Though Waters Roar (44 page)

Mother was quiet all the way home. I was sure she would collapse in another fit of weeping as soon as she reached her bedroom, and I figured I should call Grandma Bebe right away. But as we stepped from the cab, Mother turned to me and said, “I’m going to do something meaningful with my life from now on, Harriet. Just wait and see if I don’t!” She marched upstairs and changed out of her mourning garb without shedding another tear.

The way the women in Mother’s club tell the story, she barreled into their next meeting like Annie Oakley riding into the Wild West Show with guns blazing. “Ladies, I have a project for our club to undertake. If you would like to join me, I would be happy for your help. If not, I plan to tackle it with or without your help.”

The president inched toward Mother as if she may not have fired all of her ammunition yet and might still pose a danger. “Are you feeling all right, Lucy?”

“I have never felt better. But I’ve been thinking about how shallow we have become in our elegant little women’s club. All we ever focus on in our meetings is ourselves—improving ourselves and entertaining ourselves and pampering ourselves. What about service to our community? Isn’t it time that we, who have been so richly blessed, did something to help the women and children in Roseton who aren’t as fortunate as we are? I, for one, have vowed to commit myself to bettering the lives of the downtrodden here in our town.”

The president patted Mother’s shoulder as if soothing a barking dog. “There, there . . . Why don’t you sit down, Lucy. You don’t need to shout. You’re among friends.”

“No, thank you. I can think much better standing up.”

“Tell us your plan, Lucy,” a matron in the front row said. “We’re listening.”

“I would like to start by doing something for the family of our New Town hero, Daniel Carver. As you know, my father, Horatio Garner, died as a hero in the Great Flood of 1876. My family was well provided for by his estate, but unfortunately that isn’t true for Mr. Carver’s family. He labored in the brickyard all of his life. His wife and daughters have no way to support themselves now.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I suggest that we provide some sort of short-term relief for them, certainly. We can at least help his wife and daughters find employment—perhaps as domestics in our homes. But the Carvers aren’t the first family to lose their sole breadwinner, and they certainly won’t be the last one. Why not invest the money that we usually spend entertaining ourselves every month to start a charitable foundation to help the women and children of New Town who have nowhere else to turn?”

“Good idea,” someone called out. “Write up a motion, and we’ll vote on it at our next meeting.”

Mother smiled. “I’ll do that—but there’s more.” The club’s president had been about to lift her gavel, but she settled back in her seat.

“I spoke with the pastor of Daniel Carver’s church,” Mother continued, “and I learned that before he died, Mr. Carver dedicated all of his spare time to helping the young boys who lived in New Town. You see, unlike our sons, those poor boys have little hope for a better life. If their fathers worked in the brickyard, that’s where they’re destined to work, too. Daniel’s vision was to start a boy’s club for them—a place where they could be encouraged to dream of a better life. I would like to help him make that vision a reality.”

It is a credit to my mother’s charming personality and newly awakened leadership skills that the women in her club embraced her proposals. Not every woman shared her enthusiasm, certainly, but enough of the important ones did to quickly endow Roseton’s new charitable fund. They also sent a delegation to other towns to research how they had sponsored boys’ clubs. Mother stopped her weepy-eyed moping and launched into her new tasks with the same energy that she’d poured into planning Alice’s wedding. The change in Mother seemed instantaneous and complete. I didn’t understand it. And I certainly didn’t like it. Neither did my father.

He threw down his napkin at the dinner table one night, interrupting Mother’s rant about the town council’s resistance to change, and shouted, “What has gotten into you? I thought you wanted nothing to do with your eccentric mother and her crazy causes.”

“Perhaps I finally see the point of them,” she said quietly.

“Why now, Lucy? Why all of a sudden?”

“Why not now?”

Father exhaled. He sounded like one of our overheated radiators when the repairman vented the steam. “I think you should go up to Saratoga Springs for a few weeks and take a cure. I’m worried that you’re heading for a nervous breakdown. You overtaxed yourself with Alice’s wedding.”

