Heart of a Dove (6 page)

“You can’t wish for me to be punished,” I said, trying and failing to keep the tremble from my voice.

“Not unless I’m doing the punishing,” he said back, as though joking, but I felt the sickness of fear even more strongly. His free hand moved swiftly and cupped me between the legs.

I struggled against his hold on my arm, but he was a man, single-minded and strong. And then I heard Hiram, from the porch, hollering, “Get away from her, you goddamned drunk! Them girls can’t turn tricks outside their houses.”

The man cursed and set me aside, none too gently. He said, “I’ll come and find you there instead, whore.”

My stomach was aching with cramps and I felt a rush of blood between my legs, soaking the binding I wore, but I straightened with determination; I could not falter now. One person in the wide world yet cared for me, and she was waiting even as I stood immobile. I prayed that he wouldn’t follow through on that statement, turning and again hurrying away.

Once a whore, always a whore
, Ginny’s voice said in my mind.

“Lila! Lila, girl!” Hiram yelled after me, and I could hear his laugh, though I didn’t pause. Curious heads turned to observe Hiram as he hollered. “You owe me, girl!”

The activity of the docks lessened as I moved west and away, back towards Ginny’s. Within minutes I could see the glow of the lanterns from the Grand Hotel, perhaps three blocks ahead. I was drained of all bravado at this point, and my heart was knocking at the prospect of sneaking unseen back into Hossiter’s.

What if someone locked the side door?

What if Ginny is there, on the stairs?

I dropped the bag containing the tea then, my hands slippery with sweat.

“Dammit,” I muttered, kneeling at once to retrieve it. My belly was aching with cramps and I remained bent over, collecting myself, holding the small bag against my palm. I tipped my forehead against my right knee as I willed away the sudden rush of dizziness. It was then I realized I was not alone.

Dear God, he followed me
.

But it wasn’t who I thought. It was much, much worse than that. In the last instant I knew; my neck prickled horribly just as his fist closed over my upper arm and drew me forcibly to my feet.

“Lila,” Sam said, and his fingers clenched into my flesh, turning me to face him. “I knew that was you near the river.”

Run, get away, you can outrun him!

My mind screamed at me, even as my legs were paralyzed by fear at the sight of his eyes. A roaring filled my head, almost obliterating his next words. He clutched my other arm and squeezed both tightly. He observed, “Does Ginny know you’ve strayed from home? That you’re giving it away for free on the docks?”

“You bastard,” I heard myself gasp; I was so terrified by him that I had urinated a little, into my bindings already wet with blood. We were blocks from any streetlamps and I understood without being able to fully articulate it that all he need do was drag me into an alley to finish what he’d started last summer. No one to save me this time.

He drew me to my toes then, bringing my nose nearly to a level with his. Same whiskey breath, same hatred bubbling from the depths of him. He raged in a whisper, “You whore, don’t you call me names. I’ll fucking kill you, like I shoulda killed you before.”

Tears streamed over my cheeks; he was not blustering. He meant every word. His eyes drove furiously into mine and his fingers seemed to be clamping ahold of my bones, though he released my left arm to trace one finger over the scar on my cheek. He whispered, “I see I marked you good.”

I moved with a sudden instinctive reaction, thinking of my brothers and how they would have disengaged from his clenching fingers. I jerked, rolling my arm into his thumb, imagining Dalton’s voice telling me what to do.

Grip’s weak there, Lorie, that’ll break any hold. See, you did it!

Now run, Jesus, Lorie, run!

Chest heaving, I sidestepped him and turned to flee. Sam stumbled, but his grab connected with the back of my hair, which he held solidly, yanking my head. He kept his hand fisted there, twisting me around to face him again and I cried out.

Fight him, Lorie, you can fight! Don’t be such a girl.

I can’t fight, Dalty,
I thought, dread closing its fist over me, even as Sam’s fingers spread out along my throat.

“You can’t escape me, Lila,” he said, softly, almost tenderly.

“Sam, for Christ’s sake,” said a new voice, approaching us from behind, and Sam’s upper lip curled even as he set me from him with a hard shove. I stumbled backwards and nearly fell, as another man emerged from the shadows, a man I recognized. It was the small, wiry, former soldier that everyone called Union Jack. He frequented Ginny’s, but I couldn’t remain here to wonder at their connection. Even if Sam fired shots from his pistol into my back as I ran, I would take that chance; better to die from a gunshot wound than at his hands. I lifted my skirts and fled.

