The Year We Were Famous

by Carole Estby Dagg

  Ma closed the door so carefully, it hardly made a sound.

  ***

  I shuffled to the bathroom to scrub off travel grime and neaten my hair, but I stopped in midscrub when my eyes met the eyes in the mirror. I was nineteen years old. Nineteen, with the eyes, full cheeks, and hair of a father I never met. What else did I inherit from him? Everyone had always said I was like Pa. My head ached, as if all the bits of memory in my brain were breaking loose from their old moorings and rearranging themselves to fit the new version of my history.

  Hairpin by hairpin, I loosed my hair. Mrs. McKinley said she got headaches from the weight of her hair. I tipped my head back until I was looking at the ceiling and my hair brushed my skirt at the back of my knees. It was heavy, my hair that was the color of Patrick O'Keeffe's. Whether it was his fault or not, he left Ma when she needed him. How could Ma and Pa bear to look at me, knowing how much I looked like him?

  A leather sharpening strop hung by a hook on the wall, but the hotel had not provided a razor to go with it. I dashed to the bedroom. A drawer in the desk had a postcard of the hotel and a letter opener, but the blade was not sharp enough. I threw the letter opener back in the drawer and dumped out my satchel on the bed, scrabbling through the pencil stubs, a flattened toothbrush, the last of a tin of toothpowder, a sliver of soap, and a bottle of iodine until I found Arthur's penknife.

  I'd seen Pa use a strop and I used it now on the penknife. I stared into the round mirror. My pupils were so large that my eyes looked almost black instead of speckled blue and green. How bold was I? Short, like Mrs. McKinley's? Chin length? What a mugwumping ditherer—I couldn't even decide how short to cut my hair.

  I pulled a tress taut toward my shoulder and started sawing until the first clump came off in my hand—more than three feet of it. Oh, glory! What had I done? Courage; no turning back. I kept at it, pulling hunks of hair around from the back, bringing them to the same point on my shoulder, and hacking away. Each cut pulled at my scalp as I worked at it with the knife. Tears blurred my image in the mirror. I'd never get my hair into a braid now. It had taken eighteen—no, nineteen—years to grow it and now I was chopping it off in minutes. I was as impetuous and foolish as Ma.

  I was left standing in a puddle of hair. Getting rid of the hair on the floor was like getting rid of a dead body. I opened pages of the complimentary copy of the newspaper and wrapped the hair in batches and put it in the wastebasket, nearly filling it. I ran a small strand through my hands. Near the tips, it was still baby blond, but at the upper end where I had cut, the hair had reached the sparrow-brown color I supposed it would be until it turned gray. I had cut off my past, whatever that was. For old times' sake, I coiled this one last strand and carried it back to the pile of belongings on the bed, opened my battered compass, and snapped the lid shut on the last of my long hair.

  My stomach growled. Ma was probably getting dinner downstairs and talking to whoever had shown up at this late hour to see her. I wanted food, but didn't want to hear Ma rant about my hair, so I pulled it into a lump at the back and anchored it any which way with a dozen hairpins, then covered the mess with the Tyrolean hat I'd earned in Chicago.

  As I left the room I looked back toward the bed and Mr. Doré's letter and the check. Did he have any idea what he had started with that inquiry to the Vital Statistics Bureau?

  I followed voices through the lobby, the dining room, and through swinging doors into the kitchen, where a dozen or so hotel guests and town dignitaries had gathered. The hotel manager made introductions. I made myself smile.

  Ma had saved a chair next to her at a long oblong table. She must have anticipated that hunger would drive me downstairs eventually, because there was plate of food in front of my chair to match her own.

  Ma was answering questions between bites of roast beef, potatoes, and peas. I tried to eat, but my throat closed against food.

  As I looked around the room, I wondered what secrets lurked in the hearts below every starched collar and prim cameo. I tried out my would-have-been name again. Clara O'Keeffe. How would Clara O'Keeffe be different from Clara Estby? Which parts of me were from Ma and the father I had never met and which were the result of how I had lived and the choices I had made?

