Through the Deep Waters (3 page)

“Well, I can’t have her fillin’ a room meant for moneymakin’.” Miss Flo glared at Dinah. “This is a business, not a charity or a poor farm. If she can’t earn, she can’t stay.”

No poor farm would take in a soiled dove. No charity house would extend a kind hand to someone who’d sold herself to men. Dinah’s heart beat fast and hard. Panic made her dizzy. The girls of the Yellow Parrot were trapped here like birds in a cage. She hung her head, helplessness sweeping over her with the force of floodwaters breaking through a dam.

“But maybe …”

Dinah jerked her gaze at Miss Flo. The woman was smiling again. Sweetly. Invitingly. Whatever idea she had to keep Tori from being tossed onto the street, Dinah would listen.

“I could let your mama stay here through her last days. It would be hard on her, wouldn’t it, to be sent off somewhere to die all alone? So I could put a bed for her in the attic, let her live out her final days under the roof where she’s been sheltered an’ fed all these years.”

Hope ignited in Dinah’s chest.

“I could do that if you’ll give me, say, twenty-five dollars.”

The hope fizzled and died.

“See, I figure with her bein’ sick, she won’t eat much. Accordin’ to the doctor, she ain’t gonna last even another three months, so I figure twenty-five dollars’ll cover the rest of her life.”

Dinah sagged in resignation. “I don’t have twenty-five dollars.”

The woman’s gaze narrowed, her smile changing to a knowing smirk. “You could earn it.”

Oh, no …

Miss Flo leaned forward, bringing her rouge-brightened face close to Dinah’s. “I know a man—a rich businessman who doesn’t visit the brothels. He has very specific … wants. And he pays well.”

No, no, no …

“For settin’ it up with him an’ providing a room, I’d need to take my standard half. But your share would be fifty dollars, Dinah.” Miss Flo’s tone became wheedling. “Twenty-five to give for your ma’s keep, an’ twenty-five to use for yourself any way you please. A new dress—two or three, even. Some new shoes an’ stockings an’ hair ribbons. All kinds of things. Fifty dollars is more than most people earn in a whole month, an’ you could make it just like that.” She snapped her fingers and Dinah jumped. Miss Flo reached across the short distance between the chairs and took Dinah’s hand. Her cold fingers squeezed, squeezed, squeezed. “I’ll get it arranged. Yes?”

Dinah’s ears rang. One line from the advertisement she’d memorized screamed through her mind:
“… of good moral character.”
She’d given up on so many dreams—having a father, a mother, a home. Could she let her dream of becoming one of Harvey’s girls die, too?

She yanked her hand from the woman’s grip and leaped to her feet. “I’ll find another way to take care of Tori!” She turned and raced for the stairs.

Miss Flo’s mocking voice trailed after her. “No pay, no stay—for either of you. Remember that.”

Every day during the month of June, Dinah set out in search of a job. She spoke to shop owners, café owners, clinic directors, and business office receptionists. She offered to mop floors, to scour pots, to wash linens or scrub aprons, to deliver messages—no job was too menial. And in every case when she answered the simple question, “Where do you live?” she was sent away with a firmly stated, “We don’t need your kind around here.”

After weeks of fruitless searching, she came to a grim realization. Her eighth-grade certificate, so slowly and painfully won, didn’t matter. Her willingness to work hard at whatever task she was given didn’t matter. By association, Dinah was tainted—trapped in the same cage that held her mother captive. She’d never find a decent job. Not in this city. And to get out of the city would take money.

With the summer sun waiting until late to creep over the horizon, the working hours at the Yellow Parrot moved forward. The customers preferred to visit under the cover of darkness. Dinah had always found it ironic that men who so eagerly and unashamedly forked over their dollars to Miss Flo didn’t want to be seen coming or going. As summer descended, the most booming business took place between ten and midnight, with a few stragglers sticking around until two or three in the morning until Miss Flo finally gave them the boot.

On the last day of June, Dinah managed to stay awake until the very last man clomped off the porch, straddled his horse, and moseyed toward home. She waited until the girls had eaten their supper and returned to their rooms. She waited a little longer, until all murmuring and bedspring squeaking had hushed. Then she crept down the narrow enclosed stairway from the attic to the second floor and entered her mother’s room.

Scant moonlight filtered through a slit in the heavy curtains and fell like a pale thread across Tori’s sleeping face. For a moment Dinah hesitated. Despite her illness, Tori had worked tonight. She had to or Miss Flo would send her away. Her sagging skin and slack mouth proved her exhaustion. Maybe Dinah shouldn’t disturb her. But by morning the others would be awake and would possibly overhear. And Dinah needed this conversation to remain private.

Drawing in a breath of fortification, she leaned forward and shook Tori’s shoulder. “Tori? Tori, wake up.”

Tori snuffled and slapped at Dinah’s hand.

Dinah shook her again, more forcefully this time.

Slowly Tori’s eyelids rose. Her bleary gaze settled on Dinah’s face, and she scowled. “What’re you doin’, pesterin’ me? Get outta here. Lemme sleep.” She started to roll over.

Dinah caught her mother’s arm, holding her in place. “You can sleep in a minute. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

With a grunt, Tori wrenched her arm free. “What’s so blamed important it can’t wait until morning?”

After easing onto the edge of the bed, Dinah clutched her hands together and whispered, “You.” She swallowed. “I know you’re sick, Ma.”

Tori’s face pinched into a horrible grimace. “I told her not to say nothin’ to you. An’ don’t call me Ma.”

