Karen Memory

Chapter Five

We did plan to open for supper, and judging by the number of men halooing in the third-floor windows starting around sundown, such notoriety around town as might be attending Peter Bantle’s early-morning visit and his new political ambitions weren’t likely to do our trade any harm. I went up to the dressing room and got kitted, all crinolines and kilted skirts and my tits about falling out the top of my daffodil taffeta dress whenever I grabbed a breath. Bea helped me with the beauty patch and did my eyes and lips. She pulled Mr. Marcel’s iron from its heater by the fire and did my hair up with bright paste combs. I did her paint for her: she wears different colors. I’m hopeless with her hair, though, so Miss Francina came over to help.

We all three made sure we was supplied with sheepskins. Syphilis is a bad way to go. Miss Lizzie’s machine can handle more immediate problems, though that ain’t a concern for Miss Francina — but it hurts like hell I hear and there’s always the risk of bleeding out.

And I don’t want no john’s baby saddling me. I’m saving up. Someday I’ll own a stable and be a respectable businesswoman. You’ll see. The girls who stay in the trade, more often than not they keep sliding down the ladder, getting paid less and less for worse and worse work until eventually they can’t save and they can’t make a future. Or some of ’em drink too much, which Madame don’t allow. That don’t end well. Not ever.

I’m not sure why, but that silver cartwheel Marshal Reeves gave me, I tucked it inside my shoe and buttoned up over it. I could feel it there, but the pressure weren’t bad; it just sat against my ankle over the stocking and was comforting, like a squeezed hand. As I was helping Bea with her buttons, the other girls flocked and fluttered in and out. Some dressed faster; some took longer. Pollywog took the longest of anybody, and you could never tell why. She did her long hair in straight blond braids like a German girl and wore what came the closest a grown woman’s dresses could come to an eyelet pinafore.

Effie must of gotten ready on the usual schedule, because I didn’t see her until she ducked into the room already laced into royal-blue satin with a rosette over the bumroll so big I couldn’t imagine how she sat. She gave me a squeeze across the shoulders, careful of her powder, and handed me a note. It was from Miss Bethel, saying as how she’d mentioned to Madam Damnable what had happened to Francina and me and Madam Damnable has sent a card and a cake on our behalf to the lodging house where Marshal Reeves was staying, along with an invitation to dine.

He won’t accept, I thought, but it was a pretty gesture. And never mind how Madame knowed where he was staying. What would of been surprising was if Madame didn’t know or have ways of finding out.

“Madame wants to talk with you,” Effie said. “Before you go down to the parlor.”

She must of seen my eyes get big, because she patted me on the shoulder. “She’s in with the colored girls. They got moved into the Butterfly Room while you was out.”

Bea gave her an eyebrow over “the colored girls.” Effie colored her own self — more of a sunburn red than her usual peaches and cream and freckles — and grimaced an apology. “Anyway, she’s waiting on you.”

I couldn’t of jumped faster if I’d been an electrocuted frog. Bea caught me, wiped a lip-rouge smudge off my tooth, and then nodded as I passed inspection. She patted me on the bumroll and stood aside as I swished from the room in a profusion of petticoats.

The Butterfly Room was on the fourth story, same as the dressing room, and at the back of the building. It was across the hall to Crispin’s room, too, which was a good idea if there was to be any trouble. Either from inside the room or from people come to look for them as we was sheltering.

I drew up outside it and stood, catching my breath and dignifying myself. Madame’s hallways were full of mirrors, surprising no one, and I glanced into the one by the door for a last spot check. Then I drew up my shoulders and stepped inside.

Madame was seated on the red-and-orange butterfly-patterned divan off to my left, the most whorehouse thing in her whole place. Her hands rested on the handle of her cane, as if she’d just sat down or was about to heave herself to her feet. Her hair was piled on her head and Marcel curled into a fortress pinned down under a pearl cannonade. She didn’t turn to look at me, just said, “Come in, Karen.”

