Heart of the West (28 page)

A wavering voice began to sing a lullaby, scraping like a rusty chain. Clementine turned and nearly gasped aloud in shock. The woman had dropped her hands and lifted her head, and her face... her face was horribly disfigured by tattoos, like dark blue teardrops, that ran from her mouth down over her chin.

The woman rocked and sang and wept. Hannah Yorke straightened and stepped forward. "Will you need help?" She gestured toward the cases at Clementine's feet.

Clementine blinked and swallowed hard. "No, no, thank you, I can manage." Oh, God, she thought. Her face. Her poor face.

She had to force herself not to stare at the woman, not to be so unpardonably rude. "I will do a tintype for her to mount on the grave marker," Clementine said to Mrs. Yorke, as she went about setting up her camera and portable dark tent. The woman rocked and sang, rocked and sang.

"And a paper print for her to keep with her always... Oh, whyever has she done that to her face?"

"It was done to her. Indians."

Clementine's head snapped up in renewed shock.

"Comanches stole her off a wagon train when she was just a kid. They sold her to the Mohave, who like to tattoo their girls on the chin and arms by piercing the skin with sharpened bones and rubbing dye into the wounds. They think of them as marks of beauty, I guess." She cocked her head, studying Clementine's upturned face as if undecided whether to say more. While the woman still sang and rocked, lost in a terrible grief, Hannah pitched her smoky voice low. "Before they sold her, the Comanches did what they call 'passing her over the prairie.' I reckon even a lady like you can guess what that means."

Clementine nodded. Oh, yes, she could imagine.

"One of the Mohave braves eventually took her as his squaw. When our soldiers rescued her, they killed him and they killed the baby she'd had by him. Trouble is, by then she loved her man, even if he was an Indian, and her baby too, of course. And after all that, her family wouldn't have her back. Not when they got a look at her face and heard what had been done to her."

"But that was hardly her fault," Clementine protested, her throat tight. Unable to help herself, she stared at the woman, at her ravaged face. Ravaged by torture and grief. They had killed her baby and now she'd lost her little girl. It wasn't right that one woman should have to suffer such misery.

"Finding fault doesn't change what is," Mrs. Yorke said quietly. "Any girl who lies with a savage, willing or not, is going to come away from it branded a whore. There ain't no man going to marry her, and no one's going to hire her to sell hats or wait on restaurant tables. You look at her and tell me how you're going to change what is."

But Clementine no longer looked at the singing, rocking woman with her ruined face and ruined life. She looked at Hannah Yorke.

Color flooded Hannah's lightly painted cheeks, and she shook her head hard. She raised a finger to Clementine's nose as if to scold her. "Oh, no, you don't. Don't you go putting feelings to me that I don't have. I ain't nobody's savior. Saphronie does the swamp work no one else'll do, and I get one dollar out of three for every trip she makes to my back room. 'Cause whatever Saphronie was on the day she left that Indian camp, she's a whore now, plain and simple. So I reckon you know damn well what that makes me."

"I know what you are, Mrs. Yorke," Clementine said.

She held Hannah's angry gaze a moment longer, then lowered her head and began to peel off her soft ecru kid gloves. A lady's gloves that hid the scars made by her father's cane. He had beaten her for looking at souvenir cards. He would certainly think her beyond all redemption now if he found her in a house of sin, speaking to a fallen woman about such things as back rooms, which she wasn't even supposed to know existed.

Her mother had warned her about all the ways a girl could tarnish her virtue: speak to a boy who was a stranger to her family, return his smile, return his kiss... The loss of a girl's virtue was like a tar pit. If she dipped one little toe in the black gooey mess she would be stuck fast forever. Ruined forever.

And so Clementine had always believed that women fell into harlotry because of a wickedness in them that made them enjoy the carnal attentions of men.
"Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked."
But Saphronie with her poor tattooed face wasn't a sinner; she had been sinned against. And what about Hannah Yorke of the red-tasseled shoes? What tar pit had pulled her down to a place where she rented out her back room for the easement of men's lust?

Clementine looked at the two women—Saphronie with her ruined face buried in her hands, Hannah kneeling by the rocker, stroking the other woman's back—and she felt something within her break away and die. Some of her youth and innocence.

