The Hope Chest (12 page)

The woman sat down painfully on a bench, still holding her back. “Thank you, child. Just put that down right here. That's my son's uniform. They're sending him home from France. He's supposed to be shipped to Chattanooga today.”

Violet thought that was a funny way of putting it, and then she looked at the piece of black cloth in her hand and a thought struck her.

“Is your son … Did he …”

“Yes,” said the woman. “Put that on my arm, would you, dear? It's supposed to be my mourning.”

The War had ended almost two years ago, but
American soldiers' bodies were still being shipped home from France. It was a slow process, apparently. Violet shook out the black cloth and folded it diagonally, then again to make an armband. She wrapped it around the woman's gray calico sleeve. She could see in the seam that the calico had once been dark blue, but it was faded and worn whisper-thin from many washings. She tied the armband neatly.

“Thank you. Ow.” The woman winced and put her hand on her belly, and Violet looked at her, worried. The woman's face was drawn and gray, and a strand of gray hair hung damply down from under her straw hat. Violet had never understood the phrase “hatchet-faced” before, but now she did—the woman looked as though her face had been cut out of a block of wood with a hatchet. It was all sharp, hard angles.

“Are you going to be all right?” Violet asked.

“I don't know,” said the woman. “You know, child, if men knew how much work it is having babies, I'm not sure they'd be quite so willing to start wars and have our babies blow each other up.”

“My brother was in France too,” Violet said. “But he came back,” she added apologetically. “With shell shock. He never talks anymore.”

The gray lady nodded. “I hope the good Lord will grant that this is my last one,” she said, resting both hands on her swollen belly. “And that no one dreams up a war to take this one away from me.”

Violet was just about to repeat what Miss Dexter had said, that the human race had outgrown war, when a barefoot newsboy thrust a newspaper at them and hollered, “Extra! Russians surround Warsaw! Poland under siege! Warsaw to fall by the weekend!”

Miss Dexter was wrong, Violet thought, about a lot of things.

“If you could vote,” Violet said, “then you'd be able to vote against wars.”

“Vote?” The woman looked as surprised as if Violet had just suggested she tap-dance. “My husband would never allow that.”

Violet was about to answer when a loud clang made her look up, and she saw that the Suffs' tourist car was being hitched onto a train.

“Excuse me!” she cried. “That's my train. Goodbye!”

She waved and hurried to clamber back aboard before they left without her.

As the train pulled out, Violet looked back. She could see the hatchet-faced woman sitting beside her basket, an angular gray figure growing smaller in the distance, until the train rounded a curve and she disappeared. Violet wondered what it would be like to be waiting for your son to come home from France in a box. She thought about the woman giving birth to her son (Violet's mother had told her that babies were brought by a stork, but Flossie had given Violet a different explanation that sounded only slightly less unlikely), and then changing his diapers and
teaching him table manners and sending him off to school and making beef tea for him when he was sick, and then being told by the government that she had to send him off to France so that he could come home in a box.

The more Violet thought about it, the angrier she got.

Suddenly Violet understood why all these women were riding to Nashville on a train. It was so that women would never again have to sit by in silence while men made decisions they didn't like—whether it was Father deciding that Chloe couldn't go to college or the government deciding that people's sons had to go fight in France whether they wanted to or not.

The train pulled into a small station, a flag stop. The little covered platform was a jumble of trunks, porters, and valises. Men and women in stiff-looking best clothes milled about waiting for the train doors to open. Another newsboy who looked about eight years old was hawking papers, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Riots! Riots in Ireland!” Then, when that didn't attract any customers, “Tigers beat Yankees!”

Miss Dexter stood up and waved out the open window. “Paper!” she called.

The boy came over and handed a paper through the window. Violet could smell the fresh ink. Miss Dexter dropped three pennies into his outstretched hand.

The train doors had opened, and a few people went down the steps onto the wooden platform. Violet stared. If she hadn't known better, she would have sworn one of
the people who got off the train was Mr. Martin. She looked again. It
was
Mr. Martin.

