Sister Noon Read online

  “But then Mr. Price died. I know he’d already paid the Williamses for my schooling, but they pretended he hadn’t. They sent me to Nantucket as a bonded servant.”

  The weathered wood and sand of Nantucket was a new landscape for her. Her mistress was the Quaker woman who owned the island’s general store. She came from a line of whalers—very wealthy. She invited Ellen to the Friends meeting house, where they sat in the darkness on hard wooden benches and waited for the Spirit. “It didn’t take with me, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Smith, fingering the locket she wore at her throat. “I’m too fond of nice things. But she was also very kind. I called her Grandma and worked for her until she died, quite suddenly, and then again there were no provisions made for me. By now I was sixteen or so. I sold off some of her stock and got to Boston. Her real granddaughter lived there and I thought she might take me in, but she didn’t.” It was there that Ellen met James Smith, a wealthy and prominent businessman. They were married. He died. “It’s been my pattern,” Mrs. Smith conceded. “Life is loss.”

  Mrs. Radford could see that Mrs. Smith had not loved her husband. It was nothing she said; it appeared on her face when she spoke of him.

  Mrs. Radford had not decided what to do about Thomas Bell. He’d been back from Mexico for almost a year now. He was an old friend, so she owed him some loyalty, although he hadn’t, in fact, been to see her since his return. Served him right, really; if he’d come to call, to express his condolences, he might have seen the woman. Virtue provided its rewards.

  And what of her loyalty to her new friend? Mr. Bell was not the sort of man who married. There were rumors that he had been seen going into a house of assignation on Washington Street.

  Before her husband’s death, Mrs. Radford would only have had to write the invitations and San Francisco’s most eligible men would have gathered. Sometimes she let herself imagine the dinner. Alexander pouring wine. The gold-rimmed china. The sensation of the beautiful Mrs. Smith.

  But Mr. Bell had been so desperate. Mrs. Radford was a great believer in love. She longed to do her little bit to help it along. Marriage was the happy ending to Mrs. Smith’s hard and blameless life. The right man had only to see her, and it still might be Thomas Bell, who already had.

  The most enjoyable parts of a social occasion are often the solitary pleasures of anticipation and recollection. But it is sadly true that one cannot relish these without having had an invitation to the party itself.

  The MacElroys, who were special friends of Thomas Bell’s, had announced the engagement of their middle daughter. There was to be a fabulous ball. Although Mrs. Radford had, with her husband, been a guest at the party celebrating the engagement of their first daughter and also at the marriage of their youngest daughter, there was no certainty that she would be included now.

  It was only a party. Only a fabulous ball. She did not mind for herself, not so much, really, although she had always enjoyed a party. But it would be just the setting for Mrs. Smith. With this in mind, Mrs. Radford finally called on Thomas Bell. He was living in the bachelor club on Grove. He apologized for the cigar smoke, which did not bother her, but not for the fact that he had never come to see her, which did. His blond hair had receded over the years, giving him a high, wide forehead. He had always been a handsome man; now he’d attained a dignity he had lacked before. He looked marriageable. “Did you ever find your lovely shipmate?” she asked him, quite directly, with no cunning preamble.

  “Madame Christophe?” he said immediately. “No. I looked everywhere.”

  “In the servants’ quarters?”

  He responded with some heat. “She was a queen.”

  “And if she was not?” Mrs. Radford watched his face closely. She was looking for true love. She thought she saw it.

  And also rising comprehension. “You know where she is.” Mr. Bell reached excitedly for her arm. “Take me to her at once.”

  “No. But if she were invited to the MacElroys’ ball, I would deliver the invitation. Then you could take your turn with every other eligible man in San Francisco.” She meant this quite literally, but she allowed a familiar, teasing tone to come into her voice to hide it.

  “Dear Mrs. Radford,” he said.

  “She is a working woman,” Mrs. Radford warned him. “With a different name.”

  “She is a queen,” Mr. Bell repeated. “Whatever she does, whatever she calls herself. Blood will tell.”

