What Once We Loved Read online

  That was the other problem she'd discovered in the interviewing: People wished to bring their own children with them. Suzanne wasn't prepared for the taking on of an entire household. Esther had said the fire last winter had wiped out a goodly number of business establishments, and they hadn't all come back full force. So there had to be people interested in work, especially work that kept them indoors, warm through the winter, and well fed. Suzanne was offering a profession here, of tutoring and training. It required respectable women.

  Even Esty had come up empty. She hadnt found a single reference from the women whose hats she created at her little shop, not one woman she could send to Suzanne with at least some kind of letter of introduction. All the young girls Suzanne had interviewed had arrived in response to the ad Esther placed. Esther said the Sacramento Daily Californian ran her advertisement right next to notices written by husbands back in the States offering rewards for their “runaway wives.” Maybe they thought her job announcement a trick of some kind, so only women of insufficient skill applied. She hadn't thought ofthat.

  “Missis? You all right?”

  “I'm fine. I'm sorry. I got distracted. Just one last question. If I asked your…pappy to describe you to me, not how you look, but your virtues, what's inside you that drives you toward your wishes, what three adjectives might he use?”

  Pig snored at Suzanne's feet, the only break in the silence. At least she must be a kind girl or Pig would not be sleeping

  “I'm guessing I don't know for sure what that word ad-chutives means, ma'am,” she said at last. “But I'm pretty sure I don't got any of them ver-chews. I never did take up chewing or smoking tobaccy, either, and I been real healthy. I wouldn't bring no nits or worms into your house. No need to keep valerean around neither. I don't have no hysteria or nervous disorders needing such kind of herbs. I'm sound as a trail-sawy ox. See, got all my teeth yet. Oh, you can't see. Want to feel them?”

  “Thank you, Miss Edina. I'm sure you are…quite capable. Just tell me what your pappy might say about you, if he wished to compliment you, say something nice.”

  “He wouldn't cotton to such talk, Missis. It be prideful to speak kindly of kin.”

  Suzanne remembered to make herself smile. “I'd say you're honest and sincere. And since I'm not kin, I can tell you that and hope you hear it.”

  “My hearing's real good, Missis. Was you wondering over that?”

  “I think that's all for now, Miss Edina. Can you find your way out? I'll be in contact if I need to speak to you further.”

  “Yes'urn. Thank you, ma'am. And tell your boy it were real nice to shake his little hand.”

  Suzanne heard the swish of Miss Edina's skirts and the heavy thump of the girl's feet as she left. A large girl, most likely. Able to lift Clayton or Sason if need be. But certainly she'd be unable to teach them a thing about good grammar. Suzanne had thought to tell her to stay, that she'd find some work for her, even if it weren't teaching her children.

  No, she had to find the right person, not jump in too soon, not get frustrated and slip off a rock in her haste to make it across this stream. At least Miss Edina was the last interview for the day. Suzanne had forgotten how much energy it took to listen to everything a new person said, to hear the lilt in their voice, the length of a pause, the boldness of a question. What did the shuffle of their feet mean? If Pig barked but thumped his tail on the floor, was that different than if he stood and slobbered at the person's skirts? If they paused, were they thinking, or scheming, about how to answer? Did they sneak little candies from the bowl right in front of her, or did they sit and look at her as though she could see even though she couldn't? She hadn't realized the comfort that came in familiarity, in not having to wonder about every detail of a relationship. She removed her dark glasses and rubbed at her eyes. How could they tire when they did nothing all day?

  She stood, said, “Pig, go,” and waited for the dog to stand, heard him stretch and yawn, then press beside her with the harness she held to let him lead her. She felt for the leather, then started toward the door.

  “There is one more,” Esther told her, startling her.

  Suzanne put her hand to her throat. She'd forgotten Esther was in the room. For some reason, Suzanne resisted simply hiring Esther as the boys' tutor. Perhaps it was Esther's chuckle when Esty told her of the finger talking. As if it was a joke. Esther was set in her ways and came quickly—too quickly—to conclusions. But Suzanne had promised her she would officially consider her for the position. She didn't want to hurt Esther's feelings, though she knew by delaying she was.

