Karen Memory (11 page)

After that night, it all got real quiet for a fortnight or so, so’s I weren’t sure whether to be apprehensive about it or grateful. We didn’t hear much else from Marshal Reeves or from Sergeant Waterson, though each one came by once or twice to check on us. We took up a collection for the dead girl—nobody would admit to knowing her name—and got her buried decent, at least. When the constables were finished with her.

The world, I thought, had finished with her firsthand.

Priya settled in right smart and got into the habit of coming out to sit in the library with us girls and read by the fire when the tricks had gone home. By the sixth day, she was helping Merry Lee come downstairs, and Merry sat with us all, too. She was wobbly, sure, but she was standing—and Priya got strong quick, once we started feeding her regular.

I remarked on it to Miss Francina, and Miss Francina gave me a funny kind of look—not sad, but not not-sad, neither—and said, “They’re young yet, Karen.”

Nobody suggested it was time Merry got on home. In faith, she weren’t ready—I didn’t imagine she could climb a ladder yet if her life depended on it, and she sure couldn’t do it without tearing her wounds open again. And she couldn’t do for herself yet, either—though by the end of the fortnight Miss Lizzie had her stitches out and she was healing up right sharp. Anyway, none of us was certain she had a home. We didn’t ask, and she didn’t offer much.

But she was a sister, or she had been; and she risked her life helping women who … well, there but for the grace of God went every one of us in that room. Both of ’em—Merry and Priya—took their turns with the books, too. Since it turned out Priya could read, though not as good as me—not in English, anyway. It turned out she could read Chinese just fine and I guessed probably her own language. She had a knack for tongues, like, and could read a sentence in Chinese and speak it out in English fast as anything.

Merry Lee, though, did the voices and everything. Different accents. She could sound as American as me if she wanted. Or as French as Bea. She said that after she’d escaped the cribs the next place she’d had to escape was the Education House of the Women’s Christian Anti-Prostitution and Soiled Dove Rescue League. Which was maybe better than the cribs, but it were an Improving Workhouse, no mistake. And I’d heard the only way a girl left
there
was if she could find a Christian man the matrons approved of to marry her—and how many Chinese men are Christians, I ask you?

Anyway, I got the idea pretty quick that Merry Lee was prone to disguise herself. As part of her chosen work, like.

I think she figured I figured. But we held a conspiracy of smiling silence and I don’t think anybody else caught on. In two days’ time, she was in demand to do readings every evening after supper. And we all gathered around to hear her, too.

One night the book she had was a dime novel called
Deadwood Dick Defiant!,
brand-new and already yellowing. It was about Calamity Jane, who was a favorite in our house. Some would say she was nothing but a camp follower, just another new-state whore. But she could ride and rope with any man, shoot better than all of ’em, and she was a hero to us.

The way I saw it, nobody thought the worse of a man who followed his pecker anywhere it sniffed, like a droopy-faced hound dog led on by his nose. So why a woman did the same should be judged different … well, women always is.

Judged different, I mean.

Anyway, Merry Lee was reading on about something Jane had done or was supposed to have done the year previous:

“In the spring of 1877, Calamity Jane was riding her sorrel pony out on the range between Cheyenne and Crook City. She spotted a roil of dust on the horizon and rode hard to investigate.

“Before long, she caught sight of the Cheyenne to Deadwood stage, running flat out with horses lathered and a band of Indians in hot pursuit. The driver was nowhere in sight, the stage horses starting to slow with their reins flapping wild. She reined her sorrel alongside and spotted the driver, facedown in a pool of blood in the boot of the stage, an Indian arrow between his shoulder blades!

“Calamity Jane knew she could waste no time! She jumped up on the saddle of her running sorrel, standing on the horse’s back like an Indian herself. In a hail of arrows and bullets, she leaped across the gap to the stage. Swinging wildly from the rail, she got her foot on the step. Her hat blew back on its laces as she caught the reins of the stagecoach four, found the whip, and urged them on.

“Her rifle was still in the sorrel’s saddle holster. One of the six passengers climbed up the rattling, swaying exterior of the stage to take the reins, and Jane managed to lean out and retrieve the Winchester at risk of her own skin. A bullet creased the running sorrel’s shoulder so close that blood spattered Jane’s shirt cuff.