  "How many pairs of shoes have you worn out?" someone asked.

  "Have you ever been lost?"

  "Do you think you'll make it to New York in time to win your bet?"

  Over the last one hundred interviews, Ma had developed scripted answers to entertain our listeners and make herself look intelligent and resourceful. I had heard it all.

  I guess she hadn't completely forgotten about me, though, because at the question "What did you bring with you?" she reached over to hold my hand before she enumerated the contents of our satchels.

  I gripped the stair railing on the way back to our room, still lightheaded with thoughts of a stranger father. Ma gave me a one-armed hug as we entered our room and was asleep in five minutes.

  I knew I wouldn't sleep, so there was no point in going to bed. I found my journal and sat by the window, trying to write by the light of the street lamps below. What was I really upset about? That Ma wasn't perfect? I knew that already. That Pa wasn't my father? If anything I loved him more, for taking me on and treating me as his own when he didn't have to.

  For a minute, maybe two, I was so angry at Ma that I was tempted to desert her. But the sensible thing to do would be to put every ounce of willpower behind winning the bet. If I got even a quarter of the winnings I'd have enough to go to college and set up on my own anywhere in the country. But even if I wanted to cut myself off from Ma and her endless demands, did I want to cut myself off from Pa and Ida and all the rest? It was too much to work out tonight.

  A clock outside struck one, then two. If we had to walk at least eight hours tomorrow—today now—I had to get a few hours' sleep. I slipped into bed next to Ma and tried to empty my mind by concentrating on the clop-clop of horses on the streets two floors down. At last, I stopped hearing hoofbeats, or anything else.

  The next morning, I got up before Ma was awake and took a bath and washed my hair. A private bathroom—even Nellie Bly had not traveled any better than this. My shorter hair was already starting to dry, and I whirled my head from side to side, enjoying the feeling of my hair's freedom as it brushed my cheeks.

  At least my moods did not last for months, like Ma's. I had already regained my equilibrium and was ready to do what I had to do, which was get Ma to New York. After that? Maybe I'd start a new life in New York—go to college there, even change my name. No one would have to know anything about me except what I told them.

  Ma sat up as I came out of the bathroom. "What happened to your hair?" She scrambled out of bed to take a closer look.

  "I think I'll like it," I said. "It just needs to be evened up a bit."

  She held out uneven chunks, grimacing. "It looks like it got caught in the egg beater and you cut it out with a paring knife."

  "Close," I said. "Arthur's penknife."

  "If you wanted shorter hair, you should have waited until we had proper scissors, or until we had the money to take you to a barber shop."

  "I should have waited? That should have been your motto." This morning I said it with humor I could not have mustered last night. "If I occasionally act impetuously, at least I know where that came from, don't I?"

  At first Ma bristled at the reference to last night's revelation; then she sighed with resignation. "If Patrick and I had married when I found out about you, he would have had to get a job instead of finishing college..." Ma twisted her wedding band. "If we had married ... I often wondered if he would have resented me, resented you, for taking away his chance at college. And Ole loves you because you brought him and me together, which was what he had secretly wanted but never dared to hope for. So maybe my guardian angel did the right thing after all.

  "Well," she said as she stretched, "done's done. I tried to imagine how Ole felt, with his wife moony an
d red-eyed, belly swollen with someone else's child. That's when I decided to stop fussing about not having the man I thought would make me happy and worry more about making happy the man who had been willing to take me on."

  She started to unbraid her hair. "My turn for a bath."

  From the firm set of her mouth, I guessed Ma wasn't going to add more to what she had already said. She had just taken away everything I thought I knew about myself, and the very floor felt fragile, as if it might collapse at my next step.

  "This is hard for me, too," Ma said, "but we could argue a thousand years and say a million words and it wouldn't change anything. Can we agree not to talk about it anymore?"

  At my dismayed look, Ma held me tight, so tight that I could feel her heart beating rapidly against mine. "I'm not the easiest mother, am I?" she said as she pulled back, then leaned forward to kiss my forehead.

