River With No Bridge

by Karen Wills

  Jim Li stared at her again, his expression unreadable.

  A swirl of snow whipped up between them, then died away. Nora started, then glared as she remembered the river, the vegetable stand, the New Year’s Eve when his friend had been beaten. A flash of anger struck her that the tall Chinese would show up even here to catch her in this desperate hour of thievery.

  Panting, she raised her voice. “You’re right. I am stealing this damn stone. Yes. You can turn me in or you can help, but I wish you’d give up watching. I’m not your day’s entertainment.”

  He spoke above the frigid gusts. “You are Mrs. Larkin from Butte. We have met, in a way, before. You won’t move that stone far. They’ll catch you.” Li’s expression didn’t change, but his voice, enunciating the English words in what any Irish would think might belong to a fine tenor, carried sympathy.

  Nora’s head dropped. “It’s for Helen. I lost my child to the diphtheria, and I’ll not leave her to lie in that grave without a decent headstone.” Sweat froze on her and she began to tremble. The white ground of the building site swam before her as she stumbled.

  Jim Li crossed the road in long strides and cupped her elbow. She looked into his kind face with its brown eyes, more rounded than other Chinese she’d seen. She dried her own with rough palms. “You always come up on me when I’m breaking the rules,” she said, sitting down on the stone as though it were a chair in someone’s parlor. She felt weak and sick. She couldn’t even manage this one thing for Helen. And now this misfit Chinaman hovered over her.

  “Your charming daughter caught diphtheria?”

  Nora broke under his sympathetic tone. She struggled to speak through heavy sobs. “The doctor was useless, but he said something I keep remembering. He called diphtheria ‘the strangling angel of children.’ Could an angel do such evil? I stayed with my beautiful girl and prayed and bathed her poor hot body, but she went anyway. I thought she was over the worst, and then sometime in the night she just stopped breathing. Her little heart had been strained so, the doctor said. I’d only fallen asleep for a few hours right beside her. I should have stayed awake, shouldn’t I? I know I should.”

  Jim Li only said, “Honor me, Mrs. Larkin. Let me help you.”

  Nora pushed herself up awkwardly.

  His eyes swept across her swollen belly. He bent and lifted the stone easily to his shoulder. “Tell me where you wish to carry this marker.”

  “Bless you,” Nora sighed. “Bring it along to the graveyard. To the paupers’ corner.” She shuddered, remembering the rough men’s laughter as they strode past her.

  They walked in the blowing cold without speaking. Icy snow pebbles stung their faces. None of the few scurrying pedestrians they met commented as Jim followed Nora by two or three strides as if hired for a job. At the cemetery, he set the stone down at the head of Helen’s grave and waited while Nora disappeared to the caretaker’s rough shed. Planks flapped in the wind. Earlier she’d noticed a loosened window. Now she returned with a chisel and hammer. “I’ll take them back when we’re done here.”

  For the next hour, Jim Li pounded blocky letters that formed ‘Helen Larkin’ into the stone. Nora knelt on the bumpy frozen ground as she stroked Helen’s grave, whispering to her daughter. Misery overwhelmed her. She wished herself in that ground, too. “Let me have a sign,” she prayed. “Let me know she’s with her father.”

  The indifferent snow offered no solace.

  Jim Li stood, the headstone ready. Nora pushed herself up as he positioned Helen’s marker to rise higher than any nearby.

  Aching with cold and fatigue, Nora shivered in the twilight. She wiped her eyes and turned to the silent man waiting behind her. “Thank you.”

  He gave a slight bow. “It has been my honor. You look unwell, Mrs. Larkin.”

  “I look like a woman who’s going to have a baby, Mr. Li.” She made a wry face.

  He paused, studying the finished marker, before asking, “Do you have money?”

  The abrasive wind pushed against Nora. Her eyes stung. Was the man going to ask for pay now? “None. The last of it went to the doctor. Not that he made any difference.”

  “Do you have work?”

  “The Hotel de Mineral fired me when I stayed home to care for Helen. Who would hire a woman so big with child as I am now? I can’t hide it anymore.” She spat out the bitter words.

  “Someone I know. How badly do you want work?” His tone remained mild.

