Conjurer (12 page)

“The world is not always a kind place, Miss Beale.”

She studies him. “So I have been discovering. But then, I think you are aware of my recent schooling.” She shifts her focus, letting her eyes slowly wander the room. “Why would my father visit the towns of Chester and New Castle? If this man is indeed my father? The communities are commercial ports only. Not so great as Philadelphia, of course, although nearer to the ocean …” Martha doesn't finish her thought, and Kelman can supply no explanation.

Instead, he says, “It would give me great pleasure to dine with you, Miss Beale. If Mr. Simms will not object.”

Martha's glance ceases its restless roving. She smiles. “Mr. Simms has left the countryside for the day. He's overseeing certain transactions at Father's offices on Third Street and will not be home until much later. Therefore, I believe he could not possibly object.”

While martha and Thomas Kelman dine on John Dory and ragout of lobster, on wild ducks and grilled mushrooms, on Nesselrode pudding and tartlets of greengage jam, while they talk of books and the weather, while they pause self-consciously or affix too much concentration to their plates, another scene is enacted in a very different location. The room here is small and sparsely furnished: a bed, a table, an overly large looking glass hung above it, a single chair. The sole extravagance is a pair of velvet draperies covering the window; the color of port wine, they balloon across the floor in a heavy cloud as if originally cut for a much grander opening. They are also dense with dust.

A young girl sits naked on the bed. Her little feet don't reach the floorboards. Her toes, her male companion notices, are gray. He tells her to wash them; he doesn't like dirt, he says. Of her hair, which is fair but is presently as dull and dusty as her feet, he says nothing.

The child stands and walks to the basin set atop the table. Gentlemen, she knows, are a peculiar lot. They want all sorts of strange things. But then, she realizes, ladies are often no better. Not the fine ones, anyway. Not the ones with the aigrette-trimmed hats and perfumes and silk-lined gloves.

She wrings out the cloth; the water is cold by now and cloudy; a film of grease from the lye soap shivers on the surface like fresh-forming ice. She's glad she washed her body when the basin was steaming and hot. The man helped wash her, another curiosity.

“Mary,” he now says. “I must have purity at all times. You do understand the meaning of that word, do you not, my child?”

She opens her mouth to speak, but he raises his hand, the nails so perfectly sculpted, the flesh so luminous and white it makes the fingers look like a statue on a grave marker. “Remember what I told you, Mary? You must not speak unless I give you leave. You must not utter the slightest sound.”

“Mary” shuts her mouth. She wants to tell him that isn't her name, that she's been called Ella ever since she can remember. Instead, she dries her toes.

“Now sit upon the bed again, my dear. And tell me again how old you are by holding up one finger for each year of your life.”

In silence, Ella holds up both hands. Ten fingers.

“A lovely age,” he says, and smiles.

Then he removes his shoes and stockings, and finally his trousers. The shirt and waistcoat and cravat and jacket, he leaves on. Ella braces herself; she knows this will hurt, and she doesn't like pain. The madam always tells her she's a baby to take on so, that a little discomfort is nothing when you have a full belly. But the reprimand doesn't keep the ache and sting at bay. Sometimes she bleeds, but it's not the natural monthly bleeding of the older girls. Without her being aware, Ella's lips tighten into a grimace of despair; a weary sigh rises from her breastless chest.

That quick, the man's hands are upon her throat. “No noise, I told you!” he hisses in her ear. “I must have silence! Utter silence!” Then the angry tone softens and the taut fingers relax. “Mary, my dearest, my chosen one. I didn't mean to frighten you. Tell me I did not, dearest. Tell me I did not … No, later. You may say a few words later when we are done.”

But, foolishly, Ella again opens her mouth to speak, and again the man's enraged fingers fly to her throat. His thumbs press against her windpipe; she chokes and squirms until she wriggles free.

“You are a useless creature,” he hisses in a ferocious whisper, and so Ella/“Mary” acquiesces again, curling silently back under him, terrified that the customer will refuse to pay, and that the madam will later beat her—and then perhaps send her hurtling into the streets forever. To comfort herself, she plays a “game of thoughts” that has become her recourse and consolation.

