Heart of a Dove (2 page)

Betsy snorted again, then laughed. She advised, “Don’t you be repeating that, girl.”

Deirdre giggled, moving behind Betsy to fetch a box from the hutch. She extracted a skinny black cigar, lit it with a match, and braced her elbow on the opposite hand to smoke as she continued to watch my bath. She said, “Lila isn’t simple, Bets, she wouldn’t repeat such a thing. You see,” and she lowered her voice a touch, “Ginny is addicted to the pipe.” Upon seeing my confusion, she exhaled a cloud of smoke and explained, “Opium. She’ll do near anything to get it. Makes her crazy.”

“And mean as a boar,” Betsy added. “There, girl, you’re clean.”

I rose, gingerly, and Betsy wrapped me in a thick towel, saying, “Now, go with Deirdre and get dressed.”

“Blue, I think,” Deirdre said, back in my room. She was still clad in her yellow dressing gown, which gaped open a few inches, though she seemed unaware as she stood before me, untangling my hair with an ivory comb. I looked at her skin, bared before my eyes; her own breasts were small and firm, her belly white as a dusting of snow, and as smooth. She drew the long hair over my shoulders and twined its length into curls, saying, “Let’s put up the sides and keep some trailing over your neck. Lord, you’re a lovely sight. Has a boy ever tried to kiss you, hold your hand?”

Most of the boys I’d ever known had been killed in the past years of war. I shook my head, feeling detached from myself, as though I hovered above our bodies, watching silent as a ghost near the ceiling. Downstairs, on the main floor, someone was tinkling a piano’s keys; there was a sense of an evening just about to get rolling below. I prayed that I would live through what was expected of me. She caught my face between her hands and surprised me by placing a kiss on my forehead.

“I am grieved that your first time will be this way,” she said, drawing back to look into my eyes. “It’s not right. You should be married to a good man and he should have this gift.” The expression upon her face was so sorrowful for an instant that my heart seized, but she eased back, resuming her ministrations.

Within another hour, she had applied rice powder to my face and lined my upper eyelids with a slender stick of black kohl similar to the one Mama had used upon herself when I was a girl. She tinted my lips and cheeks with a small porcelain pot of rose-colored stain and then licked her index finger and combed over my lashes. My hair was twisted high upon my head, but for the long curls that Deirdre had left hanging over my shoulders. I’d been tucked into a borrowed gown unlike any I’d ever known; the word ‘gown’ was rather misleading, as it covered little of my flesh. It was laced snugly about my waist and scooped my breasts high, a slippery indigo satin with black over-lace; the skirt was gauzy and just reached my knees. I wore no bloomers, no undergarments, and felt absurdly exposed, too vulnerable to contemplate. My legs were clad in black stockings that buttoned to a slim belt beneath my skirt, my feet in soft velvet slippers.

“These are much easier to get on and off than boots with lacings,” Deirdre explained. As she’d worked, more than one curious face had popped into my room; other women who worked for Ginny, and whose names were lost in the frightened swirl of my thoughts. Ginny herself appeared as Deirdre was adjusting my hair one last time; at the sight of Ginny, Deirdre straightened and said, “I’ll return for you, Lila.”

Left alone with my employer, I willed myself to continue breathing. Ginny entered the room, lit now by two lanterns in addition to the fading sun, and perused me yet again, one finger tapping her painted lips. She said, “You’ll do. You’ll do just fine, Lila. I’ve quite a crowd assembled below, and I trust you’ll play your part. Am I right?”

I nodded instantly, my hands pressed flat to the unfamiliar material over my stomach. I hadn’t been able to eat a bite, nor so much as sip water, fearful of vomiting.

“Good, stay up here until I announce you. Half an hour or so,” she ordered, and then disappeared, her heels clicking over the floorboards.

Deirdre poked her head in a quarter hour later, her face painted and dressed so gaudily I scarce recognized her. She said, “Show time, Lila.”

Trembling and terrified, I followed her down the hall.

