The Hope Chest (15 page)

“Today's the fourth day the legislature has met,” Miss Lewis said. “We were hoping it would all be over by now. The first day they tried to pass a joint resolution in the Tennessee House and Senate, and we thought we had enough votes, but the Antis had bribed a lot of the men we were counting on.” She wiped a hand over her forehead, which was already sweating.

“How long will they meet for?” Violet asked.

“We don't know,” said Miss Lewis. “The Senate and House have to vote separately now, and they each have to pass the amendment. And we don't know when they will. The Antis are trying to bribe as many legislators as they can, and they won't let the vote happen now until they're sure they can win.”

“Aren't the Suffs bribing legislators?” said Violet. She was too tired to think straight, or she would have realized how rude this sounded.

“Certainly not!” said Miss Lewis. “Women are entering politics to clean it up, not to add to the filth!

“When women vote, there will be no more bribery or corruption. There will be no more war. The concerns of mothers will become the concerns of the government— good schools, safe food, and temperance. Just think, the United States has banned alcohol completely, and soon temperance will spread to other nations, so that nowhere on earth will mankind ever be a slave to alcohol again!”

Violet had finished her Grape-Nuts. “Excuse me, Miss Lewis,” she said. “I need to go to the train station.”

“I'm sure those Antis are going to use every dirty trick they can think of to block the legislature,” said Miss Lewis, seeming not to hear her. “If only there was some way we could know what they're planning!”

As she walked along, Violet reflected that she had sat in an Anti meeting last night, eating sandwiches, and that nobody had even noticed she was there.

She was perfectly set up, Violet thought, to be a spy. She could go back to the Hermitage, pretend to be an Anti, and tell the Suffs what the Antis were planning. She wanted to do something to help—since meeting that hatchet-faced woman in Chattanooga yesterday, she found she cared about woman suffrage very much. It was more than just a newspaper story to her now.

Violet looked at the rail yards that she was walking past. She saw two hoboes walking along, carrying small bundles under their arms. They looked like they had just gotten off a train, and they reminded Violet of Hobie the Hobo. She wondered if he'd gotten to Florida yet.

The smaller hobo let out a cry and grabbed the bigger hobo's arm, pointing to Violet.

Violet started. Hoboes could be dangerous; she'd gathered that much from Hobie, who had been careful not to let her and Myrtle meet any other hoboes. She turned to run.

“Violet!” called the larger hobo, and relief washed over Violet. She ran toward them, the gravel roadbed crunching under her feet.

“I was just on my way to look for you,” she said.

“We shook those Palmer agents,” said Myrtle. “They're running around the Tennessee backwoods looking for us.” She pointed back down the rails, toward the freight yard. “We rode in a caboose!”

“But …” Violet looked at Myrtle and then at Mr. Martin. They were both rather soot-covered, though not as much as Violet and Myrtle had been after riding in the blind behind the engine with Hobie. “Mr. Martin, you jumped off the train. I saw you.”

Mr. Martin shrugged and smiled. “Sorry to scare you, Violet. I had to make it look like I jumped so that agent would leave us all alone. I went over onto the steps of the vestibule of the connecting car, then climbed up onto the roof and rode there till the next stop. Then I got into a different car.”

“And you told
us
it was dangerous to ride freight trains!” Violet said.

Mr. Martin shrugged again. “Well, it is. Have you, um, found your sister yet, Violet?”

“Yes,” said Violet. “She's at the Tulane Hotel; it's just up the hill here. She'll be so glad to see you.”

Violet wasn't sure if this was true, but it was the sort of polite thing she'd always been taught to say.

Chloe was just coming down the stairs into the big wood-paneled lobby of the Tulane, wearing her sky blue walking suit and the straw hat with a yellow rose in it. She still
looked exhausted, Violet thought. She looked like she hadn't slept at all.

