Clara in Washington

by Penny Tangey

  Tiffany comes to the door. ‘Hi there!’ she says, her perkiness incredible given the early hour.

  ‘I’m Clara,’ I say.

  ‘Of course, I remember you. Thanks for coming at such short notice. Come in.’

  At the back of the room is the kitchen and serving area where Tiffany introduces me to Brad and Emily. They wave cheerfully at me and say in unison, ‘Hi, Clara.’

  I’m immediately intimidated by Emily, who is tall, strikingly good-looking and African American. She’s wearing a red cloth headband and her curly dark hair springs out in perfect boinging curls around her face. My hair is straight and thin and I have to work on it for an hour just to make it slightly wavy.

  Brad isn’t as glamorous as Emily. He’s wearing pleated pants and a navy V-necked jumper. At least his pants are the right length.

  ‘Can you guys show Clara what to do?’ asks Tiffany.

  ‘No problem,’ says Emily.

  She explains the menu to me. There’s cereal or toast. The cereal is generic brand fruit loops and the toast is white bread with a choice of peanut butter or jam.

  ‘It’s not exactly health food,’ says Brad.

  I agree, but I don’t want to start criticising when I’ve only just arrived so I smile in what I hope is a supportive but non-committal way.

  Emily says, ‘What would you prefer, ladle or tongs?’

  I choose the tongs. That means I’m dishing out the toast, Emily will hand out the butter and condiments and Brad will ladle the cereal.

  The doors are opened at 7.15 and the plastic chairs surrounding the tables soon fill up. My stomach twists with nerves. There are a lot of people to serve. Dishing up toast seems easy but I don’t know how to act, or what to say.

  A lady stands up and says a prayer – the usual stuff about being grateful to God for food and friends. After the prayer the women form a queue and the first one approaches the serving counter.

  The only thing is, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to offer her toast, or whether she tells me what she wants. Neither of us says anything and we appear to be at an impasse. Emily jumps in. ‘Would you like some toast, Brenda?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes please.’

  I quickly put two pieces of toast on the plate and hand it to Emily who asks Brenda about condiments.

  ‘Would you like toast?’ I ask the next lady.

  We get into a rhythm of serving and, even though a few more people drift in from outside, the queue gets steadily shorter.

  I think that we’re a bit overstaffed. I could easily do my job and Emily’s by myself. If I really had to, I could probably ladle and tong at the same time. Although that’s probably beginner’s arrogance. The centre has been running for fifteen years, I’m sure Tiffany knows what she’s doing. If there are three of us here, we must need three people.

  Now that I’m feeling more relaxed, I start to wonder about the stories of the women I’m serving. As I put toast on the plates, I try to get clues about their lives from how they look. I wouldn’t have guessed that most of the women were homeless except that they’re here.

  Emily hands a bowl to Brad and touches him lightly on the back in a way that seems more than collegial. I think they must be a couple.

  A tiny lady who must be over seventy approaches unsteadily. She says, ‘One piece of toast, please.’

  She looks almost translucent. She should eat more. ‘Are you sure you don’t want two?’ I ask. ‘You’re allowed to have two.’

  ‘I am aware of the regulations. I would like one piece of toast.’

  As she walks away, Emily says to me, ‘That’s Mary. Mary’s always on a diet.’

  Mary was the last in line, so there’s nothing to do when she walks away. I arrange the remaining slices of toast into neat stacks of four.

  Emily becomes chatty. She asks me where I’m from. I tell her Australia. She asks me what I’m doing here and I explain about Mum’s job with the World Bank. She asks me what I’ll be doing next year in Australia. I say I’m hoping to study law, which might be a lie, I’m not sure.

  I ask Emily and Brad what they do. Emily is an engineer and Brad is a designer who works on disability access, mainly for museums and galleries. I didn’t know that there was such a job.

  At 8.30, Emily and Brad put the cereals and bread onto a trolley and wheel it away. I hover in the kitchen, wanting to help but not sure what to do.

