ORINDA
1898
Pip Aims to Put Me in My Place—China Mary Refuses My Request
Pip and I smoked and shared a ham sandwich and watched Wu Lin at his tubs. I pulled my shawl tighter around me. Just the day before it had been hot enough for knickers and a chemise. At noon the temperature dropped and all the leaves along with it. And thus, fall had completed its cycle which is how seasons occur in the desert and Arizona mountains.
I squinted at Pip. “You pay Pascoe’s yet?”
“I will.”
But I knew she had the same empty wallet as me.
“We have been paid minimally for three weeks straight,” I said. “All that money coming in and none of it heading out. So, where’s it go? Is it all under China Mary’s bed? Down some old mine shaft?”
Pip spit a bit of tobacco and took her time blowing smoke rings. She lounged in the chair, knees spread under her skirt and head lolled back so her hair swept on the ground. I envied her wool skirt and jacket, for she seemed content and didn’t crowd into the square of sun with me. “Cockfights.”
I squinted at her. “What?”
“And dogfights. And fan-tan when she heads over to Mammoth every once in a while.”
“But it’s our money she’s gambling.”
Pip shrugged.
“That’s all? You’re just going to shrug? She’s stealing our money.”
“You going to confront her on that issue?”
“I just might.”
“You’re dumber than I thought.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then don’t be dumb.”
“You’re the one that’s dumb. I’m just here temporarily.”
She made some humph-humphy noise.
“Why are you like this?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“So laissez-faire. Those slips of paper she waves around. She can put anything on them she damn well pleases. We pay board and food and anything else that needs replacing, like that silk ribbon I ordered for your swan costume. She says I owe her for that. And she says I’m ahead because I broke even this week, and she was generous and didn’t charge for the extra pillow I took from the hall closet when I had my monthly and wanted some extra comfort.”
“You took two.”
“She does not value our act, Pip. And we have a good act.” I swiped at a fly that tried to batter my head. “She’d be sorry if we left.”
“And where would we go?”
Wu Lin lifted a heavy soaking pile of sheets and slapped them onto a table. Then he leaned the pole to it and took something from a long pocket on his cloak and tossed it near the ocotillo fence. A rush of birds exploded from the limbs, jostling and cawing at each other as they fought for some of the seed. Then it was gone and so were they. Wu Lin returned to squeezing out the sheets and Pip picked at a callous on her palm.
“You’re in a funk,” she said.
It appeared to me Pip was more interested in ripping at the callous with her teeth than remarking upon China Mary’s penurious ways. I folded the wax paper from the sandwich and crushed my cigar in the dirt.
“Where you going?”
“It’s practically snowing out here.”
Pip kept gnawing at her palm and narrowed her eyes as she watched me. “You got any aloe?”
“You keep chewing, you’ll end up with a hole in your hand. And that might go septic. Then you might die.” I took a step to the kitchen door. “And no one will be at your funeral because Verna will have murdered me in my bed prior to your demise.”
Pip snorted. “Why are you afraid of Verna?”
“It’s that look she has.”
“She gives that to everybody. She’s eternally resentful of the world.”
“Well, what’d the world do to her that wasn’t her fault to begin with?”
Pip twisted in her seat to stare at me. “Her husband died in a mine fire at New Atlas and left her next to nothing. Was that her fault?”
“She married a miner, so, yes, I would say she had an inkling of that outcome.”
“And Maggie won’t tell anyone anything about herself, and that means something so dark and awful happened she can’t even speak it.”
Wu Lin clipped a sheet across a laundry line, then threw out some more seed for the birds.
“Darby’s dad beat her so bad as a child she’s deaf in one ear.”
“So that’s why she can’t sing.”
“Stop blaming and throwing around fault.” Pip gave a sharp glare and turned back around. “Verna’s allowed to be mad. It’s better than despair, isn’t it?”
A match flared as she relit her cigar.
“Well, I don’t need to be the recipient of it. And she does not have to be spread-eagled and taking it from every direction.” I pulled the shawl so tight I stretched it round my waist. “She could be a schoolteacher or a, well, not a dancer, she’s terrible at that, but maybe a clerk over at the dry goods or a—”
“Shut up, Ruby.”
“I’m just saying—”
“And I’m just telling you to shut up.”
I clenched my teeth and ground them. “That’s not very nice.”
“Your self-righteousness isn’t very nice.”
“We all have choices.”
Pip’s shoulders raised and lowered with a big sigh. “Grand choice you made singing at a whorehouse.”
