Awake Unto Me (10 page)

While Laura ranted, Kerry gathered a few things and threw them into her shabby old carpetbag. She snapped it together and ran down the stairs with Laura following shouting at her, her fury unabated. Kerry threw on a cap and a jacket. She’d grown a few inches and had become even lankier and looked even more like a boy, Laura noticed, which further angered her.

“Where are you going?” Laura screeched. “Stop.”

Kerry stopped long enough to stare at Laura for a long moment. “Since you don’t want me here, why are you trying to stop me?” She walked out the door, leaving Laura speechless.

*

Kerry remembered the way and it didn’t take all that long. She walked into the Grey Dog and the first person she saw was Sally, facing away from her and looking at herself in the mirror as she smoked a cigarette, puffing out the smoke theatrically. Cigarettes were the new thing for women like Sally. She belatedly saw Kerry standing behind her. She grinned and turned around and rested her elbows on the bar.

“Well. I never. Look what the cat done dragged in. Kerry-o, I’m glad to see you.”

For a reply, Kerry dropped her bag and pulled Sally into her arms and kissed her until they were both gasping. The customers burst into applause. Sally looked into her eyes for a long moment when they broke the kiss, then tugged her arm and Kerry followed her upstairs.

Sally went to find Rose. “I’m not workin’ tonight and don’t try to get me out.” She dragged Kerry into her room and locked the door, then stood against it breathing hard and spoke to Kerry, who was across the room taking off her coat and cap. “C’mere.” They fell on the rickety bed laughing and trying to take off their clothes between kisses. Kerry got her head between Sally’s legs right away, and the whole bar full of pretty waiter girls and drinkers downstairs heard Sally scream.

“I thought you hated me,” Sally said softly, tracing a finger down Kerry’s cheek and over her collarbone and breast.

Kerry lay with her head on her arms, looking at the cracked and grimy ceiling, thinking she ought to feel better than she did. She heard Sally’s voice from a distance. Sally poked her in the side and she looked at her.

“I did, for a time, but I know it wasn’t your fault our scheme went bad. Moe woulda killed you if you hadn’t told him.”

Sally snuggled in close. “I missed you so much, girl. Ooee.”

She and Kerry stayed in her room all night making love.

*

Laura borrowed a neighbor’s carriage, rode to the hospital, and demanded Addison be called. He was quite out of humor when he finally reached the main desk.

Laura said without preamble, “Your little charity case has left and I’m happy about it.” She was perversely pleased to see Addison struggle to keep his temper.

“Laura, you don’t know what you’re saying. I’ll be home in a few hours and we’ll discuss it then.”

Much later, when Addison came home, he drew Laura to sit down on the sofa. “Did she say where she was going?”

“No, Addison, she didn’t say. And, frankly, good riddance.”

Addison scrutinized her for a long moment and said, “You’re overwrought, Laura, and you don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do! I mean every word of it. You don’t know what this is like.”

“Laura, the only thing that poor girl is doing is not listening to you. You must be easier. She hasn’t had the life you’ve had. You mus—”

“I must? I must? I must what? Addison Grant, you’re a selfish, selfish man. You bring this strange girl into our house and I have to be the one to take care of her. You’re at your hospital all day and you don’t know what it’s like.”

“Laura,” Add said sternly, “the only thing I can see is she doesn’t fit your idea of a respectable young woman. Give her time. Don’t try to force this. She hasn’t done you any harm. You’ve upset her and now she’s run away. I’m going to find her. I believe I know where she is.”

*

Leo recognized Addison when he walked into the Grey Dog. “She’s here but I don’t know just where right at the moment. Have a drink.” Leo didn’t reckon he wanted to send Addison upstairs to knock on Sally’s door.

Addison had one drink to be polite, and then he wrote Kerry a note he left with Leo.

*

The next morning, Kerry came downstairs and Leo motioned her over and handed her a note. She read it slowly, using all the work she’d done with Addison.

