GOLD FEVER Part Three. Ken Salter
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for a $5,000.00 investment entitling her to ten percent of the profits. We shook hands on the deal. She’d be back next day with a bank draft to sign the papers Hawthorne would draw. I escorted her to our kitchen where Manon and our chefs were waiting.
Both Manon and I were pleased to have Mary Ellen Pleasant as a partner. With $5,000 in new capital we could place significant orders with New York and New Orleans wholesale cloth suppliers and get good commercial discounts. Manon and Mrs. Pleasant would be working together to cater parties. She was tired of doing all the food prep for her boss’s parties and didn’t want to hire more kitchen help she’d have to train and watch like a hawk so they didn’t rob her kitchen supplies blind. Manon and Mrs. Pleasant were already trading recipes for New Orleans style gumbos.
Manon’s chefs needed more kitchen help as the catering business was taking off. Manon wanted to hire a young Chinese worker she could save from the sex slave trade. She’d heard that the Salvation Army rescued under-aged Chinese girls and trained them for work outside the sex trade. San Francisco suffered a serious cholera epidemic in 1851 with additional bouts of the disease each following year. Ever since we visited the Little China quarter of the city and saw the conditions in which the “crib girls” lived and worked, Manon was determined to join with those who sought to save the girls. She was irate that California was an anti-slave state in the Union, yet allowed Chinese slaves to be imported as “wives” on customs declarations for Chinese men in order to work and die as sex slaves for their slave owners. The brothel owners were cruel. As girls born to poor peasant families in China, they had little value to their parents as they would marry and work for the husband’s family. The Chinese wanted boys who were duty bound to take care of and provide for their parents in their old age. So, unwanted girls were sold into slavery, debauched by their buyers and either prostituted in the larger port cities or resold and shipped to San Francisco to work in Little China’s cribs.
Normally, the useful life of these “crib girls” put to prostitution was only 6-8 years before they broke down, became mentally unbalanced or too diseased to be useful. They were beaten, flogged, burned with a hot iron or tortured if they displeased a client. They were not allowed to refuse any client or sexual demand, no matter how sadistic. They were allowed outside to take the air infrequently and under heavy guard. When no longer useful to the trade, they were sent to the Chinese “hospital,” which involved being locked in a sealed chamber with a candle, a bowl of rice and a knife to die. They either committed suicide or died of starvation. After the cholera epidemics, some infected girls were turned over to the Salvation Army to die. It was a cheap way to get rid of them. Manon learned that the benevolent folks at the Salvation Army had managed to nurse a few girls back to health and were teaching them English.
Manon selected Li Ming to be trained by our chefs while we would provide room and board and a stipend of $4.00 a day to be deposited in a trust account and given to her when she was eighteen or decided to marry. We made a generous contribution to continue the charitable work of the Salvation Army in saving as many girls as they could from the Chinese “hospital.” Some slave owners could be persuaded by bribes to send a worn-out girl to the Salvation Army.
Ming was very frightened to leave the safety of the Salvation Army’s premises. She was sure she was being sold to us to be our slave and her former slave owner would yank her out of our restaurant and put her back in his crib. She was about fifteen, slim, of medium height with glossy black hair and soulful almond-shaped eyes. It would be a project to get her to smile or believe she had any future as a free woman given the two years she had been physically and sexually abused in the sex trade. At first she cringed when I or any other male came near her. Manon and her coterie of women cooks, waitresses and child minders were very gentle and reassuring with her. We all knew it would take a long time to bring her out of her shell. She liked her work in our kitchens as she felt safe with the women she worked for. She wouldn’t come out of the kitchen until the last guest of the evening was gone and the doors locked. We made a room for her in the forecastle of our ship and Georges and Nelly escorted her home with them. She knew where Georges kept his Colt revolver under the bar counter and always checked to make sure he took it with him before they traversed the Plaza and made their way to our ship docked on the Long Wharf. Sometimes they had to pass Chinese gamblers loitering, smoking or arguing outside the gambling palaces on the Plaza and she would instinctively curl into Nelly’s arms with the hood of her cloak gripped tightly and her face buried into Nellie’s shoulder.
Manon learned from a careless remark from my assistant, Gino, to one of his friends that his cousin, Antonio, had attended a Chinese slave auction and purchased a girl.
“So, Big Boy, how come you didn’t tell me about Antonio and his new slave?” Manon said skewering me with her big, black eyes and a look that said I could be dead meat.
“Because it’s news to me. No one asked my advice and it would have been the same as yours.”
“Do you mean to tell me you really didn’t know about this? That your Gino kept it a secret? You better be telling the truth, because I’m furious.” I had learned it’s best to play it straight and be on the right side of the issue when Manon is on the warpath.
As we’d finished lunch service and had no dinner service that day, Manon instructed me to get a cab on the Plaza and wait for her. Normally, when we visited our friend Luigi Salterini’s restaurant in Little Italy, we’d walk. Luigi’s trattoria had burned during the fire of June 23, 1851 set by the Sydney Ducks. Luigi’s two nephews, Gino and Antonio, had been successful mining gold and paid to rebuild the restaurant, now called Trattoria Napoletana. Antonio had installed a big pizza oven and they were doing a good business selling pizza al taglio, pizza by the slice. The new menu still had old favorites—pastas, cold cuts, etc, but pizza with a carafe of wine was a big hit with young laborers, artisans and sailors. You could get two big slices of pizza with different toppings and a carafe of wine for $1.75. As Luigi pointed out, the pizzas were cheap to make with little or no spoilage using flour, Italian mozzarella cheese made locally, fresh tomatoes in season and tomato preserves and paste out of season. Toppings included various Italian salumi — homemade salamis, sausages and cold cuts as well as olives, mushrooms, peppers, anchovies, mussels and clams. The result was a simple, tasty and cheap to make meal that was a hit with single laborers making only $6-8 dollars a day. The place was packed at lunch and even after dinner as those who could afford it, lingered over their wine and regaled their friends.
We arrived well after the lunch crowd had dissipated and a few diners were finishing their meal.
Luigi greeted us warmly. “What a pleasure to see the two of you. I was afraid you’d forgotten about us. Salvatore Benetti is due to open his new restaurant soon and he remembers his promise to invite you to his grand opening.” Benetti’s restaurant had burned as well and he’d been a guest at our grand opening.
“We’ve come to see Antonio on business,” Manon announced with eyes flashing. One look told us she was loaded for bear. Luigi’s friendly smile faded.
“I think he’s in the kitchen preparing the dough for the evening service. I’ll have him join you as soon as he’s done. Shouldn’t be long. I’ll get you a bottle of nice Chianti and cold cuts while you wait.”
Normally, Luigi would join us for a glass of good red wine, his favorite, but not today. I was sure he knew Manon was here to berate Antonio for buying a slave girl and wanted none of it. He made himself scarce.
Antonio joined us a few minutes later. I was surprised that Manon continued to sip her wine calmly and greeted Antonio with a light kiss to both cheeks which is the way both French and Italians greet close friends and relatives. “So, Antonio, Gino mentioned that you were able attend a recent Chinese slave auction. You’ve probably heard, we’ve hired a girl to help in our kitchen who was originally sold at auction. It would be useful for us to know what she went through on her arrival; it might help us to better understand her and help to make the transition to being free.” Both Antonio and I did not expect Manon to frame her inquiry this way. It was clever as the tension in Antonio’s face and brow relaxed. He took a big gulp of wine before speaking.
“Well, as you know, lots of boats have been arriving