Badlands

by Melissa Lenhardt

  “Miss?”

  Startled, I turned from Portia toward the voice. A plump, dark-complexioned Negress stood a few feet away, hands held in front of her, eyes downcast.

  “Yes?”

  “I heard you talkin’ to Stella before, and wondered if your offer extended to us.”

  “You were there? I didn’t see you.”

  Her eyes met mine. “No, ma’am. I expect not.”

  “Of course the offer is for any woman who wants my help. Do you need my help?”

  “No, ma’am. But my friend does.”

  “Lead the way.”

  The woman turned, but I put a hand out to stop her. “What is your name?”

  “Monique.”

  “Monique. A lovely name.” She nodded and walked away. “Portia, are you coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “He’ll be along shortly, I’m sure.”

  Monique led us back toward Calico Row, but instead of walking in front of Stella and her girls’ tents, she turned right and walked behind the tents opposite for a hundred yards, and moved back to the main row. We walked down a small incline and across wooden planks laid across the bottom of a dry wash in readiness of the rare occasions of high-desert rain. The tents and buildings on the other side were identical to Calico Row, except the women and men standing in groups and walking to and from were Negroes.

  “That there’s our shebang,” Monique said, pointing to a small wooden building with a corral attached. Inside the corral three pigs attacked the slop a large man threw over the side.

  “Morning, Monique.”

  “Jesper.”

  The man nodded to us and went inside his store. Monique stopped in front of a tent on the opposite side of the street. “The doctor don’t come see us,” Monique said. “I guess he don’t want our payment, though we willing to pay money instead.”

  “Your money is good with me.”

  She held open the tent flap and Portia and I walked inside.

  It was large, and neat as a pin. At the back of the tent, three cribs were cordoned off by sheets. A quick glance inside one showed pallets on the floor instead of cots, but the bedding seemed clean from my vantage point. The front of the tent was used as a waiting room, with a small table and four chairs, a deck of cards on one side, a sheet down the middle, and an identical setup on the other side, along with a small stove where a pot of coffee warmed.

  “Would you like a cup?” Monique offered.

  “Oh, no,” Portia said.

  “Yes, thank you,” I replied. When Monique went to make me a cup I motioned to Portia to accept.

  “On second thought, I’d love a cup.”

  Monique served us and motioned for us to sit down. We did and I sipped the coffee. “Oh my word, Monique. That is the best coffee I’ve had in months.” Portia concurred.

  When Monique smiled, she kept her mouth closed, I suspected to hide a jumble of crooked teeth. “You’ll have to do some mighty fancy nursing to get the secret out of me.”

  “Oh, a challenge.” I smiled at Monique and placed my mug on the table. “Are the separate rooms for whites and blacks?”

  Monique nodded and glared at Portia when she stiffened. “You don’t like the idea of your men laying with us?”

  “No, it’s that …” She trailed off.

  “They been doin’ it since they brought us over. Least now they’re havin’ to pay for it. And pay they do. Though some try to get it for free.”

  “How do you make them pay?” I asked. Duncan had proved that no black man in the country would be allowed to beat a white man for nonpayment and live, let alone do it repeatedly.

  “I got a white boy who watches over us at night. We give him a portion of every white man’s payment, and he gets some snatch for free every night. He just have to beat a couple men and the rest learn. They pay pretty easy now, though there’s always some railroader who comes off for a quickie during the red light who don’t know what’s what.”

  “And the Negro men don’t mind you servicing white men?” Portia asked.

  “Nope. We charge our men less. They visit Stella’s, pay a premium for white snatch. ’Course, they have to poke them in the alley so the white men don’t know. The crackers don’t mind fucking a black woman, but God forbid sticking their pecker in a white woman who’s opened her legs for a nigger. ’Course, we have to do the Chinamen standing up out behind the tent, too. No one, white or black, wants to dip it where a Chinaman’s been. There ain’t many of them, so’s it don’t matter overmuch.”

