Sister Noon (8 page)

Proposition Three:
Mary E. Pleasant rose to a position of power and prominence in San Francisco through Vodoun.

Mrs. Pleasant sometimes said that her mother had been a Vodoun priestess killed by slave owners frightened of her power. (Sometimes she said other things.) Sometimes she said that she herself had used her Vodoun power to escape slavery.

She was related through her second marriage to the famous Marie LaVeau and had been a guest of that house before sailing to California. In New Orleans, LaVeau created a political base through domestic spies, blackmail, and matchmaking. Mrs. Pleasant appears to have adapted these same methods to San Francisco.

She enjoyed close friendships with several white women for whom she’d found, if not husbands, then near-equivalents to husbands. She introduced Selim Woodworth to his wife, and Governor Booth to a woman whom he felt unable to marry for political reasons, but with whom he had a long relationship as well as a child. She introduced Thomas and Teresa Bell.

A few years before her death, the
Chronicle
ran an article on Mrs. Pleasant entitled “Queen of the Voodoos.” It was a very unpleasant article, and one of the things it accused her of was genuine belief.

O
n the night following her visit to the House of Mystery, Lizzie awoke sometime after dark. It took her a moment to know where she was, since she was not in her bed, where she ought to be. She couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t told Sam to take her home. A fat moon floated just outside the tower window, one small, dark cloud patting its face like a powder puff. There was a tatted antimacassar under her cheek; when she raised her head, she could feel its web indented into her skin.

She was still dressed, even to her shoes. She still had Mrs. Pleasant’s slip of paper balled in her hand. The gaslights had been long ago put out. She took the paper to the window. She could see the halo of lights over the
downtown, too far away to be useful. There was also Mrs. Pleasant’s elaborate script to contend with. Plus the ink had smeared from the heat of Lizzie’s fingers. But she thought the address was in Chinatown.

She’d not eaten since breakfast. She made her way, partly by sight, partly by touch, partly by memory to the basement and the kitchen. The Brown Ark groaned from her weight on the stairs. The parlor clock chimed a quarter-hour. She groped through the dark pantry for an apple. When she bit down, it became a potato instead. After her initial disappointment, she thought it tasty enough. She was very hungry!

What might Mrs. Pleasant and Mrs. Bell have eaten for dinner? Lizzie wondered whether Mr. Bell would have joined them; somehow she thought not. Lizzie pictured the two women at the table together, Teresa and Mary Ellen, both of them elegantly gowned, necklaces flickering in the candlelight, the murmur of their voices. Laughter. She herself might have been spoken of, though she couldn’t imagine what would be said. It was strangely exciting to think of being talked of by two women so often talked of. Ordinarily Lizzie hated the idea of being a topic for conversation.

She took another bite of potato, less pleased with the taste this time. Then she heard someone who shouldn’t have been there coming soft and halting down the stairs.

During this period, an eleven-year-old girl named Maud Curry also lived as a ward at the Brown Ark. Maud
was a thin child, with white-blond hair that coiled down her neck so thickly it was kept cut short, to prevent the abundance from sapping her strength. Maud’s mother was consumptive and had been separated from her daughter for the child’s own health. Her father had owned a small dry-goods store, but it had been embezzled away by his bookkeeper. Unable to bear presenting his darling, ailing wife with bankruptcy and failure, he brought Maud one morning to the Ark, kissed her, told her he would return for her in a day or so, and disappeared. He was by nature a cheerful, hearty man, and he had never given any outward sign of distress.

It might have been easier on Maud if he hadn’t dissembled so persuasively. As she saw the days pass and his promises turn to lies, she began to suspect his every emotion: Had he ever been happy with her and her mother? Had he ever intended to stay? Had he ever loved them?

Her mother’s health was not improved by her father’s desertion. She sent Maud many tender letters, but often they were not even in her own hand and she did not pretend that Maud was coming home soon.

After the initial shock, Maud’s unhappiness settled so deep inside her she was rarely aware of it. She was her father’s daughter. She made a place for herself among the other wards as someone who was ready for anything. “Maud is a sport,” the boys said admiringly. “Maud will stop at nothing.”

At least she had a mother and a father. At the Brown Ark, that counted for something. It was the first question
they asked when a new child arrived. They’d asked it of Jenny Ijub. Did she have a mother? A father? Anybody?

Jenny Ijub was not settling in. She was small, but without the ingratiating manner that might have turned this to her advantage. She refused to be dressed and carried about like a doll, though this would have vastly improved her popularity. Lizzie believed her to be four years old, but she was, in fact, five. She had told the other children that her friend, Mrs. Pleasant, was sending her a special gift, loved her dearly, would be coming to take her away soon. This was what she had made of Mrs. Pleasant’s promises.

Maud had once said something too much like this herself, had even believed it. She’d been made to look a fool. By the time of Jenny’s arrival, Maud had lived at the Ark for almost a year. Jenny’s assertions were preposterous. Jenny was trying to make fools of them all. Maud held Jenny’s nose and mouth closed until she confessed as much. She pinched Jenny’s nose hard enough to leave fingerprints.

“She sleepwalks,” Maud told the matron when questioned about the bruising. “And she’s such a liar! If there’s one thing I can’t bear, it’s a liar.”

She’d heard the matron say this herself often enough to know it would find its mark. “So a friend is coming to fetch you?” Nell asked Jenny. “And what friend would that be? You’ll find no friends here, missy, if you can’t learn to be truthful.”