Later, I would recall the moment as something from a nightmare, carnival sounds and garish sights nauseatingly amplified. The open staircase wound down into a bustle of activity that brought to my mind ants at spilled sugar. Men caroused everywhere, laughing, talking, drinking; some were seated at green, felt-topped tables, cards fanned before them. From above, the women circulating the rowdy crowd appeared as bright flowers among the dun-colored garb of most of the men. Here and there was a flash of Federal blue, startling me, though I well knew that those who had lived through the War and been discharged from service were allowed to keep their uniforms. St. Louis had been Federal-controlled for most of the fighting, though it mattered little now. Deirdre descended with practiced, seductive motions, the fingers of her right hand trailing lightly on the banister; she peeked over her shoulder at me and tipped her chin, indicating that I mimic her.

Ginny, from below, saw us descending and gestured to a man behind the bar, a huge, slope-shouldered man with a flat nose and a barrel-shaped chest. He lifted his hands and announced in a husking baritone, “Quiet!” and, as anticipated, a hush fell over the crowd.

Again I was stunned that the swirling eddies of guilt, shame and fear did not instantly smite me dead. Ginny spoke loudly into the stillness, as eyes lifted to watch us. And then murmurings followed, and a couple of low-pitched laughs.

“Gentlemen, let me introduce to you my newest gal, lovely Lila. Fresh as a peach, gentlemen, sweet as rainwater on a parched throat. Pure as Easter Sunday, fellas, if you take my meaning, and she goes to the highest bidder!”

A burst of noise then, as we reached the main floor. Men were shouting and caterwauling and calling, leaning over one another to gander at me. Deirdre led me through the crowd of leering faces, to the raised, wedge-shaped platform that jutted from a corner of the room and already contained the piano and the slim, red-haired man who was pounding music from its black and white keys. She led me up the single step, her long white arm extended gracefully, before turning me neatly to face the crowd; to my terror-dazed eyes, they appeared ready to consume me in one gulp.

“Look at that face!” Ginny was heralding from across the wide room. “Look at that sweetness, gentlemen. Who will give me twenty for her, twenty?”

The floor seemed to erupt with bidding. Ginny called out, “Twenty-five!”

“Thirty!”

“Thirty-five!”

Deirdre took my fingertips into her own, delicately, and lifted my right arm, turning me in a slow circle as though we were dancing. The candles in the swinging overhead chandeliers dazzled my eyes; I wished, fervently, that they would explode into flame and burn this entire place to the ground in one spectacular blaze of sin and shame. I spent a moment wondering where Jim Foster and his three children were, and if he regretted doing such a heinous thing to me. I hoped he did. I hoped he’d burn in hell.

“Do I hear forty, gentlemen, forty dollars? Nothing for such an angel, such a beauty!”

There were shouts and complaints, as the bidding rose too high for most. The saloon was surely bursting to capacity, the batwing swinging doors sprawled wide on their hinges to accommodate the growing crowd.

“I hear forty!” Ginny crowed. “Is there forty-five?”

My frantic eyes roved the crowd, attempting to discern which men were attached to which bids. There was a forty-five. I could hardly fathom anyone willing to spend such an amount.

And then a voice rose above the din, shouting in triumph, “Fifty dollars!”

There was a pocket of disbelieving silence before a roar rose above our heads. The man who’d bid this staggering amount was pushing his way through the crush of bodies, waving a leather pouch in the air. Ginny shouted, “Sold, for fifty dollars! To Buckley Hill!”

“He ain’t got that money!”

“He’s fulla horse shit, that one!”

“Hill! I’ll trade you right now, for the mare I got outside!”

More laughter and cursing and shouting. My eyes were locked upon the man I would be forced to take back upstairs to my room and…what I would have to do after that was too dreadful to contemplate. He was rangy and wiry, perhaps two score and then some, with skin as brown as saddle leather, dirty-brown hair scraped back from a slim face with scruffy eyebrows. Had I a knife, I would have sunk it into my own right eye, and all chances of heaven would be lost to me forever. Though at that moment, I was certain they were anyway. I had never been more repulsed or frightened in my entire life.

In the chaos, Deirdre leaned in close to my ear and whispered, “He’s a regular, not a bad sort. He won’t last long, honey, it’ll be over before you know it.”

“Come here, girl!” he said, using one leg to hoist himself upon the platform and then sweeping me up into his arms. I caught the sharp scents of him immediately, leather and sweat and whiskey. He turned to face the crowd, holding me in a grotesque parody of a bride on her wedding night. At the last moment Deirdre caught my hand and squeezed hard. I had a glimpse of her eyes before he stepped down and carried me through the crowd. And her eyes gave me resolve.

