Forgiven (22 page)

But still, perhaps I could help draw his eye. Maybe I could confront him and shame him into revealing the location of the box. More than anything, I wanted to help David. I knew now what I wanted, who I cared for. I had two deeply intertwined goals: to help David help the girls, and to save my pa before time ran out.

Chapter
THIRTY

April 17, 1906

 

 

 

 

THE HEAVY SCENT OF ORCHIDS WAS OVERWHELMING. As was everything else about the lobby of the Grand Opera House in San Francisco: the enormous cut-glass chandelier that descended in three tiers from the ceiling, the jewelry that adorned the necks and wrists of the society matrons in silks and satins who were escorted by their overstuffed husbands, the blood-red carpet covering the stairs in a velvet nap so thick my feet nearly disappeared.

Mr. Gable led me to his personal box, where a chilled bottle of champagne and several flutes waited next to the tufted chairs. On one seat cushion lay a set of gold spyglasses—opera glasses, as I’d been instructed, the better to see the singers from the refined heights of the expensive box seats. Mr. Gable was so solicitous and kind, I finally relaxed a bit. I no longer cared what the other patrons thought of me, of why I might be his companion. Their petty snobbery disgusted me.

I declined the champagne; I’d learned that lesson, thanks to Will. My interests lay in finding the Hendersons, not in dimming my wits. I picked up the opera glasses and scanned the boxes for the one that Mr. Gable said belonged to William Henderson. It was empty.

Rustle and chatter and soft laughter filled the hall. Every few minutes someone knocked on the door behind us, and Mr. Gable admitted yet another member of polite society who had come to converse with the artist and also ogle his companion—me. I felt like a piece of artwork myself, expected to smile and utter polite nonsense while strange men worked their gaze up and down my figure, and their wives bared teeth in forced smiles above their diamond-encrusted necks. This visiting and conversation continued even as the house lights dimmed and the orchestra struck the first stunning notes of
Carmen,
turning my body rigid with anticipation. I turned in my seat to find the Hendersons right across from me.

They’d entered the box and been seated, Mr. Henderson and Will, with Wilkie standing behind in the shadows, his eyes shining like two pinpoints. A thin-lipped, blue-eyed blond girl sat to Will’s right, and Will was bent toward her, with his arm resting casually over her chair back.

One little part of me seethed with jealousy. But then I thought of Will’s sharp words, and David’s kind eyes, and I smiled to myself as Enrico Caruso stepped to the front of the stage and, pulling a flower from his breast pocket, serenaded his love.

Oh, my stars. What a voice. With his rich and wide-ranging tenor, Caruso commanded my full attention at once, and the emotion he packed into his plaintive love song brought goose bumps out all over me. When he finished the aria, I, together with the entire house, jumped to our feet in a spontaneous rush of cheering and applause.

And so it was for the entire performance. When Caruso was not singing, I turned my attentions to the Hendersons. They remained in their box, and Wilkie, too, thank goodness. At least I did not have to worry about David, who was making arrangements to spirit girls out of Chinatown at that very moment. Once, while I was watching Will, his eyes turned toward Sebastian Gable’s box and met mine, and I quick lowered the glasses, but I’d caught his expression.

He was sad. He was not smiling, not jovial, not flashing his blond companion that dazzling smile that had made me melt.

I turned my eyes away and back to the stage, where Don Jose was becoming increasingly desperate for the unwilling Carmen.

When Don Jose finally plunged his knife into his defiant, willful lover, I choked with sympathy. Even though I couldn’t understand the language, I was transported. The audience called again and again for Caruso to take the stage, and he was pelted with roses and wild cheers.

The opera was over, but the Hendersons remained in their box, clearly enjoying the attentions from the streams of society types who filed in and out under Wilkie’s narrowed eyes. If Wilkie had seen me across the way, he didn’t acknowledge it. Of course, he couldn’t, not with so many respectable people around. Mr. Gable rose; it was time for us to leave. I turned one last time and found Will Henderson’s eyes on me. He gave me a wan smile. I stared coldly back, knowing that I’d been unable to confront him about pa’s box, vowing to do so the next day. At least I’d served Miss Everts’s and David’s diversionary purpose.

It was past midnight, and I yawned, openmouthed, as Sebastian Gable escorted me from the Opera House and into his waiting carriage.

“Only a few hours until dawn,” Mr. Gable remarked.

“Yes.” I thought about how, at dawn, at least a few of those desperate girls would find a new and better life, thanks to Miss Everts and David. I thanked Mr. Gable for a lovely evening and, on arriving back at the house, wearily climbed the stairs.

My room was now my own again, as Yue had joined Mei Lien in her room. I was exhausted, and yet I slept fitfully. It was warm and still, with no breeze coming through my open window. My miserable sleepless state and my open curtains had me up with the first dawn light.

It was an eerie morning, silent. I’d spent so much of my childhood in the woods that I knew how the first light of day was always accompanied by the racket of rising birds. On this day, there was no sound of birds. It felt all wrong. The ticking of the clock in my room sounded like a hammer, pounding. Five o’clock. There was no more sleep for me; I got up and dressed. The scarlet gown lay draped over the back of my stuffed chair.

I had just finished dressing, but with my hair still hanging loose in its single braid, when the world around me fell apart.

Chapter
THIRTY-ONE

April 18, 1906

 

 

 

 

I KNEW AN EARTHQUAKE, THE JOLT WHEN IT FIRST HIT and the roll that followed. I’d experienced the rumblings of the earth a time or two in Yellowstone. But those little knockabouts were nothing compared with this. The floor began to heave, and I was thrown to my hands and knees.

