The Hope Chest (16 page)

“Well, there's a woman down in Crappy Chute that takes in colored,” said the desk clerk, thinking. “No, come to think of it, I guess she was burned out in the 1916 fire. Now, there's a colored YMCA downtown, but of course they won't take the child. Or you either, come to think of it. Now, if you want to send her over to Hell's Half-Acre …”

“I'm not sending a seven-year-old girl to a place called Hell's Half-Acre,” Mr. Martin said.

“I'm ten, sir,” Myrtle reminded him.

“Oh, that's just the name.” The desk clerk shrugged. “Smoky Roll's just as bad. Here.” He dipped his pen in ink and wrote a name and address on a piece of paper. “This woman on Dead Horse Alley rents to colored people. Just head on up Sixth Avenue, cross the Louisville and Nashville tracks, and … and then ask someone else for directions.”

Mr. Martin took the paper. “Thanks.”

The desk clerk leaned forward against the brass bars of his cage. “Listen, young man,” he said, dropping his voice so that Myrtle had to strain to hear him. “I know what it looks like to you Northerners, the way we do things in the South. Our special customs. But we have a
very harmonious relationship between the races down here. Very harmonious.”

Mr. Martin opened his mouth to answer this, but Myrtle grabbed his arm and led him quickly to the door.

They walked up Sixth Avenue away from the capitol. The street was cobbled with gray brick-shaped stones and had concrete sidewalks that sloped and slouched disconsolately into the street. Two-story brick buildings lined the street, with wooden water towers rising above them here and there.

An advertisement painted on the side of a brick building showed two colored children of indeterminate sex, both wearing full skirts and nothing else. They had round white eyes and bright red lips. Between them was a sink full of soapsuds, and they were both holding up freshly scrubbed dishes that shone like diamonds—painted rays surrounding the dishes to show how much they were shining. More glowing dishes hung behind them. Beside one child was a box of Gold Dust cleansing powder. Underneath them were painted the words
Your Servants, Ma'am!

The sign reminded Myrtle of the Girls' Training Institute, and she felt instantly depressed. “I don't want to ever be anybody's servant,” she said.

“I agree,” said Mr. Martin. “Don't be. Excuse me, sir.”

The colored man Mr. Martin called to looked surprised at being called sir. He touched his hat deferentially and gave Mr. Martin directions to the address the desk clerk had written down. Mr. Martin touched his own hat
in return. Myrtle thought the two men were making each other very uncomfortable.

It got worse when they got to Dead Horse Alley. They had run out of brick houses and stone streets by then. There was a smell of outhouses and rotting food on the hot air, and foul water ran down a gutter at the side of the street. The houses were made of wood, mostly unpainted or painted so long ago that you could no longer tell what color they were supposed to be.

“I guess this must be Dead Horse Alley,” said Mr. Martin. “According to those directions that fella gave me.” He sounded doubtful. Myrtle could see why. It didn't look like an alley. It looked like a dry gully cut by a rushing creek that would be back again the next time it rained. It wasn't even flat. There was no way you could have driven a wagon up it, even if it had been wide enough.

A woman was sitting on the stoop of what looked like a cowshed, sewing. “Yes, this is Dead Horse Alley,” she said.

“Can you tell us where we might find Mrs. Eugenia Ready, ma'am?” Mr. Martin asked.

“I'm Mrs. Eugenia Ready,” said the woman. She stood up. She was older than Mama would've been, Myrtle thought, but not really old. She wore an old-fashioned blue dress that came to her ankles and had her hair done up on top of her head but not straightened. Mama had never straightened her hair either. But this woman was looking at them both a little suspiciously, and
she got more suspicious when Mr. Martin explained that they were looking for lodgings.

The problem, it seemed, was that Mr. Martin wanted to stay there too. Mrs. Ready was uncomfortable with that. She seemed to be thinking that if Mr. Martin wanted to stay in a place like Dead Horse Alley, he must be on the run from the law or something. Mr. Martin's evil-looking scar probably encouraged her impression, which, Myrtle had to admit, was correct. She quoted a high price, two dollars a week, but Mr. Martin accepted it without demurral and she seemed to feel she had no choice but to let them inside.

