The Hope Chest
Authors: Karen Schwabach
To Lisa Findlay
her story
and
to Veronica and Jessica Schwabach
may their votes always count
The Stolen Letters“G IVE THOSE TO ME AT ONCE, YOUNG LADY !”
Violet dropped the bundle of letters and looked up at her mother's angry face. She felt guilty, but only for a second. “They're mine,” she said. “They're my letters, from my sister—they're addressed to
me
!”
Mother made a grab for the bundle and the two of them struggled, each gripping the letters with one fist. Mother used her other hand to try to pull Violet away from the desk by her pigtails, and Violet used her other hand to wrench her pigtails free. It was very unladylike— not at all graceful.
“How dare you?” Mother cried. “Going through my desk drawers—Violet Mayhew, I thought I brought you up better than that!”
“You hid them!” Violet screamed, managing to jerk
her hair and a few of the letters free. She lurched against Mother's desk, knocking over a vase of asters and a dreadful old hair wreath in a wooden frame. She retreated to the bedroom doorway. “I bet Chloe's been writing me for the whole time since you threw her out, and you let me think she'd forgotten all about me!”
“Violet, you know perfectly well your father and I always do what's best for you.” Mother had decided to be calm and firm, but there were tears in the corners of her eyes.
Violet didn't care. She was too mad to care. “You hid Chloe's letters from me for three whole years. You
stole
them from me!”
Violet retreated out the door. Heavy footsteps thudded up the stairs behind her. Violet turned around and saw Father. It was his newspaper-reading time, and Violet and Mother had disturbed it.
“What in the name of Sam Hill is going on here?” Father demanded.
“I'm sorry, Arthur,” said Mother. “Violet has stolen some letters from my desk drawer.”
Violet backed up against the hall mirror. Father towered. He was broad and massive, like the bank where he worked. He had left his jacket downstairs, but he still looked imposing in a black broadcloth vest and trousers and a spotless white shirt with a high starched collar. He glared down at Violet through his gold-rimmed spectacles.
“Why aren't you downstairs reading to your brother?” he demanded.
Violet had no good answer. She had sat with Stephen but hadn't bothered to read to him since she'd finished all her Oz books. Instead, she'd written a letter to her cousin and had been looking through Mother's desk for a stamp when she found the letters.
“Give those back to your mother at once, young lady,” said Father.
“They're addressed to me,” Violet said. “From Chloe.” She shifted toward the hall corner, toward the dog's-leg turn that led to the back stairway. Standing up to Father was a lot scarier than standing up to Mother, partly because he so seldom spoke to her. “I won't,” she said.
“Then give them to me.” Father held out his hand. “At once, young lady, or you are going to be in so much trouble it will make your head swim.”
“I don't care,” said Violet. She didn't. She was madder than she'd ever been in her life. They told her to be seen and not heard and to speak only when spoken to. They sent her sister away and stuck her with a brother who wouldn't even talk. Then they hid her own letters from her and called it
stealing
when she found them. It was wretched that just because a person happened to be eleven years old, that person didn't have any say in things at all—not even about getting to read her own letters.
Father moved toward Violet, a huge, threatening
tower of authority. Mother seemed to disappear from Violet's field of vision. Father always had a way of making Mother disappear.
Violet darted around the corner and clattered down the curving back staircase and out through the kitchen, where Eleanor, the cook, was making boiled custard. She slammed the screen door and ran all the way to the banks of the Susquehanna River.
She had only grabbed a few letters, from the middle of the stack. The postmark on the first envelope was from 1918, two years ago. She sat down at her favorite spot, under an old elm tree that grew on the riverbank, and began to read.
New York City
Saturday, November 9, 1918
Dear Violet,
Well, I voted! It was nothing like Father warned me. There were no gangs of hoodlums standing at the top of the steps to throw down voters from the opposition party. I did not lose my femininity. I didn't have to drag my skirts through the mud and muck of national politics— my skirts are eight inches from the ground, and the muck of national politics turned out not to be that deep this year. There were thousands of women voting, and yet New York did not have a Bolshevist revolution. (Not yet, anyway. It's only been a few days.)
Did the false armistice happen in Susquehanna too? Thursday the newsboys were out on the streets hollering that the War was over. I was treating influenza patients on the fifth floor of a tenement house, and everybody dashed down the stairs and out into the street, cheering and throwing their hats in the air. But then it turned out not to be true, of course.
