by Tom Murphy
Her baby. Her child. Why, it didn’t even have a name! You can’t go on calling the child “it,” Lily, get moving, girl, there’s no time to be lost.
The names came marching through Lily’s head, a great long parade of names, some grand, some silly, some ordinary. She’d ask Sophie. They’d talk about it tomorrow. Maybe Sophie could be the baby’s middle name. Something Sophie Malone. Lily smiled. She was very tired, she could feel the weight of her fatigue as though it were a physical thing. But Lily could feel that a weight had been lifted from her, too.
For here she was, alive and a mother, and in San Francisco. And if it had been a rough voyage, at least she’d survived it. Stretching her luck thin, maybe, but at least there was luck to stretch. Finding such a friend as Sophie was luck, sure as there are leaves on apple trees. Living through the fever and the tumble downstairs was luck, and having a fine perfect little girl baby, that was the greatest luck in the whole world. You are a lucky girl, Lily Malone, and thank God for it.
Sleep came to Lily and found her smiling.
22
It was three days before Lily discovered that she was a guest in a whorehouse.
She woke on the second day to discover Sophie at her bedside, smiling, holding the baby.
“Did you sleep well, my dear?”
“Very well. She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?” Lily could still not quite believe that she had made this child, this strange and perfect little creature whose tiny hands, soft and sweet and all unknowing, held the secret of her mother’s past and her future.
“She has a pretty mother, Lily.”
“Half-dead, is what her poor mother is, and thanks be to God for you, Sophie, for the other half.”
“Here. Take her.” Sophie handed Lily the baby. The child was wearing a little gown of the finest handkerchief linen, banded with rows of white lace. A princess might have worn that gown, Lily thought, and then remembered that she had never seen the dress before.
“There, now,” said Lily as the child’s small eyes fluttered open and it gazed gravely at its mother, “you’ll be tired after that long sea voyage, won’t you, little lady? All the way round the Horn you went, and never knew it. You’re in California, baby, and in Sophie’s house. Yes, your Aunt Sophie has been very kind to us, baby, and we won’t soon be forgetting it, that’s a fact.”
“Her eyes are nearly as green as yours, Lily, and the hair will be the same golden red, like a San Francisco sunset.”
“If she grows healthy, and smarter than her old mother, that’s all I ask.”
Lily nursed the baby then and found her daughter hungry. Sophie left, and after a while the nursemaid, Dolores, came in, and Lily drifted back to sleep.
When she woke it was afternoon, and she thought the fever had got her again.
It was like a dream.
There stood three girls, half-naked they were, all wearing one kind or another of gaudy silk Chinese robes, loosely tied or not tied at all. One of the girls was dark and tall and very beautiful. Another was plump and wore a dull, almost drunken expression. The third was small and blond and hard-looking, with a face like a mink’s, a sharp predatory face and little black eyes that glittered.
“She’s coming awake.”
“Thinks she owns the place, like as not, queening it up in Sophie’s rooms and all.”
“Hush, now! The poor girl’s sick, can’t you tell?”
“We’re all sick, Lola, and that’s for sure.”
“Stuff it up your crumpet, slut! And speak for yourself when it comes to the sickness.”
“She said demurely, like the fine lady she is, la-di-da.”
“Stuff it, Ruby, or I’ll stuff it for you.”
“I’d be the last to doubt you could, dearie, what with your odd tastes.”
Lily closed her eyes then, and the strange vision dissolved in laughter and the shuffling of slippered feet, and the closing of doors. What a peculiar dream. But nearly all of her dreams were peculiar, or so it seemed. Very peculiar indeed, she was getting. It must be the fever.
When she woke again, it was dark. Lily realized she hadn’t been out of bed for a week. Even thinking of it made her shiver with doubts of her ability to do that. There was a tray beside her bed, with a teapot on it, and sandwiches, and cookies. Lily wondered how long the tray had been there. She reached out and touched one of the sandwiches, a fancy thing, all its crusts trimmed away, prettily arranged. The bread was dry. It had been here for hours, then, and herself sleeping like the dead. Well and truly, how far was she from death? She reached for the sandwich and brought it to her lips. Ham, it was, very thinly sliced, with mustard and butter. She ate it all, and then another. Lily sat up, poured some tea, and found herself ravenous. She ate the other sandwich—three in all!—and then drank some more tea, then ate two of the cookies. What lovely cookies they were, fine and thin and crispy!
