Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction

by Russell, Vanessa

  “Thank you,” I said stiffly.

  My nineteen-year old sister was the antithesis of Mama’s Victorian mind-set with those ghastly knees showing. Where was I in this social change? Somewhere between the old and new.

  Which was why I missed the point, caught in this gray blur between mother and sister. The contrast was too profound for my exhausted state and the shortsighted side of me could only focus on the more tangible comprehension of Mama and Mr. Phillips. I needed to ask Mama The Question and for this reason she and I went for a walk, turning right on the boardwalk and walking past the house next door where Mama’s old friend and suffragist had lived until about nine years ago, right after the Lighthouse opened. At that time she and her several children hid in the Lighthouse, bruised and frightened, until arrangements could be made to transport her to her brother’s home in Pennsylvania to live. Her drunken husband had beaten her for the last time, she had announced.

  “Have you heard from Aimee?” I asked, not quite ready to talk Tennessee turkey.

  “Yes, she rang me a few weeks ago to say her husband had been found dead from a liver disease, somewhere in New York City. Drank himself to death. Another reason why Prohibition must stay. Women have pushed hard for this because scores of men cannot control their liquor, it’s as simple as that. Now Aimee can move back here; he can’t haunt her home any longer. It will be wonderful … like the old days.”

  She crooked her arm through mine. “It’s different now, isn’t it? I think your work is harder, more exciting. My suffrage days were in a peaceful time in the world – no recent war – almost thirty years since the Civil War. Battles were more in the home. Your work is in the aftermath of war. The Prohibition, I’m sorry to say, has caused political scandals and crime. The old ways and the new ways are clashing. Battles are outside the home now. I see one commonality: We both saw women suffer as a result of putting the campaign on hold for the men’s wars. They did so for the Civil War and for the Great War.”

  “I’m impressed, Mama, that you keep up on this. But one suffragist said it well. Mrs. Emmeline Parkhurst said, ‘What is the use of fighting for a vote if we have not got a country to vote in?’”

  Mama laughed softly, erasing that nostalgic yearning-for-the-old-days gaze I saw more and more often. She spent too much time alone. “Do you think women can vote peace into the world now?”

  “Not many men left to have another war anyway, Mama.” I didn’t mean to be flippant about it. After all we lost my brother, Jonathan, to the Great War. But I preferred to generalize. Something I had become good at over the years. “The U.S. mobilized four million of which one hundred twenty six thousand died and two hundred thirty four thousand more were wounded. Worldwide, sixty six million fought and eight million died. Not many bachelors left for lil’ ol’ me.”

  “You’ve always remembered the details,” Mama said with a laugh. “I suppose you need to, to win the argument. You told me once that you were raised to rant and rankle, and you asked me then, ‘Who would marry such’? Do you still believe this? Billy would have married you.”

  I sighed. Mama’s irritating talent has been her ability to bring me back down to her personal level. “Don’t be ridiculous. Billy never asked me to marry him. I accused him more than once of sitting on the fence in his commitment to me. Ironic isn’t it, that he died when he landed on a picket fence after jumping from his burning aeroplane.” Only one month before the war ended.

  “Mercy, Bess, what a comparison!”

  “Ranting realist, that’s me. You’ve made me the bitch I am today.” I wanted to get mad enough to get the nerve up to bring up her and Jere. But she didn’t bite back.

  She dropped my arm and looked away. I knew I hurt her and I knew I didn’t care.

  “About Billy,” she said, still looking away. “There’s something I should tell you—”

  “I did meet another bachelor in Tennessee, though,” I said, purposefully interrupting her. “Well, a widow actually, but unmarried just the same.”

  We were nearing the end of the paved street; only a dirt road from there, the wagon tracks of carts and buggies indented like sunken railroad tracks. She would want to turn around soon. I hesitated and then practically exploded with the question, “Do you know a Mr. Jere Phillips?”

  “No, why?” she said, without a qualm.

