Mercer Girls

by Libbie Hawker

  Dovey turned her attention to her aspic. Both the raising and the nurturing of children were as far from her thoughts as the Earth was from the stars. If the men of Seattle aspired to fill their mudhole wilderness with packs of children, that was all the more reason for Dovey to steer clear of their affections.

  But she wouldn’t say as much to Mrs. Harris. She knew her genial hostess had secret hopes of her own—she had seen the young woman sewing a baby dress just the night before.

  “So you see,” Mrs. Harris went on, “everyone in Seattle is terribly glad to have you all here—you courageous Mercer girls. There may not be quite enough of you to go around, but some eligible women are a great deal better than none.”

  “Not everyone is glad,” Dovey said. “Mrs. Garfield and her society let us know just what they thought of us, the first night we arrived. She called us wagtails!”

  “Those who judge simply don’t understand. It’s hard to be a woman in this world, Dovey. I may be only twenty-three, but I can swear to that truth already. Women are better off trying to understand one another—to be friends. We can’t drive wedges between us or separate ourselves where no separation is warranted.

  “Since I’ve lived in Seattle, where women are so few, I’ve come to believe that we’re all alike—women, I mean—no matter our present circumstances. We were all little girls once, with the same dreams in our hearts. We all wish the same comforts, aspire to the same achievements.”

  “I’m not sure I agree,” Dovey said. She lapsed into a gloomy funk, poking at her aspic with the tines of her fork. “I don’t believe I do aspire to your goals, Mrs. Harris. There may be no other girl in all the world who wants the things I want.”

  Mrs. Harris folded her hands on the table. Her smile was all loving encouragement. “Why don’t you tell me, and I’ll let you know what I think?”

  “Well …” Dovey faltered. Her kind, young hostess had found so much joy in marriage—in keeping house, and in hoping for children to fill it. And isn’t that the very role women were made for? Dovey shifted uncomfortably on her chair. Not once since leaving Lowell had she questioned her desires, or even stopped to examine them. She had simply felt, and had accepted her own impulses as good, as right. Now, with this very picture of the feminine ideal beaming at her across the kitchen table, Dovey doubted her own heart. Mrs. Harris was warmly content with her lot in life—her place in the Lord’s grand scheme. Why couldn’t Dovey be just as glad to settle down and marry? What crucial element of womanhood did her spirit lack?

  “Go on,” Mrs. Harris prompted. “You can say anything to me, Dovey, and I promise you I’ll be kind.”

  Dovey straightened her spine. “All right, then. If you insist. I want adventure, Mrs. Harris. I want to take in more sights, see more cities—I want to ride trains and wander alone down unfamiliar streets, until I’m lost and have to find my own way back to where I started. I even want to sail again—take to the open sea, though I know just how terrible it can be. I want freedom—to roam about and explore. To make my own way through the world, with nobody to tell me what I can and can’t do.”

  “I don’t think that’s so unusual, Dovey.”

  “There’s more. I don’t want to settle down and be anybody’s wife. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I only just escaped that fate when I left my family in Lowell, and I don’t intend to tie myself to a strange man just because I’ve arrived in Seattle.”

  Dovey paused and drew an unsteady breath. “So there you have it. Now you know how peculiar I am. Do you despise me? Tell me the truth, please. I couldn’t stand to take your hospitality if you secretly despised me.”

  She laughed. “Land sakes, Dovey, I think more women share your dream than you realize. And I don’t despise you. Every woman does what she can with whatever circumstances the Lord hands her. But we all want to live openly, to experience all the wonders Creation has to offer. We all want to be free to guide our own choices.”

  “But we can’t be free, can we?”

  Father’s face rose up somberly in Dovey’s mind, his deep scowl of disapproval, the stern command in his eyes. He had made plans for Dovey—sought to lay a tight, restricting future around her like cobblestones impinging the roots of a growing tree. That same expectation weighed on her here—marry, be a wife, tend to a man, and accept his tending in return, without complaint or rebellion.

  “Don’t look so bleak, dear Dovey. It will bring you more freedom than you realize, to become a wife—and someday, a mother.”

