Secrets on 26th Street

by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

  A murmur of agreement rippled through the group.

  Then Lester spoke. “Ah, my friends, is that all the faith you have in your district leader? Haven’t I steered the party in the right direction these last ten years? Have I ever once failed to move with the speed of a striking adder when the situation called for action?”

  How fitting, Susan thought, that Lester would compare himself to a snake. He was as cold-blooded as a reptile, that was for sure.

  Lester’s shoes were as shiny as they were going to get, but Susan continued to shine, hoping that Lester would say more about his plans to defeat the suffragists.

  And what snaky plans they turned out to be! Lester had already arranged, he said, for “a little ruckus” at the rally the suffragists had scheduled for Saturday. “As you know,” he chuckled, “the police force, the mayor, and half the judges in town are in Tammany’s hip pocket. Those biddies will think twice before they stir up discontent again in my town!”

  All the men laughed heartily, apparently convinced that the “suffrage problem” would soon be solved. Their laughter was scornful, and it made Susan angry. Lester and his friends were no different from those boys who threw tomatoes at the suffragist in Chelsea. Why should women wanting to vote make people act so hateful?

  Susan couldn’t get their laughter out of her head, and she was still thinking about it when she finished up at the barbershop and started home. She trudged along the noisy, fitful streets, tuning out the din of traffic and ignoring the press of pedestrians on the sidewalk. It was the same as always this time of day—people hurrying, pushing, a swirl of coats and hats and skirts, faces strained, impatient, horns honking, trolley bells ringing, traffic cops whistling traffic through intersections. Always the same.

  On 30th Street, the newsboy stood at his usual post in front of the police station, hawking the evening edition of the Times. He was crying out headlines, same as usual, but this headline caught Susan’s attention. It was about tomorrow’s suffrage rally!

  “Read all about it! An army of women to march on Saturday five thousand strong!”

  “How much for a paper?” Susan asked the boy. He was red-faced, and younger than Susan. He looked like he was Helen’s age. His stack of newspapers was almost as big as he was.

  “A penny, miss.”

  Susan dug in her pocket for a penny and eagerly scanned the front page for the article on the rally. There, she found it: a photograph at the bottom of the page showing some of the suffragists who would speak at the rally. On one side was an article and on the other side, an editorial.

  Over five thousand women from every state in the Union were expected to show up for the parade down Fifth Avenue to Central Park, the article said. There would be bands, floats, and an automobile procession. Men would also be joining the parade; a drum and fife corps would head their division.

  Then she began to read the editorial, and she grew angrier with every line. The editorial ridiculed the suffragists, calling them home wreckers, dangerous, petty, and other words Susan didn’t know the meaning of. But what really made Susan mad was what the editorial said about women in general:

  That the female mind is inferior to the male mind need not be assumed: that there is something about it essentially different, and that this difference is of a kind and degree that votes for women would constitute a political danger, is, or ought to be, plain to everybody.

  Despite the big words, Susan got the message loud and clear. The writer was claiming that females were not as smart as males. Well, she knew one thing for sure—Russell’s mind was not superior to hers. She always made better marks than he did at school.

  It was Lester Barrow’s attitude all over again: if women vote, terrible things will happen. The editorial writer, Lester, Mum’s boss Mr. Riley—they all seemed afraid of suffrage. Why?

  Susan thought back to the bold suffragist she had heard speaking in Chelsea. She couldn’t remember much of what the suffragist had said, but it didn’t seem like anything people should be afraid of.

  Now Susan’s curiosity was really aroused. She looked again at the picture of the featured speaker for the rally. Alice Paul, the caption said. She looked like an ordinary woman to Susan. What could this woman have to say that stirred everybody up?

  There was one way to find out, and Susan made up her mind right there on the curb that she would do it. She would ask Mr. Delaney for the day off and go to the suffrage rally herself. And she would ask Russell and Helen to go with her.

  At dinner, Susan discovered that the rally was not the only unusual thing happening on Saturday. Mum told the girls she was getting the day off work tomorrow to visit Aunt Blanche. Aunt Blanche was Dad’s elderly aunt who lived on a farm on Long Island. Aunt Blanche was ailing, Mum said, and had asked her to come. “I’ll be leaving on the 6 A.M. for Long Island, and I’m not sure what time I’ll be returning.”

  Susan looked up in surprise. Mum was going to spend fifty cents on train fare to visit a distant relative she didn’t even like? Oh, well, she thought, at least I won’t have to explain to Mum where Helen and I will be tomorrow.

  “You’ll need to watch Lucy for me, Susan,” Mum said. “Bea has to work.”

  “But I can’t!” Susan said. If she had to watch Lucy, she couldn’t go to the rally. “I’ve made plans for the day.”

  “Then you’ll have to change them. This is not a request.” Mum’s face was beginning to flush. “We’ve all pitched in and done extra so you could be free to work on your essay in the afternoons. Now when I ask you to care for your sister so that I can have a day to do something I need to do, you balk at it?” Her eyes flashed.