Everyone says the War can't last much longer now. A lot of the countries in Europe have given women the vote now, you know. Some of them have only given it to women whose sons were killed in the War. That makes me really angry—as if women are only as good as men if their sons die. But the United States doesn't even have that.
At least women can vote in New York State now. That makes sixteen states, plus the territory of Alaska. Ah, Alaska! Speaking of soldiers, how is Stephen doing? I hope you aren't reading the war news to him. I know Father always says that that's what he'll want to hear, but somehow that doesn't seem very likely to me.
Write if you can. The address is on the envelope.
Your loving sister,
Chloe
Violet smiled because the letter sounded so much like Chloe. And Alaska—Chloe had always wanted to go to Alaska. She'd taken out every book the library had about Alaska, and she'd drawn Violet a picture of an Eskimo driving a dogsled. Violet had asked for an igloo too, but Chloe had said that Alaskan Eskimos didn't live in igloos. Violet looked at the envelope. The address was somewhere in New York City—Henry Street.
The next letter gave her a jolt.
November 20, 1918
Dear Violet,
I can't tell you how sorry I am about Flossie. You know Father wouldn't let me in to see you, don't you? I drove up as soon as I heard about it from Cousin Helen and was in Susquehanna the next morning (had to stop in Scranton overnight after the Hope Chest blew a tire—its second on the trip—and it was too dark to see to change it). Mother wanted to let me in, I think, but Father said no, and all I could think of was you all alone upstairs in our old bedroom with your thoughts.
I wish I could call, but even if I had enough money for long distance, Father would just hang up. Write to me, all right? I want to know how you're doing. And
wear your face mask every time you go out so you don't get the flu.
Love,
Chloe
Violet felt a sharp twist in her stomach. Reading the letter made it feel as if her best friend, Flossie, had just died yesterday instead of almost two years ago. It had happened right near where she was sitting now, on the banks of the Susquehanna—she and Flossie were playing Nellie Bly. Nellie Bly was a newspaper reporter who reported the War from the trenches on the western front, and Flossie wanted to grow up to be just like her. So that day they were playing that Flossie was Nellie Bly and Violet was a captured German soldier. Only suddenly Flossie had complained of a backache, and then she had gotten a nosebleed, and Violet had said, “Your ear's bleeding, Flossie.” And by the time she'd helped Flossie home, Flossie was bleeding out of both ears and her nose and couldn't talk.
That was the influenza—like getting run over by a steam train. Not just sniffles, but blood pouring out of your nose and ears. People didn't understand how the disease could hit that hard, could kill so many people, when it was only the flu. Except that after 1918, it would never be “only the flu” again.
Violet clenched the letter in her hand and was furious
at Mother and Father. In those awful bleak days after Flossie died, it would have meant a lot to have Chloe sitting at the foot of her bed again, talking to her and telling her stories. She couldn't believe Mother and Father had sent Chloe away when Violet needed her, just because Chloe was a New Woman who wanted to vote and have a job of her own. She was still Chloe.
Violet read the next letter.
December 1, 1918
Dear Violet,
How are you?
The influenza is really bad here. I treated eighty— five patients in the tenements behind Hester Street yesterday. I start at the bottom of one building and work my way up, calling on patients, and then when I get to the roof, I step across onto the next building and work my way down. Don't worry, there's no space in between the buildings! I called on one family where the mother, father, and six children were all sick in one little room and all huddled into one bed. None of them spoke any English.
So far I haven't gotten the flu (touch wood) because I'm careful to wear my mask all the time. Are you wearing yours? They also gave all of us public health nurses an inoculation at the Henry Street Settlement
House, but we think that it's a placebo—a fake shot, to make us think we're protected.
The other night I had a funny accident. I was coming home in the dark after seeing 107 patients, and I crashed right into a young man carrying a shovel. We both went sprawling into the gutter, which was not exactly clean.… I guess there are still more horses than motorcars in New York! It turned out the poor fellow had been digging graves, which is a pretty big job these days.… Anyway, he was very polite and forgiving and walked me home.
Please write and let me know how you're doing. I think about you all the time.
Love,
Chloe
That letter started stupid tears in Violet's eyes again, and she dashed them away with the sleeve of her middy blouse. She thought about Chloe all the time too. So that was what Chloe was doing—being a public health nurse. During the huge scene after Chloe bought the Hope Chest, Chloe had shouted something about wanting to do something
meaningful
with her life. Mother had cried and asked her what wasn't meaningful about marrying an upand-coming man like Mr. Russell (or was it Mr. Rice?) and having beautiful babies?