  “Would you mind terribly waiting until tomorrow, Esther?” Suzanne told her. “I'm very tired. This is more work than I'd thought it might be.”

  “I wasn't thinking of my own interview.” Suzanne heard frostiness in Esthers voice. “However, there is still another. A gentleman, who has been waiting quite patiently.”

  “You didn't tell me there was a male applicant. I don't think that would work at all.”

  “I told him as much. He said he was hoping to ‘press his case,' as he put it. Seems he had a brother once who was a mute.”

  “Clayton is not a mute! He has words! You didn't say anything like that in the ad, did you?”

  “Certainly not. But I brought Clayton past him each time you had the applicants talk with the boy. And he asked me, having heard nothing come from the child's mouth. People must know something's amiss, or you wouldn't be seeking a ‘compassionate, patient, skilled tutor of young children and reliant mother.'“

  “Maybe the word reliant threw him off,” Suzanne said.

  “You didn't want ‘needy,' you said. And you aren't. You simply have specific needs. That's different.”

  Perhaps she should just give in and let Esther be the one to tend her children, herd them—and her—around. It would be easier than explaining to people about her son. Yet she didn't receive a sense of peace when she thought of Esther being in her employ. That in itself would change their relationship. There'd be the effort of maintaining her fondness for the woman with the worry of offending Esther if she had to correct her actions as her employer. Her boys were counting on her to do what was best. She'd never forgive herself if she said yes to Esther because she didn't work hard enough to find the perfect person. “I'd best interview the man,” she told Esther, hoping her prayers for guidance and vision would be clearly answered.

  “Hey! Is anyone there?” Zane Randolph listened but heard no sounds in the room beyond his own breathing and raspy voice. “You! Surgeon! You going to cut me free? Let me starve to death? What kind of doctor are you?”

  He thought he might ve heard the scurry of a rat, twisted his head to see. Beady eyes stared at him from beneath a dresser. He hissed, and the animal darted behind a cabinet that stood with glass doors open like a dead man's mouth, nothing inside. He looked around, saw the room reflected in a mirror near to him. His own image stared back, a wasted man with broad but bony shoulders. A full beard covered his face, and his throat itched of it. He squinted. White hair? Could that be possible? His hair had turned in a fortnight? A month? How long had it been? He'd heard of that happening, to fearful people.

  His eyes lifted, scanned what he could from his position on the cot. The room was eerily empty. The cabinets no longer held chloroform, bandages, or scissors. A cuplike structure of leather attached to a wooden peg leaned against the bed he lay on, his arms still attached by bandages to the bedside. A spider ran up the wall. But for it and the rat, he was alone. His heart pounded, he felt hot, his chest tight.

  He needed to relieve himself.

  He listened for street sounds and heard none. It was morning, judging by the light streaming through the lace curtains, early morning, so few would be about in French Gulch. Surely the doctor and his wife had not just gone off and left him, not still tied as he was! “Hello! Is anyone there?”

  Silence.

  Yes, he'd made demands on the man, but no more than anyone would, confined
as they had him. What could he actually do to hurt them? He couldn't stand alone, couldn't get away without help. So what did they have to fear? Even when he'd gotten that last drink of water they hadn t trusted him, so what was he to do now, after they'd doused him with laudanum “to keep him calm,” they said while he raged against his bonds. How long ago had that been?

  He heard his raspy breathing, the sign he was starting to panic. How dare they just leave? How dare they take his leg and then leave him to starve to death, alone. Dr. Hollis. He'd find the man, he would. And when he did…

  His body betrayed him.

  He felt the warmth, smelled it, before he saw the stain against the sheet that covered him.

  Suddenly he was small and young and frightened. He was at a horse race, his father too busy to hear his pleas. Blue linen shorts he wore now stained. He heard the laughter as his father doused him in the horse trough. He swallowed water and fear as he fought against the pressure of the man's arms holding him down. He struggled for breath, his fathers face distorted in rage through the ripple of water. Muffled sounds of someone—not his father—shouting, “No, no, Randolph, you'll drown the boy—” pulling him up. He gasped for air, gasped for life, scum from the trough clinging to his face. All the way home he sat beside his father in the cab. He shivered in his blue suit, dreading the sting of his father's whip he knew would finish his night.

