A Violet Season (20 page)

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Mrs. Hargrave said, and she left through another door. Alice stood just inside the study doorway. She caught the first tear with the back of her hand.

“Your mother and I appreciate your hard work,” her father continued. He held up an envelope then, and she was sure her money was inside it. It’s money for Ma and Jasper and everyone, she told herself. I don’t need anything. “You like it here all right, do you?”

The question was a surprise; her father had never asked what she thought of anything. Her response was of no consequence, but she saw no reason to lie to him.

“No,” she said. “I want to go home.”

“There’s twenty dollars in here,” her father said, stepping toward her and giving her a peek into the envelope before drawing
it back and folding it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Five dollars a week. We need you to stay awhile longer.”

“How is Ma?” she asked. “And the boys?”

“They’re all well.” He glanced at the door through which Mrs. Hargrave had left. Then he looked at her, his lips a crack across a face of rock.

“Did Ma get my letter? She hasn’t written.”

“She sent you a package of clothing,” her father said, nodding at a brown paper parcel on Mrs. Hargrave’s sofa. He wouldn’t meet her stare. “Twenty dollars is good for a month’s work, Alice.” He cast his eyes up at the ceiling. “We sure do appreciate it, all of us.”

In the silence that followed, as her father watched the ceiling and she watched his face, Alice understood what he was thinking. She understood, too, that he was ashamed. But not ashamed enough to take her home. It was no accident that he had brought her to this place to work. His hand was still inside his jacket, holding on to the envelope. Alice’s tears spilled out too quickly to be caught, and she smeared her face with her palms. She wanted to jump on him and take her money. With twenty dollars, she could figure out a way to get to the train station. She was smart. She would find a way home. But then he would be there. And her mother. Had her mother consented to this? The fact that she’d sent a package with him suggested she had.

Alice’s father looked in her direction, though not precisely at her. Instead, he was eyeing her bosom, as the men often did. “Your mother asked me to bring home that locket,” he said. Alice pressed her right hand over the warm heart-shaped necklace. She hadn’t taken it off since she’d arrived. Sometimes she fell asleep with her fingers over it. “She thinks it would be safer at home,” he said. “She wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”

“Does she know where I am?” Alice could tell by the way he hesitated that he was considering a lie, though whether what he said was a lie or not, she couldn’t tell.

“She knows,” he said.

“I want to keep it with me.”

He reached out both his hands, cupping them before her, waiting for her to put the locket in them. She stood resolute, palm at her chest.

He stepped closer to her, and she felt his anger like a wave of summer heat in her face. She squinted at his cupped hands, and she spat. A shocking clap hit her face, and the locket chain scratched as he pulled it from her neck, though his hands moved so fast, she never saw them. She ran for the door, and as she yanked it behind her, it banged more loudly than she could have hoped. She ran up two flights of stairs, past the empty third-floor parlor, and stepped into the broom closet, where she cried among the fusty mops and brooms until she was sure he was gone.

*   *   *   

“Was that you who slammed the door this morning?” Rose asked her later as Alice swept the third-floor hallway and several of the girls sat lounging in their parlor.

“I’m sorry if I woke you,” Alice said.

The girls were impressed at her gumption, and when they told her to take a rest, she obliged, sitting at the edge of one of the armchairs and resting her head in her hands. Jessie was there, and Rose and Lena. Katerina, who always kept to herself, and Glory, who often did, were both in their rooms. So was Bridie, and while the girls let Alice sit quietly with them, she thought she heard weeping from Bridie’s room.

“Her baby is gone,” Jessie said.

“Oh, no!” Alice cried. What a fool she was to be causing her own scene when Bridie’s baby was dead.

“It’s all right,” Jessie said. “She’ll be over it. It’s all for the best.”

“What happened to her?” Alice asked.

“Mr. Fletcher took her away,” said Rose. Alice felt a tickle up
her arms, as if bugs were crawling on her skin. It felt so real that she moved to brush them away. She studied the girls’ faces, but no one seemed to realize who Mr. Fletcher was. Rose was watching her knitting; Lena was reading the
Vogue
society paper, occasionally laughing as she read; and Jessie was smoking and staring at some far-off point beyond the ceiling. Bridie’s choking sobs were more audible now, and Alice glanced over her shoulder at the door. Then she asked the question she needed the girls to answer. “Who’s Mr. Fletcher?”

