The Virgin Cure (5 page)

Inside, the place was dimly lit, with only a few lights flickering on the stairs and in the hall. Even so, I could see it was a house made from great fortunes: the floor of the entryway was tiled in marble, and the ceiling, piped with plaster ribbons and roses, soared far above any practical height.

We were greeted by a man dressed in a fitted coat and handsome silk tie. He was a proper-looking gentleman in every way except for the terrible scar that ran across his left cheek. Long and curved like a frown, it looked as if whatever had caused it had also come close to cutting the man’s lip in two. Gone white and catching light, it spoke of another life, of knife fights and bloodied ears. It reminded me of the knots the roughs around Chrystie Street all sported on the bridges of their noses. “Billy bumps,” they called them with a puffed-up sense of pride, because they’d gotten them as the result of tangling with the police.

I bowed to the man, assuming he must be Mr. Wentworth.

Looking down at his shoes, the gentleman cleared his throat and waved me up.

My face went red with embarrassment. I hadn’t even considered Mrs. Wentworth might have a butler.

“Nestor,” Mrs. Wentworth said, as she motioned for him to assist her with her cloak. “This is Miss Fenwick. Please show her to the servants’ quarters, and make certain she’s comfortable.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he responded.

No sooner had he taken the cloak off her shoulders, keeping a polite distance from the sweep of her skirts, than she was making her way towards the wide staircase that curved up from the entrance hall.

The banister that graced the stairs was made from handsome, polished wood and was decorated with aloof-looking cherubs that stood guard at every landing. Six angels in all, they balanced frosted globes of gaslight on their chubby shoulders. It was all I could do not to reach out and touch the cherub closest to me, to stroke its smooth, perfect toes. Appearing and disappearing as she passed them by, Mrs. Wentworth’s tired face glowed turnip yellow in the lamplight.

After she was gone everything was still, except for the ticking of a tall clock in a nearby alcove, its pendulum glinting as it slipped back and forth. According to the clock’s face it was quarter past one. I imagined there must be an army of maids asleep somewhere under the roof, and I was glad I’d soon be joining them.

“This way, Miss Fenwick,” Nestor instructed, as he lit an oil lamp that was sitting on a marble-topped table. “Time for you to get some sleep.” The lamp sputtered when he took it up, giving off a trail of greasy smoke.

Following the butler down a long corridor, I did my best not to brush up against the thin-legged stands and scallop-edged tables that lined the walls. Each one held a delicate-looking vase or some precious object that needed to be kept safe under a glass dome. Paintings of gentlemen and ladies from days past hung on the walls, their dour faces making me feel as if they’d caught me walking on their graves.

“Watch your step,” Nestor instructed as we came to a second staircase at the rear of the house, this one unadorned, narrow and steep. He held the lamp to one side as he went up the stairs, so I could better see the way.

The shadow of his figure crept beside us—a looming, faceless version of himself. It made me think of all the frightening stories I’d heard that summer, told on front stoops and in back courtyards, of girls being snatched up and dragged away by strangers. They were true tales that had happened right in the heart of the city, printed in the newspapers and weeklies for all to see. It was the fair-haired, well-off girls gone missing who’d made the headlines of the
New York Times
and the
Evening Star
, but there were plenty of poor girls with immigrant blood who’d disappeared as well. (
Of non Americanized parentage
, the papers said when referring to them, hushing them away in the tight, distant columns of
Police Briefs
and
News From Neighbours
.)

There is much talk, even today, about what it means to be an “American girl.” One well-known English writer defines her as: “a little under medium height; hair the colour of spun gold to golden brown; eyes a violet blue; cheeks and lips rosy; teeth whiter and brighter than pearls; hands and feet extremely small and well-shaped; figure petite, but exquisitely proportioned; toilette in the latest mode de Paris; and above all, bearing that marvellous bloom upon her face, which American girls share with the butterfly, the rose, the peach and the grape, unequalled by any other women in the world.”

Sentiments like these may seem flattering, but they have also served to fuel the denigration of many an immigrant’s daughter. Are they, too, not American?

Eliza Adler was thirteen years old and lived only two doors down from Mama and me. She’d been gone for three days when her body was found floating in the East River. At first they thought she might have done herself in, but her mother swore that she was a happy girl who had never wandered far from home. After the police took a close look at her body, they saw she’d been beaten and strangled to death. One week after Eliza was found, another girl’s remains turned up, this time buried in a haystack at the stables in Central Park. She’d come from some town in Pennsylvania to be a servant girl on Fifth Avenue and now she was dead.

