And just as she did every day, Inez Stannert, startled awake by the clamor, rolled over and tugged her pillow over her head, damning the day she’d leapt at the chance to move into the rooms above the music store she managed.
Living quarters, gratis.
It had seemed such a good deal at the time, when the storeowner, celebrated violinist Nico Donato, had made the offer.
However, after she and her twelve-year-old ward, Antonia Gizzi, took up residence above the shop at the corner of San Francisco’s Pine and Kearney streets, Inez realized that, surrounded as they were by churches of every possible denomination, the daily calls to prayer were nearly deafening. She considered it a sadistic trick of Fate—a particularly ironic variety of Hell, actually—that she should be constantly reminded of the heavy presence of Christian faith. Particularly given that her absent lover was a minister.
Pillow clutched to her ears, Inez allowed herself a moment to compare the competitive clanging of the nearby houses of worship here to that in her previous life. In the high mountain town of Leadville, Colorado, the distant sound of church bells took wing, a seductive call to soul-lifting contemplation of Heaven and the promises of eternal life. Here in San Francisco, Inez suspected a more insidious intent. It was no secret that the density of churches in the “golden city” increased in proportion to their proximity to Chinatown and the Barbary Coast, in hopes of luring lost souls into the fold with promises of eternal salvation and dire threats of eternal damnation. The D & S House of Music and Curiosities was situated close to the two unsavory neighborhoods as well as near the city’s business district. Thus, Inez suffered the torments of the damned at regular hours throughout the day when the bells vied with each other.
Still, their discordant clanging served to rouse Inez and Antonia in good time on school days.
Inez had the coffee boiling on the small stove in what passed for their kitchen when Antonia finally dragged herself in, rubbing her eyes, her black hair an untamed mane. Inez brought over a mug of coffee, liberally laced with milk and sugar, set it on the table by the hairbrush, comb, and ribbons, and pointed wordlessly to the chair. Antonia sat and sipped, wincing as Inez attacked her hair with taming implements. With her locks finally plaited and beribboned, Antonia said, “I don’t see why I can’t cut it all off.”
Inez smiled grimly. And with that, you’d be dressing as a boy and running loose through the city in trousers, just as you were in Leadville, when I first met you and your mother. May she rest in peace. But all she said was, “You have beautiful hair. Hair like your mother’s.” She smoothed it with one hand. “Treasure it as a gift from her, just as you treasure your little knife and her fortune-telling cards.”
Antonia sighed and nibbled at the thick slice of bread slathered with butter. “It’d just be easier,” she mumbled. Then, apropos of nothing, “I don’t want to go to school anymore.”
Inez crossed her arms, silver-backed hairbrush in one hand. “What brought this on?”
A stubborn silence was her only answer.
Inez set the hairbrush on the table. “Did you not finish your lessons this weekend? Is that the problem?”
Antonia pinched off a corner of her bread and rolled it into a tight little ball of dough, before finally replying, “The kids are hoity-toities. The teachers all high-and-mighty. The school is stodgified and I’m not learnin’ nothing. I can learn my numbers and letters fine helping you in the music store.”
Suspecting a deeper reason, Inez pressed. “Before we left Leadville, you were looking forward to school.” She let the statement hang there.
Antonia’s gaze flickered to the side.
“What happened?”
At Antonia’s silence, Inez said briskly, “Well then, I’ll accompany you to school today, talk to your teacher, and get to the bottom of this.”
Antonia’s eyes widened in alarm. “No!” She clenched her jaw, then said in a low voice, defiant, hardly above a whisper, “I cut a boy.”
Inez flashed on the small but deadly salvavirgo Antonia carried with her everywhere. At first glance, with its little blade folded away, it looked the most innocuous of weapons. Delicate little flowers were carved into the ivory at the top of the handle where the blade folded; a small inlaid figure of a fox gazed over its shoulder where a palm would naturally curl around the grip. But Inez was very aware of its sharpness and the speed with which Antonia could whip it out and open it.
“I didn’t hear about this. I would have thought the principal would send me a note.”
Antonia laughed, a short bark. “It was after school, last week. And d’you think that ninny’d tell anyone he was beat up by a girl?”
Inez briefly weighed whether a good whipping might be in order. It was exactly what her parents would have done, and did do, when she dared to be uppity and huffish.
One look at Antonia’s face, which had something hurt and bruised about it, changed her mind.
“Why did you do it?”
Antonia looked up. Her straightforward bi-colored gaze—one eye blue, the other brown—met Inez’s query without wavering. “He said only gypsies had eyes like mine and called me the bastard of a gypsy whore.” The slight trembling of her mouth, which she tried hard to control, convinced Inez that she was telling the truth.
“You were not wearing your glasses?” Inez had bought a pair of tinted glasses for Antonia to keep her unusual eyes concealed.
Antonia looked down at the uneaten crust on her plate. “I was. I told him to leave me alone, but he wouldn’t. He pulled my glasses off my face and threw them on the ground. At least they didn’t break. He’s always doing things like that to kids in the lower grades. Smashing their glasses, tossing their lunch tins into the streets, giving them a black eye.”
“Well, it sounds like you taught him a lesson, then. Perhaps