I wheeled in front of her. “I’m going to get back my kids. And it was my fault I got on the wrong train that landed me here, and it was my fault before that to keep taking back my sorry husband and it was my fault that I was mesmerized by Annie Oakley because the Wild West is nothing at all like she and Buffalo Bill presented it. I can go all the way back through every situation in my life and I know what I did. I’m planning to get out and I’m planning to make it right. You’re just going to molder waiting around for Cullen to sweep you off to the nameless valley he claims he owns. You’ll still be here, bloomers half down, with boos from the audience to get your aged, talentless, drunken ass off the stage. And your damn horse is going to starve.”
Pip sat stock still, her eyes boring in me, the cigar dangling in her hand and the ash flecking on her skirt and the ground.
“You’re going to catch your dress on fire, Pip.”
She flicked the smoke between us and reached a boot tip out to crush it flat. “You are a self-righteous little shit.”
She spun around and made sure to slam the kitchen door hard enough that it shook in its frame.
I rubbed my neck and blinked, wondering how we’d gone from a nice sit down in the yard to this. I kicked the dirt and went back to my chair, swiping the cigar I had stubbed earlier. I dug around in my pocket for a match, scraped it across my shoe and held it up.
Across the yard, Wu Lin had stopped midway from slinging out another sheet. It balanced in a lump on the edge of the pole.
“What are you looking at?” I threw the match down and stomped to the opposite end of the shared yard, disrupting the sleep of the lone chicken. “You could fly over this fence, you know.”
The couple puffs I took to settle my nerves did not settle them. Instead, I felt as if I were strung onto wire, so taut I might split in two. I shut my eyes against the whole wild country between me and my Emma and John. I had failed them thinking I had saved them. But I was going to get the money China Mary owed me and get on a train to Kansas City. Walk right on up to Rose and say: “Hey, those two kids are mine, so you give them here, sister.”
I took another puff, then coughed. My throat felt ragged, and I realized I was crying. “Well, hell.”
A window wrenched open behind me. “I’ve got plans, too, you know.”
I wiped my nose on my sleeve and peered up.
“Are you crying?” Pip asked.
“No.”
“You are. I can see you are.” She leaned on her elbows. “You’re going to look like hell by tonight’s show, so I suggest you reel in the tears. I’m not going on with someone looks like they got run over by the fire brigade.”
“I’ll cry as long as I want.”
“Then you do that.” She pulled at the window to close it.
“Hey.”
“Hey what?”
“What are your plans?”
“I said I got them. I didn’t say I was going to share them with you.”
I rubbed my eyelids then blew my nose on my handkerchief. “I’ll give you five dollars to tell me.”
“You don’t have five dollars.”
“Well, you won’t know because I am tired of listening to you and am rescinding my offer.” I lifted my shoulder. “I want my earned money. I am going to get it.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. There is never a time better than now. And then I will have five dollars and you will be out of luck.”
At that, she slammed down the window.
* * *
China Mary pushed herself back in her chair until its ribs squealed. She drummed her hands on the slip of paper that somehow added up to my net wages for the week. “You want what?”
“I want to see that paper.” I stood at the far end of the dining room table.
“Why?”
“Because it’s my money, and I want to see how you add it up.”
She rolled her lips from one side of her face to the other. Then she picked the small glasses from her nose and rested them carefully to the tablecloth. “Come see it.”
This, of course, was a dilemma. I could not trust my safety at that point. Verna had a bruise on her cheek that matched the precise location of China Mary’s rings. “You can just slide it across.”
She tilted her head. Her skin took on a mottled, lizard-like hue. “All right.”
“All right?”
“Yes, all right, you can look at the receipt.” She slid it closer with her index finger.
I reached to grab it. She was quick; her claw dug into my wrist and she pulled me around the table, right up close so I could see the gray hairs in her eyebrows before she pummeled my head. My vision went blotchy, then white.
Next I knew, I was flat on the floor, staring at the tin ceiling. I rolled onto my side. Dust and dirt stuck along the baseboard. The bottom of the wallpaper didn’t quite make it all the way down, leaving sections of plaster and horsehair.
It all went blurry.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and blinked in surprise at the tears. They were pink with the blood that had decided to ooze from my head. I’d be docked for the stains it made on the carpet. That made me cry even more.
The door opened and a pair of button-up boots stopped in front of me. Their owner squatted. A handkerchief fluttered before being held to my head. “You really are dumb.”
Pip took me by the shoulders and helped me sit up.
“She could have killed me.”
“Well, she didn’t.”
“Lucky, I guess.” I pressed my palms to my lids. “What am I going to do?”
“We’re going to fix that shiner.” Pip swatted my arm and stood. “It’s going to take a good hour and a whole jar of powder, but that’s what we’re going to do.”