The Virgin Cure

by Ami McKay

  Without Nestor’s knowledge, I took something else from Mrs. Wentworth’s dressing room. He may well have supported me if I’d asked, but I wanted the thing so badly I didn’t dare risk his refusal. Fastening Mrs. Wentworth’s fan to a ribbon around my neck, I slid it under the collar of my dress and let it rest between my breasts. Whether I’d choose to sell it or keep it remained to be seen, but at least I could be sure it would never again be used for cruelty.

  “Won’t she come after me?” I asked Nestor, after we’d left the house. I was worried that even if I got away, Mrs. Wentworth would rage down to Chrystie Street and force me to return.

  “She’ll complain bitterly. She’ll say good help is hard to find and that charity is a useless endeavour best left to clergymen and nuns, but rest assured, by the day’s end she’ll have another girl to take your place.”

  Closing my eyes, I wished the girl well, whoever she might be.

  Nestor pointed to a horse and cart waiting down the street. “It’s not Mrs. Wentworth’s carriage,” he said apologetically. “The driver she’s been using isn’t a steady enough fellow for me. I don’t trust him.”

  For a moment I thought that this would be our goodbye, but Nestor walked me to where the wagon stood. After a brief conversation with the man who owned the cart, he helped me to the driver’s seat and then hopped up and settled beside me, taking hold of the reins.

  “Mr. Gideon Hawkes … now there’s a good man,” Nestor said, snapping the reins to start the horse moving and then nodding to the gentleman who was now walking away. “He delivers every kind of household item you can imagine in this rig—precious cargo mostly, statues, paintings, porcelain vases taller than you. He’s offered me a share in the business when I’m ready—Hawkes and Coates, movers, at your service.” Smiling at me, he asked, “How’s that sound to your ears?”

  The houses were dark, the street almost empty. The only light came from street lamps that flickered along the sidewalk. Although I’d only been there a month, it seemed a lifetime since I’d been out in the air, outside the walls of that wretched house. Steam rose off the pavers—they’d seen rain within the hour. Leaves, wet and turning in the crease of the curb, heralded the arrival of autumn.

  “Second Avenue will take us there,” I told Nestor after he’d inquired as to the best way to get me home. As we approached Miss Keteltas’ house, I asked him to go slow so I could look into the shadows of her garden. Even though I couldn’t see much, I imagined her birds at the window, singing to me, inviting me to crawl through the fence once more.

  A shiver went through me as the cart’s wheels chattered over Houston Street. A group of men crossed in front of us, swaying this way and that, leaning on one another as they walked. I was sure they’d come from the Bowery, howling their way from dance hall to brothel to home. There were fires in barrels on the curbs. Boys and men crowded around them, their faces lit up with sparks and the glow of the flames. Two youths were picking up dried clods of horse dung in the street and pitching them at a barrel to feed their fire.

  Then I could feel the wheels of the cart gumming up with Chrystie Street muck. Beggars and children were sleeping on steps, or huddled in storefronts. Lamps and candles lit up windows here and there, crooked panes of glass with red shades drawn. I rubbed my hands together and breathed warm air into them, my belly twisting.

  Mama was sure to be angry with me. I only hoped she’d listen long enough for me to explain the reasons for my departure and to tell her that I’d found a better way for the both of us.

  It had occurred to me, while picking through Mrs. Wentworth’s jewellery, that my actions, so long as they remained undiscovered, might be the start of something much bigger. The idea that I could get away with thievery (countless times perhaps) thrilled me to no end. My success at stealing would be my defence against the anger Mama was bound to show me. Stealing, I would argue, was the remedy for all our troubles.

  She’ll come around, I thought as the cart came ever closer to her door. I just have to get her to listen.

  Mrs. Devlin James, I would begin. You’ll be like Mrs. Devlin James, Mama.