  “I have no money. I need to eat for this one I’m carrying. Otherwise, I wouldn’t care a pin about anything.” She sighed. “I have to move. My landlady lost all her savings to a bank failure. She has to go live with her son and I have to be out for the new owners. It’s all a dog’s breakfast. What kind of work?”

  “Housekeeping.” He gathered the tools he’d used.

  “Housekeeping for a family?” Nora felt a twinge of interest.

  “No. Housekeeping in a place where working girls live.”

  “Working girls! Man, are you talking about prostitutes?” She almost laughed. Did even Jim Li think she’d fallen so low? Was all her struggle to end in this? Disrepute? Degradation?

  “It is the place where they live, not where they work. The housekeeper runs it like a boardinghouse, keeps the girls from fighting, drinking, sees to their health. The pay is good. No one asks questions.”

  Nora looked at him, her eyes narrowed. “You know, don’t you? It was you in the alley watching as Bat Moriarty and I left Hibernia Hall that night.”

  “Yes. I wished I could have warned you away from him. I learned about him through those who worked in the saloons. He came from a prosperous Southern family before the South seceded. As a young boy he knew losses of money, family, lands. That turned him into a cynical, heartless man known to gamble on anything, on other peoples’ lives if it suits him.”

  As the two left the cemetery, Nora looked back reluctant to leave, but satisfied that Helen’s white stone marked the spot she would revisit. She stopped along the way to drop the borrowed tools through the caretaker’s window. “Others tried to warn me,” she said, walking back to Jim. “I didn’t listen. I wouldn’t have listened to you. I was lonely. I’m paying for my selfish foolery. Perhaps Helen would still be alive . . .” She lowered her head.

  “There is no way to know.” His voice gentle, he added, “Butte held dangers of disease just as Helena does.”

  Nora, not consoled, asked, “How is it you know of this house? Do you work there?”

  “I clean, help cook, do laundry. I mend broken things.”

  Nora shook from the cold, the wind tugging at her clothes. The world blurred through her tears. “Well, I doubt you can mend broken lives. I’m that desperate. I don’t approve of such women, but I need to feed this child in me. I don’t care if I live or die, but I never seem to die. Others do. Perhaps this baby will survive. I owe the one I’ve started the chance to live at least. Not that this child might not curse me for it some day.” The idea of a curse pierced her. Was she to wander the earth like Cain in the Bible? Despised by all decent people? Never at rest?

  Jim nodded. “You’ll want to gather your things, Mrs. Larkin. I will walk with you to carry what you want to bring.”

  Nora tottered along beside Jim Li on feet so cold they’d lost all feeling. He waited at the boardinghouse’s back porch while she packed. She paused for one last look at the room where Helen had died. Here she’d allowed herself to feel a thread of hope for her child. God had crushed that cruel illusion. She remained the tinker’s brat after all, just another poor Irish git trying to feed herself after losing everything and everyone.

  She said good-bye to the new owner, a reserved, bookish man clearly relieved to see the back of the hapless widow. No friend remained to wish Nora farewell. Yet this Chinese was kind. She might surprise herself and live through the next months.

  She dragged the trunk. Its every bump down the stairs jarred like a warning, but she could no longer stay. What choice did she ha
ve? Once she hauled her trunk outside, Jim Li picked it up. Nora frowned in distrust. “Why are you helping me? I called you a name once.”

  “I am helping you because you need help. I do not think you would call me that name again.”

  “No, Mr. Li, I would not.” The solemn look they shared seemed to seal a pact.

  The two walked without speaking further for blocks before Jim stopped. “Mrs. Larkin, I misled you. The house we are about to enter is a brothel. But your job would be as a matron to the girls.”

  Horror and disappointment gripped Nora. In worse trouble than ever, she covered her eyes. She couldn’t return to the boardinghouse after the new owner’s open relief when she, the penniless, ghostly, bereaved widow and expectant mother, departed. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” She cried in anguish. “I can’t go in there.”

  “Do you have a choice? Your duties are as I described them. You act as go-between with the girls and the madam, Lillie McGraw. She is tough and crude, but fair. You will preside over the kitchen, the servants, make sure furniture is not broken. It won’t be as hard as being a washerwoman. The pay is better than maid work.”