  I stopped in my tracks, old anger once again flapping about my shoulders like tired wings. I felt extremely disappointed in her reaction. She had lied to me and that was unforgiveable. In studying her face, I saw no surprise or blush as expected - that was the least she could do in hearing her old lover’s name. How adulterous! I had never known her to lie before and now I wondered how many other lies had she told? How many of her fictitious stories had I believed in and followed? My life felt all the more wasted, groundless. I felt glad I’d said the word, “bitch”. Suddenly longing for something solid, I turned and walked the other way, snapping back at her over my shoulder, “I’m going back to visit with Papa!”

  Thus jumping from the kettle into the fire. Papa sat propped up in bed half dozing, looking so frail in his nightclothes that I longed to see him dressed in his usual three-piece brown suit. His supper tray to his side remained untouched, the radio droning on. The large cabinet of the radio replaced his bedside table so that he could reach the dials. His eyes opened upon hearing my greeting. I watched from the footboard as he struggled to sit up more attentively. Mama came rushing into the room behind me and began rearranging his pillows. He’s not a cripple, I thought, but Mama’s making him into one.

  The room had grown dark in the early evening so Mama pulled the overhead chain hanging from a bare light bulb, reminding me of their recent installation of electricity. They could afford such luxuries, plumbing included, when Papa sold his shoe store to my brother, Victor. He couldn’t deal with the business anymore, not since his heart attack, and he became weaker after word came that Jonathan had been killed in warring France. So much had changed here in their world and even the bright light in the room made me gloomier because of the shifting changes and his shadowed raccoon-like eyes.

  Papa cleared his throat. “Good evening, Bess. I understand you have much to be happy about.”

  I sat on the chair offered by Mama. As I expected, she wouldn’t meet my eyes, her expression looking as gloomy as I felt. “Yes, isn’t it wonderful? Women can now vote for their president!” I could pretend, too; I’d learned from the best. I smiled artificially at his pale sullen face.

  “Yes, women are taking over, I understand,” he said, turning down the radio’s volume, me noting the shoe-dye stains forever on his fingers. “It’s all in here.” He patted the cabinet as if it visibly held the evidence. “Your leader, Miss Alice Paul, is running for president.” He shook his finger at my raised eyebrows. “Don’t pretend you don’t know anything about it. She chained herself to the gate of the White House screaming for equal rights until President Wilson relented. He wants peace and a fair race. There’s not much time between now and November so of course she can’t possibly reach enough voters to win. But what could he do? She threatened not to eat until they put her name on the Republican ticket. There’s a large group of those women there now, pounding on the White House door, saying they’re coming in like witches from the night to clear out the cobwebs of Victorian thinking.” He waved his hand weakly as if seeing such a cobweb. “They want to be the president’s cabinet. Said they’ve worked long enough in the war factories making guns and aeroplanes and now they want to make laws.”

  He had slid down his pillows a bit and struggled to sit up more, leaning his head toward me. “And here’s the worst part: No more women in the homes, the children and husbands must be fed in the town halls and everyone will wear uniforms.”

  My eyebrows must have been meeting my hairline by then. These were serious statements so I dared not laugh. My eyes darted to Mama but she had resorted to her needlework, her concentration on a flower keen.

  “Papa, yo
u can’t believe everything you hear on a radio.”

  “Do you think this great country of ours would release lies on the air waves for all to hear?”

  “Some people like to pretend on the radio, just like they do in vaudeville,” I answered. “Some people even like to pretend in their homes,” I added pointedly.

  Mama jerked her head toward me, a scowl between her eyes. I glared at her openly and saw hurt and confusion plainly on her face.

  “I wouldn’t listen to such trash, Bess,” Papa said. “And I hope to God you aren’t seen in such places. You have enough to clean up as it is. Look at the mess you’ve made with the young women of this world. You and your liberated women. Pearl is wild as a rabbit now, won’t eat, says she must diet away her hips, she cut off her long hair, goes to those jazz dances and speakeasies I hear about, washes all over every day of the week, obviously trying to wash away her sins.”

  “Can’t dance forever to the Blue Danube waltz, Papa,” Pearl called in from the door. She looked at me and winked. “Supper’s ready.”

