by Marlene Lee
Ernest pulled the brim of her straw hat a tad lower over her eyes. “San Francisco summers are not like the summers you’re used to.” Her face showed no fatigue from the journey. He bent, kissed her full lips, and tipped her hat up again. A few curls landed on her high forehead. Agnes grasped the handle of the carpetbag she insisted on carrying herself and matched his long steps. She pointed to a pile of old boards and debris on a corner lot.
“The earthquake?”
“Piles and piles of rubbish still haven’t been cleared,” said Ernest. “Six years isn’t long to rebuild a city.”
They passed narrow, three-story frame houses with bay windows that hung out over the sidewalk.
“Thorberg is engaged,” he said without warning.
“What?” Agnes came to a dead stop. “Thorberg’s engaged?” She stomped her foot. “Thorberg was never going to marry!”
“She’s changed her mind.”
Agnes frowned. The blood rushed to her face. Ernest watched her with a guarded expression.
“She might have written me.”
“Don’t you want to know who it is?”
“No.”
He switched his weight to his right leg. “You’re getting married,” he said in a low voice. “Why shouldn’t she?”
“It’s just that Thorberg is a—well, a Socialist,” Agnes said. “She’s supposed to have ideals.” They turned down Octavia Street.
“His name is Robert Haberman,” Ernest said, as if she’d asked. “He’s more of a Socialist than Thorberg.”
Agnes sniffed.
“He’s a pharmacist who works in San Rafael. Jewish.”
Agnes sniffed again.
“From Rumania.”
She laughed out loud. “You might know your sister wouldn’t choose someone ordinary.”
“He’s living with us,” Ernest added.
“He’s what?”
“There’s plenty of room,” Ernest said. They turned in at 624 Octavia. Ernest opened the front door and they climbed to the third-story flat. No one was home. Agnes made a quick tour of the two small bedrooms, sitting room, dining room, and kitchen.
“It’ll do.” She tossed her carpetbag onto the sofa. “Where’s Thorberg?”
“In school,” said Ernest. “She takes the ferry to Berkeley three days a week.”
Agnes paced about the sitting room. It seemed strange to be so near Berkeley, the place she’d heard about, the place she’d hated because it was taking the Brundins away from her. “What’s she studying?”
“Zoology.”
Agnes thought of Professor Irish’s biology lab and pushed her hair back from her forehead with a harsh gesture of erasure. “Where does Thorberg sleep?”
“They sleep in the south bedroom.” Ernest’s plain answer shook her. Thorberg, her friend, the woman she most admired, was sleeping in the same room with this Rumanian, participating in the profoundly dangerous and ugly sexual act between a man and woman. It left one bedroom for Ernest and herself.
“I won’t have sex!” Agnes said, furious. “We’re going to study and work. We agreed on it. That’s what you said in your letter.” She picked up her carpetbag as if to leave.
Ernest reached out and stopped her. “I’ll sleep on the sofa,” he said. “There’s no hurry, Agnes. We’re not married yet.”
“Neither is Thorberg.”
“That’s her business.” He moved closer. She saw that he wanted to hold her, but she could not bear to be touched just now, and she ran downstairs and outside. The fresh air cooled her. She sat doubled-up on the front stoop and ground her forehead into her knees. She had not bargained for Thorberg’s betrayal or Ernest’s desire.
He joined her on the porch stoop. “In Arizona, didn’t you like my kisses?” He put things so plainly that there was nowhere to hide from his words, no way to pass off his questions. This gentle man was terrifying her with his maleness. He was no longer someone to imagine. He was real. And in spite of their long horseback rides through the desert where they’d talked about friendship, work, and study, now that she was in San Francisco, it turned out that he wanted sex. And Thorberg wanted sex. And this horrible Haberman Rumanian Jew pharmacist wanted sex. Agnes could not help but notice that all the world, people, animals, even plants, wanted sex, as if that was what everything was here for, just to have sex and make more people and animals and plants. And she, Agnes Smedley, could not. She clenched her jaw. Would not. She would work hard and earn money, pay Ernest back the cost of her ticket, pay her share of the flat. She wouldn’t owe anybody anything.
