We are quiet for a few moments as all around, refugees and soldiers and Red Cross nurses and priests and firemen move past us in all directions.
Then Belinda sniffs hard and blinks back tears that threaten to continue falling. She turns toward the sea of tents, signaling that she is ready to move again. We resume walking.
“Where will you live now?” Belinda asks a moment later.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I will do after I take Kat to her mother.”
“You can come live with me. At the inn. I have plenty of rooms. You can help me run it. Help me take care of the baby.”
She doesn’t say it, but I think I hear in her voice the words,Help me let go of what was never mine.
Her offer fills my hurting soul with tiny seeds of comfort and hope. I don’t know yet what lies ahead. I don’t know what will happen to me when I meet Candace or what my options will be, if indeed I will have any. “Thank you. I’ll think on it. Thank you, Belinda. It’s quite kind of you.”
I am grateful when we arrive at the tent that the two sisters are still out and about and that Kat is alone on our bedroll. She glances at me first with disinterest, but then she sees Belinda coming in through the flap behind me and her eyes narrow a fraction in disbelief.
“Look, love!” I say to her. “Look who I found!”
Kat just stares, unblinking.
For a moment it seems Belinda isn’t sure how to respond to this reaction, but then she closes the distance to Kat.
“I had a hard time getting here, Kat,” Belinda says tentatively. “I hear you were looking for me and the baby. I’m sorry we weren’t here. I couldn’t get a carriage and they didn’t bring me to the park at first.”
Kat is still looking at Belinda as if she cannot trust that she and the baby are there.
Belinda kneels down onto the bedroll.
“Would you like to hold the baby, Kat?”
Kat slowly raises herself up to a sitting position, her face still awash with fear and doubt. When she is sitting cross-legged,Belinda moves to sit beside her and places the tiny bundle in Kat’s arms. It is only then, when she can feel the tiny weight of her half sister, that the veil of distrust begins to fall away. The infant emits a sad little mewl, and Kat begins to rock ever so slightly and the babe quiets. Through the folds of the blanket the baby is wrapped in, I can see that she is still wearing the little dress made from Kat’s old frock.
“I chose the name you like,” Belinda continues. “I’ve been calling her Sarah. It’s such a pretty name, and she is such a sweet little princess, isn’t she?”
Kat does not look at Belinda, but she nods once in agreement.
The moment is wonderful and beautiful, and my heart feels as though it might burst. I hand Belinda the summer sausage and biscuits wrapped in wax paper and leave the two of them to go ask for another bedroll and for Belinda’s name to be added to our tent assignment, the spinsters be damned.
And then for the rest of the day we coo over Sarah and ignore the sisters and their disapproving glances and wait for our deliverance.
•••
We wake on Saturday morning to the blessed news that the fires have been put out at last and that only a few hot spots to the north are giving the weary firemen trouble. Those who can get to the ferries via ruined Market Street will be given free passage across the bay to Oakland, and from there, the Southern Pacific Railroad will grant a free one-way ticket to wherever any refugee wants to go. We only have to somehow get ourselves to the Embarcadero—a four-and-a-half-mile trek from the park to the ferry landing, and half of it through the smoldering wreck ofdowntown. The closest railway station to Belinda’s home in San Rafaela is south of us at Townsend Street, but no one can tell me if that train station has survived the horrible fires in the Mission District. I do not want to walk all the way to Townsend to find out the station is a heap of ashes. Somehow I have to get the four of us to the ferry nearly five miles away.
“I can walk it,” Belinda says when I worry aloud that walking such a long distance with her having just given birth seems unthinkable.
“You’ve just had a baby!” I reply. “We need a horse and buggy.”
But there is no getting a horse. I know this. The ones still alive are all being used for more important purposes than transporting women and children to ferries. Some autos are being used for hire, but only the rich can afford the prices opportunistic people are charging for such services. One vehicle parked outside the park bears a sign saying the driver will take anyone out of the city for the exorbitant fee of fifty dollars. I’ve heard it’s not just transportation that has soared in price. Bread is apparently going for a dollar a loaf outside the refugee camp.
“I can do it,” Belinda says. “We can go slow. I can do it. Please, Sophie! I want to go home.”
She says the wordhomein that way we do when home is more than just an address. Belinda has been on an odyssey; we both have been, and not for just the last five days. We’ve been on it since Martin Hocking came into our lives and changed them. And now she just wants to go back home.
I am happy for her that she has a home to go to after this soul-crushing journey. I am envious she does.
And so we ask for passes—the only way you are legally allowed to be out among the ruins of the city—and begin the walkalong with thousands of others east to the bay. Tens of thousands remain at the park as we leave it. We have somewhere to go; countless others do not.
I carry the travel case containing Kat’s clothes, the strongbox—which I still have not found a way to open—and all the documents that prove who Martin Hocking is, or was. Kat carries the pillowcase bag with the diapers and baby blankets. Belinda carries Sarah. We are told there is no safe water anywhere to drink on the way, and we are each given one can of milk to last us until we reach the ferry building.
