Sadie and Marie never discussed the revolution happening below, or the injustices of the women Sadie had lived with. Sadie had never really understood their plight. She had never been one of them. It wasn’t the absinthe or the opium or the Champagne that was making the two women oblivious of the world around them. It was love, that great opiate. They became so entranced with each other that the rest of the world seemed irrelevant to them. It seemed like something that existed in the past before they had reunited and could never have any bearing on the present.

  * * *

  Marie awoke one night to the sound of a rock breaking a window at the front of the house. Although she never spoke of the revolution to Sadie, Marie knew exactly what was happening. It was the girls from the factories. She had been expecting them. Marie got out of bed. She quickly dressed herself in something simple. She didn’t want help getting dressed. She was going to face these girls alone. She was going to meet them because she was one of them. Whether they wanted to admit it or not.

  She left her hair down. She did not actually know how to look like one of them. She stopped for a moment to see her reflection in the mirror. Even though she was clothed, without her usual trappings she looked naked and too plain. It made her feel uncomfortable in her own skin. It was like she was looking at a stranger when she, of course, needed to feel like herself at the moment. She put a rose in her hair.

  She opened the door of her balcony. It was a balcony that had been constructed to make whoever was standing on it appear stately. In fact, Marie had rarely gone out on this balcony during her whole life in the house.

  If you were to take a peek at the balcony behind the house, you would find it littered with books and fans and a chess set, and a raccoon eating leftover cake on a tray. You would find a lounge chair covered in pillows that had the indentations of resting heads and etchings of strands of hair. But this front balcony was bare and unused.

  Marie stood there quietly. The cold winter wind blew through her dress, but she didn’t feel it. It was as though the window had been left open and a snow drift had blown in. The mob was already shouting demands at her. She could hardly make them out because everyone was screaming all at once. She did hear that they wanted her to come to her factory.

  “Yes, I will go tomorrow,” she said.

  And they all went quiet. She was up on a balcony with a rose in her hair. But for a moment they all thought they were on the same level as her. They had spoken and she had listened. Marie turned and went back into her house. And the crowd decided to return home. They weren’t quite sure what to do with one of their own.

  If she were a man, they would have broken the windows and knocked down the doors. And dragged her outside onto the street to humiliate. When they humiliated men, they felt disgust and contempt for them. They then recognized this was how men regarded them all the time. And it made them even more enraged and merciless. But they didn’t know what to make of Marie and her body. No one ever did.

  They were also suddenly frightened of where they were. When they were in the Squalid Mile, they were able to escape easily into the walls and alleyways like fleeing insects. They had known how to dart in and out of sight since they were little girls. But here they were too exposed. The crowd dispersed.

  When Marie looked back out the window, at the empty street, she noticed three young girls standing there still. They had black bags over their heads. They were small and seemingly weak. But they were all her executioners. The girls all held their hands up with their fingers spread. She shuddered. If you were to count the number of fingers on each girl’s hand, none of them would add up to ten.

  * * *

  Marie climbed into bed with Sadie, who stirred in her sleep and asked, “Who were you talking to?”

  “The revolutionary girls were at the window.”

  “Really?” Sadie said. “You should have woken me up.” And she fell back to sleep.

  The next day, as Marie climbed into her carriage, Sadie ran after her and hopped into the seat next to her friend and said, “I have an errand to run.” Marie let her off a few blocks before the factory, and they agreed to meet later.

  Marie stood in the office of her factory dressed in her business wear. She wore a dark-blue dress and a large navy-blue hat that tipped severely over one eyebrow.

  She wanted to speak to the foremen about the state of the factory before addressing the workers. She felt the tension from all the workers on the factory floor below her. She felt the spell she once weaved was still able to hold them. But she felt it was less. She felt it begin to let up. There was a stillness. But it was the stillness before a storm. It was a pregnant silence. It was a vicious silence. It was the silence of someone biting their tongue.

  The foreman explained there was great unrest in the factory. There was practically an uprising of sorts. The perhaps unusual aspect of this insurgence was that its most radical contingent were young women. She must know there were women all over the city who seemed to be engaged in a collective insanity.

  “It might be better to hold off on the Philadelphia acquisition and use the money to meet some of their demands,” he said.

  Marie had been presented an opportunity to purchase a sugar factory in Philadelphia. It would be her first expansion into the United States. It required an enormous investment on her part. This money could have been spent to improve the conditions and pay at her Montreal factory.

  Marie wondered about what she had implicitly promised the girls the other night. She wondered if she owed them anything. Then she thought about Mary Robespierre. No, she decided. Like Mary, what they wanted deep down was to take her place. They would be rotten to her if they had the chance. She had been given a unique opportunity to rise above the lot of the common girl. If they wanted to get ahead, they would have to find another way than spoiling her dreams. She and Sadie were different from these girls, and she would keep it that way.

  “No,” she said. “I’m moving forward with the Philadelphia acquisition.”