“Oh, a friend of Mrs. Hargrave’s,” Rose said, looking up from her knitting.

“A friend of Mr. Sligh’s,” Lena corrected.

“On the Sligh.” Jessie snorted, and the girls laughed.

“Mr. Sligh likes the girls to be on top,” Rose said with a gentle wink, realizing their language was too coarse for Alice.

“Mr. Fletcher is my father,” Alice said.

“Your father! I swear!”

“Mr. Fletcher is your father?”

Alice stood awkwardly and circled behind the armchair, distancing herself from them, but she didn’t want to leave the conversation. Not yet. She must find out everything. She held on to the back of the chair and watched as Jessie sat up straight and stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray.

“Well, that beats all,” Jessie said. “I’ve heard of girls being driven to a house of ill fame for lots of reasons, but their father bringing them ain’t one of ’em.”

“He brought her here to be a housemaid,” Rose reminded her.

“Sure he did,” Jessie said.

Alice heard the squeak of a doorknob, and Bridie, dressing robe tied tightly at her waist, a large handkerchief in her hand, stepped from her room. They all waited as she approached the parlor and sat on the couch next to Jessie, who patted her on the leg. “Baby’s better off, right?” she said, and Bridie nodded, though she did not seem
convinced. “Mr. Fletcher is Alice’s father,” Jessie told her, and Bridie looked up at Alice with wide, gleaming eyes. Alice was afraid Bridie might lunge at her, and she prepared to run, but instead a few tears slipped over Bridie’s cheeks and her mouth puckered.

“I’m sorry,” Alice said, shaking her head.

“It’s all right,” Bridie said, sniffing into her handkerchief. “Jessie’s right. Anastasia is better off. Mr. Fletcher said he knows a woman who can nurse her until he finds a good family to adopt her. She’ll have a much better life than I could ever give her.”

“Do you know anything about it?” Lena asked, but Alice found herself unable to speak. Her mother. Her mother was a part of this scheme. Alice’s mind scurried from one possibility to another, searching for an escape from the news coming at her, trying to find the exit hole that would tell her things were not as they appeared.

“He took another baby, too, before mine,” Bridie said. “A girl named Nancy got pregnant first. She wouldn’t let the doctor come because she knew what he was up to, so Mrs. Hargrave tried to get rid of it by feeding her cod-liver oil.”

Jessie leaned over the edge of the couch and pretended to gag.

“It didn’t work,” Bridie continued. “And then I knew to watch out when I found I was carrying a baby, too.”

“If I got pregnant, I’d just get rid of it,” Jessie said, shrugging.

“What do you mean?” Alice asked, then saw that she shouldn’t have, for they gave her varying expressions of pity and contempt.

“Look out the window on a Saturday night,” Jessie said. “You’ll see them lined up around the corner to see the doctor. For five dollars, he takes care of them.”

“One of the doctors is a woman,” Bridie said, correcting her.

“Well, she does the same thing.”

“But why . . .” Alice asked, her question trailing off because she wasn’t certain she even understood what they were talking about.

“Too many mouths to feed,” Lena said. “Or they’ve had intercourse with a man not their husband. By choice or not.”

“We don’t have to go stand out there. Mrs. Hargrave brings the doctor to us,” Jessie said, as if this made their situation more desirable.

“I had it done twice,” Bridie said sharply to Jessie. “I wasn’t doing it again.” Jessie waved her hand dismissively and picked up a new cigarette.

“We first met Mr. Fletcher when he came for Nancy’s baby,” Bridie told Alice. “Mr. Sligh brought him. They’re friends from some flower warehouse. A few days after he took her baby, Nancy disappeared.”

“Where did she go?” Alice asked. The fact that someone had left this house gave her a jolt of hope.

“Nobody knows,” Jessie said grimly, and she struck a match on the sole of her shoe. “So, what are you going to do now, Alice Fletcher?”

“Don’t be unkind,” Bridie said.

Jessie sucked on her cigarette, then said directly to Alice, “I’m only joking.”

“Did you get your pay today?” Rose asked.

“My father took it.”

“All of it?”

Alice felt her throat tightening again.

“Come sit down,” Bridie said, patting the couch next to her and scooting closer to Jessie, who gave her a quick hug around the shoulders. Alice sat beside them.