Lily smiled in the darkness, thinking of the child. The music was playing again. Someone in Sophie’s house, or in a house nearby, must be very fond of piano music. How good the sandwiches had tasted, stale or not! And the cookies. She decided to get up. Slowly, as if she were still pregnant, Lily slid first one leg to the floor, then the other. There. Standing. It was like learning to walk all over again. She made her way to the door, a tall mahogany door set between two white columns. Lily opened it and saw a long, wide hallway, richly carpeted and lit by flickering gas lights in etched crystal globes. There were five doors on each side of the hallway, ten in all.
The hallway was empty, but the sound of music was louder now, music and laughter and all the familiar noises of a party. Very swell, was her hostess. Sophie must enjoy herself here in San Francisco, for all the rather reserved appearance she had made on the Eurydice. Well, then, Lily knew she was in no condition—and no costume!—to join the party below. She turned and walked back into the big bedroom and closed the door behind her. Lily felt as though she had been on a great adventure, just by getting up out of bed. To be no more a prisoner of that bed! She looked around the room, and suddenly felt tired again. She climbed back into the big bed and soon fell asleep.
Sophie laughed when Lily told her about the vision of three girls looking at her yesterday. Sophie threw her head back and fairly roared. Then she looked a bit stern, the way she had looked that first day on the Eurydice, formidable, a lady of great character.
“I must tell you sometime, my dear, and now’s as good as any. That was not a dream. Those girls are real. And it was most impertinent of them to sneak in here like that: I’d expressly told them not to, but you know how girls are when they’re bored.”
“They live here, then?”
“They work here, to be precise.”
“They’re servant girls, then?”
“Lily, you are truly sweet. And what I am about to say may shock you. I beg you to hear me out. They’re whores, Lily. And this is a whorehouse. Not to put too fine a point on it.”
Lily looked at her friend Sophie, who had comforted her all through the long, terrible voyage, who had taken her in, who had saved her life. Sophie a madam! If Sophie had come at her with a bloody hatchet in one hand and the severed head of the baby in the other, Lily could have hardly been more shocked. It was like a cruel physical blow, and all of Lily’s training in the church, in the orphanage, and in service recoiled from this news as from a deadly serpent. And yet, it was Sophie. How could Sophie be Sophie, and still be a whore? Whores were wicked, low women, and they went right straight to hell, and the angels wept for them. Everyone knew that. Lily regarded her friend with astonished eyes and a tongue too numb to speak.
Finally it was Sophie herself who broke the dense silence. “I meant to warn you, my dear, but in the condition you were in, it seemed dangerous, for I knew you’d want friends on landing, and had none.”
She saw through my little story, then. “I can’t believe it.”
“Ah, you’ve been taught that prostitutes are evil women, Lily, and maybe we are: I’ll not judg
e. But surely we’ve all known fine married ladies with no better morals than a gila monster in heat. It’s a business, Lily, like any other. I run it right, I make a profit, and a fair one at that.”
“My baby was born…”
“Say it, Lily. Say it straight out. In a whorehouse, that’s where, and but for me she’d have been born in the gutter, like as not, and she might be an orphan by now.”
“Sophie, stop! Don’t think I’m not grateful. It’s the surprise, is all. I don’t care what you do, for you are as good a friend as ever I had, or hope to have.”
Timidly Lily looked at her friend and managed a smile.
Sophie forgot her anger and returned that smile. To Lily it looked as though all the stars in heaven had come out all at once.