  Calm, calm. He steadied his breathing.

  Dr. Hollis would pay for this, he would. No one who harmed him escaped. Not this doctor. And not Ruth.

  Ruth. She put him here. She sent him to prison, kept his child from him, and ran west to escape him. She caused him to take their child, to pursue the blind Suzanne, to take the Wintu woman, too. She made his foot infected, and even now she was why he lay here humiliated in his own stench, bound to a bed, mutilated and aged, waiting. How dare these people abuse him! How dare they simply leave him here to rot in his own stench?

  He heard a door open then, the sound of feet coming through the house.

  Zane swallowed. “Hello!”

  “Ah, so you're awake,” a man with an Irish brogue said as he came to the side of the bed. “Let's be a good one then, Beckworth, and I'll cut you free. Doc said you could flail a bit in your delirium and to advise you what I was about afore doing it. Are you ready to be moving then? Getting something to eat?”

  “Who are you?” He made each word a sentence.

  “Michael O'Malley, former pit boss and miner. Can't say which wore me out more.” He laughed as though he often made the joke. He looked at Zane's soiled sheet. “Ah, and I was getting here too late for you to relieve yourself like a man. Sorry then. But well have you cleaned up in no time. Me uncle had a wooden leg. Got around right smart with it. Took it off and threatened the wee ones with it when he wanted a rest. Never hurt ‘em, mind you. Just waved it about to get him some peace. Let's cut you free now. I got me knife here.”

  “Dr…. Hollis…”

  “Headed out as planned. Never meant to be remaining this late. Surely he would have been in New Orleans and married by now but for your needs. And then on to Oregon, so he says. Near death, you were, as I hear tell. He paid himself from your funds and my wages, too, for a time. Thought you wouldn't mind paying for your care.” He cut the bonds. “There. That's better.”

  Zane lunged for the man, his breathing raspy and raw.

  O'Malley coughed, pushed his hands up under Zane's, and pushed himself away.

  “Here, here. No reason for that now. I've been left to help you. You won't be making it without me.”

  Zane flopped back onto the narrow cot, his heart pounding. He was weak as a kitten. He rubbed his wrists. “Cut my leg free,” he ordered. He scratched at his face, the beard, winced at the pain in his leg when the bonds on his good foot were set free. “Help me up.”

  “Going to sting a bit, you not having weight on it for so long. Your good leg'll feel worse than the bad, but it'll come along.”

  The Irishman was a big man, and he lifted Zane's arm over his shoulder, then swung his leg over the side of the bed.

  The weight of his leg and both thighs dropped down, sending shards of pain so great Zane wanted to cry out. But he imagined Ruth instead. Focused his venom on her. He gasped with the effort. The Irishman twisted him back up onto the cot.

  “Fortunate you still got the knee,” he said. “When you're ready, we'll attach the harness and peg. You'll be hopping about like a young lamb in no time. You rest a bit. We'll try again. I've a crutch made for you.

  “Why would you do this?” Zane asked.

  “You're paying me, sir. Good wages. A gold eagle a day from your gold pouch. No need to be thinking you're taking charity. You're paying. I hope we made the peg the proper length. We'll be bringing you food and tending. You'll be taking baby steps. It'll take time, mind you. You've got to strengthen your good leg, get your muscle back. You'll be walking alone someday. There now. Steady. I'm sure a lad like you has places to be going.”

  Oh, yes. He had places to be going.

  Chinatown, outside Sacramento

  Sometimes, the Celestial known as Naomi dreamed she was Chou-Jou, became that woman who had once been her friend. Naomi remembered the dead girl's pocked face, her wide, flat nose; a Celestial who longed to be accepted as she was but who succumbed finally to living in another world where she was not herself at all. Chou-Jous world turned wild and full of angry outbursts just before she died on that wagon train of women. But before that she had been quiet and sweet. Thick cords and bonds of silk must have kept her tied inside her heart where no one could see but Chou-Jou.

