Bones of the Barbary Coast (21 page)

At this a veil was pulled aside, and my heart truly broke. I understood suddenly that she shows me her cruelty and coarseness with the intent to ward me away, so that I do not come here and put myself at risk. My elder sister is protecting me in the feeblest of ways, the only way she can.

"Margaret, please," I began.

"Go away," she shouted. "You don't belong here! You're not my sister. Those are my sisters, downstairs!"

I was incautious on my return to Darby. Normally I possess excellent night vision, and by remaining watchful am usually able to see threatening persons before they see me. But on that night I stormed along heedlessly, blinded by tears, and did not see a pair of men until I was nearly upon them. They were crouched in the alley, bent over a prone figure and taking things from it, even pulling off its boots. Immediately, I stepped sideways into a gangway, where not even a window lit the ground. I should have been safe, but as I stepped back my shoe hit a bottle and sent it clattering.

"Hell's that?" a voice said. "I'll look," another said, and then I heard footsteps approach.

I fled deeper into the gangway. The buildings were three storied and I was in a long slot between them, with no visible place to hide. At the very end was an airiness indicating a small courtyard, but as I approached it I was horrified to see it cut off by a stone wall, perhaps ten feet high. The only refuge was a wooden stairway from the upper parts of the building, beneath which a last flight of steps descended from ground level to the cellar. I scuttled down into the blackness there.

I pressed myself against the wall directly beneath the slant of the stairs, wrapped my cloak around me, and brought one arm up to cover my face, all but my eyes. I was now in a cul-de-sac, a cement box perhaps eight feet on a side, with no place to run.

I stayed rigid with terror, praying most fervently and hypocritically for God's mercy. This is what I had feared on every one of my secret nighttime walks, what I had avoided only by great luck all along; at last I was about to receive my due. The footsteps approached until the man's feet must have been inches from my face, for though I could not see them I heard the grit of particles beneath his soles. When he came around to the descending stairs, I could make out his dim, bulky form as he bent to peer into the deeper darkness.

For an endless moment his shape didn't move. And then he straightened and turned away. I heard him stroll along the wall and at long last make his way out of the gangway again. In my relief, I felt so faint I had to grip the rough cement to avoid falling.

I hated the darkness where I stood, the meaty, moldy stink there, yet I knew I had to give the men time to finish their business and move on. It truly seemed an eternity before I tiptoed up the steps and into the open, watchful, relieved to be out of the inky dark yet reluctant to leave its sanctuary. By then my eyes had grown accustomed to the complete absence of light, and now the tiny courtyard seemed brighter; light bled into the sky from the gas lamps several blocks away. I became afraid that the men would see me if they were to glance down the gangway again.

As I hesitated, listening anxiously, a sudden movement and noise exploded not ten feet from me. From the cellar stairwell came a scrabbling and scrambling, and then something burst out of the darkness. It came out of the shadows on all fours and I took it for a large dog: I saw the profile of its muzzle, and for an instant it swung its head toward me and I saw the dim flash of long teeth. It must have seen me, for it momentarily seemed to flinch or brace itself; then it scurried with astonishing quickness to the wall at the end of the alley. When it was reared against the stone wall, leaping and reaching to pull itself to the top edge, I saw the fully extended shape of its body and was amazed to see that it was more man than dog; and briefly, at the top of the wall, against the brighter darkness of the sky, I briefly saw its whole silhouette and knew it was neither man nor dog but something else unknown to me or to anyone.

From the instant it burst from its cover to the time it vanished over the wall was a duration of perhaps three seconds. By the time the shock fully struck me, it was already gone. The surprise, coming after the long minutes of frozen terror, left me weak and dizzy. I tottered toward the main alley, willing to risk the known dangers there in preference to the mysterious one back in the courtyard.

