Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (36 page)

I tell you all this not to complain, not to be disloyal to my dead husband or to reveal private, intimate moments, but to explain, to justify my future decisions, why I went the direction I did, why I turned right and then a very hard left, willing myself toward a greater judgment.

What is passion?

A
s I typed, each word became matter, and this matter began filling me, as water would fill an empty vessel. For the first time I wrote with feeling, and the pain felt good, because at least I could feel something, and it was fulfilling – I now knew the true meaning of that word. Emotion, whether positive or negative, was better than indifference. I felt alive for the first time in a long time. I finished the article with a hard bang of the period key, like hammering in a nail. Pearl must read this before anyone else and Thomas was due back today. With haste, I rolled the paper loose from the cylinder and splurged on a taxi to take me home speedily.

Two children whose names escaped me were playing on the verandah indicating to me that Aunt Opal was visiting Mama. Opal sat in the parlor exactly as she did ten years ago when she married her Amish husband, in the same dark blue Amish costume with no buttons, with only a cape and snug white cap to diminish the harsh lines. When I was with her I always had the sense of looking into the past.

I patted her swollen stomach. “I’m losing count, Aunt Opal. Is this the tenth?”

“And last, I pray,” she said and smiled that forever-tired smile of hers. In examining closer, I saw that she did not look the same at all; her eyes were a duller blue and her light brown hair had lost its shine. This made me sad, although aging quickly was to be expected on a large farm with breeding her main occupation. It seemed everything Uncle Jacob touched bred more, grew and multiplied, and his
corn crop and herds of horses, cows, and children were a productive lot. When working about his domain scattering seeds, he must believe he’s as powerful as God himself.

“I remember a time,” Mama said to her, “when you were praying to be with child same as Sarah in the Bible.”

“I didn’t know I would continue to have children once I was as old as Sarah,” Opal retorted. They laughed easily together, Aunt Opal’s hand covering her mouth to hide the missing teeth. There were brown splotches on her once-creamy skin, too. Carrying children was taking its toll.

Seeing her gave me one more reason to believe in my jump to the other side of the fence. Protective law should include protection against unwanted children. I was indeed becoming grounded.

“Aunt Opal, would you have had as many children if you could protect yourself from becoming pregnant?”

“Children are blessings from God, Bess. Why would I protect myself from blessings?” Her eyes welled up with tears – from thankfulness or sadness? I asked her as much.

Tears now flowed down Aunt Opal’s swollen cheeks and Mama eyed me oddly as if to say,
why are you doing this to her
?

I didn’t have an answer; only more questions.

“You’ve caught me at a weak moment, Bess,” Aunt Opal said as she brought out her handkerchief from her dress pocket. “I came here to cry on sister Ruby’s shoulder. I’m concerned that my body doesn’t have the strength to carry another child within a year of my last one, and so late in my life. I should have more faith in God, for He knows best.” She shook her head as she blew into her handkerchief. “Jacob would tan my hide if he knew I was saying such things.”

I wondered who she was more afraid of – God or husband.

“Were you breastfeeding your last one?” I couldn’t remember its name. “Breastfeeding is a form of birth control, is it not?”

“Yes, but I dried up within a few months. My milking cows are far more industrious than I am.”

“But you knew that while you were breastfeeding, you were decreasing your chances of becoming pregnant, am I right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then what is wrong with using other means of birth control? Especially when it may well save your life. If I recall, you’ve come close to death during several of your deliveries. Perhaps it’s not as God wishes, but as man demands. Always be submissive to your husband, is that it?”

“Bess,” Mama said, warning clear in her tone. “I understand what you are saying and why, but this is not the time nor the place. What is done is done. I’m afraid I’ve encouraged far too much freedom in your thinking, and now you seem too critical of those who have less freedom.”

My own vision blurred but I could see her well enough to know she was taken back by my tears. “I’m sorry Mama. Aunt Opal. I’m far too opinionated and it is easy to judge from my high horse. Pearl convinced me to come down to earth and the fall has been painful, but it shows I can still feel.”

“Well, well, welcome to the real world, Miss Serious Spinster,” came a voice from the stairs.

I turned to see Pearl hanging over the railing, looking down at me with a wicked smile. This being Saturday, she was dressed for a night out in her sack dress and long beaded necklace.

I waved a paper at her. “I have something I want you to read. If you like it, I’ll have it printed in the newspaper.”

“Read it out loud to me. I’m on the run. Mama, Papa wants his bath now.”

“Tell him I’ll be up in five minutes – that’s two radio commercials to him,” Mama said. “Bess, please read your article now. I don’t want to miss it.”

I’ve titled this,
Women’s Equal Rights; Ascend versus Descend
. The text goes like this:

‘The question here is: Do we fight for equal rights for women state-by-state or with one national Equal Rights Amendment? Sound familiar? It should. This was the same argument encountered when fighting for women’s vote. Do we heave it from the bottom up
at local and state level, or do we push it down from federal level? At the Women’s Industrial Conference, I saw both sides and it became clear to me that while the Equal Rights Amendment is needed, we as a society are not yet ready for it. We have too many social customs, sex-prejudices, and strict religious beliefs on the ground floor to work through. As I was rightfully told by my sister, Pearl Wright, federal law is “above him and too far away to touch him”. One sweeping federal amendment may throw out the baby with the bath water. We may lose what we have achieved thus far in local protective statutes that address women’s issues in work conditions, birth control, preserving the rights of mothers, and protecting children. Let’s put our own backyard in order before going to our neighbors.

