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Authors: Jim Fergus

BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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Ah, and here come the Kelly sisters of Chicago’s Irish town, Margaret and Susan, swaggering down the aisle—redheaded, freckle-faced identical twin lassies, thick as thieves, which in their case is somewhat more than an idle expression. They take everything in these two; their shrewd pale green eyes miss nothing; I clutch my purse to breast for safekeeping.
One of them, I cannot yet tell them apart, slips into the seat beside me. “’
Ave
ya got some tobacco on ye, May?” she asks in a conspiratorial tone, as if we are the very best of friends though I hardly know the girl. “I’d be
loookin
’ to roll me a smoke.”
“I’m afraid I don’t smoke,” I answer.
“
Aye
,’twas easier to get a smoke in prison, than it is on this damn train,” she says. “Isn’t that so, Meggie?”
“It’s
sartain
, Susie,” Meggie answers.
“Do you mind my asking why you girls were in prison?” I ask. I tilt my notebook toward them. “I’m writing a letter to my sister.”
“Why, we don’t mind
at-tall
, dear,” says Meggie, who leans on the seat in front of me. “Prostitution and Grand Theft—ten-year sentences in the Illinois State Penitentiary.” She says this with real bravado in her voice as if it is a thing of which to be very proud, and as I write she leans down closer to make sure that I record the details correctly. “
Aye
, don’t forget the Grand Theft,” she repeats, pointing her finger at my notebook.
“Right, Meggie,” adds Susan, nodding her head with satisfaction. “And we’d not have been apprehended, either, if it weren’t for the fact that the gentleman we turned over in Lincoln Park’
appened
to be a municipal
jeewdge. Aye
, the old reprobate tried to solicit us for sexual favors. ‘Twins!’ he said. ‘Two halves of a bun around my sausage’ he desired to make of us. Ah ya beggar!—we gave him two halves of a brick on either side of his damn head, we did! In two shakes of a lamb’s tail we had his pocket watch and his wallet in our possession—thinking in our ignorance what great good fortune that he was carrying
sech
a large
soom
of cash. No doubt His
Jeewdgeship’s
weekly bribe revenue.”
“It’s
sartain
, Susie, and that would’ve been the end of it,” chimes in Margaret, “if it weren’t for that damn cash. The
jeewdge
went directly to his great good pal the Commissioner of Police and a
manhoont
the likes of which Chicago has never before seen was launched to bring the infamous Kelly twins to
juicetice!
”
“’
Tis
the God’s own truth, Meggie,” says Susan, shaking her head. “You probably read about us in the newspaper, Missy,” she says to me. “We were quite famous for a time, me and Meggie. After a short trial, which the public advocate charged with our defense spent nappin’—the old bugger—we were sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary.
Aye
, ten years just for defendin’ our honor against a lecherous old
jeewdge,
with a pocket full of bribe money, if you can believe that, Missy.”
“And your parents?” I ask. “Where are they?”
“Oh, we
‘ave
no idea, darlin’,” says Margaret. “We were foundlings, you see. Wee babies left on the steps of the church. Isn’t that so, Susie? Grew up in the city’s Irish orphanage, but we didn’t really care for the place.
Aye,
we been living by our wits ever since we
roon
away from there when we were just ten years old.”
Now Margaret stands straight again and scans the other passengers with a certain predatory interest. Her gaze comes to rest on the woman sitting across the aisle from us—a woman named Daisy Lovelace; I have only spoken to her briefly, but I know that she is a Southerner and has the distinct look of ruined gentry about her. She holds an ancient dirty white French poodle on her lap. The dog’s hair is stained red around its butt and muzzle, and around its rheumy, leaking eyes.
“Wouldn’t
’appen
to ’
ave
a bit of tobacco, on ye, Missy, would
ya
now?” Margaret asks her.
“Ah’m
afraid
naught”,
says the woman in a slow drawl, and in not a particularly friendly tone.
“
Loovely
little dog, you’ve got there,” says Margaret, sliding into the seat beside the Southerner. “What’s its name, if you don’t mind
me
askin’?” The twin’s insinuating manner is transparent; it is clear that she is not interested in the woman’s dog.
Ignoring her, the Lovelace woman sets her dog down on the floor between their feet. “You go on now an’ make
teetee, Feeern Loueeese
,” she coos to it in an accent as thick as cane molasses,
“Go wan
now sweet
haart
. You make
teetee
for Momma.” And the wretched little creature totters stiffly up the aisle sniffling and snorting, finally squatting to pee by a vacant seat.
“Fern Louise, is it then?” says Meggie. “Isn’t that a grand name, Susie?”
“
Loovely
, Meggie,” Susan says. “A
loovely
little dog.”
Still ignoring them, the Southern woman pulls a small silver flask from her purse and takes a quick sip, which act is of great interest to the twins.
“Is that whiskey you’ve got there, Missy?” Margaret asks.
“No, it is
naught
whiskey,” says the woman coolly. “It is
mah nuurve
medicine, doctor’s order, and
no
, you may not have a taste of it.”
The twins have met their match with this one I can see!
Now here comes my friend, Gretchen Fathauer, bulling her way down the aisle of the train, swinging her arms and singing some Swiss folksong in a robust voice. Gretchen never fails to cheer us all up. She is a big-hearted, enthusiastic soul—a large, boisterous, buxom rosy-cheeked lass who looks like she might be able to spawn single-handedly all the babes that the Cheyenne nation might require.
By now we all know Gretchen’s history almost as well as our own: Her family were immigrants from Switzerland, who settled on the upland prairie west of Chicago to farm wheat when Gretchen was a girl. But the family farm failed after a series of bad harvests caused by harsh winters, blight, and insect attack, and Gretchen was forced to leave home as a young woman and seek employment in the city. She found work as a domestic with the McCormick family—yes, the very same—Father’s dear friend Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaper … isn’t it odd, Hortense, to think that we probably visited the McCormicks in our youth at the same time that Gretchen was employed there—but of course we would never have paid any attention to the bovine Swiss chambermaid.
Gretchen longed to have a family of her own and one day she answered an advertisement in the
Tribune
seeking “mail-order” brides for western settlers. She posted her application and several months later was notified that she had been paired with a homesteader from Oklahoma territory. Her intended was to meet her at the train station in St. Louis on an appointed day, and convey her to her new home. Gretchen gave notice to the McCormicks and two weeks later boarded the train to St. Louis. But alas, although she has a heart of gold, Gretchen is terribly plain … indeed, I must confess that she is rather more than plain, to the extent that one of the less kind members of our expedition has referred to the poor dear as “Miss Potato Face” … and even those more charitable among us must admit that her countenance does have a certain unfortunate tuberous quality.
Well, Gretchen’s intended had only to take one look at her, with which he excused himself under pretense of fetching his baggage, and Gretchen never laid eyes on the miserable cur again. She tells the story now with great good humor, but she was clearly devastated. She had given up everything—and was now abandoned at the train station in a strange city, with only her suitcase, a few personal effects, and the meager savings from her former employment. She could not bear the humiliation of going back to Chicago and asking the McCormicks for her old job. Nor was the possibility of returning to her family, shamed thusly by matrimonial rejection, any more appealing to her. No, Gretchen was determined to have a husband and children one way or another. She sat on the bench at the train station and wept openly at her plight. It was at that very moment that a gentleman approached her. He handed her a small paper flyer on which was printed the following:
If you are a healthy young woman of childbearing age, who seeks matrimony, exotic travel, and adventure, please present yourself to the following address promptly at 9.00 a.m., Thursday morning on the twelfth day of February, the year of our Lord, 1875.
 
