The Gilded Age, a Time Travel

by Lisa Mason

  “Stay here,” Zhu commands, helping Daniel lean up against a lamppost. Cupping her hand beneath her belly, she runs toward the boardinghouse. I’m going to get you. That’s all she can think. She’s had the place where she sleeps sabotaged before. I’m going to freakin’ get you!

  A small dark man with a mane of greasy black hair loiters at the corner. Harvey—who else? He laughs, holding a match to his cigar. Before he and his thugs even notice her, Zhu thrusts the side of her hand in his kidneys, in his neck. He turns, startled, in pain, and brandishes his fists, but he can’t bring himself to slug a pregnant woman. Too bad. She hoists up her skirts and lets him have it with a kick to his kneecap, the pointy toe of her button boot connecting with a satisfying thwack against his cartilage. Harvey crumbles to the sidewalk, and his thugs gather around him in confusion.

  Men run toward Zhu from all directions—the local bulls and the local guys, the bartender at the Devil’s Acre, the landlady’s son, Old Father Elphich’s cadre of newsboys.

  “You bastard, you bastard,” Zhu yells, kicking Harvey in his ribs, on his back. “You leave me and the father of my baby alone!” She nearly retches from the stink of whiskey on him.

  The local guys seize Harvey’s thugs, including the one with the can of kerosene. The landlady’s son pulls out a pistol and trains it on them. “Don’t you move or I’ll blow your friggin’ heads off!” he warns. The newsboys pile on Harvey and gleefully pummel him with their fists till the bulls pull them off and handcuff the lot. A paddy wagon gallops up to the scene and hauls them off to the cooler.

  *

  “We don’t have to hide anymore?” Daniel says, leaning heavily on her shoulder.

  Firemen dash in and out of the boardinghouse, tamping out the blaze with admirable efficiency, saving the place from the certain annihilation most blazes of this nature inflict on the ill-starred buildings of this day. Zhu breathes a huge sigh of relief. She likes the landlady and her son, who have both been kind to her and Daniel in spite of the cloud of disrepute they’ve brought with them.

  “Muse, is there anyone else Daniel must hide from?” Zhu whispers.

  Muse posts a string of statistics in her peripheral vision. “Negative. My analysis indicates that Daniel’s opponents will go to prison for fifteen years.”

  “We don’t have to hide anymore,” she tells him.

  “The luck of the Irish has smiled on us today!” Daniel crows. “I’m going to book us a room at Lucky Baldwin’s Hotel straightaway. We shall eat, drink, and… . Well, we shall eat and be merry, by God. I cannot think of anyone else I should want to be merry with besides you.”

  She smiles, her heart bursting with joy, hoping this hell is over and all she has to do is live out the rest of her life. Whatever that amounts to. If she’s trapped in a Closed Time Loop, if she has to live and die, live and die, over and over, then so be it. She accepts that.

  Daniel hails a cab. A smart black brougham halts for them, and they board and collapse, laughing, on the plush leather seat.

  “My angel,” he says, cradling her in her arms.

  “I’m not an angel, Daniel.”

  “Oh, yes! Yes, you are.”

  “No! I’m not an angel and I’m not a whore. I have intelligence and passion, strength and perseverance. I am capable of abstract thought, intellectual accomplishment, and artistic expression. Just like you, sir.”

  He ponders that as the brougham trots up Fifth Street to Market. “What shall I call you, then?”

  Zhu smiles. “You may call me a Woman.”

  14

  High Tea with Miss Anthony

  When Zhu and Daniel step down from the brougham at Market and Powell and stroll to the entrance of the magnificent Baldwin Hotel, Zhu sees Jessie Malone walking into the lobby. Actually, Jessie isn’t walking. She is being alternately led, pushed, pulled, and yanked by Madame De Cassin and a smiling Mariah. Mariah, smiling? Zhu can’t remember the last time she saw Mariah smile. Or if she’s ever seen Mariah smile.

  “Jar me,” Jessie complains to her bullying companions. “If women go into politics, they’ll wind up as jackassed as men.”

  “You don’t like some man telling you how to run your business, now do you, Miss Malone?” Madame De Cassin says. As always, the spiritualist wears her dashing black riding habit and boots.