  Mary walks into the serving area. She picks up a dishcloth and starts wiping a bench.

  I stand in front of her. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I say. ‘I can do it.’

  ‘Excuse me, young lady, you’re in my way.’

  Mary pushes past me and keeps wiping. She wipes with great energy but it looks like the effort could snap her arm.

  ‘No, no, I can do that,’ I say. ‘You go and sit down.’

  ‘It’s okay, Clara,’ says Tiffany’s bright voice from the doorway. ‘Mary’s rostered for cleaning today.’

  Emily pokes her head around Tiffany’s shoulder. ‘We’re going now,’ she says.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Clara,’ adds Brad.

  Brad and Emily walk out together, presumably heading to their important jobs.

  ‘Come with me, Clara, let’s have a chat,’ says Tiffany.

  When we reach her office, Tiffany closes the door and points towards a chair. I sit down.

  ‘How’d you go today?’ she asks.

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  Tiffany grins at me. ‘Good! Emily and Brad are great, aren’t they?’

  I nod.

  She continues, ‘Listen, I realise I forgot to explain the rosters to you.’

  Tiffany talks about how the aim of the centre is to encourage self-reliance. The women who live at the centre all have rostered jobs to do. We mustn’t do their jobs for them because the women are all capable of doing these tasks, and we shouldn’t treat them like children.

  It sinks in how inappropriately I behaved. Tiffany is right. I was being patronising. I clearly don’t have enough sensitivity and insight to handle working at the centre.

  I sit in the chair and put all my concentration into nodding in the appropriate places so that I won’t cry. Tiffany goes on and on and I wish she would cut to the chase and tell me I’ve failed my trial.

  ‘Would you be able to come in every Tuesday and Thursday to serve with Brad and Emily?’

  I’m so surprised that I blurt out, ‘What?’

  ‘It’s nice to have a team who work together regularly. Brad and Emily have been working here awhile, so they can help you out if you have any questions.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. I’m still trying to process what is happening. I thought I’d failed, but I seem to have passed.

  Tiffany bounces up. ‘That’s great!’ We walk towards the door. ‘Thanks for your help today, Clara.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘What are you doing for the rest of the day?’

  ‘Not much.’ As I say the words the day stretches ahead of me.

  ‘You’re here on vacation, aren’t you?’

  I nod, even though it certainly doesn’t feel like a holiday.

  ‘You know where you should go?’ she says. ‘Sewall-Belmont House. It was the headquarters for the National Women’s Party and now it’s a museum for the women’s suffrage and equal rights movement. My girlfriend’s doing an internship there. It’s really inspiring. Hang on a moment.’ She goes back to her office, and returns with a brochure about the museum.

  The Sewall-Belmont House & Museum is a large red-brick house with stone steps leading up to a white door. A yellow banner across the front has a picture of a woman holding out her arm like a rallying call to action. This is the kind of place my mother would like me to visit, hoping I will become a feminist. Actually, Mum ins
ists that I am a feminist, because I think women should have equal rights. But I don’t like to call myself a feminist, it seems too strident.

  An older woman, wearing a pale green jacket and skirt and a string of pearls, greets me at the door. Her name-tag says Elizabeth-Anne.

  She tells me there’s a tour starting in fifteen minutes and I should wait here for it to start. There’s no entrance fee, but there’s a donation box with a small sign suggesting a donation of five dollars.

  I walk around looking at the photos on the walls while I wait. I notice a photo of women picketing the White House in 1917. They’re holding a banner that says, How long must we wait for liberty Mr President? The women are wearing long skirts and big coats and their old-fashioned clothes seem at odds with the fact that they were radical activists. Heavy ankle-length skirts really aren’t very flattering, either.

  ‘Something to think about, isn’t it?’ says a voice behind me.

  I turn around to see Elizabeth-Anne.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, although I’m not sure if we’re thinking the same thing.

