Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (2 page)

(Which brings me to wonder: Are we here to write what we know or to read what we don’t?)

Ah, Jesi, if you only knew – but of course she doesn’t, no, how could she? There are things we’ve never spoken of - too prim and
proper, indeed! She must be told that we all rebelled in our own ways.

Yet we contrast, age I suppose does that and the different eras in which we rebelled. Older ones feeling superior in believing our generation was the best and thinking the next has deteriorated somewhat. Always making those on the bottom rung, like Jesi, believe they’ll never reach the top, born too late with too little, so why bother. We should be more honest with her and with ourselves. Truly look at our lives and try not to inflate and paint and exaggerate to give us more meaning. Funny how time softens the hardships of the good ol’ days; makes churning butter nostalgic when in fact it brought on blisters.

We all want to make our mark. I disobeyed by marching in that parade of long ago, yelling at an octave I’d never used before - even to scold my sons - holding a sign high saying “Fight for Women’s Right to Vote!” My strength came in numbers, in my ladies group where we pretended to have a tea party when in fact we partied the historic Bostonian way (metaphorically of course) by using the Ladies Tea as a platform to campaign for women’s suffrage.

(Really, why did those cowardly men disguise themselves as Indians and only throw overboard a woman’s drink? Pray tell, where was their whiskey?)

Ah, I digress as old women often do.

Bess on the other hand stood on her own terms. Spoke openly and aggressively – as I was forbidden to do (but I had my moment in the sun, yes!) – in front of many a microphone and man, and helped win the women’s right to vote in 1920. She seems impersonal, yes. Many don’t like her - which I take full responsibility for. I pushed her out there at the ripe old age of twelve as an extension of my weak arm, without love of man or money. She proved me right, she proved me wrong. I’ve never told her this, but I admire her strength – why have I never told her? What a personal tragic loss my daughter bore, and continues to carry like a load of dirty laundry. Sometimes I want to shake it out of her. There, I’ve said it.

Then there’s my granddaughter: spirited idealistic Katy, who followed in her father’s footsteps and found herself in her mother’s shoes. Something happened in her year away in Georgia, opening a birth control clinic. She came back here cussing like a sailor, smoking like a chimney, and looking ten years older, just dropped off on the street by “an old coot named Jerry”. Sometimes I hear a cry in that brassy laugh of hers.

And then there’s my great-granddaughter, Jesi. I typically sigh around her, sometimes provoked, sometimes not. She fights against us all, resenting our battles for women’s rights, yet creating her own. Her story is the saddest one of all – if she will talk about it – her handicap, I mean. I’m assuming that’s why she refuses to marry. I have yet to meet a beau of hers, though she’s pretty enough. Very sad. Why must she break all the rules? I see chicken scratches on her paper, lines crossed out, two lines remaining. She does disappearing acts and I wonder if Katy knows? (Katy now throws down her reading glasses and taps Jesi on the arm to
sit still!
and I catch the glare Jesi returns. Oh I do hope someday they come to terms-they seem so detached from one another.)

Which makes me look over all these years through sepia lens and tea-stained lace and wonder: With all the freedoms we fought for and earned, there came a price, a dear price that stripped us down to my great-granddaughter’s raw nudity, emotions exposed with no sensibilities, no secrets, no coyness … no femininity. Somewhere, in winning our women, we lost our ladies.

Ah, I’m rambling again and I’m not even sure Bess will type what I’ve written thus far. Suffice it to say I have no regrets, just occasional melancholy.

So! Sitting around this table, I realize – we have come full circle! I shall begin where Jesi is in her thinking – in the raw. I’m not to be outdone – I have some fight in me yet. The men are gone so I shall throw my propriety to the wind! I’ll begin my sentimental journey with the “seed” of how it started: My wedding day in 1898 and its conception of my daughter. How shocking! But this might perk Jesi
up … which will make Katy go red in the face … which will feed into Bess’s aggravation. Oh how I do love my girls!

I lean toward Jesi and say, “I’ll tell you things that will make your hippie hair curl into a bun!”

