“Look, Canning, isn’t it exciting?” I said to him the next day while we ate breakfast. “Anna says the director was so impressed by my talent he’s thinking of casting me in his next show. Can you believe it?”
Canning looked up from the review I’d shoved beneath his nose. “Another bit part or a real role?” He sniggered. “The more time you spend onstage, the more time those Johnnies are going to expect from you after the curtain falls, and I won’t have any wife of mine playing the demimonde.”
I waved away his concerns. “This is a real part. It pays fifty-two dollars a week. That’s nearly three times as much as I make as a seamstress.”
That caught Canning’s attention. “I’ll give you my blessing, but know I will be there almost every night and I will be watching what you do after the show. If you so much as look at one of those backdoor bastards, I’ll pull you from the show by the roots of your bleached wig, you hear?”
Canning must be around here somewhere. Please let him show up soon. I never thought I’d actually want to see my husband backstage—most nights he flitted around like an annoying mosquito—but tonight I could have used his temper to rid me of this particularly persistent admirer.
“Come on now, darlin’, I’m only asking you to dinner.” Anton Joss’s cigar-stained breath ruffled my hair as he trailed a finger up my arm from wrist to shoulder then back down again. “What happens after that is up to you.”
He had me pinned against one of the stage walls, one arm on either side of my neck so I could barely move, much less escape. “Mr. Joss, your offer is very kind, but as I’ve told you before, I am married to a very jealous man who would not take kindly to my being out at all hours with you when I should be at home in his bed.”
I glanced away from his thick mustache, my gaze darting around the wing. When I caught her eye, Josie sent me a concerned look. But there was nothing she could do, nothing anyone could do. Mr. Joss was one of the show’s backers, and if I wanted to keep my part in The Corsican Brothers, I had to keep him happy—even if that meant spreading my legs for him. I’d managed to fend off his advances thus far, but it appeared his patience was at an end. Where is my husband?
I swallowed hard, seeing I would have to consent. Perhaps I could slip out after the show without him noticing? But then I’d just have to face him the next day. There were only two ways this could end: I could say yes and submit to whatever depravity he required, or I could refuse and watch my job disappear.
“Your offer is very kind, but I simply do not feel right accepting it as a married woman.”
Mr. Joss stepped toward me, closing the inch of space between us. “If that’s the way you wish to play it—”
“The lady said no.” Canning’s voice from somewhere behind my admirer was a blessed relief. Before I could even let out my breath, Canning had pulled him away from me and landed a punch square on Mr. Joss’s nose. “You can play with the other actresses all you wish, but my wife is off-limits. And if you don’t heed me, I will personally see that you don’t have the equipment”—he shot a purposeful look at the man’s crotch—“to ever make a play for another woman again.”
Mr. Joss recovered quickly, straightening his rumpled suit. “Remember that I hold your wife’s employment in my hands. One word from me and she will never find another job in these theatres again as an actress or seamstress.”
Canning answered by throwing a rude gesture over his shoulder as he hustled me toward my dressing area. “I think it’s time you find another line of work.”
“Doing what, Canning? This is all I can do. I know I’m meant for something higher, but what? And how? Will you lay off your drink and your laudanum long enough for us to find out?”
Canning blanched at my mention of his newest habit.
“Don’t act like you think I don’t know that gin and whiskey alone don’t satisfy you anymore. Am I to become a cigar girl, as you once joked, to support your new habit?”
Canning smacked me hard, but I hardly noticed. After five years of marriage, I barely registered his blows anymore. If I didn’t react, he was less likely to do it again. I’d figured out long ago it was the rise, the reaction, he enjoyed. If I robbed him of that, he lost interest.
I was saved from any further conversation by the shrill call of “Places!” as the director made his last-minute pass through our dressing area, ensuring everyone was prepared for the opening scene.