  ‘Women couldn’t vote, couldn’t own property, couldn’t have jobs after they married. We take the things they achieved for us for granted now.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘Well, I think we can start the tour now.’

  I look around. I’m can the only person in the room. ‘Shouldn’t we wait for more people?’

  ‘No, it’s just you and me. Which is good, you can ask lots of questions.’

  I hate asking questions. I always worry that my question has already been answered, or that I should already know. My Year Nine social ed teacher, Mrs Brown, used to insist that we each ask a question when we went on an excursion. I remember getting to the end of our trip to the War Memorial, knowing that my name hadn’t been ticked off on the questions sheet, and worrying that I would fail social ed and be held back a year. So I finally put up my hand and said, ‘Where are the toilets?’ The class laughed, but I hadn’t been joking; it was all I could think of.

  Luckily, Elizabeth-Anne starts to talk and doesn’t stop. I concentrate on looking intelligently engaged, which makes it hard to listen to what she’s actually saying.

  Chapter Five

  In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

  Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States of America

  I pull open the big wooden doors of the church, and enjoy a momentary sense of security as they close heavily behind me. Then I walk up the worn stone steps towards the meeting room. I find myself slowing down, reluctant to reach the top.

  I enter the room hesitantly. I recognise a few people from last week. The tea-cosy girl is here. She’s sitting next to the newsboy-hat guy, the one Campbell was talking to so intensely last week. No one says hello to me. Perhaps they all hate me after last week’s tape-wasting.

  I can’t see Campbell. I check between the bookshelves, but he’s not there. I’ve been so worried about whether he would want to talk to me, or whether I’d say something stupid, but I hadn’t considered the possibility that he might not come. My sense of anticipation evaporates and being here seems pointless. I want to turn around and walk straight out but it seems stupid to have come all this way for nothing. Now I’m here I may as well send some improving literature to criminals. I take a letter from the pile. It’s from Jim. He writes:

  I would like to receive books on the following topics:

  • How to impress women

  • How to pick up women

  • How to please women sexually.

  It’s nice that he’s using his time in jail to improve himself and prepare for his return to society. Unfortunately, there aren’t any books on those subjects. In the self-help section there is a book on raising self-esteem, but no books on relationships or dating. Next to self-help is hobbies and games. I see the perfect book and pull it out.

  In the next aisle hat-boy is explaining the process for sending books to a new person, like Campbell did with me last week.

  ‘What do I write in the letters?’ asks the new guy.

  ‘Well, you can write whatever you want. You can write about the books you like and stuff like that. Or you can say, “I’m an anarchist too.”’

  Hat-boy seems to be assuming that we’re all anarchists, prisoners and book-posters alike. Is this true? Do they know that I’m not? I walk to the table and sit down with my book. I cut up a brown paper bag to wrap it up. As I do, I try to assess the other people in the room for anarchist tendencies. Most people look alternative but nerdy. And surely that fifty-year-old lady in a corduroy suit isn’t an anarchist.

  I write to Jim:

  Dear Jim,

  Unfortunately, none of the books currently in stock specifically address your areas of interest. Instead, I am sending you Learn to Juggle: From scarves to swords, which I hope you will find useful for your endeavours.

  Best wishes,

  Clara

  I’m sitting next to the tea-cosy girl, who is talking loudly about her brother’s new girlfriend to a man with an orange beard who’s sitting on the other side of me. I’m caught in the middle with nothing to contribute.

  ‘I mean, she’s okay, I guess,’ she says. ‘I just never thought he’d go for the whole preppy headband kind of girl.’

  I’m glad that I’m not wearing my headband today.

  The girl pushes the packet of corn chips over to me. ‘Want one?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, relieved that she’s not holding a grudge about tape-wasting. I take a big handful. I’m quite hungry. The problem with these meetings is that I don’t arrive home until after nine o’clock, by which time I’m starving.

  ‘Are they vegan?’ the guy with the orange beard asks.