The calm, placid expression never left Mother’s face. She had worn it ever since we returned from Daniel Carver’s funeral, and it worried me. It was so unlike her usual worried, hand-wringing appearance. “Going to Saratoga won’t change a thing, John. I’m tired of all my vain, empty pursuits. I’m starting a new life.”

Father and I exchanged looks. “You’re still a wife and mother, Lucy. Aren’t they the most important roles there are for a woman?”

“Of course they are. And the work I’m doing in our community is a natural extension of those roles. Why not share my motherly skills with families in real need?”

“What about Harriet? She needs a mother, too, you know.”

“Harriet doesn’t need me,” Mother said with a wave of her hand. “She never did need me. No, my life is going to change now that Alice has left home, and it may as well be for the better.”

“For the
better
? What more could you possibly want, Lucy?”

Father slapped the table in exasperation. “I provide for all your needs, you don’t have to lift a finger here at home, you have your women’s club and dozens of friends—why isn’t that enough, all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know, John . . . but it just isn’t.”

I started going to Grandma Bebe’s house after school every day since Mother was never at home anymore. I was helping Grandma design a newspaper advertisement for the Temperance Union one afternoon when Mother burst into our cozy little world, uninvited.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrated I am,” she said as she unwound the fur boa from around her neck. “I was certain that our mayor and city council would welcome our plans. After all, we’re simply trying to improve Roseton and the lives of its women and children. Imagine my surprise when they turned down our request to convert the old Columbia Building into a boys’ club! They wouldn’t even let us explain our proposal at the town council meeting. It seems there’s a long-standing bylaw that doesn’t allow women to attend the meetings unless they’re invited, and they refused to invite us! Can you imagine? I would love to see every last one of those hardhearted scoundrels voted out of office at the next election, but—”

“But women aren’t allowed to vote,” Grandma finished. “It’s a vicious circle, Lucy. That’s why the Women’s Christian Temperance Union joined forces with the suffrage movement. The male politicians have continued to ignore our demands, which means we can’t accomplish anything worthwhile until we have a voice.”

“I know! Our women’s club was so frustrated today that we passed a unanimous resolution to enroll our club in the National American Woman Suffrage Association.”

“Well, glory be!” Grandma Bebe leaped up and threw her arms around Mother. “I never thought I’d see the day when you would finally live up to your namesake! I named you after Lucretia Mott, you know. Grandmother Garner must be rolling over in her grave.”

I sat slumped in the chair with my arms folded and my legs outstretched, pouting. My mother didn’t even try to correct my posture. I was angry about the change in my mother and didn’t know why.

The changes continued, building in momentum and menace like a great storm. The only things I had ever seen my mother reading were the society pages and party invitations, but now that she was receiving information about the women’s movement, she read religiously. Her reading also included the daily newspaper. My father was not at all happy about sharing it with her every morning.

“Must you drip orange marmalade on the stock market report?” he grumbled. “My fingers are sticking to the page.”

“But, John, how will I be able to vote intelligently once I do win the right to vote, if I don’t know what’s going on in the world?”

“Can’t you read my newspaper while I’m at work?”

Of course not. She would be busy with meetings all day. Father left for work muttering darkly beneath his breath.

Instead of lecturing me about poise and manners, my mother now delivered sermons on woman suffrage at every meal as if she expected me to memorize the details of the movement the way I’d once memorized which fork to use for my shrimp.

“Are you aware, Harriet, that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and the other women signed the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions in Seneca Falls, New York, on the same day that Grandma Bebe was born?”

“Yes, Mother,” I said dully. “Grandma told me all about it.”

“July 19, 1848, was a very important day for all women. But I must say, we don’t seem to have made much progress in the past sixty-four years. . . .”

I deliberately slurped my orange juice and said, “That’s because the suffrage movement didn’t have you helping them.” My sarcasm was wasted on her.

