Whiter Than Snow (19 page)

Max nodded.

“They wouldn’t let me.”

“Then we won’t ask them. We’ll marry on our own. Now. Tonight, if you like. Have no fear of me. I want to be your husband.” Max grabbed her arms and pulled her to him and kissed her hard. “You know you drive me crazy.”

“You’re not joking?”

“Esther, look at me. I am serious. Don’t you want to be my wife?”

“I do, Max. Oh, I do. God alone knows how much.” She looked up at the window of the apartment, which was dark, and turned her back on it, and hand in hand, she and Max Dora hurried away.

They were married, but there was no one, not even Rachel, to stand up with them, and Esther never went back to her parents’ tenement. They disowned her. Rachel tried to intervene, telling them that Esther cried over the estrangement, missed them, missed Jakob. But her father retorted, “She brought shame on us. We should be pitied, not her. Let none call her unfortunate.” Emma was more forgiving, but she would not go against her husband.

And so Esther began her new life, and despite her parents’ decision to have nothing to do with her, she began it in great happiness, because she and Max danced in the show every night and then went home to a little apartment, where Esther kept house. She did not for one minute regret her impulsive marriage. When the theater closed, the two found another job together, although it did not pay as much. As it turned out, there were already too many dancing couples, some better than the Dancing Doras. So while they got work, they did not become stars. Sometimes they worked together, other times separately. It went on like that for a year or more, with Esther doing dressmaking on the side to earn a little extra money. She was disappointed that they did not have success right away, but she was cheerful and hopeful and never doubted that at least Max would find stardom. It would take time, but one day they would have the good life.

After a while, Max announced they should go to Chicago. There were great opportunities in Chicago and not so much competition. So they rode the train to Chicago and made the rounds of the theaters, and because they were young and attractive and fresh faces, they were employed, and they thought this was their great opportunity. They would become successful in Chicago and then return to New York.

But after a time, Chicago was a bust, and so was Kansas City, and finally “The Dancing Doras, Straight from New York’s Broadway” landed in Denver. They made the rounds of Curtis Street, Denver’s Great White Way of vaudeville theaters and movie palaces, so called because of the many lights. Curtis Street was not like Broadway, but Esther thought that diamonds could not be prettier than the electric lights on the theaters, and she believed that she and Max would at last reach stardom in that place.

“They are greenhorns here. They know nothing about theater. A dancing bear could get a job in Denver,” Max told her. But in fact, bears were a greater attraction than dancers straight from New York’s Broadway, and they discovered the jobs were even more difficult to find than before. Max worked now and then as a dancer, but more often, he found other employment—shoveling snow and working in a stable. There were even fewer jobs of any kind for women, because Denver had no manufacturing, so Esther turned to dressmaking again and convinced Max to buy a sewing machine.

Their story and where it had led was not so unusual. Unable to find the work he wanted, Max became morose. He did not blame Esther, not to her face at any rate, but she began to believe that he was sorry he had left New York, maybe sorry he had married her. Sometimes he went out at night and did not come home until morning and would not tell her where he had been. And while she was naturally cheerful, Esther, cut off from her family, with no friends, began to feel uneasy. Eventually, she began to wonder if Max would leave her.

One afternoon, Max burst into their room with the news that there was a great part available—the lead—in a new show on Curtis Street, and he was being considered. He grabbed Esther and danced with her around the room. Her good spirits were restored. Such happiness she had not known since they arrived in Denver. Each day after that, Max was giddy with the belief he would be chosen for the part. He brought Esther presents—a hair ribbon, a sack of chocolate candy. He even brought home the producer to meet her, in hopes there might be a part for Esther.

A few days later, the producer stopped by alone. Esther invited him in, offered tea, because the couple did not keep wine in the room. The man asked where she had danced before, what steps she knew, and she insisted she could learn anything. After he left, she thought it odd that he had not asked after Max, and she decided not to tell her husband about the visit. And then the man came a second time, a bottle of wine in his hand. She opened it and poured him a glass but did not take one herself.