  Tea-cosy girl reads the packet. ‘Sorry, no, they’re not. But hey,’ she adds, ‘Eric got them diving, so if you’re a political vegan, then it might be okay to eat them, right?’

  He got them ‘diving’? I have no idea what she means.

  ‘Cool, yeah, that should be alright. Thanks.’ Orange-beard man leans across me to grab a handful, shoving his armpit right in my face.

  ‘What’s the difference?’ I say. ‘Why does it matter where they came from if they’ve still got animal products in them?’

  ‘Well, if we didn’t pay for them then we’re not supporting the enslaving of animals.’

  ‘How did Eric get them then?’ I ask.

  ‘From Wholefoods. Dumpster diving.’

  Hat-boy rejoins the group. ‘Can you believe the corn chips were sitting right on top?’ he says.

  Tea-cosy girl smiles. ‘Yeah, way to go, Eric!’

  ‘You mean they were in the rubbish bin?’ I say. I expect someone to laugh and tell me they’re joking.

  Hat-boy, who is clearly the diver himself, says, ‘There’s nothing wrong with them, except that the packet split open a little. It’s so wasteful.’ There is nodding and murmurs of agreement.

  I feel sick. The chips slide down my throat. I imagine the bacteria wriggling and multiplying on the way to my stomach. I look at the packet. I’m sure I can see tiny bits of bin air attached to the chips. I’ve never had food poisoning before, but I’m very scared of vomiting. I hate the panicky feeling of not being in control of my body.

  I jump up and go to the bookshelves. If I’m going to be sick at least the bookshelves are closer to the door.

  I stare at the shelves, trying to take deep breaths and visualise soothing, normal things, like rainforests and cushions. Someone comes over and stands right beside me. It’s the corduroy-suited fifty-year-old.

  ‘I agree with you,’ she says in a whisper that the whole room can hear. ‘I think eating food from the trash is very unhealthy. My name’s Joy by the way.’

  ‘I’
m Clara,’ I say.

  ‘I never eat the food here,’ she goes on. ‘I don’t know where it’s been.’

  Actually, we do know where it’s been, that’s the problem.

  I smile unenthusiastically and turn to examine the bookshelves. I hope the others don’t assume that I agree with what Joy is saying. Even though I do.

  Walking to the Dupont Circle station I feel deflated. I was looking forward to Reading Beyond Bars, mainly because I wanted to see Campbell, but also because I thought I might make some friends in DC. Well, I suppose I do have a friend now: Joy. She and I had a very long chat. I tried not to encourage her but she prattled on about her children, and her trip to Chincoteague.

  ‘You know – Misty of Chincoteague?’ she said. Joy was stunned when I said I hadn’t read it. I told her I’d never liked horses. Joy could not accept this. According to Joy, all little girls love horses.

  She asked me if I was still at school. I told her I’d just finished. She asked me about my plans for next year. I said I was hoping to study law. Joy was impressed but I felt like a fraud. I’ve actually got no idea whether I’ll get into law and I’m not even sure if I want to. I used to think getting into law was the most important thing in the world. Until Liam said I wanted to do it to show off. Well, not in those exact words, but that’s what he meant. Anyway, I still tell people I want to do law because I don’t know what else to say.

  There’s an empty Coke can on the footpath. I kick it as hard as I can. It hits an uneven bit of pavement and bounces up to hit a parked car. I start walking faster, hoping no one saw. I don’t want to be yelled at or, even worse, shot.

  As Joy and I stood by the bookshelves talking I felt a gulf opening up between us and the other Reading Beyond Bars gang. Sitting at the tables were the open-minded, politically aware and interesting people. And at the bookshelves were Joy and me. The closest we get to a passionate opinion is tutting over the state of the tea towels. We might live by our convictions, but those convictions relate to wearing sunscreen and keeping track of deadlines. I don’t want to be like that any more, that’s the whole reason I came to DC.

  I remember the photo of the women protesting in the Sewall-Belmont house. That’s what I want to be like: fighting for a cause, standing up for my beliefs and improving the world.