The Virgin Cure

by Ami McKay

  I tried to scream but nothing would come.

  From the other end of the alley came the shrill sound of a policeman’s whistle.

  Feeling Mr. Cowan’s grip go loose, I thrust my knee between his legs and ran.

  Many well-dressed and comely females whose ages range from fourteen to twenty-five years walk the streets of New York unattended by the other sex. They are Nymphes de Pave, or, as they are more commonly called, “Cruisers.” Dressed in the best style, they are smart, good looking, fairly educated, and predisposing in appearances. All strangers in our city would do well to keep a bright lookout for this class of girls. They are to our public street what sharks are to the ocean.

  —A Gentleman’s Guide to New York, 1871

  It wasn’t the police who saved me from Mr. Cowan, it was a girl.

  I nearly ran her over as I raced out of the alley, Mr. Cowan’s dog giving chase, barking the whole way. The girl’s sudden appearance caused me to trip on a crooked stone and fall.

  “Hey!” I heard the girl shout.

  Turning to look at her, I saw she’d put herself between me and the dog.

  The animal stopped cold and stared at her, its body tense, foamy drool stringing from its jowls.

  Hiking up her skirt, the girl kicked the dog square in the head. The animal yelped, tucked its tail between its legs and ran away.

  Dressed in a fashionable frock with matching wrap and hat, the girl was a strange sight for Chrystie Street, yet somehow familiar to me. Even from the ground, I couldn’t help but admire the buttery boots on her feet, and a skirt that boasted five rows of ruffles before reaching the hem. As I looked up at her, I recognized the rusty-red curls under the brim of her hat and her pale, freckled cheeks. She brought the Bowery and the scent of fresh-baked bread to mind, even though she wasn’t holding one of Mr. Mueller’s boxes in her hands.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, leaning over to help me up.

  As she did so, I spotted a shiny silver whistle dangling from a chain around her neck. It was shaped like a fox’s head, the hoop for the chain clenched in its snarling teeth.

  “I’m fine,” I answered, waving her hand away and getting to my feet on my own, afraid she might consider giving me a kick if I soiled the white kid gloves that fit tight to her fingers. Still shaken by what had happened with Mr. Cowan, I looked over my shoulder to see if he’d decided to pursue me.

  “He’s gone,” the girl said, giving me a knowing smile. “I saw him limp off the other way.”

  She’d saved me from my predicament, but I couldn’t guess why. No matter how grateful I was for what she’d done, I figured she wouldn’t want to be seen with me. “Thank you,” I replied as I turned to make my way up the street.

  Following close she said, “Wait—let me walk with you.”

  Her name was Mae O’Rourke, she was fifteen years old, and she’d come to the city from Patterson, New Jersey, by way of a marriage broker who’d claimed she had found the perfect gentleman for Mae to marry. “A doctor,” she said, jangling her whistle on its chain, twirling it one way and then the other around her finger. “A well-respected gentleman wanting a runaway for a wife—I should’ve known the woman was lying. The man didn’t mean to marry at all, or even keep a mistress. He just wanted a girl he could ruin and toss to the street.”

  “You got out of it, I guess?” I asked, desperately wanting to learn how she’d gone from being hoodwinked by a dishonest matchmaker to wearing fine clothes and carrying large boxes of baked goods.

  “I did indeed,” she said, grinning. “Our parting was much like your farewell to that gentleman in the alley.”

  I laughed at her remark in hopes that she might continue with her tale, but instead she asked me, “Have you got a name?”

  “It’s Moth,” I answered. I felt embarrassed by the thin, homely sound of my tongue hissing too long between my teeth.

  “How’d you get a name like that?”

  “My father gave it to me.”

  “Not your mother?”

  “She wasn’t for it.”

  Pulling a clump of peppermint drops from her pocket, Mae worked to break them apart, then handed me a piece to suck on before popping one into her mouth. Clacking the candy against her teeth, she said, “I know a place on the Bowery that serves the best oyster stew. Graff’s Oyster Bar—want to go there?”