The house really had been a cowshed at one point; Myrtle was sure of it. A wooden floor had been put down, and the place was scrupulously clean, but it still smelled faintly of cows. The two partitioned-off bedrooms reminded Myrtle of stalls. One of them was clearly Mrs. Ready's room. The other one she supposed Mr. Martin would get, and she'd have to be in the kitchen. The kitchen had a wood cookstove, a dry sink, and a table covered with a checkered oilcloth. A treadle sewing machine stood against the wall. There was a shelf with a Bible on it and a wedding picture of Mrs. Ready and some fellow who must be Mr. Ready. Next to it was a picture of a serious-looking young colored lady with round glasses. Next to that was a yellow rose stuck in a bottle.

“The girl is my daughter, Rosalie. She's in preparatory classes for Fisk University. She aims to be a
doctor. There's a colored medical school, Meharry, in Nashville,” said Mrs. Ready. “The gentleman is my husband, Walter. He was killed in the Dutch Bend train derailment in 1918.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” said Myrtle.

Mr. Martin looked like he was thinking of saying something Bolshevist about railroads and thought better of it. Myrtle had learned on their travels that he thought railroads were all run by robber barons who didn't care if their workers and passengers died. “I'm sorry to hear it, ma'am. Does that yellow rose mean …”

“Yes, I'm a suffragist,” said Mrs. Ready defiantly. “And I support the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.”

“So do we,” said Myrtle.

“Well, just stay out of sight, child,” said Mrs. Ready. “That's our job this week.” She sounded bitter.

“I can always stay out of sight, ma'am,” said Myrtle. “I can turn invisible.”

“Child, we can all do that,” said Mrs. Ready.

Chloe had thought Violet's idea of being a spy was an excellent one. “And you can report to me several times a day,” she said. “You can come down to the Tulane, or I'll go up to the Hermitage.”

“No, that won't work,” said Violet. “Everyone knows the Tulane's a Suff base, so I can't go in there with my red rose on, and I can't be seen talking to Suffs at the Hermitage.”

They'd agreed to meet instead at Max Bloomstein's Pharmacy for lunch at noon each day, neither of them wearing Suff or Anti symbols. Violet thought it sounded exciting and spylike. Like something from the movies.

Going back to the Hermitage was less exciting. The ninth floor of the Hermitage was somehow hotter than she remembered. When she turned the key and opened the door to room 907, she saw that the clothesline full of nankeen bloomers had been taken down and their occupant was in possession of the room.

“Oh!” said the woman, startled.

“I beg your pardon,” said Violet. “I'm Miss Violet Mayhew; they, um, gave me that other bed.”

“Oh!” The woman's mouth was shaped like an O, so maybe it was the easiest sound for her to make. She was stout, and not much taller than Violet, and about thirty years old. She had brass-colored hair, piled up under a spreading pink hat, and round, startled blue eyes. She was wearing a flouncy pink dress that Violet would have considered too babyish for herself.

“I'm Miss Annasette Escuadrille,” she said. “I was just getting ready for the thing tonight.” She nodded at the bedside table, and Violet saw that the electric curling iron was now plugged in. How anyone could want more heat on a day like this she couldn't imagine.

Still, she might as well get right to spying. “What thing?” she asked, sitting down on her bed. “I mean, I know there's a thing, but I forgot.”

Miss Escuadrille untied the ribbons that held on her hat and began unpinning her hair. “I don't know, some thing at the capitol? Miss Charlotte Rowe is going to speak; have you met her?”

“Yes,” said Violet. “I met her at the train station.”

“She's so clever,” said Miss Escuadrille. “And Miss Josephine Anderson Pearson will be there, and Senator Candler, of course, and Mrs. James S. Pinckard … and some Suffs too, I suppose.”

“Are they going to vote on the amendment?” said Violet.

“I don't think so,” said Miss Escuadrille, opening the metal clamp on the hair curler, rolling a lock of brass-colored hair around it, and snapping the curler shut. “I don't really understand all that part of it. It's just some sort of meeting. There'll be speeches.”