April, 1898

Memories of my wedding ceremony are little more than blurred images. Of Robert perspiring, his wide mustache quivering, his hand shaking as he slipped the thin gold wedding band on my finger. Of my surprise that he might be as nervous as I. Men slapped him on the back as if he’d accomplished some great deed while women gave me sad teary-eyed hugs, contradicting their happy-for-me remarks. I remember the scratchy lace collar of my light blue wedding gown (women did not wear white those days, which is odd because they were certainly more virgin than women of today. Forgive me, Jesi.). The gown loaned by my mother-in-law, I remember my mama teasing me as she took in the seams around the bust that a few children under the belt would fill in above the belt. That was basically her birds-and-bees talk, along with a reference to the Bible that I must be submissive to my husband. “Your husband will teach you what you need to know.”

Mercy.

Vivid even now is the wedding night. Smells and sounds come first; of the buggy’s leather seat, the horse’s heat, his clip-clop on the bricked street (I rhymed!), his snorting, the rattling of his harness, smells and sounds that are long gone but can still trigger nostalgia. Next is the sight of my mother-in-law’s home as we pull up out front. I can still feel that grip of fear as I suddenly realized we were alone for the first time. All I had with me was a small carpetbag; his mother thought it best we wait until after the wedding to bring in my wardrobe. Neighbors might talk, she explained. Like mother, like son, Robert hurried toward the front door, me trailing in his steps, his eyes on the windows of the neighbors’ houses as if an unwelcomed audience is watching. This paranoia became contagious for it wasn’t long before I believed our verandah was center stage, and only came out when necessary for years to come.

How quiet I remember the house, the ticking mantel clock sounding louder than usual as if demanding more time. I wished it to be so; why, the dongs of the clock only chimed seven times when Robert walked up the stairs to the bedrooms, my bag in hand. I watched helplessly as he reached the top. Looking down at me he cleared his throat and said, “Well, you’re not waiting to have tea with Mother, I hope?” I could only shake my head and scratch at my itchy collar. “Then come on up the stairs. Mother is not here, I assure you.” His tone became cajoling, as one offering a present to a child. “You will get to see the
upper floors
.”

And that’s when I learned to take it one step at a time.

When I reached the top landing he said to me, “There now, Ruby, that wasn’t so bad was it?” And that’s when he began those famous last words. How many times did I hear him say that?

I remember the window at the far end, its outside light barely visible at the end of its day. Funny. I lived more than thirty years in that house and could walk all over with blinders on, yet this first image remains most impressionable upon my mind. It’s as if this were my only way out, unreasonable to escape from there, the sun setting beyond as if closing a curtain.

He pointed to two closed doors on the right, his room and the sewing room, and one on the left, “Mother’s chamber”. He turned and pointed up the stairs. “A large room is up that way, currently used for storage. Mother said it could be made into another bedroom someday.” Taking a handkerchief from his back pocket, he wiped the perspiration from his forehead. I wished we were on the cooler first floor having tea with his mother. Perhaps he did, too; he was fidgeting more than usual.

I wondered what hid beyond those doors and what they had in store for me, and then I wondered if I really wanted to know. It all seemed terribly unknown.

Unknown to me as well was a man’s body. The mortification I felt when he pulled down his trousers! Thank goodness he had the decency to turn down the gas lamp. Then and there, in the stifled dimness of his bedroom a wave of homesickness overtook me. I longed
for the familiarity of my childhood bedroom of seventeen years. I’d known no other and these rooms were strange to me and Robert was a stranger. How could I possibly share a bed with a stranger? Worse than a stranger, he was my husband and that day’s ceremony had cut off my umbilical cord for good; I could never go back to my home. I was no longer Ruby Johnson; I was now Mrs. Robert Wright. This comprehension of its vows and the loss and what I’d gained gripped me and I in turn gripped the doorframe. He hadn’t noticed that my life had changed in that moment.

He only noticed I hadn’t moved. He asked, “You don’t plan to sleep in my mother’s dress, do you?” To save myself from fainting I hurried off to the sewing room as directed, to change. He’d dropped off my bag here (he’d already planned this out, the scoundrel) and so with muted light filtered through the window blind, I found my nightgown, sewn by my dear sister, Opal. Opal. Well, I have much to say about her later.