“Agnes!” Thorberg came toward her up the walk, more golden and more goddess-like than ever.
“Hello,” Agnes said, and burst into tears. She braced herself against the stoop, willed herself to stand, and laboriously climbed the stairs to her new home.
Agnes sat at the tiny table that served as a desk in the corner of her bedroom, writing about the Chinese of San Francisco. During a lunch hour away from her secretarial job, she’d walked north from Market Street and found herself in Chinatown. Enthralled by the foreign culture, she’d almost been late back to her job. When the editor of The Tempe Normal Student wrote and asked her for an article from San Francisco, she had no difficulty deciding on a subject.
“Chinese men bend over sun-flooded benches of vegetables,” she scribbled at the small, shaky table. “Some have little stalls of varities where they sell brown, glutinous ribbons of seaweed— ”
In the background Thorberg and Robert’s voices sounded from the dining room where they were reading the Sunday morning Call spread out on the table before them. Haberman’s rapid, accented speech ran like a choppy river through Agnes’ days and nights. He never stopped talking. Agnes wondered how Thorberg could stand the high, penetrating voice, the endless opinions.
“Look at this!” he said. “What did I tell you?” And he began to fulminate against the United Railroads and other corporations who had participated in bribery schemes. “They let the Union Labor Party take the blame,” he exclaimed—his hair, Agnes knew, was standing on end—“and big business escaped Scotch free!”
“Scot free,” Thorberg said. Just when Haberman seemed about to master the American idiom, he would ruin the effect. Agnes got up and closed her door. She looked out the window at the backs of new homes being built on Gough Street. The 1906 fire had stopped just before it reached Octavia; the four of them lived in a pre-quake house. No, not the four of them. Ernest had left to work on the All-American Canal project in Southern California.
She stared down at the acacia tree in the backyard. Morning fog moved through its branches and toothy-edged leaves. Living apart eased the tension between them, but the prospect of separation had frightened them. On the very day his train left for El Centro, they’d gotten married. They pretended it was a lark. On her lunch hour, August 24th, they met in front of the Pioneer Monument at the hub of Market, Hyde, and Grove. While she waited for Ernest, Agnes walked around the frieze and statues of gold miners, Indians, covered wagons. It was the history of America, the history of her grandparents who left Mississippi for Missouri, the history of her restless father. He would have liked to be one of those men bent over a creek with a gold pan, an enormous nugget in his hand.
She took a dislike to the statue and turned her back on it. When she saw Ernest walking toward her with his leather grip, she felt the sting of separation. “I only have till one o’clock,” she said.
“Agnes, I want to talk to you.”
She looked up at his thin, honest face. She loved the face, loved Ernest, but couldn’t permit herself to express it.
“I’ll miss you,” she said. It was as far as she could go. Ernest took it as a declaration. He put down the grip and hugged her. His cheek against hers was clean-shaven and tender. Agnes hugged him back. When he spoke to her again his eyes were wet. His emotion worried her. They began walking.
“Don’t let Thorberg and Robert boss you around while I’m gone,” he said. They both
pretended to laugh. Before they knew it they were in front of the temporary City Hall on Market Street.
“Let’s get married,” Ernest said.
Agnes broke into a sweat. “We should think about it,” she said, her mouth dry.
“No!”
It was one of the few times she’d seen Ernest impulsive. His bony face was flushed, and there was a compelling light in his eyes. She stared at him and began to relent. She did not want to be forgotten when he was down in the Imperial Valley, and without him she had no prospects. “All right,” she said. He kissed her and she kissed him back. He was leaving on the afternoon train, so at least they would not have to resolve the sexual question immediately.
“I have to be back at work by one,” she reminded him.
