Vera by Carol Edgarian (year 7 reading list TXT) 📕

How could I deny him, even as I suffered having been branded at fifteen with a sober face.

We crossed the road and rejoined Eugenie and Pie, as Schmitz asked, “And what does your mother have planned for your birthday?”

I paused, the question of “mother” being more complicated than the mayor understood.

“I expect we’ll have cake,” Pie said, elbowing me again.

“Ah,” he replied, for he wasn’t listening anymore.

We had come full circle, returning to our block just as Alma de Bretteville was leaving her house. She had changed into a day dress, with an exaggerated bustle, her hair topped by a hat even finer than Pie’s.

She called out, “Hello, Mister Mayor!”

“Alma!” he said, his voice shifting into another register.

If Alma was shocked or even interested to find the mayor in our humble part of town—indeed outside her door—she didn’t show it. They said their how do’s, but the look that passed between them was of a deeper knowing—a look of shared affinities reserved for rascally chums.

“What have you all been chatting about?” Alma asked, prepared to be amused.

“Vera’s birthday,” Eugenie said earnestly.

“I’m just the delivery man,” the mayor explained. “I’ve delivered Eugenie to see her old friends. You know, we used to live not far from here.”

“Oh, well, happy birthday,” Alma said, showing me her best smile.

“Are you on your way?” The mayor offered his arm.

“I am.” Alma hooked her gloved hand to his elbow. Eugenie mutely took the mayor’s other arm. As they walked on, Alma looked back over her shoulder. “Keep the hat, pet. It looks right on you.”

She said it without malice. She wasn’t competing with Pie, after all; her sights were set on much grander things.

“I hate her,” groused Pie as she tried walking faster to keep up with me. “What were you and the mayor laughing about?”

“His future.”

“His future! Do you really think they’ll put him in jail? I mean, has a mayor ever gone to jail?”

I paused. “Don’t you wonder if he’s guilty?”

“Is he?”

“Yes.”

Even so, I wasn’t quite ready to condemn Schmitz. Fathers were the rarest of creatures to me. I didn’t understand the first thing about them. But I liked the fatherly wing he wrapped around Eugenie.

In front of our house, I whistled for Rogue. He appeared from a split in the neighbor’s fence, running as if being chased, his ears flat to his head, tongue lolling. He dashed headfirst into my knees. I assured him he was the baddest boy in all of San Francisco, and he knew by my voice he was adored.

As we ran up our front stairs, I glanced over my shoulder. I was fifteen. Then, as now, I was impatient. Then, as now, I was in full possession of my adult mind. I had no power, no experience. My worldview was as flat as my girlish chest and as hollow as my longings. I was neither winning nor sweet. I was alone in every room I entered. But I could see things.

I could see where I was and where I needed to go. So, I made my birthday wish. I flung my heart high over the dairy farms of Cow Hollow, to Lafayette Square, which sat like a fat queen on the throne of Pacific Heights. There at the top of the hill was a great house of many rooms, where my real mother lived. I saw her just a few times a year: on Christmas Eve, and on a random night when the flesh trade downtown was running slow, and on this, my birthday.

I was always wishing to be with Rose.

At midnight, hours from now, she’d send for me. Her driver would arrive in a fancy Buick Model F with glossy red-brown paint and black leather curved seats. He’d approach in the dark, headlamps dimmed, just the chick-chick of the motor, then that too he’d cut, the car gliding noiselessly to a stop in front of our house. And with all our neighbors asleep, no one would be the wiser that the most successful madam of the Barbary Coast, the very Rose of The Rose, was coming to fetch me, no one would know she was mine.

Morie

Rogue headed for the kitchen and his bowl of scraps, but we were wanted in the dining room.

Morie had finished eating breakfast, her plate pushed back to make room for the shuffling of cards. As usual, she was dressed in widow black, her hair faded to the hue of cobwebs, twisted in a tight chignon. A thin, limp hedge of bangs lined her forehead.

“Yah, late,” she said. “Did you wash hands after traipsing that beast?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I was famished and the lie came easily.

Pie hid her hands in the folds of her skirt.

“So, Vera’s hands are clean and Pie’s are not? Faa! Sit. Eat.”

There were plates with chops, burned at the edges, and eggs already cold.

Morie nodded at the present wrapped in cloth beside my plate. “And what is this, eh, birthday flicka?”

I already knew. She’d finagled the print folio of Audubon’s The Birds of America. It was an odd gift; it was my heart’s desire. I hated asking for it but I couldn’t help myself. For months I’d campaigned shamelessly. Birds were beautiful to me. I liked to call out their different species on my walks with Rogue. I liked how the male was brightly colored while the female hid in plain sight.

I told Pie about the folio and she told Morie, and Morie sent word to Rose, who paid for my keeping and theirs. Of course, Morie inflated the price of the prints a dollar extra, but that was tax. The Morie tax.

“Two times I had to send a note. ‘Birds?’ Rose sends back. ‘Why birds?’ ” Morie looked conspiratorially at Pie. “Do you understand this, flicka? I thought we had the bird.”

She glanced at Ricky, my parrot, who was keeping watch from his bamboo cage. Ricky had been my birthday present when I was ten. He liked to ride on