Then she looked around the Grey Dog.
Same old same old. Laura talks about
me
being disgusting. She has no idea. There’s old Toby moppin’ the puke off the floor so they can reopen and start the whole thing over again. I think Sally’s put on some weight and she smells like a brewery. She’ll be back to whorin’ pretty quick. I think I better go back to Addison’s house and try to make amends and get along with Laura somehow, though I don’t see how.

Sally seemed neither surprised nor angry when Kerry packed up and prepared to leave. She sat on her bed just like always, resting her ankle on her knee and kicking up and down lazily. Kerry wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“I guess you’re just too good for the likes of us now. But happy to oblige you for free, anytime you feel like slumming.” She was smoking another cigarette and her eyes were hard and glittering.

“Sorry, Sal. Guess you’re right and I got to head back to the swells. It’s been nice seeing you.” Kerry put a heavy emphasis on the word “see.” After their first frenzy, it wasn’t good like it used to be. Too much had changed, even in such a short time. Sally looked run-down from too much booze and too much time on her back. But then, maybe that’s how she’d always looked, and Kerry just hadn’t seen it through the haze of lust.

Kerry made her way back to Addison’s house; she couldn’t bring herself to call it home. The visit with Sally left her feeling more dislocated than ever. She knew she couldn’t go back to the Barbary Coast, but she had to do something to get her out of the house and away from Laura. Of that she was very sure.

*

When Kerry returned to the Grants, she went straight to her room without a word to Laura and waited for Addison to come home. He called her into his study to hear her side. She knew it was painful for him to hear, but she told him truthfully what happened.

“Addison, I got to have somethin’ to do, somewheres to go during the day.” Kerry sighed.
To get away from Laura.

“By all means, I think that would be for the best.”

That evening, the three members of the unlikely and unhappy family sat in the parlor and talked. It was more of Addison talking and Kerry and Laura listening.

“I’m at my wit’s end with the both of you,” Addison said sadly. “We must have peace, for all our sakes. Laura, please refrain from insulting Kerry and most assuredly do not hit her. Kerry, I beg you, please, to respect Laura and try to get along. Both of you must come to me with your troubles instead of quarrelling.”

She and Laura wouldn’t look at each other. They nodded their assent, and all three of them chose to ignore the thick tension in the air.

*

Her old friend Teddy Black finally saved Kerry from her long, boring days at home with Laura. She ventured downtown to the Palace in search of him, hoping he was still there and still remembered her after the many months that had passed.

He greeted her with enthusiasm. He cut a suave figure in his uniform and cap with gold braid. “Can you beat it? The place where we used to sneak in and steal food. I heard you left the Barbary Coast. Sorry about Jack.”

Kerry looked away and said nothing; it was still painful to think about his death, and her recent visit with Sally hadn’t improved her mood very much. “Can you get me work in the kitchen?”

“I can get you in the kitchen but not as a cook. The competition for that’s fierce, I’m telling you. They can’t keep dishwashers, though. It’s a brutal job and nasty, too, with all them dirty dishes and the giant pots and pans. My Lord! That’s why no one lasts doing it!”

“I don’t care. Just get me in. I’ll do the rest.”

The head chef, Henri, fixed her with a skeptical eye. He was a stern, mustachioed Frenchman. “Eh. You are a girl? You might have fooled me. You want to wash dishes? Well, then, that is your choice. I am not going to baby you, though,
mademoiselle
. You will make your own way, and if you are not up to the job you will be told to leave.”

“Just give me a chance,” Kerry said.

It was horribly hard work. Kerry spent hours washing dishes that never stopped piling up. She would wipe the sweat off her face and grimly remind herself that it was better than being at home all day with Laura and her theatrical sighing and her nasty little remarks she tried to dress up as advice. Plus, she was making money honestly, and it gave her a measure of pride to have coins in her pocket no one could take from her.

“You need an occupation, I don’t question that,” Addison said, “but surely something better than a dishwasher?”