  “Those dances are too loud,” Mama said, laying down her needlework. “The modern girl can no longer hear the excitement of her own heartbeat, what with the noise of the music and motor cars.” She kissed Papa on the forehead. “Get some rest, Robert, and don’t worry. Women should be able to do something in the workaday world.”

  “Well, with a flapper girl as president,” said Papa, “I’m wondering why we men fought the war in the first place. Let me see what else you women are up to.”

  My goodness, I thought as I sat there watching him turn up the volume to hear more ‘truth’, my mother is a liar and my papa is a believer in the lies. That must be their secret to a successful marriage.

  My year of awakening? I’m pretty sure mine’s not pretty. If I was a Sleeping Beauty, that sure as hell was no prince who woke me. Mama Bess and Grandmama Ruby will be shocked to know the truth; their stories will sound homesick and homespun I suspect. They’re tight-lipped anyway so I can imagine they’ll only write about their greatest love: the women’s movement. It’ll be like reading a newspaper article. They didn’t have it nearly as hard as I did. They had loving husbands and children that weren’t crippled. I had Uncle Joe and — well, all I can say right now is, here’s what I’m supposed to write about: We all have a pivotal moment that changes our lives. Symbolically a year of 4 seasons, where the spring seed of an event is born, grows, matures, and becomes winter wisdom as a life-changing realization. Write about this year of awakening. Mama has written this in big block letters on a chalk board and hung it here in the dining room, replacing the painting of Papa’s Georgia plantation house. This action alone makes me think about change – as long as any of us can remember, that painting has hung there, and the newly exposed lighter shade of paint behind it proves it.

  What if that seed was planted in a Georgian cotton patch – and it wasn’t cotton? I mean that in so many ways. Mama does like symbolism. So does my thorny daughter, Jesi, with her peace signs and Bob Dylan obsession. Amazingly, Mama has asked why I at last opened that birth control clinic in 1944, and the reasons involve Papa and his kin, a family Mama had refused to talk about. But does Jesi need to know everything? A truth that will possibly change her outlook and worse yet, change her inward belief in who she is and where she came from? I haven’t been honest with her but I haven’t yet decided if I want to be. The truth might set me free, yet as President James Garfield said, “but first it will make you miserable.” Mama would love that and I mean that in so many ways.

  I’ll start with this:

  My father died before I was born, long before I knew there was one. This corresponding male part surprised me about Mama. I thought she could do everything. I must’ve thought of her as all encompassing, a hermaphrodite of sorts. But instead she had a negative force to charge the positive, opposing qualities with stamens and pistils that somehow connected - sounds much more proper than saying the vagina and the penis coupled, doesn’t it? I had to look some of that up in the dictionary.

  Oh hell, I’m just going to write it like I talk it and stop trying to use big words like Mama. She wouldn’t approve any of those metaphors anyway. How’s this: It was like looking under the hood of a car for the first time and finding the engine, too, makes it run as much as the frame, tires, wheel and key. She’ll like that and even now her say-so is important to me. For years I was enclosed in her womb, all-consuming, hearing only one heartbeat, one Madonna above me, female life wrapped around female life until I was ready.

  It’s Autumn, 1943. I’m ready now. I think. I’m standing at the door. But as I did in departure from my mother’s womb, I cry now in departing from my mother’s home. I’m afraid I’m premature.

  “Katy?”

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “It’s time.”

  I head toward the car, inspect the tires, scoot in behind the wheel, Mama hands me the key.

  Mama. Always there pushing. Feeding me the food of the female: Eat with care, take in that which is good for you, speak out that which is good for others. Walk straight, never slouch – the hunched back is subservient. Take caution with men, those with forced laughter have no respect for themselves, those with heated eyes have no respect for you. Give the day your best effort and the night will give you its best rest. Every woman has a purpose….

  She stands beside my window, silent yet her life-long words linger. Her strength is now a part of me.

  “Don’t worry, Mama.”

  I turn the key in the ignition and the male beast under the hood awakens and roars.

