Page 39 of If Looks Could Kill

At times like these—are there, in fact, times like these?—you take stock of your situation.

I could never go back to the Salvation Army. My roommate was a monster. We had a murderous Bowery madam and her armed pimps after us. I had no answers and no plan. We sat in the cobwebby room of a total stranger, herself another monster.

On the other hand, by a miracle, I had found Pearl and somehow gotten her out.

If I hadn’t found her when I did, she’d be dead by now.

Chopped in pieces, and worse. Her head, her Medusa head, would in all likelihood have ended up the star exhibit at a Bowery dime museum.

Bought on the criminal market. Preserved in a jar.

My little Salvation Army girl companion.

Violated. Brutalized. Mutilated like those poor women in London.

I kept these thoughts to myself as I helped Cora and Freyda dust and air out their bedroom. I made sure to recover Mike’s coat and mine in the process. Now Cora was having a bath, and Freyda was shaking out a yellowed nightdress she’d found in a trunk.

I poked my nose back into the room Pearl occupied. She lay quietly under the covers, breathing steadily. Thank God. Sleep would do her good, especially after such a day as this.

I returned to the other bedroom and found Freyda clad in the ancient nightgown, seated on the edge of a bed, watching her toes trace lines in the Persian rug.

I sat down beside her and wrapped an arm around her.

“You look like you’re an actress in a historical tableau,” I told her. “A Revolutionary War ghost, perhaps.”

She plucked at the yellowed gown. “Make me something more interesting,” she said. “A banshee. No. A woman wailing for her demon lover.”

Demon lover! I would not tell a living soul how my thoughts flitted to Mike just then.

“Made you blush, didn’t I?” observed Freyda.

She nestled her head against my collarbone. Poor Mike was freezing outside, but after all Freyda had suffered, and for our rescue project, no less, I couldn’t leave her comfortless now.

“You know something?” she said. “The whole time I was there, I thought, ‘Now I’ve done it. There’s nobody who knows where I am. Nobody who’ll ever find me.’?”

Freyda’s fears had been more correct than I liked to admit. I’d only found her because I’d gone looking for Pearl, who’d gone looking for Cora.

“I would lie in bed and pray, ‘Please, God, send those Salvation Army girls to find me.’?” She choked out a bit of a laugh. “I haven’t prayed in years. Haven’t been much of a believer in anything.” She took a slow breath. “Funny how appealing belief becomes when you have nowhere else to turn.”

“Why pray for us to find you,” I asked her, “and not your family or close friends?”

She shrugged. “You were the only ones who could possibly guess where I was. But first, you’d have to notice me missing.” She wiped her eyes on her yellowed sleeve. “And that’s what’s so astonishing. You did.”

I pressed my eyes shut. “Not soon enough.”

Freyda had no words for a time.

“I’m so sorry that we ever involved you in this,” I told her. “I never meant for you to—”

She pulled back from me in some alarm.

“Don’t,” she said. “I made my own choice.”

“But you never would have thought of it if we hadn’t planted the idea,” I insisted. “You proved to be a much more faithful rescuer than either of us.”

Freyda seemed lost in thought for a spell.

“I was inspired by what you wanted to do,” she said at length. “I have to live with my choice,” she added, “but I made it. Nobody else but me.” She paused. “That’s hard enough without me having to comfort you in your own hand-wringing about it too.”

It wasn’t a slap. There was no anger in her words. But it felt like running into a brick wall. She was right. Once again, the very deeds I thought were nice or kind had more to do with me than another. Had I always lived in such a bubble of complacency and self-deceit?

I shook myself. Never mind me and my petty remorse. I had to think of Freyda.

I looked up to see her watching me. Her words rang in the silence between us. I made my choice. Nobody but me.

But why had she made it? Why Freyda, the one who herself had warned us about the dangers of entering a brothel? She, who had lived in the city for ages and knew better. Why?

As if reading my mind, she spoke. “I did want to help your Cora,” she said slowly. “That’s how the idea first took root. But…”

“What idea?”

“I thought I could do one better than Nellie Bly,” she said miserably.

“I thought, if she can enter Blackwell’s Island and pretend to be insane and sell half a million newspapers, I could enter a notorious madam’s lair and pretend to be ‘fallen.’?” She laughed bitterly.

“And me, such a nice little Jewish girl.”

Freyda was many wonderful things—brilliant, brave, with a biting wit, not to mention loyal and committed—but “nice” wasn’t quite what I’d have called my hard-talking, almost-trouser-wearing anarchist friend.

“Your family must be worried sick,” I said. “Should I get a message to them?”

She was silent for a while. “I don’t know how to go to them with this.”

I leaned back and looked into her eyes. “How long were you in there, Freyda?”

She kicked at the faded carpet. “Six days.”

Six days. No turkey dinner. No menorah. No latkes.

“After six days, won’t your family fear you’re dead?”

She couldn’t speak.

“Tell me,” I said softly, “who waits for you at home?”

She gulped. “My mother and father. My younger brother and my younger sister. And my baba.” Her breath caught in her throat.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Your… baba?”

“Babushka,” she explained. “My grandmother.”

The mention of her baba seemed to unlock something. Her face contorted with sorrow.

“Tell me about them,” I said.

She took a shuddering breath. “They’re very… observant,” she said. “Devout.”

I nodded.

“They already think I’m a scandal. That America has corrupted my morals.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” I pointed out.

“That’s not how they’ll see it,” she said.

“They won’t see much difference between entering a brothel to free a trapped girl and expose an illegal operation in a newspaper article and entering such a ‘den of sin’ for immoral purposes.

” She imitated someone, perhaps her mother: “?‘What nice Jewish boy will have you now?’?”

“Freyda,” I said, “don’t you think they’ve been pining for you ever since you left?”

She couldn’t look at me.

“Won’t they be overjoyed to know you’re alive ?”

Her breath caught in her throat.

“I think,” I said, “you should let them speak for themselves.”

She turned toward me hesitantly.

“I mean,” I went on, “before you arm yourself for battle against what they might say, see what they actually do say.”

She sighed. “Can we talk about this tomorrow? Can’t I just sleep tonight?”

I rose from the bed. “Of course.”

I was almost out of the room when Freyda’s voice stopped me.

“Tabitha,” she said, “do you have snakes for hair too?”

My hand went to my skull. Nothing there but my normal hair, more rumpled than not.

“Not that I know of,” I told her. “Good night, Freyda.”

“Are you going to tell me more about Pearl?” she asked drowsily. “That could be my new feature. ‘Snake Woman Buttons Up Bowery Brothel.’ ‘Medusa Outmaneuvers East End Madam.’ Editors love headlines with alliteration.”

“Good night , Freyda.”