  Mrs. Harris’s soft smile never wavered, but Dovey heard the faintest hesitation in her voice, a quick flutter of doubt. Even she feels impinged. Even she, with her fine home and her pretty china and her baby’s dress to sew.

  With a pang of regret, Dovey recalled a flash of rose pink—Orquídea’s vibrant gown flitting through the streets of Aspinwall; the girl’s painted cheeks and gaily sparkling eyes. Those girls—the kind everyone so despised—their freedom was real. Poor Mrs. Harris, with her talk of marriage setting a woman’s spirit free—why, she was only swallowing a bromide, Dovey realized, and hoping it would turn to truth once she had downed enough of it. Those girls went where they pleased, did as they pleased, earned their own money. They even lay with more men than just one measly husband. Maybe it was shameful and an awful scandal, but that was the kind of freedom Dovey wanted: real liberation. A pure absence of fetters.

  Dovey filled her mouth with the aspic to keep her scandalous thoughts from spilling out. Mrs. Harris had been so kind and good to her; Dovey had no desire to bring disgrace to her hostess’s home.

  When their lunch was through, Dovey helped with the washing up, then, still mired in her pensive gloom, said she’d like to go for a stroll.

  “Do you want me to come along?” Mrs. Harris asked.

  “I’d like to go alone, if it’s all one to you.”

  “And your suitors?” Mrs. Harris asked with a mischievous smile.

  “I feel I can face them, now that I’ve had a good meal and some tea. I’ll be all right. If they become too much to bear, I’ll just run home again.”

  “It’s going to be all right, Dovey.” Mrs. Harris brushed her cheek with a gentle, sisterly kiss. “By and by, everything will work out according to the Grand Design. You’ll see.”

  Dovey went briskly down the porch steps and out the front gate, propelled by her guilt. If Mrs. Harris knew only half the thoughts running through Dovey’s head, she wouldn’t want to associate with Dovey, much less kiss her. And the sweet, angelic hostess would throw Dovey right out on her bustle if she suspected where this stroll would take her.

  But there was no doubt in Dovey’s mind where she ought to go.

  The Harrises’ home stood near the foot of the largest hill—the one that wore for its crown the shining white university building. Dovey headed down the slope, walking in the damp grass beside the ruts of the unpaved road. The hill was covered in a deep-green blanket of cedar and glossy-leafed salal, the clusters of delicate, heart-shaped white flowers swaying in the salty harbor breeze. Below, the hill leveled out into the mudflats. The wet, dark smoothness of the tidal plain was broken here and there by pale, ragged patches of sawdust, the refuse of Yesler’s steam-powered sawmill. Just below the deep-cut scar of Skid Road, the mill itself spread along the flats, a vast, dark thing, still as a sleeping beast, its smokestacks exhaling a perpetual black breath.

  And there, just to the north of Yesler’s mill, snugged between the bayside docks and the taverns that lined the final, flat stretch of Skid Road, was Dovey’s destination. She could make out the prostitutes’ cribs from the knoll—tiny shacks of weatherworn wood, standing in a matter-of-fact row.

  Dovey made her steady way toward the cribs. Now and then men would call out to her, but when she responded at all, it was only with a cursory wave of her hand.

  Once a man stepped in her path, bringing Dovey up short.

  “Miss Mason, may I call on you this evening?” There was grime on his knuckles and sawdust in h
is red mustache. There was a certain rough, boyish appeal about his confident swagger, his winking blue eyes.

  But Dovey shook her head. “This shop is closed to suitors until tomorrow.”

  She went on her way. Her laughter mingled with his and buoyed her spirits. The sweet, compelling promise of unfettered freedom hung just before her, and she would not be deterred from her path by any man—no matter how charming.

  She reached the back alleys of Skid Road some fifteen minutes later. It was a fine afternoon; the sun broke through the heavy gray clouds, revealing a patch of sky that looked all the bluer for its rarity. A dazzle of golden light fell across the mudflats. Dovey blinked in the welcome glare, reveling in the sudden warmth.