  I had a nickel in the bottom of my pocket but I needed it to buy an apple from Mrs. Tobin. “I can’t,” I told her, looking to the ground. “I have somewhere I need to be.”

  She took me by the arm. “I’ll pay,” she said. “It’s the least I can do after all you’ve been through.”

  My dress was tattered from all the times I’d put my boot through the edge of the hem while climbing to the roof, and the passes I’d made at washing myself at courtyard pumps hadn’t made much of a difference to the filth that had taken up residence on my clothes and skin. I’d become so dirty I’d given up trying to keep clean. On the rare occasions I’d had extra money to spend, every shopkeeper I approached had turned me away before I got through their door. I knew Graff’s had a cellar where a rougher crowd gathered from lunch until midnight, but the one time I’d tried to get in, I hadn’t been welcome. “I’m sure they won’t take me,” I told Mae. “You’re bound to get looked over if I’m by your side.”

  “Nonsense,” she said as she began to steer me towards the eatery. “We’ll visit the stand and eat in the beer garden—no one will mind. I know one of the oyster stabbers there. I’ll tell him you’re with me.”

  The scent of roasted peanuts and steamed oysters wafting from nearby vendors’ carts nagged at my belly, making it impossible for me to refuse Mae’s invitation.

  By the time we got to Graff’s, the courtyard was busy with people milling about, mostly men who’d come to drink beer and play checkers. A few women were there as well, tending to small children or babies they’d brought out for a stroll.

  I recognized the gentleman standing in line in front of us as a regular. From the place where I sat at Mr. Mueller’s to do my nibbling each day, I’d watched the lanky, well-dressed gent come and go from Graff’s, his countenance always fairer after his belly was full. He’d sometimes dropped a penny at my feet on his way past the bakery door, but he’d never bothered to look me in the eye.

  “The usual, sir?” the oyster opener asked him when it was his turn at the stand.

  Pulling a shiny two-pronged fork from his pocket the gentleman flashed it at the stabber and said, “Yes, indeed.”

  “A dozen Blue Points, clear, coming right up,” the opener declared.

  The gentleman watched as the stabber began slinging oyster after oyster with his knife. “You’re the chief surgeon of stabbers, my friend,” he teased.

  Deftly plopping the half-shells in a basket, the stabber boasted cheerfully, “Straight from the bi-valvery institute …”

  The round-faced oyster man’s smile grew even broader when he saw Mae approach. I wondered exactly what she’d meant when she said she was friendly with him.

  “Two bowls of the best oyster stew outside of Dorlan’s,” Mae announced to the opener as we stepped up to his stand.

  “Best oyster stew anywhere,” the stabber replied. Ladling milky hot stew from a pot, he gently scolded Mae. “A pretty girl like you has no business being down by the river. When you want a belly full of oysters don’t you dare go to Dorlan’s. You come see me.”

  Mae winked at him and paid for the two steaming bowls of stew. Then she gave him another handful of pennies for a plate of beans and some crackers.

  “It’s all Shrewsburys in there, I’ll have you know,” he said, his cheeks pinking up with the touch of Mae’s gloved hand.

  “Little oysters are the sweetest and in every way better,” she replied.

  The oyster man took her money, returning her wink, and then gave me a terrible frown. For a few, all-too-easy moments, I’d forgotten my place on the Bowery. In an instant, the oyster man’s disappro
ving gaze brought me back down to where he thought I belonged.

  “She’s all right,” Mae told him, giving him a pout. “She’s with me.”

  Buckling to Mae’s appeal, he motioned for the two of us to go into the garden. “Go on, take a seat,” he said, waving us through. “I won’t charge you nothing for it.”

  It was a lovely day, with a gentle breeze and a sun so warm you’d almost think summer was trying to come back for an encore. An oompah band was playing away under a half-tent in the corner of the garden, the musicians’ cheeks puffed fat with every note. I walked beside Mae, forgetting the state of my dress and the oyster man’s stare. One look from her had made it easy to pretend life was perfect.

