Since George was never going to be a prostitute, or get married for that matter, or go to school, Madame sent her with a suitcase and some money so she could have a short apprenticeship with a woman in Sainte-Adèle who was an expert in the secrets of pregnancy and childbearing.
George returned knowing all there was to know about the secret life of fetuses. She knew how to use forceps. In fact, she bought a pair for the brothel. She had a portmanteau of gynecological instruments that looked like the skeletons of small dragons. Everyone was impressed by her savvy in that regard. That she would be able to think of their needs before they happened. She reached into a womb and turned a breech baby around. She didn’t have any qualms about it. She understood the human body as well as any anatomy student might. One prostitute was having terrible cramps. It was clear the baby had died. But her body hadn’t yet miscarried it. George had no problem with the task of fishing the baby out.
And when any of them needed to terminate a pregnancy, George could do that in a jiffy. In fact, because she had never killed a girl, others from all over the city came to see her at the brothel.
She was surprised at how long some of these daughters and maids waited before asking her for an abortion. Some of them would lie too. They would tell her that they were only a month pregnant. And then when the baby came out, it would be so perfectly formed and tiny, obviously five or six months gestation. It looked like a perfect baby.
They would beg her to take it. She hated that. It was illegal. She would be thrown in jail. She had that bag filled with instruments she could never explain to authorities. She suggested they bury the babies in the garden. But they said the ladies of the house like to garden. And what would happen if they found the small skeletons in their hydrangea?
George might have carried on this way her whole life if one afternoon, when she was twenty-three years old, she had not come across a beautiful rich girl in a filthy cloak being accosted under the awning of an oyster shack.
CHAPTER 26
The Seven Lovely Sins
Sadie got a better look around the brothel in the morning. When the sunlight came up, you could see all the stains and destruction enacted on it. There were red wine stains on the wallpaper and floors. The carpets were black in the center where too many shoes had tread. You could make out what the carpets were intended to look like only along the edges near the walls. Then you could see they were green with yellow pineapples. The carpet had expected the delicate feet of Victorian girls walking soundlessly down the stairs. But instead it was the heavy footsteps of men with a girl flung over their shoulder with her ass in the air.
There really wasn’t much use repairing the house. Because when the sun went down, all those stains and scratches vanished and the house looked fancy and illustrious all over again.
There were notches on the wall. They noted the height of some of the children who’d grown up in the brothel. George’s name was there.
Sadie imagined George at four years old standing against the wall getting measured. And then turning around excitedly to see how tall she had gotten.
She knew she would become very good friends with George. It was very different from her friendship with Marie. George was so forthright and generous. It seemed she would share anything she owned and anything she knew. She trusted George, and she had never trusted anyone before. They had only just met and George was putting Sadie’s feelings above her own.
Sadie was very interested in meeting the other women who worked at the brothel too. Madame was an older woman who wore a burgundy dress with an enormous skirt and a tight bonnet on her head. It was a mystery what might be found underneath her large skirt. One might imagine if she lifted it, there would be a small puppet theater underneath, where all the puppets were having delirious sex.
The women all came down for breakfast at one o’clock in the afternoon. Their stockinged feet hurrying across the landing were like a group of rabbits that had been flushed out of a bush.
Madame liked to hire exclusive prostitutes. And by exclusive, she meant women who were willing to engage in any theatrical and depraved requests without hesitation. Sadie was interested in the prostitutes working at the brothel. She thought she would one day write a book based on them. When she was finished with the book about herself and Marie, of course. She found the prostitutes were similar to the girls at boarding school. They had often been exiled for some peculiarity that made it impossible for them to live with their families. Sadie began to interview the girls, looking for the sin that had caused them to fall.
An Irish girl named Maureen’s sin was Gluttony. She had been scorned by her family for being obese. This was a particular tragedy because she was rather pretty. So by gaining weight, she was ruining an opportunity that not all girls had. She had taken being beautiful entirely for granted. “When I eat, the whole world disappears. I feel like I’m a cloud in heaven.”
It hadn’t occurred to Sadie that being fat could be regarded as an offense that would cause you to be sent away like a murderess, like herself. The fat of Maureen’s belly made it seem like she had the cutest baby pig on her lap.
* * *
A French girl named Marthe’s sin was Lust. “I was caught masturbating. I started touching myself. It was so wonderful. But I didn’t know it was something other people knew about. So I thought I was doing it discreetly. I stuck a cucumber between my legs. I rocked gently back and forth. And I reached the point of ecstasy and I cried out. The reverend happened to be over for dinner that night.”
* * *
Louisa, an Italian girl with curly hair, was guilty of Sloth. “I was so lazy about my physical appearance.” Sadie believed it immediately. The buttons of Louisa’s vest were in the wrong holes. Her hair was lopsided on her head so that her hat was perpendicular to her ear. The madam was always sending her back to her room to straighten her attire up. She seemed incapable of looking immaculate like the other girls. The other day at dinner, she had a milk mustache over her mouth the entire evening.
* * *
A slender, mixed-race woman named Carol was guilty of Wrath. She had been bit by her mother’s toy poodle. She had taken it by the throat with both hands and had strangled it.
* * *
Anne, who was of Scottish descent and had come from a middle-class family, was accused of Envy. Before she got married, her sister shared everything with her. Her sister shared all her toys with her. If Anne admired a pair of stockings she was wearing, her sister let her try them on. If her sister discovered a pretty way of fastening her hair in a bun, she taught Anne the technique at once. But then she got married to a very handsome man and she had no part of it at all.
“How did you seduce him?” Sadie asked.
“I looked at him a few seconds more than was normal. I couldn’t believe how easy it was.”
Anne poured herself a glass of carbonated soda. Sadie stared at the bubbles rising from it. It was as though there were a tiny fairy drowning at the bottom of the glass.