  “So why do you tolerate some man deciding the laws governing your life?” Mariah says. She looks like a totally different person. Zhu blinks, wary, fearful for a moment she’ll suddenly see all reality change and Mariah will be unsmiling and stern in her customary maid’s uniform. When Zhu looks again, though, Mariah is still smiling and still wearing a blue French-cut jacket with burgundy silk braid and fancy geegaws like military decorations, matching blue button boots, a blue Caroline hat, and a sweeping burgundy skirt.

  “We’ll all wind up in Napa Asylum,” Jessie declares. “We’ll all start a-smokin’ them vile cigars and a-growin’ them billy goat beards.”

  “Well, hello, Miss Wong,” Mariah calls out. “And Mr. Watkins, good to see you up and about. We have all been quite worried about you.”

  “You have?” Daniel says incredulously.

  Zhu smiles. She’s overhead his little altercations with Mariah many, many times.

  “We’re delighted that you’re coming to the meeting,” Madame De Cassin says. “We welcome gentlemen, of course, but you’ll have to keep your trap shut.”

  “Meeting?” Daniel says, glancing at Zhu, his eyebrows raised. “Trap shut?”

  “The meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association,” Mariah says proudly. “I have been attending the meetings of our local chapter for some years now.”

  “And I’m the one who first persuaded Mariah to attend,” Madame De Cassin says. “We spiritualist brothers and sisters support woman suffrage, along with equal opportunities for all of our American brothers and sisters. And we despise cruelty to the humble beasts among us.”

  “You do?” Daniel says, and Zhu returns his look of amazement. She never knew that nineteenth century spiritualists were in the forefront of the equal opportunity movement and the hue and cry against cruelty to animals. She knows now.

  “Most certainly,” Madame De Cassin says. “Our souls are all equal in the Summerland.”

  Jessie turns to the spiritualist, her eyebrows arched in surprise. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Madame De Cassin says.

  “So that’s where our Mariah was always sneaking off to,” Daniel whispers to Zhu.

  “Miss Anthony herself has honored our town with a visit to raise support for the state referendum,” Madame De Cassin adds.

  “What referendum is that?” Zhu says.

  “The one that shall pass a constitutional amendment giving women the vote in California,” Mariah says, beaming with excitement.

  “Indeed, the measure will be on the ballot this November,” Madame De Cassin says. “You must persuade your gentlemen friends to vote for it, Mr. Watkins.”

  “Perhaps I will,” he replies with a diplomatic diffidence that suggests to Zhu he has no intention of doing any such thing. Or maybe not. Maybe she’s misjudging him again.

  “And who is this Miss Anthony?” Zhu says, aware of the spiritualist’s tone of awe when she speaks her name.

  “Why, Susan B. Anthony, Miss Wong,” Mariah says. “President of our association.”

  “Mother of God,” Jessie moans, “we’ll all start lyin’ and cheatin’ and stealin’ just like men. We’ll all start dishonorin’ the precious sanctity of the family.”

  “Miss Malone,” Madame De Cassin says, “you do all of that now.”

  Jessie is indignant. “I do not lie, cheat, or steal!”

  Zhu and Daniel join the throng of women sweeping into a downstairs salon, which is set with dining tables and chairs. The sideboard offers hot tea, cream, sugar, scones, bread pudding, candied violets, and a large Lady Baltimore cake shaped like a shamrock and iced with green butter frosting.
/>   “What, no champagne?” Jessie complains.

  “Cake and no champagne,” Daniel whispers to Zhu. “Positively barbaric.”

  “The temperance movement supports woman suffrage, too, doesn’t it?” Zhu says, recalling the signs and demonstrations she’s witnessed all over San Francisco. She tries a candied violet. The vile thing tastes just exactly like purple sugar. “They wouldn’t approve of champagne or sherry at this high tea, would they?”

  “Quite right,” Madame De Cassin says, helping herself to tea and a scone. She licks her lips. Zhu gets the impression that the spiritualist wouldn’t mind a nip of sherry with her tea, herself. “However! Miss Anthony has asked the WCTU and other temperance interests not to meet in California this year as they’d planned. The liquor interests are keen on defeating the woman suffrage referendum. They’ve invested a bundle of money into the campaign against it.”

  “The liquor interests,” says Mariah scornfully, “exploit the friendship between temperance and woman suffrage every chance they get. What drinking man who beats his wife and whose wife hates his habit wants to let her have a say-so in the government? Let alone a vote to go dry?”

  She aims an evil look at Daniel, who fusses with the lace on Zhu’s cuff. Hmm. How will he vote? Zhu wonders.

