“The Professor also discovered a missing link in the evolutionary chain, am I right, Miss Mudge?” said Aunty Em. “A bird with teeth.”
Dorothy wasn’t too sure that all birds didn’t have teeth. She tried to remember if their hens had teeth and decided that they did. By the time Dorothy resurfaced, the conversation had moved on.
“Well, we simply have to get Brother Pillsbury and Reverend Jones to speak, though at opposite ends of the program for reasons we can both imagine,” said Aunty Em. Brother Pillsbury was a spiritualist as well as a Christian.
“Certainly both should be acknowledged,” said Miss Mudge with caution.
“Not to mention Mrs. Blood,” said Aunty Em, smiling, in one of her flights of efficiency. “She’s still alive, I hear, and there is time still to get a message to her in Illinois, so she can send something to us. I’m sure she would be most pleased.”
Eusebia agreed. Aunty Em kept flying. She reminisced about the first Congregationalist services held in a tent or in Dr. Hunting’s house. She rehearsed the story of how a tornado tore the roof off the church just after it was built—it seemed to be the fate of most churches in the county. She talked about Dr. Cordley, who had ridden all the way from Lawrence to give the dedicatory sermon. Did Miss Mudge know that his famous horse Jesse was lost during Quantrill’s raid? Dorothy began to swing her legs. Eusebia Mudge bided her time.
“Evergreen branches, I think,” said Aunty Em, talking of the decorations. “So in keeping with the season.” She talked about food. “I can certainly make a lemon jelly, if you, Miss Mudge, would oblige with your famous angel cake.”
“Speaking of cake,” said Miss Mudge, whose time had come. “What are we to do with Mr. Sue?”
There was a Chinaman in Manhattan. He had come with the building of the railroad. To everyone’s consternation, he was a member of the Congregationalist Church. He donated unsuitable cakes. They had unsuitable writing in icing.
“God made the world,” the icing said. “Tzu made this cake.”
Everyone called him Mr. Sue. Using a woman’s name made people smile, while preserving their old abolitionist consciences. When they smiled, Mr. Tzu thought they were smiling with pleasure at seeing him. Or at least, he smiled back. He had suddenly imported a wife, whom no one had seen. She was said to live in the rooms behind his store.
“And you’ve heard of his invitation, perhaps?” inquired Miss Mudge.
“Why, no,” said Emma Gulch.
“He has sent a card to every church saying that his wife will be at home to receive visitors on New Year’s Day.”
If anyone was so lost in good works as to go, it would be Emma Gulch.
“How splendid of him,” said Aunty Em. “I’m sure we will all be happy to visit.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Miss Mudge replied and permitted herself a smile.
On New Year’s Day, Calliope the mule was hauled out, snorting with cold, and was hitched to the wagon. Inside the house, Toto was barking over and over to be let out, to go with them.
“Couldn’t we bring Toto with us?” Dorothy asked.
“What, bring a dog into Mrs. Purcell’s parlor?” said Aunty Em. “She can just about bring herself to let us in, let alone Toto.”
All the way down the lane, the sound of Toto’s barking followed them.
“That’s how much he misses us. But just think how snug he is next to the stove.”
Even from the lane, Dorothy could see Blue Mont, on the other side of the river, four and a half miles away. It took two hours, and the mountain never seemed to get any closer. The sound of Toto followed them across the valley. They rode beside the woods, the trees as bare as burned black skeletons. Branches passed by overhead. Dorothy broke off a piece of ice and looked at the perfect imprint of the twig. “Don’t suck it, Dorothy,” said Aunty Em, “or you’ll perforate your stomach.” Dorothy began to hum to herself. Aunty Em sang hymns. With each turn of the road, Dorothy hoped for the rise and fall of the road that would signal their sudden decline toward the river.
Finally, finally they got to Manhattan, frozen stiff as always. The church ladies were gathering in Mrs. Purcell’s house on South Juliette. There was an alleyway with stables behind. A boy took hold of Calliope, and Aunty Em rather grandly pressed a penny into his hand. She inspected Dorothy’s dress, tugged and thumped it, and then took her hand to walk around the front of the house, to be admitted as guests.
The door was opened by a maid. There were gas lamps everywhere, frosted glass globes, and the tops of the chairs were dark and polished and carved into the shapes of leaves. From somewhere behind all the front rooms, there came a chorus of baby cries. The ladies, buttoned in black, sat in a circle amid a forest of tea tables.
Mrs. Elliott was there for the Methodists, the wife of the man who had brought Grandfather Matthew’s career to an end. Mrs. Parker was there from Aunty Em’s own church, as if Aunty Em were not sufficient in herself to represent the Congregationalists.
