Authors: Karen Schwabach
The Hope Chest (2 page)
Violet, listening on the stairs, had known just what
Chloe meant. At school Violet's class was knitting squares to make blankets for French war orphans. Miss Smedley read to the class—
Ivanhoe
was what she was reading to them just then—for half an hour each day while they knitted. And although Miss Smedley tried to make a game of it by keeping score of who knitted more squares—the boys or the girls—to Violet, knitting those squares seemed like the most important thing she had ever done in her life. She felt as though she was part of something huge, something vital, something that involved the whole world. Or at least much more of the world than she had ever seen.
Mr. Rice (or was it Mr. Russell?) had no very high opinion of women working, or voting, or doing anything interesting. Both Mr. R.'s worked for Father at the bank, and they still came to Sunday dinner every week, even though Chloe was no longer around for either of them to marry. Last Sunday they'd tried to outdo each other making jokes about women voting.
“Can you imagine if women were actually allowed to vote?” Mr. Russell had asked. “Elections would have to go on for days, with all those women standing in the voting booths, not being able to make up their minds.”
“Not only that, but they'd be standing up on their little tippy toes, trying to peer into the other booths to see who the other women were voting for,” said Mr. Rice.
Violet couldn't imagine why Mother and Father had
thought Chloe would marry either one of them. She eagerly unfolded the next letter.
December 20, 1918
Dear Violet,
Merry Christmas! I've been thinking about you a lot. I wish I could come see you for Christmas, but Father would just slam the door in my face again— so it would be a waste of gasoline, at more than twenty cents a gallon. (Did I tell you the Hope Chest gets twenty—five miles to the gallon, though? It's great!) The influenza seems to be spreading a little less this week—touch wood. I hope you are still well. A friend of mine was very bad with it, but he's better now, and I think he will live. It was scary, though.
The federal government has started deporting foreign—born radicals to Russia. Can you imagine? A lot of them didn't even come from Russia. Some of them have lived in this country nearly all their lives. But I guess that's what happens when you have a war. People start hating immigrants. I think there are people who just need someone to hate. I just hope they don't deport all of them. Some of them are such dear people.
I hope you can come to New York City one day. You
never saw a place so alive, with so many different ideas being talked about in so many different languages. New York City is a college education in itself. Still, I hope that you, at least, will find a way to go to college, and I mean a whole four years of it.
Love,
Chloe
Violet put the letter down and looked out at the muddy waters of the Susquehanna slipping by. Chloe made what their mother had always called “the wrong sort of people” sound really interesting, which Violet had always suspected they might be. She made them sound downright uplifting. Wasn't it just like their parents to want to keep Violet away from anything interesting! Chloe was wrong about Violet finding a way to go to college, though. Violet didn't want to go to college—school was boring, and the sooner she was out of it the better. Besides, Father was against college for girls.
The next thing in the pile wasn't a letter but a slender tin-framed snapshot. Stephen and Chloe, when they were teenagers, sat stiffly in their Sunday best and held Violet, who wore a white dress with enormous skirts that covered both their laps. She had been a plain baby, Violet thought, just like she was a plain girl—with straight brown hair that had never curled and never would and a snub nose and ordinary brown eyes. Mother must have stuck the
picture into the pile of letters, but why? So that she would remember what Chloe looked like? Or was she trying to hide Chloe so she could forget her?
January 15, 1919
Dear Violet,
Happy New Year! I would have written sooner, but there have been some bad relapses in flu cases, as well as some other things that have been keeping me very busy. I hope you are thinking about what I said about college— I know it seems far away when you are in fourth grade. College arms you to fight the great battles. I learned that from Miss Lillian Wald; she's the founder of the Henry Street Settlement House, where I'm doing my nurse training. She invented public health nursing, you know. She says the influenza has been a baptism by fire for all of her trainees. I hope I never see anything worse.
Speaking of battles, it looks as though Congress is going to take up the Susan B. Anthony Amendment when it reconvenes. That's the amendment poor Miss Anthony wrote back in 1878. Congress voted it down back then—to think women could have gotten the vote forty years ago! It needs a two—thirds vote of both houses of Congress to pass, which means it's going to be a huge knock—down, drag—out fight. And Congress has
defeated it before. If they do pass it, it will go to the states for ratification. And then it will be part of our U.S. Constitution.
Part of me really wants to go to Washington to help Miss Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party work for that amendment. But I also want to stay here and finish my nurse's training. (Especially now that my baptism by fire is over—touch wood and cross fingers!) There are other things that make me want to stay in New York too. But a woman shouldn't let herself be ruled by those sorts of things.
Love,
Chloe
Violet couldn't figure out what the last two sentences of that letter meant. Chloe's life in New York sounded thrilling. Violet imagined Chloe climbing up and down towering tenement buildings, risking death (by influenza or falling off a roof) to bring help and hope to hundreds of suffering people. It sounded a lot more exciting than marrying one of the Mr. R.'s. Violet eagerly opened the next letter.
February 18, 1919
Dear Violet,
You still haven't written back to me. I hope you're not still angry with me for leaving. You know I really
couldn't do anything else. I didn't want to marry Mr. Russell (or whoever else they found for me!) and turn into a good little helpmeet, hosting dinner parties and having babies and never again having a thought or idea or dream of my own.
