The Hope Chest (22 page)

Miss Pollitzer had caught the other legislator, Blotz, trying to escape on the Interurban, the electric train system that connected cities from the East Coast to the Mississippi.

That night the committee voted 10–8 to send the Susan B. Anthony Amendment to the floor. Without Mr. Blotz and Mr. Credwell, Violet realized, the vote would have been tied.

The next day, Tuesday, August 17, Violet did not see Chloe or Myrtle at all. Everyone thought the amendment would be voted on that day. Violet went to their usual noon meeting place at Max Bloomstein's Pharmacy, but Chloe did not show up. Violet slowly sipped a chocolate phosphate through a paper straw and worried. What if
they had arrested Chloe too? Why would they, though? Chloe hadn't done anything. But then, according to Chloe, all Mr. Martin had done was speak out against the War, so who knew what people could get arrested for? And anyway, Chloe had been in jail before.

The door jangled seventeen times before the last of the phosphate gurgled in the bottom of Violet's glass, but it was never Chloe. With a sigh, Violet got up and left. On the way back to the Hermitage, Violet heard a newsboy hollering that some baseball player had been hit by a fast pitch and killed. That would upset Mr. Martin, Violet thought. If he ever even heard about it, that is. Who knew where he was being kept or what was being done to him or to Chloe or to Myrtle?

Turning these worries over in her head, Violet walked across the sweltering lobby of the Hermitage and heard someone calling her name.

She was surprised to see it was Mr. Hanover, the non-Bolshevik Jewish lawyer from Memphis who was leading the House fight. Imagine him remembering her name. She was glad (and slightly proud of herself) to see that Mr. Hanover had no bump on his head and had not been locked in the hold of a slow freighter heading south out of New Orleans.

“How do you do, Mr. Hanover?” she said politely. She looked curiously at the enormous blond man standing just behind Mr. Hanover's shoulder. Governor Roberts had indeed gotten Mr. Hanover a bodyguard—a huge one.

“Fine, fine,” said Mr. Hanover. “Actually, I think I'm
getting an ulcer, but that's neither here nor there. Listen, could you tell your sister that she doesn't need to bother with Mr. Ezekiel? I heard she was looking for him, but Mr. Ezekiel's ours. In fact, I'll tell you a funny story—”

Violet had already heard from Myrtle the story of how Mr. Ezekiel had told Mr. Hanover the Antis had offered him $300 for his vote and had tried to get Mr. Hanover to offer him more. But she hadn't heard it from Mr. Hanover, so she laughed politely. Mr. Hanover was a nice fella. In spite of his baldness, he really wasn't much older than Chloe. About Mr. Martin's age, maybe. Violet suddenly felt that there was something really good about people who fought for the rights of other people, and she wished there was some way she could tell Mr. Hanover that.

“Mr. Hanover, I'm not really an Anti. And thank you.” She unpinned the red rose from her dress and handed it to Mr. Hanover (keeping the pin because it would ruin the gesture if she stabbed him in the hand).

She supposed Mr. Hanover must've known she wasn't an Anti or he wouldn't have told her the story. But she felt better for saying it anyway. She wondered why Mr. Hanover thought Chloe had been looking for Mr. Ezekiel … she couldn't remember ever seeing a question mark next to Mr. Ezekiel's name.

She went back up to her room. It was sweltering hot. Miss Escuadrille was laundering her bloomers in the washbasin. Violet turned on the fan—she didn't care
whether Miss Escuadrille minded or not—and flopped down on the bed.

“There you are.” Miss Escuadrille came out of the bathroom and hung a pair of black bloomers on the line she'd strung. “You know the House might vote today? We're all supposed to go up there and show the colors. Where's your rose?”

“I'm not wearing it anymore,” said Violet. “I'm for woman suffrage, Miss Escuadrille.”

Surprisingly, Miss Escuadrille took this in stride. “You know, I'm beginning to wonder if I might be too. I was saying to myself, you know, Annasette, you're not even married, so all this queen of the household apple-sauce doesn't really apply to you anyway—”

“You didn't say that to yourself, I said it to you,” said Violet irritably.