  Pickerville, Georgia 1943

  “Where the hell is your mama, girl?”

  I lick my lips, still tasting the Georgia dust, red and metallic tasting, like blood. How ironic. My uncle is as white as his bed sheets, looking like his own land is draining him.

  “Well, you see Uncle Joe, Mama is awfully busy at home in New York and Grandma Ruby is sick and needs looking after—”

  “Is she dying? Because if she ain’t - and I am - then who should come first? Now you just answer that, little lady.” His head returns to his pillow with a plop, eyes closed, energy spent.

  “That’s why she sent me, Uncle Joe. I’m your true kin, your real flesh and blood.” Happy to donate some to you, Uncle. I pat his hand, trying to warm up to him which is hard because he is indeed the bellowing blow-george Mama warned me about. His sagging jowls work with what I said, his jaw moving back and forth as if chewing on my last words.

  “Hell, I shouldn’t be surprised,” he says in an I’ll-give-you-that-much tone. “Bess run off from here like we were boll-weevils and she was a fluff o’ cotton. That was back in 1921 and she just sneaked out. About broke Harriet’s heart, God rest her soul. You’ll learn weak hearts run in this family. Your daddy died of one and your Aunt Harriet fell dead in the chicken coop. And now me.”

  He opens his blue eyes, colored like over-washed denim overalls, and points a thick-knuckled finger at me. “But I ain’t gone yet and I ain’t gonna go until I get this plantation settled. So don’t go getting your hopes up that the only place you have to put me is six feet under. My heart ain’t just going to quit but sort of sputter and run out of gas. I reckon I’m about on a quarter tank now.”

  I give him my best exposition of teeth. “You’re not a car, Uncle Joe. This is the forties and doctors can help you. You’ll be fine.” I pat his arm, my tanned hand touching what looks like the skin on raw chicken meat, belying what I said.

  “My Lord, you look like your daddy when you smile.” He stares, mouth open, until I feel blood rise to my cheeks. Seems I have enough of the red stuff for the both of us. A strange thing happens then: As he continues to eye me, I start feeling drained, like he is indeed the vampire of the Deep South I’d read about. Oddly enough, his cheeks flush, something definitely passes between us, perhaps only some level of understanding but it feels like more, like something is taken from me.

  It’s Mama’s fault really;
she had set me up to expect the worst from this man, for whatever reason she wouldn’t tell me. My rebellious nature comes in to save me and I withdraw my hand, raise my chin, laugh a silly sound and say, “Yes, I’ve seen his picture so I’ll take that as a compliment. It’s terrific to be here where Papa grew up; I’m quite excited about it all. Can you believe I drove down here from New York all by myself in Papa’s old Duesenberg?”

  He raises himself up onto his elbows. “You have her here? Ah, what a pretty thing she was – does she still have that wide-eyed look?”

  “Who?” I blink at him thinking that his mind is going before his body.

  “Duesy that’s who! That ol’ auto had a classic beauty – still sleek and black I hope? With overhead cams? The only auto of its kind that operated four valves in a cylinder. 265-horsepower. Damn! You would’ve had no problem, girl, in that, unless your mama gallivanted in it all over the place. Where’s she at?” He slides a leg over the side of the bed, struggling to get up.

  I grab his elbow to assist. “I told you, Uncle Joe, Mama is at home in Annan—”

  “Not her you fool! I’m talking about Duesy.”

  His frame rises two feet above me and then his two-hundred-pound-plus flesh leans into me, his forearm against my left breast until I readjust our positions. “Help me to the window, girl, don’t just stand there. She’s more than twenty years old; that was a 1921 model I recollect – how’d you keep her that long.”

  “Mama rarely drove it – I mean, her. Mostly just taught me how to. Too many memories for her, I guess, I really don’t know. The only thing wrong is it’s got a dent in the trunk hood, but Mama said that was your fault – I mean that it happened down here.”

  Again he studies my face and again I feel I’ve given him something, too much I think for it’s as much as I know. Mama would be disappointed already but I can’t help it. Here’s the biggest difference between us: She reveals nothing and I tell all.