Sex Wars

by Marge Piercy

  “How many children do you have?” the lady asked, leaning on her elbow.

  “An older boy and a younger girl.”

  “It’s the same with me,” the lady said. “An older boy and a younger girl. They’re the reason I work at the trade I’ve chosen. Before that, I was a spirit medium.”

  Freydeh wasn’t sure what that was, but she thought spirits were a lot of superstitious nonsense. You lived and then you died, that was the end of it. She didn’t imagine a heaven of clouds and white light. She didn’t imagine being born as a cow or a crow. But she kept her opinions to herself, as she so often had to in a world riddled with imagination and superstition. She was working on Kezia’s weird set of beliefs.

  Annie laughed, shaking her curls. “A woman has to have her own money. My business has been good to me. I pay off the men I have to. If they finally close me down, I have enough saved to live on comfortably. Thanks in part to my friend here. If you care to invest any money, she’s the one you want.”

  “Here.” The woman handed her a card. Her hands were well kept, manicured, soft, but there was a little scar on the back of her left hand that spoke of days that had not always been so easy. Freydeh’s hands were callused and spotted with burns. “If you want to invest, just come see me.”

  Freydeh thanked the woman, peering at the card. Woodhull, Claflin and Company, stockbrokers. Nice, but if she got ahead with money, she would move them to a safer neighborhood. If she had money like Annie and this lady—Woodhull or Claflin?—there were things she’d do, rather than gamble in the stock market. Land. A house. She believed in owning something solid, something you could live in or grow food on, not pieces of paper that could lose their value overnight.

  That afternoon, Kezia came home late. Freydeh surveyed her. She had bruises on her face and her arm, a scratch on her cheek. This would have been normal for the girl Freydeh had rescued from the streets, but the new improved Kezia usually had skin clear as good china. Her hair had grown out black and straight and her posture was no longer that of someone expecting to be hit.

  “Why did you get into a fight like a common street arab?” Freydeh was not pleased. She stood glaring, arms folded across her bosom.

  “They said bad things. Elizaveta and Karla.”

  “You have to learn not to take insults to heart.”

  “They weren’t talking about me.”

  “Who, then?”

  “You, Mamaleh.”

  “Me? What do they know about me?”

  “They said because you make condoms, you’re a whore. So I hit them.”

  “I hope you won.” Freydeh sighed. “They’re envious because you have new clothes. You have two dresses and a pinafore and a woolen shawl. That’s enough to fire up the envy of most girls in that school.”

  “I know you’re a good woman, Mamaleh, far better than their mothers. I just can’t stand for them to say evil about you.”

  “It don’t hurt me, Kezia, my honey. My little piece of heaven.” She knew she was growing attached to the girl. A daughter of her own. “I chose this work because a woman can do it, we can work on our own right here and make a good living. All the women wearing their fingers to the bone making paper or cloth flowers, seamstresses stitching coats, jackets, dresses, pants, knitting socks. They work so hard and they make not enough to live on, hungry all the time and in mended rags. Lots of married couples use them, Kezia, to keep from having what they’d be forced to get rid of, what they can’t afford to feed. How many dead babies have you seen in the alleys?”

  “I know, I know. They’re stupid mean girls. They pick on me.”

  “Defend yourself when you must, but don’t worry about my good name. The rabbi likes it just fine when I put some money in. He always greets me—not as warmly as a successful businessman, a successful shop owner, but next in line.” With two children to raise, she had begun going to shul now and then. Freethinking was not for kids. They needed rules. And in shul, they met other good Jewish kids. Kezia had been shy and nervous at first, but then she had made friends with a little girl there.

  “Where’s Sammy?” Kezia was looking around for her hero. Over the past four months, she had come to admire Sammy.

  “Delivering. He’ll be back soon. Go get yourself cleaned up. I want you to draw me a panther.”

  When Sammy arrived, he saw the bruise at once. “What happened? Did somebody beat you up?”