“I was a mere child, Harriet, when Susan B. Anthony delivered ten thousand signatures to the U.S. Senate, asking for a suffrage amendment. That was in 1877, the year after the Great Flood, and those men laughed right in her face. The following year she persuaded a senator to propose the amendment again, and it has been introduced every year since—and defeated every year since, I’m sorry to say.”

“Am I supposed to be memorizing all of this for a quiz or something?” I asked, licking jam from my fingers.

“I wish I had done more to help, all those years,” she said with a sigh, “instead of shopping and sipping tea all day.”

I rolled my eyes and reached across the table for more toast, instead of politely asking her to pass it to me. She never even noticed.

“Of course, I shouldn’t say that we’ve made no progress at all, Harriet. There are five states that have already granted women the right to vote. Wyoming was the first one, then Colorado, Utah, Idaho . . . and what was the other one again . . . ?” She stared at the ceiling above the china cabinet, scratching her chin.

“Washington,” I told her.

“What did you say, Harriet?”

“I said, Washington State granted voting rights to women, too. Grandma Bebe told me all about it.”

“Yes, I believe you’re right about Washington. Very good, Harriet.”

I was afraid she might pat me on the head. I grabbed my toast, scraped back my chair, and fled without waiting to be excused. My mother was taking all of the fun out of swimming against the stream.

I wondered where in the world all of these changes were taking my mother, and I soon found out—to Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. Nearly one year after Alice’s wedding and Daniel Carver’s funeral had begun the transformation process, Mother decided to travel to Washington on the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration to take part in a huge suffrage parade. I had heard her and Grandma Bebe discussing it and wondered when she would muster up the nerve to ask my father for permission to attend. I wanted to be there to watch the fireworks.

I knew she was up to something one morning when she came to the breakfast table dressed in blue—Father’s favorite color— and wearing his favorite perfume. I also noticed that the orange marmalade was missing, replaced by cherry jam, another of his favorites. As he began unfolding the morning newspaper, she began her appeal. “I would very much like to go to Washington, John, and take part in the suffrage parade next week.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Let me explain why I want to go. Women need to be able to vote in order to be good mothers and protect children’s interests. We deserve the right to participate in decisions that will affect our homes and families—issues like better education, free public libraries, and playgrounds for poor children. We’re not only caretakers in our own homes; we’re caretakers of our communities. But we have no voice, John.”

“Do I really have to listen to all of this? Can’t I eat my breakfast in peace?” He made the mistake of looking up at Mother. She smiled at him. My mother was still a very beautiful woman, able to blindside my father with her charms.

“If you give me your blessing, dear,” she said, “I’ll spare you the speech and the sermon. Otherwise, if I have to convince you of the rightness of our cause and the reason for our methods, it might take some time, and you won’t get to work until well after lunchtime.”

“It isn’t necessary to preach to me.” He finally managed to tear his eyes away from her. He started scanning the headlines.

“I can show you the materials that the organization sent us describing the march, if you’re interested.”

“I’m not.”

“It’s a very well-organized event. Prominent women from all across the country will be there, including Miss Helen Keller.”

“I’m not married to Helen Keller, nor is she responsible for running my home and raising my daughter.”

“So, may I go, dear?”

He looked up again. “What happens if I say no?”

I wondered if she would turn on the tears. Perhaps Father was wondering the same thing. But Mother didn’t even reach for her handkerchief.

“Why, I suppose . . . I suppose I will go to Washington just the same.”

For a moment he looked stunned. “Then why bother asking me?” He raised his newspaper like a shield and disappeared behind it.

“Well, I . . . I would like to know that I have your blessing, John.”

He was silent for a long moment before lowering the paper again. “Promise me that you won’t turn into your mother.”

“Good heavens, John!” She had no trouble at all looking appalled. “This is going to be a nice, peaceful march down a very respectable street, not a prayer meeting in front of a saloon. We simply want to get our point across to the new president, and all the other politicians who are ignoring us, that we deserve to be heard. I would never take up any cause that requires me to raise an axe or lower my dignity. Mother and I are two entirely different people.”