  As we settled ourselves at the end of a long table she asked, “How old are you, Moth?”

  “Twelve,” I said, reaching for my bowl of stew.

  “I would’ve guessed fourteen, maybe fifteen,” she said. “You seem much older than twelve.”

  Slurping a hunk of oyster down my throat, I croaked, “Thanks.”

  “Do you sleep on that roof every night?”

  “Most nights.”

  “You can’t go back there now, though,” she said. “Not after what happened.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  As it was, I rarely slept the night through on the roof. Tucked inside my barrel, I’d stay awake listening for voices and footsteps that came too near. I feared someone might give the barrel a shove and roll me off the edge of the building, or at the very least try to oust me from my spot. When I did manage to fall asleep, visions of Mrs. Wentworth haunted my dreams. She’d cackle and scream as she tried to strangle me with the ribbon that secured her fan around my neck. Gasping, I’d wake, crying out for Mama.

  “I know someone who can help you make a new start,” Mae said, pushing her bowl aside. “She’ll put you in new clothes, give you a place to stay—”

  The cut of her dress, the quality of her boots, the winning smile she’d given the oyster opener all pointed in one direction.

  “Are you a whore?” I whispered, interrupting her before she could finish.

  My question, blunt and awkward as it was, didn’t seem to bother her in the least. Tugging at the wrists of her gloves and pulling them taut, she looked me in the eyes and replied, “Almost.”

  Mae confided that after she’d gotten out of the situation with the false marriage broker, she’d called on the only person she knew in the city, a young woman named Miss Rose Duval. Also from Patterson, New Jersey, Miss Duval was a distant cousin of Mae’s who had once shown promise as a stage actress, but through a chain of unforeseen events wound up a whore instead.

  In 1871, under common law, the age of consent was ten years of age. (In Delaware it was seven.)

  The young girls of New York understood (for better or for worse) the value of declaring themselves to be of a palatable age to gentlemen. Twelve sounded far too young to the ears of any man with a conscience or heart. Sixteen, even when uttered by honest lips, inevitably brought the girl’s purity into question.

  Of the years left between, fifteen was declared to be the ideal number.

  “I didn’t know any of it until I saw her again,” Mae said. “Even her mother had no inkling she’d become a belle of the boudoir rather than a star of the stage.”

  Mae had begged Rose to help her, explaining that she had her reasons for not returning home, the greatest of which was the terrible beating she’d get from her father if she dared to show her face again at his door. Seeing Mae’s distress, Rose promised to find a way to assist her.

  “He’s not my real father,” Mae said, after noticing the concerned look on my face. “He’s just the man my mother married after Papa didn’t come back from the war. He loves her and hates me. It’s as simple as that.”

  I knew when it came to love or bruises, nothing was ever simple. Still, I chose not to press Mae to talk further about her family. I didn’t want her asking after mine, and her past wasn’t nearly as important to me as the fact that she was now a girl-in-training at a first-class brothel on Houston Street.

  “There’s whores and then there’s near-whores,” Mae said, as we walked together up the Bowery. “And only the best madams in the finest brothels know how to make something out of the difference between the two.”

  Motioning to the stoop of a clean, modest-looking house just ahead of us, she said, “You wait here. I’ll go in and get Miss Everett to come meet you.”

  “All right,” I replied, taking a spot halfway up the steps.

  “Oh, and remember,” Mae added, turning back. “You’re fifteen years of age—fourteen if she doesn’t believe you.” Then she opened the door and disappeared inside the house.

  The bevelled glass in the door reminded me of the entrance to Mrs. Wentworth’s, and although Mae had seemed honest enough to me, it was hard to shake the memory of being caught in a situation with no way out. I thought of Eliza Adler, her body floating in the river. I stuck my hand in my pocket to feel for my knife. If I die today, at least I’ll go with a full belly.

  Mrs. Riordan had often reminisced about her childhood, saying, “We was poor, but we didn’t know it.” But she’d had a family and a mother who’d bothered to care for her—she’d had love. I hated being poor. Mama never did anything to make our life seem better than it was. She’d spend her days making something out of nothing for everyone else, but when it came to inventing happiness for me, it was too much trouble. I won’t be like you, Mama. I won’t fade away.

