by Kelli Estes
Emily woke some time later to the sound of a particularly loud thud from upstairs. She held still and listened, wondering if there was something wrong, when the sound of women’s laughter filtered through the floorboards to her tiny room. Reassured, she turned the lamp down to plunge the room into darkness before falling right back into a fitful slumber.
Her dreams were convoluted with disjointed images. First there was Ben, imploring her with desperate eyes, “Why didn’t you protect me?” Emily did her best to tell him she was sorry, but he disappeared.
Then came Willie, gasping in pain as blood flowed out of her. “Find my family,” she begged.
“What is their name?” Emily yelled to her, but Willie could not hear her. “What is your sister’s name? Where do they live?” She kept shouting the questions, but Willie only moaned in pain.
Images of soldiers laughing and playing card games were overlaid with her memories from the battlefield of dead men staring with sightless eyes at the sky with chunks of their heads missing and their brains oozing out. She found herself standing all alone in the middle of a field with an entire company of Rebs running at her full tilt with bayonets, hatred in their eyes. She had no weapon and could only brace herself for the impact that never came, though she felt she stood there all night.
“Why didn’t you protect me?”
“Find my family!”
“I’ll kill you, you bloody Yank!”
Suddenly, there was Uncle Samuel sitting in Pa’s rocking chair on their front porch, rocking back and forth, back and forth, laughing at her. “You thought you could make a difference? You’re a lousy, worthless woman! Not good for nuthin’ but making babies, that’s for sure.” Rocking, rocking, back and forth, his laughter digging straight to her soul.
“Why didn’t you protect me?”
“Good for nuthin’!”
“Help me. Find my sister!”
“Lousy, worthless woman!”
Emily jerked awake and, for a long, frantic moment, thought she was still in the jail cell with that creepy guard leering at her. When she remembered she was in the bordello, she rolled over and turned up the wick on the lamp, wondering what time it was.
Her head pounded, and her eyes felt like they were full of dirt. Her body did not feel rested and, in fact, felt as though she’d been marching all night long. Her throat was parched.
When she cracked her door open to see if anyone was up and about in the kitchen, she was surprised to find a shaft of sunlight streaming into the room from a window high on the wall over the worktable. Cook was kneading dough on the floured surface, and her two young helpers were sitting on the other side of the table eating their breakfast porridge.
“Good morning,” Emily said as she stepped from her room. “Can I bother you for a drink of water?”
Cook nodded toward the pail and dipper sitting near the hearth. “Cups are on that shelf over there. Help yourself to porridge if you’re hungry.”
She was. After slaking her intense thirst with three cups of water, Emily filled a bowl with the porridge and sat next to the little girls, leaving the cook plenty of room to roll out her dough.
“Are you the new girl?” asked the little girl beside her, her mouth full.
Emily tried to figure the girl’s age. She couldn’t have been any older than eight or nine, and the other girl was probably a year older than that. She wondered if they would one day have to work upstairs to earn their keep. “No. I needed a place to sleep, so the madam let me stay.”
“That’s not what she told me,” Cook grunted as she arranged balls of dough in a cast iron skillet.
“Oh. Well.” Emily did not know what to say to this.
“What’s your name?” asked the second girl, her big brown eyes full of curiosity.
Emily opened her mouth to say “Jesse” but stopped. That life was over. Starting again, she answered truthfully, “Emily. What’s yours?”
“I’m Christina, and this is my sister, Julia. She’s seven, and I’m nine. We work here.”
Emily bit back a smile and formally nodded to the two girls. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Hurry and finish your breakfast, girls. We need to get to the market before all the fruit is gone, if there’s even any to be had.” Cook carefully laid a clean dishcloth over the rolls and set the pan on the hearth to rise. To Emily she said, “I thought you might be needing a bath, which you can take while we’re gone. No one will disturb you. The upstairs girls all sleep in. There’s hot water in that pot there and cold in the barrel.” She pointed out everything Emily would need and hustled the girls up the stairs.
The house fell into silence, with the only noises coming from the crackling fire in the fireplace and noise from the street filtering through the window. The idea of a bath brought the sting of tears to Emily’s eyes, and she quickly grabbed the large tub from where it hung on the wall and filled it with water.
As she lowered her aching body into the tub, she did weep, even though she had to bend her knees to her chin to fit and the water didn’t even come up to her belly button. It felt heavenly, and when she started rubbing the cake of soap Cook had left for her across her grimy skin, she wondered how she had gone without this for so long.
When she was finally clean, she dried off and put her dress back on. Although the dress was much better than her filthy uniform, she still wished for the rough trousers and shirt. Her life would be so much easier if she continued to live as a man.
The thought reminded her that the woman sleeping upstairs was going to wake up and expect to discuss the possibility of employment with her.
If the job was to work down here with Cook, Christina, and Julia, that would be one thing. But Emily knew that wasn’t the job she would be hired to do.