  December 7, 1896

  Dear Mr. Doré,

  Thanks to you, I will never forget my nineteenth birthday. Ma will not be any more jubilant at winning $10,000 than I was at receiving that $5.00 from Street and Smith, through the good agency of my esteemed correspondent, Mr. Charles Doré. I was also impressed with your research skills. To think that from Salt Lake City you could get details of an inconsequential birth record for someone born all those years ago!

  Again, many thanks for your efforts on my behalf to publish my first story.

  Sincerely,

  Miss Clara Estby

  CHAPTER 27

  AN URGENT MESSAGE

  December 13, 1896–Day 222 Coal country, Pennsylvania

  WITH THREE days before our December 16 deadline, we were still zigzagging through hills and more hills in Pennsylvania. We were too far behind schedule to stop and earn money, so each morning I ripped newspapers into three-inch squares to layer over the holes in the bottom of my worn-out boots. Despite stabbing cold and slippery footing, we started walking while it was still dark and we walked until I felt like I was no longer a person but a machine someone had fired up and forgot to turn off. I was tired unto tears.

  I felt the trembling earth beneath my feet as coal cars rumbled by. The rhythm of our steps pounded in my head. I wanted to curl up in front of someone's fireplace and sleep. But I didn't want Ma saying I'd spoiled our chances of winning because I was mad at her or gave up. To have a chance at winning that ten thousand dollars I was willing to walk until we froze dead in our tracks or reached New York.

  December 14, 1896–Day 223 Hummelstown, Pennsylvania

  I wasn't just tired. I was sick. While my forehead burned, my eyes stung in freezing air. I was just trying to decide if the sky looked like more snow when I stepped on an icy patch that sent my feet and head in opposite directions. I hit the ground in a belly flop, with my right ankle bent awkwardly. I weakly slapped the ice I lay on. We were due in New York the day after tomorrow, and the only way we'd get there by then was if Ma's guardian angel swooped down and flew us there. The last seven and a half months would have been for nothing.

  Ma silently lifted me into a stand and I draped my left arm over her shoulder.

  "Ish da, ish da," I muttered along with each step as I hobbled, entwined with Ma, a long mile to the next rail stop.

  I was too miserable to care what station we sat in.

  "I wouldn't have wished it on you, but maybe your bad ankle is our reprieve," Ma said.

  "Another extension?" I croaked.

  Ma had been dragging the last few days, but the possibility of a new deadline put an optimistic spark back in her eye. "How much time should I ask for?" Ma said.

  I pressed my palms to my temples to subdue the throbbing while I figured. We had one hundred and twenty-eight more miles through Pennsylvania, and at least sixty-five across New Jersey to where we'd take the ferry to New York. Our old deadline gave us two days, and we needed a minimum of eight. I was afraid to ask for more; Miss Waterson might turn us down. "We need at least six more days," I said.

  "It shouldn't matter," Ma said. "I was the one who asked for a deadline, to add a little hoopla to our venture. But I'll ask for six days."

  "We should have proof that we notified her that we were entitled to an extension. But how can we write a letter and get a response in two days?" I said.

  Looking through the window, I saw a row of icicles hanging from the eaves like Christmas tree decorations and an ice-encased line swooping up from the side of the station to the telegraph pole beside the tracks. "How much does a telegram cost?" I said.

  Half an hour later, I was propped up on a bench in the waiting room with a bandanna packed with crushed icicles on my ankle while we waited for a reply from New York. The railroad men had come to our rescue again. They telegraphed our message to the New York station, which relayed it to Western Union, where they took up a collection to have it delivered to Miss Waterson. Our message was brief:

  Illness and sprained ankle (stop)

  New deadline Dec 22

  If Miss Waterson agreed, we had eight days instead of two to get to New York.

  Three-thirty, four o'clock. Four-thirty. Four-thirty-seven. The minutes ticked by without an answer. Every half hour or so, someone in the waiting room would knock down fresh icicles for my ankle. Finally, at five o'clock, we gave up on getting an answer that day.