Without another word, Canning left to take his seat. I paced through the first several scenes, waiting for my cue. Maybe it was my encounter with Mr. Joss or the words Canning and I had exchanged or perhaps that the moon was full, but I was restless, unable to still my body or mind. Something was tugging at my edges like a communication from the spirits I could not quite hear.
Thankfully, all that melted away when I took the stage. Under the lights, amid the swell of music from the orchestra that accompanied our ballroom scene, I was able to think clearly again. My lines spilled forth without conscious effort as I charmed the audience and my castmates with graceful aplomb.
The conversation onstage centered on an exchange about the separation of the two titular brothers, but I couldn’t pay attention. My restlessness returned with a force I could barely contain. The gaslights faded, and I saw Tennie in my mind’s eye. She was dressed in a striped calico dress, holding her arms out to me.
“Victoria, come home,” she said with no small amount of urgency.
Something was wrong. I had no idea what, but whatever was going on, my sister was in dire enough straits to send her spirit directly to me to beg for help. Without a thought for the play taking place around me, I dashed off into the wings and didn’t bother to remove my pink silk dress or slippers. I gathered up my few valuables from my dressing area and ran headlong into the foggy drizzle.
Canning met me around the front of the theatre. “Vickie, are you unwell? What is going on?”
I shook my head, trying to catch my breath while simultaneously urging him back toward our home. “We have to go.”
“What? Why?”
“I’ve had a vision of my sister. All I know is we are needed. We must be on the morning steamer to New York.”
COLUMBUS, OHIO
OCTOBER 1856-1861
Tennie rushed into my arms at the train station. “You came! Oh, thank God you came.”
I held my sister close, only mildly surprised to see she was wearing the same dress as in my vision. “What is it, Tennie? What’s happened? Is it Ma?”
She kissed my cheek. “No, nothing like that. Ma and Pa are both fine. Everyone is. I”—her cheeks colored, and she looked away—“I couldn’t stand another day alone in this place. You have no idea, Vickie. It’s even worse than it was before.” She looped her arm in mine, finally nodding at Canning. “Come home. You’ll see.”
“Home” was a large house on the outskirts of Columbus where Tennie saw clients, Buck sold his snake oil, and Utica and Maggie, now divorced with four children to feed, entertained gentleman clients. Tennie occasionally saw clients in that way as well.
Once Canning and I moved in, Pa put me back to work in the parlor, but he didn’t pressure me to entertain men, the one thing for which I’d give him credit. Maybe he was respectful of my marriage or scared of Canning—I didn’t really care because it kept me from the worst of my father’s schemes.
After several years of this life, working thirteen-hour days, I understood Tennie’s desperation, for this was no way of living. But we were all well and truly trapped unless we could find a way out. Byron was growing and, as Josie had promised, becoming more erratic and sometimes even violent, especially around strangers and loud noises, both of which our house had in excess nearly all day and all night. He needed dedicated care, but none of us had time to sit with him; it fell to whoever wasn’t busy at the time to be sure he ate and was tended to. I was ashamed to admit that some days, we forgot he existed and he spent the better part of the day sitting in a corner, rocking back and forth, grunt
ing to himself.
When I voiced my concerns to Canning, he dismissed them almost before I had finished speaking. “Why should we move? We have income and a house. What more could you wish for?”
Of course he didn’t understand—no, he wouldn’t understand. He and my father were bosom friends, sharing clients by day as both “doctored” in their own humbugging way and sharing a taste for alcohol by night. For them, it was a dream life with a solid income and little responsibility.
Against all logic, I found myself praying to God for another child, one who was whole and smart and beautiful. In my darkest hours, I knew my need for what it was—a desperate desire for the love I didn’t get from my husband or my family. Tennie was the only one who truly cared about me, but even that wasn’t enough to fill the void that ate away at my heart with every beat. I needed someone who would be devoted to me, wholly dependent on me.
But I rarely admitted that…even to myself. I told myself that if I had another child, Canning and I could get away from all of this. The last thing my father would want was a screaming babe interrupting his trade, so we would be forced to leave, breaking the bond that made Canning immobile, forcing us into another phase of life.