Within minutes I was breathless at Hossiter’s back door, leaning against the side of the building a split second before I realized he may have been in pursuit. But he was not; I was alone in the fully-dark night. With trembling fingers I eased open the door, even my fears of being confronted by Ginny paling in comparison to Sam Rainey. I needn’t have feared as it was; the hall and stairs were empty, both. The rollicking piano music became slightly less muffled as I climbed the stairs with the lightest of steps; two from the top, I paused to listen for telltale footsteps coming down the hall. When I heard no one, I flew to my room and closed the door behind me, then collapsed atop my bed.

Deirdre came
creeping in at dawn’s light, finding me asleep. I woke at her gentle touch, still fully clothed and wearing my boots; I’d not the energy to remove them last night. I blinked and regarded her through a haze in my mind, before saying, “I have it.”

Her shoulders sank with relief and she kissed my forehead.

“It’s here,” I whispered, unbuttoning my dress and extracting the bag. “She gave me instructions, and Deirdre…you may never conceive again, she told me.”

Her eyes held mine, dark as ebony.

“No matter,” she said. “Lorie, I can never thank you enough.”

“Hold me,” I whispered, needing her arms about me. My limbs ached from shaking. I had finally dozed, if fitfully, less than an hour ago.

She nodded, setting the small bag aside and curling around me. Her warmth comforted me, and she stroked my hair until at last my eyes drifted closed and I was able to claim another few hours of sleep.

- 5 -

“When will you use it?” I asked Deirdre later that morning, in the kitchen. We were alone, though still whispered.

“Today, though I’ll have to feign illness. Ginny won’t question it, I’ve never taken sick, and Eva claims a headache every so often,” she mused. And then, “I opened it. It smells vile. I don’t know how—oh!”

I had lifted one arm to run my fingers along my scalp, inadvertently displaying my upper arm, as the slippery sleeve of my dressing gown slid to my shoulder. Deirdre leaned forward and studied me with horror in her eyes; I lowered my arm and hugged myself, defensively.

“What in the hell?” she demanded in a low voice. “What in the hell?”

Closing my eyes, seeing his face on the backs of my eyelids, I whispered, “He grabbed me on the way back last night. It was Sam. He grabbed my arms.”

Deirdre reached and lifted my sleeves gently, though with determination, and then she gasped. I needn’t be looking to know what she saw: the ugly blue-black bruising exactly resembling fingers on my flesh.

“How did he…he hasn’t been in here in months!”

“He must have seen me, followed me, I don’t know, I don’t know,” I whispered, tears gushing, streaking through my lowered eyelashes. “He would have killed me, I know it, but Union Jack was with him and reprimanded him.”

“Oh honey, I’m sorry,” she said, crying too.

I opened my eyes and clasped her hands tightly, determined to stop my tears. Tears helped nothing. I said, as much to comfort myself as anything, “But he didn’t. I’m safe.”

Deirdre clung to me and whispered, “I can’t thank you enough for helping me, Lorie. I wish I was your sister, truly.”

“I love you too,” I told her, comforted by her familiar scent. “Now we best boil you some water.”

Betsy paid us little attention as we set the crockery teapot atop the woodstove, letting it heat. When it whistled, Deirdre collected the tray and two porcelain mugs, though I carried them up the steps for her, to the relative privacy of her room. Within it, she sank to the mattress and I set the tea tray behind her, then quietly perused her belongings, though I had seen them many times before. It gave me comfort to look upon the trappings, though meager, of a life that had been lived beyond these walls. Before she’d become a whore; small pieces of her soul, scattered and arranged about her room.

Joshua, her husband, appeared as I opened the hinge on the oval-shaped frame that held his Federal Army tintype. She kept this, her only image of him outside of her memory, in the top drawer of her bureau, and I was familiar enough with both her and her space to look for it; he was young and handsome, staring into the camera with not so much as a hint of a smile. Across his lap lay his Springfield rifle.

“He loved me,” she said in a sigh. “He did. Would that I still had him, oh God.”

I shut the frame with great care and joined her on the bed. I knew better than to try and offer comfort, as there was none and words only aggravated that knowledge; a few of us who worked within these walls harbored such feelings about the memory of someone, whether a husband or mother, father or sibling. Someone who had once provided the unimaginable safety of unconditional love. There was none of that here, not amongst us. Eva was the only one who had never once mentioned a family, leading Deirdre to speculate, after Eva had slapped me over a high-paying customer my second week at Ginny’s, that Eva had risen from hell fully formed. Ginny too, I’d said.

“Do you think I’ll go to hell now?” Deirdre asked quietly, as though sensing my thoughts. I shivered before I could catch myself. She sounded truly concerned, vulnerable.

“No,” I said firmly. “That could never be possible.”