“It's not only that, you know,” Miss Escuadrille went on as if Violet had not spoken. “There are probably lots of women who are married and they're still not queens of the household, or maybe the household they're the queen of is some one-room shack with no floor beside the railroad track, and maybe it's really not my business to decide whether they should vote or not. And anyway, who's to say I wouldn't do a good job of voting once I set my mind to it?”

Violet stared at Miss Escuadrille as if she had sprouted horns.

“Did you just change sides?” she asked Miss Escuadrille.

Miss Escuadrille gave her a bewildered look. “You know, I think I did.”

She shook out another pair of bloomers and hung them up.

In the evening there was an Anti party on the mezzanine. The Antis were celebrating because the North Carolina legislature had rejected the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. Violet went for the refreshments. But she didn't wear a red rose, and she didn't bother to pretend she was an Anti anymore. She went as herself.

“Here's to North Carolina!” Miss Josephine Anderson Pearson cried, lifting a glass of grape lemonade high beside the Confederate flag on the wall.

“Hear, hear!”

“May Tennessee follow in her footsteps!” said Mrs. Pinckard.

“They didn't actually vote it down,” a woman near Violet said conversationally. “They voted to table it till next year.”

“Oh, really?” said Violet politely, eating her pineapple ice.

“We might do the same,” said the woman. “If it looks like we're going to lose, which just between you and me and the barn gate …”

“I want the Susan B. Anthony Amendment to pass,” Violet said.

The woman looked at her in surprise. “Young lady!
That would be the worst thing that could happen to American womanhood.”

“Why?” said Violet. “I can think of lots worse things that can happen to American womanhood. Like right now, when we're taxed but not represented, and we can go to jail for breaking laws we didn't pass.” She thought of Chloe, Myrtle, and Mr. Martin and wondered if they were all in jail now. If they weren't, why hadn't she heard from them?

“That shows how much you know,” said the woman angrily. “Woman has a great deal more political power now than she'd have if she got the vote. Right now, when a woman goes to her congressman or senator and asks him for something, he knows that she's completely disinterested; she has no political stake in what she's asking for.”

“It seems to me that would only work if he doesn't have any political stake in what she's asking for either,” Violet said.

“Young lady! Did you just contradict me?”

Violet thought about what she'd just said. “I guess so.”

“You're a very badly brought-up young lady.”

“No, I'm not,” Violet contradicted again. “I'm a very well-brought-up young lady, but I'm getting over it.”

She started to lift her bowl to her mouth to drink the last melted bit of pineapple ice but then decided she'd better not lose all her manners at once. She set the bowl down on a table.

“You know, when you think about it,” Miss
Escuadrille was saying loudly nearby, “here it is 1920 already. I mean, doesn't it seem sort of, I don't know, crazy that women still haven't got the vote yet?”

“Annasette, hush. You don't know what you're saying,” said Miss Pearson.

“Yes, I do,” said Miss Escuadrille. “I may not be very smart, but I know when someone's trying to pull a fast one on me. We're women, so what are we doing fighting against women getting the vote?”

Miss Pearson opened her mouth to answer, then shut it as a page boy rushed into the room (followed by an Anti who was guarding him to make sure he arrived safely) and thrust a note into Miss Pearson's hand.

Everyone watched while Miss Pearson read the note. “The House is adjourned till tomorrow,” she announced. “So it will go on another day.”

There were murmurs all around. This was not good news for the Antis, Violet realized. They had been expecting a vote today, and an easy win.

August 18

C
HLOE AND
M
YRTLE HAD STILL NOT SHOWN
up. It was Wednesday, August 18. There had been meetings all night long at the Hermitage, both Suffs and Antis, and the sound of the elevator running up and down had combined with the stifling heat to keep Violet awake most of the night.

Violet could think of no way she could find out what had happened to Chloe and Myrtle and Mr. Martin. If she went to the police, would they even tell her? Would they arrest her and question her? Did those Palmer agents even have anything to do with the police?

