PROLOGUE
Ghosts.
If you asked me a few months ago, do I believe in ghosts, I would have given one of those pragmatic, empirical answers that most people provide when pressed. I might not have said no, perhaps, but neither would I have said yes.
All these new doctors—the ones who specialize in the psyche and who administer to the mind—insist there can be no such thing; they are figments of an overactive imagination. After all, women see them three times more often than men do. Proof that so-called “ghosts” are nothing more than flights of fancy—because women are hysterics, of course.
Spiritualists say differently. And while I’m not a worldly girl by any means, I’ve heard stories about the séances that have grown so popular among the fashionable set. In velvet-curtained parlors all over the city, newfangled electric lights are snapped off, candles are lit, and men and women sit around a table, begging the spirits to knock once for “yes,” and twice for “no.” It is interesting to note, in most of these cases, that the spirits are more communicative when a bit of coin changes hands.
At St. Hilda’s Home for Girls, they taught us about the Holy Ghost, but nothing about the spectral kind. I remember, though, once asking Sister Maggie if she believed in ghosts—if she believed they could be real. I can’t recall exactly why I was asking. Perhaps, as an orphan, I hoped to someday communicate with the parents I’d known too briefly. Or perhaps I hoped there might be something other than myself to blame for the episodes of misbehavior I got up to.
Sister Maggie didn’t chastise me for asking such a blasphemous question—others might have given me lashes—nor did she insist that the existence of ghosts was impossible. Instead, she simply said: There are those who believe spirits return to the earth because they cannot rest; they have not finished with their earthly business. Others will tell you that a ghost is a living mind acting out its troubles. Either way, Violet, can’t we find it within ourselves to pity the haunted?
Years later, I’ve come to admire the ambiguity of her reply. Spirits that cannot rest. A living mind acting out its troubles. Sister Maggie didn’t see the need to pick one, because one doesn’t rule the other out. I’ve come to understand that “ambiguity” can likewise describe a simple sentence pared down to its smaller parts, when you can’t decide which is the adjective that ought to come first and which is the defining noun. For instance: A murderous accident. An accidental murder.
Come to think, if you asked me a few months ago if I believed in ghosts, I would have more likely said no than yes. I’m fairly certain of it.
I was not haunted then.
1
Before the great earthquake of 1906, I was not haunted, but it would be inaccurate to say my mind was entirely at peace.
From the time I was a small child, I’d suffered from what the sisters called “spells”—strange, trancelike episodes of which I have no memory. I’d be found, say, with a broken toy but no understanding of how I’d broken it. I was raised to see these spells as an undesirable flaw in my person—my curse, really.
In fact, I have always had reason to believe that my spells had something to do with my winding up in an orphanage. Most of the other girls had arrived at St. Hilda’s Home for Girls by the traditional route: that is, as infants, by way of a basket left outside the main gate. But I was seven when I was brought to St. Hilda’s. I still have memories of a house. Richly colored rugs. A chest full of toys. A fireplace and a room filled with books. I must have been around six when my mother and father died. I suffered a terrible spell around the same time and, in consequence, did not learn the particulars. The most I have been told since is that they took sick and that there was simply nothing for it.
An aunt with three children of her own took me in for a short time, but I’m told that when my spells began to take the form of hysterical, violent crying, her nerves were stretched to the limit. My aunt dealt with me as best she could, mostly by putting a drop or two of laudanum in a glass of milk and ordering me to drink it down.
She kept me in her care for just shy of a year, at which point she had a change of heart about her duty—or so I assume, because she brought me to St. Hilda’s and left me, with stunning detachment, in the care of the nuns who greeted us at the gate. I was confused when we first arrived. My aunt bade me stand a few paces behind her and whispered something to them I couldn’t hear, until her voice rose a little as she went on.
Surely you understand. I can’t have that kind of wickedness in my house. She’s beyond my help!
The nuns bobbed their heads. I was admitted without further interrogation. I never saw my aunt again. It was then that I realized most of life is divided up into a series of “befores” and “afters”:
Before my mother and father died, and after.
Before my aunt brought me to the orphanage, and after.
Before I made friends with Cora and Flossie, and after.
Before the orphanage caught fire and burned to the ground, and after.
* * *
—
Each event marked a sea change and divided my life with a sense of permanence. There was no going back, no reconciling the dichotomy.
* * *
—
Even now, this feels true, for most San Franciscans will tell you there are two cities: the one that existed before the earthquake, and the one that was rebuilt after.
What the ’quake itself did not topple in 1906, the fires razed. Afterwards, the world was hungry for modernization, and eventually, the “new” San Francisco boasted wide streets thronged with automobiles and tourists. The steel-blue waters of the Bay began to buzz with pleasure cruises. Modern department stores sprang up in Union Square, their shiny display windows winking in the sun.
But the San Francisco that existed before the earthquake was a piece of the Old West, a place that had been slapped together hastily to cater to the needs of the ’49ers.
Nowhere was this truer than in the infamous neighborhood nicknamed the “Barbary Coast,” where the sidewalks stank of piss and ale. Even as civilization tried to nudge its way in, the neighborhood still hosted the occasional barbaric shoot-out. Horses nickered impatiently, tied up outside the area’s many saloons. Ragtime and sawdust spilled out of every open doorway. The streets were narrow alleyways frequented by sailors and prostitutes. It was a place where a man might still be “shanghai’ed”—kidnapped after falling into a whiskey-induced stupor, only to wake up aboard a ship bound for the Orient and forced into work. Even the fog that rolled into the city during the late afternoons moved as though on the prowl.
During our days at the orphanage, Cora, Flossie, and I had only glimpsed the streets of the Barbary Coast a handful of times. I suppose in our initial impressions we were rather blind to the neighborhood’s more unsavory characteristics. We did not notice the stench; we did not observe the hollow, opium-addled gazes of the men and women who walked the streets. Instead, to us, it felt as though the rebellious spirit of the Wild West was still alive, and to our young, foolish eyes, the Barbary Coast appeared an exciting, merry place.