“How are the men supposed to know that you are for sale?”
“Walk past a man and then turn around and look back at him. He’ll know. That’s an invitation. Sometimes I lift up my skirt just a bit higher than anyone would think was appropriate.”
The women started laughing at this. Clearly they felt she raised her dress far higher than that.
She demonstrated to Sadie. She took a theatrical step back from the other women. The prostitute raised the front of her skirts and Sadie could make out her petticoats that were soiled. She had striped white-and-red stockings, and there was something so childlike about them. Sadie realized, looking at the prostitute’s stockinged legs, just how young she was. She realized she had been mistaken about the girl’s age. She had thought her to be much older, but now realized she was only about fifteen years old.
“What’s a fancy woman like you want to know for?” another prostitute, whose dark, slicked curls looked as though they had been painted on her forehead, asked her.
“What makes you think I’m fancy.”
“The way you talk,” they all answered at once.
“You want to work on this corner and take our business, do you?”
The prostitutes started surrounding her. They all started cursing her. She tried to leave, but they began pulling at her cloak.
“Your dress is expensive under there. Why don’t you hand it over?”
Sadie was suddenly pushed up against the wall as the prostitutes began to tear at her clothes. A slender man wearing a long black coat and a beaten-up top hat stepped between Sadie and the women and held up his hand. The women backed away. Sadie was stunned to see she had a protector. The man was very young and strangely thin. He put his hand under Sadie’s arm and led her away down the street. The man moved with a peculiar lightness, almost as though he were dancing. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He exhaled the smoke through his nose and it curled to form a white mustache. He looked at Sadie with his large eyes that were framed with very long lashes and smiled sweetly. Sadie didn’t feel at all alarmed by the presence of a man as she usually did, which surprised her.
She was even more confused when the voice that came out of the slender man’s mouth was high-pitched and soft, and clearly that of a woman.
* * *
The slender man with the voice of a woman introduced herself as George and asked her to wait. George went back to the group of prostitutes, who were still hanging around nearby, and pulled a handful of flyers from her breast pocket to give them. The women looked at them dismissively.
George returned and again took Sadie by the arm. “Don’t worry about them,” George said. “They have strange ideas about having a good time.”
As they walked away, Sadie half expected the women to come after her. Instead, all she could make out was the sound of them all laughing. She imagined that no matter what circumstances they found themselves in over the course of a day, they would end up having a good laugh about it. Laughter was like tossing a bucket of water on any inflammatory situation.
Sadie turned her attention to her protector. She was very odd-looking, and unattractive by any classical standards of beauty. But the way she walked in her masculine getup was charming. And she nodded and winked at everyone who passed as though there wasn’t a single person she considered a stranger.
“What were those pieces of paper you gave them?”
“They are some pamphlets about women’s suffrage. They were mailed to me by the suffragette society in New York City, if you can believe it. I wrote to them one afternoon, and they wrote me back! And sent along those flyers to educate my own countrywomen. My full name is George Danton, by the way. Actually, my given name is Georgina Danton, but you know, George suits me better.”
“I’m Sadie. Sadie Arnett. Of 54 McGregor Avenue. Except not anymore, of course.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Sadie Arnett of uncertain address.”
George’s sense of humor was infectious, and Sadie felt herself become calmer.
“You have an intelligent face. It’s not one I would forget. What brings you to this neighborhood?”
“I ran away from my home in the Golden Mile.”
“Do they have British accents up there now?”
“I lived in England for nine years. I’ve been here since the morning.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t have any run-ins before you met those women.”
“I hope I don’t run into them again.”
“Well, come over to my home for a cup of tea then.” George took off her top hat, twirled it on her finger, tucked it under her arm, and looked at Sadie.
“All right,” said Sadie.
“Wonderful!” George said with great enthusiasm. Sadie wondered if she was dead and this was an angel, because people were never so amenable.
Sadie was surprised when George led her to a large house on the corner of a street that was brightly illuminated by gaslights. It was one of the few stone houses in the neighborhood. It had gorgeous wooden moldings below the peaked roof that were covered in carvings of symmetrical flowers. It had clearly once been a fancy farmhouse before the ghetto had sprung up around it. From the music coming out the window, the sound of women’s laughter, and the men walking up and down the front stairs, Sadie deduced at once it was a brothel.
“I know the last thing you’re in the mood to see right now are whores. But don’t worry about it. These girls aren’t worried about competition. If anything, they would welcome the help. As soon as Madame began advertising the brothel as exclusive, business has been booming. Nobody has any idea what she means by exclusive, though. Is it the girls who are exclusive? I don’t think so. They show up at the door without shoes. Not ever even having had a bath in their lives.”
“Do you work here? Are you exclusive?”
“No.” George laughed. “But I’m certain I would be considered exclusive!”
George put her hand on Sadie’s back and led her away from the front of the building. Sadie reflected on how gentle George’s touch was. There was something naturally considerate about her. They entered through the back of the building. Sadie couldn’t make out much of what was going on in the brothel. They were in the servants’ quarters of the house. All she could make out was laughter and hysterical piano playing from the next room. George hurried her up a flight of stairs to a room in an attic, taking Sadie’s hand when she needed to step over a pile of porcelain washbasins that had been left on a landing.
It was evident that George had done her best to render her attic room cozy. There was an oval-shaped painting of a deer standing on its hind legs. There was a cigarette burn in the painting. Everything was slightly damaged. That was how it came to be moved up to the attic, out of sight. There was a red carpet that had a large black hole in the middle indicating it had survived some sort of fire. And there was a bed whose mattress seemed to have been slept in for a hundred years.