Frog Music

by Emma Donoghue

  A shrug. “A little pepper improves the omelet.”

  Blanche has heard enough. She crosses her arms and leans in very close. “The barefaced gall of you. Offering a partnership when you sent my baby to a slow death at the hands of that so-called doctress!”

  She expects outrage, denial, the same old bluster.

  But Madame looks right back at her. “Frau Hoffman is one of this City’s necessary evils. A sort of human machine to deal with pregnancies in whatever way those inconvenienced by them require: abortion, shelter, adoption … She is somewhat”—she hesitates over the word—”hardened by her work, of course. Babies die, and not just on Folsom Street. They come into the world weak, even the longed-for ones, and many of them continue to weaken. Each disease takes its percentage.”

  “It’s you and Hoffman who take your percentage!” roars Blanche.

  Madame goes on as if addressing an appreciative audience. “Death is the state toward which infants tend, just as it’s in the nature of milk to turn and beef to spoil. Like clockwork toys, they’re born with their end wound up tight inside them, all ready to spin itself out.”

  Blanche stares at her.

  “Water, food, clothing, cleaning, that sort of thing improves their chances, of course. Touch, I suppose,” adds Madame. “The doctress’s baby farm is similar to any farm in that she encourages some crops and discourages others, depending on the market. You still may not get what you’ve paid for, due to uncontrollable variables, but you certainly won’t get what you don’t pay for,” she points out with a touch of sanctimony. “Last September, when your man banged on my door, I asked him what you two would pay to have the child nursed out. I needed to know how much you wanted your P’tit to live. How much you’d stake, you see?”

  “And Arthur offered eight dollars a week?”

  “I suspect he picked the figure at random.”

  “The son of a bitch! Why didn’t he ask me?”

  “You were out of your mind with fever. Besides,” says Madame Johanna, “what would you have proposed if he’d run home to consult you? Fifteen?”

  Blanche wants to believe that she would have said fifteen.

  “Twenty?”

  “That’s ludicrous.” She goes on the attack. “What was your cut, I’d like to know?”

  Madame considers her for a long moment. “Four.”

  “Four out of eight!” So just four dollars a week made its way to Folsom Street, to keep P’tit alive.

  “Like my countrywoman, I’m running a business. Given what you were earning from me, you could have afforded twenty,” Madame tells Blanche. “You could have told your fancy man to pay any amount of money—or you could always have kept your baby at home.”

  “Who offers to pay any amount for anything?” Blanche protests.

  “Someone who sees her infant not getting any stronger month after month, I suppose.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  Madame steps very close to her. “What you really can’t bear is that I know your hard little heart as I do my own. You wanted to be rid of that baby.”

  “I did not!”

  “Well, perhaps you weren’t quite decided, so you hedged your bets and paid eight.”

  “Enough!” Blanche seizes her bag. “I want my five hundred dollars.”

  A tiny sigh. “Less the two hundred eighteen you owe me for expenses—I’m adding on the cost of the tights you just destroyed,” explains Madame, “that’s two hundred eighty-two.”

  “Plus”—P’tit was with the doctress about fifty weeks; Blanche multiplies that by four dollars—“the two hundred or so you made off P’tit.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” says Madame silkily.

  Blanche opens her mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. She’s suddenly wrung out like a rag.

  Madame counts the notes and coins out of a long mesh purse. “You should stay here tonight,” she remarks.

  Blanche gives her an incredulous look. Does this spider never leave off weaving her web?

  “My doorman tells me there’s likely to be trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Madame shrugs. “A hullabaloo of some sort. Several buildings on Kearny have been torched already—”

  “Enough of your swindles.” Blanche holds out her hand for the cash.

  “Why her?” Madame’s ash-colored eyes have an oddly shiny quality.

  “Who?”

  “Jenny Bonnet. What could she give you but grief? What could she do for you that I couldn’t?”

  Blanche’s stomach turns as she understands. For as long as she can remember, ever since she was a creamy-skinned girl doing pirouettes on horseback, she’s known herself to be desired. This is the first time it’s ever made her shudder.

  A wild surmise flickers in the back of her mind. “Was it you?” Blanche whispers.