  Kezia told him. Sammy was scornful but protective. They fought often, screaming at each other over the last chunk of bread or bit of potato. Now that she was no longer hiding food, Kezia still ate as if the meal could vanish from the table. Sammy was growing fast, filling out, and they both wanted more food than she could provide. This was the third year with Shaineh somewhere in the city but nowhere she could find her. Freydeh judged herself a bad woman for preferring to make money and collect children that could be hers instead of finding her sister. Maybe if she had quit everything else and just looked for Shaineh, she would have found her a year ago. If Moishe had lived, no doubt she would be a better person, because she would not have to make every decision alone. What did she know about raising an American girl or boy? She could not even speak correctly. Who could she turn to for advice? Nobody. She went to lectures when she could to make herself smarter, but she worked most evenings and weekends. No Shabbos for her except for shul.

  Sometimes she went alone to bakeries. Sometimes Sammy or Kezia came along. Always she bought something for them, a roll, a cookie. Sometimes it was hard for her to remember that Sammy and Kezia had never met Shaineh, for they talked about her together, second-guessing what might have happened. By now, she knew her adopted children far better than she knew her own sister. Sammy, who had been in on the search since the beginning, was determined to find Shaineh. However, she suspected Kezia just liked to go along to get a poppy seed roll, cookie or little tart. Kezia ate whatever she could lay her hands on, but she especially appreciated sweets. She was still too thin, for she had grown taller more than sideways. Sammy was taller than Freydeh, gangly but beginning to fill out. His voice had deepened. His face was still boyish, but his manner was growing stronger. It was he who challenged the baker in the second bakery they went to that Saturday.

  “No, never seen her,” the man said, gingery mustache and sideburns dusted with flour, a heavy man almost as broad as he was tall. That was what every baker they asked said, as they handed back the much-thumbed tattered drawing the street artist had made of Shaineh. He shook his head but did not bother to look up. He did not even ask them if they wanted to buy anything besides two sugar cookies. Kezia had eaten hers at once, a bite at a time around the edge and then into the center. Sammy ate his more casually, staring at the man, frowning.

  The man said again, “Can’t help you. Never saw her. Goodbye.”

  Something in his voice bothered Sammy. “You do know. You just aren’t saying. That could get you in trouble.”

  “I don’t want trouble,” the man said. “Just leave me alone.”

  Freydeh stepped nearer. “Believe me, we aren’t going anyplace till you tell us what you know.” She turned and addressed the women waiting for bread. “Best shop someplace else. This man has urgent business with us, and we’re not getting out of the way.” She repeated that in German.

  The man turned, squinting as if he had something in his eye. “You got no right to hold up my customers. They’ll go someplace else.”

  “We got every right,” Sammy said. “You know something about our sister.”

  The man, square as a pavement stone, chewed on his mustache. Then he finally muttered, “Okay, she did work here.”

  “What happened? Where is she?”

  “One day this man come.”

  “What man? When was this?” Sammy was leaning half over the counter now.

  “Just before Christmas. Four weeks ago. This man came in and Samantha stared at him like she was going to faint dead away.”

  “What did he look like?” Freydeh ask
ed.

  “He was maybe thirty. He was a toff, well dressed, with a diamond stickpin in his cravat. His nails was clean and he was wearing fine boots and a beaver hat. He was close to six feet tall.”

  “Did he speak to her?”

  “He yelled at all of us. He said she was his wife what had run away from him and he was there to bring her back. And we better not get in between a man and his lawful wedded wife.”

  “What did Samantha do?”

  “She said she wasn’t his wife and she didn’t want to go with him, but he grabbed her. He had a heavy weighted cane, one of those things you see the better-off thugs wielding. He wasn’t no river rat.”

  “So you let him take her away?”

  “If she was his wife, he was entitled. She started screaming she had a child—she did. She had her little girl tied up in the back room so she wouldn’t get burned—tied to a table leg. She could crawl around the table but she couldn’t burn herself. A cute little bugger. Samantha called her Reba—”

  “That was our mother’s name… She’s dead. Do you have her still?”

