The Virgin Cure (8 page)

“Kiss my cheek and all will be forgiven,” she said as she bent towards me.

Mama had never allowed me to kiss her. She said that kissing was something people took far too lightly, and that the genuine affection that was meant to occur when lips met flesh had long ago been lost. For a moment, I wondered if Mrs. Wentworth, like Caroline, was giving me some sort of strange test.

“Go on, child, do as I say.”

My lips touched her pillowy cheek, and I found myself inhaling the heady scent of flowers. It wasn’t like Mama’s rosewater or her lavender soap. This was spicy and strong, like nothing I’d ever known.

Next to the broth Caroline had served, Mrs. Wentworth’s perfume was the only other scent that had gotten my attention since I’d arrived. The house seemed almost without smells at all, pleasant or foul, leaving me to wonder if the upper class existed on a different sort of air from the rest of the world, a breeze piped into their homes from above the clouds, so clean you had to pay for it.

As I made to move away from her, Mrs. Wentworth reached out and took my chin in her hand. “What a face you have,” she said. “So willing and so full of promise.”

She fixed her gaze on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to return it. Instead, I settled on looking at the ribbon that trimmed the edge of her corset. The entire garment was adorned with pink lace and ruffles of a shade that matched the canopy over her bed. The longer I stared at it, the more I wished it were mine.

While many women believe in the powers of the corset—to create a diminished waist, heaving bosoms, and an accentuated female form—science has proven that this insidious garment is no friend to the fairer sex. Constipation, indigestion, shortness of breath, and fractured ribs, are the least of the injuries caused by the device. Over time, it causes internal organs to become misshapen and displaced, greatly diminishing the volume of the lungs and pressing the liver violently upward, threatening imminent bisection.” —from
Against the Corset
, by Dr. S. Fonda (See
figure 1
.)

I’d asked Mama a hundred times for a corset. “Even the kind with rope for stays would do,” I’d begged. But Mama knew as well as I did that a corset was the surest way to turn a girl into a woman before her time. It brings the body into a desirable shape, taking a girl’s breath away, causing her to dream of whirling around a dance floor or riding a galloping horse—her only chances to fly.

Fig. 1

All the dresses I’d ever worn had been made for a girl, with buttons up the front, or a short row down the back that could be fastened easily at the nape of the neck. They were second-hand dresses bought a bit too large, with hems that could be taken up, and later let down. The frock I’d brought with me from home was one I’d found sticking out from between two crates behind Mr. Goodwin’s shop. I’d spotted the skirt first, its sad ruffle coming apart, snaking down into a muddy puddle. Both the sleeves had been torn as well, but aside from the mottled way the fine-checked gingham had faded, there was nothing that couldn’t be repaired. Much to Mama’s dismay, I’d filled it out nicely, my breasts looking like more than two knobby lumps, my hips almost round enough to rest a basket on when I walked.

“You favour your mother,” Mrs. Wentworth said, still staring at me. “You have her lovely dark hair and eyes.” Trying to get me to look up at her she asked, “Tell me, who were her people?”

The ladies who went slumming on Chrystie Street often asked the same question of me. Perfectly fashionable and modestly snobbish, they came from parish halls and ladies’ societies or on behalf of Miss Jane Clattermore’s Home for Wandering Girls to peer into our windows and our lives, one hand holding the front of a skirt, the other keeping a peppermint-scented handkerchief to the nose. “Poor little dears,” they called us children, as they dropped pennies into our hands, taking care not to touch us.

I hated them almost as much as I hated the surly, knock-kneed boys who hissed at me and called me “dirty little Gyp.” They’d yell after me from down the street, telling me to wash the ugly off my face and go back where I came from. I’d run home feeling sad and angry, and scrub my face with salt until it burned, wishing that at least one of them would fall in love with me and that all the rest would die.

“Just stay away from them,” Mama would say, throwing up her hands at my tears. “And stop stealing my salt. You’re never going to be a golden-haired Alice with a long neck and freckled skin. You’ve got the Black Dutch in you.”

I’d liked the way the words had sounded coming out from Mama’s mouth,
Black Dutch—rude
and proud all at once, like her. The Jews and Gypsies and Swarthy Germans all claimed Black Dutch for themselves. It meant that however they looked, they could be whatever they liked, that they had good beginnings and acceptable blood.

“Don’t be shy now,” Mrs. Wentworth urged. “You can tell me.”