Chloe got to the bottom of the stairs and stopped, looking at Mr. Martin for a moment as if she wasn't sure who he was. She didn't notice Violet and Myrtle at all. Violet watched Chloe and Mr. Martin look at each other. The desk clerk and the drummer he was playing cards with watched too. Chloe's mouth opened a little bit and she froze. Mr. Martin turned faintly pink under the train soot, and Violet could almost hear him wishing he'd stopped to wash his face.

Chloe's face turned pink too. “Theo, what were you thinking, helping my sister run away from home?”

“He didn't help me run away from home; I did it by myself,” Violet said, annoyed.

Chloe spared Violet a glance and then looked back at Mr. Martin again.

“I'm delighted to see you too,” said Mr. Martin sarcastically.

“Theo, you shouldn't have left New York.” Chloe spoke very quietly, and Violet guessed she was trying not to let the desk clerk and drummer overhear.

“I wasn't aware I needed your permission to leave New York,” Mr. Martin said.

“Theo, stop it. What happened? Did the federal agents find the safe house?”

“No. Your sister came crashing in on me.”

Violet felt she had by no means come crashing in, but
the way the two of them were glaring at each other now, she didn't really want to be involved in their discussion.

“Why didn't you send her home, Theo?”

“Because it's impossible to make you headstrong Mayhew women do anything you don't want to,” said Mr. Martin testily.

“I see you're still thinking in terms of
making
women do things,” Chloe snapped.

“That's completely unfair, and you know it!” Mr. Martin said.

Violet and Myrtle exchanged glances. Unfortunately, this was enough to draw attention to Myrtle.

“Hey!” the desk clerk barked, and everyone turned to look at him. “Uh-uh. We don't allow
them
in here.” He pointed.

They all stared at him.

“You mean Myrtle?” Mr. Martin said in a dangerously gentle voice. He stepped over and put a hand on Myrtle's shoulder.

“If you don't mind, we're trying to have a conversation here,” said Chloe to the desk clerk.

“Have it somewhere else, then,” said the desk clerk. “Not in my hotel.”

“I
happen
to be a guest here,” said Chloe. She put her hand on Myrtle's other shoulder.

“Not if you're going to bring in coloreds and parade them around the lobby,” the desk clerk snarled.

“Yeah, this is a high-tone establishment,” said the
drummer, shuffling the cards and pushing his hat back on his head.

“Have you two eaten?” Chloe asked Mr. Martin.

“No, we were just going to look for something.…”

“Do you need any money? I mean, to get the child something to eat,” Chloe said. Violet noticed that they were both looking at Myrtle now and that neither of them seemed angry anymore.

“No, thanks, I have—”

“Are you going to get that colored kid out of here or am I going to have to call somebody?” the desk clerk asked.

“We're leaving,” said Mr. Martin. “I'm sure we can find someplace where they'll take our kind in. Even in Nashville,” he added, giving the desk clerk a nasty look.

“Can't imagine where,” said the desk clerk. “There's colored hotels, of course, but you ain't colored.”

“I don't think I like Nashville,” Myrtle said to Violet when they got out to the street.

“I'm not so sure I like it either,” said Mr. Martin, overhearing her.

“Well, it's your own …,” Chloe started to retort, but then seemed to think better of it. “Nashville is where it's all come down to, Theo. We're going to win or lose everything in Nashville. And I'm staying right here until we do.”

Mr. Martin went over to the curb. “How's the old Hope Chest holding up?”

Chloe followed him. “Pretty well. I replaced the brass radiator with one of those steel ones, like you suggested.”

“Excellent.” Mr. Martin stroked the radiator. “And I was right, wasn't I?”

“Yes,” said Chloe fondly. “It hardly ever overheats now.”

Violet noticed that Chloe seemed suddenly happier and much less tired than she'd been a few minutes ago.

Myrtle noticed too. “I don't think your sister's going to send Mr. Martin to the rightabout,” she murmured.

“No, it's the car she's sweet on, not him,” Violet said.

“Uh-huh,” said Myrtle skeptically.

“We should drive her out into the country, take a picnic,” said Mr. Martin. “There are some beautiful places east of Nashville.”

