Tabitha Read online

  Rose nodded. “It is not necessary. I will pray about how to write this part. Surely some of the girls who read your account will . . . relate?”

  “Yes, that is likely. I-I , well, after the abortion, I became sick—so sick! For a long while I ran a fever and tossed in pain upon a cot in a back room. The sweat poured from my body for days. I think Ethyl figured I would die, and she stopped feeding and caring for me. But I did not die.”

  “No,” Rose whispered. “God preserved you.”

  Tabitha sighed and took a sip of water. “Yes, he preserved me. But, as you know, because of the infection I contracted, I will never have children.”

  She rolled her shoulders to ease the tension in them and continued.

  During the long weeks while the fever festered in my belly, anger and hatred had festered in my heart. After my body healed, Ethyl put me back to work, but I was not the same girl. I would never be again. Within a week I was causing trouble—insulting customers, provoking other girls, defying Ethyl. Anywhere and in any manner I might vent my anger, I did.

  I did not care if Ethyl starved me. I no longer worried about the beatings—I simply went elsewhere in my mind.

  I just did not care anymore.

  “Yer not worth m’ time, Red,” Ethyl snarled at me. “You hev cost me more money’n you’ll ever make up t’me.”

  She dragged me back to Opal and shoved me through the front door into Big Jim’s arms. It was a triumph on my part. A small victory that reinforced my resolve.

  “I’m shut of ’er, Opal,” Ethyl declared. “A worse bargain I ain’t ever made.”

  No sooner had I been reinstalled in Opal’s house than I rebelled against her rules. It was as though the old Tabitha had been asleep—and had revived. I stared at the world with wide-open eyes, and everything I saw, I hated.

  Every outburst and disobedience earned a punishment. Opal starved me. Big Jim beat me. Opal allowed customers free reign with me. Nothing mattered and nothing changed. I may have feigned defeat more than once after a punishment, but only until the bruises faded.

  As soon as the pain eased, my resentment flared back to life, and I invented a myriad of ways to express my fury. The customers complained to Opal that I was not “accommodating” enough.

  Indeed, I hated the men who expected me to smile and please them. Customers who were drawn to my bright hair were as quickly driven off by my caustic tongue. My behavior and reputation caused nothing but problems for Opal, and no matter the punishments, I celebrated the few little victories I managed.

  Opal’s other girls steered clear of me—they had all learned the hard way. However, I hated them just as much as I hated Opal. In fact, I hated everyone.

  But most of all, I hated Cray Bishoff.

  Someday I will find you, I vowed to him in raging thoughts. Someday I will find you and make you pay. I fantasized meeting him again, of surprising him. And I planned in detail how I would kill him. The time I spent thinking and plotting filled my waking hours and haunted my sleep. It was all I lived for.

  Of course, Opal wearied of my surly disposition and the problems I caused. At one point, she managed to sell me to an unwitting customer, a man who had admired me from afar but who knew nothing of my, er, disposition. He was a man Opal felt “would suit” my temperament.

  Yes, he was strong and determined, but I did not care. I made his life miserable. Two weeks later he dumped me back in Opal’s arms and demanded his money back.

  “Glad to be rid of you, you red-haired hellion,” he breathed in my ear as he turned me over to Big Jim.

  Opal stared at me, her hands fisting and unfisting at her sides. “Lock her in the attic, Big Jim,” her words grated through clenched teeth. “No water. No food. She will stay there until she capitulates. Or until she dies. I do not care which.”

  Big Jim hauled me up the three flights of stairs until we reached the attic. He pushed me inside and I heard the rattle of the lock on the door as he fastened it. I took a deep breath, confident that I had scored another victory, and looked around.

  The attic was empty except for the trunks we had used on our trip from Silver City. Dust motes floated in the air, in cracks of light coming from a vent at the front of the house.

  When the sun set, the attic settled into darkness. I hauled a trunk to the vent, stood upon it, and tried to peer between the slats. All I could see were rooftops across the street, but even they were shrouded in darkness.

