By the 1890's San Francisco was an entirely different city than the one Mrs. Radford left behind. The streets were paved. The sand was landscaped. Cable cars ran up and down Nob Hill. The Railroad Kings were old or dead, and also the Bonanza Kings, and also the Lawyer Kings. Society had arrived and settled, its standards strictly maintained by Ned "I would rather see my sister dead than waltzing" Greenway. Fashionable women belonged to the Conservative Set, the Fast Set, the Smart Set, the Serious Set, the Very Late at Night Set, or the highly respectable Dead Slow Set.
There were still many more men than women in the city, an imbalance that resulted in a high percentage of unrequited passions. Afflicted men consoled themselves with horse-racing, graft, and, most frequently, with liquor. Any woman whose nerves did not compel her to depend on Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound (alcohol, dandelion, chamomile, and licorice) or Jayne’s Carminative (alcohol and opium) or Dover’s Powder (opium and ipecac), could count on the advantage of sobriety in her dealings with men. The destabilizing effects of widespread heartache combined with widespread drunkenness were somewhat alleviated by the rigging of local elections.
The city was propelled in equal parts by drunken abuse and sober recompense. In those days every steamer that docked in San Francisco Bay was fitted with a large box. Each box was the same — pinewood, a sizable slot edged with brass, and the words "Give to the Ladies' Relief and Protection Society Home," burned in a circle about the open mouth. After the wreck of the S.S. Rio de Janeiro, one of these boxes was found floating past Alcatraz Island, and, miraculously, the money was still inside. When levered open, the box contained rubles and yen, lira and pesos, all shuffled together like cards.
Successive treasurers for the society counted out coins stamped with the profiles of queens they couldn't name and birds they'd never seen. Some of the coins were worn so thin there was no picture at all, just the polished disk with no clue remaining as to its history or origin. Occasionally during rough seas someone would donate a holy medallion, usually Saint Christopher. Once a box contained a single amethyst earring with a small drop pearl.
It was still charity, it was still begging, but it bore the semblance of adventure.
Lizzie Hayes wore one of the more puzzling coins on a chain around her neck so every time they looked at her, the people of San Francisco would be reminded that she needed their money. The coin on the necklace was imprinted with a mermaid, curled into a circle, her hair so wide and wild it netted the tip of her own tail. If anyone asked, Lizzie said it was the currency of Atlantis.
Lizzie Hayes had been a volunteer for the Ladies' Relief Home for almost ten years, its treasurer for three. She had few intimate friends, but attended two churches, Grace Church and St. Luke's Episcopal, which was good for her soul and also for fund-raising. In the spring of 1890, she was a spinster who had just seen her fortieth birthday.
She was in the cupola, sorting through a box of donated books, when one of the older girls came to tell her Mrs. Mary E. Pleasant was at the door. "The front door," the girl said. "She'd like to speak to you."
Culling books was surprisingly dirty work and Lizzie could feel a layer of grit on her hands and face. She wiped herself with her apron and went downstairs at once. She’d never spoken with Mrs. Pleasant before, never been in the same room with her, although two years ago she’d waited on an over-loaded streetcar while the driver made an unscheduled stop so that Mrs. Pleasant could ride. Mrs. Pleasant walked the half block to the car, and it seemed to Lizzie that she had walked as slowly as possible. She had given the driver an enormous, showy tip.
Lizzie had also seen Mrs. Pleasant on occasion in her opulent Brewster buggy with its matched horses from the Stanford stables. Mrs. Pleasant dressed like a servant, but she had her own driver in green livery and a top-hat and also her own footman to attend her.
If she hadn't ever seen her, Lizzie would still have recognized Mrs. Pleasant's face. It was one of the most famous faces in the city, appearing often in editorial cartoons, particularly in The Wasp. (Although, in truth, the last drawing had not actually used her face. Instead, a black crow had peered out from underneath Mrs. Pleasant’s habitual bonnet.)
"Now I never cared a feather’s weight for public opinion," Mrs. Pleasant had been once quoted as saying, "for it’s the ghostliest thing I ever did see." It was fortunate she thought so. Here are just a few of the things people said about Mary Ellen Pleasant:
She'd buried three husbands before she turned forty, and in her sixties had still been the secret mistress of prominent and powerful men. At seventy years of age, she looked no older than fifty.
She had a small green snake tattooed in a curl around one breast. She could restore the luster to pearls by wearing them.
Although she worked as Thomas Bell's housekeeper, she was as rich as a railroad magnate's widow. Some of the city's wealthiest men came to her for financial advice. Thomas Bell owed his entire fortune to her.
She was an angel of charity. She had donated five thousand dollars of her own money to aid the victims of yellow fever during the epidemic in New Orleans. When she got to heaven, she would soon have the blesséd organized and sending cups of cool water to the sinners below.
She practiced voodoo and had once sunk a boat full of silver with a curse.
She was a voodoo queen and the colored in San Francisco both worshipped and feared her. She could start and stop pregnancies; she would, for a price, make a man die of love.
She trafficked in prostitution and had a number of special white proteges with whom her relationships were irregular, intimate, and possibly Sapphic. She was responsible for all of poor Sarah Althea Hill-Sharon-Terry's mischiefs and misfortunes.