Ernest pulled a marriage license out of his pocket. “It won’t take long,” he said.
“How much did it cost?”
“Two dollars.”
“And how much does it cost to get married?”
“Five dollars.”
Agnes opened her purse. Ernest waited. He took the three dollars and fifty cents she handed him. It was no time for an argument.
“I guess we’ll need a witness,” said Justice of the Peace A.T. Barnett when they appeared in his office on the second floor. He opened a side door beside his roll-top desk and bawled out a name. When the witness arrived he began the ceremony without preamble.
“Are you willing to take this woman to be your wedded wife?”
Ernest hesitated.
Justice Barnett sighed. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“You go about it so fast,” Ernest said lamely. “I wasn’t ready for you.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Do you want me to do the hula-hula?” He began to lecture them about the vicissitudes of marriage. Agnes memorized the word “vicissitudes.” She thought it probably had something to do with sex. She would look it up in Thorberg’s dictionary when she got home.
“I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.” The short, red-haired witness watched with interest, but Agnes squeezed Ernest’s hand and pulled away. She felt stifled and needed air. They signed their names in a large black book. Agnes dipped the pen in the ink bottle and signed, “Ayahoo Smedley, Age Twenty.”
“Sign your real name, your married name,” instructed the Justice. But Agnes had refused.
Now she turned back from the bedroom window. It was January and Ernest had visited her just once from El Centro. He’d slept on the sofa again, but he was less patient than before and she could not put off sleeping with her husband forever. The thought made her tired and headachy. Sometimes she had trouble breathing. She picked up her pen and began writing where she’d left off. After a few minutes there was a knock on the door. She got up and opened it.
“What are you doing?” Thorberg asked, gazing past Agnes’ shoulder to the table in the corner.
“Writing an article for The Tempe Normal.”
“Can I read it?”
Agnes invited her in. They sat on the edge of the bed, Agnes feeding Thorberg pages as she read. Robert Haberman passed by the doorway.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
“Agnes is writing an article about Chinatown,” Thorberg replied.
“Ah, the Chinese.” Haberman’s revolutionary zeal ignited. “Do you talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act? Have you described the exploitation? The struggles of China against Western imperialism? Have you—”
“She has walked through Chinatown,” Thorberg said languidly, and read aloud: “’In the school, the same modern and sanitary conditions are to be found that are found in other sections of the city. The teachers all seem to be devoted to their work and say the pupils are extremely keen and alert.’”
Haberman snorted. “Do you mention that the Chinese children are not allowed in the San Francisco public schools?”
Agnes flushed. She lifted her chin and her eyes snapped. “This isn’t an article about the schools. It’s an impression of Chinatown.”
“An impression doesn’t convey the truth,” Haberman said. Uncharacteristically, he dropped the subject, perhaps because of the warning look from Thorberg, who finished reading the article and praised it.
“It shows a fine awareness of cultures other than your own,” she said. Haberman returned to stand in the doorway. “Ah,” she continued, reading ahead, “I see you included some of Ernest’s ideas about ancient Chinese engineering.”
Agnes gave a curt nod.
“May I read it?” Haberman asked.
Agnes shot the article toward him. Thorberg looked worried. Agnes went to the kitchen, opened the broom closet, and took a dust cloth from a peg. While he read, she ran it industriously over the furniture and shook it out the window with a snap. No one spoke. By the time he made his first comment Agnes had swept the kitchen and washed the dishes that Thorberg had, as usual, insisted she would do and, as usual, had not.
“How much do you know about Chinese history?” Haberman asked bluntly. Agnes came out into the living room, soapsuds to her elbows.
“Not much.”
“Here, where you say”—Haberman searched for the passage—“’There was no hereditary aristocracy, and the only aristocracy recognized was the aristocracy of learning. While dynasties rose and fell and practiced their beliefs of commercial truthfulness and honor’—” he broke off.
“What’s wrong with it?” Agnes asked.