  She stood across the wide, unpaved alley from the row of cribs, leaning casually against a wall, in just the way Orquídea had taught her. It was daylight, and there was always work to be done in a newborn city. There were no men visiting the cribs just now—or if the girls had a few callers, they were already engaged inside their dark, narrow shacks. Most of the young women lounged in the doorways of their cribs, exchanging jests or challenges in rough, bursting shouts, or simply turning their painted faces up to bask in the unexpected sun.

  They noticed Dovey right away, of course, fixing her with long stares, approaching one another’s cribs to whisper behind their hands. Working girls were always quick to spot any change to their routine. Dovey supposed they had to be observant and keen. There was no one to look after them, save for other girls of their kind. And after her brush with Clifford in San Francisco, Dovey understood all too well the dangers a city’s dark streets might conceal.

  Now and then, when a girl would cast her an especially potent glare, Dovey would offer a smile, a nod, a little wave of her hand. That only set them to whispering all the harder. But soon enough, three of them worked up the crust to cross the street and meet Dovey eye to eye.

  All three girls were well fleshed, with enough natural color in their cheeks that they were obliged to powder their faces heavily to obtain the lily-white pallor so coveted among fashionable ladies. Business must be excellent in Seattle, Dovey thought as she assessed them with a quick flick of her eyes. In Lowell, the night flowers had been thin and sallow, with limp, dull hair. These girls had lined their eyes with plenty of dark powder, and their lips were as bright and plump as ripe berries, but even through heavy paint, their robust good health shone through.

  One of them, her straw-yellow hair teased into an enormous, pillowy roll at the nape of her neck, took in Dovey’s elegant blue dress and unmussed ringlets with a scowl. “You don’t look like a working girl.”

  “I’m not,” Dovey said.

  “So what are you doing on this street, then—alone?” asked another.

  “I’m new to Seattle. I only came out for a walk, to explore the city.”

  “Explore the city!” the blonde hooted. She elbowed one of the other night flowers in the ribs. “You’ve found where the action happens, all right. New to the city, you say. Are you one of those Mercer girls?”

  Dovey nodded vigorously. Her curls bounced against her shoulders. “Yes, I am. I’m Dovey Mason. Pleased to meet you all.”

  “Came in on Mercer’s cargo? Sure you’re not a working girl, then?”

  The sly insinuation would have set Sophronia’s ears to steaming, but Dovey only shrugged. “That’s what some people in Seattle say, isn’t it? About Mercer’s girls, I mean—that we’re prostitutes.”

  The tallest of the three girls, with hair a shade of red unsupplied by nature, gave a loud snort. “All women are harlots, one way or another. Flop on your back for one man only, or for a hundred—it’s all the same, and every girl does it for pay. Coins in your pocket or a fancy house up on the hill—makes no difference in the end.”

  “I don’t believe what the town gossips say, though,” the blonde girl said. “The Mercer girls didn’t come to Seattle to set up in the cribs. That was never the idea.”

  “Oh, wasn’t it?” the redhead said, cutting her black-rimmed eyes at Dovey. “I see a Mercer girl right here, loitering in the general vicinity. Don’t be a dunderhead, Haypenny.”

  The blonde girl—Haypenny—tossed her head in disdain. “Ruby, you know Asa Mercer would have been a perfect rot head to go all the way to the East Coast for a boatload of rowdy girls. More trolleys come dinging into town all the time, and all of them ready to take on new customers. If Mercer had wanted to fill up a few more knocking shops, all he’d have to do is open the doors and let the local cats in.”

  “I didn’t come to Seattle with the intent to work—that is, to work as you girls do,” Dovey said. “I only came because it’s so far from home.”

  “Getting away from your crab old dad?” Haypenny said. “I know how that goes.”

  Dovey shrugged. “Something like that. But now that I’m here—now that I’ve thought it all out—I do intend to make my own money, I think.”

  “So you are a working girl, after all.” Ruby sniffed with an air of vindication.

  “I thought to teach,” Dovey said. “I can read well and do my figures, and I’m smart enough to educate young children, at least. But I’ve never worked as a teacher before, and it seems nearly all Mercer’s other girls have. We’ve only been in the city a week, but already they’ve beaten me to the work.”

  “Only one other way for a girl to make money in Seattle,” the third prostitute said.