Mama’s voice echoed in my head, but the words that had once seemed so defiant, so sure, now felt like they had little to do with me. My skin and my heart were never the same as hers. They were fairer, perhaps even weaker, somewhere in between her Gypsy blood and my father’s unknown roots.

“Black Dutch,” I answered. “My mother’s Black Dutch.”

Dearest Mama
,

I am doing my best to please Mrs. Wentworth
.
I hope my wage proves to be enough
.
Did you know I was to be a lady’s maid?
It’s better than serving in the scullery, but more
difficult than you can imagine
.
I have much to learn
.
I miss you
.
I miss hearing my name
.
Your daughter
,
Moth

M
r. Wentworth’s portrait graced the wall of Mrs. Wentworth’s sitting room—a grand-looking likeness of the man, set to stare at his wife’s back while she was seated at her desk. The collar of his shirt was stiff and high, wrapped round with a tie so full it nearly covered his chin. What the tie couldn’t conceal (even under the careful hand of the artist) was the weary slant of Mr. Wentworth’s jaw. The dour-faced gentleman’s eyes were dark and searching and had far more to say about regret than accomplishment. Seated in a chair that was larger and more imposing than the one paired with his wife’s desk, Mr. Wentworth had a walking stick in his hand and an eager-faced hound at his side. Both the dog and its master were curiously absent from the house and Mrs. Wentworth’s life.

The first time I entered the sitting room was to serve the lady her afternoon tea. I found Mrs. Wentworth standing and gazing at the painting. Before taking her chair she approached the portrait, touched the edge of its frame and said, “I’m waiting.” Her voice was steady, her lips not quite turned into a half-smile.

Halfway through the hour, Mrs. Wentworth took up the fan that was dangling from her wrist and tapped it on the arm of her chair. After gaining my attention, she touched the tip of the fan to her cheek. I thought she meant to show me a drop of tea that was lingering there, so I quickly reached for a napkin and moved to wipe her face.

Waving the napkin away as I came near, she shook her head with disapproval. “You’re to kiss me, not clean me,” she scolded.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, giving a short bow before bending to bring my lips to her cheek. It was a kiss given in haste, and far less gentle than the one I’d placed on her cheek that morning.

Grabbing me by the arm she held me fast and said, “You should’ve known what I wanted.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wentworth,” I whimpered, hoping she’d soon let go.

She did not.

My awkward and tardy show of affection had caused her to lose all patience and she meant to punish me for it.

“Kneel down and bare your wrists,” she ordered, her eyes narrow with anger.

Frightened by this change in her, I pushed the sleeves of my dress past my elbows, knelt and held my arms out.

“It’s the soft of them I want,” she complained, circling her fan in the air to show she wished for me to turn them over. “And you’re to keep your hands open, no fists.”

Unsure of what might happen if I refused, I did as I was told.

“That’s better,” she said, as she raised her hand, the fan tight in her grip. Then she brought the thick of the fan’s guard down on my arms, so hard I couldn’t help but cry out. I knew she didn’t mean to stop.

“Please,” I said, wincing from the pain the blow had left behind. “I’ll do better, I promise—”

But she paid no attention to my pleas. Five, six, seven stripes appeared as she continued to smack the tender part of my wrists, red lines burning in a row. Mr. Wentworth and his dog looked out from the portrait, eyes blind to the cruelty that was being heaped upon me and the tears coming down my cheeks.

Mrs. Wentworth had chosen the fan that morning out of a drawer filled with gloves and garters. It was a beautiful thing, the sticks and guard made of bone, the image of a dragon painted on its silk—tail snaking around, eyes wide, tongue lashing out.

The look on the dragon’s face had reminded me of a dead horse I’d once seen on the side of the street when I was small. Two men had been arguing over the animal—one grousing over who should have to dispose of it, the other muttering of secret poisonings and evil deeds. A gang of guttersnipes soon gathered, pushing and shoving, daring one another to touch it, take its eyes, even piss in its mouth. The horse’s head was nearly larger than the whole of me, but I walked right past the bickering men and sat down next to the poor creature. Curling up in the curve of its neck, I shooed away the flies so I could marvel at its eyelashes and stroke its velvety nose. My bare knee touched its skin, rubbing against the wormy scars that had been left behind by its master’s whip. “Sleep well,” I said to the horse thinking it deserved at least a bit of kindness.