  “Was it I who—”

  “Did you send Lamantia to San Miguel Station? Was he supposed to shoot Jenny or just fire over our heads? Were you trying to scare me so badly that I’d crawl back to you on my knees?”

  Those gray eyes roll upward. “Heaven preserve my patience.” Madame’s voice is a businesswoman’s again. “You have a lunatic imagination.”

  Blanche’s cheeks are on fire. It’s true, she’s tilting at windmills. “I wouldn’t put anything past you,” she mutters, stuffing the money into her pocketbook and then dropping that into her carpetbag. “Didn’t you once dip a girl’s hands in boiling water?”

  She’s repeating this old rumor only for effect, but the Prussian shrugs. “Hands are inessential in this line of work. I knew she could wear gloves.”

  Blanche shrinks away from her.

  “Your sort often overestimates your importance to this establishment,” says Madame. “Everyone’s replaceable.”

  On her way out the door, Blanche takes one last swig of the brandy.

  “Also, hasn’t it occurred to you that if I wanted someone dead, I would use some more discreet and reliable method than a gun?” inquires Madame. “For example, a soluble, delayed-action poison …”

  Blanche spits brandy down herself.

  And Madame, for the first time since Blanche has known her, laughs.

  Sacramento Street seems no rougher than usual when Blanche puts her head out and looks both ways: drunks, quarrelers, the odd screeching woman. Madame was no doubt inventing the trouble on Kearny to keep her at the House of Mirrors a little longer, but Blanche turns in the other direction just in case. She hurries along the street, carpetbag under her arm.

  On the next block, two whites have cornered a nervous Chinese man, are threatening to saw off his pigtail as spoils, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary for a Saturday night; Blanche knows that her intervention would only make things worse. She’s suddenly ravenous. Nothing but expensive brandy in her growling stomach, the same brandy her ruffled bodice reeks of. What Blanche needs is some dinner. She needs somewhere she can grab a bite to eat and distribute her money carefully among various parts of her costume, as she hadn’t time to do before she rushed away from Madame’s. And then a bed for the night, in a room with a lock strong enough to let her sleep without fear of being robbed.

  The Oyster Grotto, that’ll do. Blanche could just fancy a bucket of oysters with a half loaf …

  But the door’s shut and barred, and when she bangs on it—because she can see lights in the back—nobody answers. Standing there, thumping the knocker, Blanche realizes she’s clutching her carpetbag tight enough to advertise to all and sundry that it contains hundreds of dollars. She forces herself to relax her grip and swing it by her side as she walks, as if all it holds is a change of clothes.

  Not a single chow house seems to be open tonight. This is ridiculous.

  Then Blanche smells scorching on the air, and when she reaches the corner of Dupont, she sees why. Oh Christ, Madame wasn’t lying. It registers with Blanche for the first time that all that anti-coolie nonsense may be more than that. A Chinese laundry’s in
flames, and a gang of white workingmen won’t let the firemen get near. Blanche watches, openmouthed. Somebody’s going to get hurt in that building if those cons keep this up. The chief fireman aims the big hose squarely at the crowd of workingmen now, blasts their faces. Howls, screams, but suddenly the flow subsides, because some of the rioters have hatcheted through the hose …

  Blanche rushes the other way, one block, two, scurrying along in her little mules. All she wants is some blasted dinner. She’d settle for a cab, if she can find one, or even a horsecar to take her out of Chinatown. Up ahead, the street’s thick with foot traffic that, as she nears it, looks more and more like a mob. From the alley to her right, a raucous chorus. “‘Bang away, my Lulu …’”

  The familiar song must be coming from some bistro or barrelhouse where Blanche can sit out the fuss, have some hot food, and tuck away this wad of banknotes that’s bumping along in the bottom of her carpetbag. So she ducks down the alley—

  And realizes her mistake. A score of men outside a dark-windowed building (Double Happy Washing, says the sign), staving in the glass with pickaxes and shovels. They’re sweating, thrilled with themselves. “‘Bang away, my Lulu,’” they roar as they work,

  Bang away good and strong.