  “One other way?” Ruby gave a loud harrumph. “This is the only way, Lila, and you know it.”

  Haypenny nodded. “That’s true enough. This is the best place in all the world to make a buck—Seattle, I mean; not the cribs. If you can get into a good establishment—something north of Skid Road, say, or one of the fancy places up in the hills—”

  “You can make ten times more money in a house than you can down here in the cribs,” Ruby confirmed.

  “Still, I’d rather be in Seattle’s cribs than in a fancy house in any other town.” Haypenny swept her arm wide, taking in the whole city with a single, enthusiastic gesture, and stirring up a gust of her oversweet floral perfume. “This town is crawling with men. They’re everywhere, like fleas on a dog, and all of them are ready to go. Not even San Francisco can put so much jingle in your pocket.”

  “Or so many johnsons in your hand.”

  Ten times more money in a fancy house, Dovey mused. And the mistress of the house takes a cut of all her girls’ earnings. If a house has a dozen girls … or two dozen …

  Even if her old ambition hadn’t kindled anew, Dovey still would have befriended the three young prostitutes. They were jolly and bright, with devil-may-care tempers, which Dovey envied and admired. She found it simple enough to adopt their slangy speech and the confident, swaggering gait characteristic of dockside girls. And once they perceived that she had no intention of setting up in the cribs and competing for their business—once she made it plain that she aimed to open an establishment of her own, where they might hope to work someday—they were ready to accept her as one of their own. Even Ruby put her arm around Dovey’s shoulders, and the redhead’s brusque manner now seemed no more off-putting than a jab in the ribs.

  Seattle’s night flowers maintained their own brand of society—one that would surely send Mrs. Garfield’s set into a moral panic, but which was ready to welcome a girl like Dovey into the fold, as long as she showed them consideration and their due respect. This Dovey offered naturally, for she found much in their freewheeling ways and coarse speech to enjoy. Loitering in their company gave her a delicious feeling of the contrary, a veneer of unexpected power that she quite appreciated. Sophronia’s eyes would pop if she overheard the blasphemies on Dovey’s tongue, the frank discussion of activities better left private and the particulars of men’s hidden parts.

  I don’t care, Dovey thought stoutly, falling into step beside her new friends. Let Sophronia’s gogglers shoot right out of her skull. I’ve found my cronies, and I’ve found how to make my own way. Tha
t’s all I need care about now.

  “I made some extra early this morning,” Haypenny said, patting the pocket of her skirt. “Let’s go up to that new candy shop by the dry goods store and have some taffy. I’ve got a sweet tooth that won’t let me rest.”

  Dovey fell into step beside her. “Why are you called Haypenny? It’s an awfully strange name.”

  “She once did it with an Englishman for ’arf a penny.” Lila’s attempt to replicate the accent sent all the girls into a fit of giggles. “Penny’s is the cheapest crib in town.”

  “That’s not true,” Penny said loftily. “I know a few cheaper. But I’m not selective, unless the man looks diseased.” She jingled the coins in her pocket again. “Frequent work pays off. I don’t see you girls offering to buy the taffy.”

  “Dovey here will buy us more than taffy once she starts up her house,” Ruby said. “Look at her: she’s a girl with taste. I can just imagine it now—beds that don’t squeak, fine Persian rugs on the floor, and acres of red velvet.”

  “Scrumptious,” Lila agreed. “When can you start up your knocking shop, Dovey?”

  “I don’t know,” Dovey said. “I still have to run the figures. But a house must have plenty of expenses—all those rooms to furnish and acres of red velvet to buy. And then there’s the property itself. I must rent some place from a landlord, if not buy a house outright. I’ll need capital, if I’m to set up a place for you girls.”

  Ruby narrowed her eyes. “You’ll need what?”

  “Starter money. My father was a big wheel in business, you see. Trust me when I say that I’ll need capital. So it comes back to the damned jobs again. There’s no schoolhouse within ten miles of the city that needs a teacher now. How am I to raise my starter cash?”

  “Can you sew?” Penny asked.

  “Not well enough to darn my own stockings.”

  “You might help out in the Terrys’ bakeries,” Ruby suggested.