“Well, I’d rather cook but they don’t have a position there at the moment.” In truth, Kerry knew, she could gain a cook’s position only by the sheerest chance. She was very lucky to be a dishwasher.

At the beginning of her employment, Teddy said, “It’s odd you washing dishes and all. Some of the boys,” he meant the other bellhops, “ask me if you’re my girl and why you wear men’s clothes. I told them to shove off, it was none of their business, but still…” He’d looked so anxious, Kerry almost decided to quit, but the talk had died down.

At six a.m. on a dull, rainy San Francisco autumn morning, the probationary students for the class of 1898 met at the Women’s Ward One of City and County Hospital. Their instructor for the day, Nurse Bennett, eyed her class critically.

“Nurses. Each of you will collect your supplies from the wardroom. We have some cleaning to do.”

The probationers scurried away and returned with their buckets, mops, and sponges.

“Cleanliness is the first principle. The ward must be spotless by six thirty a.m.”

They made their way among the beds of the patients. Beth wondered how the sleeping patients felt about the nurses’ early morning cleaning. The smell of carbolic cleanser wafted up as they laboriously scrubbed the floors.

Nurse Bennett followed each nurse to check her work. She had sharp, beady, dark eyes and the demeanor of a crow. “Hammond. You are missing half the floor.”

“I—” Bennett’s expression silenced Beth, who was on her knees. She resumed scrubbing vigorously. When Bennett moved on, Beth whispered to the young woman next to her, “I suppose she’ll check on us to be sure we don’t leave a drop of water behind. Is this really nursing? We’ve been here for more than a month and haven’t touched a patient. They treat us like a lot of scullery maids.”

Beth’s companion, a redhead named Virginia, snorted. “My favorite task is bed making. How in the world could it possibly matter to a sick person if the corners of their sheets are squared strict military style?”

Beth shrugged. It was, it seemed, a price of admission to the profession of nursing to be able to perform menial cleaning duties perfectly and cheerfully.

Later, Beth sat in one of their nightly medical lectures and yawned. It was a trial to learn anything after twelve hours in the ward, but she fortified herself with black coffee at dinner. Many of the girls would nod off and Beth was determined not to. They were taught several subjects, including, anatomy, physiology, hygiene, surgical technique, and diet. She loved all the lectures, but her favorite were the ones on infectious diseases with Dr. Grant.

She and Virginia were two of five girls who managed to survive their first few months.

On her rare day off, she would go home and sleep for the entire day, which perplexed her parents. It had taken an enormous amount of cajoling, begging, and arguing to get her father to agree to nursing school, and her days spent sleeping allowed him to voice his doubts every time. She ignored his complaints and slept.

The patients made the difference in Beth’s life. When a sick woman or child looked up with gratitude after Beth had administered a healing bath or a soothing medicine, she felt instantly better. All the nurses she encountered, from the probationers like herself up to the school superintendent, seemed to be either one of two types—the healing angel or the exacting taskmaster. Some of them seemed to believe discipline was the secret ingredient needed to recover from sickness or injury.

They frown on sentimentality: the hospital is not a place for the soft-hearted. There is no room for independent thought. Apparently, we’re all to be stamped from the same mold.

The discipline of nursing school extended to the complete control of what little personal time the students possessed. It was left over from the days when the earliest nurses were in religious orders. A nurse was expected to be almost the equal to a sister in chastity, obedience, and devotion.

Most of the girls fretted under the restriction of their personal lives. Virginia joked, “I may never meet a husband unless he be recovering from a broken leg or some hideous malady.”

Beth was unconcerned with meeting anyone. She focused wholly on the work, which wasn’t mentally exacting but was certainly grueling, and she didn’t see how anyone could have any energy left over for social obligations. Beth preferred to spend her free time reading either for pleasure or from a medical text she borrowed from one of the doctors. She ignored the other nursing students, who talked among themselves about their odd classmate.