The Virgin Cure (9 page)

When she was done, Mrs. Wentworth ran her hand along the length of my arm, fingers gliding over my stinging flesh. She clasped her hand around my wrist and pushed her thumb into one of the marks she’d made. “Now you’ll know better,” she said, as she tightened her grip and watched me flinch.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, salty tears on my lips.

The imprint of her fingers blossomed white after she let go, then faded away.

“I’d like some shortbread now,” she said, straightening her shoulders and picking up her teacup.

Afraid to stop to wipe my eyes, I stood up, the room blurry before me. I fumbled to place the plate of biscuits in front of her so she wouldn’t have to reach for them.

Rather than taking one of the squares, she folded her hands in her lap and stared up at me. “From
your
hand,” she ordered, making it clear she intended for me to feed her. “I don’t like getting butter on my fingers.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, picking up a piece of shortbread by the edges and bringing it to her lips.

To my dismay, she chose to make a meal of it, nibbling at the biscuit in tiny bites, licking at my fingertips for the last of the crumbs. When she was finished, she smiled and said, “I quite like forgetting where I end and you begin.”

From then on, with her every complaint, out came the fan.

I was the one to dress her, so I was responsible for making certain it was always on her person, secure around her wrist. She’d strike me with it whenever it pleased her to do so. If I winced, or made any sound at all, she’d hit me again, twice as hard. The more attention I gave her, the more she required. I was to hold her hand until she fell asleep at night, wash every inch of her when she bathed. Turned-down sheets and pinned-up ringlets (no matter how deftly placed) never satisfied her for long. She wanted more. Without any gentle words on her part, she expected to be showered with affection. “Show your devotion, Miss Fenwick,” she’d say several times throughout the day, pointing the fan to her cheek. She had a Sybil’s sense for detecting half-heartedness, and try as I might, my attentions were never soft or sincere enough to please her. She did not hold back in showing her disappointment.

The insides of my arms grew raw, and soon became mottled in shades of yellow, green and blue. According to how many times she’d hit me the hour, the day, the week before, spidery lines of purple and red formed like lace around the edges of my bruises.

Mama had, on occasion, left a dark bruise on my ear or in the fleshy part of my arm where she’d pinched me too hard, but even at her worst, she’d never been set on hurting me like this. Every time Mrs. Wentworth came at me, I thought of Mama. I prayed she’d walk through the door and put a stop to Mrs. Wentworth’s meanness. I dreamed she’d take the woman by the hair and give her a fierce pounding—cursing, spitting and screaming, “I won’t let you treat my girl that way.”

But Mama could never know. I was tied to Mrs. Wentworth now. The wage they had agreed upon was meant to keep Mama alive. If I ran away, I feared Mrs. Wentworth would come after Mama. She’d be left with nothing—no clothes to wear, no place to sleep, no food in her belly. My bruises were a small price to pay.

Caroline still hadn’t seen fit to speak to me directly, and although Nestor had told me time and again not to worry about it, I couldn’t help wishing she’d change her mind. “Maybe Chrystie Street can get that for you,” she’d say whenever Nestor asked her to pass the pitcher of milk from across the table, not quite speaking to me, but almost. Calling out in the dark whenever she thought I was listening to her talk herself to sleep she’d grouse, “Chrystie Street should mind her own business.”

I missed the kind of talk that went on between women—over the course of an hour’s worth of chores, at the clothesline in the courtyard, on front stoops in the evening. The women of Chrystie Street were generous with their stories and their gossip, even when there was no fondness between them. Fast friends one minute, enemies the next, it made no difference to them.

Nestor did his best to make life bearable. We did not talk of Mrs. Wentworth’s cruelty or of the things she did to me behind closed doors. Instead, we spent late nights in the kitchen after Caroline had gone to sleep, raiding the larder and bragging about our “worsts”—the worst fight he’d ever been in, the worst thing I’d ever found rotting in a trash barrel.

He said he’d been raised on Old St. Nichol Street in the East End of London, a place where rats dine better than people, a place that sounded an awful lot like Chrystie Street to me. He went on to say that the only thing that had saved him from ending up in the gutter like the other St. Nichol lads was “meetin’ my dear Polly one evening at church.”

His girl’s name was Miss Paulette Saxby, and according to Nestor, she was the prettiest and kindest soul he’d ever met. “Don’t know what she sees in a sod like me,” he liked to joke, his hearty laughter there, then gone, as memories of Polly took over his thoughts.

Not long after the pair met, Nestor decided to make his way across the Atlantic to America. Hearing there were untold riches to be had in New York and points farther west, he convinced Polly that his going was their best chance to start a new life together. As much as he’d hated to leave her behind, he knew it was better she stay with her family until he got settled in a place they could call their own.

He wrote to her nearly every night, penning letters to be sent out in the next morning’s post.
I’ll bring you here one day soon, my love, I promise. Until then, thoughts of you warm my bones and my heart as I write, as I wait for your reply
.

