Orphan #8 (34 page)

“Give my best to that dear girl Mary,” Mrs. Abrams called as Rachel went out the door.

“I will,” Rachel lied.

It was past noon by now, but Hop Alley still seemed half asleep. Rachel had heard the rumors and imagined what businesses lay behind the shuttered windows—opium parlors, gambling halls, brothels that catered to unfaithful husbands and wifeless Chinese men. Rachel mounted the fire escape steps, her shoes slipping on the slick metal. At the second-story landing, she pulled at the door handle. It stuck, then popped open, flinging Rachel against the railing. For a second she thought she’d fall, imagined Mrs. Abrams reading a notice in the
Denver Post
about a bald white girl found dead in Hop Alley.

But she didn’t fall. Regaining her balance, she entered Mrs. Hong’s House of Hair. It wasn’t a showroom. Rachel understood why Mrs. Hong always went to Madame Hildebrand’s dressing room. Stage actresses and wealthy socialites wouldn’t come themselves
to this barren space. Paint flaked from the plank floor and plaster had fallen away from the masonry walls, exposing ragged patches of brick. Bare bulbs dangled from wires like descending spiders, augmenting the weak light filtering in through filmy windows. A worktable occupied the center of the room. Along the walls were shelves of wig forms labeled in Chinese characters. Rachel wished she could decipher the names of the women whose heads they represented.

A curtain of bamboo beads skittered open and a little girl stopped at the sight of Rachel. She called back in excited syllables, and in a moment Mrs. Hong herself appeared. Rachel had expected a more imposing figure, but the woman was petite, her braided hair pinned around her head like the route on a treasure map. She wore a square black jacket and shapeless trousers, which Rachel assumed were confined to the workroom—she’d never seen a woman walking around Denver in such attire. Rachel thought if she had passed her on the street in a skirt and blouse, she might have taken Mrs. Hong for Cherokee instead of Chinese.

Mrs. Hong sent the little girl back through the beaded curtain. An expert at summing up a woman from her clothes and bearing, Mrs. Hong assessed Rachel. She noted the hem of a fashionable dress and the expensive hand-stitched shoes but couldn’t figure the old-fashioned wool coat. Something about the girl didn’t quite add up. The hat, however—Mrs. Hong understood instantly what the cloche hat was hiding.

“Welcome to Mrs. Hong’s House of Hair, but please, this is where we make the wigs. It is not a place for a lady to come. We could make an appointment for later today if you would allow me to visit your home.” Mrs. Hong gestured toward the door.

“No, wait. Madame Hildebrand told me about you. I met her in Leadville, at the Tabor Opera House. She let me try one of your wigs.”

Mrs. Hong’s dark eyebrows arched into narrow bridges. “But Madame Hildebrand has never been here.”

“No, I know, but I passed by this morning and I saw your sign.”

Mrs. Hong relaxed her outstretched arm. “Madame Hildebrand is a very discerning customer. Are you also a singer?”

“No, I was just in the audience. I met her backstage.” Rachel was too nervous to explain properly. She tried again. “I brought this.” Rachel stepped up to the table and placed her package on it, folding back the newspaper. In the dreary workroom, Amelia’s hair glowed and flickered. “Madame Hildebrand said your wigs were expensive, but you see, I already have the hair. How much would it cost to make it into a wig?”

Mrs. Hong touched the braid. The hair was gorgeous. She could see from Rachel’s coloring it had never been her own, but how she had acquired it was none of Mrs. Hong’s business. What she did know was that it would be a pleasure to work with this hair. Still, it would need to be washed and combed, divided and sewn. It would keep her girls busy for weeks, not to mention making the custom form and the cap. She knew what price she’d give to Madame Hildebrand in similar circumstances. She doubted this Leadville girl had the means, but she named that price anyway, as any businesswoman would.

What little color there was in Rachel’s cheeks drained away. The price Mrs. Hong gave was double what she could earn in an entire year. Madame had been right; Rachel could never afford to
have something so beautiful. Struck dumb by disappointment, she began wrapping the braid with shaking hands.

Mrs. Hong read the authenticity in Rachel’s reaction. Accustomed to dramatic bouts of bargaining for everything from bolts of silk to baskets of onions, Mrs. Hong had expected her first price to be countered, but now she saw she’d aimed too high and frightened the girl. “Wait,” she said, placing her hand on the braid. The hair came alive under her palm, curling around her fingers. She made another guess about Rachel. “Doesn’t your father want to pay for the wig, as a gift for his lovely young daughter?”