Finally, the Lord heard my prayers. Late in the summer of 1860, I found myself with child once again. But rather than being upset by the news, my parents welcomed the impending birth of their next grandchild with unusual solicitude. It seemed that part of my plan had failed. But then fate intervened again.
One afternoon in early 1861, snow fell in large flakes outside our building amid a bitter cold snap, keeping away our clients and forcing my nieces and nephews into a single room to entertain themselves when all they really wanted was to play outside in the snow—a desire they voiced loudly any time one of the adults came near. After several skirmishes that ended in scratches and tears, Utica was elected to stay with them and ensure they didn’t kill one another.
When I brought in trays of soup and bread for their midday meal, I found the kids so engrossed in their games they didn’t look up when I opened the door. At least I thought they were playing until I paused on the threshold to listen. Then I realized I had walked in on a very different scene.
The kids were gathered in a semicircle near the rear of the room, their backs toward me, taunting something. I assumed they’d cornered a rat or one of the neighborhood tomcats who’d tried to escape the cold. But before I could move to break up their circle, I realized it wasn’t an animal they were after but my son. I could just barely make him out between their tiny bodies, cowering against the wall, arms clutched over his head protectively.
“Monster!” one of the boys yelled. “You ain’t even a person.”
“My mama says you the devil’s spawn,” Polly’s daughter Rosa said.
“Yeah, you more like a dog,” an older boy said, removing the rope that held up his pants. “An’ you know dogs need whippin’ to keep ‘em in line.”
He raised his arm to strike. I flung aside the tray of food and was in motion in the same moment, determined to protect my son. But Byron sprang up with shocking ferocity and tackled the boy, snarling like a crazed beast, his hands clamped around his attacker’s throat. The kids shrieked that Byron was going to kill Jessup, drawing Utica out of her morphine-induced haze and bringing the other adults scrambling into the room.
Before I could pry Byron’s surprisingly strong grip from Jessup’s throat, the accusations began. I finally got Byron to let the gasping boy go, and I held my son to my breast, where he shook with a rage I’d thought impossible for one so young. Ignoring the ravings around us, I whispered soft words to him, stroking his hair, telling him all was well, until he calmed enough for me to look up. When I did, it was into a circle of grim, silent faces.
My father broke through the ring, pushing siblings, nieces, and nephews away so that he towered over me and my now-quiet son. Byron clung to my protruding belly as though seeking comfort from his unborn brother or sister, refusing to look at his grandfather. I didn’t blame him. The hatred on my father’s face was such as I hadn’t seen since I was a child myself.
Emboldened by the years that had passed since then, I dared speak first. “Whatever you may do, do not punish my son for the taunts of his kin.”
“He tried to kill my boy,” Maggie screeched from somewhere behind Pa’s broad shoulders.
Pa ignored us both. “Vickie, I cannot have this happen again. Imagine if we’d had clients here. What if your son attacked one of them? He needs to be locked up like the wretch he is. And if you won’t do it, I will. Otherwise, get out.”
I couldn’t believe my own ears. “You would abandon your own kin, your pregnant daughter and her family, based on one tussle? I’ve seen Utica and Polly come to blows over who took the last sugar cube, and you would toss us out over this?”
Pa turned his back on us. “Be gone by morning and do not come back. You aren’t welcome here.”
We had nothing. Nowhere to go. For the first time in my wretched life, I was homeless.
After begging one night’s stay with friends in Columbus, Canning decided we should visit his father and uncle in New York. “They’ll take us in,” he said with great assurance.
I sold my few remaining pieces of jewelry from our time of prosperity in San Francisco to book passage to New York. Though I’d known for years that Canning’s connections were not what he made them out to be, I was not prepared for the coldness with which we were received. His uncle, the “mayor,” was traveling and so could not receive us, and his father flatly refused to let us in. I wondered what had really taken place all those years ago when Canning left New York for Ohio. It had to have been something big for his father to still be holding a grudge. One thing was for certain—Canning’s tale of admiring small-town life and wanting to settle down in one had been just as much of a lie as his made-up familial connections.