  Mrs. James lived over on Orchard Street and visited Mama from time to time to discuss matters of the heart. She had been married to Mr. Devlin James (a.k.a. Patrick Silver, a.k.a. Patrick Gold, a.k.a. Patrick Dymond, et cetera). The couple, unremarkable in their lives (he swept the streetcar tracks and hoisted bricks for masons; she made paper bags, folding the brown sheets, one, two, three, and creasing them with sticky, smelly glue), carried on much like everyone else, until the day Mr. James decided that he was going to make the most of the war.

  The Union had kindly provided a way out for men who did not wish to serve. For the sum of three hundred dollars, a gentleman could be freed from his duty. The only catch was he also had to provide a substitute to take his place. As the war dragged on, bounties for substitutes soared, often reaching as high as a thousand dollars or more. Agencies specializing in the brokerage of such agreements set up shop throughout the city and across the whole of the North. Every other block soon boasted a substitute broker, a tin-type dealer, and an embalming service, all for the sake of the soldier.

  One morning in the spring of 1863, Mr. James kissed his wife goodbye and walked into one such office on Third Avenue. He signed the paper with an X, a document which promised him “sufficient consideration” for his service. He sent the bounty home to Mrs. James, who promptly stuffed the money inside her mattress. Over the course of the next six months, Mr. James repeated this same process several times over, slipping away before reaching the front line, disappearing from telegraph-line repair duty, getting captured by and escaping the enemy—while Mrs. James waited patiently at home.

  Then, during one of Mr. James’ self-appointed furloughs in the city, he chose to visit a woman on Mott Street rather than going straight home to his wife. Mrs. James, in her scorn, became something of a patriot, and did not hesitate to turn her husband in for bounty jumping. “I know a man,” she announced to a policeman stationed at General Dix’s office, “who has deserted his country and his wife several times over.” Two weeks later her husband was executed by firing squad at Governor’s Island.

  After crying over his body and making arrangements for his remains, Mrs. James took her mattress, moved to Ohio and changed her name. Within a year, she had become Mrs. Frederick C. Mills. Not long after, she sent Mama a letter to say that Mr. Mills had bought her a three-storey house with a mansard roof in a town called Cincinnati.

  “I’ll do all the work,” I’d promise her. “I’ll take on whatever position you find for me. You can sell me away as many times as you like.” I imagined myself coming home again and again with whatever I could get my hands on—silver, jewels, money, gold. All Mama would have to do was sit on her mattress and wait. If anything went wrong, there was always Ohio.

  “It’s just up there,” I said to Nestor. “You can let me off any time.”

  The horse’s ears were turning, catching my words and then letting them go again. The leather straps in Nestor’s hands gently moved up and down with the horse’s gait.

  “All right then,” he said, looking at me with concern. “I’ll stop at the corner and wait until you get inside.”

  “You can’t,” I told him. “The boys here don’t sleep. They’ll swarm the wagon if they see the quality of your clothes. They’ll take your hat and tear off your coat. They’ll cut the straps on the horse and take her too.”

  “I have to see you safe,” Nestor argued.

  “Circle around if you must, but don’t wait for me,” I said. “You needn’t worry. I’ve got somewhere to go if she won’t take me back.”

  Nestor nodded, giving a gentle tug at the reins. The horse let out a snort.

  “Be well, Miss Fenwick,” he said, reaching out to touch my hand.

  I wondered for a moment if I was making a mistake. “Will she be different when Mr. Wentworth comes home?” I asked. “Would things have gotten any bette
r?”

  “No, my dear, they would’ve gotten worse.”

  Leaving him was more difficult than I’d imagined. My cheeks burned and my throat swelled with not knowing what to say. I hoped that he’d be at least a little bit lonely without me.

  Jumping from the cart, I landed square on the street.

  “My name’s Moth,” I told him, not waiting for him to say anything more.

  Someone I hold in great esteem would one day explain to me that Nestor’s actions (although meant to save me) were just as criminal as Mrs. Wentworth’s.

  His motives were not pure (enough).

  True.

  He asked you to commit a crime.

  True.

  He allowed harm to come to you in order to serve his needs.

  Perhaps.

  September 25, 1871

  The New York Infirmary

  for Indigent Women and Children

  128 Second Avenue, New York, New York.

  They are everywhere I look—girl after girl left behind by their mothers, their families, and society.