Rachel shook her head. “I’m an orphan. I work as a nurse’s aide at the Hospital for Consumptive Hebrews. I’ve saved most of three month’s pay, but . . .” Rachel’s voice faded as she considered the pittance in her pocket.

Mrs. Hong, however, asked, “How much do you have?”

Rachel realized she wasn’t being refused—Mrs. Hong was negotiating. She berated herself for not bargaining the way Mrs. Abrams had over the horse carving. Rachel took the bills out of her pocket and placed them on Mrs. Hong’s worktable. It was all the money she had in the world.

“And this is what you earned in three months?”

“More than that. That’s my earnings.” Rachel divided the pile; the money she’d taken from Naomi was still creased where it had been folded to fit into her shoe. “And this is my savings.”

Mrs. Hong calculated. Because the girl was providing the hair, the sum on the table would cover her initial expenses for materials, but it was labor and skill that made her wigs so precious. She longed now to transform the crackling braid on her table into a
head of hair, imagining the business she could drum up by showing it off, but she needed to make some profit. “This isn’t half what it will cost me, out of my own pocket, to make the wig. I have a business here, mouths to feed, rent to pay. I’m not running a charity.”

Rachel tried to regain her bargaining position. “I can pay you most of what I earn for the next”—she did some math—“the next seven months, but I need the wig by September. I’m going back east for nursing school, so it has to be finished by the end of summer.” Rachel was surprised by the words that came out of her mouth. She’d only meant to set a limit for the price of the wig, but as soon as she’d expressed the idea, she was taken by the possibility.

Mrs. Hong tallied the total and considered the girl’s offer. She wouldn’t lose money, but she would barely profit. She needed something to sweeten the deal. Since the stock market crash, people everywhere were losing jobs. Mrs. Hong wondered if this girl could keep hers through the spring and into the summer. Maybe. Maybe not. It was a bet Mrs. Hong was willing to make.

“I’ll tell you what, Leadville Orphan Girl. You give me all you have now, as a deposit, and I will begin making the wig. You keep up the payments every month. With your final payment on September first, the wig will be finished, and it will be yours.”

Joy spread over Rachel’s face. Mrs. Hong wondered if the girl knew how beautiful she was. “Yes, of course, I will, Mrs. Hong, I’ll come next month and every month.”

“There is one more thing. This is a very special price. If Madame Hildebrand or any of my other customers ever hear what I let you pay, they’d be furious. I am taking food out of my own mouth to
make you this offer. And I will be doing all the work before you finish paying. What if you don’t pay me after all? I need some protection.” Mrs. Hong paused. “If you miss a payment, or don’t pay in full by September, I keep the hair and the wig and everything you’ve paid so far. Agreed?”

Rachel did, eagerly. What was money to her if she could anticipate having Amelia’s hair for her own? The little girl was called out from behind the beaded curtain and sent running into the alley. She returned in minutes with a wrinkled man who carried a roll of paper and a box containing ink and pen. In Cantonese, he wrote out two copies of the terms of Mrs. Hong’s agreement with Leadville Orphan Girl. Mrs. Hong took up the calligraphy pen to create the character of her name, and Rachel signed as well.

“Now then, let’s get to work.”

Hours later, Rachel left Hop Alley in the last light of the winter day. All of her money and Amelia’s hair were with Mrs. Hong. In her pocket, a folded piece of inscrutable paper was all the promise she had that she would get everything she bargained for.

The next day, Mary asked Rachel why she hadn’t visited her. Too full of excitement to keep it to herself, Rachel told Mary all about the Opera House and Madame Hildebrand and Mrs. Hong’s House of Hair. Without mentioning the theft of Amelia’s braid, she told Mary that yesterday she’d gone to the shop and bargained hard with the wig maker, settling on a price she could afford for a lovely wig made from dark red hair.

“Why red?” Mary asked. “You’d look more natural as a brunette.”

“She had these braids of hair for me to choose from, and that one just seemed so alive.”

