Behind the Masks

by Susan Patron

  Residents gathered together for a holiday celebration. Because no trees grew in Bodie, they were hauled into town from outlying areas and lashed to buildings or fences for decorations during holiday celebrations such as this one.

  A modern map of the United States showing Bodie, California.

  Mask Making circa 1880

  Cut loose-weave cotton muslin into 3/4″ × 3″ strips. Cut some of the strips in half lengthwise and some in half crosswise so you have three sizes of strips to use, as needed.

  Fixative:

  If you are going to dye the fabric, use this fixative: Mix 1 part vinegar with 4 parts water in a pot. Add fabric and simmer for 1 hour. Rinse in cool water and squeeze out excess.

  Yellow Dye Bath:

  Put 1 cup firmly packed dry onion skins in pot and cover with water by ½″. Bring to a boil and simmer 1 hour. Strain onion skins. Put muslin fabric strips in dye bath. Simmer, covered, until color you desire is achieved. You can turn off the heat under the water and let it sit as long as overnight. The longer you leave the fabric in the dye, the darker the color. Note that the color will lighten as the fabric dries. Rinse in cool water and lay in a single layer on a towel to dry.

  Paste:

  You’ll need 2½ ounces of wheat flour (before weighing, we strained the whole wheat flour to remove the big pieces of bran). From a 1-pint measure of water, add water to flour until you have a smooth paste with no lumps. This will not use all the water. Put the remaining water in a pot and bring to a boil. Pour the boiling water into the mixed flour and water, stirring all the while. Put the mixture back in the pot and boil 5 minutes. When it cools, it will be a thick paste. Thin with water to a pancake batter consistency.

  Mask:

  It works best to do this project with a partner. Coat one face with a light layer of Vaseline to protect the skin. Dip a strip of fabric in the paste and run it between two fingers to remove most of the excess paste (and to evenly distribute the paste). Lay strips on the face in overlapping fashion, leaving eyeholes, going over the nose but not nostrils, and leaving an opening for the mouth. Exact openings can be evened out with scissors when the mask is dry. Sit in the sun or a warm place to dry. (Twenty-first-century people can also use a blow dryer, on low heat, to hurry things along.) When mostly dry, begin to pry the mask off using a small butter knife (rounded top, not sharp). Loosen all the edges and then begin to prod deeper, until you can release the whole mask. The inside will still be damp. Be careful when turning it upside down to keep the nose, forehead, and cheek shapes supported.

  Once the mask is thoroughly dry (at least overnight) you can add a another layer of fabric strips. You don’t need to use your partner’s face again (although that is ideal). You may be able to simulate it with a gourd or upside-down oval bowl.

  When your mask is completed and very dry, use small scissors to even the eyeholes and trim the exterior edges.

  Use an awl or nail to punch holes in both sides of the mask, even with the eyeholes.

  Knot two 18″ pieces of ribbon. Feed an unknotted end through each of the holes from the front to the back.

  —By the author’s sister, niece, and great-niece:

  Georgia Chun, and Erin and Christen Miskey

  From the Author

  I first visited the ghost town of Bodie during a road trip with my husband a dozen years ago. The town, a National Historic Site and a California State Historic Park, is northeast of Yosemite near the Nevada border. It is maintained in a state of “arrested decay,” meaning repairs are made to keep buildings upright but there is no attempt to restore them. The interiors remain exactly as they were, with furnishings and goods and peeling wallpaper. I walked the dusty streets and peered into windows and did not feel as if I was on a movie studio lot or in an amusement park. I got a vivid sense of the real people who had lived there: the riches and work, violence and hardship, and the everyday struggles that defined their existence.

  After writing a trilogy of novels (The Higher Power of Lucky, Lucky Breaks, and Lucky for Good) about a contemporary girl growing up in a fictional impoverished former mining town of the Eastern Sierra, I wondered what it would have been like to come of age in the same region back when the mining towns were booming. I learned that people mostly made their own medicines and cosmetics, soaps and ointments. Girls and women, with the women’s rights movements still many years in the future, were subject to the will of fathers, husbands, and sons. Victorian mores dictated rigid and (compared with those of today) constraining standards of dress and behavior. The daily work was immense. Immigrants and people of parallel cultures were subject to racism and inequality under the law. Miners worked twelve-hour shifts and six-day weeks. Saloons were open twenty-four hours a day. The California Red Light Abatement Act that declared brothels public nuisances was not passed until 1913. So in 1880, though mainstream society did not approve of this way of life, it was legal for women to work in brothels.

  The more I read about Bodie and some of the actual people who lived there in 1880, the height of its gold-rush boom, the more I wanted to imagine the story of an ordinary girl, her family and friends, against the backdrop of that extraordinary time and place.

  I was especially inspired by material that was written in the 1870s and 1880s, which provided tremendous access to how people thought, what they ate, the way they lived. I relied heavily on Practical Housekeeping, A Careful Compilation of Tried and Approved Recipes, Buckeye, 1881, for insight into Angie’s daily life: The recipes for freckle removal, hair tonic, moth treatment, protective ointment for the face, gray hair preventative, and pigs feet souse, as well as directions for cleaning a woodstove, are taken from its pages. Similarly, Let Them Speak for Themselves: Women in the American West 1849–1900, edited by Christiane Fischer, Shoe String Press/Archon, 1977, shows how western life was experienced by women through their uncensored letters, diaries, reminiscences, and journals. I paged through the handwritten ledgers of the 1880 U.S. Census for Bodie, scanning the columns: occupations (“house keeper,” “gentleman,” “miner,” “show man,” “cook,” “gambler”), ages, places of birth, roles in household—thrilled by the realization that I was viewing a vivid snapshot, taken at the time, of the people who lived there. Another rich source of primary material, The Saga of Inyo County, California, Taylor, 1977, provided informal, personal histories that made me feel steeped in the times and able to imagine a life like Angie’s in the neighboring county of Mono.

