Page 9 of If Looks Could Kill

Pearl turned and started striding back down the Bowery toward our base camp. “You know what this means, don’t you?” she said. “It means this is your fault.”

Of all the injustices this girl had heaped upon me, this was a new low. I ran after her and tugged at her sleeve. “What in God’s name can you possibly mean?”

She whirled about so fast, I almost collided with her. “She asked for directions,” she said angrily. “I immediately offered her The War Cry . But you insisted I direct her to Spring Street.”

I threw up my hands. “It’s common courtesy! Anybody would—”

“We aren’t called to be like ‘anybody,’?” she said. “We have a ministry. A very specific job. Nobody is just another person to us. Everyone is a soul in need of rescue.”

I backed away from her. “You sound like a fanatic.”

“Maybe I am.”

I realized then that her eyes were red.

“I can see it now,” Pearl said, her voice thick. “She comes to the city for a job. She’s probably running away from home because she’s angry at her parents. For something trivial. She doesn’t look poor, but she spends her last penny of pocket money to get here. Classic runaway.”

Pearl paused and looked away until she could find words to continue.

“She shows up at her job,” she continued. “She’s been promised something—a singing role in an opera. Or a position as a maid.” She swallowed hard. “But that’s not what happens.”

A shudder passed through her. She couldn’t go on.

Tabitha Woodward, for shame, I thought. You’re more angry right now about being wrongly blamed than you are about the horrid fate of that poor girl.

“I’m sorry,” Pearl said dejectedly. “This wasn’t your fault. This was mine.”

I blinked in bewilderment. Did I miss something? An apology? From Pearl ?

“How do you mean?”

She started walking. “You’re new,” she said. “I’ve been doing this longer. I know better.”

What’s worse: being blamed or being patronized?

“I feel awful about the girl,” I told her, “but I don’t see how this is either of our faults. I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”

She sighed. “What if,” she said, “instead of giving her directions, I had succeeded in getting her to hear our message? What if, instead of going to the Lion’s Den, she had come back to the base with us?

What if, instead of feeling she needed to walk through that saloon door to survive—she was probably counting on the ‘room and board’ they’d no doubt promised—she’d had a meal with us at the base and given her life to the Lord? ”

I didn’t know what to say to this. That was a lot of ifs.

“And what if, when she explained to us what brought her to the city, we realized quickly how she’d been duped and warned her against going?” She sniffed. “To a known bordello, where a life, a short life, of entrapment”—she swallowed—“and horror awaits?”

Ah.

“And what if we could’ve helped her make it safely home, before her life was ruined?”

I willed myself to speak gently. “You can’t live life that way, Pearl,” I said. “Torturing yourself with what-ifs. We can’t see the future. None of us knows what’s about to happen.”

“Exactly,” Pearl cried. “No one knows how much life is left to them. We get only one chance to talk to any particular person. Most people will never give us that chance. So when someone comes up and willingly talks to us, we need to seize that chance.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“This isn’t just religion,” Pearl said quietly. “Salvation isn’t only about heaven. To be saved is to be safe . To keep people safe from the clutches of all that would destroy them.”

The hollow look. The rouged cheeks and lips. The dark black lines about the eyes.

The fresh-faced girl in pigtail braids.

“Nothing,” Pearl continued, “not even polite manners or… or social convention should stop us from sharing the message we’ve been sent to give.

To everyone. No matter what.” She cast me a sidelong look.

“We’re here on a rescue mission, and we can’t forget it.

A soul is worth so much more than… us looking silly. ”

I took a deep breath. “I’ll try to do better,” I said. “To remember what we’re here to do.”

She nodded, once. We’d reached our base, and the smell of dinner cooking downstairs wafted out to greet us.

“But I don’t think we’re doing that girl any favors by dwelling on what might have been,” I said. “We see the tragedy. The question now is, what are we going to do about it?”

I had Pearl’s attention, but she couldn’t let herself hope. “Do?” she said. “What can we do?”

“You said it yourself,” I said. “We’re here on a rescue mission.”

A new gleam appeared in her eyes. “Yes,” she said slowly, “we are.”

“If we steered her wrong,” I told her—big words, too big—“it’s up to us to fix it.”

We sat, distracted and preoccupied, through the Hallelujah Spree (no easy task).

We went home to our barracks—meaning we went home to the tenement flat we shared with two other volunteer women.

(Everything was styled like the military in the Salvation Army.) We spoke no more of the girl.

We changed into nightgowns and went to bed.

Pearl went to sleep. I stewed over the events of the day, trying to make sense of them all. Not the events; the people. At the center of it all was Pearl.

And me. Me and her. Why did it have to be me and her?

Wasn’t it good of me to have come here? There; I said it. Childish or no. Wasn’t I good?

Surely I’d been at least a little bit good. I could be at home with Aunt Lorraine, hosting tea parties and shopping for hats. I had truly wanted to make a difference in the world.

Then why wasn’t I assigned to someone else? One who would be a comrade and a friend?

Why was I stuck with this human monster?

Why Pearl?

I could almost admire her, sometimes, when she wasn’t being a sappy, soppy sponge dripping with religion, judging my every move, or otherwise driving me to distraction, such as by floating about Manhattan looking like a pre-Raphaelite maiden in a Salvation Army suit.

Almost.

Her conviction ran deep. She was willing to work. She had courage, or something like it. Stupidity? Who can say? Perhaps it was stupid of all of us recruits in God’s army of salvation to think we could make one single dent in the hell of the Bowery.

But that night as I lay in bed, listening to Pearl sleeping, I remembered the expression on her face when she saw the ribbons, and then when she saw the girl in the window in the rain. Both longings felt similar. To shine, and to serve. Both tinged with heartache.

Perhaps that was what it meant to her to “lay up treasures in heaven.” Perhaps faith mattered so much to Pearl because it was the one bit of beauty she could afford.