He asked if she would wear a skimpy costume in the show, something that was short and cut low in front. Maybe she could try it on for him. Esther, confused, said she would have to ask her husband, and then she inquired if Max had been offered the part. “We’ll see,” the man said, and moved over beside her and patted her hand. Esther was uncomfortable then and stood up, walking back and forth across the room.

“Don’t be nervous,” the man said. “This is how it’s done; you know that. I give your husband a job. You show me you’re grateful.”

Esther told him he should leave, and he laughed at her and went out. She forgot about the bottle, and Max saw it when he returned and asked where it had come from. So Esther told him

“I think he wanted me to…you know.”

She thought Max would be furious, but instead he shrugged and said, “That’s the way of it. The job, it’s just what I need.”

“The way of it! For you to get hired in this show, you advise me to disgrace myself with the man? Adultery it is, a sin.”

“Isn’t it also a sin to go hungry, to shovel horse droppings in a stable when I could be dancing? God intended me to be a dancer.”

“Don’t talk rubbish.”

“Rubbish, is it? This man, it’s only a little thing. It’s not adultery if your husband says it’s all right.”

“You don’t mean that!”

“You’d rather your husband was a mutt?” Max walked out on her that night. Later, the man came back—Esther knew in her heart that Max had sent him to her—and she did what he wanted. Afterward, she scrubbed with soap and water and then vinegar to rid herself of his stink. When Max returned, he presented her with a tiny bouquet of violets and a pot of rouge, and because her husband was so grateful and believed that his future was secured, she did not tell him how cheap she felt. She put the incident behind her and believed in the future.

The show did not open, however, leaving Max with his odd jobs, and Esther thought with irony that she had sinned for nothing. But the episode introduced her to a new way of life, because after that, Max began bringing men to the room, and when Esther protested, he cuffed her, once blackened her eye. He said being with the men was only for a time, until something broke for him. But he no longer looked for work in the theaters, and he began hanging out in the saloons instead, and it wasn’t long before Esther supported both of them with her dressmaking and the encounters with men. She did not know how much Max charged them, because he found the men and brought them to the room and waited outside in case there was trouble.

To her surprise, Esther found that with time, she did not resent the men so much. That work, if one could call it that, was not so difficult—easier than bending over a sewing machine—and the men were nice. Some came back and brought her little presents, such as perfume and jewelry, both cheap. A few of the men talked to her when it was over, and she realized then that not all of them came to her only for the sex. Some just wanted to be with a woman. So she fixed them tea or gave them wine, and when she had it, cake, just the way her parents entertained their guests.

And then one day, a man told her, “I like you ever so much better than Evelyn. I suppose everyone does. That’s why he charges more for you.”

The man expected her to know who Evelyn was, so Esther pretended and said, “Evelyn, what’s so bad about her?”

“You don’t mind, then?”

“Why should I?”

“Oh, I’d think you’d be mad, him being your husband and her just being another whore. She’s pretty enough, but with her, it’s hurry, hurry, and get out. ‘Minutes is money,’ she says. Never a word to spare or a cup of water to drink.”

Esther did not hear any more of what the man said, and after he left, she sat in the chair brooding. She was there when Max came in, and he frowned. “What ails you? Are you sick?”

Esther looked up and stared at Max for a long time. “You eat my heart out.”

He frowned and came close to her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean Evelyn.”

Max was startled and went to the window, where he stood looking out, his back to her. “What do you know about Evelyn?”

“I know everything. Do you think I am so stupid? You have two whores. Maybe more.”

“Well, what of it?”

“You say that to me, your wife?”

“Are you?” He snickered as he turned around to face Esther.

“Of course I am. I have the paper.”

“So does the other one, the woman I married before you. She lives in Baltimore now. I never got a divorce. If you’re not stupid, you should have known.”

Esther thought of many things to say then, but in her heart, she knew Max spoke the truth, and as she was not used to arguing, she saw no reason to continue the conversation. She knew, too, that what she did with the men was not just a temporary thing to help Max. She was a whore, and her bigamist husband was a pimp. Oh yes, they both knew those names now. But she knew something that Max did not—that she was pregnant. The child was his. She was sure of that, because she had been pregnant when he brought the first man to her. But she would not tell Max. She did not want such a man to be the father of her child. She would not even give the child his name. Instead, she ordered him to leave.