“And I could teach the girls to drive,” Chloe said.

At the words “the girls,” Mr. Martin turned around and looked at Violet and Myrtle. He had clearly forgotten they were there.

“Let me go get this one something to eat,” he said. “And find a place to park her. There has to be a hotel that takes white and colored in this town somewhere.”

Violet watched them go with regret. She hadn't realized it until now, but she hadn't seen a single colored person at the Hermitage or the Tulane. She was sorry that Myrtle wasn't going to be able to stay with her.

Maybe when women got the vote, they'd be able to change that.

Dead Horse Alley

M
R.
M
ARTIN WAS WRONG — THERE WAS NOT
one hotel in Nashville that would take in a white man and a colored child. Myrtle realized this a lot sooner than Mr. Martin did. She tried to tell him, but he just got more and more irritable and wouldn't listen. They couldn't even find anywhere to eat lunch.

At the first drugstore, they went in and sat down at the lunch counter. The boy at the counter didn't even speak to them. He simply called to the druggist in the back to telephone the police. Myrtle didn't have much trouble getting Mr. Martin out of there. At the next place, the boy behind the counter told them that if they went around to the alley door, he could serve them. Or, he added generously, Mr. Martin could eat at the lunch counter and Myrtle could eat in the alley.

“Or I can take my business elsewhere,” Mr. Martin snapped.

“Why don't you take it back up north?” said the boy. “If you don't want to respect our Southern customs.”

After the fourth drugstore, Myrtle suggested that they eat in the alley because she was getting hungry. So that's what they did, sitting on stone steps behind a drugstore beside an overflowing garbage can, eating egg salad sandwiches and sipping chocolate phosphates.

“At least prices are cheap in the South,” said Mr. Martin, who had paid twenty cents for their lunch.

“I don't think I like it here,”

Myrtle repeated. Myrtle's people had lived in Washington ever since the Civil War. Washington wasn't exactly the South, her mother had always said, but it wasn't exactly the North either. Mama had sometimes talked about moving to the North. She would have been happy that Myrtle ended up in New York. But Myrtle didn't care for the Girls' Training Institute, and she knew Mama wouldn't have cared for it either. Mama had meant for Myrtle to get an education and do something in the world. Something besides be somebody's maid.

Mr. Martin seemed to get the point about the hotels quicker, perhaps because of their experience at the Tulane. Most of the hotels probably didn't have room anyway, Myrtle thought, because the entire city seemed to be full of visitors wearing yellow or red roses. But the hotels with doormen stopped them at the door, and in
those without, the desk clerks shook their heads and said, “Uh-uh.”

“They have to take us in one of these places,” Mr. Martin said as they crossed Capitol Hill and came down on the other side to a row of disreputable-looking hotels and rooming houses, which seemed to be leaning on each other for support. They went into one that said
Rooms Twenty-five Cents
over the door.

They walked into a gloomy lobby furnished with weak-backed chairs and a grease-stained sofa that looked like it had fought in the Civil War and lost. Men who seemed to be as much a part of the decor as the tobacco-stained carpet were slumped on the furniture, looking as if they had become one with it.

The clerk at the desk sat behind a protective brass cage—in case any of the men in the lobby came to life and attacked, Myrtle supposed. He seemed less affronted than the clerks in the other hotels at the idea that he might have room for Myrtle.

“Sorry, we don't take colored,” he said. “We try to run a nice hotel here.”

Myrtle looked around at the men on the chairs, one of whom was swigging enthusiastically out of a brown bottle labeled
Best Stomach Bitters
. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered between their heads and the ceiling. Cigarette butts were scattered around the men's feet.

“To tell the truth, sir,” said the desk clerk, “we don't allow ladies here anyways. Not even white ones. You can
never tell with females, sir, and we do try to keep the place decent.”

“I can see that,” said Mr. Martin. “Tell me, is it too much to hope that there's anywhere we can lodge in this great city of Nashville?”