The Virgin Cure

  In 1865 a fire broke out at the New York Medical College on Fourteenth Street. Housed therein was a vast collection of medical oddities, having once belonged to Dr. Valentine Mott (a late professor in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York). Numbering over one thousand items, nearly everything was lost. What remained of Dr. Mott’s collection was shortly thereafter given to the doctor’s widow. A few, select items were donated to a Bowery museum that specialized in anatomical specimens.

  There was a nasty hole in the side of Miss Jewett’s skull, yet her mouth was open in a wide, toothy grin. I reached out and wrapped my fingers around one of the long bones of her arm. It felt smooth in the palm of my hand. I could see that someone had carved words along the length of it and darkened them in with ink. As you are now, I once was. As I am now, so you shall be. I let go of the bone and stared at the skeleton, afraid she might set her ghostly sights on me.

  “You can sleep here tonight if you like,” Dr. Sadie said, bringing out an extra pillow from a blanket chest and fluffing it into shape. “Miss Everett knows you’re safe here.”

  “Thank you,” I said, grateful not to have to walk back to the house in such terrible weather. Going to the window I watched the raindrops and listened to them tapping at the pane. I followed a single drop with my finger as it nagged down the glass.

  “Did you meet Mr. Dink through Miss Everett?” I asked.

  “No,” Dr. Sadie said. “It was the other way around. I’ve known Mr. Dink for years.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes, I’ve been seeing to his performers’ health for quite some time.”

  I tried to imagine Dr. Sadie attempting to look inside the mouth of the World’s Tallest Illusionist. That, I thought, would be a sight worth seeing.

  “Why did you want me to come with you today?” I asked.

  There may not be any signs of the disease when you first encounter a gentleman with syphilis.

  It tends to go into hiding for long periods of time. Men think they’re safe, when they’re not.

  If a gentleman appears to have a grey-blue complexion, suffers from sore gums and excess saliva, or bears a scent akin to fried potatoes – you can be sure he’s taking mercury to try to hold it back.

  When the mercury fails, many men get desperate. Some turn to virgins thinking that their innocence holds a cure.

  Slumping into a chair next to the bed, she put her feet up on a pile of books. The shadows of the room made her seem less a lady and more a girl. Her voice sounded different too, softer and more relaxed.

  “I needed to know that you were going to be all right, now that your mother is gone.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to ask?” I wondered out loud, still confused.

  “Words are an unreliable way to measure the heart,” she said. “I’m more inclined to trust what I observe rather than what someone tells me.”

  “Miss Tully will die soon, won’t she.”

  Meeting my eyes, Dr. Sadie said, “Yes, Moth. She will.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “She’s got an illness with no remedy.”

  She told me that Miss Tully had caught one of the meanest things a person could get. The English blamed it on the French, the French blamed it on the Italians, the Dutch blamed the Spanish. No one was sure why it did what it did, but it came like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and just when you thought it was gone, it would turn up again, uglier than ever. After the rash faded, hair loss, muscle aches, and a pronounced limp were sure to follow. There was even a chance your nose might fall right off your face. If it didn’t kill you sooner rather than later, it was quite possible you’d go mad from it. It was so awful it had a whole handful of names—the Grandgore, the Lues, the Great Pox, Cupid’s disease.

  Dr. Sadie had been chasing after it for quite a while and the one thing she knew for certain was that dishonesty spread it worst of all. Just like any other lie, once you’d passed it around, you couldn’t take it back. It didn’t care if you were a baby or a whore. There was no cure.

  Sickness often took a terrible toll on the people of Chrystie Street. Mothers worried over their children with every new wave of typhus or cholera that descended on the slums. In the swelter of summer, whitewashed coffins got stacked tens high and tens across in the back of the gravedigger’s wagon, mothers keening after it as it rolled away.

  I wished I could forget ever meeting Miss Tully, and every sobbing mother I’d ever seen. I wished my father had come back to Mama and me, bringing happiness instead of sorrow to our door. I wished it was easy to do all that Miss Everett asked of me, and that Dr. Sadie’s kindness would just disappear and she’d leave me to my fate. I got up and wandered over to the window. Pressing my nose to the pane, I tried to see down the street to Miss Keteltas’ house, but it was impossible to make it out in the darkness and rain.

  November 10, 1871.

  Yesterday began with Miss Everett complaining that Moth (or Ada as she calls her) had been acting sullen and uncooperative. She said she was at her wits end over how to shake the girl from it.

  “Isn’t there something you can give her to even out her temperament?” she asked.

  Loathe to blindly prescribe the type of cure she was suggesting, I asked if she’d tried talking to the child to get to the heart of the matter.

  “It’s beyond that,” she said, quick to dismiss me.

  “She’s too young for this,” I argued (once again.)

  “Clearly the girl knows her own mind.”

  In the end, I suggested I take Moth with me on my rounds for the day to see if I could do her any good. Much to my surprise, Emma agreed to it. “She’s all yours,” she said, leaving Moth to my care.

  I took her to see Katherine Tully.

