A City Tossed and Broken (6 page)

He gave me another look and unwrapped more clean space on the paper. “Look here, it’s not hard to get around once you get a few facts straight. San Francisco is all up and down, it’s true, but we’ve got water on nearly all sides, so you can almost always figure out where you are — if you climb to the top of the nearest hill,” he added, grinning.

He drew more quick lines. “Here’s the ocean — that’s as far west as you can get. See this rectangle? That’s Golden Gate Park — runs all the way out to the Pacific. You can take the streetcar out there and wade in the ocean — jiminy, it’s cold. See this sort of squarish space? The Presidio, where the Army is. It goes down to the bay. You could walk it in a morning if you wanted to. This big wide street here is Van Ness. It starts at the bay and runs right up like this. Here’s City Hall, and here’s Chinatown. And this here’s the Barbary Coast, you don’t want to venture there. On this side is Telegraph Hill and here’s Russian Hill, where I live. Not too far from here.” He smiled at my confused face. “You’ll get it. On your days off, you can explore.”

“I only have one day off.”

“Me too. I work at Jennardi’s as a delivery boy most days after school, and then hauling crates of whiskey down at Hotaling’s on Saturdays. Say, you wouldn’t have a night off tonight, would you? Because down at Mechanics’ Pavilion they’re having a roller-skating contest. You wouldn’t be going just with me,” he said quickly, “if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m going with my sister and brother and cousins — a big group. You’ll be well chaperoned. Should be a shindig. And for once it isn’t damp and chilly. Feels like the first day of spring out there.”

I couldn’t for the life of me imagine going to Mrs. Sump and asking if I could go rollerskating on my first night here. I laughed, and the boy looked hurt.

“I think it’s a bit early to be asking for a night off, don’t you?” I pointed out to him. “I don’t want to get my ears boxed on my first day.”

“Well, that depends,” Jake said with a genial grin. “You might consider it breaking in a new boss, letting ’em know what they’re in for.” He pointed to the tea tray. “And if you’re the only one here, roller skates might help you with chores.”

I laughed, thinking of skating on the polished, elegant floor, bringing the tea tray to the study. “That would be a sight,” I said. “I don’t know how to roller-skate, or ice-skate, either. I’d smash the tea set before I got across the kitchen.”

“That’s why you have to come with us tonight. All you need is practice.”

We grinned at each other, and then I felt awkward, like he might think I was forward, or flirting with him. There’s no telling what he was thinking. So I busied myself taking the things out of the carton.

He edged toward the door. “I’m sure we’ll meet again. I do the deliveries, like I said. I’m Jake Jennardi, by the way. Yeah, my family owns the store. We’re right down the hill on Broadway.”

I knew he was waiting for me to supply my name, but I hesitated. I didn’t like how familiar he was.

“Aw, that’s all right. You want to wait for a proper introduction I reckon. You’ll find we’re a bit more informal here.” I stiffened, thinking he was making fun, but he touched his fingers to his cap and whistled as he headed for the door. “Well, I can wait. Good-bye, Philadelphia.”

Couldn’t help smiling at that while I folded up his map and tucked it between your pages, diary.

8
P.M.

Lily refused to go to the opera. Another scene. Mrs. Sump said it was the perfect opportunity for her debut into society. Mrs. Sump doesn’t care about some Italian singer, but everyone will be there and they must be, too.

But Lily said her headache was worse. I don’t blame her — if I had that woman yammering at me like that, my head would pound, too.

I’ve laid out Mrs. Sump’s nightclothes and I’ve checked on Lily, knocking on her door and hearing her say she’s fine and she’s going to bed.

Mr. Sump stopped me outside in the hall, saying he wanted to make sure I could find everything and apologizing for not having other servants tonight and my having to do everything.

And of course I curtsied and said I was fine, sir.

That’s when he said to me that he would appreciate my telling him if any communication arrived for Lily at any time, because he would like to examine it first, being her father. He must have seen the reluctance on my face, because he said he is the head of the house and even though I wait on Miss Sump I take orders from him.

