Band of Sisters (31 page)

“Please sit down.” Olivia gently but firmly pushed Maureen to the seat of the vanity before an oval mirror. “Allow me.” And she pulled the simple pins from Maureen’s wild knot, combing the long and tangled tresses one by one until they shone like silk in the electric light.

The brushing and combing seemed to calm both women, though neither said a word. Olivia wound the thick cords of shining hair into an attractive upswept style, something her lady’s maid would have done for her, and pinned it neatly into place. “There. You have such lovely hair, Maureen. Thank you for allowing me to help.”

“I ran all the way from home. I was so afraid for her.” Maureen spoke low, breathing more deeply now.

“Afraid for Katie Rose?” Olivia watched Maureen’s face in the oval before them. “For coming here? But why?”

Maureen’s wide green eyes held the same bleak expression they’d held Thanksgiving afternoon, when Drake had roughly ushered her from Morningside.

“Why would you—?”

But they were interrupted by Dorothy’s knocking on the door. “Olivia? Are you there? What has become of you? We’re ready to start the meeting.”

“I’ll be right there, Dorothy!”

Maureen’s frightened look was a total mystery to Olivia, a mystery she determined to solve, but later.

“Come, sit with me, and I’ll get you some tea. You must be starving.”

“Please, don’t ask me. Send Katie Rose out, and we’ll go.”

“No, Maureen. You’re here now. Please, please stay. Sit with me. Nothing and no one will harm you here.”

“But—”

“I don’t think Katie Rose will leave willingly. She’s so bright and eager to stay. Please.”

From the look on Maureen’s face and the change in her posture, Olivia knew she’d hit both a nerve and the truth. She took Maureen by the elbow and drew her gently along the corridor to the drawing room, smiling with all the loving care and happiness she could muster, until Maureen breathed almost evenly and gave a tentative smile in return. Then she opened the drawing room door.

For the sake of Olivia, who’d been so kind and reassuring to her, Maureen did not glare the daggers at her younger sister that she might have, that she determined to give in good measure when she got her home—not even when she was introduced as Katie Rose’s elder sister to the ladies of the circle. Maureen thought the ladies welcomed her warmly in words, if a little awkwardly in spirit.

Still, the color faded abruptly from Katie Rose’s cheeks, and while she’d apparently been the life of the tea party, she said not one more word as the meeting was called to order.

The order of business sped by as little more than a blur to Maureen, who, so relieved to find her sister safe, was truly grateful for the piping hot tea in the warm room, the dainty sandwiches and scones.
“A lovely English nursery tea,”
Lady Catherine would have said.

As Maureen’s nerves calmed, she recognized the conversation around her—sometimes heated and passionate, sometimes calm and questioning—as a continued discussion of the book and its purposes that Reverend Peterson had commended in church some weeks before.

“Have you read
In His Steps
?” Julia directed her question bluntly toward Maureen.

“No.” Maureen nearly choked on her scone for the sudden attention drawn to herself. “I’ve not.” The women stared, seeming to wait for her to continue. “I’d not heard of it until Reverend Peterson mentioned it just before Christmas.” Women nodded politely, still waiting. The silence was awkward, so Maureen offered, “We may not have it in Ireland, it bein’ an American book.”

“Well, I would like to read it, if I may.” Katie Rose spoke up and basked in the approving smiles of the women around her. “Is there a copy I might borrow?”

“Gladly.” Carolynn beamed. “You may take my copy with you today.”

Agnes, the eldest and the leader of the circle, appeared to overlook Katie Rose and returned the conversation to Maureen. “Do you understand the question posed by the book and the purpose of our meeting, Miss O’Reilly?”

“I—I think so.” She hesitated. “You’re askin’ each one to do what they think best for the poor.”

“They’re asking what
Jesus
would do for the poor,” Katie Rose corrected.

“That’s right,” Agnes praised the girl, “and we’re each taking a pledge to do just that—whatever we believe Jesus would do in every situation.”

“Regardless of the consequences,” Miranda added.

