The Virgin Cure (26 page)

French imported male “safes” (made from skin or India rubber) are a vast improvement over
onanism
, yet often shunned by men at the moment of need. Preventative powders are another solution to undesired conception, primarily made of Pearlash or corrosive sublimate. A woman must, however, find the proper moment to implement them (the sooner the better). In the end, womb guards are, perhaps, the most discreet way for a woman to prevent conception.

As we entered the pharmacy, I looked over the items on Miss Everett’s list.
Preventative powders, toilet vinegars, lavender water, Macassar oil, sea sponges, smelling salts, Bouquet de Rondeletia, extract of patchouli, Grosvenor’s Tooth Powder, cherry bounce, anisette
. They were the trappings of women, and in this case, of whores. Seeing the list didn’t bring on thoughts of my impending fate—that day still seemed far-off, almost unimaginable. The note did, however, hold a notion I hadn’t yet considered. With the correct choices, it seemed a girl might have success in bending anyone’s will (stranger, friend, or foe) to her own.

Camphor rub, quinine, milk of roses, love-drawing oil—every useful potion you could think of was lined up on the shelves of the pharmacy, set between yellowed globes and maps of the world, exotic beetles with pins stuck through their shiny middles and bowl after bowl of gold-speckled fish swimming around in circles.

Mr. Huber’s name was on the shop, but Mr. James Hetherington was the apothecary who ran it. Mr. Hetherington was smart and proper looking, with a short spade beard and eyes so blue it seemed as if their colour had been dropped into them from a twilight sky. The part in his hair was messy and honest, not like the false, straight lines that ran down the centre of so many men’s heads, splitting them in two.

Aside from the bottles and jars of remedies, soaps and liniments he had for sale, countless shelves and shadow boxes were crowded with colourful dead spiders and butterflies. I figured that maybe Mrs. Hetherington, if there was one, didn’t want the things he’d collected cluttering up her house.

Wearing a long crisp apron, his shirtsleeves rolled up just past his wrists, Mr. Hetherington nodded to Cadet. Greeting Mae with a smile he said, “Miss O’Rourke, how may I assist you?”

Mae motioned for me to hand Mr. Hetherington the list, and said, “The usual, if you please.”

“It would be my pleasure,” he replied as he took the list from me. “And who might you be?” he asked.

“Miss Ada Fenwick,” I said, giving him an awkward smile.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Fenwick,” he said.

“And I’m pleased to make yours as well,” I replied, returning his kindness as Miss Everett had instructed me to do.

Cadet headed over to study one of the apothecary’s globes.

Mae hummed a tune as she spun a lazy Susan of perfume oil samples that sat on the countertop. She looked back and forth between me and the whirl of the vials as they went round. “Lavender, no. Cardamom, no. Neroli, no. Hyacinth—yes.” Pulling out the rubber stopper on the glass tube, she waved it under my nose.

“Try this,” she urged. “I think it’s right for you.”

I took one sniff and my head went dizzy with the stifling-sweet scent. Backing away, I said, “I’m going to look at the fish.”

“Suit yourself,” Mae replied.

As I watched the goldfish swim, their feathery tails gracefully waving in the water, I wondered if the bowl was large enough to please such a beautiful creature. I wished I could box one up and send it to Mrs. Riordan. She would’ve marvelled at the way a fish never tired of turning round inside its tiny world.

“You may feed them if you like,” Mr. Hetherington called out as he moved between cabinets and shelves, collecting the items on the list. “Just pinch a few grains from the jar that’s next to the bowl and let it float on the water.”

I did as he instructed and the fishes swam straight to the surface, nibbling and puckering away at the food. Was their only pleasure swallowing bubbles with every bite?

Cadet soon came to me and said, “I’m going outside, under the awning. You can join me if you like. I’m sure Mae will be awhile still.”

My hands went clammy inside my gloves. “All right,” I said, nodding.

I went to Mae, who was still investigating the perfume display, and said, “I’m going out front for some air.”

“Mm-hmm,” she murmured, dotting her wrist with carnation oil and lifting it to her nose.

I found Cadet reading a collection of handbills that had been posted on a board in front of the shop. After the way Alice had gone on about his kisses, I was nervous to be alone with him. The only other boy I’d ever spent any time with was John the Witcher. He’d stolen a teacup I’d found in an ash barrel, so I trailed after him calling him a thief. The sooty, flowered treasure was still useable even without its handle and I’d intended on giving it to Mama. John grinned at me when he snatched the cup from my hands but never gave it back, even though we spent the afternoon together, playing.

“Ever been there?” I asked, pointing to a notice for Dink’s Museum.

“Many times,” Cadet said with a nod.

The museum was joined to the theatre where most of the gentlemen who came to call at Miss Everett’s house took her girls for an evening’s entertainment—both buildings were just a short walk from the concert hall Mae liked to sneak out to at night.

In my days nibbling on the street, I’d caught glimpses of the freakish performers who stood out front of Dink’s to entice passersby, but had been disappointed to find the place was
for gentlemen only
. Bricks painted in outrageous colours and boasts, I’d wanted to enter the building at first sight. A man with long, stretched-out legs was pictured there, standing as high as the first storey and holding a crystal ball in his spidery hand. M
AGNIFICO, THE
W
ORLD’S
T
ALLEST
I
LLUSIONIST!
Next to him was a woman’s head with orange-red flames bursting out of her mouth. L
ADY
M
EPHISTOPHELES
, M
ISTRESS OF
F
IRE!
Images and words went up the side of the building and around the corner, melting into the brick. There was a two-headed goat, a woman with a snake wrapped around her body, a man sliding a long silver sword down his throat. L
OOK!
M
YSTERIOUS
P
EOPLE FROM
E
XOTIC
P
LACES!
S
EE!
M
AGICAL
T
REASURES FROM
E
VERY
C
ORNER OF THE
W
ORLD!

