A City Tossed and Broken Read Online Free Page A

it. I always get taken for older than I am.”
    No, she said. Not that life. That would be worse.
    “This is worse!” I screamed.
    And I said I hated her for it.
    And I ran out the door.
    Later
Midnight
    I am packed and ready to leave tomorrow. My life hadn’t seemed quite so small before. Now it is something you could hold in your fist. Just a few things in a suitcase.
    Look, diary, how the paper is all splotched and sodden. I didn’t think there were so many tears in the world.
    April 10, 1906
    What a time getting on the train! She fussed and fussed, getting settled with all her parcels and boxes, and then when she saw my little suitcase she complained about my taking up too much room!
    And Lily, what a creature, doesn’t say much just follows behind her ma’s big behind.
    I haven’t had a minute to myself, not even to cry.
    April 11, 1906
    We changed trains in Chicago and now we’re going all the way through to California. Mrs. Sump and Lily are in the fancy Pullman car where they swivel the seats at night and make lovely private beds for you, but I have to sleep sitting up. I don’t mind. I get to have a whole seven hours without her voice in my ear. I do not think she stopped talking for one minute altogether yesterday.
    I sit and lean my head against the window and wait for the towns, when the conductor swings his lantern in the dark as we pass, and the people asleep in their houses make us a part of their dreams.
    April 12, 1906
    The days are full of her complaints, too hot, no too cold, needs tea, find her pillow, mend her gloves. Not allowed to rest until she’s sleeping and then I fall asleep like a rock fell on my head.
    And the train wheels on the track are saying this: You’re alone you’re alone you’re alone.
    Later
    She keeps a green case with her always, right by her feet. I am guessing it holds her jewelry because even I can’t pick it up and she makes me carry everything.
    This morning she shouted at me in front of the whole car and called me “ignorant girl” when her tea wasn’t hot enough.
    I am not so ignorant. I know this much: She is a terrible old thing.
    Later
    I am finally able to write. We have our routines now. In the afternoons she falls asleep after lunch.
    Mrs. Sump has made a list of all the eligible bachelors in San Francisco. Lily is sixteen so she has two years, Mrs. Sump said, before the bloom is off the rose. Courting by seventeen, engaged by eighteen and a half, married by twenty, she said. Lily just stared out the window.
    She’s been studying up, and she’s got the names. She’s going to start with the wife of Mr. Sump’s lawyer, she told Lily — Mrs. Hugh Crandall. Not that she’s quite the upper crust, but she is invited to the bigger events. She’s a second cousin to one of the big San Francisco families, so the Crandalls, according to Mrs. Sump, have managed to climb their way to the lower rungs of society, despite being “in trade.”
    “That will be my entrée,” she said. “One always needs an entrée at first.”
    And she plants her feet on her green case and gossips about people she doesn’t know, about who would be “suitable” or not. She talks about the great San Francisco families like she knows them. I’ve become her secretary, for I have to copy down who she expects to call on within the first six months. De Young and the Spreckels and Hopkins and Flood and Crocker and Tevis and Haggin and Kohl. And sometimes she mentions a young man’s name, and she frowns and considers.
    “Maybe he’ll do,” she says.
    Lily stares out the window.
    April 13, 1906
    Lily’s not a bad sort, although I have to say, she does not seem to possess a sense of humor. Perhaps because she seems sad.
    You can tell that she is ashamed a bit of her mother, when Mrs. Sump is rude to the porter. She calls them all “George” no matter who they are. I don’t think she can tell them apart.
    Maybe it’s being on a train — you get to see the bad up close, the