  “Are there any of their demands you could meet? Perhaps a shorter working day for the children?”

  “Not now. If they worked harder, we would have money for it. I’m not giving up my plans for them.”

  Marie felt all the eyes on her as she stepped out of the foreman’s office. Everyone was waiting. They wanted to get a look at her, especially the men in the crowd. She knew they had all been saying the most obscene things behind her back.

  She stopped on the platform to look down at everyone. The faces of the men all looked up at her. They were all round and identical. She was giving them their moment to speak to her. If they had any idea how to speak to a woman in power, they might have said something to her that would have changed her stance.

  There were wonderful things about her. She had been a beautiful girl. She had been full of life. There was a time when she thought she would have spent her whole life reciting poetry. There was a time in her life where she would have given them anything they asked for. In fact, the night before when it was only the girls at the window, she had been ready to give them what they wanted. But now that she saw all the men mixed in with them, she recoiled. She could not be kind to that class; they spoke of her as though she were an object. She felt the hatred and disgust in the room.

  They looked at her as though she were a whore. She accepted their judgment of her. It curdled her blood. She walked along the bridge and down the stairs. The whole time she was thinking they might suddenly cry out at her. But they didn’t say a word as she was walking down the stairs. They didn’t say a word as she was walking out the door. She tilted her head ever so slightly, so her hat covered her face but so it didn’t look as though she were avoiding them. She had effectively turned her back on the women who had come to her window the night before. But they were part of this group who would never love her. She could not separate the women from the rest of the mob of workers. They would be outraged when they found out they had been duped by her femininity. She had effectively declared war against them. And once she left the building, she didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER 44

  Sadie Arnett’s Head Rolls up a Mountain

  After she had been dropped off by Marie, Sadie intended to cut across the market square to go to the brothel. She wanted George to read something of hers and give her feedback. She knew George was writing hysterical diatribes against Marie, but she didn’t assume it had anything to do with her. She wanted to try to win their friendship back. Moments after the carriage pulled away, Sadie saw a woman with white pancake makeup on her face balanced on an upside-down bucket. “They want to work me to the bone. I am a dead factory worker!” the woman yelled. Sadie quite appreciated the insanity of the rebellion. She felt lucky to be in this place at this time. There was a sort of theatricality to it.

  She saw a thirteen-year-old girl who had stuffed her dress in a manner that made her look pregnant. “I am giving birth to a child who will go hungry its whole life,” the girl shouted.

  Sadie passed by drawings women had made all over the walls. There were drawings of rich men with nooses around their necks. There were drawings of hands with missing fingers with blood spurting out of them. They were using their talents not to seduce men but to demand recognition.

  Sadie enjoyed every spectacle very much and considered herself, as a former resident of the Squalid Mile, a participant.

  Hearing the noises of a rally, Sadie walked toward it, her cloak wrapped tight around her. It had snowed the night before and she was surprised these were still being held despite the cold. She moved through the crowd toward the podium that had been created by pushing a group of boxes together. Sadie stopped when she spotted George near the podium. She had never seen George look more beautiful. Her hat was off. Her short black hair was blowing up in the air over her head into a pompadour. Her tie was fluttering as though both ends were black birds attempting to mate. George looked stately and important. She had found a way to be famous in her own right.

  Sadie was startled when she saw Marie climbing onto the podium wearing a long black wool coat that had a large hole in the elbow. But she quickly realized why she was up there when Mary Robespierre began speaking. That psychopath was hypnotic. But Sadie had recognized her peculiar talent for speaking when they had met.

  “They eat sweets and our teeth rot,” Mary proclaimed to the crowd. “We bathe and they are clean and we are still covered in grime. We give birth and we breastfeed their babies, while our children drink horrid water. Our children dance on the street corner and their pockets are filled with the coins they earn. We sew beautiful clothes but we end up in rags. We spend all day putting brand-new soles on brand-new shoes, but there are holes in our own. Our stockings are soaked. Our bodies are cold.

  “They take away any meaning to our lives. There is no point to our days. We go through motions all day long. We don’t know why. Only so we aren’t cold, but we are freezing. Only so we aren’t hungry, but we are still starving.

  “The law doesn’t allow us to be violent. The law won’t let us get the fruits of our actions. We are puppets on strings. They say we are a tragedy. It makes them feel good about themselves when they see how foolish our theater is.”

  She held up her fist in front of her, as though she were staring at an imaginary knife. All the girls in the audience mimicked her gestures.

  “I say we take a knife and we cut off those strings.”

  She turned her fist to the side and made a swift motion with it, as though she were slitting a throat. All the girls made the same motion.

  “What gives them the authority to tell us what to do and what not to do? They are only human. They aren’t gods. They have us believe that when we steal it is a crime. But when they steal, it is for the common good. You say, I don’t not have permission to act this way. That is why I give you permission to do so. I, Mary Robespierre, a woman of the Squalid Mile, gives you permission to fight back.

