Chapter 6 Faith

6

FAITH

There were only a few girls in the home who would talk to her. Her roommate, for one. May had been chilly at first but now seemed to appreciate having an audience who would not interrupt her sermons about the amorality of the other women in this place, and, since Sunday, her monologue about her beau, Hal, and the dinner party she’d been invited to. Should she wear the gingham? The gingham was her best, but he’d seen her in the gingham several times at church. The only other option was a dark-green calico skirt and a blouse. Far too plain for a dinner party. Did Faith have an opinion? May didn’t wait for an answer.

“She’s wound awfully tight, May is,” Tuva said that week, one evening after supper, when she and Faith sat on the steps behind the kitchen, sharing an apple.

Tuva was her real name, she’d told Faith. Everyone else here called her Constance. Faith had met her before, once or twice, when she’d gone to court to pay her fines. Once, Tuva had offered her a smoke, on a bench outside the courthouse. Faith had hated going there to be publicly shamed. She remembered that gesture from Tuva as a warm ray of humanity.

Now that Faith had eaten several meals in the dining room of the Bethany Home, she’d noticed a few other familiar faces as well, none of whom had a smile or a spare word to offer her, save for Tuva. Mostly, Faith listened in on conversations wafting from nearby tables. Talking about one’s past was frowned upon here, but once they sat down to supper, the girls opened up like broken faucets. They spoke wistfully of their regulars, throwing a gauzy sheet of nostalgia over their memories, and competed over who’d gotten the most elaborate gifts—a jade comb, a pair of scarab earrings, a fifth of Jamaican rum.

Tuva, too, had spoken at length of her best john, a clergyman by the name of Willard. When she got out of here, she aimed to rendezvous with Willard. She wished he’d have turned out to be the father of her baby, Luke, but, alas, the boy had been born with dark eyes and curly hair.

Tuva had recognized him, though. Right away. She’d recognized the baby. That was all she’d say on the matter.

“Why’s May so keen to stay here?” Tuva said now. “We all know there’s worse out there, but we also know there’s better.”

Faith crunched through the green-and-pink skin of the apple. That wasn’t quite right. May did seem determined to move on; she was simply hell-bent on leaving with a husband.

“Suppose I can’t blame her,” Tuva continued. “They like to send the girls here to farms, to be homestead wives. Last place I want to be is back on a farm.” She scratched under her arm, and her ample breast jiggled in response. Nobody here wore a corset, Faith had noted, or ribbons, rouge, or lace. There were very few looking glasses about. Their hair went into careless buns; their cheeks shone from a clean scrubbing and nature’s pink exertion. They laughed with abandon; they blew their noses loudly and stuffed their hankies into sleeves. It felt as if they were all on a brief holiday from a world that included men. Most of the women appeared to enjoy it, but Tuva seemed to miss the attentions of the masculine sex.

Tuva Larsen, born into rural squalor; she came to the city when she’d heard there was a demand for domestic work. Maltreated and fired by several mistresses, she ended up going for two dollars an hour in the First Avenue red-light district. A familiar story. Her baby had already been adopted, but she’d only arrived here five months ago, right before he was born, so she had seven months to go. Seven months of drudgery, as she put it to Faith.

“Sure, they feed us fine, and they don’t beat on us if we make a mistake, like the mistresses do in the big houses. Miss Rhoades, she’s a pushover. But I don’t like the way they look at us,” Tuva told Faith that night, as they watched the branches of the trees turn black against the purpling sky. Faith took “they” to mean the Sisterhood of Bethany. “Like we need to thank them all the time. You can grow a bit sick from it, eh?”

Faith cleared her throat. Her lips parted.

Tuva continued, not anticipating an answer, because why should she? “They make such a great deal of there being no bars on the windows, no lock on the front door. All of us free to go, et cetera. Yet you’d have to leave in the dead of night unless you wanted a hundred eyes on you. That’s how girls do it. They go back to the trunk closet and fetch their belongings, if they’re still there, then shove off in the middle of the night.”

Faith raised her eyebrows. The trunk closet?

“Sure, what do you think they do with all the fine dresses these whores arrive in?” Tuva laughed; she had nibbled the apple down to its pips. “Keep them in the trunk closet, that’s what, up in the wing by the seamstress’s sunroom. Once every few months or so, they donate them to be cut up for scraps. And make a big fuss of it, so everyone knows how charitable they are.”

Again, Faith cleared her throat. A clutch of phlegm gathered at the back of her tongue. She swallowed it down, and when she spoke, her words came out rough.

“You sound as if you want to leave.”

“Uff da!” Tuva mimed tumbling off the step. “It’s got a voice! Can’t recall I’ve heard you speak before.” Slowly, she handed the stripped apple core back to Faith, eyes slanted in exaggerated suspicion. “Is it true, Faith, what they say about you?”

Faith nibbled around the stem, finding every bit of apple flesh. The name—“Faith”—she was beginning to feel accustomed to hearing it from other people, but she couldn’t yet use it herself, in her thoughts. It felt like wearing the wrong-size shoes.

“What do they say about me?” she whispered.

“That you’re Marguerite the Magnificent.” Tuva said this as though it were a joke, but then she waited for a reply. Faith detected a bit of curiosity. Tuva wanted to know. “But that isn’t right, is it?”

Faith grinned, sadly, and shook her head. That one didn’t quite fit, either.