She imagines herself out the room and away from the horrible man who smells of too much soap and
eau de cologne
. Instead, she ensconces herself in a gold-washed chamber with a parquet floor and a tea table overflowing with confections and fruits. She once peeked in at the window of such a place and was astounded to see children inhabiting it: a girl of about her height in a dress of dark stuff and lace and a younger boy with long curled ringlets like his sister's. At least, Ella endowed them with the status of siblings. And she was able to watch long enough to observe how they played, how the girl was mistress, how the boy subservient, how they laughed and how the girl read to the boy from a book with colored pictures, and how icing stuck to their lips when they nibbled the cakesSusie … But then the boy had spotted Ella and screamed, and his sister had followed his glance, staring unrelentingly through the glass as if willing their unwelcome observer to vanish—or perhaps to die. Then the girl had shouted something, and a man burst out the house doors with a broom as if he intended to sweep her, like trampled leaves, into the gutter.

Remembering this final piece of the scene, Ella inadvertently groans with sorrow, and the man rises up from her back, cursing. He slaps her buttocks; he hits her head, and when she draws herself into a protective ball and tries to roll away he pinches her calves and toes, spitting out a vengeful “You are useless! Useless!”

Ella leaps off the bed, naked and splotched with red handprints. “That I am not, sir! I'm a good girl. I do as I'm told.”

“You don't know when to keep your mouth shut!” He follows this with loud oaths that roar into the hall.

The door to the room bangs open and the madam barges in. She simpers apologies to the man and turns a countenance on Ella that's so fearsome it looks like the maw of a watchman's dog. “Get out of this house!” she barks.

Ella grabs up the few clothes she can reach while the madam rains abuse and blows upon her, promising to procure a “quiet one for the gentleman” as she sends Ella tumbling down the stairs and out into the cold and inhospitable street.

A common man is walking by, a man with a crooked gait and clothes that remind Ella of a suit she saw on a boy doll in a shop window. “If you please, sir,” she whispers.

The man keeps walking. Ella notices that his one foot causes him pain, and she pursues him as much out of need as curiosity. “Please, sir. I am cheap … and I am clean.”

He makes no sign of noticing, and Ella plucks uncertainly at his sleeve. “I am—”

The man whirls around. “What do you want?” But the tone isn't unkind. Ella sees him gaze at her hastily thrown-on dress, at her stockingless and weather-stained shoes. “Why have you no coat?”

“If you please, sir. I'm a good girl. I do what I'm told.”

“Susan?” the man murmurs after a moment.

“If you wish it, sir.”
Susan
, Ella thinks,
Mary
. When will a client wish to use her true name? “Susan, yes sir. I will be your Susan.”

The man stares through her. Ella waits, shivering. “No,” he says at length, “of course, you cannot be my little Susie …” Then his eyes refocus on the child standing before him, and his face grows perturbed and angry. “Where are your mother and father that they allow you to walk about without proper covering?”

Ella can't think of an answer, and so she merely repeats a more importunate “Please, sir …”

“I will make you a coat,” the man states, “and I will feed you. Then we shall find your family.” And he takes her hand as though clasping the fingers of his own lost daughter.

Mary and Martha

U
NAPPEASED BY THE MADAM, ELLA
'
S
onetime customer hurtles out of the fancy house, stalking in coiled anger into the waning daylight. The gas streetlamps—where there are lamps—emit a sulfurous and sickly glow, sending a green-yellow tinge into the thickening air. The man drags the collar of his fur-lined cloak closer to his face and pulls the brim of his beaver hat lower on his brow until only the tip of his nose is visible. His eyes and mouth are hidden.

The new girl provided by the madam failed him, too. She was too old, her hips and breasts already womanly, her glance censorious and lewd. Remembering her hard, judgmental stare, he grinds his teeth, moans, and marches on, brushing furiously against unwary passersby as he strides north out of the squalid neighborhoods bordering Lombard Street toward the more decorous region abutting Washington Square. This residential district he also avoids, turning at length down Chestnut Street toward the Delaware River.

