The Hope Chest (9 page)

“Miss Dexter, tell the girls about New Hampshire, where you come from,” Miss Burns interceded desperately.

The long oaken benches of the waiting room at Union Station seemed to disappear in the enormous, echoing arched chamber.

“The waiting room is ninety feet high and was modeled after the Baths of Diocletian,” said Miss Dexter.

“He must've been pretty dirty,” Myrtle muttered, and Violet laughed. The hall wasn't dirty, of course—it was spotless.

“It is the largest railway waiting room in the world,” Miss Dexter pointed out.

That perhaps explained why it seemed so empty, Violet thought. There were people in it, but they were dwarfed by the enormous arched ceiling. But most of the wooden benches were empty. Violet would have liked to get up and walk on them, turn at the curved seat at the end, and then walk back along the other side. But of course a young lady couldn't do that sort of thing.

The suffragists had rented their own train car, called a tourist car, which made the tickets to Tennessee much cheaper. There were some spare seats, because a few people—including Miss Burns and Miss Alice Paul—had decided not to go. The suffragists had agreed to take Violet and Myrtle and Mr. Martin along, and Violet had the impression that Mr. Martin had given them some money.

They were a jolly crowd boarding the train—even rowdy, Violet thought. Some wore sashes of green, white, and purple, or gold, white, and purple, or green and gold—all of these colors symbolized support for woman suffrage. Some of the women had badges and medals, and when Violet looked closely, she saw that some of the badges said that the women had gone to jail for the cause, and others said
Hunger Striker.
These were women who
had picketed the White House in snowstorms, and been in jail, and starved themselves for woman suffrage. A group of them joined arms and sang:

“Don't sing that song!” a woman protested. “It was Woodrow Wilson who asked Governor Roberts to call this special session in Tennessee.”

“Only because we troubled him till he did!” another woman called out, laughing.

The train rumbled to a stop, and the suffragists found their car and climbed aboard.

The conductor came along checking tickets and stopped when he got to their party. He stood over Myrtle, looking down at her disapprovingly.

“This won't do,” he said.

Myrtle looked up at him, her face expressionless. The skirt of her blue dress was spread out on the red mohair seat, and her feet in their high-topped black shoes swung a few inches above the floor. He towered over her.

“What won't do?” Mr. Martin demanded sharply. He
and Miss Dexter were sitting on the seat opposite Violet and Myrtle.

“The colored girl. She's going to have to ride in the colored car.”

“That's not the law in Washington,” Mr. Martin said.

“Mr. Martin, please,” Miss Dexter murmured.

“Well, it's not!” said Mr. Martin.

“Maybe not, but once we get moving, we'll only be in Washington for a few minutes,” said the conductor. “As soon as we cross the District border, the girl needs to go in the colored car and stay there.”

“But she can't ride by herself. She's just a child,” Mr. Martin said.

The conductor shrugged. “She'll be among her own people. I'm sure they'll look after her.”

Mr. Martin got to his feet, his face twisting into an ugly scowl that made his scar look more menacing. He no longer looked like polite Mr. Martin—he looked like some dangerous thug in a moving-picture show. Violet felt a lurch in her stomach. She had never seen adults fight before, and she didn't want to.

Violet looked at Myrtle and then at Miss Dexter. Miss Dexter was determinedly looking out the window. Violet looked back at Myrtle, who looked away.

Violet was sure there was nothing Mr. Martin—let alone Violet herself—could do; rules were rules. But it seemed really unfair to Myrtle. She reached out and took Myrtle's hand and glared at the conductor.

The conductor ignored her. “I'm sorry, sir,” he said to Mr. Martin, not sounding sorry at all. “You can keep her in here for a few minutes if you want, but once we cross the District line, we'll be under Virginia law. It's my responsibility to enforce the law.” He smiled thinly. “And to have anyone who doesn't comply arrested.”

This last sentence seemed to deflate Mr. Martin, like an inner tube with a pin stuck in it. His face went from red to pink to pale, and his fists unmade themselves.

The conductor pressed his advantage. “The ticket discount is only on this tourist car, sir. It'll be two dollars extra for the child's ticket in the colored car. Or one dollar if she's under eight.”

“I'm seven,” said Myrtle. She held Violet's hand tightly but still didn't look at her—her eyes had been going from Mr. Martin to the conductor and back to Mr. Martin like someone watching a tennis match.

Mr. Martin reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change. He counted out four silver quarters. All the fight had gone out of him, Violet thought. The conductor pocketed the dollar and made out a ticket, looking victorious. He slapped the ticket down on the seat beside Myrtle.

“Hurry up, girl,” he said. “This train's about to start moving.”

Myrtle walked off down the corridor, her head held high. She did not look back. The conductor stalked close behind her.

Mr. Martin hadn't sat down yet and was trying to get
Miss Dexter to look at him. “Miss Dexter, I'd have thought, since the suffragists have taken the whole car, it would have been possible to argue that—”

Miss Dexter turned suddenly from the window and glared at him. “Mr. Martin, I'll thank you to refrain from making any more scenes between here and Tennessee. This may be just a tourist jaunt to you, but to us it represents the culmination of a seventy-two-year battle.”

Mr. Martin glowered at her. Then the train started with a lurch that threw him into her lap.

“A thousand pardons, Miss Dexter,” Mr. Martin apologized, getting into his own seat with difficulty. “I can assure you that I care every bit as much about the woman suffrage issue as you do,” he added frostily.

“I find that very hard to believe,” said Miss Dexter. “But if you actually care about the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, then don't jeopardize our chances by making ugly scenes about unrelated issues.”

