Tabitha Read online

  “I—” The horror was just beginning to dawn on me. “Work fer ya?”

  “Why, yes. In addition to the store below us, I also own the saloon next door. News of your arrival has already made quite a stir. The men are looking forward . . . to getting to know you better.”

  As though I would blithely accept and accommodate her instructions, she waved her hand and continued. “Working hours are six in the evening until one in the morning. You may sleep until ten each morning if you like. I prefer my girls well rested and in good spirits.

  “However, you must be present at the table for the morning meal at 10:30. After we eat together, I will assign chores. If you complete your chores in a satisfactory manner, you may use the time remaining for your own pursuits—but you may not, ever, leave this building without permission. Then, promptly at three in the afternoon, you will wash, fix your hair, and tend to your clothes.”

  She examined her hands. “Yes, about the clothes. Amber is making over a dress for you right now. I want it understood that you will receive this dress in good condition and you will keep it in good condition. Every afternoon at 4:30 we will meet again for dinner. If you are not properly turned out, you will leave the table and repair whatever part of your toilet is lacking.”

  She looked hard at me. “I do not save back food for girls who are late or unprepared, and we do not eat again until the following morning, so have a care. Take your clothing and appearance seriously.”

  “I ain’t doin’ any of thet,” I spat at her. “I’m a-leavin’ this god-fersaken place. T’day.”

  Opal smiled her amused smile. “Let me introduce you to Big Jim, Tabitha.”

  She crooked her finger at the monster near her elbow. With more speed than I could believe, he lumbered toward me. I bolted for the door but he cut me off and spun me around. His hands grasped my neck, and he lifted me from the floor.

  No matter how hard I hit him or raked him with my fingernails, Big Jim did not loosen his hold around my neck. He held me straight out in front of himself, his arms fully extended so I could scarcely reach his face.

  Oh, I bloodied his cheeks and his eyes in those first seconds, indeed I did—but it seemed to make no impression upon him. He simply stared at me with those little piggy eyes and squeezed. He squeezed hard enough that soon I could not breathe, could not swallow. I felt the enormous strength in his thick fingers and I knew he could snap my neck with little effort—but he was not trying to kill me outright.

  He squeezed until I floundered and twitched, my feet dangling above the floor, until I had no air left. Until I hung limp and yielding in his hands. Until the room dimmed and sparks of light were all I could see. Until I was certain I would die.

  I think Opal murmured something. I cannot really remember. Big Jim dropped me to the floor and I lay there, helpless and motionless except for the bit of air seeping back into my lungs.

  Opal bent over me. “That had to have been unpleasant, Tabitha, and I am certain you would not like to repeat this experience. So have a care: I do not tolerate insubordination or a poor attitude in any of my girls. Do you understand?”

  Big Jim loomed behind Opal. He twined his hands together behind her shoulder where I could see them. A silent threat.

  “Do you understand, Tabitha?” Opal asked again.

