Prospects of a Woman

by Wendy Voorsanger

  In comparison, you are not as impulsive and strong-tempered as your father complains, as it is our role as women to stretch the comfortable boundaries of men, even while damaging our souls during the process. If we remain stuck in the same place, subservient to our fathers and husbands, we wilt and die, causing them in turn to complain at our grief and immobility. Rather they grumble just the same when we fly far beyond our common places. After all, men rely on us to pull them patiently along as we soar, and will surely rejoice in the new place where we’ve all arrived, finding it far more beautiful than the place we fled.

  Despite your father’s protests, I predict your life growing full, as you hold a determination that will soon be rewarded by more publications, bringing in much-needed money for your family. Simply ignore that nasty publisher, Mr. Fields. His advice on your essay “How I Went Out to Service” is utter rubbish. He knows nothing of service. How dare he advise you to stick to teaching. A man knows nothing about the plight of a woman. Trust me, women everywhere will read your words and understand. You must steel yourself against the very nature of men like Mr. Fields, and any other man for that matter, who places a heavy weight of lies and guilt around your neck. Ignore both their criticism and praise as of no consequence in your quest, as I now do here in the West. Your essay is of great importance.

  Ambition is our crux, sitting at our center as a sextant, guiding us which way to turn. I know that much, and am bolstered by the knowing of it. I don’t give myself over to it blindly but am paying attention with all the good judgment and reason I can muster. At first, I fretted terrible about being alone and finding a suitable way to support myself. Fortunately, many kind California women have pulled me along, teaching me how to lean in to the challenges of living independent. The fine Mrs. Ethel Rosenblatt has given me an extraordinary opportunity to learn copper engraving. I don’t know why she sees such promise in me, but I accept her generosity with gratitude. I find solace in the work, and a sort of peace, too, knowing this is where I belong at the moment. In this place. At this time. Until I discover another direction, please post me at the Pacific Print Shop on Front Street.

  Waiting for your forgiveness in San Francisco,

  Miss Elisabeth Parker

  37

  When I see a road

  In truth, working in copper at the Pacific Print Shop lessened the itch for drink, keeping her hands busy and her mind focused away from the sadness, guilt, and lingering want for that damn Californio. Every day before sunup Elisabeth walked the five blocks from her room at the Sully Boarding House to the shop on Front Street, then back in the dark to take her supper with the rest of the boarders. She fell in bed exhausted each night, with images of lines and curves and crosshatches drifting in dreams, pushing out memories.

  Ethel and Jacob Rosenblatt welcomed Elisabeth with an intellectual companionship and solace that pulled her away from falling off the edge of reason. The Rosenblatts ran a sophisticated operation and set high standards for Elisabeth’s work. At first she wasn’t at all comfortable trying to prove herself, but she pushed down her nerves and rolled up her sleeves, watching and learning. Overwhelmed, she sat sheepish among the reams of paper and shelves stacked with copper plates and the large iron press and the dozens of cans of ink, and the inked-up paper drying on lines hanging overhead, wondering how she’d possibly master the new modern printing techniques. But Ethel remained patient even while demanding perfection, explaining how to melt wax on a small round copper plate and stick the pictures atop the wax. Using a stylist as Ethel instructed, Elisabeth’s hands shook as she traced along the lines, pressing the image into the wax. After the first pass, Ethel removed the paper from atop the wax to reveal Elisabeth’s first engraving. It was only a simple picture of a tree, but it looked magnificent outlined in wax. When Ethel told her to trace the image straight down through the wax onto the copper below, she faltered, growing flush under the scrutiny.

  “Just remember, copper is much softer than the wood you worked with. Don’t press too hard, or you’ll punch right through the plate and ruin it. Make your first pass light,” said Ethel. “Take your time, Miss Parker. Put the plate on the sand pad and turn the copper as you engrave deeper on the second pass. Peel off the wax as you go. Understand?”

  Ethel didn’t take a warm tone but wasn’t dismissive either, instructing with a matter-of-factness that assumed an understanding.

  “Yes,” Elisabeth said, feigning confidence.

  Her face burst open with a nervous sweat, and she wiped her forehead before it dripped onto the wax. Ethel placed a hand on her shoulder, reassuring. Breathing slow and shallow, she held herself rigid over the copper as her still-healing ribs throbbed something awful under the bony stays in her corset. Her hands shook, but she steadied her nerves and concentrated. Compared to digging in mud, engraving copper required much less force and no luck. She fell into a deep concentration, pressing into the copper slow and luxurious, losing all track of time, pulling the burin along while turning and tilting the copper plate on the sand pad, thinking of nothing but the next line, the next curve, shape, and dot. She stopped every inch, pulling the burin out of the emerging lines, cutting the curl of copper burr off with a scraper, and peeling away the unnecessary wax from the plate. The work required more patience, more delicacy than engraving wood, and proved far less forgiving.