  Portia made a valiant attempt to take this information in with equanimity, but I could see the strain around her mouth and eyes. An interesting reaction for someone who said she’d worked with prostitutes for years. “Who is it you want me to see?” I asked Monique.

  “Lavina. This way.”

  Monique led the way to the crib on the far side of the tent, off the whites’ waiting room. “Do these women only see white men?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, but I could tell she was lying. “Lavina, a nurse is here to see you.”

  The woman lay on her side, facing away from the crib opening, a large soft lump beneath the blanket. She turned over and looked at us through opiate-hooded eyes. “What?”

  “A nurse is here to see you.”

  “What for?”

  “What do you mean, what for? To take care of it.”

  I moved inside and to the bottom of Lavina’s pallet and rolled up my sleeves. “She’s pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  I knelt down. “Hello, Lavina. I’m Helen. Would you lie on your back for me?”

  With a sigh, the woman rolled over, pulled her legs up, and opened them in the practiced manner of a woman who’d done it a thousand times and the resignation of a woman who knew she would do it a thousand more.

  “I think I’ll wait outside,” Portia said in a faint voice, and left the crib.

  I watched Portia leave, then turned back to Lavina. I closed the whore’s legs and pressed them gently down. “I want to feel your stomach first.”

  I pulled her dress up and revealed a soft, expansive stomach, one that would easily hide a pregnancy for weeks. “When did you feel the quickening?” It was impossible to tell how far along she was by sight. When I pressed against her abdomen and measured the head I estimated thirty weeks.

  “Couple of weeks ago.”

  Monique couldn’t see the expression of disbelief I gave Lavina, who looked away. I pressed on her stomach this way and that, trying to get the baby to respond. I pulled her dress down to cover her nakedness.

  “When was the last time the baby moved?”

  “I don’t know. I try to forget it’s there.”

  “What are you high on? Opium? Laudanum? Morphine?” She looked away.

  “Can you get rid of it?” Monique asked.

  “No. She’s thirty weeks along, at least. Maybe more. Why didn’t you try to get rid of it earlier?”

  “We did,” Monique said.

  “When?”

  “A month, or little more. It didn’t take,” Monique said. “Got the herbs from that huckster, Drummond. It was Stella’s doin’, I know. She know Lavina my best girl. She’ll do anything she can to ruin our business, and she got Drummond by the cock. Little do she know that Drummond dipped hisself into Lavina, too. Part of his payment, he say.”

  “I imagine there’s plenty of men to go around.”

  “Yes, well, we get the rich men from across the tracks who wanna relive the old days with a little nigger snatch. Rubs Stella raw she’s stuck sucking off miners and railroad men and won’t ever be welcome in the saloons on Nineteenth Street.”

  I stood. “You’re going to have to bring it to term.”

  “I don’t want no white man’s baby.”

  I thought of the girl at Mary’s orphanage, Sophia. No matter how intelligent she was, or how good at midwifing, or possibly surgery, she wou
ld be, she would always struggle because of her mixed parentage. A mulatto child born to a whore in the West would have an even more difficult time of it, especially if the baby was a girl.

  I thought of another pregnant whore I’d tried to help a year earlier at Fort Richardson. She and her baby had both died. At the hands of Cotter Black, because of me.

  I rubbed my forehead. So many lives lost in my name. But, I was still bound by my oath, believed in it. My goal—my purpose—as a physician would always be to save everyone I could. This child would be no different.

  “Between the herbs you took and the opium you’re eating, the baby might be stillborn. If not, I know of an orphanage in Saint Louis that will take your baby.”

  Lavina propped herself up on her elbows. “You do?”

  “I do. You’ll have to pay for my train passage east, but I will take the baby there for you.”

  “That’s mighty nice of you,” Monique said. “Why would you do that? You gonna sell it?”

  “What? God, no. It’s a Catholic orphanage run by my husband’s sister.”

  I’d promised Rosemond three months, and if Lavina brought her child to term, I would almost make it. She’d promised to pay for my train ticket, but there was no guarantee she would keep her word. In ten weeks the newspapers and gossips would have moved on from Catherine Bennett, and traveling with a baby would give me an invaluable disguise. I would give Mary the baby and cable my cousin, Charlotte, to book passage for England, finishing the trip Kindle and I had started.