The room didn’t reek of blood or sickness or rot, more’s the mercy, or even of the chamber pot. Given some sickrooms I’ve been in, I was that relieved. There were two empty bowls and two mugs on the sideboard on a tray — bean soup, by the flecks of bacon stuck to the indigo willow ware. Mostly the air smelled like strong Indian tea.

Merry Lee lay on the left side of the big brass bed, but she was on her back, propped up, and her eyes were open. I wondered if the pillow pushing against her bandage made it hurt worse or less, like when you push a cloth against a cut to soothe the pain. She looked even thinner awake, but other than that … bigger, somehow. Even though she was greenish with loss of blood.

She had a face shaped like an oval shell cameo and a barely there button nose, and her straight black hair — real black, not rust-black like what was left of Crispin’s — was cropped off shorter than a boy’s, like that of a woman who’s had scarlet fever. I didn’t think they’d cut it because she was shot, though, since I recollected it had been like that when she came in last night. It looked fetching, wisps framing her gamine eyes. It was probably practical for running across rooftops, but I had to pull my fingertips away from my own hair, never cut, and still a shudder.

“Gamine.” That’s another one of Bea’s words. It means waiflike, only more so and in French. Which I reckon makes it double.

Merry Lee’s right hand had reached out and it clutched Priya’s left. I was that shocked. I would never have expected the legendary Merry Lee to show human need to anyone, which just goes to show how young I was then. Priya stood up beside the bed, though somebody had thought to bring her in a straight-backed chair with an upholstered seat. She looked to me like a spoon bent back and forth between your fingers until the bowl’s ready to snap off the handle. Work hardened, but brittle.

She’d bathed and changed, but she weren’t wearing a dress. She’d on braces and men’s tweed trousers too big and too long for her, though not big and long enough to be Crispin’s. Left behind by a trick, no doubt. The cuffs was rolled up to show knit socks and carpet slippers, and she wore a white button shirt under a cardigan that probably was Crispin’s, because it fit her like a smoking jacket. And my heart skipped a beat to look at her.

I was staring. She stared back, challenging — angry — and I looked down. Blast.

“I don’t blame you.” My voice, and my lips were moving, which meant it must of been my words, but I didn’t remember deciding on ’em.

“I’m sorry?” She didn’t sound any less cultivated and forbidding than the night before.

I picked my chin up again — I could hear Miss Bethel lecturing in the back of my head — and met her gaze. “For not wanting to wear a dress. I don’t blame you.”

I could feel Madame’s bright gaze moving between us. I didn’t know if I should say more, or if it meant I had already said too much. I bit my lip and hesitated.

The corner of her mouth twitched. She wouldn’t care if I did. “Madame says one of Bantle’s men tried to snatch you away today, Miss Memery.”

My mouth stuck half-open, slack as a child’s. I hadn’t been about to tell her. I guess maybe I had thought I was protecting her, that she didn’t need to know. That she would somehow not know that everybody here was taking a risk protecting her.

“I told Madame that I’ll move on,” she said.

“No!” It left my mouth before I had a chance to stop it, before I had a chance to realize that maybe Madame had told Priya she had to move on. That this was Madame’s house and I had no say here and if I wanted to defy her it meant I wanted to leave. And if I wanted to leave I wasn’t going to find another place as comfortable. I could work in a factory or go blind doing real needlework … or work in a house that wasn’t Madame Damnable’s and didn’t take care of the girls the same way.

“Karen?” Madame asked, with that look on her face that meant she was weighing up my crimes and deciding what she was going to do about the tally.

“I’m sorry, Madame,” I answered. “If you think Priya should go—”

She snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the one who got involved in a fucking knife fight this afternoon, child. You get to have an opinion on whether you’re continuing to risk your life on this matter.”

Risk my life.

I hadn’t actually thought of it. Effie should be here, too — no, Effie had come with the note. She’d already given her verdict, then. And I thought I could tell from the pinch at the corners of Priya’s eyes what it was. She and Madame were waiting on my feelings.

So Effie had said she thought they ought to stay. And it wasn’t as if Merry Lee could travel. And I knowed weren’t none of us giving either girl back to Peter Bantle, that day or evermore.