What if they never came back? What would Violet do? Should she write to her parents for help? Would they even help her? Violet had to admit, though she didn't want to, that they probably would. They might come to Tennessee
on a train, full of fury, to rescue her. Or they might call the police and tell them to arrest Violet and keep her in jail till they came. Was that what had happened to Hobie the Hobo?

Violet went down to the lobby, thinking about all this and about finding something to eat. But as soon as she stepped off the elevator, she was caught up in a tide of people surging toward Capitol Hill.

“You'd better hurry or you won't get a seat!” a woman called as they climbed. Violet didn't know her and couldn't tell whether the woman was a Suff or an Anti. There were hundreds of people climbing up the hill. Violet looked around for Chloe, but she didn't see her. What if she never saw Chloe again?

She spotted a yellow rose on the ground, and she picked it up and stuck it in her hat.

“If they're going to vote, it means the Antis are sure they're going to win,” a woman near Violet said grimly.

Violet turned around and recognized Miss Kelley from the train. “Good morning, Miss Kelley,” she said politely. “What do you mean?”

“Seth Walker controls when the vote happens,” Miss Kelley said, panting as she climbed. “And the Antis own him. That's why the vote's been delayed so long; Walker's been waiting till he was sure.”

Violet felt a sinking in her stomach. What Miss Kelley said made perfect sense. When she looked up to reply, Miss Kelley had vanished in the moving throng. There was still no sign of Chloe anywhere.

The crowd carried her into the dark, vaulted first floor of the capitol. They surged up the wide stone staircase with the bullet-gouged handrail. Violet looked around, hoping to see Chloe in the crowd, but elbows and shoulders closed in all around her, blocking her view.

In the light, high-ceilinged main floor of the capitol, everyone was pushing toward the House chamber. The doors were open, and people were pouring onto the House floor. Violet joined them. Soon she was one of hundreds of women crowded among the old mahogany desks in front of the high Speaker's dais. “Out, ladies, please! Out!” a harassed-looking man in a uniform was saying. “Spectators are forbidden on the floor. All up to the galleries, please.”

He put his hand on Violet's shoulder. “Up to the gallery, please, miss.” He gave her a little shove toward the door.

Violet went out. It was too crowded on the House floor, and she couldn't see what was going on very well from there anyway. She started toward the narrow stairs to the spectators' gallery. Then she noticed a folded paper on the stone floor.

It was an envelope. It was addressed
Harry T. Burn, Hermitage Hotel, Nashville, Tennessee.

Violet held the envelope in her hand, uncertain what to do. It was a letter to Mr. Burn, and it might be important. But Mr. Burn was an Anti. He had danced with Chloe, and with Violet, and remained an Anti. Every list she'd seen had had him listed as an Anti.

The envelope was open. Violet looked around her. The high-ceilinged hall was full of people heading toward the galleries or toward the House floor or just milling about in confusion. The stone walls and ceiling rang with voices, and footsteps, and an occasional high-pitched, nervous laugh. You could feel the tension in the air, Violet thought. There was a sense that today really was the day, after yesterday's false alarm.

It was very wrong to read other people's mail, and Violet knew it. She thought about how angry she had been at Mother for reading her letters from Chloe. But this was different, she told herself. This letter had already been opened. She glanced around. Nobody was paying any attention to her. She slid the letter out of the envelope and unfolded it. This is very wrong, she thought, but she read it anyway.

Violet folded the letter hastily and stuffed it back in the envelope. The letter was from Mr. Burn's mother, who sounded less distant than her own mother. She
couldn't imagine Mother starting a letter to her with “Dear Daughter.” But then, she couldn't imagine Mother writing a letter to her at all. She wondered if Mr. Burn was in the habit of listening to his mother—a lot of people were. She'd better get this letter back to him. He might not even have read it yet—so many letters and telegrams had been stolen over the last few days. If he had gotten it, maybe he needed to read it again to remind him that millions of women needed his vote and that one of those women was his mother.