  I gritted my teeth and nodded.

  ~~~

  “This place is played out,” Opal announced at breakfast two months later. “I invested my working capital here because I believed it would grow, that the miners would put down roots. Sadly, I was mistaken.

  “We will be moving to Silver City next week. I do not plan to stay there long; I’ve set my sights on returning to Kansas City, my home town, as our permanent destination. When we have earned enough in our next town, we shall start east.”

  I barely listened. An insistent vow played in my head: I will kill Cray Bishoff if ever I find him. It was, in fact, all I thought of, all that kept me moving through each day . . . and each night.

  “Pass the butter, Red.”

  I ignored “Amber,” as she was called. I knew it was not her real name. All of Opal’s girls were renamed for colors or colored stones. Opal tried calling me “Ruby” to fit into her naming scheme, but the men all asked for “Red,” so she relinquished Ruby and called me Red.

  I despised the moniker and I despised her for shackling me with it. I particularly hated hearing the men talk about me and ask for me using that despised name.

  “Hey, Red. Pass the butter?”

  When I still did not respond to Amber’s request, her elbow nudged me in the ribs.

  My hand snaked out of its own volition. The resounding crack of my palm on Amber’s face echoed through the kitchen. I do not know why I did it. I knew I would be punished, but I could not restrain the ever-simmering rage in my breast.

  “Red!” Opal was on me in a trice. She may have been an older woman, but she was still strong, and she was ruthless. Opal grabbed me by my hair and yanked me backward. My chair toppled to the floor with me in it. Opal sat on my chest and held me down.

  “Get Big Jim in here,” she hissed.

  Amber ran to do Opal’s bidding. The other women, three of them, eyed each other uneasily. I had been nothing but a vexation to Opal since the day she had told me how Cray had “sold” me to her—and this would not be the first punishment Opal ordered Big Jim to dish out.

  Big Jim shambled into the room with Amber peering from behind his bulk. “Yesh, Missh Opal?”

  “Take Red upstairs and discipline her, Big Jim. This time, I do not care how marked up she is—just not her face.”

  I swore and struggled violently under Opal’s knees. I wanted to run, but Big Jim grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet. He lifted me so that my toes were unable to touch the floor. I managed to rake the nails of my free hand across his face one time before he shook me so hard that my teeth rattled.

  Opal smoothed her skirt. “I want this girl compliant, Big Jim. If she will not bend to my bidding, I will get rid of her.”

  She hissed in my direction. “You are more trouble than you are worth, Red, but let me tell you something. You think life with me is bad? Here you receive enough to eat and are treated well enough as long as you are productive and obedient, but know this: I could sell you today to any of six men in Fullman and not lose a minute of sleep over it.”

  She sat, shook out her napkin, and placed it across her lap with that air of sophistication she had perfected.

  “Take her out of here, Big Jim.”

  The man swung me over his shoulder like so many pounds of potatoes in a sack and hauled me, shrieking and cursing, up the stairs.

  I screamed with rage until I screamed in pain.

  ~~~

  For a time, I gave Opal nothing to complain about. Her threat to sell me to one of the disgusting men of Fullman’s tent city had frightened me more than she knew.

  We moved to Silver City and, after four months there, Opal hired two men and their mule-pulled wagons to cart all of us and our things to Santa Fe. When we had gone far enough east to have skirted the nearby mountain range, we turned north and followed, roughly, the muddy river our drivers called the Rio Grande. The trip took three weeks and was hard on all of us, body, mind, and temper.

  Most of the journey it was easier to walk than to ride in the wagons. Our bones were stiff and bruised from the wagon’s continual jolting. As I walked, I stared out onto the desert with its distant craggy mountains, red-rock bluffs, dangerous crevasses, and endless vistas. I was again terrified of being abandoned, left alone in the wasteland—and for good reason: The men Opal hired were as disreputable and untrustworthy as one might imagine.

  Opal, to her credit, was no fool. She used both a carrot and a stick to keep the drivers in line—the carrot being one of us girls each night, the stick being Big Jim. Oh, the drivers were right to be as afraid of Big Jim as we girls were: At a word from Opal, he would have killed the drivers and never batted an eye.
r />   In that respect, we girls were grateful for Big Jim’s protection. Without him we feared the two drivers would have killed Opal—and taken us. I harbored no illusions that we would have survived long in their “care.”

  After the long, difficult trek, we arrived in Santa Fe. It was a strange town, bustling with three diverse populations, Indian, Spanish/Mexican, and white American.

  Opal regarded the straggling adobe buildings and narrow, dirty streets with distaste. We all wrinkled our noses over the odors of meats cooking with unfamiliar spices. Opal hurried us into a boarding house where we bathed after so many days travel and washed our clothes.

  We were exhausted, but Opal was up and about early in the morning. She arranged for the owner of the boarding house to pack enough food to feed us for the day. Then she hurried us again, this time to the train depot. We boarded the train, and she had Big Jim guard us while she dealt with the two drivers. Sullen-faced, they took her money, climbed aboard their wagons, and drove away.