“But what I’m doing is—”

“Saving your child from a life of living hell,” I said softly, catching and holding her hands. Hers were pale and cold within mine, and I curled my fingers around them more securely. Her hands seemed so small and slight; I was used to the large, hard, callused hands of men.

“You’re so warm,” she murmured. “Thank you, Lorie, for everything. You risked yourself for me, and you were hurt in the process. I’m so sorry.”

Her dark hair was loose, soft over her slim, pale shoulders and her eyes were wet with unshed tears. I tucked a wayward curl behind her right ear. I said, “You’ll be all right. I’ll tell Ginny you aren’t feeling well, and I have yet two days of bleeding, perhaps three. I’ll wait on you. I’ll bring you cake in your bed.”

She smiled a little at that, shaking her head.

After a moment I whispered, “How did it happen?”

Her lashes lowered as she said, low, “I don’t know, Lorie, I don’t. I use the butter so carefully, I never forget.” She closed her eyes tightly then, clinging to my hands. She whispered desperately, “If I was yet Joshua’s wife I would be such a good mother, I would. I would love this child and raise it to care for others, to be a kind human being. And it would have Joshua’s smile. He had such a sweet smile, Lorie, I can still see it plain though he’s been gone these many years.”

“I know,” I told her, tears stinging my eyes. “I know.”

“God will never give me another child,” she said decisively, punishing herself. “I feel it. This is my only child and I’m destroying it.” She laughed then, though it was a terrible sound. “I may tell myself I have no other choice.”

Fear bubbled inside my stomach; I imagined her bearing a child in a whorehouse and shortly thereafter being forced out to live on the streets, though even life there would be preferable to Ginny’s; I felt ill at imagining what would be the child’s fate, should Ginny ever get her hands upon it. Better to starve on the streets than that. If I was brave enough, I would have taken that option myself, by now.
Perhaps we could run away together…perhaps…

“I’m sorry, Lorie, I’m being so macabre. I don’t mean anything by it. I know this is the right choice, though I’m frightened a little. It smells so pungent.”

I lifted the small porcelain lid of the teapot, inhaling the steam that curled out. It did have an unpleasant musky tinge, of moldering plants crushed beneath others in an unkempt garden.

“Shall I fetch honey?” I asked her.

“No, I’ll drink it quickly and be done,” Deirdre said. “Has it steeped for a good half hour?”

I nodded and she moved as though to pour herself a cup, but her hands were shaking.

“Here, let me,” I told her, and performed the task.

And then she drank.

I lay on my mattress that evening, alone in the darkness, watching the moon decline west. It was so thin, nearly new, as though drawn upon the backdrop of the sky with the slash of a white ink. Soon it would disappear behind the rooftops. My door was tightly closed, though the boisterous activity from a night in full swing seeped through anyway. I had learned to tune out most of such noise; I no longer noticed Mary’s headboard thumping, scarce registered the songs Johnny played upon the piano. I had heard them all so many times my ears jangled if I paid attention too closely.

Tonight I was simply grateful for the momentary peace afforded by bleeding; I lay still and silent, my ankles crossed, hearing the coyotes in the distance. Again something restless pulsed within me, fleeting and yet strong, a sense of something new on the horizon. Something just out of arm’s reach, though drawing nearer each day. I was startled by the feeling and shifted to my side, tucking both hands beneath my cheek. I was nearly asleep when I heard commotion in the hall outside my door.

“Deirdre!” It was Ramie’s voice, pitched high in fear.

My feet hit the floor and I ran to open the door, blinking as my mind tried desperately to counteract what I was seeing, to pretend that it wasn’t actually real before my eyes.

“Oh no, oh God,” I moaned, dropping to my knees at once, my hands fluttering uselessly, too terrified to know where to light upon her. My voice was not my own as I cried, “Deirdre, what’s happening…what’s happening…”

Ramie was across from me then, also on her knees, her brown eyes wide with fright. She demanded, “Deirdre, who’s hurt you, who’s done this?”

My heart was so loud it roared within my ears. I put my hands on her face and curled near her, pleading, “What should I do, what should I do?”

Deirdre’s dark eyes were no more than slits and between my palms her skin felt afire. She had dragged herself into the hallway; there was a trail of blood on the floor behind her, more covering her pale-yellow dressing gown. And then I saw the shape upon her, near her pelvis, where blood had flowed and left upon the material an almost perfect crescent moon, bright red. I began sobbing, unable to prevent myself from falling to broken shards.

“What’s happening, Lila?” Ramie asked, frantic.

“Get Ginny, get a doctor!” I screamed. “
Run!
”

Heads were popping from nearby doors, men tugging britches over their hips and lifting suspenders into place, curious about the racket. We were joined shortly by Lisette and Mary, both white-faced beneath their make-up. It was like a carnival featuring an atrocious new attraction, and I did my best to block her from their gazes.