  At one point she pressed too hard and poked right through the copper clumsy, and Mr. Rosenblatt sighed impatient and grabbed the plate out of her lap. For a slight, balding man, he seemed to take up the whole room as he held the plate up close to his nose, scrutinizing every inch of the design from behind his tiny round glasses.

  “Quite crude. Very rough,” he said. “Don’t you have any formal training?”

  “Self-taught,” she admitted.

  “Don’t use your crude engravers on our copper,” he said.

  Ethel stepped in.

  “Have patience with her, Jacob,” said Ethel, handing Elisabeth a finer bruin.

  Elisabeth continued engraving, until Ethel’s simple drawing of two trees appeared beneath her fingertips in the copper as if by magic. Finished, she sat back thinking it the single finest picture she’d ever engraved, hopeful the Rosenblatts might find her work sufficient to keep her on.

  “Give her the scraps of copper to practice crosshatching,” said Jacob.

  Ethel saw potential in Elisabeth and was as generous with her compliments as Jacob was stingy with his.

  “You’ll save me enormous time doing the engraving so I can focus on my drawings,” said Ethel.

  As Ethel’s apprentice, she worked the whole of spring, learning to engrave extraordinary detailed sketches in copper including one large image of a western landscape with Indians on horseback circling a buffalo, a long line of wagons on the prairie, an Indian mother carrying a baby on her back, and an impressive mountain range. When Jacob printed the plate onto paper and hung the picture on wall behind the front counter to show potential customers a sample of what they could print, she knew he finally approved of her work.

  Working for a Jewish couple that didn’t believe in the baby Jesus proved less complicated than working for Christians, as they didn’t reproach or throw around pious judgment but revealed themselves as high-minded, enlightened intellectuals not limited by the strict constructs of the Bible. Elisabeth hadn’t even realized the Rosenblatts were Jewish until the end of her first week when they left her alone in the office Friday at sundown for their apartment upstairs. She heard them praying through the ceiling and realized she never even considered the differences between folks anymore. She didn’t care if the Rosenblatts were Jews any more than she cared if Nandy was black or Ginny was Irish or Nemacio Catholic. Maybe those particularities had mattered to her in the past, when she’d first arrived in California and was naive and scared. But she now understood how a variety of folks made a place more interesting. More alive. And she’d surely benefited by being around all sorts of folks these past years. Spending time in t
he company of those different from herself, opened her eyes wider.

  Ethel and Jacob proved as fair and industrious in their business dealings as they were exacting and precise in their printing. Elisabeth gained enormous respect for Ethel’s gift of drawing and wanted to please her. She listened careful at her instruction, eager to learn every part of the printing process from the drawing and engraving to the inking and pressing. She watched the Rosenblatts careful, seeing what she might learn. Ethel proved a great model of womanly industriousness. Nearly fifteen years older than Elisabeth, Ethel’s forehead lifted with thin lines of expression when she spoke and scrunched up in concentration as she sketched. Small and bony, the woman worked with enormous stamina, drawing elaborate pictures from memory all day. Some days Ethel didn’t rise from drawing until dark, creating picture after picture of San Francisco: the buildings, the harbor with abandoned ships, and sandy dunes. Elisabeth struggled to keep up engraving all the pictures but soon matched Ethel’s pace, only pausing long enough to ask about the best tool to use or how deep to make a particular flourishing etch.

  She envied the Rosenblatts’ partnership. They worked side by side, with Ethel creating the images and Jacob taking orders from customers, setting type, inking plates, and pulling the printing press. Jacob elevated Ethel’s contributions equal to his own, expecting his mother-in-law, Flora, to manage their three children in the large apartment above the shop so Ethel could work. As a tender and affectionate husband, Jacob often paused his own working to ask after Ethel’s progress, blinking at her with both eyes closed for a moment behind his glasses in a secret code of affection from across the room. It seemed a remarkable partnership, making Elisabeth both hopeful and sad. If she’d had this sort of setup with a man, she might’ve been able to keep the child. She never let on a thing about her family shame or the terrible deed she’d done. Reasonable folks could only abide so much.

  Ambitious, Jacob had plans to expand the Pacific Print Shop, writing summaries to accompany Ethel’s drawings, passing the printed broadsheets out for free at the more respectable saloons as advertisements. By summertime, Jacob admitted he was pleased Elisabeth had joined their shop and hoped she’d help them expand.

  “I’d like you to run the store during the Sabbath, to avoid any complaints that we’re not open on Saturdays,” said Jacob.

  Eager to manage a business again, she agreed. She took over the shop every Friday when the Rosenblatts retired upstairs for dinner and prayer, settling into a comfortable weekend routine taking customers’ print orders in between engraving. She closed the shop at nine and opened it on Saturday at six in the morning until six at night. Come Sunday morning, the Rosenblatts kept their shop shuttered as required by San Francisco city laws, but behind drawn curtains Ethel and Jacob toiled away in secret. They expected Elisabeth to take off Sundays for Christian church services and perhaps rest, but they didn’t judge when she chose to stay and work seven days a week, even though the Rosenblatts could only pay her for six.