“The Chinese Revolution arose because of the abuses of the Manchus. Have you heard of Sun Yat-sen?” Haberman began to talk about modern China. It was the only nation in history, he said, that had formed a republic without spilling a drop of blood. China would, he assured Agnes and Thorberg, adopt the tactics of the West and beat the West at its own game. His comments moved from continent to subcontinent, across Russia, across India. As the lecture expanded to include the New World and the Mexican Revolution, Agnes stepped into the kitchen, rinsed off the soap, dried her hands and arms, and came back to the living room where she sat at one end of the sofa and listened.
“Under Diaz almost all of Mexico’s oil and mineral rights went to American and British corporations,” Haberman said. His curly black hair stuck straight out from his head. “Why don’t you write an article about Mexico? Whenever Mexico tries to strengthen its economic democracy, her two greatest opponents are the United States and the Roman Catholic Church… .”
Agnes got up from the sofa and went to the coat closet.
“Where are you going?” Thorberg asked.
“For a walk.”
“We planned to take the streetcar to the ocean,” Thorberg said. “Don’t you want to go with us?”
“No.” Agnes despised Playland at the ocean end of Golden Gate Park. Haberman and Thorberg went there so they could mingle with what they called “the common man.”
“I hate carnivals,” said Agnes. She buttoned her coat. “And I don’t like the common man.”
Thorberg’s fiance jumped to his feet, cocked for ideological struggle. “And why is that?”
“The common man is vulgar and cheap and ugly,” retorted Agnes. “The common man wants quick thrills and silly prizes.”
“And why are people vulgar and cheap and ugly? What makes them that way?”
Agnes thrust her hands into her pockets and stood at the door.
“The system!” he shouted in answer to his own question. “The system makes them that way!”
Agnes opened the door. “I’m a product of the system!” she shouted back. “I’m your common man!” Slamming the door behind her, she strode down Octavia and turned left on Ivy, a narrow street lined with small wooden homes. The windows had flower boxes and curtains. It was a domestic alley, clean and pleasant. For a moment Agnes wondered what it would be like to live in one of these nice little houses with a husband and children. Books. Maybe a piano. But she could not. There was too much she had to accomplish. She must not fail like Father or be trapped like Mother. She had t
o get an education. With an education she would know history and wouldn’t make mistakes in her writing. She would know about Mexico and China. If she’d had enough money to finish four years at Tempe Normal, she would have known about the Manchus. She’d have known about Sun Yat-sen. She’d have known that the world is in turmoil, as Haberman said, struggling to take power and money from the rich in an effort to spread it around. She would have known what Haberman knew.
She wouldn’t have gotten married, even to Ernest.
Agnes fished in her coat pocket and found paper and a stubby pencil. At the corner of Ivy and Gough she stopped to write a phrase. She stopped again at Franklin before circling back along Grove to Octavia where she re-entered the apartment, went straight to her room, threw her coat across the bed, and sat down again at the shaky table in the corner.
She wrote, struck out lines, wrote again, until, coming to a stopping place, she went out into the living room to show Thorberg what she’d done. But Thorberg wasn’t there. In the kitchen sink was another round of dirty dishes. Agnes laid her article on the table, washed the dishes, then sat down and read what she’d written.
“It is to be regretted that the yellow race are slowly absorbing some Western ideas. It is interesting, however, to note they are building up a nation of science, art, history, literature, and military power that, when it moves, it will move the world, and when it speaks, the world will listen and obey.” She shifted on the kitchen chair, pleased.
“China was once a nation which used gunpowder for obtaining valuables in the earth, but has been taught a new use for it. She is a vast nation, compact, united, harmonious, arming silently and mechanically, after the white man’s methods. With the shrewdness and intelligence of the diplomat”—she stumbled—“in the second birth of their progress, she is using not only Western ideas, but is also adding her own racial endowments—her accumulation—of failures and successes—to make her the most powerful and intelligent nation in the world.”