  “He yelled at her, ‘Whose is it?’ And she said, ‘She’s yours but you didn’t want her so she’s all mine.’ When I heard that, I knew she was his, and I told her to get out with her kid and go home with her man and leave us alone. So he took them both.”

  Freydeh said nothing, biting her tongue. She wanted to punch the ginger man in the face, but first she wanted to shake every bit of information he had out of him. “Did you get a name?”

  “I didn’t ask. Not my business.”

  Sammy leaned closer, fingering the knife in his pocket. “The name?”

  “Al something she called him. Alfred or Albert, that’s all I know. So she picked up the baby and he took hold of her and dragged her out, and that was the end of that. I don’t want no trouble. She was crying and begging, but he was the father of her child, so she had to go with him. He had rights.”

  “And she had none? Oh, never mind.”

  “And you don’t know anything else?” Sammy was still leaning over the counter. He was taller than the baker and could make himself look mean. “You know something, I can tell.”

  “Just he got into a spider phaeton and started whipping the horse and they were off. That’s all I saw.”

  “Anything about the phaeton? Color?”

  “I was scared of the guy. He wasn’t no B’hoy like we see around here. He was a plug-ugly but highfalutin and wrathy.”

  “Try to remember.”

  “I only saw it was dark-colored like maroon and the horse was gray. That was it. And he had a serving man with him in those fancy suits they wear—livery.”

  “Again, what color?”

  “Two colors. I didn’t get a good look. It was like blue and white or blue and silver. Light blue. Believe me, I didn’t see nothing more.”

  Kezia was eyeing the cakes through the glass. Not only was that an extravagance Freydeh would not commit, but she disliked the baker. He had lied to them. He had not protected Shaineh from the man, obviously the one who had kept her locked in a room until she escaped in the fire. Her captor was the father of her child. It was more important than ever that they find Shaineh, quickly, and her little girl too.

  As they were walking home, Freydeh clapped Sammy on the shoulder. “You were great, Sammy, you did just what was needed. I can’t believe how mean you sounded. Without you, I would have left him and learned not one thing.”

  “But what did we learn? Not much that helps us find her.”

  She stopped at a fish market. “We can have fresh whitefish. I love whitefish. I can’t bake it like we did at home, but I can make it good on the burner. This is a treat for all of us, but especially for Sammy.”

  At supper Sammy enjoyed the fish, certainly, for it was a big treat, but he seemed preoccupied. After they had hauled up water from the pump and washed dishes in the basin, he perched by the window, motioning her to come sit by him.

  “I have to stay out of school this week. I’ll help you write a note how sick I am.”

  “Why do you want to stay out of school? Education is important, Sammy. I want you to make something of yourself.”

  “I need to go around to the stables. So he has some money. He has a fancy carriage and fancy clothes and a footman in livery, but I bet he doesn’t have his own stables. I bet he keeps his horse and carriage in a stable near where he lives.”

  “But how will you find it?”

  “I bet he don’t live up on Fifth Avenue by Madame Restell’s. I’ll start in the Twenties and Thirties.”

  “You stay in school. I’ll look.”

  “Freydeh, you can’t go around to stables. I can hang around pretending I’m looking for a job and find out where he keeps his maroon spider phaeton and his gray horse. Then I can find out who he is and where he lives.”

  “He may have Shaineh locked up some other place.”

  “Once we find him, we can follow him. We’re only four weeks behind now.”

  She was torn. She desperately wanted to find Shaineh, but she was afraid of the temptations that would beset Sammy if he stayed out of school. She doubted if stableboys were a good influence. It was hard to keep a young man from getting into trouble, and Sammy was growing into a fine young man. But he was right: if they did not follow up on what they had been told quickly, they would lose their only shot at finding her lost sister. She had to trust him. She had to. Slowly she nodded.