“I’m sorry about your baby,” she whispered, and Bridie wiped Alice’s teary face with her damp handkerchief.

“It’s all right. It’s for the best,” she said. “But my tits are killing me!” Alice cringed, though the laughter of the girls seemed to cheer Bridie.

“You have to bind them,” Rose said.

“Later,” Bridie said. Then she reached her arm around Alice and said to her, “Listen. If you want some money of your own, there’s just one way to do it.”

Alice knew what they were about to say, but she was too tired to protest. Let them say it.

“If you start turning tricks, you’ll be able to keep some of the money yourself,” Bridie said. “It’s not so awful as you might think.”

“As long as you don’t get the clap,” Lena said.

“We can teach you what to do,” Bridie said.

“Her father will just take that money, too,” said Rose. “She’s best off not getting started.”

“He won’t know about the extras,” Jessie said, leaning forward.

“That’s right,” Bridie said. “He’ll get your regular pay—well, Mrs. Hargrave gets half, and he’ll get the other half. But any special services you do are behind the bedroom door. The men pay you directly. You find a good place to hide that extra cash, and it’s all yours. You could make enough in a few weeks to buy yourself a ticket anywhere.”

“At my last place it was easier,” Lena said. “We just robbed them.”

“Stop it, now,” Rose said. “Don’t pressure her.” But the others were enthusiastic about the plan, and in order to extricate herself from the conversation, Alice had to promise she would think about it. She smiled weakly at them as she left the smoky parlor. She held the railing to steady herself all the way down the back stairs to the kitchen, where Bella sat with a huge kettle between her legs, peeling potatoes. Alice passed by without a word and closed the door of her room behind her. The bedcovers were cold, the pillow was cold, and when she touched the place where her locket usually lay, she felt instead the flaring scratch on her neck. She lay there in the cold, caring for nothing, until Ivy pounded on the door asking why she hadn’t cleaned the piano parlor. The men would be here soon.

A
letter came from Joe. As Alice sat at the edge of her bed, reading it over and over again, she despaired for her old life. There must be some way to reclaim it. She would write to Joe and tell him where she was, and he would come to get her, and she would go home. She pressed the letter against her face, searching for a familiar smell, and against her heart. Then she read it again and again and again, until the words were empty.

For over a week she avoided answering the letter, though she slept with it under her pillow, fingering it like a child’s rag doll. Then one Friday afternoon when Bella had a cold and didn’t want to venture out, Alice was sent to purchase some sausage and vegetables at the market up the street. Rarely did she leave the building, except to step out the alley door to empty the slop pots in the privy or shake the dust from a throw rug. Sometimes in the evening the other girls left the house in pairs and brought men back, but otherwise they mostly stayed in, too, while a little boy from the neighborhood served as their “lighthouse,” handing out cards on the street. Katerina and Glory were forbidden to leave the house at all.

Heading out this brittle, sunny day on her errand gave Alice a slap of courage. The air was the same sharp winter air that had
stung her cheeks on the farm, and the same sun warmed her back. She liked the click of her heels on the granite sidewalk; she felt important, walking somewhere with a purpose. A gentleman even tipped his hat to her as she passed him crossing the street. No one knew who she was or where she had come from. She could be an immigrant woman buying food for her family. She could be anyone—a shop clerk or a secretary or a teacher. She mustn’t give up. If she were to find a position of her own, she could leave Mrs. Hargrave’s and start her own life, and her father would never find her. If only she could come up with a bit of honest cash to get started, to pay for a room in a reputable boardinghouse, then Joe really could come to the city to visit her.

When she had delivered the groceries to Bella and finished her chores, Alice stole half an hour before supper to reply to Joe’s letter. If he were to keep writing, he must think she was in a normal domestic situation, so she chose her words with care, trying to sound like the old Alice. She waited until morning to read the letter over before sealing it and leaving it for Bella under her plate.

That morning, a Saturday, Mrs. Hargrave wanted the sitting room and the piano parlor decorated for Christmas. Ivy unrolled a sheet full of greens on the sitting room floor, and she and Alice wired them in garlands across the mantel and around the large mirror, adding some old red ribbons and pinecones. Alice marveled at the incongruity of recognizing a Christian holiday in this house but said nothing to Ivy, who never spoke except to chastise or complain.