Unless Madame was asking our opinions and making her own decision when it was all in. Which meant I didn’t know what Effie had said and maybe never would. Which, to be honest, would be what I expected of Madame. Just as it was only fair for her to make me say whatever it was that I intended to say in front of Priya. I chewed up, for a moment, how unfair it was, too — that Priya’s life could be decided by people she’d only just met. But that was everybody’s lot, I supposed. Or at least every woman’s.

Priya in her trousers and braces seemed to have forgotten she wasn’t supposed to look me in the eye. She stared right at me, and I didn’t want to be the sort who would inflict what Miss Bethel would call The Agony of Expectation on anybody, much less somebody as brave and bright and wonderful as Priya. But I weren’t thinking too fast, somehow. And I was talking even slower. And Priya’s fierce expression and the weight of her looking at me weren’t making it any easy to twist my mind around to words.

Finally I found my tongue. “Where would I be if you hadn’t decided I could stay, Madame? Licking radium brushes in the clock factory until my jaw rotted off? Of course I want her here.”

Madame didn’t look up from her knees, but I caught the wrinkle of her smile.

Madame heaved a big breath and said, “Well. I guess that settles it. Priya, Karen here will take you down to meet Miss Francina. She’ll find you a room, and if you like you can start work tomorrow. I take thirty percent for the house and thirty percent pays for board. The other forty percent is yours to keep or spend as you see fit, though I fucking recommend you save some of it. The constables get served on the dead, I’m afraid, but we draw up a roster of who waits on ’em by turns and if they want to choose outside of it, they pay. The other ladies will help you find clothes until you can buy some of your own.” She did look up, then, and weighed Priya with a glance that like swept over her. “Beatrice’s dresses will be a little short, but that’s no burden to a tart, and they’ll fit until you start to fill out a little—”

“I won’t whore,” said Priya, as if every word had hooks on it. “And I won’t wear skirts.”

Madame stopped. She said, “Everyone in this house works. There ain’t nothing wrong with honest whoring, child.”

“I don’t like it.”

There wasn’t much either of us could say to that. I liked it better than going blind in a factory sewing shirtwaists or whatnot. But we ain’t all put together the same, and I suppose God made us different for a reason.

Merry, who had been watching with that fuzzed-over expression people get when they’re full up on laudanum, roused herself to say, “We’ll find you work, Priyadarshini, if you want work.”

Priya smiled sideways at her, then took a big breath and said to Madame, “I can do other things. I can cook, and tend hens, and make a bed. I can’t sew fancy, but I can mend. I can garden. I’m a good weaver and can do sums. And I speak Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, and Chinese. Northern and Southern.”

Madame cocked her head to one side and said, “Cao ni laomu de lanbi!” I could tell whatever she said, it weren’t no nice thing.

Priya’s lips twitched. In a completely decorous tone, she answered, “Ni ma shi guisunzi, ni ba dai lü maozi!”

Madame stared at Priya for a long moment, then grinned. She rocked back and forth to start heaving to her feet. I itched to give her my hands, but I knowed she wanted to do it on her own, so I grabbed my wrist behind my back and stood tiptoe, looking at Priya as the safer option. Safer than what?

Well, it was where my eyes wanted to rest anyway.

Standing at last, Madame said, “You’ll ruin your hands scouring pots, girl.”

Priya shrugged. “No more than I would if I were married.”

Madame made a little moue with her lips and nodded kind of sidewise, conceding. “We’ll see. There’s certainly enough cleaning to do, and I imagine Connie needs the help. You’ll get wages as a domestic, though. You understand that.”

“Room and board, too?” Merry asked, eyes bright.

“And room and board,” Madame agreed, a wry smile twisting her mouth.

Priya nodded. She crossed the room to me in quick, small steps, then stopped. She turned back toward Madame and wrung her hands in the knit of her giant cardigan. “Madame—”

Her voice broke in a way I didn’t understand. Hadn’t Madame just given her permission to stay? Even if she didn’t want to take in alterations? Me, I’d rather whore than scrub floors; it’s easier work and the money’s better. But I could see how after Bantle you might not want any man’s rooster making up to your birdie, so to speak. What more could she be wanting?