She ran a home for unwed mothers and secretly sold the infant girls to the Chinese tongs.
She was the best cook in San Francisco.
Here is what people said about Lizzie Hayes:
She would have married William Fletcher if she could have got him.
No one had asked Mrs. Pleasant to come into the parlor. Lizzie found her standing just inside the heavy oak door under the portrait of philanthropist Horace Hawes, with his brooding Lincolnesque looks. No one had offered to take her wrap, a bright purple shawl, which she had nevertheless removed and carried over one arm.
Lizzie Hayes had not kept Mrs. Pleasant waiting, but neither had she taken off her work apron. Mrs. Pleasant was better dressed. She wore a skirt of polished black alpaca, a shirtwaist with a white collar, gold gypsy hoops through her ears and her usual out-dated Quaker bonnet, purple with a large brim. She noticed the apron at once; Lizzie saw her famous mismated eyes, one blue, one brown, flicker over it, but her facial expression did not change. Her skin was finely wrinkled, like crushed silk, and she smelled of lavender.
There were no courteous preliminaries. "I've brought you a girl," Mrs. Pleasant said. She’d come to California forty years ago with the miners, but never lost the Southern syrup of her vowels. "Named Jenny Ijub. She’s just come off a boat from Panama. Her mother took sick on the voyage and was buried at sea. When I ask how old she is, she holds up all five fingers. Quiet little thing. She doesn't seem to know her father."
One of her hands rested on the little girl's hair. Mrs. Pleasant dipped her head as she talked, so her face was hidden by the bonnet brim. "I have my friends at the docks. I’m known to care for such cases." As her face vanished, her voice grew softer, more confiding. She knew how to make white people comfortable.
She knew how to make them uncomfortable. Where had she really gotten the child? Lizzie felt the contrast between them. Mrs. Pleasant was tall, elegant, and spotless. Lizzie was short, dusty, squat as a toad. She was a person who rumpled, and not a person who rumpled attractively.
She cleared her throat. "We have a waiting list." Lizzie would have said this to anyone. It was the simple truth. So many in need. "And I'd have to be certain of her age. She's quite small. We don't take children under four years."
"I'll have to find somewhere else, then." Mrs. Pleasant smiled down at Lizzie. It was an understanding smile. Seventy-some years old and Mrs. Pleasant still had all her own splendid teeth. She stooped a little and aimed her smile farther down. "Don't you worry, Jenny. We'll find someone else who wants you."
Lizzie looked for the first time at the girl. She was dark-haired and sallow skinned. She had sand on her shoes and her stockings, it was impossible to get to the Home without sand, but was otherwise as clean as could be. Neatly and simply dressed. Hatless, but someone — Mrs. Pleasant? — had woven a bright bit of red ribbon into her hair. Her cheeks were flushed as if she were too warm or embarrassed. She did not look up, but Lizzie imagined if she could see the girl's eyes they would be large and tragic. She held her back stiffly; you could deduce the eyes from that.
Lizzie hated saying no to anyone about anything. Saying no, however you disguised it, was a confession of your own limitations. It was not only unhelpful, it was galling. She reached out and touched Jenny's arm. "I have some discretion. Since she really has no one. We'll find a bed somehow. Would you like to stay with us, Jenny?"
Jenny made no response. Her eyes were still lowered; she had one knuckle firmly hooked behind her front teeth, and her spare hand wrapped around the cloth of Mrs. Pleasant's skirt. When Mrs. Pleasant was ready to leave, Jenny's fingers would have to be pried apart.
"That's lovely then," said Mrs. Pleasant. "Now I know she'll have the best of care."
"We might even find a family to take her. Be better if she had a bit of sparkle. Don't put your fingers in your mouth, dear," Lizzie said. She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a silver bell. "This is how we call Matron," she told Jenny. She rang the bell twice. "We have two Jennys already, but they are both much older than you. So we must call you little Jenny. Shall we do that?"
The bell sounded very loud. Jenny's fingers twisted inside Mrs. Pleasant's skirt. Mrs. Pleasant knelt. She pulled a violet-hemmed handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped Jenny's mouth with it. She had the face of a grandmother. "Listen," she said. "You must be brave now. Remember that I'm your friend. I'll send you a present soon so you'll see I don't forget you either." Mrs. Pleasant said these things quietly, intimately. It was not for the matron to hear, but she arrived just in time to do so.
"I hope your present is something that can be shared," the matron told Jenny as she took her away. "If you have things the others don't, you can't expect them not to mind."
The matron was a fifty-year-old woman named Nell Harris. She had come to the Home as a charity case; she had stayed on as an employee. She had soft-cooked features and a shifting seascape for a body. Her bosom lay like a pillow on the swell of her stomach, rising and falling dramatically with her breath. Her most defining characteristic was that no one had ever made a good first impression on her.
She took Jenny down to the kitchen and offered her a large slice of wholesome bread. "Mrs. Pleasant gave me cake," Jenny told her. The kitchen counters were piled with dishes, half clean, half not. Two young girls in aprons were washing; one more was drying. That one smiled at Jenny and flicked her dishrag. The air was wet and warm and smelled of pork grease.
"And that's all it takes to make you think she's nice as pie. She gave you away pretty fast, didn't she?" Nell said.
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