  Susan had lost her appetite for the stewed cabbage on her plate. She asked to be excused, but she wouldn’t look at Mum.

  She was careful not to stomp on her way back to her room. No use giving Mum more reason to be mad at her. No, Mum would be angry enough when she found out Susan had gone off and left Lucy with Russell’s mother for the day.

  Because nothing was going to stop Susan from going to that suffrage rally tomorrow. Nothing.

  Mum and Bea were both gone when the girls got up Saturday morning. There was a note to Susan on the kitchen table. It was from Mum, apologizing for snapping at her and marked with two long lines of Xs—Mum’s kisses. The note made Susan feel guilty about disobeying Mum to go to the rally, but not guilty enough to change her mind.

  Now Susan, Russell, and Helen were on their way, the trolley lurching and bumping along Fifth Avenue. The suffrage parade was to begin at one o’clock, and the rally would follow in Central Park. Russell and Helen seemed to be enjoying the ride, despite its bumpiness. Susan tried to lean back and relax as well, but she was too excited, and there was too much to see. Though she had lived in the city all her life, she had never been this far uptown.

  Uptown was a different world from Chelsea. Instead of run-down brick tenements, uptown streets were lined with quiet, dignified brownstones behind wrought-iron fences and with elegant stores and apartment buildings where uniformed doormen waited. Pierce-Arrows and Packards were parked on the curbs, not the milk-wagon nags and Model T’s seen on Chelsea’s curbs. There were fancy restaurants and office buildings with ornate facades and arched windows.

  Even the uptown people were different. No one hurried here. Pedestrians sauntered along the street, lolling in front of houses or store windows. Men in suits with narrow trousers strolled arm in arm with women in feathered hats and fur-trimmed jackets. Mothers pushed infants in prams along the sidewalk.

  As the trolley crossed 50th Street, Susan’s heart beat faster. Cars draped with yellow banners were already in line for the parade. The line must have stretched the entire nine blocks up to Central Park.

  Once off the trolley, Susan, Russell, and Helen hurried to find a spot on the sidewalk amid the crowd that was already gathering to watch the parade. Mounted policemen patrolled the avenue trying to keep the crowd in order. By the time the parade began, a solid wall of spectators hu
ng behind the ropes stretched across the sidewalk. Susan wondered whether they all supported suffrage or were only here to gawk at “the dangerous home wreckers” that the Times had reported would be marching.

  Soon the bands struck up and the marchers came, hundreds of women in yellow sashes, striding confidently through the sea of spectators, their yellow banners floating in the wind. Susan thought it was a thrilling sight.

  And the men were marching, too, just as the newspaper said they would. There were countless bands and floats, an endless procession of automobiles, drums beating, trumpets tooting, horns honking. Susan’s pulse quickened with every beat of the drums.

  Susan tried to look at every face, all the marchers, as they went by, to see if she could figure out what it was about them that made people so angry. But there were too many marchers to see them all, and they went by too fast. Besides, they looked so ordinary. They looked like all the other men and women Susan knew, and the people she saw on the streets of the city every day.

  Later, at the rally, Susan felt her heart thrill again when Alice Paul began to speak. The rest of the crowd melted away for Susan. All she saw was the platform where Alice Paul stood; all she heard were the words Alice Paul spoke in her strong, vibrant voice.

  “Our movement isn’t just about the rights of women,” Miss Paul said. “It’s about the rights of individuals—all of us here—to participate in the freedoms of our country, a country founded on the principles of fairness and justice, but a country which denies fairness and justice to those of its citizens who happen to be female.

  “Yes, my friends, our country tells us that we as females are not entitled to be treated fairly. You and you and you”—here she pointed to women in the audience—“are not entitled to be treated as your brother is, or as your father is, or as your husband is.

  “Our movement is about the rights of individuals,” she continued, her voice lowered. “All of us here. Every man and woman, every boy and girl, must travel through life individually, and, individually, face life’s challenges. There will be difficult times in every girl’s life, every woman’s life, when she must be prepared to depend on her own resources—whatever strength, whatever comfort or guidance she finds within herself. She must rely on herself.

  “It is a cruel thing indeed to rob an individual of her right to rely on herself. And that is exactly what those who oppose votes for women are doing.”

  She went on to talk about the way women for more than sixty years had worked quietly and ineffectively, asking for consideration as full citizens of this country. “The time of quietness is past,” she said. “We intend now to sound our voices loudly and clearly to the lawmakers of the land. They will know the strength of our anger. It is high time that we cease to politely ask for the vote. From this day forward, my friends, we will demand it!”