In both cases, there were signs the girls had been spoiled by a man just before they were killed. There was the tearing and bruising and blood to prove it.

“Everything all right?” Nestor asked when we were halfway up the stairs, nearly causing me to miss a step. “You’re awfully quiet back there.”

“I’m fine, sir,” I answered, hoping he hadn’t seen me flinch.

In August of 1871, a man was caught attempting to drag a young girl away near her home on Delancy Street. He later confessed to murdering four other girls, including Eliza Adler.

It was common knowledge that newly hired servant girls were often taken aside for personal indulgences—by the butler, or the footman, or even the master of the house. It was assumed it was their right to have the girl, a natural part of the domestic economy, but I hadn’t given up anything to anyone yet. I hadn’t had my first blood or my first kiss, wasn’t sure of how to meet a man’s expectations outside of Mama once explaining to me, “All you need to know about men is this—they have a great need to put their cock into whatever holes they find fitting. The more you’re grown, the less it’ll hurt. So, until you’re ready, stay out of their way.”

I can trip him, push him down the stairs if I have to. I can run away
.

Mama would never forgive me.

More and more, I’d felt men gazing at me, licking their lips when they thought they might get me alone. Mr. Goodwin, the grocer, made no secret of his fondness for little girls. Mr. Cowan insisted on calling me “princess” every time he came to collect the rent. Pensioner Peter Rutledge was kind and had a roaring laugh, but he was thirty-three and had no legs or prospects because of the war.

Unsettling as their attentions were, I understood (as most girls in my circumstance did) that I could, if careful, get quite a lot from a man before having to give any of myself away. A look, a word, a nod was an invitation to a game.
What’s in it for me?
I’d learned to ask myself.
How far can this go before it’s too late?

I’d smiled at Mr. Goodwin, let him run the back of his rough hand across my cheek so he’d give me half-a-dozen eggs instead of the three or four Mama’s pennies would buy. A winning smile and a lingering nudge of my shoulder against his arm, had, on occasion, meant a new ribbon for my hair. There were dangers to such games of course—one false move and I might end up ruined, or worse, like poor Eliza—but the rewards that came when I moved cautiously and correctly were too tantalizing to resist.

This was the sort of path Francine Grossman had taken all the way to London, and then to Paris, and then back again to New York. Now known as the Baroness de Battue, she’d once been a Chrystie Street girl herself. She’d played her cards right and become a
courtesan
rather than a whore, a woman of consequence rather than a corpse. All the girls from Five Points to Rag Pickers Row had, at one time or another, tied strands of oyster shells around their necks for jewels, waltzed in the dust with broomsticks for princes, and pretended to be her. Every tencent whore on the Lower East Side cursed her existence, insisting
that should’ve been me
. Eliza had planned to follow in Francine’s footsteps, but had somehow lost her way. I wasn’t about to let that happen to me.

Nestor’s voice was gentle, and he’d struck me as a thoughtful man, somewhat like Reverend Osgood, the minister who came on Sunday afternoons to say prayers with troubled souls in the slums. I wondered if perhaps Nestor had been his own man in his youth, but somewhere along the way had fallen on hard times, leaving him to depend on serving others for his livelihood.

His eyes had gone soft when he’d looked back at me, sympathy held like a pearl in the furrow of his brow. I hoped he was the kind of man whose heart could be touched by pleading.
Please, sir, not now
—I’d beg, if he approached me.
I’m too young
.

Reaching the top of the stairs, he shone his lamp into the gloom of a small, dark room where it revealed the figure of a woman stretched out on a mattress in the middle of the floor. Her breathing was steady and low, her mouth agape. Our footsteps echoed on the wooden floor, but she didn’t stir.

“That’s Caroline,” Nestor said. “She cooks and keeps house.” Shining the light in the far corner of the room he added, “And that’s your bed, Miss Fenwick. Good night.”

“Good night, sir,” I said, sighing in relief.

After he was gone, I lay down on the mattress, still in my clothes, holding fast to Mama’s old pillowcase. I could feel the lonely arm of my ragdoll through the thin cloth. So many times I’d patched her up, plumping her again with sawdust and peanut shells I’d gathered from the doorstep of a beer hall, sewing her together with thread made from my hair and the needle I kept hidden in her belly.