The Virgin Cure (23 page)

A
girl had one month’s grace before Miss Everett expected her to lie down with a man. “Give or take a week, depending on your willingness,” Mae explained. “If your training goes bad, or Miss Everett loses interest in you, then it’s back to the street.” If a girl did well, then the clothes and anything else she’d been given (so long as the bounty paid by the gentleman who took her maidenhood covered the cost) were hers to keep. As far as pocket money was concerned, Miss Everett didn’t pay a girl a penny until after she’d been had by a man.

Running a brothel wasn’t a lawful occupation, but Miss Everett and the other madams of the city had the advantage of numbers on their side. Manhattan was bursting with businessmen from near and far with large bank accounts and even larger appetites. Those who ruled the city from the private rooms of Tammany Hall turned a blind eye to their cravings. Boarding house matrons who catered to the needs of Mr. William Tweed and his friends were not only favoured by the mayor’s office but rewarded for their efforts with protection by (and from) the law. Rose’s ongoing affair with the Chief of Detectives was proof of that.

“She all but told me she’s leaving to be kept by the Chief,” Mae announced to Alice and me as we sat talking in our room a few days after my arrival. Primping in front of her dressing table mirror she added, “After Rose is gone, her room will be open for whichever girl’s next.”

There was overwhelming confidence in Mae’s voice, in her posture and her attitude. She was certain that she was going to be the next girl. With only space for three full-time whores in the house, most girls who got their start at Miss Everett’s didn’t stay in her employ. They went on to work at brothels (of equal standing or better), their services bought by madams who hadn’t the ability or patience to deal with the delicacies of brokering a girl’s first time.

“Missouri Mills says sometimes Miss Everett will double up girls in a room if she thinks they merit keeping,” Alice chimed in. “There might be room for all of us.”

We three near-whores, Mae, Alice and I, shared the upstairs quarters—the room where Dr. Sadie had examined me. There was teasing and rivalry of course, and sometimes sharp words, but, in the short time I’d been there, there’d been more kindness than cruelty. We were sisters of a sort—with Miss Everett acting as our strange, sly mother.

Mae had been at the house three weeks, Alice, half that. It had only been five days since I arrived, and already I’d been given three sets of undergarments, several pairs of stockings, two day dresses with petticoats, a pair of boots, a soft bustle and a corset. I’d accepted the clothing without question, but after Mae made it clear how things worked, I’d begun to keep a list of everything Miss Everett put in my hands. Recording each item in the margins of an 1868
Harper’s Bazar
I found under my mattress, I was determined that my accounting would match Miss Everett’s, line for line.

No matter how things added up, I was glad to be a pampered girl without a care. Miss Ada Fenwick had nice dresses, a full belly and a soft bed. Better than that, she had prospects and a chance at a life I’d never known.

My biggest trouble so far had been adjusting to my corset. Made from English leather and lined with muslin, it featured a system of buckles woven around it to supply added strength to the laces down the back. “You’re to wear it day and night, until further notice,” Rose had said as she fitted the stays to me, tightened the buckles one by one, then pulled hard on the laces.

Excited by the comeliness of my reflection in her many mirrors, I’d said “yes” to her pulling the laces ever tighter. The crush of the corset around my ribs was stifling, but I kept my shoulders back and my body upright in an effort to cooperate with the garment rather than struggle against it. I wasn’t about to let something that had seemed so simple for Mrs. Wentworth defeat me.

“Here, Ada,” Alice said, coming over to where I was sitting on my bed, “shall I let you loose for the night?”

Each evening Alice had taken pity on me and loosened my corset so I could sleep. She’d worn one since she was really young, and her torso was wonderfully curved, her waist small from years of training. Miss Everett didn’t require her to wear a corset at night, which, it seemed, made her all the more sympathetic to my pain.

“Yes, please,” I said, turning my back to her, anxious for relief.