But how was that possible? Mr. Martin had jumped off a completely different train the night before.

She hardly had time to wonder before she noticed someone following Mr. Martin … or that's what it looked like, anyway. It wasn't one of the agents from last night, but the man wore a starched collar—of course most men did—and he walked with a speed and sense of purpose that seemed out of place on a railroad platform.

Violet sprang to her feet. She started up the aisle toward the exit. Maybe there was time, before the train left, to warn Mr. Martin he was being followed.

She was in the vestibule when the train started moving. She pushed at the exit door, but it wouldn't open. She gave it a hard push, and it came open, just as a hand grabbed Violet from behind.

“Let me go!” She hit out at whoever was holding her.

On the platform, she saw a small colored girl running toward Mr. Martin. She couldn't see if it was Myrtle; the train was already picking up speed, and the station was soon out of sight.

The conductor let go of her. “I don't know what you're playing at, missy,” he said disagreeably, “but you're a Nashville passenger and to Nashville you're going.”

Violet hadn't wanted to get off, only to make sure Mr. Martin knew he was being followed. But it was no
business of the conductor's. “I can get off the train if I want to,” she said angrily.

“Why would you want to?” the conductor said. “You're paid through to Nashville.” He opened the door to the suffragists' car. “Now get back to your seat, miss.”

In Nashville an army of women greeted the train, their arms full of flowers. They swarmed among the men and women getting off the train, thrusting yellow and red roses at them.

Violet stepped off onto the platform, holding the small bundle that contained her spare clothes. The train had pulled into a huge train shed with a high, soaring roof that covered all of the rows of tracks and platforms. Violet had never seen anything like it, but she didn't have time to study it. She looked along the train, searching for the colored car. There it was, all the way at the back. Violet hurried over to where colored men, women, and children were getting down from the two exits, carrying valises.

She watched every single person get off the colored car, but she didn't see Myrtle. So it must have been Myrtle who had chased after Mr. Martin this morning. And then what had happened to them? Had the Palmer agent caught Mr. Martin? If he had, then what would happen to Myrtle?

Violet paced anxiously back and forth on the platform, staring at the train and willing it to produce Myrtle. But it didn't, of course. Violet didn't know what to do. She
and Myrtle had run away together—it was a joint project, and it felt wrong to have gotten separated from her. Besides, she was older than Myrtle and ought to have looked after her better. She went into the train station, worrying.

The station was even fancier than the one in Washington, though not as big. It had a high, arched stained-glass ceiling and mosaic tiles on the floor. A woman with a basket of red roses assailed Violet.

“Wear a red rose,” she commanded, smiling sweetly and holding one out to Violet.

Violet took it uncertainly. “How much are they?” She didn't want to buy one but wasn't sure how to say no politely.

“They're free, dear. We just want everyone to wear a rose to show her support for the cause.”

“Oh. Er, thank you.” The stem was wrapped in paper tape with a long pin like a hat pin through it. The woman helped Violet pin it to the collar of her dress. Violet's eyes wandered over to a set of windows at the side of the grand room, which had a sign on them that said
Colored Waiting Room.

“There!” said the woman. “Now you look lovely. Where are you staying, dear?”

“Er, with my sister,” said Violet. A group of suffragists, some from the train and some who had greeted it, had joined arms in the middle of the mosaic floor and were doing a little dance, singing.

Violet did not see Miss Dexter in the circle, but she wouldn't mind losing her—she who had worn thin on better acquaintance. She didn't see Miss Kelley anywhere.

“I'm Miss Charlotte Rowe,” the woman said, extending her hand.

“Miss Violet Mayhew,” said Violet, shaking hands.

“Is your sister staying with us at the Hermitage Hotel?” Miss Rowe said. “I don't recognize that name, Mayhew. Or is your sister a married lady?”

“No, she's not married,” said Violet.

“I'm surprised she didn't meet you at the station.”

“She didn't know what train I was coming on,” Violet said, which wasn't exactly a lie.