  Oh, what’ll we do for a damn good screw

  When our Lulu’s dead and gone?

  Blanche freezes, but one little fellow’s spotted her already. “Hey, miss.”

  The man beside him is stuffing a rag into a bottle. He strikes a match and puts it to the rag, then tosses the burning bottle through a broken window. The laundry’s empty, by the looks of it. The owners must have been wise enough to flee hours ago, Blanche tells herself.

  Here’s the thing about running: it makes people chase you. So instead of running, she gives the group her most confident, girl-on-the-town curtsy: “Gentlemen.”

  Half a dozen of the men swagger over to Blanche, keeping up their song.

  I took her to the Poodle Dog,

  Upon the seventh floor—

  Blanche throws the next line back as gamely as she can manage, because if you can’t lick them, it’s safer to join them. “‘And there I gave her seventeen raps,’” she sings sweetly, “‘and still she called for more, oh, Lordy—’” She’s eyeing the building. No sign of flames inside; maybe the fire went out when the bottle smashed onto the floor.

  “‘Bang away, my Lulu,’” they roar back, delighted with her, “‘bang away good and strong—’”

  But Blanche isn’t listening to the song anymore because she’s heard something. A faint, high-pitched animal sound over the clamor of voices.

  “That’s a baby.” Softly, to herself at first. Then she shouts at the man who threw the bottle and is standing watching the building intently. “Don’t you hear the baby?”

  He doesn’t turn his head. Keeps watch as smoke begins to puff out the gap-toothed windows.

  Again, that mewing. “Listen,” pleads Blanche. If there are people in the laundry, huddled behind the sinks and wringers, why aren’t they screaming?

  “That’s a cat, I reckon,” says one of the gang, sliding his arm around Blanche. “Yum-yum chow kitty!”

  She shakes him off. The sound, pitched almost inaudibly high over the crackling of timbers. “Put out the goddamn fire,” she shrieks at the bottle man, “there’s a baby!”

  He looks at her, finally. “One coolie down, then,” he crows, “just a few tens of thousands to go.”

  Blanche is rooted to the spot. Tiny flames flare in the man’s small eyes.

  “What’s in this bag you’re hugging so tight, miss?” the one slipping his hand around her waist wants to know.

  “Oh, little enough,” says Blanche. “Got anything that can fill it up?” she adds with automatic lewdness, holding on tight to her bag while straining to hear cries from the crackling house …

  He wrenches the carpetbag out of her grip, this little man, and puts his arm in it up to his brawny elbow.

  “Come now, would you rob a girl’s frillies?” Blanche asks, tugging on the bag, still trying to lay on the charm with a shaking voice. Behind her, the laundry roars with flame. If there were people in there, would they still be holding their tongues? A cat, that’s all, Blanche tells herself, sobbing a little. It must have been a cat.

  The fellow lets out a joyful whistle. Holds up her pocketbook, coins spilling, notes dancing on the air. He waves the first fistful like a flag.

  Blanche will get no better chance to run, and she’s off already, because her body thinks faster than her mind. She hares off up the alley, one shoe heel slamming on the cobbles, the other mule left behind along with her bag, her clothes, her money, every blasted thing she’s got in the world.

  The men aren’t even following, she realizes at the corner; they’ve stayed laughing by their fire. “So long, Lulu,” one of them roars after her.

  She stumbles down Dupont in case they change their mind. Another fire patrol rattles past, men with hatchets and ladders hanging off the wagon. Patrolmen clattering by on wild-eyed horses. One shoe’s worse than none, Blanche concludes after two blocks. When a half-grown boy brushes past her and tries to squeeze her breast, she pulls her mule off and hurls it at him.

  She’s not safe on these streets. The House of Mirrors? Never again. Her mind scrabbles for other addresses. Low Long? Blanche threatened to set the law on him yesterday. And besides, he and his new renters will be boarded up tightly, tonight of all nights. Durand? But the restaurant owner knows Blanche as the cracked salope who taunted a grieving old man at the graveside this afternoon. Maria? How gratefully Blanche would throw herself on the one-eyed hag’s mercy if only she knew where Maria lived. So it’s come to this. Blanche has nowhere to go, no one in this whole city who’ll take her in.

