Still, I passed the afternoon pleasantly enough, adding modest chemises to the traditional, midriff-baring vests that some of the dancers wore with their skirts and tassels. These additions had to be transparent enough to show the women’s stomach muscles, but opaque enough to prevent nice midwestern white people from freaking out. Next there were endless tiny beads and sparkly coins to replace on jackets, pantaloons, scarves, and shoes. As I licked another piece of thread and poked it through the needle’s eye, Aseel sat down next to me and groaned.
“Long day. And we have a performance in a couple of hours.”
I was surprised. “I thought the show started in May.”
“Why do you think the costumes are already so ripped up and broken? I’ve been putting on a preview show for the past few weeks. Two bits a head. We’ve made plenty of dough and the Midway isn’t even open yet.” There was a note of pride in her voice.
I started attaching coins to a bodice, carefully placing them so they overlapped like kissing buttons. “How long have you been dancing with this troupe?”
She sorted through the dish of coins and handed me a few of the right size. “Oh, I didn’t come over with them. I joined up last year, when Sol put a notice in the paper for a manager who spoke Arabic.”
“He hired you as the manager?”
“Well, technically he hired me as a dancer. But then he figured out that I can speak English and Arabic, and that I know how to run a show. My parents are from Egypt, and they owned a saloon back in Arizona. I learned African dances to entertain the guests, but my dad taught me how to run the business too.” She looked down, suddenly sad. “He was a good man. Always treated the girls as well as the boys.”
“Why did you come to Chicago?”
“After he died, my mother remarried and… well, perhaps you can guess. Not all men are equally good.”
“No, they aren’t.” I carefully placed another coin and thought about my past, waiting like an unpopped blister in the future. “Leaving is probably better than the alternative.”
“The alternative… I considered that.” Aseel gave me an appraising look, and I wondered if we were both talking about murder. Then she winked and smiled. “But now I’m here, with my own show.”
Sol poked his head into the dressing room, a fat cigar in his mouth. “I think you mean my show. It’s almost preview time, Aseel.”
She stood, face smoothed into professionalism again. “We’re ready.”
He clapped her on the shoulder with a grin. “Of course you are. Of course.” Then he slipped her an extra two dollars. That was, as I learned, a typical Sol move—he took credit for the show, but he also made sure we knew that he appreciated the real force behind its success. His small gestures made a big difference. Nobody in the show ever questioned that Aseel was their boss.
I was making $1.50 per day, which was actually pretty good for a seamstress in this period. The political gains from suffrage were helping a new generation of ladies move out of their fathers’ houses and into a few limited areas of work: garment-making, nursing, teaching, landscaping, and the arts. Newly founded colleges like UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago opened their doors to a fully coed student body.
Like many other unmarried women of the day, I rented a room in a boardinghouse—a three-story brick building on Dearborn Street that Soph recommended. Her consulting parlors were right down the hall, and that meant a steady trickle of visitors came past my door seeking spiritual guidance.
That night, I lay back on the hard cot in my room, read the Tribune, and eavesdropped on two well-dressed ladies gossiping about how Soph could cure anyone’s broken heart with a prayer. An hour later, three women arrived from jobs in the garment district, their faces drawn and fingers raw. One was crying. “God have mercy on me, but I cannot have this child,” she whispered, voice quavering. “He is not a good man. After what he did to me—” Her sobs came again, a seizure of melancholy. Another shushed her. “Soph can help. We will pray. She knows the secrets of angels.” The third snorted. “You mean she knows a certain midwife.”
As the afternoons blurred together, each one warmer than the last, I witnessed a nearly forgotten facet of feminine culture in the Gilded Age. These were Spiritualists, devotees of a mystical blend of paganism, occult beliefs, and Christianity that was embraced mostly by American women. Soph was one of Chicago’s best-known practitioners.
Watching women demur to men in public and suffer the consequences of their abuse in private, it was hard to believe we were at a transition point in history when women’s growing power could unsettle a long-established social order. But change is never linear or obvious. Often progress only becomes detectable when it inspires a desperate backlash. Which is why I was almost certain to find the Comstockers here and now, laying the groundwork for their malicious edit.
SIX
BETH
Balboa, Alta California… Irvine, Alta California (1992 C.E.)
Lizzy had the biggest car, so she always drove when we did things as a group. Which was good, because it turned out Heather had invited her cousin Hamid, and Soojin had brought that poseur Mark. As we drove to the movies, I wondered whether Mark still had scars from his unimpressive experiments with chest carving. And then I remembered with a nauseated jolt that we’d left Mark’s best friend floating in Woodbridge Lake a couple months ago. Maybe I’d try to be nice to the guy for once.
The double bill at the Balboa Theater that night included Total Recall. As we piled into the stained pseudo-velvet seats in the balcony, I wound up between Lizzy and Hamid. I was a little annoyed at first, but it turned out that Hamid had seen RoboCop on video, and could actually string together a few sentences about it.
“I really liked how RoboCop had those advertisements and news propaganda bits.” He turned to me and offered some of his popcorn. Hamid and Heather hung out sometimes, so we’d met before, but all I knew was that he was a senior who had gotten into UCLA.
“Yeah. I love movies that are violent and funny at the same time. The ads made it seem like Total Recall will be that way too. Plus it’s the same director.”
“Exactly! Paul Verhoeven is rad.”
I’d rarely met anyone who cared that movies had directors, let alone that those directors might have something to do with the tone of the film. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but Hamid was pretty cute. It wasn’t his looks, which were perfectly fine but not particularly noteworthy—he had short black hair and one of those perfect golden-brown California tans that all of us wanted. The main thing was that I liked talking to him. We discussed our favorite directors until the lights went down, at which point I was definitely developing a crush.
We started holding hands around the point where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s eyeballs pop out in the thin Martian atmosphere. It was one of those surreptitious moments in the dark, eyes carefully averted, that I’d experienced half a dozen times with other boys. Usually all that came of it was extra popcorn butter on my fingers and a few awkward glances once we’d returned to the light.
Not this time. During our post-movie excursion to the donut shop, Hamid managed to jam a folded napkin into my hand. Much later in the evening, alone in my room with headphones blasting Million Eyes, I peeked. There was a phone number. Below it, he’d written: “Get your ass to Mars. Or call me. Or both.” Of course I called.