  She finds a table for her and Daniel, helps him sit. He’s still so frail and weak. She hurries to the sideboard and fixes up a tray of tea and scones and bread pudding. Jessie, Madame De Cassin, and Mariah join them.

  Now a plump young blond woman plunks her tea things on the table and sits next to her.

  Zhu stares, disbelieving. What wonderful new reality has she found herself in, now that she didn’t die on the Chinese New Year? Maybe living in a Closed Time Loop won’t be so bad, after all.

  “Li’l Lucy? Is that really you?”

  “Just Lucy is fine, Miss Zhu.” Lucy looks radiant and fresh, with neatly combed yellow hair, a scrubbed face, and a high-collared gray cotton dress. “I met this wonderful fellow, a business man in shipping, not a sailor. He loved me at first sight—though what a dreadful sight I was! He helped me kick the booze and the dope. I do declare, Miss Wong, I shall never go back to the sportin’ life.” She giggles, and it’s the same old giggle, only the girlishness is real. She touches Zhu’s arm. “We got married last week—can you imagine?—and bought a house in the Western Addition. Oh, it’s a very small house and the neighborhood is still so rough. But I do believe Randolph and I will make a go of it.” She glances enviously at Zhu’s belly. “With luck, I’ll look just like you come autumn.”

  As Zhu exclaims over Lucy’s good fortune and congratulates her, a tiny, tightly corseted and veiled lady sits tentatively beside Mariah. Fanny Spiggot smiles nervously at the assembled company, avoiding Daniel’s eyes.

  Mariah says, “Welcome, sister,” and smiles. Though she switches her handbag to her other arm.

  Now a tall, elegant lady in a pompadour thickly streaked with white sweeps into the salon and seats herself beside Lucy. “Good afternoon, ladies,” Donaldina Cameron says with a dour look at Jessie and Zhu. She hesitates, clearly pondering whether she should be seen in such questionable company, but the other tables have all been filled up with attendees. Cameron shrugs—Zhu knows from her own experience this proper lady is much tougher than she looks—then studies Daniel’s face for a long moment. “Have we met before, sir?”

  Zhu glances at Daniel as he coughs into his napkin. “I believe you must be mistaken, miss,” he says. Then whispers in Zhu’s ear in an insinuating tone, “Her special friends call her Dolly.”

  Zhu punches his arm. “Yeah, and how would you know?”

  He chuckles. “Never you mind. That was a long time ago.”

  Suddenly Mariah cries out and leaps to her feet. She ushers a stately woman into their midst, bidding her to sit in the last seat available at their table.

  The stately woman joins them. White hair pulled back in a severe bun, a pince-nez planted on her eagle’s beak of a nose, her stern face ravaged by sun and by age, her stout figure clothed in stiff black silk—everyone hushes at the sight of her. But despite her austere appearance, the woman’s eyes sparkle with warmth, deep compassion, and a keen intelligence.

  Zhu catches her breath. Susan B. Anthony is a formidable woman, but her evident love for her fellow women is the most striking thing about her. Miss Anthony studies everyone at the table, one by one, never losing her polite smile. But her assessment of each flashes subtly across her stern face.

  Zhu glances around at their table, too. Okay. A notorious Irish madam getting on in her years. A young German former hooker. A cockney pickpocket still plying her trade, though probably not as skillful at it since she’s getting on in her years. A French spiritualist who conducts fake séances and soaks her clientele for money over their grief and guilt. A Scotch missionary who does good works, yes, and also presses her rescued child captives into righteous hard labor. And a Chinese bookkeeper. That would be her. A Chinese bookkeeper from six centuries in the future who is pregnant by and unmarried to the young American gentleman seated next to her who is a recovering drug and alcohol addict.

  What a motley crew! Zhu has no doubt that Miss Anthony, with her penetrating eye, intuits much of what the people seated at this table are all about. Even Zhu, from six hundred years in the future.

  “Sure and we’ll all be growin’ them smelly mustaches,” Jessie says, with a tart look at Miss Anthony’s plain face and stout figure. Jessie is up to her usual escapades. Today she’s resplendent in a tightly corseted green silk gown, enormous Colombian emeralds draped around her neck, dangling over her décolleté, and decorating her wrists and her fingers. There will of course be a bash for Saint Paddy’s Day at the Mansion tonight, and Jessie will reign over the celebration. Chong will surely bake rye bread, make his own mustard, and cook up a wonderful corned beef platter with all the trimmings. She sniffs. “As sure as I’m Miss Jessie Malone, the biz is the biz, and I’m advisin’ you to watch out for this political biz.”