  I thought it an idea with small risk, and perhaps great rewards. I’d hoped that introducing her to Miss Tully might sway her thinking. It was wrong of me not to be honest and tell her the whole of Katherine’s story, but I was desperate to have her turn away from Emma and turn to me, instead.

  As the day went on, I was touched by the tenderness she showed my patients and her willingness to help. There were moments of true confidence between us, I’m sure of it, but sadly, it seems, they weren’t enough. Although she spent the night curled up and sleeping in my bed, she was all too eager to leave the next morning. She ran from me when we got to the house, straight up the stairs without saying goodbye.

  It seems all I’ve done is remind myself of the mistakes I made in the past. Perhaps I’m not meant to take risks after all.

  S.F.

  May 5, 1870

  Three weeks after getting Katherine Tully out of Miss Everett’s and into a spot at a refuge house, she came to my door, begging to be let in.

  She’d been seduced against her will.

  The man had first approached her a fortnight before as she was walking home for the evening. He strolled with her on three occasions, each time handing her a few coins at their goodbye and then making her swear she would keep his kindness a secret between them.

  The third time they met, he told her that he knew of a situation where she might be brought on as help for a party in a private residence. He said she would earn a dollar for her efforts and that she need only sign an agreement of employment and he would take care of the rest.

  “What did the agreement say?” I asked her.

  “I don’t exactly know. I don’t read so well.”

  They travelled by carriage to a fine house in a nice part of town. The man kept the curtains drawn on the windows, so she wasn’t sure of where they ended up. She could only say that they were in the cab for what seemed like a long time.

  When they arrived, there was no one there to greet them except the man of the house. She was escorted to the parlour and told to sit down. She recalled that there was a pianoforte in the room and when she told the man how pretty she thought it was, he sat down and played a song. After he was finished, he came after her.

  S
he hid in the draperies and cried, begging him to leave her alone, but he grabbed her from where she was hiding and forced himself on her.

  “Do you know the name of your seducer?”

  “No.”

  “What is the name of the man who arranged it all?”

  “He said his name is Mr. Jones.”

  No doubt an alias.

  “Was there anything special or unusual about Mr. Jones that you recall?”

  “He was a tall man with dark hair, and he had a handsome smile. He wore a nice suit, fashionable and bright. He didn’t have a beard or moustache, only sideburns. He seemed respectable enough.”

  Upon showing me a painful chancre that had since appeared after the incident, she asked, “Is there something you can do to make it go away?”

  A mercurial ointment will dry it up in a few days’ time, but I’m certain the sore is a sign of a greater disease.

  S.F.

  15. How many lovers shall I have?

  16. The one that I love, what does he really think of me?

  17. Ought I believe the tender vows that are breathed to me?

  18. The person that I am thinking of, does he love me?

  19. The person that I am thinking of, does he think that I love him?

  20. What ought I do, to make him (that I love) love me?

  —from The Ancient and Modern Ladies’ Oracle

  by Mr. Cornelius Agrippa

  (Infallible Prophet of the Male Sex)

  Mae came to my side and put her chin on my shoulder to see what I was looking at through the window of our room. “Why don’t you go keep him company,” she teased, pointing to Cadet, who was standing sentry on the roof. “Maybe he’ll give you another kiss.”

  Lantern at his feet, he was standing guard as usual, waiting for Mae to try to escape.

  Shrugging her away, I said, “He only kissed me because you told him to. The whole game was just a ruse so I wouldn’t see it coming.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But I never told him to enjoy it. He did that on his own.”

  I blushed at the memory of his lips against mine but didn’t move from my spot at the window.

  “If you don’t go out there, I’ll send Alice instead,” Mae warned.

  Giggling, Alice fetched my wool cloak and put it around my shoulders. “He’d rather see you than me,” she said, giving me a little push.

  More and more, things weren’t as they’d seemed when I first came to the house. Alice had gotten into the habit of praying every night, begging God to bring her a husband rather than a seducer. Rose had grown short with everyone, impatient to leave. Three mornings in a row, I’d heard Emily crying in her room. When Missouri caught me listening at the door, she said, “It’s nothing that concerns you. She’ll be fine.”

  Miss Everett hadn’t seen fit to return Mrs. Riordan’s tear-catcher to me, but I was sure the tears I’d managed to trap within the pretty vial hadn’t dwindled in the least. My dream of Mama’s ghost had been false, and I’d not had any sign that she was truly near. I’d been waiting to smell the scent of Dr. Godfrey’s on her breath when there was no one in the room, or to feel her fingers tug the hairs at the back of my neck, but nothing had come. Her passing had brought me more sadness than any lie she’d ever told. Betrayals can be forgiven and forgotten. Nothing changes death.

  Only daydreams of Cadet relieved the anxious knot I often had in my stomach, and although I would’ve preferred to keep my longing for him to myself, there was no way I could fool Mae, or even gentle Alice.

  “All right,” I said, giving her a playful scowl. “I’m going. Help me out the window.”

  Pulling on the window frame, Alice and I got it open wide enough for her to help me scramble through.