“It is not an unrelated issue!” Mr. Martin said heatedly. “It's all the same issue. If you can't see that—”

“You sound like a Bolshevik,” said Miss Dexter, and turned pointedly to look out the window. Mr. Martin turned the other way and stared across the aisle out the opposite window. The other suffragists in the seats around them were all trying hard to look like they weren't staring at Miss Dexter and Mr. Martin. Violet felt extremely uncomfortable. This was going to be a long train trip. She wished Myrtle had been allowed to stay.

In the Jim Crow Car

M
YRTLE HAD HER BUNDLE TUCKED UNDER
one arm—the extra cut-down dress and a toothbrush and a comb that Miss Burns had bought for her. The only possession she really cared about she always carried in her pocket, like a talisman. It was a tiny tin-framed snapshot that Mama and Daddy had had taken the day they were married. Mama had come through clearly, looking just like Mama only not as tired as Myrtle remembered her. Daddy was mostly hidden. The flash powder had left a blurred spot in the middle of Daddy's face, so that she could only see the edges of it. She wished whoever had taken the picture had known this was going to be the only time William Davies's daughter would ever see him and had tried again.

Daddy had gone down to Panama to work on Mr.
Roosevelt's canal just before Myrtle was born. Then he had died, either of yellow fever or in a cave-in; the boss who wrote to Mama wasn't sure. So many American colored men died digging the Panama Canal, according to Mama, that the bosses couldn't keep track of them. Myrtle imagined that Daddy might have looked a bit like Mr. Martin, only much handsomer, and colored, of course. She liked Mr. Martin. He reminded her of Daddy somehow, which was dumb, considering Myrtle had never actually met her father.

The conductor followed Myrtle down the length of the train car to the vestibule between the cars, then said, “The colored car's all the way at the back,” and left her. Myrtle struggled to open the door into the next car, the one behind the one that Mr. Martin and the other white people were in. The door wouldn't budge. She braced one foot against the side of the train car and hauled as hard as she could at the handle. The door opened and she stumbled backward but managed to recover and get through the door before it closed.

The next car was full of white people, and Myrtle hurried through it. Some of them gave her cold stares over their newspapers. One woman smiled at Myrtle and said to the man next to her, “They're so cute when they're little.”

The train started and Myrtle fell down. Somebody laughed. Myrtle got to her feet, angry but schooling her face to perfect passive indifference. She made her way
backward as the train sped forward. A conductor grabbed her arm.

“You're in the wrong car, girl,” he said.

Myrtle gave him a vacant look. “I'm going to the colored car, mister.”

“The Jim Crow car is in the back,” the conductor said. He opened the door at the rear of the car and shoved Myrtle through it. “Keep walking.”

The floor of the vestibule shifted and creaked under Myrtle's feet. The doors to the cars were even harder to open now that the train was moving. Myrtle found she couldn't open the next one at all, and against her will, tears of frustration started in her eyes. Then a white man came through going in the other direction and Myrtle was able to pass through. He didn't even see her. Colored people were completely invisible to some white people, Myrtle had noticed. If she worked at it, she could make herself even more invisible. It was the only kind of magic she knew how to do.

Finally she got to the colored car. It was older than the other cars, with an open platform at the end instead of a vestibule. That made the door the hardest of all to open, but a young woman sitting at the front of the car saw Myrtle through the window and came and opened the door for her.

This car was made all of wood, and the seats were covered with woven rattan instead of mohair. The people in the seats were all colored. Myrtle felt relieved, knowing
that nobody in the car was going to give her evil looks over their newspapers. But there was a conductor at the end of the car, coming toward her. He was white, of course; all conductors were. He was taking tickets, reading them carefully, and snapping them neatly with his hole puncher. Myrtle felt for the ticket she had in her pocket and hoped that other stupid conductor hadn't made any mistakes on it.

Myrtle looked around for an empty seat. The car was very full. She saw a space next to an old woman— remarkably old. The woman looked almost too old to be human. She looked more like a very ancient tree that Myrtle knew of that grew in Anacostia, Washington. The woman was wearing the full, long skirts that had gone out of fashion before Myrtle was born.

The old woman saw her looking and patted the rattan seat beside her. “No one sitting here, child.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Myrtle said. The rattan seat creaked as Myrtle sat down in the space between the woman's full skirts and the wooden wall of the train car. The seat had no springs, and Myrtle jolted with each clank of the wheels rattling against the rails. Myrtle had heard someone say that trains ran on paper-cored wheels, but she didn't see how a train could run on paper, and the wheels sounded like metal to her.

The conductor stopped in front of the old woman and held out his hand for her ticket.

“Where are we headed to today, Auntie?” he said.

The old woman murmured something in reply. Her voice was so weak Myrtle couldn't make it out.

“Change trains in Lexington, Auntie,” said the conductor. He punched her ticket and reached for Myrtle's.

“Change in Chattanooga for Nashville,” he said to Myrtle. She guessed her ticket was all right.

“Mrs. Merganser is my name,” said the old woman, speaking quite clearly once the conductor had moved on.

“Pleased to meet you, ma'am,” said Myrtle politely. “I'm Myrtle Davies.”

They rode on in silence for a while.

“You have people in Tennessee?” Mrs. Merganser asked eventually.

“Yes, ma'am.” Myrtle had never heard that she had people there, but there were people in Tennessee, no doubt, so it was possible that some of them were Myrtle's.

Mrs. Merganser seemed to accept this as reason enough for Myrtle's traveling. People sometimes sent their children on trains alone, because who could afford an extra adult's fare just to escort a child who presumably had brains enough to change trains by herself?

“How old do you think I am, child?” Mrs. Merganser asked.

“I don't know, ma'am,” said Myrtle, thinking that the woman must be at least a hundred.