  After the jarring passage from Silver City to Santa Fe by wagon or foot, the train was a delight. Oh, the railcars were still filthy and hot, but riding by train was far easier than walking or riding in a wagon. And faster. We arrived in Kansas City in three days’ time. This leg of our journey ended in the bustle and stench of Kansas City’s stock yards.

  To Opal, however, Kansas City represented opportunity. Once we were away from the trains and cattle, we found ourselves in a much more gentrified town. Opal again installed us in a boarding house and left Big Jim in the hall outside of our rooms.

  I thought of climbing out a window and running away, but we were on the second floor and the ground sloped steeply away from the house. It would have been a dangerous drop. I was too scared of what the fall to the ground might do to me—and the other girls watched me closely anyway. They would not allow me to do anything that would put them in jeopardy without alerting Big Jim.

  Apparently Opal was a good business woman: She had saved much of the money she made from the women and alcohol she served in Fullman and Silver City. Within a week of arriving in Kansas City, she located and purchased a house. We girls worked hard under her direction to ready the house and, within a second week, we were set up for business again.

  Opal laid great store by manners, elegance, and sophistication. She invested money in the house’s furnishings and the girls’ clothing.

  She drilled us relentlessly in conversation and diction. She strove extra hard to eliminate my crude, illiterate, west Texas dialect, slapping or pinching me if I lapsed into countrified speech.

  She also trained us in “charm,” but what I am referring to is the art of wit and guile—all aimed at flattering our customers and encouraging them to spend more money.

  At every turn, Opal sought to raise the standards of her house and so attract a wealthier clientele—men to whom money presented no impediment.

  Opal graced her parlor with the best looking and best “turned out” of her girls, those who could converse in an intelligent, clever manner. She was always on the lookout for new girls who, with a little training, would be an asset to her house.

  At the same time, Opal could not abide a girl who, after many lessons, continued to use incorrect grammar and whose speech or accent remained coarse. Opal could not ask top dollar for those women, so any woman who could not—or would not—be improved, she sold off to cheaper, less discriminating brothels.

  We heard whispers about the “working conditions” in those places, rumors about the squalid cribs and the customers who were allowed to mistreat the girls.

  I was not obtuse: I watched Opal sell off girls who did not comply with her standards, and I did not want to be one of them. I also had no desire for Big Jim to repeat the last beating he’d given me back in Arizona.

  So I learned what Opal demanded of me and I performed as she required. In fact, because of my flaming hair, I became one of Opal’s “first” girls, the ones who were in demand, the girls men reserved ahead of time and paid a premium to do so.

  How did I survive? How did I bear the horror of that first year? Bereft of hope, I shut my feelings away. I denied the cries of my heart until I was numb. It was not long before I learned how liquor, too, had the power to temporarily deaden my pain.

  You see, every drink a man bought for me (watered down, of course) was money in Opal’s pocket. You can imagine then, how she encouraged her girls to drink. Besides, Opal knew that a drink-addicted prostitute was easier to control. Like the other girls, I gave in to alcohol. I was able to face each evening by looking forward to the drinks with which eager men plied me.

  I stayed out of trouble for a while, but the self-preserving restraint I exercised over my unruly temper started to shred, to unravel. One morning I awoke and realized that my birthday had passed. I was now fifteen years old—and had been for an entire month.

  The fact that I’d forgotten my own birthday, that no one else had remembered it, that no one cared that my birthday had passed unnoticed—or ever would care—struck deep into my heart. I peered ahead into my future and all I could see was another fifteen years, perhaps twenty, of the same corrupting life.

  Soon after we arrived in Kansas City, a new girl, a lovely, delicate brunette with milky white skin, joined the house. Her real name was Pauline, but Opal, in keeping with her theme, bestowed the illustrative name of Pearl upon her.

  Pearl was, perhaps, nearer the age of thirty than twenty. She had been raised as a gentlewoman, a spinster who had never been required to work. Apparently, Pearl had fallen upon hard times and had no family to help her. Opal had glimpsed Pearl’s manners and beauty and had swooped in to “rescue” her.