  “Indeed.” Miss Anthony turns to her quizzically. “Are you a working woman, Miss Malone?”

  “Hmph! You bet!” Jessie jabs her elbow into Mariah’s ribs. Mariah ignores the jab, and Zhu wonders how many times Mariah has ignored Jessie’s intrusive elbow.

  “May I ask what line of work you are in?” Miss Anthony inquires, taking the cup of tea Madame De Cassin has served her.

  “I own whorehouses, Miss Anthony. A high-class parlor and some lousy cribs.” Jessie tosses her blond curls defiantly, eagerly seeking a shocked look on Miss Anthony’s craggy face. “I’m what they call a madam.” She raises her voice in case the elderly suffragist is hard of hearing. “A whore, Miss Anthony. They call me the Queen of the Underworld.”

  Zhu coughs, and everyone else at the table coughs, cringes, or blushes. But no shocked look appears on Miss Anthony’ face. On the contrary, she leans forward, her eyes sparkling with interest. “And how, may I ask, did you get started in that line of work?”

  Donaldina Cameron rolls her eyes, Madame De Cassin pats Cameron’s arm sympathetically, Lucy nervously sips her tea, Mariah gazes stonily into the distance, and Daniel circles his arm around Zhu’s shoulders protectively. No one is joking. Not now.

  “Line of work! The biz is the biz.” Jessie brays with laughter. “You really want to hear my pitiful sob story, Miss Anthony?”

  “Indeed I do!”

  Jessie pulls a flask from her purse, uncorks it, knocks back a swallow. Zhu smells expensive brandy.

  “Once upon a time, I was a little girl,” she begins sarcastically.

  But the table hushes, the meeting seems to hush all around them, too, and Jessie’s eyes glisten.

  Oh! Zhu thinks, holding her breath. The story I’ve never heard.

  “Once upon a time, I was a little girl with a littler girl to take care of. My sweet innocent Rachael was younger by a year and a half, but Mum liked to say we was twins ‘cause we looked so much alike. ‘My sweet ange
ls,’ Mum called us. ‘My little mermaids.’ We lived at Lily Lake on the Oregon side of the border. Sure and we swam in that lake every chance we got from the time we could stand up and walk. That’s the way I thought of us. We walked, we swam, we ate, we slept, Rachael and me. Like two sides of a coin. Like one person, you might say.” Jessie sighs. “She may have been younger, but she was wilder and stronger. Rachael could hold her breath and dive down deep and swim halfway across the lake under the water. Her skinny arms and legs a-pumpin’ like a frog. And Mum and me, we’d get scared. ‘Rachael, Rachael,’ we’d call and hug each other. ‘Mother of God, she ain’t comin’ up this time, Mum,’ says I and cried. And then she would. She would just pop up from the water, gasping and laughing, and wipe the water from her eyes. ‘You a-cryin’ for me, Jessie, you silly girl? You thought I ain’t comin’ up this time? Huh? Did ya?’”

  “And then Mum died, didn’t she?” Miss Anthony says.

  Jessie nods, surprised that the suffragist is following her story. “The fever took many a soul that winter. It’s a wonder Rachael and I didn’t up and die, too. Pater was a smithy, that’s how I get my special touch with the nags. Pater’s business had been slow, the house was an ice box, and he and Mum both caught the fever and died. I was ten years of age, Rachael eight going on nine. There must have been some money, you know? Pater owned our house and our stables, least as far as I knew. But a lawyer came to settle their accounts and sent me and Rachael to an orphanage in Portland. Maybe some money went with us for our keep, I don’t know. All I know is we never saw one red cent of it.

  “Sure and we hated that place! I took it into my head that the orphanage had murdered Mum and Pater. That Mum and Pater would never have gone off and left me and Rachael alone without a penny.” Jessie pulls from her flask. “So we turned bad. We ran away from that place every chance we got. There’s a great big ol’ river winding through Portland, and down to the river we’d go to swim. Oh! How we missed our Lily Lake.

  “One hot summer we’d run away to swim, and Rachael was a-swimmin’ underwater the way she did, divin’ down and breachin’ up and spoutin’ water from her mouth. Kickin’ up her legs, sassy like. Showin’ off she was. And me a-cryin’ and a-wringin’ my hands. Beggin’ her to come up, don’t drown! My sweet innocent Rachael, she was all I had left in the world.