  It was cold on the roof, and the wind sliced through my cloak, making me shiver. Cadet smiled when he saw me coming; Alice had been right to send me out.

  Taking a flask from his pocket, he twisted off the lid and held it out to me. “To take the chill off,” he said.

  The liquor had a far more agreeable odour than the stale beer Mama used to drink to chase down her Dr. Godfrey’s, but my memories of her stumbling around and crying drunken tears on my shoulder kept me from accepting.

  “No thank you,” I replied with a frown.

  “Suit yourself,” Cadet said, then tipped back the flask and took a long draw from it. Seeing the distaste on my face, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and said, “It’s a bad habit, you’re right. It’s what took my pa’s life. I guess I got used to sharing drink with the boys I lived with when I worked for Dick the Ratter. We slept in a cellar underneath a store on Third Avenue, in nothing more than a pick- and shovel-scarred cave. It got cold down there at night.”

  Spotting Mae and Alice still at the window, he said, “There’s a sheltered spot behind the chimney stack over there—come on, let’s get out of the wind.”

  I followed him to where he’d pointed and found he’d made a private place for himself with a box to sit on, out of sight. Once we were settled together, neither of us knew what to say or do, and our silence stretched awkwardly between us.

  “Do you like it here?” I finally thought to ask, even though I was fairly certain I already knew the answer. The opportunities for a strong, young man like him were many. Surely he was only biding his time until something better came along.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “If you could go anywhere you wanted, where would you go?”

  “Out west,” he answered without hesitation.

  “And leave New York?”

  “In a heartbeat.” He took another swig from his flask. “People find their fortunes out west every day. When I get enough saved, I’m going to get on a train and make my way to California. I’m going to make a new life, maybe change my name.”

  My heart fell at his words. I’d not guessed that his plans would take him so far away.

  Putting a finger under my chin he lifted it until our eyes met. “Kiss me goodbye?” he said with a grin. “You never know when I’ll be gone.”

  I closed my eyes and once again felt the softness of his lips. Reaching for his hand, I held it tight, wanting him to know how much I’d miss him.

  He must have taken my affection as an invitation, because he slipped his hand out of mine and opened the clasp on my cloak. Sliding his fingers between the buttonholes of my shirtwaist he felt my breast where it met the top of my corset. His kisses growing more insistent, he became less like the Cadet of my daydreams and more like Mr. Goodwin, wanting to touch whatever he could in exchange for a few eggs or a half-loaf of bread. I’d wanted so badly to be alone with him, but I hadn’t imagined anything more than our sharing a kiss.

  “Don’t,” I said, pushing him away.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I won’t tell. No one will know.”

  Unsure of what he wanted, I stood up, ready to bolt.

  “I thought you meant for me to,” Cadet said.

  “I only meant for you to kiss me, not take advantage.”

  “I’d never do that,” he insisted.

  “How was I to know?”

  “You shouldn’t play at things you’re not sure of.”

  “You shouldn’t play with the hearts of girls.”

  I waited for him to say something more, but he turned from me instead, and took out his flask for another drink. Feeling angry with myself and him, I crossed the roof and climbed back through the window for the night.

  Alice was sitting on her bed, waiting. Mae was gone.

  “She dared me to go steal us some biscuits from the kitchen,” Alice said. “When I came back, she had snuck out.”

  “She’s tricked us both, Alice,” I sighed, realizing Mae’s deception.

  “Should we go to Miss Everett?”

  “No, we can’t tell on her—Cadet would lose his job, and you and I would be in our own share of trouble.”

  “For the longest time I pitied her for the things she told me about her mothe
r,” Alice said. “I even gave her the few pennies I still had to my name after she brought me here. But it doesn’t seem fair that she gets to be so thoughtless. I’d love to go dancing, to laugh and twirl in the arms of a gentleman at least once before I become a whore. It must be quite nice to never care for the consequences.”

  Cadet caught Mae that night, sneaking back over the roofs after the house was dark and she thought he’d gone to his bed.

  “You mustn’t tell Miss Everett,” she told him, her voice whiny with drink as she came through the window. “She needn’t know that I’m so very clever.”

  “Conniving bitch,” Cadet muttered before Mae pulled the window shut.

  The next day, he turned his face away from me as I passed him in the hall.

  I stopped and whispered, “It’s not your fault Mae got away.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he said, looking at me and frowning.

  Realizing he thought I’d had some part in Mae’s plan, I said, “I didn’t know she meant to leave—”

  “I see,” he said, then turned his back on me once again.

  Another Sunday came and went, and although I didn’t fall apart during my turn in the second parlour, Miss Everett still wasn’t pleased with my performance.

  “I don’t mind if you have sad eyes, or even tears in them—some men like that sort of thing. But you need to make more of an effort to appear willing. Be more like Mae.”

  When Mae got dressed for Sunday mornings in the quiet room, she’d fix her hair into two long braids and pin them up beside her ears in two perfect loops. Tying bright blue bows to the top of her head, she’d make herself into the picture of sweetness and purity. “When I get in there, though,” she said to me once, “I don’t hesitate. I give the gentlemen what they’re after.”