Only afterward did it occur to me that I had been crouched in that cellar stairwell with it, with him, for five minutes or more, unknowing, and that had he meant me harm, he could certainly have accomplished it. But he had held perfectly still and silent, just as I had. Though his profile and muscularity of movement were that of a predatory creature, it seemed to me he had checked his impulse to attack; in general, I saw that he had behaved like me—as if both of us were creatures in peril.

23

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 1889

T
HERE is NO way to describe my actions but to give up and list my deceptions, lies, and contrivances. (Dearest Hans, if it is you who reads these words, I beg you to forgive me for my lies and for my hubris in defying you and all the customs of respectable society.)

First, as the castaway sending his message to a stranger on an unknown shore, I must say that, lest it seem unlikely that a virtuous Christian woman of good society have a sister like mine, it is the reverse that is really improbable. That is, what is more remarkable is that I am not like her, that anyone could have escaped those circumstances which prevailed in this forever-unfinished city.

Our father came, like thousands of others, in 1849. He was the n'er-do-well brother, fleeing the perpetual disapproval of his staid family in Mobile and determined to show his mettle by becoming richer than they through some luck in the gold fields. He came in a great wave of similar men to a hardscrabble outpost of a few thousand souls. Within two years, there were a hundred thousand such hopefuls here, all but a few disappointed, stranded far from their homes and hopes. In those early years, women were rare, perhaps one for every two hundred men; all but the tiniest proportion of those women drifted here, or were imported by shameless businessmen, for the purpose of meeting the sexual needs of the men. They came from small towns, or east coast cities, or Mexico or France, misled as to their real destiny, or desperate and having no good alternative, or forcibly abducted or coerced. Some came voluntarily to strike it rich where their services would be in much demand.

My mother was one of those women. My sister and I were two of the thousands of children that inevitably resulted from so much spilled seed.

Margaret was born in 1856, the year that the Second Committee of Vigilance made such a great upheaval and it seemed that California was in a state of insurrection; I was born in 1860. That my father lingered long enough with my mother to sire us both and to dwell even intermittently with us was perhaps the most steadfast act of his life. He was a weak man in every way. Unlucky or unwilling to exert himself, he drifted from job to job, scheme to scheme, throughout the towns and camps of the region. I am sure he and my mother loved or at least needed each other, or they would not have cast their lots together; yet when he could not earn enough to feed us, he was never reluctant to have my mother ply her former trade "to see us through." And when Margaret came into her maturity, he forced her to do the same. I am sure my turn would have come had he lived.

My father did only one other thing of any virtue, which was that he read newspapers, magazines, pulp novels, and books on mining or business or even history. He was, after all, from a respectable family, and had spent a year at university. Sometimes he read aloud, and he left his literature about so that, being bright and highly curious children, we learned to read. Thus Margaret and I at least grew up literate and with a glimmering that there was another world beyond our own tawdry circumstances.

For my first year of life, we lived in a mud-floored tent in the silver country, where my father thought he might strike it rich and where he again failed, and thereafter in whatever shack or tenement was available. What might have become of us I cannot say, but late in 1872, my father learned that his brother Franklin intended to move to San Francisco. Those were the years that a new sort of enterprising person was drawn by the prospect of fortunes to be made here, providing needed commodities to the burgeoning population. Franklin rightly saw the opportunity to make great profits in fabric and clothing sales in such a place.

When my father heard of his intent, he was both concerned and inspired: concerned that his brother would learn his true circumstances of poverty and unmarried cohabitation with a whore and her bastards; inspired by the opportunity to capitalize on his brother's respectability and industrious nature. He conceived a scheme whereby we would misrepresent ourselves to Franklin as decent people, with the goal of securing a loan (ostensibly to start a business) or a job in his firm. Motivated by this plan, my father read us the Bible, knowing Franklin was religious, and strictly schooled us in speech and deportment. He contrived a fiction of our proper lives and had us memorize its details. We sisters were thirsty for such stimulus and of course were of an age that we did not mind putting on airs, and we absorbed it all quickly. So that we could afford to dress appropriately to meet Franklin, my father put my mother and sister "to work." We were living in two rooms near the Oakland docks then. My sister was leased to a brothel in San Francisco, where the trade was brisker and, being young, she could fetch a better fee. My mother did her business at our apartment.