  From her first day in Opal’s house, I knew Pearl would not survive long. She’d been beaten into compliance like the rest of us, but she had no inner reserves upon which to draw. The crushing blow of being forced into prostitution had broken her spirit, and she succumbed to the snare of alcohol almost immediately.

  I do not know how she managed it, but within three months of joining Opal’s house, Pearl was drunk nearly all the time. She no longer cared for her clothes as Opal demanded. Her face was chronically swollen, her eyes bleary from drink, her pearly white skin a sallow, sickly yellow.

  The rest of us edged away from her, knowing one morning she would be missing, sold away. The morning I awoke and realized that I had missed my own birthday, Pearl was gone.

  That was the morning I stopped drinking. That was the morning my temper’s tamped-down embers again glowed hot deep in my breast. It was not long before my smoldering anger showed itself.

  As I related earlier, I despised the name Opal had foisted upon me and the many “gentlemen” who asked specifically for “Red.” Out of my anger, I invented many small ways to rebel against those men. My favorite game was to (carefully, of course) denigrate those who denigrated me.

  During the clever banter of the parlor or bedroom, I delivered subtle jabs to the men who used me. I enjoyed watching my barbs strike their mark, all while maintaining an innocent or come-hither expression.

  Some customers were not quick or astute enough to see through my sweet, guileless façade; others smarted under my verbal gibes. If they reddened or grew cross, I soothed them with smiling platitudes—but it was a dangerous game I played, baiting these men.

  And then, of course, I made a mistake: I leveled my stinging wit at the wrong man.

  He was small in stature and carried a chip on his shoulder because of it. He was a mean, vindictive little man, but he was intelligent.

  He grasped my veiled insult to his size. The scene he caused in Opal’s parlor—and my subsequent punishment—are still etched on my mind, but I do not care to rehash the details.

  Suffice it to say that it was a very bad night for me.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 4

  Early the next morning, while the other girls still slept, Opal woke me. She bid me to rise and pointed at what I was to wear—my old dress, the one I had b
een wearing when I came to her.

  “Come down to the parlor when you are presentable,” was all she said.

  When I stepped into the parlor, Big Jim stood ready at Opal’s elbow.

  A large, vulgar-looking woman, all the more slovenly in appearance for her soiled skirt and shirtwaist, looked me up and down. “Aye. She’ll do.” She latched on to my arm with a hand like a manacle.

  I clawed at the hand—until Big Jim flexed his fingers.

  “What are you doing?” I stared at Opal. I was bruised and in a great deal of pain from the beating I’d received the night before. But I was still defiant.

  “Meet Ethyl Moyer,” Opal muttered through thinned lips. “I have loaned you to her for a time—time enough, I hope, for you to learn gratitude. You are one of my best moneymakers, Red, but your attitude creates more difficulties than benefits for me. Your attitude must, therefore, be corrected. When you have learned to be grateful, and when you beg me to take you back, I will consider doing so.”

  Big Jim walked with us to Ethyl’s wagon and waited until I was seated next to Ethyl. The woman did not release my arm until she’d clamped a chain about my wrist. I screamed and pulled at the chain until Ethyl backhanded me across the mouth. Still I screamed and struggled. She used her fist then. When I stopped struggling, she released the brake and picked up the reins while I cradled my bleeding mouth.

  An hour later we arrived at a building every bit as slovenly as Ethyl herself, and I began to understand what Opal meant by “learning to be grateful.”

  I had been with Ethyl two months when I began to feel unwell. I was tired all the time, even in the morning, and parts of my body were tender and sore. A customer complained to Ethyl about me. He told her that I whined that certain things hurt me. Ethyl stripped me down, examined my body. She said I was pregnant.

  Tabitha looked away. “You and I have spoken of this, Miss Rose. Ethyl brought in a woman to-to ‘take care’ of the baby. Is it all right if I do not speak of it again?”