Sex Wars (30 page)

Lib ran upstairs to her bedroom, with Susan on her heels. Elizabeth paused to say to Theo, “You’re behaving like an idiot! Some supporter of woman’s rights you are.” Then more slowly she climbed the steps, holding on to the banister, and followed them into Lib’s bedroom. She dropped into the overstuffed chair by the window, sighing. She did not enjoy domestic tantrums. She was exhausted. Giving over the
Revolution
had depressed her, even though the money drain had kept her awake nights for the last few months. Susan was locking the door—a response Elizabeth thought overdramatic. Susan had never been married and thus had no idea what storms could blow up between a husband and wife and how noisy it could get.

She changed her mind when Theo began banging on the door screaming to be let in. Lib was shouting at him and he was shouting back. The door rattled at his thumping but did not give way, although he was threatening to break it down.

Susan stood just inside the door. “I will not turn this key. You’re out of control. Get hold of yourself!”

“No woman can come between me and my wife.”

“You’ll get at Lib only through my dead body,” Susan said grimly, leaning against the shaking door.

Elizabeth was on her feet now. “Theodore Tilton, you must calm down. Your wife has committed no act you did not carry out before her. Are you drunk or crazy?”

A long silence followed. Theo stopped banging on the door. Finally they heard his footsteps receding. Probably he would return to Laura to spend the night.

“Come,” Susan said. “We must barricade the door lest he come back and break it open.”

Elizabeth joined them in pushing the bed against the door. Exhausted, all three of them climbed into the bed half undressed and put out the light. Lib had stopped crying but was overwrought and snuggled against Susan, holding her thin body as if to a spar after an ocean wreck. Lib began to talk about how she had become involved with Henry Ward
Beecher. Elizabeth feigned sleep, knowing that Lib would never confide in her as she did in Susan. The relationship had begun when Beecher started bringing her his sermons and his writing to critique, praising her intelligence and insight, as Theo never did. Henry and she had become closer and closer. His wife was a cold, materialistic and distant woman who could not give him the kind of attentive love the great man needed. They had become soul mates.

She had never intended their relationship to go beyond the platonic. But Theo was gone so often giving lectures, attending conferences, or simply gallivanting off to his other women that she was deeply lonely and often depressed. Theo had never, she thought, been faithful, although she had been too naïve in the first decade of her marriage to guess. She genuinely liked Laura Bullard, considering her a friend. Laura had explained that she had no desire for a husband. A passionate friendship was just what she wanted, nothing more. She wished only to work with Theo and sleep with him sometimes and exchange ideas. She had no intention of threatening their marriage, she said, and Lib believed her. Laura was wealthy and did not want to lose her independence to any man. A husband would be an impediment.

“Did Beecher force himself upon you?” Susan asked.

“Oh, no! Never. He was the gentlest lover a woman could ever have. I experienced such joy with him. He made me feel cherished, Susan.”

Exhausted as she was, Elizabeth was too interested to doze off. All this business of free love was exciting in its way. Why shouldn’t women too have adventures? She had not been tempted, because her Henry had been a good lover, however lacking as a husband. She had been deeply and passionately in love with him for a long time. She had changed, he had changed, and all the childbearing and -rearing had dimmed her sexual nature; but when she wanted to be embraced, it had been Henry she desired. Other men might flirt with her and she with them. She had found the great Negro abolitionist Frederick Douglass attractive, but affairs took time she never had. She preferred to put her energy into her writing, her speaking, her political work, her children, her friends. She had a brief moment of wondering if men named Henry were better lovers than others, since she suspected from Lib’s roundabout descriptions that she experienced pleasure with Henry and none with Theo. She could hear Theo moving about downstairs. So he had not gone to Laura. The morning, if they ever got through this night, would be interesting, if likely to prove melodramatic.

“So when you confessed to Theo, he stormed out of the house.”

“He was gone for three days. I was crazy with worrying. Then he returned and he wasn’t angry. He said we’d have a better, more honest marriage with both of us enjoying our passionate affinities. That’s what he said.”

“Did you tell Beecher that Theo knew about the affair?” Susan asked.

Lib moaned. “I meant to. Theo made me promise to tell. Somehow I never could. Things seemed to be going along so well I didn’t want to upset Henry.”

“Then you told Theo you were with child.”