There is a great deal more to tell of this period, but this is a pathetic and painful recounting. It is almost impossible for me to write it down. I will hasten to the ending, which is both tragic and fortunate.

On the day we were to meet Franklin, my mother and father and I took the ferry from Oakland. The boat capsized near the San Francisco side, drowning sixteen people, among them my parents.

Ever curious, I had expressed interest about the operation of the vessel and had been invited to the pilot house by the kindly crew, and so was not at the railing with my parents. The newspapers have described in detail this famous tragedy, but I saw only my small share of it: I remember a sudden forceful thump, followed by a booming in the hull; then the floor canted abruptly and threw me against the pilot house wall. The port rail went under, and then the bulk of the ferry settled suddenly and sucked down those who had first fallen in. The crew helped me escape the listing hulk, and within moments boats sped from the docks to pick up the scores of swimmers and those who still clung to the decks.

So my parents died. And so I lived, and my uncle, instead of meeting his brother that day, simply inherited a ward: a girl of thirteen, an orphan with good speech and deportment, some knowledge of the Bible, and one brand-new but ruined frock.

My sister was not with us, as she was "at work" in the city. My uncle never knew she existed. It was ten years before I was able to find her again.

Oh, I cannot continue this. It will have to wait for another day.

FRIDAY, MAY 17, 1 8 89

Here are the ways I have betrayed and deceived everyone. This will be a terrible list, but it confronts me whenever I face these pages and I had best dispense with it.

I am the product of a sinful act between a weak and morally bereft man and a whore.

My sister is a depraved whore and an opium addict, and I love her and forgive her utterly.

I pretend to be a good woman of a fine home in Pacific Heights, yet I know the alleys of the worst sections of the Barbary Coast as well as any rat that skulks and skitters there.

I practice deception daily in my every deed, as when I dress in the petticoats and bustles and corsets that are expected of me and envy those whores lounging comfortably and shamelessly in their open wrappers and transparent chemises. Even so mundane a thing as my household ledger is full of misrepresentations that conceal surreptitious expenditures.

Hans, I cannot bear you any children because I sustained an infection of my womb that left me infertile from the age of eighteen; I am lying when I say I, too, hope and expect that we will soon start a large family.

Hans, I do not merely receive you when we engage in sexual intercourse; my ladylike passivity and seeming aloofness is a falsehood I adopt to act a woman of the class you imagine me to belong to; in fact I take great pleasure in the pressure of your powerful body upon mine and in your manhood, and I think about that pleasure inappropriately, even when I sit on the hard pews at church and feel your thigh against mine.

And that brings me to the worst of all my lies, those pertaining to my faith. I cannot, will not, deny that I am a person of faith; I believe absolutely in our Lord Jesus and in the acts of kindness we bestow in order to emulate his life and to relieve suffering. But I lie when I claim to accept the literal truth of Scripture, the strict moral admonitions of our church fathers, or the rigid habits and customs of our denomination. My demure and docile behavior is a lie; in truth, I am a willful and wanton spirit, rebellious by nature, disobedient, full of secret thoughts and longings. I have some corrupt or pagan strain of mind, for I see more of God in the sunset over the ocean or a blossom in my garden than I do in church, hear more of His truth in the creak of a cricket than in any of Rev. Wallace's thunderous sermons. I cannot abide the Thompsons and their ilk, in all their fine clothes and manners and blindered lives, their intolerance and haughty privilege. I do not condemn the criminals and sinners we minister to, only pity them. My husband and the church fathers believe my devoted work at the mission derives from a fervent desire to bring sinners to Christ; but in fact it stems from no such lofty aspiration, only a simple, heartfelt urge to relieve them of some measure of pain and misery, and to justify my regular presence in the Barbary Coast and thus provide a pretext to visit my sister. I do not believe in Satan, only in a single God who is vaster and more mysterious than we are willing to conceive, and whose intentions for us no man, no minister or saint or prophet, can claim to understand.