Her hands curled into fists, her fingers pressing hard against the scars. She felt outrage at the tragedy she had found in this room. Rage at men like her father who made it possible. Oh, she could just imagine the Reverend Theodore Kennicutt standing high in his pulpit, pointing his righteous finger at Saphronie and calling her a harlot for lying with a savage, condemning her to a life of swamping out saloons and selling her body to strangers. And rage at men like Mr. Rafferty who took their pleasure from women in houses like this one, without sparing a thought for the souls and hearts within the soft feminine flesh they craved.

And she felt a rage at virtuous women like herself, who condemned their own kind for the things that were done to them by men.

"Are you sure you aren't gonna need some help?"

Clementine looked down into Hannah Yorke's face. She saw a wariness there, and the stamp of a sleepless, grieving night.

And she saw another woman grown. A woman who had loved probably, and lost certainly. A woman who had broken the Lord's commandments and the laws of men and now must forever pay for her transgressions. A woman who was ashamed of what she was and proud of what she had become. A woman just like any other woman born of woman. A woman like her.

Saphronie had stopped singing. Once again the only sounds in the room were the tick of the clock and the creak of the rocker.

It wasn't until she was outside on the gallery, preparing to expose the print, that she and Mrs. Yorke spoke again.

She had already sensitized the albumen paper and was now fitting it onto the negative plate in the printing rack, which she had set up on the unshaded end of the porch. "It shouldn't take more than half an hour of this bright sunshine before we have a print," she said. She was kneeling before the rack and had to tilt her head way back to meet Hannah's eyes. She produced a shy smile. "I guess you must find it hard to believe, but I really do know what I'm doing."

Hannah's answering smile was hard and brittle. "Oh, I don't doubt you know what you're doing, honey. You might be an innocent, but you ain't nobody's fool. What I'm wondering is why such a genteel lady as you, such a
smart
little lady, would defy her husband and risk ruining her reputation simply to ease the grieving of a worthless whore."

"You asked me to come."

"You could've spat in my face. You
should
have
spat in my face. Your Gus did, in a manner of speaking."

Clementine glanced up at the window, where ragged snatches of lullaby spoke of a heartbreak too terrible to bear. "That poor woman up there—she isn't only a..." But she couldn't bring herself to speak the vulgar word aloud, even though Hannah Yorke had been tossing it about all afternoon like rice at a wedding. She looked down at the printing rack. She felt the heat of blood rushing to her face. "She is also a mother. No matter in what ways you both have sinned, you are
women.
Like me." No, that had not come out at all right. It made her sound self-righteous, to talk of sinning like that. She looked up to explain herself and saw to her dismay that Hannah Yorke's eyes were awash with tears.

Clementine stumbled to feet. "Mrs. Yorke, please, I didn't mean—"

Hannah backed away, shaking her head so hard the tears splashed onto her cheeks. "Oh, my," she said. She pressed her fist to her mouth and, whirling, crossed the porch so fast her heels rapped like castanets on the wooden boards. But at the door she stopped and her spine stiffened. Turning, she said, "Will you come back into the house when you're done out here? I could serve you some refreshment while that thing..." She gestured helplessly at the printing rack.

Clementine thought of tar pits and the scars on her palms, prices women paid for defying convention, for disobeying the laws of God and of men, who were allowed to make up all the rules. She lifted her chin. "I would love something cool to drink, Mrs. Yorke."

Hannah sliced up two pieces of dried-apple pie. Not that she'd be able to choke down a single bite, her stomach felt so jittery. And her hands shook as she stirred the lemonade she'd made with citric acid crystals.

She entered her front parlor on legs as shaky as a newborn colt's. The room suddenly seemed ugly to her eyes. Too stuffed with things: plaster busts, cushions, gimcracks, and vases. Back before she'd taken over the house, there'd been lewd paintings in here as well, and a slate board with the menu and price list.
Cost you three dollars if you want it straight, cowboy. Five if you want it done the French way.
Hannah thought she could still smell the stale whiskey, the unwashed cuspidors, and the sweat of men in rut. No matter how much dried sweet grass she burned, the parlor of this former parlor house still stank of old sins.