“Ah, Lily, my poor sweet Lily! You are a delightful child. I won’t try to justify myself, Lily, not to you, nor to anyone living. I have done what I’ve done for reasons we need not go into. I run an honest house, a clean house, and if I can help it, no one ever gets robbed here or cheated here or diseased here. Delage’s El Dorado Hotel is the cleanest sporting house in town, and with the best-looking girls and the finest wines. And the highest prices. The only harm I do, Lily, is to the sanctimonious married ladies of the town, so stiff in their whalebone and their psalm-singing and their noses so high in the air they couldn’t see love if it climbed in the carriage with ’em, and their husbands running to Sophie every chance they get. Drives ’em mad, does Sophie’s place, and I can’t say I mind.”
Lily suddenly felt very tired again. When she replied, her voice was weak. “I feel better now, thanks to you.”
“You must take it easy, my dear. It was doing too much too quickly that made you fall down those stairs.”
“Oh, indeed I will. But, Sophie, I would like to pay for what you’ve spent, the doctor, things for the baby, all of that.”
“Fiddlesticks! You’d deprive poor old Sophie of her few remaining pleasures, would you? How often do you think I get the chance to do a good deed, Lily Malone? Hell’s bells, girl, I’ve got to at least try to offset my terrible wickedness somehow, don’t you think? So I can at least have a bit of a conversation with that old St. Peter, when the time comes, instead of just being sent directly to hell.”
“We’ll be there together, then, you and me, in hell. You won’t lack for a friend there, Sophie.”
“It’s the other place I’d be lacking, my child. Out of my mind with loneliness, I’d be, on the right side of the pearly gates.”
Lily looked at her friend, at her only friend in California, maybe her only friend in the world. The shock of Sophie’s revelation was still on her. It hadn’t truly registered yet, not in its fullest meaning. That you have known this woman, and liked her, and been befriended by her, yes, and even had your very life saved by her, and her a brothel keeper, a scarlet woman! Inwardly Lily found herself mocking her own astonishment. And who are you, my fine girl, to judge the morality of others? Still and all, it was one thing to have been seduced, however willingly, and quite another thing to embark on an entire career of seducing others, and for money! Then what’s that in your money belt, Lily? If it isn’t money, and the very wages of sin, it surely is the color of money, and sure enough, it buys what money buys. And didn’t you get it from a man, for the pleasures of your sinful flesh?
Lily started to say something, then stopped.
“You are shocked, aren’t you, Lily?”
“Only surprised. It seemed…”
“That I was a fine upstanding lady? Many appearances are deceiving, child. You seemed to me exactly what you claimed to be, for example.”
“Yes, and it was a lie, too, wasn’t it? I do not blame you, Sophie, nor will I ever. It’s just that I don’t know anyone else who…”
“Who runs a whorehouse? Give the thing its proper name, my dear! We’re very outspoken here in California, it’s all the fashion.”
“…who runs a whorehouse, then. You will help me find a place to live, Sophie? As soon as I’m well enough?”
“Of course. And you do look better. I’m glad we’ve had this little chat, Lily, however painful it might be to you at first, for it has been weighing on my mind.”
“Please, think nothing of it. I could not be more grateful.”
“That is kind of you, Lily. I must go now. I’ll send Dolores with the child.”
“Sophie?”
“Yes, dear?”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Kate. Katharine. What an odd question.”
“That’s what I’ll call her. I love that name. Kate. Katharine. Kate it will be, then.”
“In honor of me? Lily, you astonish me. And I thought I was beyond astonishment. You’d name your child after a madam’s mother?”
“I would and I shall.”
And as she said those words, Lily felt a rush of happiness. Maybe ’tis a small thing I’ve done, but if it helps make Sophie feel better, then I count it a good thing.
Sophie smiled, a little too brightly, and turned away. “Thank you, my dear,” she said quickly, “thank you very much.”
Then she left the room and closed the door softly behind her.