Lingering with Mary’s lunch tray, Rachel recounted the rest of the afternoon she’d spent at Mrs. Hong’s. “She had me sit in a chair, and one of the little girls—”

“Eat this, will you? I haven’t touched it. What are the girls’ names?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Hong always talks to them in Chinese. I’ll ask her next month. Anyway, she sat me in a chair. You know that ointment, Vaseline? Well, Mrs. Hong rubbed that all over my scalp. Then one of the girls handed her strips of gauze dipped in plaster, and she wrapped them around my head like a mummy. I had to sit there for a long time while the plaster dried, then she cut it off my head with a scissors.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“I was, but the little girl held my hand, and Mrs. Hong said, ‘Don’t worry, Orphan Girl, nothing’s going to hurt you.’ Then after she took off the plaster cast, the other little girl washed my head. They’re both so adorable. I started to sing the alphabet song just to entertain her, and she sang along! I didn’t know she could speak English. But then Mrs. Hong sent her into the back room. She’s very strict with the girls.”

“Are they her daughters?” Mary blotted her mouth with the napkin. It came away spotted with blood. She hid it under her pillow.

Rachel had wondered this herself. Mrs. Hong ordered the girls around like servants, but it was no worse than the monitors at the Home. What did Rachel know, anyway, of how mothers treated daughters? “I don’t know. I’ll see if I can find that out, too.”

For the rest of the month, Rachel’s workdays flew by. Her afternoons off were spent visiting Mary, and each Friday evening,
she helped with the Shabbat dinner, the table filled out by interns from the hospital invited into the warm circle of the house on Colfax. The day after collecting her next wage envelope, Rachel made her way back to Hop Alley to make her payment to Mrs. Hong. She lingered at the workshop, her curiosity emboldening her to ask about the girls.

“This one, I call her Sparrow, because she chatters all the time, and that one I call Jade, to make her strong. Now go, do your work!” The girls darted into the back room. Mrs. Hong lowered her voice. “They call me ‘auntie,’ but they’re nothing to me. Their mother pays me to keep them, teach them a trade. Their fathers were customers, Chinese men, but she doesn’t know which ones.”

Rachel parted the beaded curtain to watch the girls at work. Sparrow was combing out long strands of hair, and Jade, the older of the two, was operating a sewing machine, stitching layers of hair to strips of linen. The way they worked made Rachel think of girls in a garment factory, though where that impression came from she wasn’t sure.

In April, Mrs. Hong asked Rachel to stay in the workshop. “I need you for a fitting.” She lifted a tightly knit cap off a plaster form and settled it on Rachel’s scalp. With a long needle and silk thread, Mrs. Hong plucked at the cap, snugging it to cup the back of Rachel’s head and hug her temples. As Mrs. Hong worked, Rachel asked her how she came to have the wig shop. Instead of answering directly, Mrs. Hong launched into an oblique story.

“When the Chinese men came to America to build the railroad, they weren’t allowed to bring their wives and children. After the railroad was finished, some of them went home, some stayed here. The railroad crossed Indian country, and some of the Chinese men
set up trading posts on the frontier. Sometimes an Indian woman would stay with the Chinese man, to work in the trading post. If the Chinese man decided to come into Denver to open a laundry, the woman might leave her people and follow him, wash the clothes, have his children. The white people write the laws so the Chinese man can’t bring his own wife here, but they don’t mind if he lives with an Indian woman he will never marry.” A hardness came into Mrs. Hong’s voice and she seemed to speak more to herself than to Rachel. “The white people, they think Indians and Chinese are both dirty, no matter how clean we make their shirts.”

After a minute of silence, Rachel asked, “What happened to Mr. Hong?”

Mrs. Hong straightened her back. “What makes you think I ever got married? Married women work themselves to death, all their money goes to husbands who gamble it away. Why would I ever do that to myself? I call myself ‘Mrs.’ because my clients like to think I’m a respectable widow. Ladies are always suspicious of a woman who isn’t some man’s wife.”

Before Rachel left, she stopped in the back room to wave good-bye to the girls. She thought it sad that they didn’t go to school, and cruel when Jade whispered how their auntie kept them locked in the shop when she went out on a delivery or to take an order. There was no one to rescue the girls if Mrs. Hong exploited them, no recourse if they were treated harshly. Maybe she should mention it to Mrs. Abrams? Then Rachel reconsidered Sparrow and Jade, their features too Oriental to pass for white, their skin too light to conceal their mixed parentage. Rachel thought of their mother’s profession and knew there was a worse kind of life Mrs. Hong was saving them from.