There, I have said it. I have written all the worst. I can hardly read my own word, my hand trembles with the expectation of some great punishment, some bolt from above. Yet though I would welcome it, none comes.

TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1889

No, no punishment came, only Cook, who startled me by appearing at the pantry door: I had been so immersed in my confessions that my attention had lapsed. I pretended my tears resulted from some irritant in my eye. I shut the ledger in an offhand way, told her I had already put water on, would she make the tea; she complained briefly of her toothache and trundled away.

I read my confessions and cringe. I realize to my horror how like my father I must be, to have become such an accomplished dissembler and schemer. And yet pouring it out has proved a relief, like opening the valve of the pressure cooker, letting the steam go; the danger of explosion is past. Afterward, I have felt a strange serenity and acceptance. Perhaps I am also like my sister and mother, far too flexible of temperament or morals. Inwardly, I make something of a shrug, as Margaret did, as if to say to God, "What you see is what I am." I suppose I am like her, willfully choosing, or claiming to choose, a shameful life.

But that long list has compounded my situation, in that I cannot tell anyone about the mysterious and fascinating creature. He is surely something rare and amazing, that might by his nature answer many questions we have so often considered in our religious discussion. At the very least, he lives a unique life and sees this world from a rare perspective, and I am very curious about him; yet circumstances prohibit my telling anyone, for there is no way to explain how I came to be crouched in a cellar stairwell in a gangway in that filthy warren at that hour, and so saw him.

By the week-end, I had not yet solved this dilemma, and in any case, though I half wanted to return to that gangway, Saturday and Sunday left no time for surreptitious errands. Saturday is the mission's busiest day and night, for it is when the district's enterprises are most active: men from the entire region come to find whores, sailors pour off ships and gamblers flood in to fleece them, and the saloons with their randy shows are full to overflowing. It is a time when those with any religious impulse at all are prone to sudden remorse and likely to appear on our doorstep, when already poor men gamble away their last cent and have nowhere else to turn. It is also when footpads are out in force, and their victims, along with those of the fist-fights, knife fights, accidental fires, and drunken falls, keep dispensers of mercy quite occupied.

Sunday is for church, a great relief: The somber, serene convocation in that big hall, on its placid street in the Western Addition, safely removed from the Barbary Coast, refreshes and reassures me. Afterward, Hans and I often entertain members of the congregation, and all is most proper and reverent and civilized—too much so, for me, by the end of the day. This Sunday we had the Schultzes and the Thompsons to dinner. The Schultzes are unassuming and kindly, but the Thompsons are stuffy and disapproving, and it was an interminable evening. Even Hans expresses some impatience with Mr. Thompson, but has derived lucrative contracts from their association and so feels compelled to endure his company. Among other things, Mr. Thompson harbors strong opinions about the Celestials, which he is not reluctant to express, so that I had to bite my tongue throughout our meal. And his wife is boring, which after some hours can seem a worse sin even than intolerance.

But on Monday I rode to the mission with Deacon Skinner, and conceived a bold idea that like so many of mine required deception.

"Deacon," I asked, as if it were an idle question, just banter, "what is your opinion of Charles Darwin?"

"He is a scoundrel!" he answered immediately. "No, worse—a minion of Satan. The only question is, witting or unwitting?" Then, scowling: "What prompts you to ask? You have surely heard my views a hundred times."

"Of course. But have you read his works?"

"I have indeed. I only recently finished
The Descent of Man.
Aptly named, I thought. Myself, I am distinctly in favor of
ascent,
thank you!"

He looked at me askance, knowing I was up to some mischief. Deacon Skinner is an avid naturalist, who has closely studied the flora and fauna of the Peninsula and has gathered and catalogued an impressive collection of specimens.