Lily lay there trying to sort out what Sophie had told her. The bed was soft as any bed, and surely the sheets were of the finest. But it was a whore’s bed and a whore’s sheets, and she, Lily Malone, was eating a whore’s food and drinking a whore’s tea. Lily turned the word over and over in her brain: whore, whore, whore, whore. The bed stayed as soft, the sheets as smooth, the food did not poison her. This was the way it went, then, and here lay the road to damnation. Lily knew all about damnation, and had, since earliest childhood. Damnation was what happened to bad people, people who sinned against the church, liars and whores and fallen women, and they’d all roast in the fires of hell, and devils with pointy tails would stick hot forks into them for all eternity. Oh, and how the angels must be weeping for Lily Malone on this black day! Sophie a sinner, and Sophie damned for all eternity did not alter the fact that Sophie had saved her life.
Dolores came in with the baby Kate then, and Lily had only to take one look at her child’s smile in order to forget about Sophie and Sophie’s house and her profession. For in Kate’s smile lay all the happiness in the world, a free gift for anyone who cared to reach for it. Lily knew that she cared more than anyone, and would keep on caring all the days of her life.
September turned to October before Lily felt well enough to go out and inquire about her promised position at the Wallingford Emporium. Kate was three weeks old now, lively and radiant with health, and Lily herself had put back a few of the pounds she had lost. Her strength came back more every day, though she was still prone to spells of dizziness when she tried to do too much. Lily paced her room and looked out of its windows at this strange new world called California.
The city Lily saw from her window teemed and vibrated with life. All day long and halfway through the night, the hills resounded to the bang of hammers on nails, the rasp of saws, the rumble of wagonloads of bricks and building stones being unloaded at last after their long journey around the Horn and even from Europe as ballast for the restless clippers. And night, in Sophie’s house, brought its own special symphony of sin. The piano was as much a part of Lily’s life now as the luxury of Sophie’s bedroom or the flower smile on Kate’s sweet face.
On dry days the streets smoked with dust and windblown sand. When it was wet, San Francisco turned into a swamp, for only Market Street was paved, and with rough boards at that. Mud and dust and horse dung were taken for granted underfoot everywhere else.
The city seethed with people, and nearly all of them were men. Lily could sit in her window and watch knots of gibbering yellow Chinese thin as wires moving with quick, choppy steps like puppets. There were huge lumbering Russians in furs head to toe, so heavily bearded it was hard to tell where the beard stopped and the fur coat started. There were miners rampaging in from the gold and silver fields, filthy
as beggars but with fat leather sacks of pure gold dust and nuggets, their eyes red with greed and cheap whiskey and lust. Highly tailored gamblers moved among the crowds with the supple and somehow faintly evil grace of a snake rippling through tall grass. Every nation in Europe was well-represented, and places beyond: all the wide-brimmed, black-haired, two-gunned amateur banditos from Mexico and points south, Australians who had started out as convicts and had nothing more to lose, half-breed American Indians, an occasional Polynesian carved from amber and out of place, Scandinavians tall and fair as birches, fat Germans, weedy men from nameless places with the look of whipped mongrels, shifty-eyed and smiling too quickly, the schemers and wheedlers who would prey only on the weak, jackals of the gold rush, the takers of leavings.
The animals were as mixed as their owners. Fine horseflesh was priceless, and the streets ran with compromises: mules and burros and oxen and now and then even a dog cart. From time to time a proud Castilian would deign to be seen in town, glistening on the sort of horse legends are built on, sleek and dark, the man like his mount, both decked in the supplest of leathers and the brightest of silver. These were the old race, owners of the immense Spanish crown land grants that sometimes ran to hundreds of thousands of acres, feudal baronies they were, said Sophie, whose owners held absolute power over all the peons and anyone else who presumed to set foot there. But that was all changing, for these proud men never thought of their wealth, and often lost it. The great baronies were slowly being chipped away. It was sad, said Sophie, but inevitable. Lily wondered why.
On the day she gathered her courage to set out for Wallingford’s, Lily felt that a whole new chapter was beginning in her life. It was much the way she had felt on setting sail from New York Harbor in April. April! It seemed a lifetime ago! How carefully she dressed, putting on her New York-bought dress of plain but well-cut gray challis and the green cape she had made on board the Eurydice. Her black bonnet added the right note, she felt, conservative yet becoming. It was ten in the morning when she walked boldly out the side door of the El Dorado Hotel.