“He figured it out. I never told him.”

Elizabeth sighed. What a mess. No wonder she’d never had the energy for such complications, and no wonder Susan hadn’t bothered with the whole untidy business of sexual love. In the morning they would coerce, cajole, embarrass Theo into behaving better toward his wife, if he would listen. She was not convinced he would. This night might have shattered several friendships. Now she regretted they had given over the
Revolution
to Theo and Laura. But who else wanted it? She was fighting on so many fronts she felt overwhelmed. That was why she had let go of the
Revolution,
although they could not get rid of the debts they had incurred. But she felt far less sure of the wisdom of that decision than she had in the so distant morning of what must by now be yesterday.

T
HE FIRST COUPLE
of months with Kezia were bumpy. Freydeh noticed a bad smell in the bedroom, and found that Kezia was hiding bits of food under the bed, where they had attracted mice and soon would bring rats. Kezia cried when brought to task, but she did it again the next week. She would pick up things she found in the street, a lost glove, a piece of half-rotten melon, a pin that had rusted. She had to be taught again
and again to clean herself properly with a basin of water. If not watched, she would soon be dirty again. She seemed afraid of soap and water.

Once Kezia was cleaned up and started school, they learned she could draw. She could see a picture of a racehorse or a tiger and catch the essence in a few lines. They were making several types of condoms and labeling them according to some animal that might inspire the buyer. They had the elephant type (for those massively endowed). Men liked to buy them, even if she suspected that not all of them needed the extra large. They had the tiger—brightly striped. They had the rooster with a little tickler on it. Kezia drew pictures they had printed on the boxes. Madams liked the fancy ones for their clients.

She delivered to the brothels herself, so as not to put Sammy in the way of temptation. That morning she took Annie Wood her supply for the next two weeks. Annie was entertaining another woman in the conservatory, a room Freydeh loved, where they were drinking coffee. The other woman was as dark as Annie was fair, at least in hair color—black hair like Kezia’s, but her eyes were blue and her complexion ivory. She was beautiful, not dressed like a whore but severely, in black silk with a white rose—a real rose, not a cloth rose—at her throat. They had been talking about railroads when the colored servant led Freydeh between the potted palms to the table. Freydeh was a little nervous as this was obviously a Yankee lady, whatever she was doing in a brothel, although she had a strange feeling she’d seen the woman before.

Annie waved her to a seat. Sometimes Annie treated her as an equal, sometimes as a servant. “This is Freydeh Levin. She manufactures the line of condoms we supply. A businesswoman like us.”

“What do you do?” Freydeh asked the lady. She could be a madam who dressed to distinguish herself from her girls. Freydeh had learned a lot about brothels since she had gone into condoms—and since she had been searching for her sister.

“I’m a stockbroker. Have you heard of me?”

“I’m sorry,” Freydeh said. “How would I have?”

The lady smiled, more amused than annoyed. “The papers got a lot of copy out of my sister and myself.”

“I’m working on my English, but mostly I read German papers.” They had news of things back in Europe, where the remnants of her people were. She had recently sent money urging Sara to take her family and come. She had not heard back yet.

“What made you go into your line of work?” the woman asked.

“It’s a way I can make money as a woman. I figured that out when I worked in a pharmacy. Now I work for myself and my children.”

“How many children do you have?” the lady asked, leaning on her elbow.

“An older boy and a younger girl.”

“It’s the same with me,” the lady said. “An older boy and a younger girl. They’re the reason I work at the trade I’ve chosen. Before that, I was a spirit medium.”

Freydeh wasn’t sure what that was, but she thought spirits were a lot of superstitious nonsense. You lived and then you died, that was the end of it. She didn’t imagine a heaven of clouds and white light. She didn’t imagine being born as a cow or a crow. But she kept her opinions to herself, as she so often had to in a world riddled with imagination and superstition. She was working on Kezia’s weird set of beliefs.

Annie laughed, shaking her curls. “A woman has to have her own money. My business has been good to me. I pay off the men I have to. If they finally close me down, I have enough saved to live on comfortably. Thanks in part to my friend here. If you care to invest any money, she’s the one you want.”

“Here.” The woman handed her a card. Her hands were well kept, manicured, soft, but there was a little scar on the back of her left hand that spoke of days that had not always been so easy. Freydeh’s hands were callused and spotted with burns. “If you want to invest, just come see me.”