  Mandy Clarke, sixteen years old, looking as aged and tired as a Fulton Street whore, sores and chancres covering every inch of her body.

  Penny Giles, thirteen years old, ruined by her uncle.

  Fran Tasch, nineteen, her face badly burned by the carbolic she drank to end her life.

  Girl Unknown, approximately nineteen to twenty-five years of age, her corpse found stuffed inside a trunk at the Chambers Street station. Her death was caused by an abortion gone wrong.

  These were just the girls I saw today.

  S.F.

  I tried the latch but found it bolted. I knocked, first quietly rapping at the door, then pounding hard with my fist.

  “Mama?” I called, but there was no answer.

  I called again, this time louder, figuring she must’ve tipped back too much Dr. Godfrey’s before bed. “Mama, are you there?”

  When the door finally came open, the face that greeted me wasn’t hers. A stranger stood in her place, a fair-haired woman holding a lamp, her cheeks lined with sleep. She wore a black-fringed shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders just like Mama’s.

  “I’m looking for my mother,” I told the woman as I tried to see past her into the front room.

  She scowled at me and said, “You a beggar—go away.”

  Her voice was throaty and mean, as if she meant for the words to stick in my ears. She was, like so many of the women in this part of the city, filled with distrust. The language of her homeland had not been welcomed by strangers. A-mer-i-ca had turned out to be a false friend.

  Mama still had her mother’s tongue locked up inside her head, but refused to use it. Every so often I’d catch her whispering strings of unknown words to a dress or skirt she was mending. They sounded tender and haunting to me, like someone telling a secret.

  “Teach me to speak like that,” I’d said one night, settling down next to her while she was sewing.

  “No,” she said, biting thread between her teeth.

  “Don’t you miss having someone to talk to?” I asked.

  “Let me be lonely, Moth,” she answered. “You don’t need to learn more words for sorrow.”

  As the woman moved to close the door, I stepped forward to stop her. “Please,” I said, quickly pointing to Mama’s fortune-telling sign still sitting in the window. “Do you know where she is?”

  “Gypsy of Chrystie Street,” the woman said, nodding as if she’d understood.

  I could hear the wheels of Nestor’s cart behind me in the street. He whistled to the horse to pick up her pace, and drove on. I hoped he could see that I wasn’t in the clear and that he’d choose to keep circling for a bit longer.

  “The Gyspy is my mother,” I said to the woman. “Where has she gone?”

  The woman shook her head and frowned. Motioning to the sign and then to herself she said, “Fortune teller—that’s me.”

  A man’s voice echoed from the dark of the backroom. “Lottie,” he grumbled. “Come to bed!”

  She pushed me out to the step. “No Mama here,” she insisted, and shut the door.

  I looked around, wondering if I’d forgotten where I’d lived. Perhaps Mama had been right all along about the dangers of not keeping track of my hair.

  Standing on the curb, I waited on Nestor for as long as I thought safe, but he was gone. He must have thought the woman on the doorstep was my mother and that all had ended well. The streetlight closest to Mama’s door was just the same as when I’d left—glass cracked on two sides, the post leaning as if it were too tired to stand straight. In its faint glow, I saw that Chrystie Street, too, was just as it had always been—dark and hungry, waiting to devour the weak.

  I picked up a piece of broken brick from a pile of rubble and hid it in the palm of my hand.

  Head up, eyes ahead, move fast, don’t run.

  “She’s gone, dear,” Mrs. Riordan explained after she’d let me through her door. “You didn’t get word?”

  “No.” I sat down on the wobbly stool she’d offered me. The death notices of a hundred paupers came to mind. No one has come forward to claim the body and it is probable she will be buried in Potter’s Field. The back page of the Evening Star was never without them. “Was she sick? Did someone hurt her?” I tried to push away the thought that Mama had come to a terrible end.

  Mrs. Riordan took my hand. “Oh, no, dear child,” she sighed. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just she left Chrystie Street some time ago and I don’t know where she’s got to.”