  Panting with agitation, she picks the next alley and checks to make sure that it’s quite dark before she ducks in. So small, it’s more of a drain, and it smells like one too. Blanche edges behind a leaning pile of rotting planks and hunkers down. Arms tight around herself. She can smell brandy on her clothes, the slime of vegetables, ash from the fires.

  At least she got away from the rioters before they could finish their celebrations by riding her until she was torn apart. At least she’s not trapped in that burning laundry like those Chinese who refused to make a sound, if they were really there. If Blanche wasn’t just imagining what she heard. Count your blessings, Blanche. Count your goddamn blessings.

  Her ears attend to the distant pandemonium. She watches the bright end of the alley for the silhouettes of men. Something goes by in a flash. A high-wheeler? Her heart hammers. It wasn’t Jenny. Blanche doesn’t believe in ghosts. She shuts her eyes so she won’t see it again. Squeezes them closed, wrapping the darkness around her.

  VIII

  WHEN THE TRAIN COMES ALONG

  Blanche doesn’t exactly wake when the pitiless sunrise pries her eyelids up on the seventeenth of September, because she hasn’t exactly slept in this nameless alley, or so it seems to her—but there are gaps in her memory of the night. What’s bothering her most, she finds, is hunger. Not her dead friend and the impossibility of proving who killed her, her lost baby and the men who stole him, the rioters who snatched almost three hundred dollars from her last night, her lack of a home and clothes, her having no earthly idea what to do next … No, it’s breakfast that presses on her mind. How to rustle up breakfast.

  Blanche pounds her numb thighs to rouse them. She wipes her face on the slightly cleaner inside of her wrecked pink dress and struggles to her feet.

  Shoeless, filthy, and broke, she can’t pass for anything other than a woman at the end of her rope. Blanche could probably find a stranger to buy her a drink—which comes with food—at one of the City’s free-lunch places, except that they don’t open till eleven on Sundays and Blanche is dizzy already. So she starts walking, picking her way carefully along the sidewalk to avoid putting her stockinged soles on a shard of glass. Men throng by, bent under bundles and
baskets on the now-illegal poles. There’s no day of rest in Chinatown.

  Of course Blanche remembers some of the names of michetons who’ve paid high for a night with her. She could seek one out and send him a tear-smeared note saying that she was attacked by the mob last night and needs to throw herself on the mercy of the most honorable man she knows. That should drum up enough for a new outfit and a room, at least. That’s how Blanche la Danseuse would get herself back on her feet this morning.

  But this Blanche stumbles on, weighed down by self-pity, and self-contempt too, because it feels as if every bad thing that’s happened to her in the last month has been her fault. The sky’s turned a strange pale gray that doesn’t make the air any cooler. Blanche wipes the humidity off her face with her sleeve. She’s walking for the sake of keeping moving, the way Jenny used to do, but with feet already beginning to blister.

  As she limps along, Blanche torments herself with plans of how she’d spend those two hundred and eighty-two dollars if she had them back. (If only she’d waited another minute at the House of Mirrors and hid the money in her corset instead of carrying it in her bag, like some naive girl, for the first muscled con to grab.) Clothes, a room—no, a whole apartment of her own, with one key to the door. If she had all that, if she looked like a woman of substance, she’d sweep into Detective Bohen’s office every morning from now on, demanding to know what he’d discovered about the macs and their movements. She’d hire half a dozen sleuths of her own to comb the City for a baby boy with a turnip forehead and his father’s slim eyebrows.

  She’s almost at Townsend, she notices; the South Pacific terminus.

  Blanche goes in and hovers near the ticket desk, trying to give the impression that she’s waiting for a friend. She knows—having once had plenty of cash—that when rich folks pay for things, they sometimes drop coins, and they don’t look very hard for them if they’re small ones. And after five minutes of shuffling and scrutinizing the dusty ground, she does find a quarter. Blanche lurches to the nearest Mexican stall and buys beans and coffee. Helps herself to half a bowl of mushroom ketchup too, while the owner’s looking away, because who knows how long this breakfast’s going to have to last her? She’s on the bottom rung now.