  Mrs. Radford was in black. Mrs. Smith wore a gown of pink silk. It was fitted at the bodice, but blossomed at the hips with puffings and petals. The hem was larger still, and laced with ribbons. The MacElroys’ drawing room had been cleared for dancing, and she entered it like a rose floating on water. Couples were just assembling for the grand march. Every head turned. Mr. Bell made a spectacle of himself in his effort to get to her first. He was slightly shorter than she was.

  “Mrs. Radford,” he said politely. “How lovely to see you here. And Madame Christophe. I mustn’t imagine that you remember me, simply because I remember you.”

  “Though I do,” she said. She glanced at Mrs. Radford and then looked back to Mr. Bell. “And my name is not Madame Christophe. I owe you an explanation.” There was a pause. Mr. Bell rushed to fill it.

  “All you owe me is a dance,” he assured her. He was eager, nervous. He drew her away from Mrs. Radford, who went to sit with the older women and the married ones. The music began. She watched Mr. Bell bend in to Mrs. Smith to speak. She watched the pink skirt swinging over the polished floor, the occasional glimpse of the soft toes of Mrs. Smith’s shoes. She attended to the music and the lovely, old sense of being involved in things.

  Some of the men seemed to know Mrs. Smith already. Young Mr. Ralston engaged her for the redowa, and everyone knew he never danced. Mr. Sharon took the lancers, his head barely reaching her shoulder. Mr. Hayes chose her for the waltz, leaving his wife without a partner. And Mr. Bell danced with no one else, spent the time while she danced with others pacing and watching for the moment she came free.

  In her own small way, Mrs. Radford also triumphed. People approached who hadn’t spoken to her since her husband’s death. Innocuous pleasantries, but she could no longer take such attentions for granted. Eventually every conversation arrived at Mrs. Smith.

  “That lovely woman you came with?” said Mrs. Putnam. “I’ve not seen her before.”

  “She’s an old friend,” Mrs. Radford answered contentedly. “A widow from New Orleans.” She said nothing else, although it was clearly insufficient. Let Mrs. Putnam remember how she had accused Mrs. Radford of talking too much!

  At the end of the evening, Mr. Bell went to find their cloaks. “I so enjoyed that party,” Mrs. Smith told Mrs. Radford.

  “You’ll have many nights like this now. Many invitations. You were such a success.”

  Mrs. Smith had a gray velvet cloak. Mr. Bell returned with it, settled it slowly over her shoulders. He was reluctant to release her. “About my name,” she said. They were walking outside, Mrs. Smith in the middle, the women’s skirts crushed one against the next, like blossoms in a bouquet. On the steps, they joined a crowd waiting for carriages. To the right were the Mills family and that peevish, gossipy attorney, Henry Halleck. “I had a need to change my name to get out of New Orleans. I was born into slavery in Georgia,” Mrs. Smith said. Everyone could hear her. “I became a white woman to escape. Ellen Smith isn’t my real name, either.”

  And then Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Radford were alone in their carriage. The ride to the country was a long one. Mrs. Radford’s feelings were too tender to bear examination. It seemed as though Mrs. Smith had deliberately humiliated her. “Is it true?” Mrs. Radford asked.

  “Everything I’ve told you is true.”

  “Why pick that moment to say it?”

  “It was time. I’ve been a white woman for so many years. And I didn’t want what that was bringing me. It wasn’t aimed at you. Or your ideas about love and beauty.”

  The horse hooves
clapped. The carriage rocked. “You don’t want to be the same person your whole life, do you?” Mrs. Smith asked. The carriage wheel hit a stone. It threw Mrs. Radford against Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith caught her by the arm. She was wearing gloves, so they didn’t actually touch.

  This was the last party Mrs. Radford would attend in San Francisco. One month later she left on a boat filled with missionaries going to Hawaii. One year later she was one of only seven white women in Edo, Japan. From there she sailed to Russia; from there she made her way to Peking. She died somewhere near Chungking at the age of seventy-four.

  In 1883, many years after her death, Selim Woodworth received a message from her. It was a bedraggled note, crumpled, carried in a pocket, trod upon, lost, left out in the rain. Even the stamps were indecipherable. “The mountains here!” was the only legible bit, and it wasn’t even clear where, exactly, Mrs. Radford had been when she wrote those words. It didn’t matter. Selim Woodworth had been dead himself for more than thirteen years.