Rather than getting ready to retire, Mae was donning a fresh dress, and adorning herself with her favourite hat and a drop of neroli oil behind each ear. She had plans to go to the Bowery Concert Hall, a nearby saloon that offered free admission to pretty young girls. They held dances there every night, including Sundays. Although Miss Everett had made it clear that we weren’t allowed to go out after dark, Mae, having climbed out of (and back into) the window the week before without being discovered, was determined to try her luck again.

“You’re going out again?” Alice asked, shocked at Mae’s behaviour.

“Amantes sunt amentes,”
Mae declared in a flirty voice. “Lovers are lunatics, my dear.”

Alice shook her head and sighed.

“Stop fretting,” Mae scolded. “I’ll be home long before the house wakes.”

“If Miss Everett discovers what you’re up to she’ll put you out on the street.”

Taking Alice’s hand, Mae stared at her with wide eyes. “But she won’t find out, now, will she?”

Pulling her hand away, Alice muttered, “No.”

“I only want to dance with some pretty gents before I’m sent to Rose’s room,” Mae complained. “Have you seen Mr. Chief of Detectives?”

“Rose likes him just fine,” Alice argued. “He takes her to the theatre, and to Delmonico’s for steak and oysters, and to Sunday dinner parties at the Birnbaums’.”

“Mrs. Wolfe Birnbaum, on Clinton Street?” I asked, picturing Mrs. Birnbaum’s magpie squawking through her mistress’s parties, begging for cake.

“That’s the place,” Mae answered, giving me a curious look. “You’ve been there?”

“Only in the shop,” I answered, and said no more.

Telling the truth about why I’d been at the Birnbaums’ might have gotten me some respect from Mae, but now that I’d chosen whoring over thieving, I didn’t want there to be any reason for Miss Everett not to trust me.

“Rose says Mrs. Birnbaum’s dinner parties are over-the-top affairs,” Alice said as she changed into her dressing gown. “Her tables are set with fine china, linens, silver and crystal, all stolen from the richest homes in the city.

“The sideboard’s crowded with sweets and pastries, wine flows from a fountain, and Piano Charlie, the best-dressed house thief in the city, sits at the keys, playing whatever Mrs. Birnbaum requests, all night long. There’s always at least one duke, princess, baroness, lord, lady or senator in attendance, as well as the finest safecrackers, jewel thieves and confidence men.”

Ignoring Alice’s prattling, Mae came to me and pointed to the ribbon around my neck. “Let me borrow it,” she said, gesturing to Mrs. Wentworth’s fan.

I shook my head. Though we’d begun to share things, trusting combs and hatpins to each other’s care, the fan was off limits. “You know I always keep it with me.”

“You owe me, Ada …”

“Then I’ll have to keep owing you.”

Alice intervened, trying to make peace between Mae and me. “It was her mother’s. It’s her good luck charm.”

Giving up and heading for the window, Mae said, “I don’t need it. I make my own luck.” Then she was gone.

“Don’t let Mae fool you,” Alice said after the other girl had disappeared into the night. “She’s as soft-hearted as you or me.”

I wasn’t sure that anyone could be as soft-hearted as Alice. At sixteen, she bore the innocent air of a much younger girl. Fate had dealt her a terrible blow—her parents and her sister had died from the tailor’s cough in the space of a year—but she hadn’t let it break her. She’d sold her family’s belongings (her mother’s silver spoons, her father’s pocket watch, her sister’s best dresses) in an effort to survive. When everything of value was gone, she went to work at Mr. Mueller’s bakery, fixing sugar roses and bows to cakes with pink apple jelly. One bow, one rose, one bow, one rose. It was simple work, and she understood how it should go, but haunted by hunger, she’d turned into a thief by the end of her first week. Crumbs on her cheek, icing sugar on her lips, she’d told Mr. Mueller she couldn’t help herself. “I understand,” the baker said, and then, slapping a rolling pin against his palm, he stood over Alice and told her that she wasn’t to return. That’s when Mae came to her rescue.

“Mae got a fair bit of pocket change the last time she went to the concert hall,” Alice said, climbing into her bed. “She didn’t steal from the men there, or ask for anything outright, she just made mention of forgetting her reticule and needing to pay for the streetcar. The gents she was with were more than happy to oblige.”