The warning had no apparent effect. Maud told the other children that Jenny boasted she’d owned a pony, a parrot, a silver cup with her initials, dresses, and dolls.
Her mother had allowed her lemon sticks whenever she liked, had kept a vase full of them on a low table within Jenny’s reach. Her lies grew more and more fanciful. Her father had been as rich as a sultan. She believed in fairies, because she had actually seen them. She’d seen ghosts and angels, too. She didn’t believe in God. Before a week had passed, everyone at the Brown Ark knew you couldn’t trust a thing Jenny said.

Even Jenny was persuaded. Her memories tangled into the things Maud reported. Jenny thought there had been a pony, dresses, and candies, but apparently these were lies. And more confusing, she didn’t remember telling Maud anything. She vowed to say nothing about herself to anyone—she already hated them all—but in the midst of her rigorous silence, her lies carried on without her.

Once her untruthfulness was known, she became an easy target for pranks. Cups of sand were poured into her shoes at night, followed by cups of water. Imogene Reed caught a fat black spider and saved it in a glass, to be dropped onto Jenny’s face as she slept. The cores of several apples were stuffed into her pillowcase.

The food at the Brown Ark was not what Jenny was used to. The discipline was also a hardship. She’d never before been expected to stay voluntarily in her chair, with its terrible spindled back, for hours at a time. She had never been asked to envision God’s disappointment in her. She had not been told to keep so clean. She reacted against confinement like a wild animal. She paced in her cage.

It was Jenny, then, whom Lizzie heard on the stairs. When Lizzie turned around, there she was, her eyes brooding, her hair wild as a nest of sticks. She had been
unable to do up the laces at the back of her dress, but was otherwise fully clothed.

“Jenny Ijub,” Lizzie said. “Little Jenny. You frightened me. You should be in bed.”

“I know.” Jenny began to back upstairs, her legs so short each step was a difficulty. Lizzie caught her by the arm. What a twig it was! Lizzie’s fingers wrapped about it and squeezed, and she could feel right down to the bone.

“Where were you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“All dressed up to go nowhere? It won’t do, miss. I know you’re fond of deceits. I’ll have the truth from you now.”

“I wanted the cat,” Jenny said. “The stripe cat.”

“The cats don’t come inside.”

“I didn’t know.”

Jenny’s voice was unconvincing, but she met Lizzie’s eyes steadily. The look on her face surprised Lizzie. It was an altogether adult look. It was anger.

“You know this very well, Jenny. Someone let the orange cat in today and it killed a lovely little bird. Jesus hates to hear a child lie.”

“I can’t sleep,” Jenny said, her chin coming up and her mouth setting. “I want to go out.”

Lizzie turned Jenny away, intending to march her smartly upstairs. Instead she fastened up the back of Jenny’s dress. She smoothed her own hair with one hand. “Get your coat. I won’t have you catching a chill. Matron has enough to do without nursing you.”

She fetched her own coat, too. Complying with Jenny’s wishes made no sense, but this seemed to be exactly the part
that appealed to Lizzie. You don’t have to be the same person your whole life, she told herself. She was excited to see that she could be impulsive, unpredictable. They don’t expect that from me, she thought. She would show them. She had no idea at all who they were.

n
othing could have been more familiar than the walk in and out of the Brown Ark, but Lizzie had seldom done it at night. She was disoriented, exhilarated by the darkness and her own strange behavior. Everything common, the garbage and ash barrels, the cellar door, the dunes, was transformed into something she’d never seen before. She could be underwater, or in another century.

It was a clear, dry winter night. No streetlights lit this part of the city yet, and the moon had receded higher and smaller and dimmer in the sky. There were a preposterous number of stars. Who could ever need so many? Lizzie raised her chin to look at them all, strung like beads along the telegraph wires, scattered in handfuls across the netted void.

The cold air made a mist of her breath. A scratchy wind came over the dunes and into the sleeves of her coat. The orange cat was lurking by the door. It took off into the scrub, then turned to watch them. “You’re a bad one,” she told it, softly, but she knew it heard. Lizzie could see the unearthly jewels of its eyes.

What now? It was too late to get the buggy. Jenny was too small to walk more than a few blocks. Lizzie had gotten this far on momentum, but now she had to invent something. Now she had to have a plan.

“Where are we going?” Jenny asked.

“Where would you like to go?”

“The ducks.”

Lizzie had no idea where that might be, but since they weren’t going there, it hardly mattered. “The ducks are asleep.”

“Wake them,” suggested Jenny.

There was really only one destination that Lizzie could think of within walking distance. She took Jenny’s hand and started off. She wasn’t sure exactly how late it was. There were still lights far away in the city, but no one else seemed to be abroad.

The streets were unpaved and full of obstacles, stones and dips and horse droppings. Lizzie was not used to walking with a child. People credited her with maternal instincts simply because she volunteered at the Brown Ark, but as treasurer, she worked solely with adults and accounts. She was actually quite awkward around the young wards. Jenny’s steps were so small. She labored on the uphill slope to Sutter Street. Lizzie recalculated how long the few blocks would take, and then leaned over and hoisted Jenny.
“You’re a bigger girl than I thought,” she said, trying to keep the disapproval out of her voice. She could smell Jenny’s hair, a stale-molasses smell, not entirely pleasant. If she were mine, Lizzie thought, I would keep her as clean as a kitten.