  ONE

  By the 1890s, San Francisco was an entirely different city from the one Mrs. Radford had left behind. The streets were paved. The sand was landscaped. Cable cars ran up and down Nob Hill. The Railroad Kings were old or dead, and also the Bonanza Kings, and also the Lawyer Kings. Society had arrived and settled, its standards strictly maintained by Ned “I would rather see my sister dead than waltzing” Greenway. Fashionable women belonged to the Conservative Set, the Fast Set, the Smart Set, the Serious Set, the Very Late at Night Set, or the highly respectable Dead Slow Set.

  There were still many more men than women in the city. This imbalance resulted in a high percentage of unrequited passions. Afflicted men consoled themselves with horse racing, graft, and most frequently, liquor. Any woman whose nerves did not compel her to depend on Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound (alcohol, dandelion, chamomile, and licorice) or Jayne’s Carminative Balm (alcohol and opium) or Dover’s Powder (opium and ipecac) could count on the advantage of sobriety in her dealings with men. The destabilizing effects of widespread heartache combined with widespread drunkenness were somewhat alleviated by the rigging of local elections.

  The city was propelled in equal parts by drunken abuse and sober recompense. In those days every steamer that docked in San Francisco Bay was fitted with a large box. Each box was the same—pinewood, a sizable slot edged with brass, and the words “Give to the Ladies’ Relief and Protection Society Home” burned in a circle about it. After the wreck of the SS Rio de Janeiro, one of these boxes was found floating past Alcatraz Island, and miraculously, the money was still inside. When levered open, the box contained rubles and yen, lire and pesos, all shuffled together like cards.

  Successive treasurers for the Society counted out coins stamped with the profiles of queens they couldn’t name and birds they’d never seen. Some of the coins were worn so thin there was no picture at all, just a polished disk with no clue remaining as to its history or origin. Occasionally during rough seas someone would donate a holy medallion, usually Saint Christopher. One box held a single amethyst earring with a small drop pearl.

  It was still charity, it was still begging, but it bore the semblance of adventure.

  Lizzie Hayes wore one of the more puzzling coins on a chain around her neck, so whenever they looked at her, the people of San Francisco would be reminded that she needed their money. The coin was imprinted with a mermaid curled into a circle, her hair so wide and wild it netted the tip of her own tail. If anyone asked, Lizzie said it was the currency of Atlantis.

  Lizzie Hayes had been a volunteer for the Ladies’ Relief Home for almost ten years, its treasurer for three. She had few intimate friends, but attended two churches, Grace Church and St. Luke’s Episcopal, which was good for her soul and also for fund-raising. In 1890 she was a spinster who had just seen her fortieth birthday.

  She was working in the cupola one day in January, sorting through a box of donated books, when one of the older girls came to tell her Mrs. Mary E. Pleasant was at the door. “The front door,” the girl said. “She’d like to speak to you.”

  Culling books was surprisingly dirty work, and Lizzie could feel a layer of grit on her hands and face. She wiped herself with her apron and went downstairs at once. She’d never spoken with Mrs. Pleasant, never been in the same room with her, although two years earlier she’d waited on an overloaded streetcar while the driver made an unscheduled stop so that Mrs. Pleasant could ride. Mrs. Pleasant walked the half-block to the car, and it seemed to Lizzie that she had walked as slowly as possible. She had given the driver an enormous, showy tip.

  Lizzie had also seen Mrs. Pleasant on occasion in her opulent Brewster buggy with its matched horses from the Stanford stables. Mrs. Pleasant dressed like a servant, but she had her own driver in green livery and a top hat, and also her own footman to attend her.

  If she hadn’t ever seen her, Lizzie would still have recognized Mrs. Pleasant’s face. It was one of the most famous in the city, appearing often in editorial cartoons, particularly in the Wasp. (Although actually the last drawing had not used her face. Instead, a black crow had peered out from underneath Mrs. Pleasant’s habitual bonnet.)

  “Now, I never cared a feather’s weight for public opinion,” Mrs. Pleasant had been once quoted as saying, “for it’s the ghostliest thing I ever did see.” It was fortunate she thought so. Here are just a few of the things people said about Mary Ellen Pleasant:

  She’d buried three husbands before she turned forty, and in her sixties had still been the secret mistress of prominent and powerful men. At seventy years of age, she’d looked no older than fifty.