We all lived through it
, she’d said.

Trouble was, I didn’t want to live that long.

Upstairs, he kicked shut the door to my room and the sounds from the floor below were instantly muffled. I was breathing hard, with short, panicked breaths, though he didn’t seem to notice. He was grinning at me, breathing fast too, as though it had winded him to carry me up the ornate staircase.

“A virgin,” he muttered, and he swiped at his upper lip with the back of one hand, his eyes roving up and down my body. “Fancy that.”

I did not know if I was supposed to speak to him, address him in some way. I felt as though I would die, and had no words, if words were even expected. My heart was surely about to rip to pieces, my mind floundering for something solid around which to wrap its drowning fingers. He reached then and slid the black lace straps from my shoulders. I heard a whimpering sound coming from my throat, but again, he paid my state of mind little regard.

My father had not been a drinking man, though I’d lived long enough to know the sight of someone touched by liquor. And this man surely was, his eyes appearing watery and streaked with red, shadowed beneath. He licked his lips, tugging at the straps when they stuck near my elbows. I felt tears in my eyes and tried to blink them back as he succeeded in baring my body from the waist up. I could not quell basic instinct and my forearms rose and crossed instantly to cover my breasts.

He laughed then, as though amused by a child’s antics, catching my wrists and forcing them back down.

“Don’t be shy,” he insisted, keeping his fingers locked around me and guiding me to the bed. He pushed me down upon it; Betsy had indeed made it up at some point this afternoon, with linens and a rose-patterned spread. Two plump pillows with tasseled edges sat side by side near the brass headboard. He added, “I won’t hurt you none.”

Sobs were forcing themselves up my throat; I felt as though I may suffocate at any moment. He continued to tug at my dress, making strange sounds, grunting. He cursed when it refused to budge further, tipping his head as though confused, and then simply lifted my skirt, bunching it up past my waist. I was shaking now, unable to help it, my kneecaps jittering. And then his hand cupped the flesh between my legs and tears flooded my face, rolling over my temples as I bit my bottom lip to keep from sobbing. He plunged what felt like a finger within my body and said, “Damn if it ain’t the truth. You’re tight as a drum, girl.”

He eased back to his knees, and I covered my eyes with both fists, pressing hard. I sensed that he was lowering his breeches, and with my whole heart I did not want to see what this would expose. I was so cold; the shaking would never stop, I was certain, some part of my body would always tremble from this moment forth. I felt his fingers push at my knees then, spreading my legs, and his hand was cupping me again. He was still breathing hard, as though in concentration.

“Open up,” he muttered, and the breath left my lungs in a horrified rush as there was an imposition of flesh between my legs, pushing at me.

I reared to my elbows, my only thought to get away from him, from what he wanted, and was scrabbling backward on the bed. He said, “Dammit, get back here!” and caught me behind the knees, pulling my legs out from under me and shoving me onto the mattress.

“Please don’t,” I heard myself pleading, crying openly now, but he didn’t stop, bearing down upon me again, closer this time, his whiskey-tinted breath right at my nose. The pressing again, much more insistent, and he jerked his hips against me, hard. I would have screamed, if not for his leathery hand closing over my mouth to muffle any such sound. He drove into my body, both his hips and his hand pinning me to the mattress. I felt torn in two, certain that blood was spurting from between my legs and soaking the bedding.

It was over quickly. He plunged into me one last time and shuddered, groaning. And then he was standing beside the bed, looking down upon me. I dared to open my eyes and saw him squinting as though confused. He held his pants, his shirttails covering him to the thighs.

“You might thrust back next time,” he said, and I realized, too absurd to comprehend, that he was offering me advice. “I’ve had me a better ride on a mule, girl. Goddamn virgin.”

Perhaps a quarter hour had passed from the time he’d carried me here to this moment. I curled around myself, not caring what happened to me in the next quarter hour, as he hauled his pants back into place and then left me alone, still grumbling. But minutes later I heard clicking footfalls and the door to my room burst wide. I used the blanket on my bed as a shield to cover my half-naked body, though Ginny ripped it away, venom in her eyes as she glared at me.

“He wanted his money back, goddamn fool that he is,” she hissed. “Good thing I’d already collected and he knows better than to cross me!”