  One of the railway men helped us to his family's home. The next morning there was a reply from New York, but it was from Western Union, not Miss Waterson.

  Message delivered (stop)

  Addressee declined to answer

  No answer. Did that mean she had refused to agree to an extension? Did she think we had made up an illness? Did she suspect we had exaggerated the time I needed to recover? Or by not contesting our claim for an extension, had she assumed we understood that she accepted it?

  December 15, 1896–Day 224 Near Hummelstown, Pennsylvania

  We packed up before dawn. I iced my ankle one more time, and gratefully accepted a gnarled wood cane from the people we stayed with last night—another family from the list of recommendations from the suffragists we met clear back in Des Moines. My cheeks burned and my head was so stuffed that I thought it might burst my skull, but I was still willing to crawl the last two hundred miles to get to New York on time. After a grueling mile, I wanted to be back in bed. Ma didn't seem to notice my limp and bleary eyes. I was also miffed that she seemed to think that once she'd told me about my real father, that was the end of it.

  Ma called a halt as we came to a park bench under a bare oak tree within a stone's toss of a creek that ran through the village.

  "Even if we walk from dawn to midnight, we may miss our deadline." Ma cleared her throat and leaned toward me to whisper, "We could sneak a ride on a train to make up lost time. The hoboes do it all the time."

  "But Miss Waterson said she had spies watching us!"

  Ma looked behind her, under the bench, and up in the trees. "I don't see any spies. Do you?"

  "No..."

  She sagged against the back of the bench and lifted her chin so all she could see was sky. Was she looking for her guardian angel? Maybe she had been affected by what she'd told me in Pittsburgh, even if she didn't want to talk about it. She drew her feet up under her skirt on the bench as she turned to me. "Why should you cripple yourself just so we can say we walked all the way to New York by some artificial deadline?"

  I couldn't read her face. Was she giving up, or goading me into disagreeing with her and pushing even harder toward New York? There was no way Ma and I could walk all the way home again, though. We had to keep going for any chance of getting the ten thousand dollars and a ride home in a first-class train car.

  Grimly, I leaned over to unlace my boot, wrapped my bandanna tightly around my ankle, and snugged up the laces. "Let's go." Once we reached the border into New Jersey, we only had another sixty-odd miles to New York City.

  Sunday, December 20, 1896–Day 228 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

  I had to confess we had missed church more than a few S
undays since we left Mica Creek. If we weren't walking, we were working for the next pair of shoes or sleeping. But this was nearly Christmas, and here we were in Bethlehem—Pennsylvania. This morning's Bible reading was the passage about the wise men.

  During the sermon, I propped up my bad ankle on the kneeling rail and let my mind wander to the three wise men heading out into the desert to follow a star. How would I know when I got to the right place for my life without a star to guide me? Ma said I should feel lucky to have more choices than she had had, but having too many choices put me into a mugwumping dither. Bad choices now would lead to a life of misery. It was hard to make a living as a writer—a five-dollar check every month or two was not enough to live on. Shouldn't I do what most women did and marry? Or if I didn't marry, shouldn't I have another career to fall back on? But what career? Going through the alphabet didn't help: A, actress (too shy); B, ballet dancer (too tall); C, clerk (too boring); D, dentist (too frightening); E, engineer (too hard).

  By the end of the sermon, I still didn't know what to do, and I found myself clutching Pa's owl so tightly that the beak had dented my palm.

  After church, the congregation adjourned to the social hall. As I brushed off the crumbs of my fourth cookie (I hoped no one had been counting), I studied Ma. She had given up a life of private schools and parlors and married a man she did not love at first for my sake. She had served a ten-year sentence in a sod house, bringing forth a new child every other year. She was risking her life to save the farm that kept us from starving. And perhaps she knew that my future lay far beyond Mica Creek, and wanted this last year with me before I left to find my place in the bigger world. What more could she have done?