  I heard muffled voices from the floor below and lay flat on the dirty floorboards, my ear to them. I could not make out any words, only a little laughter and movement. Then doors closed and sounds faded.

  They have gone downstairs, I thought, to begin the night’s work. Soon they would be bringing customers to their rooms. I did not want to hear any of that activity.

  Unexpectedly, the door to the attic opened and Big Jim lumbered over the threshold. He placed a chamber pot on the floor.

  Nothing else. No blankets. No water. Nothing.

  I was left in the attic, without food or drink, for four days before Opal appeared at the door. I was as near death as a person deprived of water can be. I lay curled upon the bare floor, my muscles contracted in spasms from lack of water. I had not given Opal the pleasure of hearing me beg and scream for something to drink—but then again, by the time I was ready to scream, my throat had been too dry to utter more than croaking sounds.

  Opal nudged me with the toe of her finely polished shoe. I moved my mouth and tried to blink, but the lids scraped painfully across my dry eyes. I gave up and kept them closed.

  Opal squatted near me. “This must be your choice, Tabitha,” she whispered.

  I was, in some withered part of my mind, surprised to hear my name, my real name, but I could not respond.

  “This must be your choice,” Opal repeated. “You must choose now if you wish to live or die. If you choose to die, very well. You will not suffer much longer. Another day. Perhaps two, at the most.”

  I turned her words over in my head. It was hard to think, to string the thoughts together and make them stay put. Another day. Perhaps two. I was past the frantic pain of thirsting. It would not be too hard to . . . let go.

  “However, if you choose to live, you must decide now that things will be different.” Opal’s voice cut through my confused thoughts. “If you choose to live, you must change your mind and do all I expect of you. No more rebellions. No more problems. Do you understand?”

  As best as my distressed mind could, I weighed the two options. Slipping farther away would be easier. The worst was over.

  Except for the sudden niggle, a frisson of fear that quivered its way through my chest.

  “If you choose to live, Tabitha, you must capitulate to me. Now. Choose, Tabitha. If you agree to surrender to me, open your eyes.”

  She waited for my answer.

  That fear, the fear of death, trembled in my breast. The door to eternity loomed before me, and what lay beyond it terrified me. I could not let go. I wanted to! Oh, I wanted to! I wanted to slip into oblivion, to float far away from all pain and sorrow.

  But the fear in my heart was not convinced that painless bliss awaited me if I let go. I was scared of what lay on the other side. I was not ready to die, and I knew it.

  Opal urged me to surrender to her and live. She urged me to choose.

  Choose? Did I have any choices left? No, choice for me was dead.

  And so I was beaten. I had fought long and hard, but I was defeated.

  As real, as vivid as the unmistakable rending of a length of fabric, I heard—I felt—my will and my heart tear apart. My broken will fluttered downward, into the abyss. What remained of my heart lay bleeding and mortally wounded in my breast.

  I opened my eyes and surrendered.

  Tabitha dropped into a silent preoccupation with her own thoughts. Rose turned from her scribbled notes to watch her.

  “What are you thinking now, Tabitha?” she asked gently.

  Surprised
from her reverie, the red-haired woman smiled. “Actually, I was thinking of how, at what could be deemed the second-lowest point in my life, God reached out to me.”

  Intrigued, Rose leaned forward. “Tell me what you mean.”

  “I could not have known it then, but the fear I felt, the fear that kept me from choosing death, kept me alive for the next thirteen years. And even though I thought that I had come to the end of myself, I still had not reached out to God, had not called out to him.”

  “And?”

  “And I think he placed that fear in me so that I would choose to live. He kept me going, kept me alive, all those years that followed after, so that when just the right time came, my heart would be ready.”

  “In the fullness of time, God sent his Son,” Rose whispered.

  “Yes. In the fullness of time.” Tabitha’s mouth quirked in wry humor, “I thought I was at the bottom, but I had not yet reached the end of myself, the place where I would, finally, cry out to God, and ask for his help. I had not yet met Cal Judd.”