Freydeh thanked the woman, peering at the card. Woodhull, Claflin and Company, stockbrokers. Nice, but if she got ahead with money, she would move them to a safer neighborhood. If she had money like Annie and this lady—Woodhull or Claflin?—there were things she’d do, rather than gamble in the stock market. Land. A house. She believed in owning something solid, something you could live in or grow food on, not pieces of paper that could lose their value overnight.

That afternoon, Kezia came home late. Freydeh surveyed her. She had bruises on her face and her arm, a scratch on her cheek. This would have been normal for the girl Freydeh had rescued from the streets, but the new improved Kezia usually had skin clear as good china. Her hair had grown out black and straight and her posture was no longer that of someone expecting to be hit.

“Why did you get into a fight like a common street arab?” Freydeh was not pleased. She stood glaring, arms folded across her bosom.

“They said bad things. Elizaveta and Karla.”

“You have to learn not to take insults to heart.”

“They weren’t talking about me.”

“Who, then?”

“You, Mamaleh.”

“Me? What do they know about me?”

“They said because you make condoms, you’re a whore. So I hit them.”

“I hope you won.” Freydeh sighed. “They’re envious because you have new clothes. You have two dresses and a pinafore and a woolen shawl. That’s enough to fire up the envy of most girls in that school.”

“I know you’re a good woman, Mamaleh, far better than their mothers. I just can’t stand for them to say evil about you.”

“It don’t hurt me, Kezia, my honey. My little piece of heaven.” She knew she was growing attached to the girl. A daughter of her own. “I chose this work because a woman can do it, we can work on our own right here and make a good living. All the women wearing their fingers to the bone making paper or cloth flowers, seamstresses stitching coats, jackets, dresses, pants, knitting socks. They work so hard and they make not enough to live on, hungry all the time and in mended rags. Lots of married couples use them, Kezia, to keep from having what they’d be forced to get rid of, what they can’t afford to feed. How many dead babies have you seen in the alleys?”

“I know, I know. They’re stupid mean girls. They pick on me.”

“Defend yourself when you must, but don’t worry about my good name. The rabbi likes it just fine when I put some money in. He always greets me—not as warmly as a successful businessman, a successful shop owner, but next in line.” With two children to raise, she had begun going to shul now and then. Freethinking was not for kids. They needed rules. And in shul, they met other good Jewish kids. Kezia had been shy and nervous at first, but then she had made friends with a little girl there.

“Where’s Sammy?” Kezia was looking around for her hero. Over the past four months, she had come to admire Sammy.

“Delivering. He’ll be back soon. Go get yourself cleaned up. I want you to draw me a panther.”

When Sammy arrived, he saw the bruise at once. “What happened? Did somebody beat you up?”

Kezia told him. Sammy was scornful but protective. They fought often, screaming at each other over the last chunk of bread or bit of potato.
Now that she was no longer hiding food, Kezia still ate as if the meal could vanish from the table. Sammy was growing fast, filling out, and they both wanted more food than she could provide. This was the third year with Shaineh somewhere in the city but nowhere she could find her. Freydeh judged herself a bad woman for preferring to make money and collect children that could be hers instead of finding her sister. Maybe if she had quit everything else and just looked for Shaineh, she would have found her a year ago. If Moishe had lived, no doubt she would be a better person, because she would not have to make every decision alone. What did she know about raising an American girl or boy? She could not even speak correctly. Who could she turn to for advice? Nobody. She went to lectures when she could to make herself smarter, but she worked most evenings and weekends. No Shabbos for her except for shul.

Sometimes she went alone to bakeries. Sometimes Sammy or Kezia came along. Always she bought something for them, a roll, a cookie. Sometimes it was hard for her to remember that Sammy and Kezia had never met Shaineh, for they talked about her together, second-guessing what might have happened. By now, she knew her adopted children far better than she knew her own sister. Sammy, who had been in on the search since the beginning, was determined to find Shaineh. However, she suspected Kezia just liked to go along to get a poppy seed roll, cookie or little tart. Kezia ate whatever she could lay her hands on, but she especially appreciated sweets. She was still too thin, for she had grown taller more than sideways. Sammy was taller than Freydeh, gangly but beginning to fill out. His voice had deepened. His face was still boyish, but his manner was growing stronger. It was he who challenged the baker in the second bakery they went to that Saturday.