While I was trying to think of something more to say, Cadet bent down to pick up a penny he’d noticed stuck between the cobblestones. He brushed my skirt with his fingers as he stood up.

My heart fluttered as I wondered if he’d meant to do it or if it had just been an accident. “Alice told me your father’s a bloodsucker,” I said, making another awkward attempt at conversation.

Putting the penny in his pocket he replied, “He was, until he died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling terrible.

“He’s been gone two years now,” Cadet said. “His last words to me were ‘I hope I get to heaven so’s I can bite off Gabriel’s ear.’ That was my pa.”

Picturing a man tearing off an angel’s ear with his teeth made me want to laugh, but Cadet’s face was sombre when he spoke of his father and I didn’t want to offend him now that he seemed to have more to say. I listened, taking in his every word as he talked of boxing matches, bloodied faces and catching rats.

After his father had passed, he’d gone to work for a man named Dick the Ratter. Still scrawny and small, he was able to get into all the twisty, tight spaces the ratcatcher couldn’t go. He’d cover his hands with sweet oil to attract the rats, then light a torch and wave it around, flushing out the vermin, right into Dick’s waiting bag.

“After you’ve got them, you’ve got to keep the bag moving,” he explained as he circled his arm round and round, an imaginary sack of rats hanging from his fist. “If you don’t, they’ll chew their way out so fast you won’t even know they got away.”

It had been a decent job, affording Cadet and his boss the opportunity to collect pay on the rats not once, but twice. “Fancy hotels need to keep their rat troubles quiet, so there’s good money right there. Then you take the rats straight from the hotel and sell them, either to somebody who wants to put another man out of business, or to a man who needs them for a pit. Mr. Burns used to give the best price when he was still in the game. Good rats were worth ten dollars a hundred to him. He took bets on which of his dogs would catch and kill a rat first. When his best terrier, old Jack, died he had him stuffed and mounted over the bar. That dog caught a hundred rats in less than seven minutes, a true American record.”

Mr. Burns threw all kinds of things into his pit—roosters, dogs and cats, as well as rats. Once, Cadet watched him put four dozen rattlesnakes down in the pit, the reptiles having been brought in special from someplace out west. “A man named Tinley was paid to walk through the pit between all the hissing, mean serpents while everyone placed wagers as to whether the man would get bit or not, and also, if he did get the fangs, whether he would live or die. You can always count on men to put money down on anything that’s life or death.”

Just as Cadet was about to recall Mr. Tinley’s fate, Mae came out of the pharmacy with a large parcel in her arms. “Telling Ada about the rattlesnakes, I suppose,” she said, handing Cadet the box. “How many were there this time, four, five or six dozen?”

Ignoring her, he began to walk up the street.

I chose to ignore Mae, too, in favour of catching up with him. “Did he die?” I asked, my flesh still crawling with the thought of having that many snakes at my feet.

“Who?”

“The man in with the snakes.”

“No,” Cadet answered, grinning. “And a lot of men still hate him for it, too.”

October 29, 1871

I attended a meeting of the New York Committee for Women’s Concerns this evening, Miss Jane Clattermore, the guest speaker. She is the matron for the Home for Wandering Girls, so I was curious to hear what she had to say about the plight of the young women of our city. Sadly, she demonstrated no real understanding of them at all.

“A girl has no instinct of purity to defend her.”

“Her body and brain are weak from the start.”

“She often lacks moral fibre to such a degree that any attempt to reform her presents a troublesome situation that most often turns out to be a waste of everyone’s time.”

“For the girl there is less chance in every way.”

Because of these terrible and mistaken assumptions, she refuses to take girls who are over ten years of age into her care. She’s given up on older girls, and proceeded to tell the women in attendance that we should do the same.

“How did you know where to draw the line?” I asked, anxious to see her try to defend herself.

She did not reply.

I’m frustrated too
, I wanted to say, but I knew she wouldn’t listen.

The law is in bed with the brothel keepers, corruption all around. The idea of a girl selling herself horrifies me, and yet I find myself in the middle of that world. Where is the line? How young is too young?

I believed Emma Everett when she told me she needed a doctor to examine her prostitutes, someone to educate them on matters of hygiene and signs of disease. Seeing Moth Fenwick again yesterday made me realize that things there have gone too far. That girl is too young—and surprisingly, given the world she’s grown up in, still an innocent. Is Emma looking after the girl’s interests, or is she merely in the business of selling virgins?

“If I turn her out, she will sell herself on the street,” Emma threatened when I put the question to her.

Confident that the girl will choose her way over mine, she invited me to say whatever I liked to her. “Given the choice between wooden slats or feather beds, which would you choose?”

Dr. B_. says the infirmary cannot afford to get involved. Funding is difficult to come by and the words “whore,” “disease” and “prostitution” send benefactors running, their purse strings pulled tight.

Still, the girls of this city need someone to insist there’s another way. I can’t stop thinking of dear Miss Fenwick. A girl should command attention, not suffer it.

S.F.

Face to face and nose to nose
Smick, Smack, Smuck and away she goes
Lay her eyebrow on your collar
Hug her so that she can’t holler;
Tell her that you’re always true
Squeeze her till her face turns blue
Keep it up for fifteen hours
Then begin anew
.

—J.P. SOUSA