One of the men knelt as though to look more closely and I screamed at him, “Get away, you
son of a bitch
!”

“Well shit,” he said, sounding startled, though he only afforded me a momentary glance before his eyes went back to Deirdre, sprawled on the floor. I could tell she was trying to curl around her midsection. If I had been strong enough, I would have lifted her and carried her from sight. I shielded her head as well as I could, my voice shaking as I repeated, tipping near her ear, brushing back her dark hair, “It will be all right, it will be all right.”

“She’s losing a child,” said Eva’s voice from her own doorway.

I looked at her instantly, rage broiling in my blood. She was lounging against one shoulder, smoking from a slender tobacco holder, observing as though witnessing something slightly dull and not quite worth her time.

Later I would be unable to remember exactly what happened. One moment I was kneeling and the next I leaped upon her, noticing as her eyes went wide and shone with sincere astonishment before my weight, meager though it was, knocked her to the floor. Her burning tobacco went flying. I grabbed her hair in one fist even as she fought back; she was tall and wiry, surely tougher than me, though I had the strength of fury.

She shrieked and yelped, “Get off me, you bitch!”

My other hand slid over her painted face, seeking a hold; I longed to smash her head against the boards of the floor. She clawed at my arms and there was so much shouting and bustling in the hallway that I could hardly hear the growling sounds coming from my throat. I was yanked from her body and shaken until my teeth clattered together. I fought the new arms, screaming now, and someone, Horace probably, as it was a hard blow, struck me across the side of the head.

When I regained consciousness, I was alone in my bed. The rectangle of visible sky was silvering with the approach of dawn. My mind swam in dizzy waves as I blinked and then blinked again, as everything came rushing back, blindsiding me. I sat and moaned in pain, tipping inadvertently forward. But I was determined to know what had happened and forced aside the aching within my skull, creeping over the floor on bare feet. The hallway was empty but a lantern was yet lit on the main floor, and I crept to the top of the staircase to see who remained awake below.

Ginny was seated at the bar, smoking. From above I studied her with unveiled loathing; perhaps she sensed the weight, the heat of my hatred, as her eyes lifted to mine. Though I should have known better, I couldn’t smooth the emotion from my face.

“Lila,” she said. As there was not a soul stirring other than the two of us, the quiet word seemed to echo through the space.

“Where is she?” I asked her, and my voice was hoarse.

Ginny let her gaze fall back to the air before her face, drawing long on her rolled tobacco.

“Where?” I demanded, and her fearsome eyes flashed back to mine at the defiance in my tone. Even with the yards separating us, fear seeped into my gut at the expression.

“They took her body away,” she said at last, and I sank to the top step to bury my face into my hands. Perhaps it was selfish, but all I could think of was how I was alone, so very alone. There was no one left in the world who loved me, who I could love back. And the fear that I kept desperately coiled deep inside, the terrible and oily darkness in my soul, came surging upwards. I gasped and ran down the steps, frantic to be outside, away from this place. Through the hinged doors I bolted, into the dawning day.

Upon the boardwalk, I stopped as though coming up against a glass wall and stared up at the sky, trying to breathe, the world reeling and rotating. I sank to my knees, vaguely aware that Ginny had come behind me, still smoking, observing me as one would perhaps a troublesome, wayward child.

“Where in the hell are you going?” she asked me, as though reading my thoughts.

“Away, I have to go away,” I cried, sobbing now, but in quiet, hoarse breaths, just a step away from outright panic.

“Good luck with that,” she said remorselessly. “You’d only be back. Once you’ve worked as a whore, you’ll always be one. You can’t escape it.”

“No,” I whispered, turning to face her, still on my knees and tears swarming over my face. “I don’t believe you.”

She seemed genuinely puzzled, slightly unfocused, and I realized she was high on her opium. She looked hard at me and said with an odd tone of voice, “Your eyes have always struck me, Lila. They’re fascinating. It’s as though all of the pain of the world is within them.”

“
I hate you
,” I told her then, not caring if she would indeed whip me for those words. She walked forward with deliberate steps and I forced myself not to cringe from her as she transferred her smoke to her mouth and caught my loose hair in both hands, stroking over its length.

“You need me,” she said back, unconcerned. Her hands were wrapped into my hair and my stomach lurched with loathing. She added, “You would never survive out there, Lila, a little dove like you.”

I turned back to look at the dusty street in the first shards of daylight, and then hid my face behind both palms, shuddering with sobs. Deirdre was gone, and I had purchased the tea that killed her. I had poured it for her.