“Well, come along with me to the Hermitage,” said Miss Rowe. “We'll get it all settled there.”

Violet could think of no better plan. She was worried about Myrtle—and about Mr. Martin, of course—but she might be just moments away from finding Chloe at
last. Chloe would know how to go about finding Myrtle. Chloe would make everything all right.

Violet followed Miss Charlotte Rowe, who handed her basket of red roses to another lady and said that she was leaving. They went out to a darkening city street, lit at intervals by globe-shaped streetlamps. A tired-looking horse clopped along, pulling a wagon with
Overton and Bush—ICE
painted on the side. They crossed the street, stepping around horse manure and over streetcar tracks, and turned down another street. They passed movie theaters and vaudeville theaters and drugstores, which, even though they were closed, advertised the fact that they had soda fountains with fountains formed of electric light-bulbs blinking on in succession, to look like streaming water. Well, sort of like it.

Violet was surprised to see such a lively, modern city, after the quiet towns and vast wooded mountains they had passed through on the train. Unfortunately, Nashville also seemed to be a very hot place, even at night. Violet could feel sweat trickling down her back inside her undervest.

“I know it looks quiet,” said Miss Rowe. “This is the still before the storm, as they say. There's a battle brewing that's unlike anything the South has seen since the Civil War.” She smiled grimly. “I'm from up north, as I gather you are too, Miss Mayhew?”

“Yes, Pennsylvania,” said Violet.

“A state we fought long and hard for! Well, we have a
battle on our hands here, Violet. The other side is pouring every effort into Tennessee. They've sent in some of their most unscrupulous … Ah, here we are.”

The Hermitage Hotel was ten stories high and mobbed, the crowd pouring out the grand entryway onto the street. Violet started toward the entrance, but Miss Rowe pulled her arm. “The ladies' entrance is around the side, Violet.”

They went around the corner, under a vertical sign that reached up the side of the building and spelled out
Hermitage
in electric lightbulbs.

They went in through the much smaller ladies' entrance, then down a hallway and past the elevators to the lobby.

There was a crowd of men and women around the elevators, and a lady in a pink satin dress called out, “Charlotte! Come here a minute.” Miss Rowe went to the lady, and Violet wandered on into the lobby.

The lobby was as crowded as the train station had been. Violet looked up at a high stained-glass skylight (which was dark now) set in an elaborately decorated ceiling, with plaster bosses and garlands of fruit. There was a balcony, and people crowded along the railing, looking down at the people in the lobby. Violet couldn't hear what anyone was saying—the babble around her was too loud, with hundreds of voices echoing off the marble floors and walls. In fact, she was getting an awful headache.

Violet looked around and found the registration desk. She made her way through the crowd of people in yellow roses and red roses and past an old man wearing what she thought was a Confederate army uniform. The desk clerk didn't seem to notice her.

“I beg your pardon—” she ventured.

“No rooms!” said the desk clerk, looking up. “I have no rooms left. Small or large. With or without conveniences. No rooms for Suffs, no rooms for Antis, no rooms for the Southern Women's Rejection League, the Men's Ratification Committee, the Tennessee Constitutional League, the National Woman's Party, the League of Women Voters, the Confederate Widows' Society, or the Women's Christian Temperance Union.”

“I'm not with any of those,” Violet said hurriedly. “I was wondering if—could you tell me if my sister is staying here? A Miss Mayhew.”

“Suffs are on the third floor,” the clerk went on, seeming not to have heard her. “Antis are on the seventh and eighth. Anti headquarters are on the mezzanine. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt and Mr. Joe Hanover are on the third floor although not, of course”—he sniffed delicately—“together. Miss Josephine Anderson Pearson is on the seventh floor. Antis' hospitality suite is on the eighth floor. People who take both the Antis' and the Suffs' side—”

“Mr. Walker!”

Violet turned. A woman was calling to a man in a
black suit who seemed anxious to avoid her. She called his name again and he turned reluctantly to face her. She looked very angry.