Speak Through the Wind (23 page)

“Hey there, Bob!” an anonymous voice called out. “Not like you’re the first one brought down by a whore’s skirt!”

Raucous laughter followed as Bob disengaged himself and staggered to his feet. Kassandra, too, struggled up and was on her knees, her face bowed in shame as the crowd continued to shout its taunts.

“Whoop, look out, Bob! She’s gettin’ up now. Watch
she
don’t knock you down this time!”

“Yeah, take ’er on.” This the voice she recognized as Bob’s assailant. “You might have a chance beatin’ her.”

“I’d take her on,” another man said. “Lay ’er back down again and take ’er right now.”

“Lay her down? She’s already on her knees.” And a chorus of low chuckles.

There was a palpable change in the crowd then. A primitive, canine-like quiet came over them—all of them—as the entertainment of an impromptu boxing match suddenly lost all its appeal. She still did not look up, but saw from the corner of her eye that the men were circling her. She saw filthy boots, dark pants—some nearly shredded—in a neat circumference around her. Then one pair of boots walked toward her and stopped in front. Soon she felt a hand at the back of her head, grabbing a handful of her hair, digging Ben’s comb deep into her scalp, and yanking until she was forced to look up into a face so bloodied and raw it must be Bob himself.

“You knocked me down,” he said through swollen lips.

“Get your filthy hands off me,” she said, squelching any instinct she had to plead or beg.

An amused murmur resounded with the pack of men. Kassandra felt the release of her hair as Bob took a step away. The last thing she heard was “Slut!” before Bob’s boot collided with her face, and everything went black.

er first instinct, even before opening her eyes, was to run her tongue along her teeth to ensure that none had been knocked out. A small matter of vanity, perhaps, but one that seemed logical considering the crushing pain and the taste of blood in her mouth.

All there. A bit loose in the front, on the left, but none missing.

She was cold. Even without opening her eyes she knew it was that gray, predawn time in the city, a time when the streets were nearly thick with silence. Drunks and revelers were settled in their flats or in stupors along the streets; vendors hadn’t yet brought out their carts and calls. The ground beneath her cheek was damp, and the chill of it seeped through her dress. She felt the hard-packed dirt beneath her open hand and gingerly patted it, reassuring herself that there was a solid world to carry her whenever she did choose to get up and join it.

The first sight to greet her when she opened her eyes was the distorted vision of colors gathered together with loving, precise stitching. The quilt from their bed. She groped across the bundle to find the rope still knotted at the top, seemingly undisturbed. She rose up just a little, running her hands, caked with mud, over the fabric, feeling the outline of Clara’s Bible and the ridge of her hairbrush, taking comfort in the assumption that the bird figurine was still nestled inside.

Nothing missing.

But as she struggled to sit up, she felt a dampness in her skirt. Not anything seeped through from the street below, but something clinging against her very skin. That, combined with a tearing pain and a bunching of her underskirts triggered flashes of memory from the night before—flashes brighter than those first rays of sunlight piercing through the buildings looming over her.

They had taken what they wanted, after all.

The alley in which she revived herself—to which she had at some time, somehow been dragged—offered relative privacy from the stirrings on the street. The occasional passerby glanced in, but most ignored her as they would any other besotted mass. Kassandra herself had walked past and over countless such bits of humanity. Now she was thankful for the isolation as she crept further into its recesses, not yet trusting her legs to stand. There, hidden in the shadow of the tenement wall, she gingerly ran her fingers over her face. Swollen, yes, but no sign of any open wounds. Flakes of the crusted substance under her nose were dark, but the nose wasn’t broken. She didn’t doubt there was a fair amount of discoloration and bruising—she’d seen enough women with faces ravaged by their husband’s fists to know that—but all bruises fade over time.

Then, her hands. The backs of them raw with cuts and scrapes, as though she’d valiantly defended herself. Closer inspection revealed dirt caked within the wounds, and she remembered. She hadn’t fought back; she’d been pinned down. But still, these wounds were nothing that a little water, bandage, and balm wouldn’t cure.

And the other …

Bracing herself against the wall she slowly stood up, then allowed herself a few steps, cringing at the chafing rawness. What had he—had they—done to her? She reached up her skirt and found the waist-tie of her bloomers, untied it, and let the garment fall around her ankles. After stepping out, she reached down and picked them up. The garment was smeared with blood, trailing halfway down the leg. She wadded up the material and tossed it to the ground beside her.

Once again, she reached up under her skirt and found the waist of her first petticoat, untied it, and let it drop to the ground. This, too, she lifted for inspection. This, too, bore the stain of her blood and brought it all vividly back. The fruitless struggle as her skirts were lifted. Hands gripping her feet. Whiskey-soured breath breathing into her mouth. Dirt in her hair. And one after another, after another. The seemingly endless lot of them in turn rutting and swearing and laughing.

Kassandra barely had time to take a few steps away from her precious bundle of belongings before bending over to retch against the wall, bringing up blood-tainted spit. She allowed herself a bitter laugh as she sought an unsoiled corner of heir ruined petticoat to wipe the corners of her mouth when she was finished. So this, then, was the result of her first night of freedom from Ben. She imagined him somewhere—either holding court back at Mott Street Tavern or even just around the corner—sharing her low laughter.