The Purcells were Presbyterian and owned the bank that had sold the mortgage to Emma Gulch’s farm.
Dorothy knew of these people. She was interested to see them. She wondered how it was that Aunty Em could bear to smile at them. Dorothy looked at the frosted lamps, at the line of fuel within them like water under ice. She pretended to herself that the lamps had grown naturally frozen out of the Zeandale marshes.
Mrs. Purcell, no longer young, but very brisk and pleasant, came in with baby John. He had just been born a few months before. He was passed around the ladies, who complimented him and talked to him. Baby John beamed like an ancient old man. “Happy New Year! Happy New Year!” the ladies piped.
“His little hand!” cooed Aunty Em.
Dorothy peered into his soft, unformed face. Intelligence in his eyes met hers.
“Bah bah,” he said. “Mo ta woe?”
It was how babies talked.
“Oh yes? Oh yes?” said Mrs. Parker too brightly, as if she understood. Maybe she did. The baby was passed to a maid to be taken upstairs. Tea and cakes were served, and the adults talked about Chinese people.
“Apparently they fry all their food in very hot oils,” said Mrs. Elliott. “My cousin visited such a home once, and her fur collar smelled peculiar for weeks. They couldn’t think what the odor was; it was so unpleasant, but not at all identifiable. Finally someone said it was burned sesame seed oil.”
Mrs. Parker produced a nosegay from her purse and silently held it out. “I shall endeavor not to resort to this, since I’m sure Mrs. Sue will do her utmost to be polite.”
“It’s not the oil, it’s the incense that will choke me,” said Mrs. Lyman. She was the doctor’s wife and she was beautiful and young, with red hair. Aunty Em made a point of chuckling. Mrs. Lyman was from St. George, just across the river from the Gulch farm. Aunty Em always made a point of saying how enchanting she found her. “Just a good, plain-speaking Kansas beauty,” Aunty Em would say, again and again.
“Well,” said a woman whose name Dorothy did not know. “My tablecloth came back cleaner than the gravel by the river.”
Dorothy did not know much about the Chinaman herself, but she could see that the adults were frightened of him.
The seven ladies, Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist, Lutheran, wrapped themselves in scarves and pinned on hats and were helped into coats that nearly reached the ground. They walked unsteadily on the boardwalk of South Juliette, north towards Poyntz, the main avenue. They walked past one Methodist church and Mrs. Elliott’s house. They walked across Houston, past the Bowers’ and the Buells’. On the corner of Poyntz and Juliette was Aunty Em’s own church, white limestone, small. They turned right and swept down the broad main avenue.
Poyntz was lined with wooden-frame buildings, with wooden awnings that stretched out over the wooden sidewalks. The ladies passed another Methodist church, with a tall, graceful spire, and an Episcopalian and a Presbyterian. They passed the Manhattan Institute, which was a hospital built of brick. There was Huntress’s Dry Goods, a two-story building of stone. On Poyntz Avenue alone, there were four banks, three land offices, three drugstores, a lumberyard, several general stores, clothing stores, hotels and two county offices. There were many businesses, with many owners, but amid those many names, a favored few kept reappearing: Higinbotham, Stingley, Elliott, Purcell.
The street was shuttered and closed, peaceful and safe. An old black man everyone called Uncle was sweeping the ice that covered the boardwalk. Someone Mrs. Elliott knew passed them, tipping his hat, breathing out vapor into the sunlight, nodding “Good morning, ladies,” as he passed.
Mr. Sue’s shop stood near the corner of Humboldt and Second, opposite the Wagon Shop.
There was a wide space around it, a market garden that was the town’s only source of sorrel and green peppers. The laundry hissed out back, white stream rising up even on New Year’s Day. Dorothy took hold of Aunty Em’s hand, afraid.
The store was dark. Mrs. Purcell took it on herself to try the door. It opened with a clinking of bits of metal hung across the doorway. They peered inside, into scented shadow.
“Mr. Sue?” called Mrs. Purcell. Dorothy began to wish she hadn’t come.
Mr. Sue emerged from some inner recess, smiling, smiling.
“Good morning, ladies. So kind to come. I hope you are not cold. Thank you, thank you.”
He looked funny. Dorothy wasn’t sure how. He was small and quick, wearing perfectly normal clothes and a bowler hat. Dorothy was miffed. Didn’t he know it was impolite to wear a hat indoors? Then she saw him take it off, over and over, once for each of the ladies.
Inside the store, the air smelled a bit like soap, nice soap, and there were things in pretty boxes, nice colors, very pale and gentle. There were bolts of shiny cloth and little cups and teapots. There were china people, white with pink cheeks, frozen forever, looking shy and a bit afraid.