“But how do you know what Jesus would do?” Maureen asked. “How can you be sure?” She looked around at all the different women, twelve in all, wondering if they realized just how different they were from one another, from her—how different they all appeared from the radical Jesus pictured in the stories Reverend Peterson read about from his Bible in the Sunday pulpit. “And what if you disagree?”

“Maureen!” Katie Rose admonished.

“No.” Julia jumped in. “That’s a perfectly legitimate question, and I applaud you for asking it.” She glanced round the group, daring them, Maureen thought, to contradict her. “We’ve been praying, asking the Lord to lead each of us individually, trusting that He will lead us in a similar direction to work with the . . .” She hesitated. “The poor.”

Maureen forced a smile, realizing suddenly that she was not a guest and not an equal, but “the poor” and the cause of the forthright young woman’s discomfort.

“The Holy Spirit leads us,” Olivia offered. “We’ve no right to question the Spirit’s leading of one another.”

“The Holy Spirit?”

“The still, small voice of God within. The Comforter who leads and guides us,” Carolynn explained.

Could that be the voice I heard? The voice that helped me battle Mr. Kreegle?

“But we want to do something that truly matters,” Agnes intervened. “Something that makes a difference great enough to change the lives of . . . of . . . women who . . .”

“Women who what?” Maureen stared her down.

“Of women in need, especially those who come to this country with nothing,” Miranda spoke plainly.

“Women like me and my sister?” Maureen asked quietly. “Is that why you’ve asked us here, because you want to give us tea?” She set her cup in its saucer. “Do you think tea will solve the problems of the poor?”

“No.” Agnes took charge. “We know it won’t.”

“But we need to know what will, and we need to form a solidarity with the women of—the women in need.” Julia regained her voice.

“Until there is no difference between us,” Olivia offered. “Until we are sisters, a band of sisters, strong and united. That is why I asked you here, because I want us to be sisters in every way.”

“A wonderful plan,” Katie Rose enthused.

“It won’t work,” Maureen said flatly. “The poor don’t go away rich. We don’t stop bein’ poor or uneducated or hungry because you want it. Our employers don’t suddenly become generous or honorable or even fair.”

Katie Rose bit her lip, and Maureen saw the daggers she’d intended to give her young sister spring from Katie Rose’s eyes.

“It will work when we all come to know the Lord, to share fully and freely in the gift of life He died to give us.” Dorothy Meitland spoke for the first time, lifting her chin, Maureen was sure, in some sort of barely perceptible snub.

“Jesus said that the reason some have wealth or earn an abundance is to share it with those who have none.” Carolynn, who seemed to be the quiet one of the group, spoke up. “We just need to know how to best share it.”

“To share it? Or to give it away as benefactors?” Maureen frowned. “No one wants a handout.”

“Then why are there beggars in every street?” a woman named Hope spoke from the side of the room. “Help me understand that.”

“Because they’ve figured a way to make themselves pitiful to you. Beggin’s a job to them—some do it willingly, and some are forced by those greedier and more powerful.”

The women looked astonished.

“You pay the hungry beggar for his beggin’ through your coins dropped into his cup, and you both leave happy: the beggar, who’s worked at beggin’, is paid, and you, the ‘employer,’ who’s paid so generously to feel good about yourself.”

Spines straightened as if Maureen had bitten the women.

“But the ones in greatest need you never see. They’re behind closed doors, in sweatshops, hunched over tables, workin’ their hands to the bone—too cold to sit in winter and too hot to breathe in summer. They’re down dark alleys, scroungin’ through the leavin’s behind pubs and stores, or hidden away, scrimpin’ and starvin’ or bein’ threatened or beaten . . . or sold by the hour for another’s gain. And their children are starvin’ or sent to beg, dirty because they can’t afford to ask their landlord to fix the water pipe—they daren’t bring attention to their need when they can’t pay the rent.”

“How do you know?” Hope demanded.