  “I want to learn everything I can,” she said, knowing work kept her from thinking about Nemacio and drinking.

  As a paid apprentice, she earned five dollars a day, a low wage by San Francisco standards. Even so, she was relieved to earn her own living, free from Nate and Nemacio and anything else holding her down. After spending three dollars a day on room and board at the Sully House, she had little leftover each month to save. Not enough for starting her own business, yet. But she stashed all her savings over at Mr. Langley’s Pioneer Bank, while waiting on her mining shares to cash in, hoping her meager balance might grow into a substantial savings over time. Mr. Langley offered an extraordinary savings interest rate of 75 percent. She took the interest rate gladly. Still, she didn’t want to be in his debt, or any man’s debt, so she inquired about his rate, just to clarify.

  “What’s the going interest rate elsewhere?”

  “Short-term rates are running at six percent back in New York. You can get about twenty-five percent in Missouri. I offer from fifty to seventy-five percent for larger investments. You’re my exception.”

  “That’s quite a differential, Mr. Langley. What’s the catch?”

  “No catch, Miss Parker. My intentions are noble. Consider your special rate my personal investment in the women of California, if you will. I assure you, I’m entirely trustworthy.”

  “How can you promise such grand interest?”

  He leaned over the table of his bank desk, speaking in a mere whisper.

  “Land. I invest my customers’ money in land.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here, in the sand below my feet. San Francisco won’t always look such a dusty windblown place, but will sparkle as the jewel of the West. Most folks don’t have the courage. Fine by me. More lots for the taking. I’m buying up all I can get my hands on, block by block, all the way from the ocean to the end of the bay down the peninsula. It’s a good investment, Miss Parker. Mark my word. Bound to pay off. Those little plots of land stand to increase tenfold, in very little time.”

  “How much time, do you suspect?”

  “A year or two, at the outset,” said Mr. Langley.

  “Since I’m giving you my savings to buy up all that land, I’d like to take out my interest payments in monthly installments. I need something to live on until my mining shares pay off,” she explained.

  Once they worked out the particulars of an arrangement to cover her room and board at the Sully House, he once again pressed her to join him for dinner. She begged off as usual, reminding him that she was too busy working. He was persistent and charming, saying his day would improve mightily if she’d agree, but she always turned him down, suggesting perhaps next week. It became a silly game playing between them, him asking, her declining. She found the flattery helped bury her deep loneliness for a man. But as he escorted her to the bank door, he spoke of his family, reeling her in slowly, like a fish caught on the end of a hook.

  “Didn’t always look like this, you know,” he said, pointing to the long scar disfiguring the right side of his face. “I was a handsome widower when I came out here in 1848 looking to make a better future for my daughter, Lily Beth. I came by way of New York as a seaman, an occupation I didn’t at all enjoy. Too little for my mind to work with, you understand, Miss Parker. I had an unfortunate incident with a knife-wielding American trapper drunk off his topper. He attacked me one night, disfiguring the right side of my face with this considerable gash and cutting my tongue so bad I nearly swallowed the swollen bits. But I healed, by some miracle, with the sole mission of caring for Lily B., my sweet daughter. I don’t mind scars much, knowing a true woman of substance wouldn’t take my face or woeful manner of speech as deterrent.”

  She thought he wasn’t likely attractive before the attack, with his too-pale skin and smattering of orange freckles, even on his hands. It hardly mattered. She had no romantic interest in the man.

  “Turns out I have a head for banking. When a few of my more speculative investments paid off, I sent back east for Lily B., and she’s been here with me ever since. She’s the light of my life. A precious spark of energy. You must come to my house for supper and meet her,” he said.

  Standing close, that stale cheese smell exuded from his skin, not just his breath. But she ignorned the smell, in awe of the way he spoke of his daughter. His love and commitment made him feel endearing and safe.

  “You promised to consider my offer quite some time ago, Miss Parker,” he said, feigning hurt. “I warn you, Miss Parker. I’ll only take one more rejection after today, then I’ll stop asking. I won’t pester a woman. A man can only take so much.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe your ego is as fragile as all that, Mr. Langley,” she said, teasing as she walked down the steps.

  “But it is, I tell you,” he called after her in jest. “I’ll ask only one more time. One more time!”

  “See you next week,” she called out, waving her hand high up in the air, without turning around. �
��For my weekly interest payment.”

  She chuckled to herself, hoping he’d not stop asking. Even with his cheese odor, funny lisp, and freckly face, his weekly attentions felt surprisingly welcome. He made her feel smart and womanly, again. And she liked it.

  38

  Lightly as a song

  After six straight months of working for the Rosenblatts, Elisabeth took a day off. She’d intended to return the borrowed dress to Gabriella at the Sanchez Rancho, now that she’d finally bought a new working outfit for herself. But she dreaded going back, seeing all those sweet children running around, reminding her of what she’d done and what she’d lost. Lacking the courage, she paid a man at the Sully House that morning to return the bundled-up clothes with a note of gratitude tucked inside, and headed off to church.