Page 20 of My Darling Girls

Usually when Jo is in the darkroom, she’s at her most confident. The solitude, the smell of chemicals, the familiar process of developing photographs, seeing images slowly appear on the paper—the energy of her work is her sustenance. But right now, her hands tremble, and she’s barely able to form thoughts. She’s apprehensive, and she’s not sure where this eagerness to investigate, to ask questions, is coming from, but it keeps crashing over her—wave after wave after wave, and she wants to pace her darkroom, dispense of this anxious energy that is churning inside her. But there he is, in the corner, watching her.

Perhaps she’s wrong. Perhaps she’s been wrong the whole time. She attached herself to this fragile hope of finding peace in exchange for what? Helping a dead girl to move on? She allowed herself to think that maybe if she could save Millie, she could save herself. She should’ve kept her mouth shut. Silence is the best course of action.

“Jo.” Finn doesn’t sound angry anymore. He sounds tired.

She lifts her head. Licks her dry lips. “Finn.”

“What’s really going on with you?”

How does she explain that she got caught up between two worlds? How does she tell him about the courtyard? About Millie and Horace, the voices of the dead? He’ll think her mad, and maybe he’ll be right to think so. Maybe the visions she experienced are there to torment her. Maybe it’s her atonement for the things she’s done. But she also knows—deep in her gut—Millie’s death was not accidental. That feeling, that suspicion, swells in her like a dry crust of bread too big and too hard to swallow.

His steps are heavy and slow. He’s close again—too close. His breath is warm on her neck when he leans in and whispers, “Don’t concern yourself with my family. We’re not good people.” He leans even closer, his lips brushing over her skin. “And I don’t want you to get hurt, Jo.”

Steam Laundry

Jo enjoys walking through the streets of Chicago, especially when the weather allows it, when the daylight is at its peak and the streets are crowded.

Today is one of those days—no wind to whip her hair around her face, and so far no rain to chill her bones. The air is crisp with the hint of early autumn when she exits the cable car. In the sky, the clouds gather thick and low—so low she might be able to touch them—and the first few drops of rain land on her face as she turns the corner of Sixth and Trade Streets. By the time she walks around the trash piled on the sidewalk and crosses the street by Pleasant’s Hardware Store, her hair is a bit looser, and her breath is a little harder.

She stops in front of Zhang Kim Steam Laundry, pulls the door open, and enters a half-lit room with a solid wooden counter and a few linen shelves behind it. She doesn’t pause by the Chinese washerwoman sitting in a wicker armchair by the door. The woman’s head lolls on her chest as if she’s taking a nap, but her sparse eyelashes flutter to assess the newcomer.

Jo gives the woman an almost imperceptible nod. The woman nods back.

The counter is overflowing with linens and freshly laundered clothes. Behind it, a young girl in a white apron, a sixteen-year-old daughter of Zhang’s assistant, fills her mouth with water from a glass and takes a deep breath like she’s preparing to swallow it. Then, leaning forward at a precise angle, the girl spews the fine mist over the garments and starts ironing.

Jo smiles. The girl smiles back.

Jo knows the place well, and the place knows her.

She opens another door and starts her descent into the basement. The staircase is old and creaky. The wooden banister is covered in spiderwebs and layers of grime. There is mold on the walls and something else, something slimy and disgusting. Jo lifts her skirt and goes down, down, down.

She enters the darkness, pauses, and lets the darkness enter her.

The familiar odor of stale bodies, burned oil and tar, assaults her lungs as soon as she walks inside the den. The quietness of the room is punctuated by the steady drip of brown water from a pipe by the door. A rat scurries away from the water, refusing to drink it.

Slowly, Jo’s eyes adjust, and she starts walking between the bunks where men and a few women lie in a state of stupor. These men and women serve as stark reminders of her first taste. She came to Old Zhang on the recommendation of a random customer, a gentleman who brought his wife and two boys for a family portrait. During the photo session, Jo couldn’t hold her camera, her shaky hands refusing to obey. The night before, unable to find any respite in sleep, she had emptied a bottle of whiskey August kept for special occasions. She had managed to put herself together in the morning but not well enough, because on his way out, the man pushed a tiny vial into her hand. “Consider it a payment,” he said. “It alleviates pain. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but you seem to be in a lot of pain. A few drops over a sugar cube will bring you relief. If you need more, find a steam laundry on Trade Street and ask for Old Zhang. Tell him Walter sent you. I buy it for my wife. She suffers from insomnia.”

Jo craved sleep more than anything else. At first, she only used it every few days when insomnia became unbearable, but as the time went by, she started using opium every other day. Once, she went without the drug for a few days because she had realized how much she had come to depend on it, and one morning she woke up in great agony. Invisible needles were poking and prickling her skin, her every joint. Her body was consumed with fire. The sweat was so profuse, she thought she was having a typhus fever. Later, hands shaking, core trembling, she measured drops of opium into her glass, gobbling the mixture down like a starved animal. And she knew it then. She knew things would be different for her, and she would never be the same again.

She wasn’t wrong.

Jo reaches the far end of the opium den and stands in front of a tall Chinese man guarding the iron door bent so badly it can barely be fully shut.

“Jo,” he says and shakes his head. “He isn’t selling you nothing.” He places a cigarette between his lips. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m not here to buy, Hong. Not today.” She smiles at him as if he’s her best friend and tries walking around his large presence, her eyes on the door behind him.

In a beat, Zhang’s guard or assistant or maybe just a family member—Jo never figured it out nor cared to—is in front of her, blocking the entrance. His motion is so fast, so fluid, it startles her.

She takes a quick step back, her shoes splashing into the water. It’s the same brown water she saw on her way in, but there’s an oily film in it. She steps to the side, farther from the door. “I must see him. Please. I just need to talk to him. I’m not asking for credit.”

“Talk about what?”

All the reasons why she is here knot around her throat like a rope. “About . . . about my life.”

Hong looks at her like she sprouted a second head. “About your life?” he asks slowly, as if he’s uncertain he heard her. When she nods, he chuckles. “He isn’t your priest, Jo.”

“I must see him.” She repeats and lifts her chin, pointing at the door. “I know he’s there. He never leaves this place. He told me so himself. Please just ask him if he’ll see me.”