“I’ve been a benefactor to your family, Minette,” he said. “I was happy to be able to extend a hand of generosity to an unfortunate circumstance so that a worthy family would not slide into poverty and disgrace. It’s not that I expect thanks” — and here he paused, diary, so that I could dip into a small curtsy and thank him — “but I do expect loyalty.”

Was that what my father was, an unfortunate circumstance? Not a person?

“I’m prepared to be loyal to you both, sir,” I said, which wasn’t much of an answer and by the scowl on his face he knew it.

Midnight

I am waiting up for the Sumps to return. She could want some tea, she said, and help getting into her nightclothes. With all those buttons and clasps, I’m sure she’s right. I am so tired. I have to be up at five to start the fires in the rooms.

Earlier in the evening I knocked on Lily’s door to collect her tea tray and she wasn’t there. When I looked out the window I saw her walking quickly down the hill toward the house. I imagine she wanted some fresh air for her headache, and who could blame her? I took the tea tray and fixed up her bed again and then laid out her nightclothes.

I will fetch and carry and sew on buttons and lay out nightgowns but I will not be a spy.

If you ask me, that girl just needs to breathe some fresh air and get away from both her parents, Mrs. Sump’s yammering and Mr. Sump treating her like a doll.

Now I will tell you how long it took to get Mrs. Sump into her splendid gown! Oof! Thirty buttons down her back, twenty buttons on her gloves, the diamond headpiece placed just so, the pearls clasped around her throat. Once we were done she looked rather majestic, I must admit. If there was a surface on her person that was unadorned, I did not see it. She wore face powder, too. She left with a wide smile, holding on to Mr. Sump’s arm, ready to show off.

I hope Mr. Caruso doesn’t get blinded by all that magnificence and fall off the stage.

I took her some soup at eight o’clock and she told me she was just going to bed and not to disturb her.

It’s odd how families work. Mrs. Sump bullies Lily and snipes at her. Mama and I worked together. We knew what needed to be done and we did it. We all worked in the tavern, we all pitched in because that’s the way families work, isn’t it?

But there are secrets in this house, and nobody seems to listen to anybody else.

I miss Mama. My heart is aching. I am sorry I shouted at her before I left. I am sorry I didn’t kiss her good-bye. I will write to her tomorrow.

April 18, 1906

Wednesday

6:30
A.M.

I never thought I would survive to write this.

My hand shakes and I don’t know if I can make the pencil move.

Yet if I don’t set it down, if I don’t make sense of it —

I must write it so some of the horror can leave me and rest on the page instead.

I am sitting outside of a ruined house. I’m sorry for my handwriting, diary, but I can’t seem to stop my trembling.

When I woke at five to my alarm (the clock given to me by Mrs. Sump to make sure I would awaken), the sky was just beginning to lighten to gray. I had gone to bed at two. I was wearing Lily’s nightgown but I knew the others would not be up at this hour so I threw a shawl around me and quickly ran down the back stairs to light the fire in the kitchen before I dressed. I had to get the things I’d need to kindle the fires in the bedrooms. While I was in the kitchen I got out the coffeepot, for that was what Mr. Sump preferred, and the tea things. All that was in my head was the list of what Mrs. Sump told me I must do:
fires lit by six, tea at seven in my room, coffee for Mr. Sump in the study, newspapers laid out in dining room, full breakfast at eight thirty.

I had already lit the coal stove when I heard a noise behind me. Suddenly Lily was in the kitchen, dressed in a plain dark dress and hat — my dress! And carrying my suitcase!

We just stared at each other for a minute, and I saw that she recognized her nightgown on me. And so at the same time we each burst out with questions.

What are you doing in my gown?

What are you doing with my case?

And being that I was the servant I had to answer first, and I told her I had taken the gown to mend — I showed her the tear — but I needed nightclothes because I
thought
my case had been stolen.

And then she looked embarrassed and looked down at the suitcase in her hand. I knew she realized she had no choice but to confide in me.

She said she was leaving, running away. She told me I had to help. She said she’d pay me back, she knew she shouldn’t have taken the case with my things, but it was easier to leave as a working girl than to leave as a swell, where they could track her. This way it was a disguise.

