We observed what naïve girls do: Cora took special note of the colorful, flashy dresses worn by the dancehall girls. Flossie noticed that these girls often jingled with coins. As for me, I noted their laughter, which seemed loud and constant. Surely, people who laughed like that were having a gay time.
When we run away, Cora mused. That’s where we’ll go. We’ll wear bright dresses and dance, and no one will order us about, ever again.
Cora hated life at the orphanage. Like all wrongfully imprisoned heroes, she insisted her presence there was a mistake: she ought have been born to royalty, or, at the very least, a great robber baron. Of course, the way most people reacted to Cora’s scarlet hair and striking beauty did not help to disabuse her of this notion. She took to flouting the sisters’ rules and obsessively plotting her escape. As Flossie and I were her closest friends, she planned for all three of us to run away together.
Cora was full of ambitious dreams, but if there was anyone who might actually see one of Cora’s plans to fruition, it was Flossie; she had a knack for shrewd planning. Flossie was slim, narrow-hipped, and as straight as an arrow. She had lank blonde hair the color of pale straw, a long neck, and very large, very round blue eyes that seemed to take you in one feature at a time, as a bird might. Whenever her eyes lit up in that birdlike way, you could be sure she was making careful calculations.
But, as it turned out, it didn’t take much plotting for us to run away. When St. Hilda’s mysteriously caught fire, we were presented with a natural opportunity. I can still recall those first days roaming the streets of the Barbary Coast; it was then that we first glimpsed the neighborhood’s rougher side. It was like seeing behind the curtain at a magic show. The atmosphere of merriment that had so charmed us before was laced with dark frenzy, and sometime between night and morning the sounds of laughter too often turned to the screams of violent argument. I found myself newly intimidated. Flossie appeared unsurprised but leery. Only Cora remained doggedly optimistic.
“It’s only because we’re on the streets all night,” she insisted. “I’m sure anywhere you go, four o’clock in the morning isn’t bound to be very pretty.”
When we arrived, we hardly knew what to do, but the cheerful plinkety-plonk of the player pianos kept our steps light even as our stomachs growled, and kept us hoping that the answer would come. Later, of course, the irony of this dawned on me—we’d taken heart from music produced by mechanisms with no heart at all. We couldn’t have guessed then, but this was symbolic of the Barbary Coast: merry on the surface, but cold and mercenary underneath.
By then we’d managed to piece together what had happened to our former home. A Terrible Act of Arson, the newspapers all read. St. Hilda’s had been utterly reduced to cinders. A handful of girls had died of smoke inhalation, as had one of the sisters, Sister Edwina. The remainder of the orphanage’s former occupants were scattered upon the winds of charity that carried them in haphazard manner to five other similar establishments—one as far away as Oregon. If we had lingered instead of running away, we surely would have been separated. This would have proved unbearable: the three of us were family, tied together by a bond even stronger than blood.
* * *
—
We wandered aimlessly for a few days, until Flossie set her sharp mind to ensuring our survival. She procured a name—Mr. Horace Tackett—and the address of the boardinghouse he ran.
“I hear not only will he take us in, he’ll help us find employment,” Flossie said. “He owns the dancehall down the lane.”
Cora mulled this over, brightening. I could see she was already imagining herself wearing a colorful dress.
“But what will I do?” I asked.
Cora and Flossie were sixteen then, but I was not quite fourteen and scrawny, with the figure of a boy. I was a mousy little sister with few defining features other than my atypical passion for books, which I very much doubted would help me pass for a dancing girl.
“Hmm.” As Flossie looked me over, it was plain she was wondering the same thing. “I’ll think of something,” she promised.
After a particularly uncomfortable night sleeping in an alley, we agreed to give Tackett’s a try. We’d long ago divided ourselves according to our specialties. It was Flossie’s job to do the negotiating. It was Cora’s job to be witty and fetching. And it was my job to be invisible—or as close to it as I could manage. It was entirely likely that Tackett might want to turn me away, but Flossie set her mind to convincing him I’d make a suitable—and cheap—scullery maid.
When we arrived on his doorstep, Tackett asked our ages, and did not seem to notice nor care that we carried on our persons the scent of burned char. Likewise, he was either unaware or unconcerned with the fact that a girls’ home some small distance away on the other side of town had recently burned to the ground. He clearly did not consider it his duty to bring wayward orphans to the attention of authorities.
I snuck looks at Tackett while Flossie employed her most persuasive appeals. He possessed a clashing air of old age and wiry youth. His face was angular and leathery, like a pirate’s, but his body was surprisingly robust. I also noticed that his hair—presumably gray—had been dyed with so much black, it took on a bluish tint.
As fortune would have it, Tackett was down a couple of girls at the dancehall, and eager to replenish this deficit sooner rather than later. Convincing Tackett that my presence was somehow necessary in the whole bargain was trickier—but Flossie, soft-spoken genius that she was, managed to win him round, and Tackett began to approve of the idea of a servant that he didn’t have to pay outright.
“You could tell folks that she’s your ward,” Flossie persuaded him. “After all, if you did have a ward, it would be only natural for her to earn her keep.”
Soon enough, Tackett saw the beauty of it all—and, more importantly, the economy. I would be cook and maid. Blanche, the girl who’d had the longest tenure at the boardinghouse and who fancied herself Tackett’s second-in-command, handed me a bedroll and showed me to a slightly sooty alcove in the kitchen where I was to sleep. Being so near the oven fire, it was, at least, quite warm.
Cora and Flossie were to have a small bedroom each. While my work was to begin immediately, Tackett generously insisted that Cora and Flossie remain idle for the week, taking some time to get to know the other girls, and learn the can-can the girls sometimes danced when they were not being ferried about the dance floor by a customer. He ordered Blanche to help them rustle up some suitable dresses.
* * *
—
The week passed quickly. My first memories of the boardinghouse are spotty, impressionistic; I was utterly overwhelmed by this sudden new life. I attempted to survey my surroundings, but it was extremely dim inside the house; I found out later this was because Tackett had a miserly streak, and insisted the gas jets be kept turned down low. And while the house itself was quite large, the rooms were small and cramped, as if they’d been squeezed together by some impulsive, slapdash architect. The floors creaked; the stairs were rickety. The privy, I learned, was out back, through a tiny yard, and put up a horrible smell.