  “I’d like to visit my sister-in-law, and taking Lavina’s baby will give me the opportunity,” I explained.

  “Where’s your husband?”

  My throat thickened, but I managed to get one word out. “Dead.”

  Monique looked down her nose and studied me, as if trying to figure out where the lie was and how much she could trust me.

  I shrugged as if it meant nothing to me, and realized it didn’t. Going to Charlotte held no appeal, and neither did staying in Cheyenne. “The offer is there. Do you have a midwife who delivers your babies?”

  Monique scoffed. “We delivered plenty of babies on the plantation. I expect this one won’t be no different.”

  “You’re probably correct. If you run into trouble, send for me. I’m glad to help.”

  “Even a nigger whore?”

  “I’m taking her baby to Saint Louis, aren’t I?”

  “What’s it gonna cost?”

  “My passage. One way.”

  “Don’t like Cheyenne?”

  “It’s not home.”

  “Where is home?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Portia waited for me outside the tent. “Would you like to explain why you ran out of the tent? I thought you were a nurse,” I said, as we walked back the way we came.

  Portia blushed again. “I didn’t imagine she wanted me watching the examination.”

  I laughed at the obvious prevarication. “She’s beyond caring who sees her pudenda.”

  “I didn’t want to see it.”

  “It’s no different than a white woman’s, I assure you.”

  Her face reddened further. “Why would you think—”

  Drummond interrupted us. “Mrs. Graham?”

  “Mr. Drummond.”

  “I hoped I might have a word with you in private.”

  “Of course.”

  “You can find your way home, I assume,” Portia said, stiffly.

  “Yes.”

  She nodded and walked off, back straight and stiff. I supposed all the good feeling we had managed to cultivate in our morning together had been lost, though I wasn’t sure why. “What can I do for you, Mr. Drummond?”

  “Theodore. I, um …” He cleared his throat. “I have a boil that needs to be lanced.”

  I remembered his grimace when he got down from his wagon and had an inkling where his boil might be located. I knew as a physician I shouldn’t shirk my responsibilities to heal, but I was exhausted from my sleepless night, and my cravings for laudanum were returning. The thought of lancing a boil on Theodore Drummond’s backside held no appeal at that moment.

  “Wouldn’t a doctor be better suited for such a procedure?”

  “Yes, well, Dr. Hankins and I had what you might call a run-in on my last swing through town. I wouldn’t want him holding a knife over me in such a vulnerable situation.”

  Though the sun was bright in the cloudless sky, chills rushed across my body. Though the worst had passed, the mere mention of laudanum was enough to awaken my craving. Soon I knew I would be a pale, shivering, and trembling mess. Drummond watched me with a discerning eye. “Are you ill?”

  “Recovering.”

  “We can help each other. Payment in kind. Whatever I have on my shelf.” He lowered his voice, though there was no one around to hear. “Or under the counter, if you wish.”

  I swallowed and pushed away the urge to take him up on his offer. “Coin is fine.” I considered asking him to meet me at my house in an hour but decided I didn’t want this man to know where I lived.

  “Do you suppose Stella would let us use a cot?”

  Drummond raised his eyebrows, and I realized how the suggestion sounded. “Don’t insult me, Mr. Drummond, or you won’t want me to have a knife near your nether regions, either.”

  He held up his hands in surrender, though his amusement didn’t abate. When we arrived at Stella’s tent, Drummond went inside as if he owned the place. “Stella, my dear. We need to use your facilities.” Stella’s response was muffled. Drummond stuck his head outside the tent. “Well, come on, then.”

  The bright sun struggled to permeate the dirty canvas tent, throwing the inside into a perpetual gloom. The detritus of a busy night littered the floor at the edges of the room—whisky bottles, cigar butts, a leather belt with a broken buckle, a neck cloth stiff with dried blood, a used sheath. Stella sat at the table in the main area, drinking a beer with a thick head of foam, while a young whore picked up a deck of cards scattered on the floor. Drummond went to the keg in the corner of the room and drew himself a beer. “Want one, Mrs. Graham?”