How was it she had been able to live the earliest, smallest years of her life on these same streets in complete and utter peace? Had her survival instincts been completely eroded by years of Reverend Joseph’s pampering and Ben Connor’s protection? She reached into the deep pocket of her skirt and found the handful of coins taken from the jar on the shelf in the apartment. In her early, hungry days, this would have been a fortune—infinite bounty Now, she wondered how it would get her through this day, let alone the next, or the next. Reverend Joseph and Ben thought they saved her, but they hadn’t. They’d crippled her, made her unfit to live with either of them. Or alone.

She hadn’t felt frightened as she strode through the streets alone last night. She didn’t really feel frightened when Bob’s drunken frame knocked her down. She’d been startled, then annoyed, but the reverend’s assurance that God’s watchful eye and his own careful training would always keep her safe in this world, coupled with Ben’s reliably long arms, had kept her from ever feeling any real fear. It wasn’t until this new morning, her face swollen and sore, her teeth loose, her hair and hands encrusted with filthy alley dirt, her underskirt streaked with blood, that Kassandra felt truly afraid.

She hugged her arms tight around her and folded herself against the tenement wall.
Dear God
, she began, then stopped. This was the God that saw everything, even the tiniest sparrow falling to the ground. Had He seen her last night? A new sense of shame enveloped her, dwarfing any she’d felt before, making her so small that she was sure she escaped God’s notice. She couldn’t pray. There, in that alley, cut and bruised and torn, she was overcome with such longing that she faltered a bit and fell to her knees. For a year she’d been vacillating between ignoring the growing emptiness inside her and placating it with the occasional prayer or glance at Scripture. Last night that emptiness became a deep, black, hopeless chasm.

She had to go back to him. But not like this.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kassandra saw, just next to where she’d been sick, a discarded, rusted tin bucket languishing on its side. There was a short, dull pain in her back when she bent to pick it up, and she wrinkled her nose a bit after sniffing inside. God alone knew what this bucket had last been used for. Left with little other choice, though, she picked it up and went to look for the closest water pump.

There was one not far—maybe half a block away—and she debated whether or not her bundle of possessions would be safe in that long of an absence. She took her chance and walked as quickly as her wounded body would allow without drawing attention to herself.

She rinsed the bucket twice before finally filling it. Then, she walked swiftly back to her little nest, keeping her head down and her eyes on the ground, though nobody seemed to take much notice of the bruised, bedraggled young woman fairly limping through the street.

Once back, she picked up her bloodied petticoat and tore off a sizable square. This she dunked into the water, wrung it out, and brought it to her face. She winced a bit as it made first cold contact with her bruised cheek, and though she hadn’t brought out her mirror, she was increasingly satisfied as she saw the remnants of blood and dirt come off on the clean cloth. When at last the rag came away clean, she pronounced herself so, and tore off a second piece of the petticoat.

She dunked this new piece into the water and wrung it out, then brought it up under her skirts and scrubbed her legs and thighs, hoping to cleanse away every trace of her violation. The same cold water that had been initially uncomfortable to her face was somewhat soothing to her swollen flesh, though part of her wished to have a boiling kettle to submerge herself in a scalding bath. She longed for the healing of the lavender and comfrey compress she’d used just after the baby, and for just a moment she allowed herself the luxury of being glad the child was dead so he might never know the kind of world that would do this to his mother.

Once clean, she knelt in front of her little bundle and untied the knotted rope. She took out a small jar of a lavender and lanolin cream Imogene had given her to protect the newborn’s skin and pried the large cork out of the jar’s mouth. The healing properties of the cream were immediate, and she sent a silent, heartfelt thank-you to her caregiver and friend.

Kassandra dug into the bundle once again to find a clean pair of bloomers and debated whether to pull on another petticoat. She had several, as Clara had always told her a well-dressed young lady never wore fewer than three, but the idea of being such a slave to fashion seemed more ridiculous now than ever. He wouldn’t care how many petticoats she wore. He had probably never noticed.

She once again tore strips of cloth from the petticoat, soaked them in the rapidly graying water, and wound them around her hands. Finally, she found her silver-handled hairbrush and brought it through her hair, dislodging tiny clumps of mud with its bristles. She began to plait it into the single braid she’d grown accustomed to wearing twisted into a knot and secured with Ben’s comb. But she stopped herself and opted instead to leave it loose, with only the hair framing her face pulled away, as she’d worn it the day she left, hoping, somehow, to recapture just a bit of that innocence that now seemed to never have been. The comb was still lying in the dirt in the middle of the alley, where it had undoubtedly fallen the minute she hit the ground. As she took the few steps to retrieve it, she found herself in a much better state for walking, and the journey ahead seemed a little less daunting.

Her toilet complete, Kassandra noticed the handle of her hand mirror peeking out from the skirt in which it was wrapped. She debated for just a second on taking it out, but decided as long as she didn’t look at herself, she could imagine she was much the same girl as she had been almost exactly one year ago.

Maybe he would think she was the same, too. And they could start all over again.

Kassandra folded the corners of Ben’s mother’s quilt around everything she owned and tied the little bundle securely. Then, standing, she picked it up and attempted to hoist it over her shoulder, without success. She slowly lowered her arm and took the first of many, many steps, willing her feet to bring her aching body to Park Avenue.