Maureen stared at the young woman in blue silk, ivory lace, and pearl earrings.
She must be all of three and twenty, and she’s never really seen the poor. She’s never gone hungry. She can’t even imagine it.
“Because I’m one of them. Because I’ve been one of them, and I’ve seen many worse off than me in Ireland and right here in your ‘land of the free.’ But it’s not free—everything costs money, and those without it are enslaved to their poverty or to those who feed them—at whatever cost to their souls.”

The only sound in the silence was Katie Rose’s muffled sobs. And for those tears of humiliation and shame, Maureen pitied her sister.

“But how can we change that?” Julia persisted quietly.

And Hope echoed, “Please, tell us how.”

“The problem you describe is monumental.” Agnes spoke as though to herself.

“All I know is that if you want to help women, you need to help them find jobs—respectable jobs with fair wages so they can afford good food to eat and a safe place to live. Invitin’ the poor to drink tea in your grand houses won’t do that.”

“We’d hoped to treat them as equals and then to draw them into the church, to help them spiritually and economically.” Miranda spoke up.

“But you won’t let the poor forget they’ve received a handout, will you?” Maureen replaced her teacup. “You’ll invite us to your church, to sit in your pews and take Communion at your side, but you won’t forget the next day, the next week, that we’ve come from someplace different, that we’ve had to do as you would never do, live as you have never lived, just to get by. You might not even notice us if we passed you in the street, say on Fifth Avenue. You’d not miss us if we disappeared entirely. We’d never truly be a part of your ‘circle.’”

“I wouldn’t have thought the poor would be ungrateful for help of any kind,” Dorothy replied, not smiling.

Maureen stood.

“Please.” Olivia stood too, her distress visible. “We’re all missing something. This is not a ‘them and us’ question; it’s a question of how we work together for everyone’s good.”

“Until we all go back to our places—all of you to your grand mansions in the squares with butlers and cooks and scullery maids, and Katie Rose and me to our hovel, our tenement near the Battery, our flat above a bar and brothel.”

“Brothel?” Dorothy paled.

“It’s not a brothel!” Katie Rose cried. “You’re exaggeratin’, Maureen!” Her eyes flashed desperately round at the women sitting tall in straight-backed chairs, women whose acceptance Maureen knew was her sister’s heart’s desire. “We’re only there until we can afford somethin’ better. We’ve nothin’ to do with the pub downstairs! Tell them, Maureen—tell them!”

The women waited. Maureen finally spoke. “How can you talk of bein’ like your Jesus and helpin’ the poor when you’ve no idea what it is to be poor, to be powerless and hungry, unprotected and desperate? To be vulnerable all the time?”

“And what do you do in your desperation?” Dorothy asked coldly.

“You’re right,” Julia said, ignoring Dorothy. “We’ve no idea and no right. So help us, Miss O’Reilly. Tell us where to begin and what we can do.”

But Maureen had had enough.
If sayin’ we live above a brothel shocks them, what would they say to knowin’ the number of their wealthy husbands and fathers and brothers who not only visit those brothels but buy and sell women—dupe or dope or beat them and take them who knows where, right under the nose and with the blessin’ of Tammany Hall and “New York’s finest”? What would they say if I told them Drake Meitland, the benefactor who housed and hosted their ladies’ tea, may well be among those sinners?

“Come, Katie Rose, we’re goin’ home.” Maureen walked to the door.

“No.” Katie Rose’s voice trembled, but she stood firm. “I want to stay.”

“Perhaps you should—” Olivia began.

“I want to take the pledge,” Katie Rose interrupted. “I want to join you, just as you said, and follow Him together. I can help you help the poor.”

Maureen stopped with her hand on the door, not looking back.
Katie Rose, you’re simply curryin’ favor with these women—women you don’t know if you can trust beyond a pleasant afternoon with tea and scones. Don’t pledge—not for that reason. Wait until you know you can trust this Jesus, until you know that He will help you, love you as you want, before you love Him.

But no one said anything, so shocking was Katie Rose’s insistence.
What can they say? They can’t turn her away from their notion of the all-forgivin’, all-lovin’ Jesus. And perhaps, after all, I shouldn’t. Just because He can’t love me—want me—it doesn’t mean He won’t love her.