She finished dressing and looked around, trying to figure out where her bathwater should be drained. It was too heavy to lug up the stairs and out the door to the street by herself. Should she take it up by the bucketful? That would take too long. She did not want to risk being here when the madam woke up.
With a whisper of apology to the cook, she left the full tub where it sat near the fire. Grabbing a hunk of bread from the half-eaten loaf she found in the bread box and tucking it in her pocket, she tiptoed up the stairs and out the door.
As she had the day before, Emily walked aimlessly as she tried to come up with a plan. As the sun rose higher in the sky, she found inspiration eluding her. Nashville was clearly a military town, and though martial law had long ago been lifted, troops still marched through the city, and nearly every block had some sort of military-occupied building, be it a hospital, officer’s quarters, prison, Union storehouse, or barracks. The civilians in the city went about their business as normally as possible, but clearly, the city was not running as it would in peacetime and paying jobs were scarce. Paying jobs for a respectable woman were certainly nonexistent.
Discouraged, Emily considered returning to the brothel. Would the work be that bad? She’d have a place to sleep and food to eat.
But then she heard a paperboy calling the day’s headlines. “Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law!” the little voice announced over the din of horses and carriages and pedestrians pushing past. “One hundred sixty acres to any U.S. citizen willing to farm the land! Read all about it!”
Emily did not want to waste a nickel that could be put to better use than on a newspaper, but she did it anyway. She propped her back against the brick building behind her and read the announcement as fast as she could, excitement building.
According to the article, President Lincoln was allowing United States citizens to file applications for a parcel of land in the western states and territories. Once the homesteader lived on the land for a minimum of five years and showed improvement to the land, he could file for a patent and the land would be his, free and clear.
Even better, the act allowed women to take part. The only thing holding Emily back would be her age. She would turn twenty in October, still a year shy of the required twenty-one years.
She could not wait a year. She’d have to lie about her age.
Reading further, her heart sank when she read that no claims could be filed until January 1, 1863, still eight months away. What would she do until then? Her money would not last nearly that long, and she would still need funds to travel to Nebraska and get a farm up and running.
The excitement she’d felt drained out of her like water from a leaky bucket. She was back to where she’d started.
Tucking the paper under her arm, she continued to walk and think, hoping she’d stumble across something, anything, that might help her.
* * *
Night was falling, and Emily still had found no place to sleep and no respectable businesses or homes that wanted to hire a woman without references. She knew her appearance did not help her effort, even though she was clean from her bath that morning. Her hair was shaggy, and her body had become lean and muscular during her months of soldiering. She did not look like a woman anyone would want in their homes. But she would not return to the bordello.
She turned her feet away from Smokey Row and the tightly packed buildings of downtown to walk north, past Public Square and farther. The neighborhood quickly became residential, with the houses spaced farther apart, allowing for yards and fences and little gardens bursting with plants. Her stomach growled as she thought about the vegetables growing there. She’d eaten the bread she’d pilfered from Cook hours ago.
As she walked down one packed-dirt street, she heard a mother call her children in for supper. Through the window, Emily watched the domestic scene inside unfold as the children plopped onto chairs at the table, their parents at either end.
Emily’s gaze slid to the path worn into the grass alongside the house and knew it led to a garden in back. She could see it from where she stood on the other side of the street.
If she was careful, she could make her way back there and find something to eat in their garden while the family was occupied. Surely some greens or a few peas could be picked without the family noticing their absence.
Before she could change her mind, Emily lifted her chin and walked across the street as though she belonged, hoping not to draw any neighbor’s eye. As soon as she reached the yard, she hurried to the shadows alongside the house and paused, willing her heart to slow its frantic beating so she could hear if anyone sounded an alarm.
The neighborhood was quiet, with only the sounds of barking dogs and the occasional horse and wagon passing on the busier street a block away.
With a deep breath, she moved alongside the house to the backyard where the sight of a bountiful garden rewarded her efforts.
Ignoring the mud, she dropped to her knees and started pawing through the plants, shoving whatever looked ripe into her mouth. The deliciously bitter taste of green beans was sweetened by tiny early strawberries.
As she was digging her fingers through the soil in hopes of finding a small new potato, she saw a flash of movement in the corner of her eye. She froze. The movement came again, and she turned to see what, or who, was in the yard with her.
Laundry. It was only laundry hanging on the line, swinging gently in the breeze. She could have melted to the ground in relief. With a chuckle for how scared she’d been, she finished digging up the potato, and then dug out two more for later, which she shoved into her pockets.
With her stomach finally satisfied, she climbed to her feet and was about to return to the street when an idea struck her.
Hanging from the line were two sets of men’s clothing, including breeches, shirts, socks, and even a cotton jacket.