“She wasn’t afraid of getting put upon by them?” I asked. I’d seen the sporting men who lined up outside the concert hall each evening on my way to the rooftop on Chrystie Street. I was sure things there weren’t as jolly as Mae made them out to be.

“She says she’s an anything-but-girl and that she knows how to turn a gent away before things go too far,” Alice said with a shrug. “I’d tell on her in a heartbeat if I thought it was as simple as her just wanting to have a bit of fun, but she needs the money. Mae has her heart set on buying a coffin plate to send to her mother, sooner rather than later. Not a tin or copper one, but silver, with lots of fancy scrollwork around the edges.”

Mae’s mother had once carried a baby boy in her belly for nine long months, only to have the child die at birth. In her grieving, she’d had the coffin plate that bore his name,
Timothy O’Rourke
, removed from the tiny casket before it was laid in the ground. “She keeps the plate in a place of honour, next to a silver pitcher her grandmother brought all the way from Ireland. Those two objects are her pride and joy. She kisses them every morning after her prayers and then again after she kneels to pray at night.”

Not wanting to remain in her mother’s memory as forever missing, Mae hoped that sending a memento of her own death, a lie engraved on a shining, silver plate, would, in time, heal her mother’s heart.

“Room and board are enough for me for now, so long as the man who gets me first falls in love with me,” Alice said, wistfully leaning on her pillow. “Perhaps he’ll even ask me to be his wife.”

“I hope he does,” I said, thinking Alice’s desire to be even more ambitious than Mae’s. I brushed the oil Rose had given me into my hair, counting out the strokes,
one, two, three, four, five, six
, impatient to reach
one hundred
. Not knowing if it was Rose or Miss Everett who’d purchased the oil in the first place, I stopped what I was doing and added it to my list, just in case.
One bottle of Circassian hair oil—large
. Then,
one pen, one bottle of ink, two packets of paper and a five-cent stamp
.

The stamp was to go towards sending a few things I’d been collecting in my dressing table drawer to Mrs. Riordan—an almost-full box of chocolates that Missouri Mills hadn’t thought good enough to finish, a woollen scarf Rose found too scratchy for her neck, a pair of gloves Mae refused to wear anymore because she’d lost a button from one of the wrists. I planned to mail the parcel to Mr. Bartz’s shop on Stanton Street and ask that his delivery boy take it on to Mrs. Riordan’s. Not wanting Mr. Cowan to discover my whereabouts, I would pen a letter to Mr. Bartz as well, asking him to not reveal my address to anyone, even Mrs. Riordan.

“Ada?”

“Hmm?”

“Have you ever kissed a man?”

“No, have you?”

“Yes,” Alice answered, smiling. “Well, a boy, anyway.”

“What was it like?”

“Moist,” she said, biting her lip, “and soft.” Her face turned red as she offered, “I can get Cadet to kiss you so you can see for yourself. Mae teased him into kissing me.”

Mama had told me I should never let myself get kissed, especially by a boy. She said kissing a man was also a risky thing, but at least you could usually get something out of him. “Of course, if you’re not careful, you can stumble from whatever game you’re playing right into something else and before you know it—nothing makes sense. You know what that something else is, don’t you, Moth?”

“No.”

“It’s love, and it’s exactly what you don’t want to fall into with a man. If you end up loving them, then no matter how rich or fine they are, you’ll just want more, and nothing they give you will ever be enough. You won’t be able to keep yourself from telling them you love them, you need them, you want them—and in the end, they’ll hate you for it. Stay away from kisses, Moth.”

Alice thought Cadet to be a handsome young man, and she said that he was gentlemanly too, in a shy sort of way. He’d been hired not only to do chores around the house, but to act as guard as well. By day he travelled most places with the girls, and at night, he stood in the hallway outside Rose, Emily and Missouri’s rooms, arms folded across his broad chest. Since he escorted Miss Everett’s girls most of the time when they were out in public on their own, Alice had gotten to know a bit about him while walking at his side. “His mother died the minute he was born,” she told me, shaking her head. “Isn’t that just the saddest thing?”