
he was but a boy. A fightin’ cock, that one. He’d gambled his way across the
West, played poker in Tombstone, killed two men in Cheyenne. Still proud and
handsome by the time he got to San Francisco, but getting on in his years. No
longer such a young man, and wantin’ a wife equal to his passion.

“He
went sweet for Rachael the moment he laid his eyes on her and demanded her
hand, in spite of her reputation. She would have none of it. Wild as a cat she
was. What would Rachael do, a married woman? Cook and clean and bear Morrisey’s
babies? Nah, she’d acquired a taste for the sportin’ life. One night she
consented to dine with him at the Poodle Dog. A third-floor suite, plenty of
whiskey and champagne. He must have proposed to her again. Sure and she must
have mocked him. Morrisey never did have a sunny temper, but Rachael made a
lunatic out of him. They found her in that suite with her neck broke, the rest
of her black and blue. And Morrisey never got hanged for it, neither. He blew
town, and I never heard one word about him again. And the police? Well, she was
just a whore.”

Zhu
and everyone at the table, even Daniel, are struck with silence.

“Thank
you for sharing your story with us, Miss Malone,” says Miss Anthony.

Jessie
sniffs, but her face is as hard as stone. “And that’s how my sweet innocent
Rachael crossed over to the Summerland.”

“No
protection for children’s legal rights and property,” muses Miss Anthony,
stroking her chin. “No decent child labor laws. No decent wage laws at all. No
decent educational opportunities for most women. Few decent employment
opportunities for any woman except in a menial job that doesn’t pay a wage that
a single person needs to decently live on. Prostitution has everything to do
with poverty and lack of opportunity. That is why,” she declares in a ringing
voice, “we must have woman suffrage. Because if men do not care to address
these issues with their vote, surely women will. Women will.”

“Miss
Wong tells me she knows all about what the future will bring,” Jessie says.
“Ain’t that so, missy? Sure and Mr. H. G. Wells don’t say a thing about woman
suffrage in his book. Will women get the vote in America? Will women ever go
into politics?”