I returned the paper to my lap and looked up at Pearl, now sitting on the stairs and peering through the railing. My heart warmed at her sincere smile and blushing face.

“This is so kippy after what I saw you do at the conference, sis,” Pearl said. “Are you really going to publish that? I think it’s great what you’re saying but you’re going to get a lot of ridicule from your fellow snake charmers.”

“I’m ridiculed either way I go, Pearl, so I might as well do it for a cause I can believe in. What I say in this article makes more sense to me than what I said at the conference. Something about that amendment that sounds too big, too much, too soon and it’s not looking after our family’s needs. Let’s work together to fight the system, shall we?”

“I suppose so, Bess, though I’m just a tomato; just a good looking girl with no brains. Not as smart as you, so I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“Oh, you’ll do fine, Pearl!” Aunt Opal said, surprising us all - I would have used her as a perfect example of problems in social customs, sex-prejudices, and religious beliefs. “Yes! I have been
forced to look beyond my farm gate, now that my children are in school and I’ve lost nephews to the war. I used to control what my family ate and Jacob and I were not dependent on the government, but now we see that their decisions can affect all of us.”

Mama reached over and squeezed Opal’s hand. She seemed to literally light up at what Opal was saying. “You and I used to buy rolls of fabric to sew into clothing and linens. Now the fabrics are sewn by factory machinery. My daughter-in-law does not even know how to sew! And she buys her bread, she doesn’t bake it. Now many foods are canned outside the home. I took pride in my lavender oils and sachets and sold them well, but now young ladies turn their noses at them, preferring store-bought products. Advertisements make factory things prettier than homemade. We’ll have to become aware of every government decision because more and more, it will affect our home.”

It was my turn to light up. “Mama, Aunt Opal! That was very insightful. The four of us should campaign together.”

“Oh no, Bess, your father is too ill—”

“Oh no, Bess, Jacob would never permit—”

“Well I suppose I should tell all of you,” Pearl said loudly, “David has asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”

Would this ever end? “The opposite sex has caused your problems in the first place, and here you are succumbing to the capital Him once again!” I stormed out of the house.

I returned to the newspaper office angry over everything and nothing. I suppose I had hoped for praise and partnership with Pearl. Mama and Aunt Opal would have been a bonus. Instead I departed empty-handed save for the sheet of paper I had waved around the parlor like a surrender flag. Once more, Pearl had gotten under my skin in an irritating fashion. Not that I opposed her upcoming marriage; it was that she was marrying and forsaking all others, including her own co-workers at the textile mill, brushing me off by saying
there’s nothing she or I could do about the unfair conditions of such a place.

“Men rule, women spool,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders.

The day was not getting any better for now I must face Thomas who had returned from the south, and he was motioning me into his office when he saw me coming in. I continued to hang on to the paper as if it had become a shield.
It just might save my life
, I thought, looking into his stormy eyes clouded by thick low-cast eyebrows.

“Do you have a problem working for me, Bess?” he asked, walking behind his desk and slamming a drawer closed. He flattened his hands on his desk top and leaned forward. “Do you? I understand you did not follow my orders but instead followed some damned women’s radical group at the Women’s Industrial Conference. I shouldn’t be surprised but, frankly, I’m disappointed. What do you have to say for yourself?”

His anger needled me. Reminding him of his own words, I answered “Freedom of speech, remember?”

“That’s a weak-ass reason, Bess. I expected better from you.” He sat down and pointed to a chair for me to sit. “Why have you gone back to such crude ways of making a point? This isn’t the first time you ran to the Woman’s Party defense. You tried this back in 1916, didn’t you? You think I don’t remember how you left the NAWSA along with Alice Paul and a group of militant activists and formed the National Woman’s Party?”

I sat on the edge of my seat. “I was tired of the sluggish state-by-state plodding to win the vote, Thomas. The same thing is happening all over again with equality.”

“Yes, well, militants only brought you arrests and hunger strikes. I worried—well, at least you did return to Mrs. Catt and her older women’s peaceful strategies.”

He paused and rubbed his mouth in thought. I waited, looking as passive as possible, letting his temper ease.
He worried?

“Enough of the past,” he continued. “Let’s look at today’s story: the great majority of the working girls today are unskilled because they are so young and because they quit when they get married. They
work in crowded, sex-segregated jobs, excluded from most men’s jobs. So many competing for limited jobs has created a downward spiral in wages. We need to do something.”

Even though I had written an article agreeing with that, I felt rattled by his lecturing tone. “Women needing protection gives us an inferior and old-fashioned view. Women’s bodies are not so Victorian anymore, now that artificial methods of birth control, like condoms and diaphragms, are out there, well, if we can get rid of that damn Comstock Law. And then there’s the growing clerical labor force giving women a better working environment than in the factory. Oh, damn it to hell, I’m tired of it all!”