The house creaked and groaned, and the plaster crashed and framing wrenched and wood splintered to fragments. The portrait of my Blue Boy swayed against the wall like the pendulum of a clock. The clattering of bricks tumbling to pavement lifted through my open window and a rumbling noise like thunder that seemed to come from the belly of the earth itself.

After a minute that felt like an eternity all motion stopped, and an eerie silence settled over the house. Thunder rumbled in the distance as walls—whole buildings, from the sound of it—that were shaken loose fell to earth. I stood, all shaky, and had just dusted off my knees when the second shock hit.

This time I ran for my door and stood in the frame, clutching it tight with both hands, for this shock was far worse than the first. The house rose and fell like the ferry would on the roughest sea; porcelain crashed to the floor in the hall below. Outside, something close at hand—one side of the house?—fell with a violent rending and hammering. And the bells. Through my open window came a clamor of bells. Bells in all the steeples of all the churches in the city rang and rang, as if calling to heaven, pleading for help.

When this shock was finished, I stood for a minute, getting my bearings. Then I ran down the stairs toward Miss Everts’s room. She clutched at her bedpost, her face drawn and tight. I pulled an evening coat from her wardrobe and threw it over her shoulders.

“Come on,” I said to her. “We have to leave in case there are more.”

She came with me, like a child, obedient and silent.

In the downstairs hall we were joined by Jameson, Mei Lien, and Yue. Together we stumbled out into the small front yard.

Up and down the street people in various states of undress were also outside, clutching odd belongings—a porcelain vase, a birdcage, a set of books—and everyone was silent in stunned confusion. The only noise came from animals. Dogs barked and horses screamed; birds flapped and squawked in every tree.

The houses on our street had mostly survived, even if their chimneys had not; one house farther down the steep hill shrugged to one side, its front porch on the verge of sliding off like a layer on a tilted cake.

Miss Everts’s house had held up surprisingly well. It lost its chimney, which must have been the noise I’d heard, and the bricks were scattered in a fan at the foot of the outside wall. Several windows on the ground floor were broken. An image of Sebastian Gable’s wall of windows came into my mind, and I was sure they could not have been spared. I wondered what had happened to all his paintings, and if he was all right.

“Well.” Miss Everts seemed recovered. “What an alarming wake-up call.”

Jameson stared down toward the city center. “Look.” Smoke billowed skyward from several places around the southeastern end of the city.

There were no sounds now: no cable cars, no more church bells, no people; no one moaned or cried out; even the animals had gone quiet. We had all been struck with reverential silence at the awful power of nature.

Mei Lien touched my arm, and I looked at her. “Girls, in cellars.”

I started, and turned to Miss Everts. Her lips were set in a thin line. “Yes. In the cellars. We were to move them in half an hour. David might already be there. They would all be trapped if the buildings fell.”

“I’ll bring round the automobile,” Jameson said.

“I shall get dressed. Mei Lien, you and Yue stay here and help Kula—”

“No! I’m going with you.” I would not be left behind, not knowing if David had been crushed in the midst of his rescue. I knew he thought I was silly and selfish, but I didn’t care; I could only think of him. “Miss Everts, you should stay here.”

“Absolutely not,” she replied, turning on her heel and marching up the steps and inside.

Within a few minutes it became clear that there were other problems to consider. No water came out of the taps, nor was there gas from the stove. And the automobile could not be brought round until the rubble of the chimney was cleared from the drive.

Miss Everts, dressed now, put her hands to her hips. “There’s a hand-pump well at Simpson’s Grocery down at the bottom of the hill. Mei Lien, you and Yue will fetch water. We can’t survive without water. Kula, you and I will stay here and keep the house safe.”

“I’ll go find them,” said Jameson, meaning David and the girls.

“Please let me go with Jameson,” I begged. “He can’t manage alone, and I can move fast.”

Miss Everts pursed her lips, and then nodded once.

Jameson had long strides, but at least we were headed downhill and I was able to keep up. Once we were out of the Nob Hill neighborhood and into the area of tightly packed tenements, the effects of the earthquake became clear. That’s when we began to see real destruction.

Many of these poorly constructed buildings had collapsed entirely, falling in on top of people. We passed a man in nothing but a nightshirt sitting, stunned, upon a pile of rubble. Others were digging through the bricks in an attempt at rescue. Still others stared in the direction of Market Street, where several of the plumes of smoke had grown larger.

Jameson knew just where to go; the girls David had been seeking were warehoused in the Barbary Coast. We threaded our way through people who now carried belongings away from the ruins, in a migration to nowhere, in a state of calm. It was eerie, that calm, broken only by the crying of infants. The adults and older children—it seemed we were all a blank.

Shock, I thought. We’re all in shock.

The Barbary, that refuge of all that was foul, was a ruin, her residents, in nightshirts or tuxedos or, most shockingly, nothing at all, drifting along the streets. I averted my eyes as Jameson gave his coat to one unfortunate man, who was naked as a jaybird and who only stared back blank-eyed and confused. Others sifted through the ruins calling after friends in this otherwise friendless place.

Jameson stopped suddenly in front of a pile of rubble, and I realized why. It was gone. The evil building where the girls were imprisoned was gone. The buildings to either side had collapsed as well. I sank to my knees in the rubble. There was no one else here; no one seemed to care about this place. No one searched for loved ones. Only Jameson and I had come looking.

And David. Where was David? I would not picture him buried in this. My mind could not comprehend it.

Jameson clambered over the piles of bricks and broken timbers. After a moment he called out, “Kula, here!” I gathered myself up and ran to him, to the girl he found.

She lay pocketed beneath a timber that had collapsed over her and sheltered her from the crush. Jameson and I had to work at the rubble to dig her out. She was conscious, with scrapes along her thin arms and legs that the scrap of clothing she wore barely covered. She was so small. Her hand fit fully in mine.