She remained for a moment, stroking my brow, until eventually I closed my eyes. I was amazed how Flossie never seemed to worry for herself, only others. Eventually she sighed and I heard her soft steps moving away. She was likely going to check on Cora yet again.
Just rest. I knew I should be grateful; at the very least, I hadn’t been separated from Cora and Flossie. I loved them. I cared for them more than I had ever cared for myself.
But there are those who say that three is an unlucky number, and unluckier still when it comes to groups of young girls. Triangles make for poor allegiances, people will say. After all, a triangle—what is that?
* * *
—
The blade of a knife, coming to a point.
2
I found out later that Cora had been reprimanded for dancing with some men while turning others away. Evidently it was not her place to discriminate.
How foolish we were! The Barbary Coast was teeming with houses hung with red signs—the signal that “good-time gals” would offer a weary sailor or lucky gambler a warm welcome. Tackett did not hang a red sign on the door, but, truth be told, he did not have to. Everyone knew the girls who lived in his boardinghouse also worked in his dancehall, performing the old can-can or dancing the Bunny Hug with sweaty patrons who slipped Tackett some coin. It was a short walk from the dancehall to our boardinghouse, and Tackett’s greed knew no bounds.
We vowed to one another that our stay was temporary, a stepping-stone to something better. Flossie hid her despair, but when it came to Cora, I never saw a girl more like a cat in a burlap sack: even when she was able to keep her smooth, charming composure on the surface, beneath it she was full of hellfire. We would leave, Cora determined. Flossie insisted we just needed to hit upon the right plan.
Routine soon shaped our days. While the other girls rested and bickered over clothes, I laundered the sheets, scrubbed the floors, peeled potatoes, and boiled cabbage. It was lowly labor, to be sure, but I preferred it to what I imagined their work to be like. I’d watched the occasional man staggering in, clutching a girl under his arm like a crutch, sweating and drooling and roaring with laughter. I’d smelled their booze and indigestion. I’d heard the thumping against the wall, the grunts, even the shrieks and howls and guttural profanities. My blood curdled to imagine what little romance these encounters offered.
We each found a way to forge forward. Flossie plodded along with her usual stalwart pragmatism. Cora discovered that, with her great beauty and sharp tongue, she was able to manipulate most men, and was minorly appeased by the small measure of control this afforded her. She also found distraction in collecting showy, frilly dresses, and flipping through society magazines while dreaming of a life beyond. But as the days went by and the glossy pages turned, I noticed a new and vaguely strained note in Cora’s disposition towards me.
“She thinks you might feel you’re better than us,” Flossie confided to me one day.
My heart seized in protest, as though stabbed to believe Cora felt I was putting on airs.
“I’m the maid,” I pointed out. “I scrub the privy she sits on!”
“Still,” Flossie insisted, nodding, “you’re the lucky one.”
Long ago—as far back as my earliest days in the orphanage—I had cultivated a talent for invisibility, to the point where I could complete my chores in front of the sisters without them remembering I had ever entered the room. (Have you tidied my study, Violet? Oh—I see you already did!) When I ran errands that sent me tripping along the city streets, I noticed that passersby looked right through me; I was a common urchin, an unremarkable piece of urban scenery.
On nights when the girls found themselves obliged to entertain “suitors,” I gave silent thanks for my ability to go unnoticed. I cranked the player piano and watered the whiskey, all without a second glance from the men who leered at the other girls in their loosely laced corsets and rolled stockings.
It wasn’t all gloom. We had the company of some of the other girls—Henrietta, Mary, and Opal—and it is an incredible fact that when a group of women is cast into a situation bounded by less-than-desirable circumstances, they still find ways to laugh together, to find sisterhood and solace in one another. This was true of Tackett’s boardinghouse, especially during the mornings and afternoons—stolen hours, free of male visitors.
The pact we’d made to someday leave the boardinghouse kept hope alive—for a time. But one day turned into seven, one week into twelve months, and twelve months into two and a half years. With little knowledge of the world, there was no way to leave, and nowhere for us to go.
* * *
—
One evening, just after I’d turned sixteen, I found it difficult to keep away from their rowdy, dazzling primping. Despite varying wildly in stature and shape, they treated their dancehall dresses like communal property, and preparations to go out always took on the enthusiastic, bickering tone of a horse-swap. I watched Henrietta wiggle and jiggle her way into a corset.
“Oof! I reckon I better lay off the sausages down at the beer hall! I kin barely squeeze into this infernal contraption!”
I was fond of Henrietta. She was red-cheeked and full of lewd jokes and merriment, with lively blue eyes that twinkled like Father Christmas’s when she laughed. She was bawdy and sensual and was always going on about “getting the pleasure out of life.” When she gave impromptu lectures about getting the pleasure out of life, it always called to mind the way she sucked the marrow out of chicken bones (very thoroughly).
“Lace me up, will ya, Mary?” Henrietta asked.
Mary—in many ways Henrietta’s gaunt-faced opposite—crossed the room and commenced her dutiful best. As Mary’s long, bony fingers were working hard at the laces, a loud fart sounded. Mary tsked and made a face.
“Henrietta!”
“Just makin’ room, dearie!”
Henrietta looked at me and winked.
“When you get to be an ol’ lady like me, you take it where you kin git it.”
At thirty, Henrietta was the oldest “girl” in the house—and the one with the biggest heart. While she bore no love at all for Tackett, she seemed the least sorry for herself. Once, I asked her how she managed to keep a merry face all the time. She shrugged.
Ain’t much else a woman can do, she’d said. The world only needs so many schoolmarms! Not that I woulda had the learnin’ for such anyhow. No . . . there are only two professions on offer, I’m afraid. A wife, or the kinda trouble that drives wives crazy.
Now, as I watched Henrietta struggle into the corset, I let out a giggle. Mary continued tugging away, clearly hoping not to be downwind of another fit of flatulence. Despite her profession, Mary was fond of praying the rosary and had a talent for stern looks. She shot one at me now and I took my cue.