“Who are you?” She said the words carefully. “Why you want me?”
“My name is Molly.” I paused. What did I say next? I’ve come to deliver you back to your husband? I wished I knew how the law stood in New York. Could she legally be forced back to her husband? Was she officially his possession? Was I going against the law by hiding her? I didn’t think Daniel would take kindly to finding his own bride fined or in jail for aiding and abetting a fugitive. But neither did I want to send her back to a man like Lee Sing Tai. I needed time to think. If I could get her to Sarah’s settlement house, then she’d be safe for the moment and I could buy myself some time. “I’ve come to help you get away from here,” I said.
“Where go?” she asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“You can’t take her out onto the street around here. She’d be seen,” Mrs. McNamara said. “That man’s spies are everywhere and you can’t let her go back to him, the monster.”
“Did he treat you badly?” I asked.
She nodded. “He make me do bad things. He say I belong to him now. He pay my father plenty money. He want I give him son pretty damned quick.”
“So you definitely don’t want to go back to him?”
“I no go back. I kill myself first.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We must think how to get you away from here, and then we can plan your future.”
“She’ll need some clothes first,” Mrs. McNamara said. “She came here in her nightgown.”
“How did you escape?” I asked.
She gave me a shy smile. “I hear church bell and look down on street. I see there is church, so close. So I wait see which day is Sunday. When it’s hot night, master sleep on roof. He have boy bring me to him, and when he don’t want me no more, he send me away again. So this night he think boy take me downstairs. But I come back up again. I hide on roof. When master sleeps I go on roof as far as I can, and when I can’t go no more, I jump to next roof.”
“Goodness,” I said. “How far was it?”
“Far,” she said.
“Weren’t you scared?”
“I think if I die, is better than to stay with him.”
“How did you get down from the next roof?”
“Down iron stair outside,” she said.
“Fire escape,” Mrs. McNamara corrected. “She came down the fire escape—can you believe the nerve of it?”
“Fire escape,” she agreed. “And then down pipe to ground.”
“Wearing your nightdress? Didn’t people see you?”
“Middle of night. Nobody in street. I wait in alleyway and hide in garbage. When people go church, I go too.”
“In your nightdress? Or did you have clothes with you?”
A sly smile crossed her face. “I steal sheet from laundry hanging on next roof. Throw down to street. I put it over head like this.” She demonstrated. “Make me look like nun. People not look at nun. I go in church and I wait. I think where there is church, there will be nuns. They will help me. They will not want me to live in sin.”
“Live in sin?”
“The brute never intended to marry her. He brought her over here as his concubine,” Mrs. McNamara said, hands on hips.
“I go to hell if I am with a man and not married to him. That is what nuns say.”
I put my hand on her arm. “That’s not true. If you were forced to do things you didn’t want to, then it’s not your fault. You won’t go to hell, I promise you.”
She gave me a sad smile. “When man come to mission and say that rich Chinaman in America want me for bride I am happy. Nuns say Western life very civilized, say it’s good I live in Christian country where women are respected. And I be bride of rich man. Never go hungry. But I come here and I find he already has one wife. He call me wife number two, but that is not true. Jesus say only one wife.”
“So he already has one wife?”
She nodded. “She old woman. Very mean. Not want me there. She call me concubine. Tell me terrible things.”
So those had been the fingers I had seen of the person behind the drapes. The old woman who did not welcome a new young bride.
“She tell me I no better than slave. I have to do what master want. Do what she want. And if I no give master a son pretty quick, he put me away, send me to house of fallen women.”
That was no idle threat, as I had witnessed.
“I’ll do what I can to help you,” I said. “Where would you like to go?”
She gave a helpless shrug. “I know no one in America. I can’t go home. No money and family not want to feed me. That’s why they sent me to nuns when I was small. Too many daughters. Not want to feed me. But then when man come to village, my father happy to get money for daughter he didn’t want.”
It sounded as if she’d had a rotten life all around so far.
“Were the nuns kind to you?”
“Nuns okay. Very strict,” she said. “Punish with stick. But I learn reading, writing. I like learning. I good student, so not punish much.”
At the very least she could be a nursemaid or companion, I was thinking.