  Rose shuddered at the mention of Cal Judd. She could absorb no more of Tabitha’s revelations today, so she glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantelpiece. “Goodness. We have been here for hours. Shall we break off for the day, Tabitha?”

  Tabitha nodded her agreement. “Tomorrow, then?”

  “Yes,” Rose replied. “As soon as the girls leave for their work and the house quiets.”

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 5

  Rose and Tabitha seated themselves in the same places they had occupied the day prior.

  Breona, her black eyes dancing with intrigue, placed a tea tray between Rose and Tabitha.

  “Thank you, my dear Breona!” Rose exclaimed. “How very thoughtful.”

  “Ye was both bein’ as parched as th’ ground in July yisterday.” Breona wiped her hands on her apron. “Will ye be talkin’ fer hours agin t’day?”

  Rose glanced at Tabitha. “Perhaps. We shall see how it goes.”

  “Shall ye be needin’ onything from me?”

  “No, dear one, but thank you for asking.”

  Having received no word or hint to assuage her curiosity, Breona shrugged and left the great room, closing the door behind her.

  “Did you sleep well last night, Tabitha?” Rose inquired. Her own sleep had been restless and her dreams uneasy, disturbed by the details Tabitha had shared with her.

  “Yes. I am surprised at how well I slept, actually,” Tabitha responded. “To be truthful, the sharing of my past with you is causing me to appreciate God’s grace toward me so much more than I had.”

  She glanced up at Rose from under downcast lashes. “I think I had not realized that I still felt a great deal of shame about my past. And yet, as I spoke of the things I had done, the woman I used to be, the shame seemed to . . . slip away. Does that make any sense?”

  “It makes sense to me, Tabitha,” Rose replied. “I believe that God’s children cannot testify to his gracious forgiveness in our lives without first acknowledging that for which he has forgiven us.”

  Rose tapped her pen on the notebook already filled with so many lines and mused, “I wonder if those individuals who have lived ‘good’ lives do not sometimes struggle to see their need for God’s grace and forgiveness.”

  “Well, I certainly do not struggle to see that need,” Tabitha sniffed.

  She and Rose laughed a little.

  “Shall we begin again?” Rose asked. “Perhaps at this point you might move your story ahead, closer to when Jesus met you.”

  “That is a good proposal, Miss Rose. I do not wish to dwell overmuch on those evil years.” Tabitha’s brows drew together. “I will take up my tale not long before I was moved to Denver.”

  Kansas City, 1907

  I stared from my second-floor room to the busy street below. I was not really taking in the sights; rather, I was allowing my thoughts to wander . . . allowing them to fret and grow anxious about the future.

  Eleven years had worn their way through my life. For eleven years I had performed, complied, and obeyed as Opal required. I was now twenty-six years old, a well-practiced prostitute, utterly dead in my heart. Yet somehow, I had managed to maintain a “lively” enough pretense on the outside to suit Opal’s purposes these many years.

  But now Opal was ill. Her skin, once beautiful in its porcelain clarity, hung from fragile bones in paper-thin folds. She looked every year of her life—and more.

  She is dying, I made myself acknowledge. I have seen the signs before; I recognize them.

  Indeed, over the last decade, I had watched two of Opal’s girls march toward death in similar fashion. Opal was dying of consumption.

  The harbingers of death by the dread disease were clear enough: A cough that would not abate, that sent the older woman into spasms where she could not catch her breath; coughing spells that more and more frequently ended in blood-soaked handkerchiefs; a persistent fever. And Opal had lost a great deal of weight. Far too much weight.

  She would not be coming back from this sickness.

  What will become of us girls when she dies?

  In a deep corner of my heart I clutched at and gripped a tiny, brittle hope, a hope that when Opal passed, I might be free again and make my way home to my parents.

  My folks. Are they still living? Neither of them would be old yet, but life on a farm was arduous, and disease and injury were ever-present in the world, threatening even the hardiest of bodies.

  Like Opal’s.

  Opal’s ever-present shadow, Big Jim, was also older by eleven years. He was just as massive, just as strong as when I had first laid eyes upon him, but he was not as light on his feet as he had been in his younger days.

