Evelyn had sat up in bed, drawing her knees up to her chest. Goldman stared at the floor. He was in prison eighteen years, she said, many of them in solitary, in a dungeon. I visited him once. I could never bear to visit him again. And that bastard Frick survived and became a hero in the press and the public turned against the workers and the strike was broken. It was said we set back the American labor movement forty years. There was another anarchist, Most, an older man whom I revered. He denounced Berkman and me in his newspaper. The next time I saw Most at a meeting I was prepared. I had bought a horsewhip. I horsewhipped him in front of everyone. Then I broke the whip and threw it in his face. Berkman got out only last year. His hair is gone. He is the color of parchment. My darling young man walks with a stoop. His eyes are like coal pits. We are friend in principle only. Our hearts no longer beat together. What he endured in that prison I can only imagine. Living in darkness, in wet, tied up and left to lie in his own filth. Evelyn’s arm had gone out to the older woman and Goldman now took her hand and held it tightly. We know, don’t we, both of us, what it means to have a man in jail. The two women looked at each other. There was silence for some moments. Of course, your man is a pervert, a parasite, a leech, a foul loathsome sybarite, Goldman said. Evelyn laughed. An insane pig, Goldman said, with a twisted shrunken little pig’s mentality. Now they were both laughing. Yes, I hate him, Evelyn cried. Goldman grew reflective. But there are correspondences, you see, our lives correspond, our spirits touch each other like notes in harmony, and in the total human fate we are sisters. Do you understand that, Evelyn Nesbit? She stood and touched Nesbit’s face. Do you see that, my beautiful girl?
As she had been talking Goldman’s eyes reacted to something in Evelyn’s posture. Are you wearing a corset? she now asked. Evelyn nodded. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Look at me, even with my figure I have not one foundation garment, I wear everything loose and free-flowing, I give my body the freedom to breathe and to be. That’s what I mean, you’re a creature of their making. You have no more need of stays than a wood nymph. She took Nesbit’s hands and sat her up on the edge of the bed. She felt her waist. My God, stays like steel. Your waist is pinched tighter than a purse string. Stand up. Evelyn stood up obediently and Goldman with a nurse’s expertise swiftly unbuttoned her shirtwaist and removed it. She unclasped Evelyn’s skirt and had her step out of it. She untied the strings of her petticoat and removed it. Evelyn wore a light corset around her waist. The top of the corset pushed up her bosom. The bottom was attached to straps which went between her thighs. The corset was laced in the back. It is ironic that you are thought of in homes all over America as a licentious shameless wanton, Goldman said pulling the laces out of the grommets, loosening the garment and pulling it down Evelyn’s legs. Step out, she said. Evelyn obeyed. Her undershift remained stuck to her body in the pattern of the stays. Breathe, Goldman commanded, raise your arms, stretch your legs and breathe. Evelyn obeyed. Goldman plucked at the shift, then lifted it over her head. Then she knelt and slid Evelyn’s lace-trimmed underdrawer to her feet. Step out, she commanded. Evelyn did so. She now stood nude in the lamplight except for her black embroidered cotton stockings which were held up by elastic bands around the thighs. Goldman rolled the stockings down and Evelyn stepped out of her stockings. She held her arms across her breasts. Goldman stood and turned her around slowly for inspection. a frown on her face. Look at that, it’s amazing you have any circulation at all. Marks of the stays ran vertically like welts around Nesbit’s waist. The evidence of garters could be seen in the red lines running around the tops of her thighs. Women kill themselves, Goldman said. She turned back the bedcovers. She took from the top of the bureau a small black bag of the kind that doctors carried. A superb body like this and look what you do to it. Lie down. Evelyn sat down on the bed and looked at what was coming out of the black bag. On your stomach, Goldman said. She was holding a bottle and tilting the contents of the bottle into her cupped hand. Evelyn lay down on her stomach and Goldman applied the liquid here the marks of the stays reddened the flesh. Ow, Evelyn cried. It stings! This is an astringent — the first thing is to restore circulation, Goldman explained as she rubbed Evelyn’s back and buttocks and thighs. Evelyn was squirming and her flesh cringing with each application. She buried her face in the pillow to smother her cries. I know, I know, Goldman said. But you will thank me. Under Goldman’s vigorous rubbing Evelyn’s flesh seemed to spring into its fullest conformations. She was shivering now and her buttocks were clenched against the invigorating chill of the astringent. Her legs squeezed together. Goldman now took from her bag a bottle of massage oil and began to knead Evelyn’s neck and shoulders and back, her thighs and calves and the soles of her feet. Gradually Evelyn relaxed and her flesh shook and quivered under the emphatic skill of Goldman’s hands. Goldman rubbed the oil into the skin until her body found its own natural rosy white being and began to stir with self-perception. Turn over, Goldman commanded. Evelyn’s hair was now undone and lay on the pillow about her face. Her eyes were closed and her lips stretched in an involuntary smile as Goldman massaged her breasts, her stomach, her legs. Yes, even this, Emma Goldman said, briskly passing had hand over the mons. You must have the courage to live. The bedside lamp seemed to dim for a moment. Evelyn put her own hands on her breasts and her palms rotated the nipples. Her hands swam down along her flanks. She rubbed her hips. Her feet pointed like a dancer’s and her toes curled. Her pelvis rose from the bed as if seeking something in the air. Goldman was now at the bureau, capping her bottled emollient, her back to Evelyn as the younger woman began to ripple on the bed like a wave on the sea. At this moment a hoarse unearthly cry issued from the walls, the closet door flew open and Mother’s Younger Brother fell into the room, his face twisted in a paroxysm of saintly mortification. He was clutching in his hands, as if trying to choke it, a rampant penis which, scornful of his intentions, whipped him about the floor, launching to his cries of ecstasy or despair, great filamented spurts of jism that traced the air like bullets and then settled slowly over Evelyn in her bed like falling ticker tape.