“The driver took me a few blocks to a place where he stopped, let me out, and helped me up the steps. He rang the bell and went away. I gave the card to a colored girl who opened the door. She came back in a minute and asked me to come in—and,” she finished wearily, “I’ve been in Miss Kate’s ever since, kid.
“Miss Kate took me in and dressed me up. She charged me double for my clothes. I pay her, she pays the milliner. It’s the same with all her girls. No girl ever goes into her place unless she is broke and ragged and sick and hungry. I’ve been there two years, and if I stay there twenty years I will still be in debt to her. The longer I stay the more I owe. Everybody charges us double for what we buy. We have to go to a certain drug store where we get robbed. On our days off, Miss Kate takes us around to her friends in the saloons and restaurants, and they rob us. We go out with her because we can wear our best clothes and look good and she shows us off to her customers.
“Once in a while a girl gets so discouraged that she runs out into the street in her wrapper, but she don’t get out of the block. Some other landlady’s door is open and she goes in hoping to get fairer treatment and a chance to save part of the money she earns, but it’s the same old thing. What the madam don’t get goes to the doctors, druggists, hack drivers, and messengers. All we get is enough to eat, enough to wear, and plenty to drink if we’re foolish enough to go that route. God only knows what becomes of these girls when they get too old and ugly. They go down and down from one place to another till they finally land in the street, old, worn out, dissipated and diseased. No man will have them. I guess they go to the river or to the hospital.
“Bad as Miss Kate’s is, it is better than having to trade yourself for a few shabby rags like I did. Miss Kate won’t let drunken men come in and beat us and abuse us. The men we meet don’t lie to us or deceive us like they do out in the world. They come in and look us over just like the butcher used to look at my father’s fat hogs in the fall. We know what they come for; they know we know. So there’s no lying and deception and promising you a job. Of course they will steal your money out of the bureau drawers or your hair brush or a pair of garters or silk stockings, but you soon learn to protect yourself. Sometimes, when they get drunk, they give you a few dollars for yourself, or lose it on the floor and you put your foot on it. Sometimes a girl gets so in debt that she steals a few dollars from the men to spend decently when she can get out by herself.”
“Julia,” I asked, “did you take the hog man’s money?”
“No,” she snapped, bristling. She lied bravely, and I knew it, and respected her for it, somehow. It was one of those lies you know to be a lie and yet believe. The beauty of her lie was that she just let it go with that plain, short “No!” She did not go into any long explanations or excuses, or blame it on anybody else. It was a perfect lie, any way you look at it.
She lied to me and made me like it. My mind was much disturbed by this terrible story, so new to me, and a hundred plans came into it for helping her, but she seemed so independent, confident, and resourceful that I hesitated.
She struck the table with her fist. “If I ever put my foot out of that place again I’ll stay out. I was foolish to go out to-day; it’s so much harder to go back now, after all the fun we’ve had. If I had a change of clothes I would stay away and try to get a job and start over again. I’ve got to get out of there while I’m young and strong enough to work.”
“Don’t go back, Julia,” I advised. “Take my money, get a room and a few clothes. I’ll help you find a job. I know how. I have forty dollars saved up. You take that and we will earn more. It’s at my room. You wait here till I get it.”
“Sit down,” she said. “Sit down. Why, you poor kid, I wouldn’t take your money on a bet. I’d rot in Miss Kate’s first. Don’t you know you are the only human being I’ve met since I left home that hasn’t tried to do me some kind of dirt? I am going to start in saving every nickel this week, and if I can find some way to get a few clothes out of there I’ll kiss Miss Kate’s good-by forever.”