“Is it such a bad life?” he asked. “You don’t have to go out on the street. I protect you. You have it better than most. What does it matter if there are others?”

“I will manage,” she said. “I have my sewing machine.” But in fact, hooking was more lucrative, and the men came back to her, and so she earned her living as she had before, keeping the money now instead of giving it to Max. She worked almost until the baby was born, because there were men who sought out hookers in advanced pregnancy.

After Sophie came, Esther sent a letter to her parents, asking if they had forgiven her and would let her return. “I write this letter with my heart’s blood,” she told them, explaining that Max was gone and that she had a baby girl. “I am an
agunah,
the most dreaded word in the Yiddish language, a deserted wife.” But she never heard from them, and after a time, she was almost glad, because she liked the West and its sunshine and fresh air, so different from what she had known as a girl. And she did not want to bring up Sophie in a tenement.

Esther turned again to dressmaking, but she did not have enough clients to support herself, nor enough money to wait until she built up her business, so she had no choice but to leave the baby in the care of a woman and go to work in a house on Market Street. Then the war came, and the police closed down the brothels, scattering the girls, and she had to set up in a room across the hall from Martha, the confidence woman. The two became friends, Martha often caring for Sophie, whom she treated as her own, when Esther was busy. So it seemed a natural thing, the three of them moving to Swandyke, where Esther, now Essie Snowball, got a job at the Pines, and Martha went to housekeeping with Sophie. In Swandyke, Essie Snowball decided that life as a hooker was not so bad, not so bad at all.

Essie spent the early afternoon at her sewing machine, making a white dress for Sophie. The dress was a bit of foolishness, and Essie had no idea where the girl would wear it. Perhaps to church, because Martha talked about sending Sophie to Sunday school. Essie said nothing about it. She was conflicted. She herself was not religious, but she thought it might be a sin to raise a child of Jewish parents as a Christian. She had not told Martha that, because, like the women at the Pines, Martha did not know Essie’s religion. Perhaps it would do no harm if the girl went to the Protestant church. Maybe it was better that Sophie have some religion, and there was no Jewish congregation in Swandyke.

Essie finished the dress and held it up against the window, thinking the little garment was as white and pure as the snow outside. She hid the dress in her trunk, because she did not want anyone to come across it and ask questions. Then she went into the kitchen, where the other girls were eating eggs and drinking coffee.

In a few minutes, the school bell rang, and one of the girls sighed, because soon the men would start to arrive. “Damn bell,” she said.

“Damn brats,” another said. The boys from school sometimes veered off the trail and approached the whorehouse, throwing snowballs or running sticks across the wooden fence.

“Watch what you say. Ain’t long before some of them boys’ll come here as customers.”

“And some of the girls will be asking for jobs.”

Essie turned and stared at the hookers who’d said that, thinking again it was time to take Sophie away from Swandyke. She knew that some of her customers had children who went to school with Sophie. Minder Evans was one, that strange old man who liked to sit in her room and talk to her. Once, he’d asked if he could call her Kate, and she hadn’t minded. And there was the black man she’d seen staring at the hookhouse. He had a daughter. Of course, he’d never come to the door, perhaps because he knew Miss Fanny didn’t allow Negroes. Essie wouldn’t have cared, because he was a nice man who always touched his cap when he passed her, even in the middle of town, where most men ignored the hookers.

She turned again and stared through the filmy curtain that hung in the window. Sometimes Essie could make out Sophie as the girl trudged along the trail. She could see better if she pushed aside the curtain, but Sophie might look up and recognize her from the Sunday visits, and that would not do. A group of children, the little ones, maybe ten of them, appeared in the distance, pushing their way through the snowdrifts ahead of the others, and Essie thought Sophie might be one of them. She watched as they passed the turnoff to the hookhouse and started across the road below the Fourth of July Mine. Essie watched the dark little figures against that vast field of white that was gleaming like quartz in all its beautifulness.