  1871

  TWENTY-NINE

  ANTHONY WAS DEEPLY satisfied with his personal life. His dear wife was in the family way at last. He cosseted her. Sometimes he even cooked, to keep her from tiring herself by standing too long on her feet, for her ankles were swollen and her back often ached. He knew most men refused to do what was regarded as women’s work and thus demeaning, but he felt himself too securely a man to worry. He carried out all his church duties, Sunday school, prayer meetings at the jail, special meetings at the Y, but always he hastened home to his Maggie. He was proud of their house with its comfortable furnishings, the piano in the parlor that even now she often played for him, old favorite songs and hymns. He liked the neighborhood, where many prosperous Christian families lived. He could walk to church, although now that Maggie was so far along, he had a cab take them. He would have liked to have a carriage, but he was not advancing in the dry goods trade.

  He was bored with his toil of fancy and fashion. He tried to do the Lord’s business on his own time for these were wicked days, when depravity was spewed out by countless presses, flaunted on the stage, sold from shop after shop. Newspapers carried open advertisements for the prevention of children and the killing of them once fecundated. The sporting papers for men spoke openly of so-called star courtesans, filthy women with the gates of hell between their legs. Brothels were corrupting youth on every other block in Manhattan. Streetwalkers roamed alone or in packs even on Broadway; in the theaters they filled the balconies. Wicked upper-class women disposed of potential offspring as if they were tossing out spoiled fruit. All they cared about was pleasure and fancy clothes, jewels, hats, gloves, boots. Maggie was nothing like that. She made her own dresses and she kept a tight budget—as they had to. Success was eluding him, and here he was starting a family. He was frustrated into impotent rages in which he strode the streets of Brooklyn until he had worn out his temper lest he carry it home.

  The city was rotten, like Nineveh in the Good Book that Jonah was sent to warn, and a strong man was needed to set things right. He attended meetings of the National Reform Association, full of devout men and clergy. They wanted the nation to pass a constitutional amendment to place the United States firmly under God, to declare God and Jesus Christ the rulers and the Bible the supreme authority. A Presbyterian who had been president was now a justice of the Supreme Court. Anthony did not think much of Presbyterians, for he did not find them evangelical enough, but certainly they were supporting this fine project. After all, his wife had been raised Presbyteri
an, and her father, the shopkeeper, had been an elder of his church. They had a certain strictness that was appropriate. The proposed amendment would settle the nation once again on the way of virtue and restore Bible teaching to schools. There would be no room for freethinkers or freelusters, for radicals with dangerous ideas. But the movement was not making the headway the founders had expected. Some of them were moving into reforming morals, fighting obscenity that destroyed the bodies and minds of so many young growing boys, leading to enervation and insanity.

  In his Connecticut village, if someone was doing something bad, everybody shortly knew and could punish that person, drive him out of town. Here in the city, a boy could go astray and no one pay heed. Young men’s lives, like poor Edward’s, were wasted. Now that Anthony was about to be a father, his duty to fight evil was clearer than ever. Budington encouraged him, something he needed these days when his job oppressed him.

  He pondered the YMCA. They had money, for many important men of business belonged, some even serving on their board, like J. Pierpont Morgan. Such men cared deeply about the generation growing up, that they learn to cultivate good habits and avoid evil ones. If only he could demonstrate to these rich and powerful men his usefulness, his ability to serve as their strong arm in the war against those who would corrupt and enervate youth, he could carry out the Lord’s work and support his family at the same time. The Y had recently limited membership to evangelical Christians. They had been responsible for passage of the state law against obscenity. Surely if he could reach the men in charge, he could persuade them of his zeal.

  He had been studying the YMCA structure. William E. Dodge was one of the leaders, young and wealthy, son of the man who had led the New York Tract Society that proselytized widely. The father had poured money into evangelical causes, and the son was following in his footsteps. Another leader was Cephas Brainerd, a prominent lawyer and active in Republican inner circles. Then there was Morris Jesup, who had lost his father at twelve, as Anthony had lost his mother. He knew about hard work and scrabbling his way to the top. Only a decade older than Anthony, he was a banker and railroad financier everyone said was worth millions upon millions. Yet he too had been raised in a devout Congregationalist family in Connecticut. Anthony was particularly avid to make personal contact with Jesup. He knew in his bones that they would speak the same language, would understand the world in a similar way.