  “If they take away your childhood, take away their old age. If they take away what you have made, take away everything they own. If they take your food, poison it.

  “I declare all criminal actions to no longer be such. All crime shall now be considered justice. Crime will be the great reckoning. You are now all bandits. You are lowlifes. You are thieves. You are villains. You are free.

  “Let me speak to you now of a traitor in our midst. It is Marie Antoine’s best friend, Sadie Arnett.” Sadie turned red in shock as Mary continued. “She has already professed her love for Marie Antoine in her decadent book Justine and Juliette. They are one and the same. They were raised mere houses away from each other. They played the same make-believe games. All they both ever wanted was power. Sadie Arnett has been infiltrating the revolution. She is a spy. She brings word of everything we do straight to Marie Antoine.”

  There was a general stirring among the crowd.

  “What are the two of them capable of when they are together? They are capable of your worst nightmares. Do not put anything past them. If now you find yourself thinking, But they are just women, just like me, just like my sisters, just like my friends. They have hands and breasts and feet just like I do. They are capable of carrying children just like I am . . .” Mary paused and said, “I have personally been a victim of one of their sadistic crimes. In a game, for sport, for amusement, fourteen years ago, Sadie Arnett and Marie Antoine shot my mother in the heart and killed her.”

  Sadie was startled by the accusation. She looked toward George, and at that moment their eyes met. Sadie was certain George would somehow tone down the statement, or subtly indicate how she was to escape this situation. She waited while George continued to stare straight at her.

  “There she is!” George cried, pointing to where Sadie was standing. Everybody in the front of the crowd turned to look. Sadie also turned. So she would look like one of the crowd, desperately eager to catch sight of Sadie Arnett and to bring her to their new tribunal of justice.

  Sadie began to move through the crowd quickly. Her cloak was a perfect disguise. Everyone would be looking for some outlandish clothing. They would not expect Sadie Arnett to be wearing a tattered, nondescript cloak.

  She realized she and George were no longer on the same side. George could not be her friend.

  She had somehow thought of herself as classless because she was an artist. She was a member of the bohemian class, at least. But the crowd was right. When women were this angry, they were always right.

  She hurried into the carriage parked on the corner, where Marie was sitting inside leafing through some documents, waiting for her.

  “The revolution is after me,” Sadie said, climbing in beside her friend.

  “People have been pursuing you your whole life. They had always been trying to stop you from being yourself. You are a brand-new type of woman. More and more of you will be born in the next century. There will be an army of women created in your image. That is why everyone is making such an effort to destroy you. But you are back home with me now. I will protect you. I will make sure no one causes you to flee in the night ever again. You can spend the rest of your life writing. You can write all your wonderful novels.”

  “Thank you,” Sadie said. And she meant it.

  * * *

  That evening, the two women decided to get high to nullify the effects of the collective rage directed toward them earlier. It was now the two of them against the entire city. They were both despised by the lower and upper classes. Marie thought it was the first time she had been happy since she was a child. Marie stared at the smoke rising from the opium pipe. The smoke began forming into the illustrations of children’s novels. She understood why sailors were attracted to smoking opium. The smoke told the story of a long voyage at sea all in the space of a brief minute. There was a ship on top of waves that was struggling not to capsize. A dragon reared its head out of the depths, a whale flipped upside down in the air, and mermaids reached from above the water for sailors. Enormous waves began to rear up and the ship tried to ride on top of them. But it could no longer manage and the waves rose up and swallowed the ship. Then Marie inhaled the small ocean and a sea of calm filled up her whole body. It drowned all her worries and left a great nothingness in its wake.

  Marie was on the daybed. She raised her stockinged leg in the air like a cobra entranced by a flute. Sadie leaned on her stomach on the lounge chair like a caterpillar on a leaf looking at her pretty friend.

  Marie never brought up men or marital prospects. Relationships with men seemed so common and mundane to Sadie, it hardly seemed worth inquiring into Marie’s reasons. When she did think about it, she assumed Marie had avoided marriage for the obvious reasons: whoever would marry her was bound to try to manipulate her fortune. Nonetheless, she wondered whether Marie had ever experienced any horniness, and how it was she had never been curious enough to experiment.

  “Why didn’t you ever take a lover?” Sadie asked Marie.

  “I thought it was too dangerous to be romantically involved with a man.”

  “I could never be terrified of men. They are too inept and insecure. But I understand your reservations.”

  Sadie had attributed Marie breaking off her engagement with her brother to her friend’s coming to her senses. There was hardly any mystery to that. But she found herself curious as to the exact circumstances of his jilting. And thought it would be an interesting story to hear.

  “How did you ever break it off with my brother?”

  “The only thing I ever liked about him was he looked so much like you.”

  “How did he take it?”

  Marie stared at Sadie. Marie was silent. A boiling tear dropped down Marie’s cheek. Her tear fell onto the page of a manuscript lying on the small table next to her and it turned the word it landed on into a black sea creature swirling around in the saltwater.

 

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