“No, never seen her,” the man said, gingery mustache and sideburns dusted with flour, a heavy man almost as broad as he was tall. That was what every baker they asked said, as they handed back the much-thumbed tattered drawing the street artist had made of Shaineh. He shook his head but did not bother to look up. He did not even ask them if they wanted to buy anything besides two sugar cookies. Kezia had eaten hers at once, a bite at a time around the edge and then into the center. Sammy ate his more casually, staring at the man, frowning.

The man said again, “Can’t help you. Never saw her. Goodbye.”

Something in his voice bothered Sammy. “You do know. You just aren’t saying. That could get you in trouble.”

“I don’t want trouble,” the man said. “Just leave me alone.”

Freydeh stepped nearer. “Believe me, we aren’t going anyplace till you tell us what you know.” She turned and addressed the women waiting for bread. “Best shop someplace else. This man has urgent business with us, and we’re not getting out of the way.” She repeated that in German.

The man turned, squinting as if he had something in his eye. “You got no right to hold up my customers. They’ll go someplace else.”

“We got every right,” Sammy said. “You know something about our sister.”

The man, square as a pavement stone, chewed on his mustache. Then he finally muttered, “Okay, she did work here.”

“What happened? Where is she?”

“One day this man come.”

“What man? When was this?” Sammy was leaning half over the counter now.

“Just before Christmas. Four weeks ago. This man came in and Samantha stared at him like she was going to faint dead away.”

“What did he look like?” Freydeh asked.

“He was maybe thirty. He was a toff, well dressed, with a diamond stickpin in his cravat. His nails was clean and he was wearing fine boots and a beaver hat. He was close to six feet tall.”

“Did he speak to her?”

“He yelled at all of us. He said she was his wife what had run away from him and he was there to bring her back. And we better not get in between a man and his lawful wedded wife.”

“What did Samantha do?”

“She said she wasn’t his wife and she didn’t want to go with him, but he grabbed her. He had a heavy weighted cane, one of those things you see the better-off thugs wielding. He wasn’t no river rat.”

“So you let him take her away?”

“If she was his wife, he was entitled. She started screaming she had a child—she did. She had her little girl tied up in the back room so she wouldn’t get burned—tied to a table leg. She could crawl around the table but she couldn’t burn herself. A cute little bugger. Samantha called her Reba—”

“That was our mother’s name… She’s dead. Do you have her still?”

“He yelled at her, ‘Whose is it?’ And she said, ‘She’s yours but you didn’t want her so she’s all mine.’ When I heard that, I knew she was his, and I told her to get out with her kid and go home with her man and leave us alone. So he took them both.”

Freydeh said nothing, biting her tongue. She wanted to punch the ginger man in the face, but first she wanted to shake every bit of information he had out of him. “Did you get a name?”

“I didn’t ask. Not my business.”

Sammy leaned closer, fingering the knife in his pocket. “The name?”

“Al something she called him. Alfred or Albert, that’s all I know. So she picked up the baby and he took hold of her and dragged her out, and that was the end of that. I don’t want no trouble. She was crying and begging, but he was the father of her child, so she had to go with him. He had rights.”

“And she had none? Oh, never mind.”

“And you don’t know anything else?” Sammy was still leaning over the counter. He was taller than the baker and could make himself look mean. “You know something, I can tell.”

“Just he got into a spider phaeton and started whipping the horse and they were off. That’s all I saw.”

“Anything about the phaeton? Color?”

“I was scared of the guy. He wasn’t no B’hoy like we see around here. He was a plug-ugly but highfalutin and wrathy.”

“Try to remember.”

“I only saw it was dark-colored like maroon and the horse was gray. That was it. And he had a serving man with him in those fancy suits they wear—livery.”

“Again, what color?”

“Two colors. I didn’t get a good look. It was like blue and white or blue and silver. Light blue. Believe me, I didn’t see nothing more.”

Kezia was eyeing the cakes through the glass. Not only was that an extravagance Freydeh would not commit, but she disliked the baker. He had lied to them. He had not protected Shaineh from the man, obviously the one who had kept her locked in a room until she escaped in the fire. Her captor was the father of her child. It was more important than ever that they find Shaineh, quickly, and her little girl too.