I’d known how to read for as long as I could remember, having figured out, first, the words Mama used on her notices, and then others as she read me ads from the paper. She’d run her finger along the text and say the words under her breath—
curious, clean, lily-white, good, sweet, amazing!
I soon knew all the words that got painted on signs or the sides of buildings, and anything to do with soap or baked goods, yet I’d never learned to use a pen. The only writing I’d ever done was to make my name in the dirt with a stick. Lines and hatches beside a game of hopscotch,
M-O-T-H
written to the right of the numbered court, my
O
looking lopsided and strange next to Eliza Adler’s graceful script that swirled inside the arch at the top spelling out the word
Home
.

Sometimes Mama would tell a woman who came to have her fortune told to write something down on a piece of paper. It was usually the name of a man, one whose affections might be turned, or who had wronged her, or who owed her money. The bits of paper she used for the ritual were tiny enough to hide inside a pocket-watch or, in the case of needing to forget the man, to be burned in a candle flame.

Pen and ink were luxuries, so Mama guarded them, even from me, keeping them locked inside an old wooden tea caddy. The box was one of her fire treasures, found intact but without a key. To open it, she’d insert a bent hatpin in the keyhole and give gentle tics with her wrist until it unlocked. There, nestled between the bottle and nibs were three small rolls of paper she’d cut from the margins and edges of the
Evening Star
and then carefully wound onto empty thread spools. Delicate and creamy, one edge evenly (barely) scalloped, it looked just as beautiful as fine French ribbon.

The paper Nestor used to write to Polly had been given to him by Mr. Wentworth. Each sheet was perfectly square at the corners and embossed at the top with a proud, weighty
W
. The envelopes had the same mark on the flap. It seemed to me that London was a terribly long way for a letter to travel, but Nestor assured me that far lesser paper had made the journey there and back. He showed me one of Polly’s letters to prove it, her words of love scrawled across sheets so thin the ink had bled through to the other side, making them nearly impossible to read.
The day will come, my dearest, when we will have no use for pen and paper. We’ll be too occupied with being in each other’s arms. Your adoring Polly
.

There is much to be learned from the ebb and flow of a lady’s script. No matter her words—all her hopes, schemes, aspirations, and inclinations are coded within her hand. Aside from the obvious cues of station set forth by the quality of the paper and ink, the writer gives further indications of her identity away when she puts pen to paper. Swift, short lines indicate distraction, bold strokes given to words such as
Dearest, Yours
, and
until
are hallmarks of true affection. Shakiness of script often portends weakness of constitution or mind.

After Nestor finished his letter to Polly for the night, he’d guide me through lessons in penmanship. He watched over me as I looped
L
after
L, O
after
O
, learning to connect letters together.

I felt guilty when I dipped the pen, thinking I should offer him something for his kindness. I had only bits of myself to give (a kiss, a touch), but he asked nothing in return. He smelled like pipe tobacco and Macassar oil, of warmth and somewhere far away. At first I wished he were my father, then, later, I wished I were his Polly. Neither thing was right or good, but my affection for him knew nothing of manners.

In Nestor’s company, I forgot Mrs. Wentworth and the pain she gave me, at least for a little while. I’d stay at the table long after I should’ve been in bed, turning my name into a feat of curves, the pen never coming off the page until the final upturn of the
h
, trying to impress him.

“She’ll like it, won’t she?” I asked him, before gently blowing sand off a letter I was writing to Mama. In my heart I knew it was the sort of thing she’d find to be a waste of time, but it meant everything to me, the words having come from my heart to my hand to the page, a bit of myself about to be folded square and sent back home.

“I should think she’ll like it very much,” Nestor answered, his voice filled with confidence and perhaps even a little pride.

Standing behind me, he placed a hand on my shoulder and looked down at my work. I’d turned the cuff of my sleeve back so as not to smudge the ink, and when I glanced up at him, I caught his gaze shifting from the page to the bruises on my wrist.

“You’re not hers,” he said, staring at the marks on my arm. “She doesn’t own you.”

I’d once watched Mama work a spell to help a woman break free from a bad situation; the woman’s man had beaten her, and she said he simply wasn’t the same to her anymore. Out of a page from the
Evening Star
, Mama made a charm for the lady to take home and burn in a candle’s flame—a perfect heart within a heart, cut from the centre fold of the newsprint and marked with the man’s name. “Repeat the words
I’m not yours
while the heart burns away. Don’t stop until it’s turned to ashes, or all will be ruined.”

After the woman left the house, I crawled under Mama’s table and collected all the scraps of paper that had fallen to the floor. I took the largest piece and used it to make a string of wishing dolls. Folding the paper back and forth, I wondered if there was enough of Mama’s magic left on the page to make a wish come true. With rusted scissors I cut through the folds, curving the paper around, whispering my heart’s desire until the figure of a girl appeared. Taking her tiny arms in my fingers, I pulled a dozen sisters between my hands, each one passing my wish, one to the other, secretly multiplying my chances of success. “I don’t want to belong to anyone,” I told the fluttering string of paper girls before hiding them under a loose floorboard by Mama’s bed.