  Laughter came from the other side of the door along with the voices of at least three young women. Although I couldn’t make out much of what they were saying, I could tell they were having a high time teasing each other. “It’s true!” one of them exclaimed, amid more fits of laughter. I was all but certain it was Mae.

  Over our stew, she’d told me a fair bit about the matron of the house, Miss Emma Everett. Mae had explained that she knew of any number of madams across the city who’d be glad to take me on, but that none of them cared about their girls half as much as Miss Everett did hers. “Those other women only care for profit,” Mae said with an air of disgust. “They allow men to line up halfway around the block and wear out their girls’ bodies just so they can fill their pockets with more cash.

  “Raising girls to be gentlemen’s companions, and highly paid ones at that, is Miss Everett’s business. She’ll start you off slow and smart, teach you to keep company like a lady, and how best to attend to a gentleman’s needs. No agreement is made until she feels a girl’s ready, and even then, only if the gent’s willing to pay the right price. Miss Everett’s girls live freely and generously. We drink, eat and sleep like royal mistresses, and care for nobody on earth.”

  I could tell she was being careful to put things in a way she thought would sound best to my ears, but I kept quiet and let her finish. I was just so thankful to be seen as more than a sad-faced girl in a ragged dress.

  Not long after the sound of the girls’ laughter died away, the door to the house opened and a woman appeared. Petite and attractive, she stood above me on the steps, wearing a blue satin dress that dipped low at the neck and gathered tight at the waist. Her hair was pulled back and tucked inside a pretty snood, its long ribbon hanging gracefully behind her right ear. The lace gloves she wore on her hands matched it perfectly, down to the ties at her wrists.

  “Miss Fenwick?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied as I got to my feet, regretting I’d not stood up as soon as I’d heard the latch move in the door.

  After looking me over from head to toe she said, “You may address me as Miss Everett.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said with an awkward bow. Then, stumbling to find a more proper greeting, I added, “Pleased to meet you, Miss Everett.”

  By the lines at the corners of her mouth, I could see she was past the age for bridal gowns and babes in arms. The telltale wrinkles on her powdered, heart-shaped face gave her a look of constant seriousness.<
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  “This way, Miss Fenwick,” she said, holding the door open for me.

  The house was far more lavish on the inside than out. It was just as well-fitted as Mrs. Wentworth’s home, yet more comfortable and bright. Rather than having tiles in the entryway, carpets had been laid the entire length of the hall, so thick I thought I was about to sink into the floor with every step.

  Miss Everett led me to the front parlour and invited me to sit. “Wait here while I arrange a few things, then we can discuss matters further.”

  I nodded, but before I could reply she turned her back on me.

  Mae was there in the parlour with another girl, the two of them seated on a couch with plum-coloured velvet cushions. Fresh bouquets of flowers had been placed on every table, and the air in the room was thick with the scent of roses. A piano filled one corner, a gilded harp another, and fine paintings covered nearly every inch of the walls. There was a picture of a cabbage rose opening up to beams of sunlight, and a scene of a river winding through countryside making its way to a forest glen. Hanging over the piano was a portrait of a young girl holding a basket of fruit. Her blouse had fallen to reveal one shoulder, and her hair tumbled in loose curls around her neck. So serene was the expression on her face, I guessed she hadn’t a care in the world. The brass plate attached to the frame read, The Gypsy Girl’s Bounty. From the room’s tasselled curtains to its chandelier, to the tea cart that was parked in front of the couch, I wanted it all.

  The cart was set with a silver service and three round trays piled high with perfect, tiny cakes. There were round ones, and square ones and even little cakes shaped like hearts—all frosted with sugar ribbons and icing flowers of yellow, blue and pink.

  “Tea?” Mae offered, reaching for the teapot.

  “Yes, please,” I answered, hoping that it might take my mind off worrying over whether Miss Everett was going to take me in.