Clementine McQueen sat perched on the end of the gold brocade sofa, her gaze focused on the giant grizzly bear rug spread out before the nickel parlor stove. But as Hannah entered the room, the girl turned her head and greeted her with an uncertain smile. It was a hot day, and the stiff, tight black collar of her dress butted up under her chin, yet she looked as cool as an ice-cream soda. She was so very Bostony, with her perfect manners and quiet courtesy. She'd been born knowing to leave her hat and gloves on when taking tea and never to leave the spoon in the cup, knowing what hour to pay a social call and how to address an invitation in a fine copperplate script. Hannah Yorke hadn't even owned a pair of shoes until she was twelve, let alone a hat and gloves.

Hannah set the tray of lemonade and pie on an oval mahogany tea table. One of the glasses teetered, and the sharp smell of the citric acid tickled her nose. She pressed a finger against her nostrils to stop a sneeze, and snorted instead. "Pardon me," she mumbled, and handed the lemonade to Clementine, along with a napkin and a tight little smile. "It ain't—isn't the real thing, I'm afraid."

Hannah settled down in a chair opposite her, wishing herself in a deep, deep hole somewhere on the other side of the world.

Clementine opened the napkin and laid it across her lap, rubbing her fingers over its pink-flowered border done with tiny, delicate Irish stitches. "This is very pretty. Did you embroider it yourself?"

"Lord, honey." The words gusted out of her, too loud. "I wouldn't know the sharp end of a needle if I sat on it."

Clementine lifted the lemonade to her lips and took a dainty sip. "Mrs. Yorke..."

Hannah leaned over and waved a hand through the air, nearly knocking over her own glass. "You might as well call me Hannah. The Mrs. business is a lie. Oh, I came close to it once, but someone forgot to remind me to keep my drawers buttoned until the ring was on my finger." She forced a laugh because it was such a tired old story—every whore had a similar one. Hers just happened to be true.

Clementine was staring at her now in that intense way she had that made Hannah want to wriggle like a cutworm. "I have a question I would like to put to you," the girl said in her very proper diction, which had Hannah despising the Kentucky twang in her own voice. "I don't mean to offer you insult with the indelicacy of it, but I..." She faltered. She ran a finger beneath the stiffened velvet edging of her high collar. A telltale blush stained her cheeks.

In the world where Mrs. Gus McQueen dwelled, women of breeding said "limbs" instead of "legs," even when talking about a piano. In that world women bathed in their shifts and made love wearing nine yards of flannel to a husband in a union suit. And in such a world there were no rules of etiquette for how to make polite conversation with a saloonkeeper and retired whore.

Hannah decided to take pity on her. "I've never been with Gus," she said. At the girl's look of utter shock, she let out another hard laugh. "I guess that wasn't your question."

Clementine slowly shook her head, her eyes wide. "I'm glad that you and Gus never..." A tide of color now flooded her cheeks. She dropped her gaze to her lap. "Mrs. Yorke—Hannah..."

"You want to know how a sweet little gal like me got into such a business?"

"Oh, no, that wasn't what I... But I must confess I have wondered..." Hannah watched with amusement as the girl's perfect manners warred with her all-too-human curiosity.

"Listen, it wasn't any grand tragedy like what happened to Saphronie. I just listened to too many sweet-talking men. So what is it you want to ask me, Mrs. McQueen? You'll find we drink our liquor straight out here in the RainDance country, and we do our talking straight as well."

The girl lifted her chin and met Hannah's gaze squarely. "How does a woman know if she is with child?"

Hannah felt a stab of envy so acute it was an actual pain just below her heart. It left her breathless, and she thought she could actually feel all the blood drain from her face. A baby. This girl who had everything, who'd been born having everything, was now going to have a baby.

Clementine set down her lemonade and started to stand up. "I know, of course, how improper it was of me to introduce such an indelicate topic into the conversation, but you did invite me to speak frankly. I only thought that perhaps you might have had some experience with the condition—"

"Lord, honey, we weren't exactly having a delicate conversation to begin with." Hannah hurried over to the sofa. She seized the girl's hands, pulling her back down. She looked at their entwined fingers. Hers soft and white because she was careful to keep them that way, Clementine's covered with expensive ecru kid. She raised her head and met Clementine's gaze and actually managed a smile. "I've had experience with a number of conditions—'experience,' of course, most times being just another word for 'mistake.'"