  Big Jim was, like the rest of us, preoccupied with Opal’s condition. I could see from the concern glinting in his simple-minded eyes that he, too, knew Opal would not rally. As I watched him, I probed for the right opportunity to flee. I would have to be quick and have a good plan.

  I left off staring out the window and came to the table when called.

  In the years following my surrender to her, Opal had built on to her house. Twelve girls now sat down to the morning meal. Usually Opal presided at the table, but she had sent word that she would be taking her breakfast in her room.

  For the third morning in a row.

  Instead, Big Jim and two other hired men like him kept watch over the table. Their sole job was to keep us girls in line.

  While I ate, I covertly studied the three men. I was not sure if Big Jim had thought ahead, had thought about what would become of Opal’s “business” when she died. His eyes shifted uncomfortably from watching us girls to watching Marco, a younger, smarter version of himself. Marco, in my estimation, was an ambitious type, the kind of man who would make a move to take over Opal’s business the moment she was no longer able to give orders.

  But Opal was not at quite that point yet; no, she was not about to allow a coup to topple her rule. Not over her own house!

  Tensions in the house were rising, however. I would have to time my escape to dovetail with the power struggle I could feel looming near—when Opal’s attention was elsewhere.

  My timing did not foresee Opal’s preemptive move.

  Only two days later, she called all of us—working girls and hired muscle—into the parlor. She looked . . . somewhat better, stronger, than she had for a while. Certainly she had taken pains with her toilet and dress, even though her clothes sagged upon her exceedingly thin frame.

  As I studied her, I wondered what it was that I sensed about her. I was mildly disconcerted when the word “relieved” came to mind.

  Relieved?

  “Ladies,” she nodded at the dozen women who worked for her, “and gentlemen.” Her last word held a degree of sarcasm, and she fixed on Marcos, in particular, as she addressed us. She drew herself up in her chair.

  “I have an announcement to make.” She again surveyed us, considering each of us for a moment. Then she s
ighed, and a bit of vitality seemed to seep from her.

  “But first, Big Jim, would you kindly show our guests in?”

  Big Jim ushered three men into the room, two of them impressive in their stature and girth. The third smiled at Opal and swapped a wad of chaw from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “Miz Opal. Right good t’ see ya lookin’ s’fine t’day,” he grinned.

  Opal, a tight smile frozen upon her face, nodded like a queen to an inferior subject. “Mr. Jacobs. Thank you for your prompt arrival.”

  She inclined her head and Jacobs took a seat. His men stood behind him, hands clasped in front of their bodies, expressions inscrutable.

  “Ladies,” Opal began again, “and gentlemen,” (this time there was no mistaking that she had fixed her gaze upon Marcos) “I wish to announce that Mr. Jacobs has made me an agreeable offer for my business. I have accepted his offer. As of this afternoon, Mr. Jacobs is the new owner of this house.”

  The tension in the parlor could not have been thicker. We girls, discomfited, stared from Opal to Jacobs and back while Jacobs leered at us, looking us up and down like so much meat on the hoof.

  Marcos clamped his lips together in anger and evaluated Jacob’s muscle. They, in turn, dropped their hands to their sides and held them in readiness, hinting at the guns that had to be hiding beneath their suitcoats.

  “Marcos.” Opal’s voice broke through the crackling hostility. “Mr. Jacobs will not be retaining your services as he steps into his management of this house.” She lifted an envelope with a weak, trembling hand. “Your pay. Please take it and excuse yourself with my thanks.” Her address to Marcos, again, was laced with sarcasm.

  Big Jim took the envelope from Opal’s hand and held it out to Marcos. The man looked from the envelope toward Jacobs and his men and back. Finally, snatching his pay from Big Jim, he stormed from the room and out the front entrance.

  “As I mentioned during our negotiations, Mr. Jacobs, you would do well to watch out for that one,” Opal drawled.

  She struggled to her feet and Big Jim assisted her. “And now, ladies,” Opal wheezed, “I bid you farewell. Big Jim and I are departing for a warmer, drier climate, one better suited to my health.”