With another glance at the house to make sure no one was looking, she crossed the yard and took the items she needed from the line. In their place she clipped bills she pulled from her diary to cover their cost. With the goods bundled to her chest, she darted back to the shadows alongside the house, where she would be screened from the street by a huge hazel alder shrub. Moving quickly, she kicked off her shoes and stripped off her dress, dropping it to the ground. As she slipped into the man’s breeches, she found they fit better than the uniform she’d been wearing for the last several months. She would still need to roll up the bottoms, but she was not at risk of them slipping off her hips without a belt. The shirt fit as well, but this she removed again and started ripping the second shirt to use as her chest binding.
Voices on the street made her move even quicker. Finished, she gathered her dress into a bundle, for she wasn’t quite ready to be rid of it. It might be needed. Or she could sell it, at the least. She grabbed a clump of dirt and rubbed it on her jaw and chin like she’d seen Willie do, hoping it would look like she needed to shave. Finally, she reached for her shoes to put them back on, her heart sinking when she remembered they were clearly women’s shoes.
The street was quiet again. She’d be safe to duck out of the shadows now. But those blasted shoes! With nothing else to put on, she slipped into them and unrolled the legs of the breeches enough to cover the shoes as much as possible. That would have to do.
Feeling like herself again, she moved to the front corner of the house and leaned out just enough to see the street. Empty.
With a deep breath, she straightened her back and crossed the short front yard as quickly as possible, her gaze firmly forward, and headed back toward downtown.
The farther she moved away from the house, the more she could relax. Only when she’d gone several blocks was she able to turn her mind back to the problem of where to sleep for the night. As a man, she had more options.
But, then again, did she really want to spend money on a place to sleep when she should be saving it for her land claim? The night was fairly warm, after all. She was used to sleeping on the ground. She didn’t have a blanket, but the dress could suffice.
She passed an abandoned two-story brick building, no doubt the former property of a secesh who had fled the city when the Union Army arrived. It had an inset porch that, with no lamp lit, appeared as dark as a cave. She could curl up there and no one on the street would see her.
She darted up the steps and rapped sharply on the door. When no one answered, proving the building was abandoned as she’d thought, she relaxed. With that, she lay on her side in the corner with the dress over her as a blanket and waited for sleep to claim her.
From her vantage point she could see the street, and she idly watched people pass by, mostly men on their way to the saloons and brothels on Smokey Row. None of them gave her a passing glance.
She was starting to doze off when a strange sight made her sit up. Two children crept along the street, one a black boy of about nine years of age and the other a little blond girl who looked to be Ada’s age, about six. The boy followed a step behind the girl, as though he were her servant, and did not say a word as the girl planted herself in the path of two men in uniform and turned her wide eyes up to them. “Please, sirs, could you spare a coin? I’m a poor little orphan with no place to live, and I’m very hungry.” She let out a heartrending sob.
Emily was digging in the pocket of her dress for her diary, intending to draw out some money to give to the kids, when she saw a third child, a boy with hair matching the girl’s, dart out from the shadows, pick the pockets of both soldiers, and disappear before they even knew he was there. The three children were clearly working together.
“Now, now, little one,” said one of the soldiers. “Don’t get all worked up. We’ll help you.” He reached into his pocket and, finding it empty, got a confused look on his face. “Wha—”
The girl and her friend took off running. The soldiers gave chase, but they were no match for the small children, who disappeared around the corner.
Emily chuckled as she lay back down, impressed by those kids. They wou
ld, undoubtedly, survive this war just fine on their own.
And so would she, she decided, curling onto her side. She was going to be fine, too.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Present day: Woodinville, Washington
May 29, 1862: There is no use pretending anymore. My charade is up with the Army. I am again in men’s clothes and am doing my best to play the part of a civilian man now.
I was betrayed by Uncle Samuel. I underwent the most shameful inspection of my most private person and was thereafter discharged, after a night in the city jail. I am so angry, but that is not what I want to think about right now. Something even worse has happened. I received news that Benjamin was killed in battle at Pittsburg Landing. He has been gone all these weeks, and I did not know. How did I not know? Did he die before Willie, or after? Are they together now in Heaven? Was he scared when it happened? Did he suffer, or did it happen quickly? Oh, I hope it happened quickly for I cannot bear the thought of my brother dying alone and in pain.
Ben, I am so sorry I wasn’t with you. I am so sorry I failed to protect you. I am so sorry that we enlisted in the first place. I would beg your forgiveness, but I am unworthy of it. You deserved so much more.
Dear God, how am I to go on?
I reckon I don’t have a choice.
Since being released, I’ve slept in a brothel and on the street. I never wrote here about Vee, so I will do so now. Back in February when we were posted here, I had the unique opportunity of seeing the inner workings of a house of ill repute. Details are not necessary, but I came out of that place with a new friend and a softer heart toward women like Vee who have fallen so far due to no fault of their own. Vee said her name was V. A. White and she was kind, so when I found myself back here in Nashville and needing help, I thought of her. Alas, she is no longer employed at that bordello, and I was unable to determine where she went. I hope she is alive.