“Speak up, child,” Madame said. Not cruelly, she continued, “I can’t fucking abide fucking mealymouthed women.”

Priya’s back straightened. I laid a hand on her elbow, realizing too late that I should of asked her first, but she seemed to stand up straighter at the touch, so that was all right, probably. Her throat rippled with a swallow. Nobody was ever braver than Priya.

“I have a sister,” she said. “I don’t know if she’s still with Bantle, or if he sold her on. She’s two years younger. Her name is Aashini.”

That wrinkle of a smile on Madame turned into the furrow of a frown. She said, “I’m sorry.”

“I want to get her out.”

“I’m sure you do,” said Madame. She glanced at Merry. “But there’s not much I can do about it, child. None of those cribhouse pimps would sell her to me, not with the way things now stand between us. And it’s one thing to shelter an escaped whore. It’s another to go steal one.” She paused, brows beetling. “Do you even know if she’s alive?”

Priya looked at her feet.

Madame nodded. It wasn’t a kind nod, but it weren’t cruel nor satisfied, neither. It was a tired, just-what-you’d-expect-then nod. Her eyes didn’t look as bright as I was used to. “Well then,” she said. “I’ll take on Peter Bantle if he comes to my house, never fear. But going after him in his den might stretch my resources, young lady. And without more to go on … Still. Maybe we can find out something about young … Aashini. But I wouldn’t hold my breath about it, and doing more may take money.”

Money Priya wasn’t going to earn as a domestic. That much went without saying.

“I understand,” Priya said.

I knowed from the set of Madame’s jaw that she was considering ordering Priya not to go looking on her own, neither — and realizing that it would be useless. My da would of said that a good master keeps his authority in part by not asking for the impossible except when he really has to. If he does that, then his horse won’t realize it’s impossible when he asks for it.

“Go on then,” Madame said. “Get on with you.”

Priya gave a glance to Merry Lee. Merry Lee nodded wearily. “Go rest,” she said in a cracked voice. “I think you’ll know where to find me.”

It’s God’s truth that she didn’t look like she was getting far, anyway.

I led Priya out the door, shutting it carefully, and showed her where the back stair was. What would of been the servants’ stair in most houses, but we used it for getting around without the tricks getting in our way, when the house was working. We rattled down. I should of been eager to get to the parlor before the other girls got all the sober men, and the ones with good breath — there’s nothing duller than trying to charm up a snake that won’t rise due to whiskey. I like to do my work and get it over with. But Priya seemed to move in a warm glow of comfort, like a good fire on a cold day, and walking along beside her made my heart lift.

We hadn’t made the second landing when I thought of something. And as I tend to, I said what I thought before I thought about it enough. If you know what I mean. “A lot of men come in here,” I said with a rush. “Most of ’em won’t be the same ones that go to the cribs. At least not regular. But one of ’em might … know your sister. Or at least have heard of her.”

Men brag, I didn’t explain. Didn’t need to, by the spark of understanding on Priya’s face when I turned to look at her.

“Madame said you couldn’t help me.”

“Madame said she couldn’t help you.” I knowed it was a fine distinction, but wasn’t that what the whole profession of lawyers made their living off? “She didn’t say nothing about me. Besides, it’s just listening. There’s no harm in it.”

Listening and maybe asking a question or two. But wasn’t that part of a whore’s job? Being the sort of ear that lonely men could turn to?

I wondered who lonely women paid to listen. As with so much, it seemed as if the world had a solution for the one but not the other.

Priya had stopped walking down the stair, so I stopped, too. A step lower, so our heads was level. She stared at me suspiciously.

“What do you want?”

“I want to help.” Which was the truth. I wanted to kiss her, too, and slide my hand over the warm skin under that white shirt. But that was probably a conversation for another day. Maybe a day after I had a better idea how Priya might feel about French favors and the rites of Sappho.

She stared, still. I shrugged and went back to descending. “You’ll like the bedrooms,” I said.