“Having retrieved the rifle, she mounted it to her shoulder and from the jouncing seat of the stage, returned fire against the galloping, whooping band of Indians. They fell away, and then under Calamity Jane’s care, the stage and its passengers made it safely into Deadwood.

“The driver survived.”

Merry turned the page and held up the book so we could all see the engraving of the woman on the next page. She leaned back on a bench with one foot kicked up, flourishing a Winchester rifle. She wore buckskin chaps, a fringed coat, an open-creased hat, and a good white neckerchief folded well. I liked her scowl and I liked her freedom to wear it.

Martha Jane Canary,
it read underneath.
“Calamity Jane.”

Priya bounced on the edge of her cushion, as pleased as a pup with two tails. “I want to be like her!”

“She drinks, they say,” Miss Bethel said, but kindly.

Miss Francina snorted. “A woman in the West? You show me one who doesn’t drink, and I’ll show you one that wants to.”

*   *   *

Well, as I was saying, Priya settled in right quick, and half the time I’d come down to breakfast to find her in the parlor with Miss Lizzie, taking apart that Singer sewing machine. With all her other smarts, she had a knack for mechanicals, too. Sometimes they had to race to get the thing put back together before the trade showed up, and I know once or twice there were pieces that got left off for a day or two when they ran short of time—because in
my
spare time I was sewing.

I didn’t tell her what I was sewing on or that it was for her, but I spent all day Sunday on that patchwork coverlid, a wedding ring pattern in orange and red, and with the machines and all it was finished by suppertime. Even quilted. I got to use the big machine for the quilting, stitching spirals with my right hand and measuring with my left. It was easier inside the frame, because the machine did all the measuring and math for you and kept the circles even and whatever they’d done to it made it work smoother even with the thick layers of fabric. I filled the quilt with wool bat instead of cotton, too. Priya being so skinny, I reckoned she wouldn’t mind the extra warmth.

I found some grosgrain ribbon I’d bought to make over an old dress and never gotten around to using and folded the quilt up, then tied it into a fancy package—pretty as you’ve ever seen. I didn’t want to embarrass Priya or make her feel beholden by giving her things in front of others—and also I was a little shy. So after dinner, but before we all gathered in the library, I tracked Priya down in the pantry where she was inventorying flour and cornmeal and suchlike, and I brought it to her.

I must of crept up behind her softer than I meant to, because when I rapped on the open door with my knuckles she about jumped out of her skin and left it straggled out on the boards. She squeaked and pirouetted, arms crossed over her apron.

It threw me off my stride, I don’t mind saying. I stood there gawping at her while she skipped and stared like a startled filly. You could have used her pupils for stove lids.

“Careful, now,” I told her. “It’s just me.”

Slowly, pretending I didn’t notice her chest heaving up and down, I held out the coverlid all packaged up with its bright blue ribbon. Even folded up, it was colorful and pretty. I’d picked the brightest scraps from the ragbag, greens and pinks and purples and reds in addition to the oranges. It mightn’t match much else—it didn’t match itself, in point of fact, though I loved the way the green and the vermilion played off each other on that one patch—but it was a gaudy great, wonderful pile of cloth.

Priya kept her hands at her sides and caught her breath as she looked at it. “That’s beautiful.”

“It’s for you,” I said. I bounced my hands a little. The quilt was getting heavy. “You’re supposed to take it now.”

“Oh!” Her eyes couldn’t possibly have gotten bigger, but they seemed to. She put her hands on her mouth instead of reaching out. “I can’t—”

“You’d better,” I said. “I got no use for it.”

“But the rug—and—”

“I like taking care of my friends,” I told her. I took a step forward, and she didn’t move back. “This isn’t getting any lighter, you know.”

“Oh!”

Priya didn’t so much reach for the quilt as let me put it in her hands when they came down again. But once she had it, she clutched it like the mane of a bucking horse. Her hands made little fists on the fabric. “Karen, I—this is too nice.”

“So you do something for me someday,” I answered. “Friends don’t keep score.”

Because friends don’t have to keep score, my da would of said. Friends just pitch in as needed, as they can.