  “But why did you wait to tell me?”

  “You would not have come, and it is the wisest course. Did your Jesus not sit down with such women? Is that not in your Christian Bible? Who is more worshiped here in America than your Christ?”

  “Sure and he turned water into wine, too, but I don’t suppose I could manage that.” Her voice broke with despair. “Well, it’s true he didn’t care what others thought of him. But these people—I’m afraid of them.”

  He smiled. “The ones who worship or the working girls?”

  “Now that you ask, I’m not so certain. The high and mighties were disapproving of me taking Bat in for my lodger.”

  “You would be living with girls from poor families, most often visited by lonely working men. Just come and see.” He continued to hold the big trunk on his shoulder. Her weariness as convincing as Jim Li’s words, Nora nodded.

  They walked up the steps to the heavy closed door of what appeared to be a large, ordinary house with a roseate glow from a lamp in a front window. Inside, tufted red wallpaper lined the entry lit by two soft sconces. Nora had the nightmarish sense of walking into a mouth that would swallow her whole.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jim set down the trunk and left Nora to her raw fears. The interior was at least blessedly warm. She caught the surprising scent of fresh baked bread, and that triggered hunger gnawing into her exhaustion. Jim returned and bowed her into the offices of a woman seated behind a heavy desk.

  Lillie McGraw, large-boned with coarse hands, wore an elaborate burgundy silk walking suit. She had a cunning, broad face and green cat’s eyes that scrutinized Nora for a long moment, pausing at her bulging midsection and shabby mourning coat.

  “Can you keep a house?”

  Nora summoned what dignity she could. Her instinct for survival asserted itself with that one fragment of her history. “I’ve kept my own and with a lodger. I also worked in large hotels. I could manage a place this size well enough, I believe.”

  “Do you think you’re above us?” The woman lit a cheroot, one eye closed against its rising smoke.

  Nora shrugged. “I just stole a marker for my child’s grave. I’m not above anyone.”

  “Well, we’ll try you out. Have that worthless Chinaman take your bags upstairs.” Nora saw Jim Li’s face stiffen into a carved mask. He bowed and picked up the trunk. “I can’t abide the Celestials, but this one works hard and cheap, and he and the girls keep a distance from each other.”

  Nora winced. Apparently even the lowest of the low cast around for someone worse off to scorn. Why were people so cruel? The two ruffians who laughed at her were far below Jim Li with his unexpected rescue of a bereaved mother, but only she viewed things that way.

  Lillie’s gravelly voice snapped her back. “My old housekeeper Gert will show you the ropes. When is your kid due to enter this world of sin?”

  “In about five months.”

  “Planning to leave us then?”

  Frowning, Nora dropped her eyes to study the figured carpet. “I don’t know what I’ll do then.”

  “With yourself or the baby?”

  Nora shrugged. She had no answers. She hadn’t thought past the birth, just wanting to escape Butte and start anew with Helen and the newborn. For a fact, she felt nothing but resentment for this child she carried. She couldn’t help the thought that haunted her. Why couldn’t that cold, neglectful God have taken the gambler’s unknown, unborn child and spared Helen? She turned to follow Jim Li. There was only so much even Lillie McGraw had a right to ask or know. “Thank you,” she said with a forced smile. “I’ll earn my keep.”

  Jim set down the trunk. “Gert Hensley is in the kitchen.” He bowed and left Nora alone in her room.

  Her new quarters were light and clean, with a wardrobe, wash stand, and double bed. Framed pictures of pale ladies draped in scarves that didn’t cover everything reminded her where she was. Nora sank down on the creaky bed with one thought. So this is what I’ve come to. She felt light-headed. Disoriented. But she had no choice. Unreal as it seemed, thanks to Jim Li she had work to do that would feed her. She removed her coat, washed her chapped face, fixed her hair, and with a deep breath started down the hall with its red carpet and wallpaper.

  Visible through a half-open door, a thin young woman sat at a dressing table, applying color to her lips. Nora paused, and the girl’s hard gray eyes shifted in the mirror to look at her. “What are you gawking at? Never seen a girl get ready before?”