I was soaked in perspiration as I unsnapped the many snaps of the whale-boned corset in nervous jerking motions, bittersweet to be released from its clutches, yet feeling I’d collapse without it. Fearful yet forced to move quickly, eager to depart the stifling heat and cramped room. Ah, how comical I must have looked at first, with my nightgown on and ruffled petticoats protruding from the bottom. I had to smile when I looked down and saw what I had forgotten. But when it all came off, I hugged around my breasts feeling ashamed of my nakedness. All my life I was told not to show so much as an ankle and here I was, well, never mind. I desperately longed to wash but at a loss as to how to ask Robert for a water bowl and soap. God only knew how indisposed he might be at that moment. It was then I heard the bedsprings squeak through the wall.

That was telling, nonetheless I called out to him. “Robert?”

“Ye-” he cleared his throat. “Yes?”

“May I wash?”

There was a pause, and then the bedsprings squeaked a release. I heard the porcelain pitcher click from its bowl and return with a louder scratch.

“There is no water here, Ruby,” he called out. “You can do that tomorrow.”

The bedsprings squeaked again.

I folded my arms and leaned against the doorframe of the sewing room with another realization. Hard work and constant effort were ahead of me in living with a pampered only son of an overprotective mother.

The effort began immediately as we entered his bedroom (this room was to become yours in later years, Bess).

Mercy, here I am losing my nerve, Jesi, I must confess. I’ve never spoken of this. Am I being disloyal to Robert’s memory? He would die again if he knew. Except that, is not my loyalty now to my womankind? Is this not what I longed for all those years – to be able to come out into the open and speak my mind? Perhaps it will be easier to write it down, one word at a time.

Tell all. Yes. Well.

With the curtains closed the room had turned to a murky darkness. Grateful of the darkness I lifted the sheet and slipped under in a hurry, bringing the sheet up to my chin, stiff as a board. He kissed my cheek for the first time since being pronounced man and wife but this didn’t help matters, not with the erratic breathing in my ear. I felt like one big question mark as his hand lifted my gown, roamed and explored, eventually finding an opening I myself did not know existed. This must sound terribly naïve or stupid these days but at the turn of the century, our Victorian morals were highly cherished, to our own detriment I must admit, preached in the pulpit, and protected even by such laws as the Comstock, such ridiculous censorship of any literature dealing with sex and birth control methods. Even to teach. (Katy knows this better than anyone, poor thing). So what was I to do but resist: clamp my knees together and grab his wrist?

Naturally, he resisted that. “Don’t,” he said and continued on his breathless expedition.

Quite suddenly I found him looming over me and flattening me, his male odor overwhelming my senses. Some rigid thing was trying to push and enter between my legs. He was hurting me and I told him so.

Dead-set on his task at hand, he pushed harder. “Help me. Guide me in.”

“I don’t know what you are doing!” I said breathlessly, but for a different reason than his; I was suffocating under his weight.

Lifting himself, he placed my hand on something that reminded me of the wooden crank on the wringer washer. I thought seriously of doing what I knew best but my touch was enough to make him gasp and jerk and the crank became a wet fish. My sense of touch became most alive at that moment. As if that wasn’t enough, he collapsed on top of me for a moment before rolling onto his back.

My body remained still, but my mind was racing. Why hadn’t Mama told me about this? I made a silent commitment then and there that when this at last resulted in children, I would prepare my daughter for her own wedding night.

But then I wondered how pregnancy could occur this way – certainly not through the belly button (I had some sense to me). I quietly wiped my abdomen with the sheet, quietly longed to wash. Was this it? I could just about make out the outline of him lying on his back. He appeared to be asleep, but sleep was not to be had just yet.

From the darkness he spoke, in words I remember clearly. “You are a virgin. So am I. But I do know that I am to enter you. You must not resist or I am forced to release my seed where it does not belong. I cannot provide you children this way. This I know for certain. Next time you must relax and open yourself to me. Never again move my hand or close your legs to me. Can we agree on that?”

I stared at the ceiling. The meaning of those words moved across my mind and projected clearly onto the ceiling dark pictures of the demand on my body. But strangely relief came as well in knowing what would be expected. The unknown, I realized, carried more fear. “I am sorry I have disappointed you, Robert. I was frightened.”