“I can call you Ma now. Nobody’s around to hear. I needed to know about you being sick. You should’ve told me.” Even as she chided her mother, Dinah realized the pointlessness. She and Tori had never talked—not the way she imagined mothers and daughters were supposed to talk, sharing secrets and laughs and concerns. Mothers and daughters were supposed to look out for each other. They might have failed in every other sense, but maybe they could do at least one thing right. “Miss Flo says if you can’t work, you can’t stay here anymore.”

“Stingy old biddy.” Bitterness tinged Tori’s weak voice. “All these years I stayed, lettin’ her get rich off me, an’ now she’s ready to put me out like some dried-up milk cow. She don’t know the meaning of loyalty.”

“I want to help you.”

A soft snort left Tori’s throat. “You got a cure up your sleeve?”

Dinah hung her head. “I can’t make you well. But I … I want to take care of you. I can’t let Miss Flo send you away. Not when there’s a way to let you stay here.”

A glimmer of hope appeared in Tori’s purple-smudged eyes. “How?”

Why couldn’t life be like the stories in the fairy-tales book Rueben had given her one year for Christmas, where a knight rode to the castle and rescued the distressed maiden from the dungeon? No knight would help her or her ma. Dinah had to depend on herself. “If I give Miss Flo some money, she’ll let you stay. Until you …” She couldn’t make herself say the word
die
.

“Where are you gettin’ money?”

Dinah forced a glib shrug. “I found a way.”

For long seconds, Tori stared at her through mere slits. “I wanted to get rid of you when I found out you were comin’. There’re ways, you know.”

Chills rolled through Dinah, as if her blood had turned to ice water.

“But I’d already done so much wrong, an’ doin’ away with you wouldn’t fix none of it. So I went ahead an’ brung you into the world. Brung you into
this … this
den of iniquity
. An’ over an’ over I’ve wished I’d done different way back then. Wished I’d not brought you here at all.”

Realization bloomed. Tori didn’t regret Dinah’s birth because she hated her, but because she hated the life into which she’d been born. Which meant her ma cared. Cared about
her
. The ice in her veins turned liquid and warm. Tears filled her eyes, and they pooled in Tori’s eyes as well.

Tori continued brokenly. “Now here you are, a woman grown, offerin’ to take care of me when I never in all your life did nothin’ to take care of you.” One tear rolled down her sunken cheek. “I don’t deserve any kindness, Dinah. I don’t deserve bein’ cared for.”

The rejections she’d faced over the past days, the past months, the past years swirled up like a giant whirlpool and threatened to topple Dinah from the edge of the bed. Even if she was just the illegitimate child of a prostitute, she’d deserved to be treated better. And even if Tori had sold her body to men to make a living, she didn’t deserve to die alone on the streets. Why couldn’t those high-and-mighty people in town turn up their noses at the men who paid the dollars instead of saving all their disgust for the women who pocketed the coins? Things sure were backward in the world.

She smoothed the tousled, dry strands of hair on her mother’s head. “You deserve to be cared for, Ma, an’ I’ll see to it you are. You’ll die warm in a bed instead of cold on a street.”

Dinah returned to her room so her mother could sleep. She dropped into her tiny bed, resigned but also resolute. Tori would enjoy one small good in a whole host of bads. And Miss Flo said Dinah could use the money to buy anything she wanted. She’d use her twenty-five dollars to buy a train ticket and take herself to Mr. Harvey. So far away from Chicago nobody’d know where she’d been or what she’d done to earn her freedom. She’d be one of Harvey’s girls, and nobody would look down his or her nose at Dinah ever again.

Dinah

Dinah perched on the end of the hotel room bed, where Miss Flo had directed her to sit. The woman, her face crunched in concentration, arranged Dinah’s skirt just so and finger-combed her hair into a fluffy veil that tumbled across her shoulders. Then she stepped back, gave her a frowning examination, and finally nodded. “You’ll do.” She aimed her finger at Dinah’s nose. “Stay right there so he’ll see you when he comes in the door. He’ll be here soon.”

Dinah licked her dry lips. “What should I say to him?”

Miss Flo laughed. “He ain’t comin’ for conversation, Dinah.”

Embarrassment heated her face. She hunkered low.

Hard fingers gripped her chin and yanked her upright. “Don’t pull into a burrow like a scared rabbit.”

Miss Flo’s makeup caked in the lines of her mouth and eyes, drawing attention to every wrinkle. Dinah was glad she hadn’t been told to paint her face. Up close, it looked terrible. The woman pinched Dinah’s chin hard, as if she’d read Dinah’s thoughts, before releasing her and moving toward the door to the adjoining room. “Just sit there, like I told you, and wait.” She glanced back, her face impassive. “There’s no reason to be scared. It’s nothing, really, for the female. He’ll do it all. You just do what he says, an’ everything’ll be fine.” She swept through the doorway and clicked the door closed behind her.

And Dinah was alone. The gentleman coming was too fine to make use of one of the rooms at the Yellow Parrot so he’d rented a hotel room uptown. She’d never imagined being in anything so luxurious. A large gilt mirror on the wall reflected ceiling-to-floor damask draperies and an enormous four-poster
brass bed with a lacy canopy. The thick mattress wore a silk cover of deepest green—dark as fir needles. Dinah cringed, imagining how she must look in the midst of such beauty. Like a thistle in a rose garden.

She folded her hands on the lap of her dress—her familiar blue-flowered calico—and crossed her bare feet. She’d wondered if she would have to wear one of the bawdy costumes the other girls wore for greeting the men, but Miss Flo said her everyday dress was best for this man. Dinah had been relieved. She felt like herself in this simple frock, even if it was faded and too tight in some places. Dressed like this, she didn’t feel like a harlot. But she supposed even if she didn’t dress like one, she was one. Miss Flo had waved the money—a fanned display of crisp bills—in excitement when the appointment was set. She hadn’t given Dinah her half yet. She’d get it later. Afterward.