  “I would, as a matter of fact.”

  “Help yourself,” Stella said sarcastically, waving her hand.

  “I’ll give you a free bottle of Mugwhumps,” Drummond said.

  “I don’t want no free bottle of that snake oil.”

  Drummond handed me the beer. He removed a small pouch from his inside pocket and tossed it on the table in front of Stella. “Cannabis. You roll it like a cigarette.”

  “I know what it is,” Stella said. “You’ve cut it with oregano, most like.”

  Drummond clutched at his heart. “That cuts to my very core, Stella dear.”

  The beer was lukewarm and tasted like piss. I forced it down and tried not to grimace or cough from disgust.

  “You’re right,” Stella said. “Oregano would cost you money. Prairie grass is free.” Stella evaluated me. “Do what you need and get on, Slim. I wanna sleep.” Drummond bent down and spoke into Stella’s ear.

  I set my medical bag down and set to work, and was immediately sidetracked by an empty water bucket. “There’s no water.”

  “Pump’s across the street,” Stella said.

  I looked to Drummond, expecting him to be a gentleman and offer to fetch it, but he and Stella continued with their low-voiced conversation. I picked up the bucket and went to find the pump.

  With the whores sleeping off their busy night, Calico Row had gone quiet, the only evidence of life the stray dogs sniffing for food in the alleys, feral cats darting between the shadows, and a plume of black smoke floating behind the tents across the street. I walked between the tents, disturbing a pair of copulating cats and getting a terrifying hiss in return. The female didn’t move but stared into the distance, an expression of resignation on her little feline face. With my back to the wall of a tent, I inched past, hoping the tom wouldn’t launch himself at me.

  The water pump was
in the middle of a large U-shaped area bordered by outhouses on one side, a washhouse on the other, and a large fire pit at the top of the “U.” A Negro woman with turbaned hair and her sleeves rolled up past her elbows washed clothes in a large wooden tub. Next to the fire pit, Jesper leaned on a two-by-four scorched on one end, watching the flames. He nodded at me and poked at the fire with his board. The woman ignored me. I hooked the bucket over the nozzle and pumped water into the bucket. I removed the bucket with my right hand and dropped it, spilling the water all over my skirt.

  I rubbed my right hand with my left, silently cursing myself. Even after almost a year, my instinct was to use my right hand, which would never be as strong as the other. It didn’t help when I used it to punch a man in the nose. A pain shot from my middle knuckle up through the finger. I grimaced and flexed my hand and was relieved that it trembled only slightly. I was lucky Drummond would be turned away, and unable to be discomforted by my shaking hand.

  I filled the bucket halfway, hooked it on my left arm, and returned to the tent. Stella sat at the table as before, and Drummond stood across from her, near where my medical bag sat, top unbuckled. I met Drummond’s shrewd eyes with a pang of fear. Was there anything in my medical bag that would connect me to the Murderess and the Major?

  I set the bucket on the worktable. “Did you find what you were looking for?” I asked.

  “You don’t have any laudanum.”

  “I suspect you have something in your caravan that will help with the pain. More cannabis, maybe?”

  “That I do. Just odd for a nurse to have everything but an opiate. Not to mention a surgeon’s kit.”

  “It was my father’s,” I said. I stepped close to Drummond, keeping my eyes on his, and hoped I was brazening his questioning out, though my insides had turned to jelly. I opened my bag and looked inside. It was a jumble, but nothing seemed to be missing.

  “And you know how to use it?”

  “Well enough to lance a boil on your ass, yes. Do you want my help or not?”

  “Hush your yapping and get on with it,” Stella said. She motioned to the corner crib. “Use Clara’s crib. She’s off with that preacher, sweet-talking him into giving her something for nothing.” She rose unsteadily and disappeared behind a sheet. I heard a rustling, the creak of a straining cot, and a groan of exhaustion. Almost immediately, she began to snore.