  “I need directions to the kitchen.” The girl looked no older than seventeen. “I’m the new housekeeper, Nora Larkin.”

  “Josephine Dodd.” The girl gave Nora directions, her voice now neither friendly nor mean.

  In the kitchen, the woman seated at a long trestle table wore her iron-gray hair pulled back into a severe bun. Wire-rimmed glasses sat halfway down her nose. Her mouth formed a thin line cutting across a triangular face. She could pass as a schoolmarm. She looked up from her coffee to appraise Nora.

  “Are you what Lillie hired to replace me?”

  “I am. I’m Mrs. Larkin. Miss McGraw said you’d train me in.” Nora realized her voice held the tone she’d just heard from Josephine Dodd.

  The woman straightened. “She must be daft, hiring a young woman with child. Still, the girls might listen to you because of it. They aren’t hardhearted, but they lack sense. They’re here a few weeks, then off to Denver or Seattle or Portland. It’s not like the old days when we stayed with one house.”

  Nora nodded, absorbing the implication that Gert Hensley must be a former soiled dove.

  The older woman stood and carried her cup to the counter. “They start their work at 6:00 in the evening, unless someone has an earlier appointment, and go at it until 4:00 a.m. You need to pay attention and yell for Lillie and the big Celestial if somebody starts breaking dishes or furniture. You run the kitchen. They eat dinner around 5:00. You also supervise the saloon people. See to it they’re presentable and the glasses get washed as they come through. Follow me.”

  In the ensuing hour, Nora learned the crotchets of the kitchen and how to plan menus and shop for provisions for nine girls, Lillie, Jim, and herself. Gert gave her a warmed-over supper.

  “It’s best you be here for the evening. In the afternoon, if the girls go out, order them not to drink too much.” The woman removed her glasses and rubbed the chafed marks at the bridge of her thin nose. “Don’t bother Lillie unless things really go to hell. Solve the other problems—arguments, sickness, whatever else—yourself. Lillie will treat you right.”

  Nora tried to remember everything as she made her way back down the hallway. Laughter erupted or insinuated itself, then faded behind closed doors. Back in her own room, she heard an accelerating rhythmic pump of bedsprings overhead. Well that sound stayed the same, home, grand hotel, or brothe
l. It disturbed her, though. She sat down on her bed, her hand resting on her stomach.

  “Well, you have a gambler for a father and your mother keeps house in a brothel. What more can befall you?” These were her first words to this baby. She’d tried to ignore it, along with their future, since she’d lost Helen. But new life kicked and stretched under her ribs. She took no joy in the signs of life, in acknowledging that her existence would again include another. A child, wanted or not, seemed far too fragile a gift, set up for the breaking.

  Next evening, after a hectic first day, Nora joined the others at a family-style dinner of chicken and dumplings. She learned that “the girls” varied in age from sixteen to twenty-three, most twenty-one or twenty-two. At nearly twenty-five, she felt like an older sister with designated authority. The nine in her charge were rough, cynical, and given to emotional outbursts, but they took a sympathetic interest in Nora’s pregnancy. One even promised to knit a little cap. A few became sentimental, having given babies up to respectable families, or to orphanages. With a pang, Nora considered that except for naively believing Bat and she were in love, she wasn’t so different from the young women around her.

  In the weeks that followed, Jim Li remained polite, but distant. They often met in the kitchen. He helped cook, and Nora planned food orders, menus, and cleaning. The girls treated Jim with contempt, referring to him as the Celestial. A shocked Nora learned from Josephine Dodd that Jim had lived with a Chinese prostitute in Butte. “He wasn’t her pimp,” Josephine said, snickering at Nora’s expression. “They just shared quarters. Her pimp’s her uncle.”

  Nora thought the news over, then shrugged. Wasn’t she herself “sharing quarters” with so-called upstairs girls? And comfortably, too.

  She fell into a routine, her greatest challenge keeping the girls sober. As for the rest, she learned to look straight ahead when patrons leered at her. Were they smirking because they assumed her a fallen woman? Why didn’t they focus on the scantily clad girls? She swore off forever from any doings between men and herself.