Gretchen laughs when she tells the story—a great hearty bellow—and says in her heavy accent, “
Vell
, you know, I
tought
this young fellow must be a messenger from God, I truly do. And
ven
I go to to
dis
place, and
dey
ask me if I like to marry a Cheyenne Indian fellow and have his babies, I say: ‘
Vell
, I
tink de
savages not be so
chooosy,
as
dat
farmer
yah
? Sure,
vy
not? I make
beeg,
strong babies for my new
hustband. Yah,
I feed
da
whole damn nursery,
yah?’”
And Gretchen pounds her massive breast and laughs and laughs.
Which causes all the rest of us to laugh with her.
Unable to break the Southern woman’s steely indifference to them, the Kelly sisters have moved on to try their luck in the next car. They remind me of a pair of red foxes prowling a meadow for whatever they might turn up.
Just now as I was writing, my new friend, Phemie, came to sit beside me. Euphemia Washington is her full name—a statuesque colored girl who came to Chicago via Canada. She is about my same age, and quite striking, I should say nearly fierce, in appearance, being over six feet in height, with beautiful skin, the color of burnished mahogany—a finely formed nose with fiercely flared nostrils, and full Negro lips. I’m sure, dear sister, that you and the family will find it perfectly scandalous to learn that I am now fraternizing with Negroes. But on this train all are equal, at least such is the case in my egalitarian mind.
“I am writing a letter to my sister at home,” I said to her, “describing the circumstances of some of the girls on the train. Tell me how you came to be here, Phemie, so that I may make a full report to her.”
At this she chuckled, a rich warm laugh that seemed to issue from deep in her chest. “You are the first person who has asked me that, May,” she said. “And why would your sister be interested in the nigger girl? Some of the others seem quite distressed that I am along.” Phemie is very well spoken, with the most lovely, melodic voice that I’ve ever heard—deep and resonant, her speech like a poem, a song.
It occurred to me that, truth be told, you, dear sister, probably would not be interested in hearing about the nigger girl. Of course, this I did not say to Phemie.
“How did you happen to go to Canada, Phemie?” I asked.
She chuckled again. “You don’t think that I look like a native Canadian, May?”
“You look like an African, Phemie,” I said bluntly. “An African princess!”
“Yes, my mother came from a tribe called the Ashanti,” Phemie said. “The greatest warriors in all of Africa,” she added. “One day when she was a young girl she was gathering firewood with her mother and the other women. She fell behind, and sat down to rest. She was not worried, for she knew that her mother would return for her. As she sat, leaning against a tree, she fell asleep. And when she woke up, men from another tribe, who spoke a tongue she did not understand, stood round her. She was only a child, and she was very frightened.
“They took her away to a strange place, and kept her there in chains. Finally she was put in the hold of a ship with hundreds of others. She was many weeks at sea. She did not know what was happening to her, and she still believed that her mother would come back for her. She never stopped believing that. It kept her alive.
“The ship finally reached a city the likes of which my mother had never before seen or imagined. Many had died on route but she had lived. In the city she was sold at auction to a white man, a cotton shipper, who owned a fleet of sailing vessels in the port city of Apalachicola, Florida.
“My mother’s first master was very good to her,” Phemie continued. “He took her into his home where she did domestic duties and even received a bit of education. She learned to read and write, a thing unheard of among the other slaves. And when she became a young woman, her master took her into his bed.

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