Seeing I was soon to give birth, Canning’s step-mother took pity on us and paid a month’s rent at a local boardinghouse so I wouldn’t have to birth my child on the street. Our lack of funds also meant Canning lost his ready access to alcohol and laudanum, which meant he was frequently sick as his body went through withdrawal. He was in no condition to see patients, so we lived on the charity of neighbors.
Finally, my time came. In between contractions, I prayed Canning really did have some medical education because this time, I would have to rely upon him to help me deliver my child, a frightening prospect given his hands shook constantly and he was covered in more sweat than I was. As pain ripped through me, I prayed to Demosthenes, Jesus, and every spirit I could think of to be with me and my new child, to deliver us safely.
Canning told me we had a healthy baby girl, whom I named Zula Maude, before I succumbed to exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep. I awoke a few hours later to a pool of warm liquid on my left shoulder just beneath where my sleeping daughter lay. Damn it, Canning, couldn’t you have at least swaddled her correctly? But when I looked at my hand, it wasn’t covered in urine; it was red with blood.
I sat straight up in bed, looking around for my husband to ask for his help, but the small room was silent. I was alone. I held my baby girl carefully and checked for the source of the bleeding. A large crimson stain covered the front of her tiny gown right where the stump of the umbilical cord protruded from her stomach. As I removed the soaked cloth, she emitted a weak cry, bathing my hands in fresh blood. He was a doctor. How could he have not tied the umbilical cord off properly? Panic built in my throat as I searched for something to use to re-clamp it so my child wouldn’t bleed to death. Finding nothing at hand, I tried to stand, but my legs gave way and my head swam with dizziness. When my ears stopping ringing and my eyesight cleared, I tore the edge of the bed sheet and used it as a makeshift tie.
I breathed deeply, knowing the worst of the danger was over, but my daughter still needed help. She had lost a lot of blood, and I had no idea how to know if she would live or die. I laid Zula on the bed and tried to s
tand again. This time I made it a few steps before collapsing into a rickety old chair, which splintered beneath the weight of my sudden fall. Now I too was bleeding, and I had not the strength to rise again.
Desperate, I called out for help, but no one responded. I heard a scuttling on the other side of the wall, so I knew our neighbors, the Collinses, were home; I just had to get their attention. I pulled a piece of the broken chair out from beneath me and banged on the wall with it. For what felt like hours, I knocked on the wall, scratching the wallpaper and gouging out pieces of plaster, until my front doorknob rattled.
“Mrs. Woodhull, are you all right? What is going on in there?” Mrs. Collins called.
“I need help,” I cried, my voice hoarse and throat dry. “Get a doctor.”
The handle rattled again, and a loud bang startled me as she threw herself against the locked door, trying to get it open. “Don’t you worry, dear. I’ll get someone right away.”
By the time Mr. and Mrs. Collins finally got in through a grate in the basement, I managed to pull myself to my feet and collapse back into bed, cradling my baby girl. The doctor was there soon after, assuring me Zula would be fine and treating the wounds I had sustained in my fall. He tried to give me a dose of laudanum syrup to help me rest, but my stomach rebelled at the sugary sweet scent I’d come to associate with my husband’s breath. Failing that, he gave me something else, something bitter. Before I lost consciousness, Mrs. Collins promised to stay by side and care for Zula.
It was dusk two days later when I woke. Byron had crawled to my side from wherever he had hidden during the chaos of the birth and its aftermath, and he was sleeping peacefully snuggled up against me. Mrs. Collins was there, as promised, with a heavyset young woman with kind eyes and long brown hair piled on top of her head in a manner that reminded me of a Viking maiden. Mrs. Collins introduced her as her daughter, Celeste, who was nursing her own babe and was happy to lend her other breast to Zula.
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