  I discovered that Bodieites loved their festive masquerade balls. Masks were also worn by highwaymen and robbers, by vigilantes, by actors for theatrical performances, and at the end, death masks served as a way to commemorate loved ones. Masks hide our secrets, our fears, our regrets, our identity, and our hopes. I came upon a quote by Annaeus Lucanus (often incorrectly attributed to John Dryden, a translator of Latin texts), “Boldness is a mask for fear, however great.” To find out if that is true, I peeked behind some of the masks in Bodie and found stories waiting to be told.

  Susan Patron is the Newbery Award–winning author of The Higher Power of Lucky, among many other books for children, including the Billy Que trilogy of picture books; Dark Cloud Strong Breeze; a chapter book, Maybe Yes, Maybe No, Maybe Maybe, which was an ALA Notable Book; and two sequels to The Higher Power of Lucky: Lucky Breaks and Lucky for Good. She was a children’s librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library for thirty-five years before retiring in 2007, and currently lives in Los Angeles.

  Acknowledgments

  In striving to capture historical details as authentically and seamlessly as possible, I owe a great debt, for their unstinting help and expert advice (although any errors are my own), to the following: Robert P. Palazzo, knowledgeable as to weapons of the period, was generously receptive to my questions. He has written extensively about the Reddy brothers, Ned and Patrick, and also responded to my queries about them. Terri Lynn Geissinger, Business Manager of the Bodie Foundation, met me in the Bodie Museum and kindly answered questions after my
husband and I had explored the town in the fall of 2010. Grateful thanks to Dr. Joseph L. Dautremont, DDS, for his vivid description of late nineteenth-century dental practices and for reviewing that section of the manuscript. I’m privileged that Dr. Judy Yung, professor emerita in American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, an authority on the history of the Chinese and Chinese Americans in the West, read this book in manuscript form and responded with insightful and useful suggestions and comments. Her time and expertise are hugely appreciated.

  An enormous boon to me in writing the mask-making scene were the careful notes and photographs provided by an intrepid three-generation team of Georgia Chun, Erin Miskey, and Christen Miskey, who re-created the process using period ingredients and techniques. Patricia Leavengood (with her insight and ideas on the subject of masks) and Georgia Chun boosted morale as always.

  Many thanks to Lisa Sandell and Jody Corbett for their kindness, enthusiasm, and editorial expertise. Thanks again to Susan Cohen and to Kirby Larson for advice and encouragement.

  Much appreciation to Lloyd Woolever for generously lending me unique materials from his collection.

  Theresa Nelson redefines friendship and bigheartedness. She helped me see ways to make this a better book than it otherwise would have been. Thanks, too, to our cohort Virginia Walter.

  René Patron made my writing of this book (as with all else in life) fun, rewarding, and possible.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use the following:

  Cover portrait by Tim O’Brien.

  Cover background: courtesy of California State Parks, 2011, West Sacramento, California.

  Overview of Bodie, California, 1880, courtesy of Mono County Historical Society, Bridgeport, California.

  Site of the Occidental Hotel, Bodie, California, ibid.

  View down one of Bodie’s streets, 1877, ibid.

  Bodie Standard Mill, 1879, ibid.

  Bodie cabin, ibid.

  Grand Central Hotel, courtesy of California State Parks, 2011, West Sacramento, California.

  Bodie couple, 1879, courtesy of Mono County Historical Society, Bridgeport, California.

  Standard Mill miners with ore train, 1902, ibid.

  Wedertz Meat Market, early 1900s, ibid.

  Engraving of anti-Chinese riots, North Wind Picture Archives, Alfred, Maine.

  Holiday celebration, 1800s, courtesy of Mono County Historical Society, Bridgeport, California.

  Map by Jim McMahon.

  Other books in the Dear America series

  Copyright

  While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Angeline Reddy is a fictional character, created by the author, and her diary and its epilogue are works of fiction.

  Copyright © 2012 by Susan Patron

  Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi

  Cover portrait by Tim O’Brien, © 2012 Scholastic Inc.

  Cover background: courtesy of California State Parks, 2011

  Photo research by Amla Sanghvi

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, DEAR AMERICA, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Patron, Susan.

  Behind the masks : the diary of Angeline Reddy / Susan Patron.—1st ed.

  p. cm.—(Dear America)

  Summary: In the “wild west” of an 1880s California gold-mining town, Angeline investigates the supposed murder of her father, a famous criminal lawyer, who she and her mother are certain is still alive. Includes historical notes and instructions for making a mask from muslin.

  ISBN 978-0-545-30437-5

  [1. Frontier and pioneer life—California—Fiction. 2. Robbers and outlaws—Fiction. 3. Diaries—Fiction. 4. Lawyers—Fiction. 5. Gold mines and mining—Fiction. 6. California—History—19th century—Fiction.

  7. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P27565Di 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2011023826

  First edition, January 2012

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-39241-9