A dreadful smell of burned hair filled the room.

“Do you want to use this next?” Miss Escuadrille asked.

“No, thank you,” said Violet, who couldn't imagine putting hot metal next to her face in this heat. Besides, her hair wouldn't hold a curl anyway. She wondered if Miss Escuadrille would mind if she turned the fan on.

“I just think we all need to look really nice,” said Miss Escuadrille, looking at Violet's plaid dress with the horrible patent leather belt. “Because you know the Suffs are going to look like frumpy man-hating witches.”

Violet felt moved to retort that at least the Suffs didn't
wear flouncy pink dresses better suited to a four-year-old, but she remembered that she was supposed to be an Anti and kept her mouth shut.

“I was on duty at the telegraph offices all morning,” said Miss Escuadrille. “Every time a Suff goes in to send a message, I go look at the desk after she's sent it and see if I can read the impressions the pen has left on the blotter.” She shrugged and reached for another strand of hair. “Then whenever a messenger boy heads out with a telegram, I try to catch him before he gets on his bike to bribe him to show me the message. But I can't catch them.” She shrugged again. “They move so fast.”

“Would they really show you the telegrams for money?” Violet asked, surprised.

“Supposed to,” said Miss Escuadrille. “And then if it's addressed to a Suff and you don't want them to get it, they're supposed to give you the telegram for more money.”

Miss Escuadrille was either the stupidest adult Violet had ever met or just didn't know what “supposed to” meant, Violet thought.

“Don't you have another dress you could wear?” said Miss Escuadrille.

Violet unwrapped her bundle and showed Miss Escuadrille the other dress that had been cut down for her in Washington. It was a brown-and-black houndstooth check and looked as if it was meant to subdue whoever wore it into a deep and prolonged state of melancholy.

“Huh,” said Miss Escuadrille. “That won't do.
Makes you look like a Suff. Or a Bolshevik. I'll see if we can round up something better. I'm sure Mrs. Pinckard can find something. Or buy it if she has to—we have plenty of money.”

“Why do we have plenty of money?” Violet asked. She had been wondering this since the meeting last night.

“Because of the generosity and true chivalry of Southern men,” said Miss Escuadrille blithely. “They don't ever want women to have to vote. They know that Southern women were meant to be the queens of their households, so voting would be demeaning to us.”

Violet took this to mean that Miss Escuadrille didn't know where the money was coming from. “But Miss Escuadrille, you're not even married,” she said. “So how can you be the queen of a household?”

To Violet's dismay, Miss Escuadrille's eyes filled up with tears. “What a horrible, cruel, nasty thing to say to a person!”

She sat down on her bed, which creaked alarmingly, and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

Violet dived for the curling iron, which had fallen on the rug. She missed the wooden handle and grabbed the business end instead, burning her fingers painfully. She unplugged the curling iron from the wall socket.

“I'm sorry, Miss Escuadrille,” she apologized. “I beg your pardon.”

“Horrible … not my fault … not married!” Miss Escuadrille sobbed.

“I'm really, really sorry. I didn't mean it that way.”

“How would you like it? To get to be my age and not even married!” Miss Escuadrille was getting more and more out of breath between sobs, and Violet wondered if she might be becoming hysterical. In books, when people got hysterical, you slapped them in the face. Violet didn't think she'd do that.

Instead, she sat back down on her bed and went on apologizing every time Miss Escuadrille stopped sobbing long enough to hear her. In between apologies she sucked her burned fingers. She thought about the hatchet-faced woman in the train station in Chattanooga, waiting for her son's body to arrive from France. She was Southern, that woman, but she hadn't looked like the queen of anything.

This spying was a lot less fun than Violet had thought it would be. She wished Myrtle were there.

Max Bloomstein's Pharmacy

M
R.
M
ARTIN HADN'T SAID ANYTHING ABOUT
how long they were staying in Dead Horse Alley or where they were going afterward. Myrtle supposed that, like everyone else, they were waiting. They had been there for two days already, but Mrs. Ready had told them that no one was sure when the legislature would vote.