  In her dreams Naomi felt the warmth of the Seth man s hand as he helped Chou-Jou from a wagon, the smile of Ruth who wore a whip at her hip. A breeze brought the softness of the woman named Elizabeth who held people in their hurts. Perhaps they saw Chou-Jou as she was. No, no one could do that, except perhaps The Heart One Sister Esther often talked of. She could not recall the name inside her dream, only remembered him as The Heart One, who could see through everyone and loved them just the same.

  Sometimes in her dreams as Chou-Jou, Naomi felt seen through, the way the sunlight flashed through a butterfly's wings. Known inside and out and yet loved fully. She would rest when that happened, feel light and purposeful and safe. Then she'd stop the dreaming and fall instead into a deep, deep sleep.

  After those sleeps, Naomi would wake, no longer Chou-Jou on her way to dying but as Naomi, wife of a disappointed Chinese miner, living inside a hovel not fit for his goats, let alone his wife. Naomi would wake as a Chinese woman longing to die, but for the mewing sound coming from the corner. A mewing sound that was her child. A girl child considered useless by her husband. She was her mother, a failure, not having given him a son; the husband seeing through her to who she really was.

  She had hidden the fact of the coming infant from him. He had work for her to do—washing laundry in steaming tubs, scraping dung and blood and mud from the clothes the white miners brought her. She made her husband more money than his other slaves, her countrymen whom he forced to sift gold from the once-deserted mines until they paid off the cost of their passage.

  Once she had asked to spend a small amount of his gold dust to visit Sister Esther and her friend Mei-Ling. He had struck her face and hissed like a snake over her cowering on the floor.

  The pains had begun after that. Naomi dreamed that the child floated in the water of her womb despite its pressing early to come into life. Aching, she kept her legs crossed, inhaled long and deep though the infant pushed, demanded to breathe the California air. And then Naomi could hold back no longer, and the wetness and the scent of life had filled the room. With the sight of the girl child, Naomi knew their lives would be no better, no better.

  “You stupid girl!” Dow Yuk had charged when he saw the infant, tiny, suckling as she could at Naomi's breast. Naomi raised her arms across the baby's head to protect it from the blow she knew would come. He struck Naomi's cheek. “Get r
id of it,” Dow Yuk demanded while her face still stung.

  The welt he left joined many scars, the puflfiness of her eyes a common sight.

  “Best put some raw beefsteak on that blow,” a miner bringing his laundry told her. Squinting, he said, “Whooee. That's a bad one.”

  She'd taken the blows to her head and her face as though she deserved them. Hadn't she given him a useless girl child? Hadn't she come to him not the beauty he believed from the photograph of her cousin but a common girl, trained in fieldwork and simple house chores, not the refined woman he imagined he would bed? Hadn't she arrived with feet larger than some men, a sign her family did not care enough for her to bind her and then tend her, as she'd need in order to survive? Yes, the welts and hits she deserved. She was not a woman complete unto herself despite what Mazy Bacon said each woman could become if The Heart One loved her and they returned that devotion.

  She defied Dow Yuk's order about the infant, hiding her daughter, placing her palm over the tiny mouth when she cried. As long as Passion lived, she'd stay.

  She'd named her Passion. A time on the trail, Sister Esther said the word meant “deep feeling.” Naomi had such deep feeling for her baby. She willed her child would have it too, so she would live.

  So tiny, Passion slept inside a box that once held rolled tobacco. On cool mornings, Naomi placed the child at the warming oven of the stove, watching her, picking her up at the first sounds of discomfort. Naomi vowed that she would not dream to be like Chou-Jou as long as Passion looked into her eyes each morning. Instead she would remain the quiet mother, worker, protector.

  When the infant was strong enough to hold her head and then sit and watch the world of her father wearing wide sleeves as he exchanged coins and gold dust with men of pale skin, Naomi would place the child on her back to keep her safe. When no one was looking, she would brush the miners' clothes with more speed, while quickly filling a tiny buckskin bag she kept tied around the baby s waist, filling it with gold dust, readying their escape.