The rowdy excesses of oyster cellars spill onto the pavement; there's the stink of decaying shells, seaweed, sawdust, and spilled malmsey wine, the screech of drunken laughter, the clatter of tin plates. From one oyster cellar an old dog bursts forth, scuttling up the steep stairs onto the street while open oyster shells, long-necked bottles, and several stones pelt after it. In his consuming rage, the man kicks at the animal but misses, and his foot, flailing at the empty air, brings him crashing and cursing down: a heap of heavy coat, a hat that dances away into the street.

A young Negro woman bends down to aid him. She wears a mantle of cheap fabric. Her legs are bare although she has shoes on her feet; and her act of compassion is unpremeditated. A human being falls; she reaches out her hand.

She steadies the man and helps him rise, then dodges through the carts and coaches and omnibuses to retrieve his beaver hat. She holds it out but doesn't leave her palm upward in hopes of a reward.

The man takes the hat and studies her, weighing her age against his desires. “You will go with me,” he orders.

“No, sir. That, I will not do.” She lets her eyes rest on his face and frowns. “Have I seen you, sir? Before now?”

“I will call you Mary,” is the oblique response.

“If you mean to offer honest employ, sir, my name is Ruth, and I have skill as a maid-of-all-work.”

The man smiles, although to Ruth the smile is more that of a starving animal than a human creature. “‘Call me not Naomi,'” he recites,“‘call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.'”

“I know naught of that. I am Ruth, and I—”

“Daughter-in-law to Naomi. In the Holy Book.”

“Yes, sir. That book I know, sir. A Quaker lady read it me—all about the story of the mighty king and the part the loyal Ruth played …”

The man graces Ruth with a gentler smile. His passionate wrath is finally beginning to dissipate. In its place he knows he will experience the calm and pleasure of purpose. The girl in the bawdy house was a mistake. Perhaps, however, her failure is leading him to a better place.

“… But I am no daughter, sir, nor daughter-in-law …”

The man's eyes half close as though in prayer. “‘Mara' is so very near to ‘Mary,' isn't it?” he murmurs while Ruth tilts her head, listening.

“I do believe I know your voice, sir—”

His fist rises in the air that quick, but Ruth leaps away from the blow. “You do not!” he spits out. “You do not!” Then he spins away, disappearing into the crowd.

Ruth trudges on. It feels to her that she has wandered the city ten times over since the three days of her release from prison, but there are still so many lanes and courts and alleyways to search. Finding her little Cai is her only desire. She can't remember when she last ate, or where she slept the night before.

Her hunt began in the tenements and factories near to where the Sparks Shot Tower rises above the lesser buildings: the ropewalks and brickworks, the tanneries, the slaughterhouses, the fertilizer manufacturers that collect horse droppings and dog pure from the streets and dry the ill-smelling mixture for use in the curing of hides. She reasoned that if Cai were still living he'd be of an age to perform tasks in such places. She was disappointed.

She moved on to the Northern Liberties with its textile mills and dye works, the wheelwrights and coopers of Green Street and Poplar and Laurel and St. John. There, her quest also failed. She considered continuing north again to Fishtown and the Boiler Works on Palmer, the iron foundries nearby and the glasshouses and brass and bronze smelters, but what would be the use? None but the skilled enter those premises.

In her great weariness, Ruth now sinks to the ground, mindless of the crowd surging past, mindless of the illegality of her act. With her chin nearly resting on her chest, she watches the world parade past her: the gentlemen approaching the Demport House Hotel up the street, the merchants strolling down toward the Exchange on Third. She sees them glance at her in distaste and dismay: a Negress crouching on the cobbles like some dressed-up monkey lady.
A slave
, more than a few will be thinking,
or an escaped slave whose master was foolish enough to bring her to Philadelphia while attending to business in the city. Doubtless, the wretch will soon be recaptured
.

Ruth realizes that it's only a matter of moments before a member of the day watch is called to haul her away. Perhaps she'll stand again before a judge; perhaps, return to prison.

She pulls herself erect and sets her feet in a westerly direction, but before she can take a step her attention is arrested by the sight of a crooked-legged man walking with a yellow-haired girl—his daughter, or so Ruth believes. The man's outer coat rests upon the child's shoulders while she smiles up at him and he beams protectively down. Then they move so close, Ruth can almost feel their happiness flitting through the air.