I wonder if Mother ever had a dream before she married Father? Well, it's too late for me to ask her now. Last week I drove the Hope Chest out to Long Island with some girls from one of the worst tenements on Hester Street. None of them had ever seen an open field before. They couldn't believe all the space. I wish you could have been with us. The Hope Chest got two flat tires, one on the way there and one on the way back, but fortunately a friend of mine showed me how to patch them myself. Everyone agrees that a lady motorist should know how to change a tire, but considering how often they burst, I'm glad I know how to patch them now as well.
Some people think that us suffragists (or is it we suffragists?) hate men, but that's not true at all. Lots of men are really nice, like my friend who showed me how to patch tires. There's a difference between liking men and wanting to have them run your whole life.
Well, that's neither here nor there. I hope you are getting along all right. I remember that when I was in
eighth grade and my friend Dottie Armitage died of consumption, I didn't want to be friends with anyone else for a long time. I thought that would be somehow disloyal to Dottie. It wasn't true, though, and I hope you know it isn't true about Flossie either. When a friend dies, some of her always stays inside of us. Write back if you can.
Love,
Chloe
Violet felt peculiar—it was as if Chloe had read her mind. Back then, that is. She had felt just that way, when her grief started to ease enough that she could sometimes laugh and have fun and want to be with people again. She'd felt as if she'd be betraying Flossie if she made other friends. Violet threw the letter angrily down on the riverbank beside her. It would have been great to read this letter back then.
The last letter was just a note.
April 15, 1919
Dear Violet,
This clipping is a poem that was in the newspaper the other day. It's called “Aftermath,” and it's by a man named Siegfried Sassoon, who was in the British army. I wish you'd read it to Stephen.
You know there's going to be a League of Nations—everyone says we will never have a war again. I hope that's true.
Violet looked in the envelope, but there was no clipping. Either it had fallen out or Mother had taken it when she'd read the letter.
That was what made Violet snap. Mother had read all these letters. Maybe Father too, but it was Mother who she felt ought to have known better. Mother had kept Chloe's interesting news and comforting thoughts from Violet when Violet had needed them most. And there were more letters, besides these few that Violet had managed to rescue. Violet knew they wouldn't be in the desk anymore. They'd be hidden somewhere she couldn't find them. Or even burned.
All her life, Violet had accepted that her parents made decisions, and whether Violet liked it or not, that was the way things were. But this was too much. The letters had been written just for her, by Chloe, the only person in the family who had ever told her anything except how to behave. And she hadn't stolen them; they'd been stolen from her. It was completely unfair, and Violet wasn't going to put up with it.
The Dying Mrs. RenwickV
IOLET WISHED SHE HAD MORE COMFORTABLE
clothes to run away in.
Her navy blue pleated skirt and matching sailor's middy blouse were what Mother called a compromise. Mother liked to dress Violet in fluffy white dresses with lots of petticoats, a sash and ribbons of violet satin, and a hat with artificial violets around the brim. Violet would have preferred overalls. She had seen girls' overalls advertised in the Sears, Roebuck catalog, although she'd never seen anyone actually wearing them. They looked very convenient and serviceable. Violet had ruined several white dresses while exploring along the muddy banks of the Susquehanna River and lost two hats with violets around the brim. Then Mother had given up on the white
dresses with violet trim. As far as Violet was concerned, her navy blue clothes weren't a compromise at all. Violet wanted overalls.
When Violet had finally gone home, after an hour or two of squatting among the trees on the bank watching the Susquehanna water slide indifferently past, she'd been sent to her room without dinner. Violet had tucked the letters into her bloomers, just above the band of elastic around her knee, and pulled her stockings up over them and buttoned the garters to her undervest before she got home. When Mother asked her for the letters, Violet told her she'd thrown them in the river.
Now it was morning, and Violet sat on an itchy mohair-covered train seat and stared out the train window at the smokestacks and the soot-blackened brick buildings chugging by. She was on her way to New York City. She was through with Mother and Father and their rules. She was going to the Henry Street Settlement House, and she was going to find Chloe.
Before she left, Chloe had told Violet about settlement houses—they were mostly started in bad neighborhoods in the big cities by young college men and women. They lived in the settlement houses and did whatever they could to help out—taught English classes, took care of sick people, organized children's clubs. There were even some workers in the settlement houses who called themselves social workers, although Violet wasn't quite sure what those were. It had something to do with socialism.
Socialism, Chloe had once explained to her, meant the idea that people should take care of each other instead of just themselves.
Well, Violet was big enough to take care of herself and whoever else needed it. She had snuck out of the house in the very first morning light, taking her savings of $3.92 tied up in a handkerchief pinned inside her middy blouse. Violet couldn't face another scene—she hated scenes— and besides, she very much doubted that she would have been able to leave if there had been a fight, since unlike Chloe, she was only eleven and didn't have the Hope Chest.
She remembered the final scene when Chloe had left and never come back. Father and Chloe had yelled at each other at the door. Mostly Father. Mother had stood behind him saying, “Arthur, the neighbors!” Violet had sat at the top of the stairs, out of everyone's sight. She had hugged her knees to her chest, bunched up into a tight little ball of terror as Father's bellowing rang through the hall and made the crystal in the chandelier hum. Stephen had been in the front parlor, presumably studying the wallpaper. Violet had heard the front door slam shut and the creaking of the crank that started the Hope Chest, then the sudden roar of the Hope Chest's engine as Chloe drove away.
The Hope Chest had been the final straw, as far as Father was concerned. Not the votes for women nonsense, not the damn-fool crazy college ideas, not Chloe's
insisting that she wanted to do something meaningful, but the Hope Chest.