Thinking that made me notice something else. To wit: she was wearing the same clothes she’d had on since she got here, the cuffed-up trousers and shirt, and they were all starting to get a bit dingy. She’d washed them, I knowed—we all had a hell of a laundry day once a week, boiling big vats of water with lye soap in Connie’s kitchen for all the underthings and the linens tough enough to take more than airing and brushing. Shifts and bloomers and Crispin’s shirts and suchlike. But I knowed Priya’d borrowed a shift from Beatrice to wear while her shirt was being boiled. And that she didn’t have much else.

“Tomorrow,” I said, “we’re going shopping. If you’re going to wear trousers, they’re going to be trousers that fit. And you need shoes before winter gets worse, and more than one shirt and one pair of skivvies.”

“I haven’t saved the money yet,” she said.

“We’ll buy cloth. I’ll loan you for it. You can pay me back in cash or chores, your option.”

“I don’t sew that well—”

I waved at the coverlid. “I do. We’ll get you ragged up proper in no time at all.”

The look on her face was the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen. She just stood there, canisters of flour and meal on the counter all behind her, hugging that quilt like a cat with only one kitten. I was afraid she was going to cry, and I was afraid I was going to beat her there.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll get up early.”

*   *   *

Early, in this case, was before noon. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find Priya when the time came to go—I’d already learned she had tricks for making things she didn’t want to happen not stand a chance of happening without putting up no kind of a fight. But I woke up instead with her bouncing on my bed like a puppy. Connie was just putting the bread she’d risen overnight in the ovens, but there was some stale from the day before, and she dipped it in egg and fried it in dripping for us so there was something to eat for breakfast.

We gobbled it up, and I wish now I’d been more mindful of my gratitude. Connie had a way of doing such—putting herself out to make things a little easier for all while being so quiet about it you never think to stop and appreciate the kindness. But I was too wrapped up in Priya to pay proper attention. Mama would of been ashamed.

I’d noticed Priya didn’t eat beef or pork by itself—she’d eat around it, not making any fuss—but it seemed more of a philosophical objection than a physiological one. Which was for the good, because ten out of every eight things Connie cooks is fried in dripping.

In return for the early breakfast, Connie gave me a shopping list of her own. “And this time, try not to pre-chop the onions.”

I could feel Priya watching. When I looked at her, she gave me a flicker of a smile. I wondered if she was figuring out how, in this house, we lived together mostly by doing one another favors. I mean, I know there’s houses where it’s every girl for herself, and constant knives in the back. But Madame won’t cotton to that, and any girl who tries to import that sort of behavior and don’t take a warning or two winds up plying her trade elsewhere. Madame’s even less keen on mean than she is on drunk. She might
forgive
a girl who miscalculates how much liquor she can hold, as long as she don’t do it regular.

I loaned Priya a pair of my boots and three sets of socks to keep ’em on her feet. It weren’t perfect, but it was better than nothing. Then we checked the barometer, which was uncharacteristically heartening, and I flipped open the morning paper to check the Mad Science Report. No experiments were scheduled, and no duels had been announced—at least among the Licensed Scientists—but you never knowed when a giant automaton was going to run rogue unscheduled. Mostly the city makes the inventors keep to the edge of town. Mostly. And there’s always those as won’t pay the licensing taxes, and while that’s illegal, it’s hard to track them.

So I guess what I’m saying is that both looked fair for now, but both was always subject to change without notice.

Blinking in the unaccustomed sun and with Crispin for an honor guard and to help haul dry goods up and down the ladders, we set out with baskets and sacks to get some marketing done.

First I took Priya down Threadneedly, in and out of shops that sold gingham and muslin and wool. We had to walk the long way around to get there, as two big construction armatures had the Deucy Street sidewalks blocked off. They was doing the work of six steam shovels, each lifting a block of granite the size of a boxcar into place to shore up one of the raised street walls, and we all stopped to gawk for a minute. They was like the sewing machine’s much, much, much bigger cousins, and you could hardly see the operators embedded inside the framework of the big things’ chests. One operator must of caught us looking, and the hue of my primrose day dress, because once the rock was placed he began cavorting in his armature, making curled arms like I was supposed to fly up there and feel his big machine’s hydraulic biceps.