“Help me,” she said. Her eyes pleaded with me. I’d never seen so much emotion in her face. I realize now that she must have learned to keep her face still and set like a mask to hide what she was feeling from her mother.

“You helped me yesterday,” she said. “You knew I left the house.”

“I won’t spy on you for them,” I said. “But this is different.”

“All you have to do is say nothing at all. Say you didn’t see me.”

And I said, “But why are you running away?”

And she smiled, but not like it was directed at me, that smile. She smiled to herself.

She said: “I am running
to
something.”

And as she said it the rumble started.

I had a second or two to be confused about the noise. I decided it must be the cable for the cable cars, that maybe they wound it up in the mornings and maybe it rumbled, and so I would feel that underneath the ground every morning and one day it would be a familiar noise.

Just as I decided this, the rumble got louder and became a roar, and then I felt the
power
of it, so terrifying that Lily and I reached out to grab each other but it was as though the house gave a twist and we were thrown away from each other instead.

The noise grew and grew until it was deafening, like a train was running through the kitchen. The house began to shake with a violence that made Lily and me cry out in terror. Everything in the kitchen — plates, cups, table, chairs, bins, platters, pots, pans — began to shake and shatter. The knowledge roared into my head.

EARTHQUAKE.

So many things happened at the same time that my senses were overwhelmed. Plaster fell, first in a fine cloud and then chunks of it from the ceiling. The floor was moving in a wave but also bumping up and down, making the furniture give great lurches across the floor.

The house was alive. It had us in its jaws and it shook us without mercy. I had one last chance to look into Lily’s eyes and I am sure her terror was like my own. I tried to reach for her again but I was thrown backward, right through the doorway into the butler’s pantry. I hung on to the door frame as the stove tore loose and danced across the room. To my horror it slammed into Lily and she fell on the floor with a scream. I dropped to my knees and tried to crawl toward her. Part of the ceiling crashed down in front of me and I felt a pain that seemed to burn through me. Clouds of dust suffocated me and I choked and choked, trying to breathe, trying to see.

There seemed to be a pause of a second or two and then the shaking got even worse. Through the haze I saw something incredible, the back wall of the kitchen
moving
. Then the wall fell with a thundering roar — I heard Lily’s scream cut short — and I could no longer discern the difference between the bellow of the earth and the clamor of a house coming apart.

Something fell on top of me and the breath was knocked out of me. All was dark. I was sure I was dying.

The shaking stopped. When I opened my eyes I couldn’t see anything at first. My eyes stung and my throat was raw. I could move my arms but not my feet. I felt my legs and guessed that I was somehow pinned underneath plaster, but I didn’t think my legs were broken because I could wiggle my toes. I was able to get my arms out. I cried for help several times, but that just exhausted me.

Slowly, I wriggled out one arm and began to pick the plaster and bricks off my body. Now that the dust was settling I saw that a chair had fallen over me in such a way that it had saved my life. Chunks of plaster and bricks had fallen, but only a few on me. When I pushed off the chair I was able to sit upright and then wriggle my way out.

My legs were bruised and I had a gash on my ankle and my shoulder, but I was alive.

I flipped over onto my knees. I was face-to-face with the bricks on the floor and I realized that they must be from the chimney. It had crashed straight through the roof.

I raised myself up and saw that the house had cracked like an egg. I saw plaster and wood and tiles, and I couldn’t imagine why they were on the kitchen floor. I looked out and saw the pale crescent moon. It was then that I realized that the roof had collapsed.

Did the world split open? That’s how it felt. I could hear, faintly, the sound of church bells, and although I knew they were ringing because of the shaking from the quake, had most likely been ringing all along, it felt like they were tolling for the end of the world.

I called for Lily. There was no answer.

I crawled forward and saw her arm, her fingers curled and unmoving. She was covered in bricks and plaster and wood.

The church bells stopped, or maybe the roaring in my ears did, for suddenly it was so quiet. That’s what was so odd, after all that crashing and roaring, the quiet was the most absolute I ever heard.