  She had a small green snake tattooed in a curl around one breast.

  She could restore the luster to pearls by wearing them.

  Although she worked as Thomas Bell’s housekeeper, she was as rich as a railroad magnate’s widow. Some of the city’s wealthiest men came to her for financial advice. Thomas Bell owed his entire fortune to her.

  She was an angel of charity. She had donated five thousand dollars of her own money to aid the victims of yellow fever during the epidemic in New Orleans. When she got to heaven, she would soon have the blessed organized and sending cups of cool water to the sinners below.

  She practiced voodoo and had once sunk a boat full of silver with a curse.

  She was a voodoo queen and the colored in San Francisco both worshipped and feared her. She could start and stop pregnancies; she would, for a price, make a man die of love.

  She trafficked in prostitution and had a number of special white protégées with whom her relationships were irregular, intimate, and possibly sapphic. She was responsible for all of poor Sarah Althea Hill Sharon Terry’s mischiefs and misfortunes.

  She ran a home for unwed mothers and secretly sold the infant girls to the Chinese tongs.

  She was the best cook in San Francisco.

  Here is what people said about Lizzie Hayes:

  She would have married William Fletcher if she could have got him.

  No one had asked Mrs. Pleasant into the parlor. Lizzie found her standing just inside the heavy oak door under the portrait of philanthropist Horace Hawes, with his brooding Lincolnesque looks. No one had offered to take her wrap, a bright purple shawl, which she nevertheless had removed and carried over one arm.

  Lizzie Hayes had not kept Mrs. Pleasant waiting, but neither had she taken off her work apron. Mrs. Pleasant was better dressed. She wore a skirt of polished black alpaca, a shirtwaist with a white collar, gold gypsy hoops through her ears, and her usual outdated Quaker bonnet, purple with a wide brim. She noticed the apron at once; Lizzie saw her famous mismated eyes, one blue, one brown, flicker over it, but her facial expression did not change. Her skin was finely wrinkled, like crushed silk, and she smelled of lavender.

  There were no courteous preliminaries. “I’ve brought you a girl,” Mrs. Pleasant said. She’d come to California forty years earlier with the miners, but never lost the southern syrup of her vowels. “N
amed Jenny Ijub. She’s just off a boat from Panama. Her mother took sick on the voyage and was buried at sea. When I ask how old she is, she holds up all five fingers. Quiet little thing. She doesn’t seem to know her father.”

  One of her hands rested on the little girl’s hair. Mrs. Pleasant dipped her head as she talked, so her face was hidden by the bonnet brim. “I have my friends at the docks. I’m known to care for such cases.” As her face vanished, her voice grew softer, more confiding. She knew how to make white people comfortable.

  She knew how to make them uncomfortable. Where had she really gotten the child? Lizzie felt the contrast between them. Mrs. Pleasant was tall, elegant, and spotless. Lizzie was short, dusty, fat as a toad. She was a person who rumpled, and not a person who rumpled attractively.

  She cleared her throat. “We have a waiting list.” Lizzie would have said this to anyone. It was the simple truth. So many in need. “And I’d have to be certain of her age. She’s quite small. We don’t take children under four years.”

  “I’ll have to find somewhere else, then.” Mrs. Pleasant smiled down at Lizzie. It was an understanding smile. Seventy-some years old and Mrs. Pleasant still had all her own splendid teeth. She stooped a little and aimed her smile farther down. “Don’t you worry, Jenny. We’ll find someone who wants you.”

  Lizzie looked for the first time at the girl. She was dark-haired and sallow-skinned. She had sand on her shoes and stockings, it was impossible to get to the Home without picking up sand, but was otherwise as clean as could be. Neatly and simply dressed. Hatless, though someone—Mrs. Pleasant?—had woven a bright bit of red ribbon into her hair. Her cheeks were flushed as if she were too warm, or embarrassed. She did not look up, but Lizzie imagined that if she could see the girl’s eyes they would be large and tragic. She held her back stiffly; you could deduce the eyes from that.