  After I’d gone, Mama had strutted around for a week, bragging about the fine lady who’d taken me into her house with too many rooms to count. And then she’d disappeared. Her place was nearly empty when Mr. Cowan came to call, nothing in the rooms to speak of except an old frying pan sitting on the rusted stove. It was clear she’d planned to go.

  “He wasn’t too pleased, as you can well imagine. He claimed your mother robbed him blind, that she hadn’t paid rent since July. Make sure you watch for him when you’re about. He’ll take what she owes him out of your hide if he can catch you.”

  Staring at me with sympathy, Mrs. Riordan asked, “Have you any place to stay?”

  “No,” I replied. I had no one in the world but myself.

  “Then you’ll stay here with me,” she said. “There’s not much room, I know, but it’s a place to rest your head. Get a proper night’s sleep and in the morning you can begin again.”

  Mrs. Riordan’s house was nothing more than a shack—one in a row of makeshift shelters that had been tacked on to the back of the tenements. Mostly let by immigrants fresh off the boat, they were an easy way for landlords to make fast cash. People got out of them as quickly as they could, moving to a spot on the floor of a distant cousin or friend—a place with proper walls and perhaps even a window or two. Poor Mrs. Riordan had travelled in the opposite direction. Her status had slipped away bit by bit, until this shack, crumbling and sad, was all that remained between her and the street.

  “I’ll take the wall side, dear,” she said, pulling back the tattered quilt covering her bed.

  I curled up next to her, unsure of our closeness, but thankful to have a place to sleep. She smelled of fish and smoke, and every time she exhaled there was the slightest hint of turning milk in the air.

  As I tried to settle down, I heard the twitchy pinch-pinch-pinch of rats in the wall. Mama always said that rats would eat anything, including the fingers and toes right off a person’s body while they were sleeping.

  In a single year, a female rat can produce two-hundred-and-eighty-five offspring. The best rat-catchers in New York are revered for their talents. At dawn, they rise like tricksters from beneath the finest hotels, twirling their bags with deft wrists, carrying hundreds of squirming rodents.

  I’d brought home a stray cat once, thinking it would help keep the rats away. He was sleek and black, with ears so thin they looked like bat’s wings. I called him Soot. I name
d him before I caught him because I thought if he had a name, he’d be more likely to stay in one place. Mama scolded me as soon as she saw him and then she threw him out the door. “Shame on you, Moth,” she complained. “You know proper Gypsies don’t keep cats.”

  Whenever she heard a rat in our rooms, she’d stomp around the place with a broom, banging the end of the handle on the walls, floors and ceilings. Then she’d pass the rest of the night in fits and starts, bolting up in bed and saying, “Ssst. Did you hear that? Damn rat. Oh, Moth, did you hear it?” I would lie next to her, listening hard, fighting to keep my eyes open. I hoped that if a rat did try to eat me, I’d be strong enough to beat the hungry, chattering thing to death.

  There was a rat inside Mrs. Riordan’s mattress, moving underneath me. I felt it come up through a hole at the end of the bed, slither past my ankle and tug at the hem of my dress. Not wanting to startle my host, I grabbed hold of my skirt and shook it, desperate to scare the rodent away.

  “Shh, child, don’t be afraid,” Mrs. Riordan cooed in the dark. “They’ll settle down soon enough. You’ll see. They’re sweet, like children. The more you don’t want them around, the more they wish to be near you.”

  I gave up trying to sleep. I lay there in the dark trying to figure out why Mama had gone. Before she’d sent me away, she’d grown devoted to staying put, sometimes not leaving the house for days. She’d sat in her chair by the window, talking through memories of her youth and of travelling with her father’s medicine show, of horses pulling beautiful caravans and days spent rafting along rivers from place to place, stopping to camp when the moon was full. That life had sounded better to me than any other I could imagine—even the one where our rooms and clothes and Chrystie Street were new again and my father had never gone away. “Let’s go to the river tonight, Mama,” I’d begged. “We’ll find the Gypsies and go with them. I won’t be any trouble, I promise.”