Dorothy began to be afraid for Mr. Sue. China was made of clay and so, said the Preacher, were people. China could fall and break. Maybe that’s why the adults were frightened. They were frightened that they could shatter him. They walked so carefully around him as he smiled and smiled. He pulled back a curtain and held out his hat to show them the way they should go.
They went into a room, and Dorothy wondered if China people lived in tents like Indians. The wall seemed to be made of blue cloth. Dorothy pushed the cloth. There was a solid wall behind it. Perhaps wood or stone was too rough for China people.
There were cushions everywhere, with cloth flowers sewn on them, and the little room was hot as a stove, and full of the soap smell.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Purcell, looking around the tiny place in surprise. She looked large and clumsy, as if she would knock something over. But Dorothy felt at home. Everything was the right size for her.
Then Mrs. Sue came in and Dorothy knew she was right. China people could be broken.
Mrs. Sue walked in with breathless child steps, small and very quick, and her eyes and her face were lowered from shyness and she smiled shyly. She wore blue trousers and a blue top, very shiny, and she was painted like the frozen people outside. Pink on her cheeks, black around the eyes, red on her lips.
“Da doh, da doh,” she seemed to be saying, unable to look at the ladies, bowing to them. She held out her hands.
The ladies looked at each other.
“She doesn’t speak English, and she wants to take our coats,” said Aunty Em, crisply. “Dorothy, please to help Mrs. Sue with all these coats. Mind you take them where she shows you.”
Aunty Em passed her own thick, black, worn coat to her. “Thank you, thank you, Mrs. Sue,” she said loudly, very plainly, smiling with her leaky gray teeth.
Mrs. Sue averted her face and bowed, again, and said something with the gentleness of the wind.
“May I help you?” Dorothy asked, looking up at her.
Mrs. Sue could bear to look at Dorothy but not at the adults. She looked at Dorothy and smiled. Dorothy strode boldly among the ladies, taking coats. She knew she would not knock anything over.
“We are to sit on the cushions,” announced Aunty Em.
The ladies raised their eyebrows. This would be indelicate. Dorothy wanted to see how plump Mrs. Purcell and bony old Mrs. Elliott would manage it. Mrs. Sue, in a soft and singsong voice, was trying to tell her something, so Dorothy turned and saw she was to follow through another curtain, into an alcove. There was a white statue in the alcove of a fat and naked smiling man. There were pipe cleaners all around it, burning. Did Mrs. Sue think you were supposed to smoke the cleaners and not the pipe? Mrs. Sue reached and hung up the coats. She folded and smoothed down the ladies’ scarves. They looked beautiful, the scarves, folded so tidily, Mrs. Sue smiled her gentle, withdrawn smile, and Dorothy knew she was to go back to the adults.
Back in the hot room, the ladies were sitting, backs straight. Mrs. Purcell and Aunty Em had adopted the side saddle position they had learned as young ladies. Mrs. Elliott was thrashing, trying to fight her way upright. She kept slipping off the cushion.
“Knees under you, Emeline,” said Mrs. Purcell.
Mrs. Sue came toddling in, carrying something that was neither a tray nor a table. It was made of beautiful brown wood and carved in funny shapes, and there was a teapot with red and blue crisscrosses on it. The tray was placed on the floor. There was tea and little pink cakes. Mrs. Sue lowered her head and held out her arms with a sweep over the tea and cakes.
“Isn’t it exquisite,” announced Aunty Em, determined they would all feel the right thing. “And so charmingly presented.” She inclined forward, with her broken and horsey smile. Mrs. Sue tried to look pleased, but she could not bear the huge, coarse visage and had to look away, lest the distaste show.
Dorothy felt she was having some kind of revenge. The adults all looked wrong, like pigs or straggly plants. The only beautiful person in the room was Mrs. Sue.
She began to pour the tea, and to pass the cakes, looking up hopefully to make sure that everything was all right, that she had done nothing wrong. And Dorothy knew, just from looking, that Mrs. Sue was alone in Kansas, and that she was trying as hard as she could, but that she and these women would never be friends, no matter how correct they all were, no matter how polite. It was all done in hopefulness and was doomed to failure.
“The cakes,” said Mrs. Purcell, in horror. “I think they’re made out of fish.”
Dorothy tasted one of them. It was bland and chewy.
The pink bland cakes were followed by sweet spicy ones that were also to no one’s taste. And Mrs. Sue, trying hard, adopting all the right postures, sent signals of sociability that were only partially received. They were swamped by the heavy-handed and insincere gestures that came in reply.