  Susan’s heart swelled. She had never heard a woman speak like this. Susan was so caught up in Miss Paul’s speech that it took her a few minutes to notice what was happening in the crowd. Then she saw that spectators up near the platform were getting rowdy; someone began shouting at Miss Paul, and a few more people joined in. At first Miss Paul ignored them, but soon the shouting drowned out her voice. Another suffragist on the platform, the woman who had earlier introduced Miss Paul, stepped to the podium and tried to outshout the hecklers, asking them to have some respect for Miss Paul. Someone hurled a half-eaten ice cream cone and hit the suffragist in the face. The crowd laughed. Then someone threw a tomato, which set off a barrage of fruit, rotten vegetables, even eggs being thrown at the suffragists. Suddenly, Susan realized Lester’s “ruckus” had begun.

  The rowdiness quickly spread through the crowd. People started pushing at anyone who was wearing a yellow sash. Banners were ripped off the stage and torn from women’s hands.

  To Susan’s surprise, the police didn’t make a move to stop the rowdiness. In fact, they seemed to spur the crowd on. Susan heard a policeman yell to one of the suffragists that she deserved a lot more than an egg in the face. It wasn’t long before the front of the crowd had become a brawl. The police got out their clubs, but Susan thought they seemed more eager to club the suffragists than anybody else.

  Farther back, where Susan, Russell, and Helen were standing, the crowd was getting agitated, and some people were moving forward toward the brawl. “We’ve got to get out of here,” Russell said to Susan, “before this whole place breaks into a riot.”

  The pandemonium spread. The crowd surged forward, and the three children were swept along with it. People were jostling and pushing, packed so close that Susan could scarcely breathe. Russell had seized Susan’s sleeve and was screaming at her to grab hold of Helen a few feet in front of them. But the press of people was closing in on her, and Susan couldn’t move. Two men beside Helen started slugging each other, and one of them fell against Helen. Susan watched, horrified, as Helen stumbled, then went down under the feet of the crowd.

  CHAPTER 7

  CAUGHT IN THE RIOT

  Helen!” Susan screamed, but her voice dissolved into the human sea. Helen was nowhere to be seen. Terror seized Susan. She shook off Russell’s grasp and pressed forward, squeezing between the people in front of her, thankful for once that she was small. Her eyes swung right and left, searching for Helen amid the swirling confusion.

  And finally, there was Helen, struggling to stand up in the tide of people. Susan screamed at her again, and this time Helen heard and turned toward Susan, her face etched with fear.

  “Give me your hand!” Susan called. Helen pushed a thin arm up through the tangle of legs, and Susan pressed forward, closer, grabbed Helen’s hand, pulled; and there was Russell, too, pulling, and finally Helen was in Susan’s arms. Tears were streaming down their faces. She was holding Helen so tightly she could feel her sister’s warmth against her.

  “Come on!” Russell yelled, beckoning toward a break in the crowd. The children pushed toward the gap and forced their way out of the press of people. Fresh air rushed into Susan’s lungs. She could breathe again. She checked Helen over, every inch of her. As soon as Susan was sure Helen was all right, the three hurried away toward the trolley.

  Susan looked back only once. The police had finally begun to break up the riot. Some people were being arrested and carried to paddy wagons waiting nearby. Good! The hecklers and rowdies would spend the night in jail. No less than they deserved.

  Susan dropped a dime into the trolley’s glass jar, fare for her and Helen, and watched the conductor crank the coin down the transparent chute into the till below. Then she slid into a straw-colored seat next to the window, where she could see the troublemakers being hauled away. The trolley jumped to a start just as the paddy wagons were rumbling by.

  But it wasn’t the rowdies being carted off to jail at all! It was the suffragists, still wearing their yellow sashes! Susan couldn’t believe it.

  By the time the trolley lurched to a stop at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 26th, the rooflines of Chelsea were stretched tight against a darkening sky. Stores and cars had begun turning on their lights, and the Nabisco factory was blowing its whistle announcing the 6:00 shift change.

  At home, the girls found an empty flat. Bea was not home yet from the factory. Susan got Lucy from the Cochrans’, fed her some cornmeal mush, and put her to bed. An hour passed, and Bea still hadn’t come. Anxiety flickered in Susan’s stomach. Where was Bea? Susan reheated the mush for herself and Helen. Helen ate just a few bites before she fell asleep at the table, and Susan could only pick at her own food. She settled Helen in the rocker, then sat at the table and watched the hands of the clock creep to half past eight.

  Why didn’t Bea come home?

  Now anxiety was gnawing at Susan in earnest. Whispered stories hovered in the back of her mind—stories about workers injured at the factories. The story of the horrible fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory only a few years before, when more than a hundred workers had died, trapped in the blazing building.

  What if
something equally awful had happened to Bea?

  At nine o’clock Susan couldn’t stand it any longer. She roused Helen and then went to Russell’s and asked if he would go to the Nabisco factory and check on Bea.

  Time inched past. The girls huddled together in Mum’s rocker and watched the clock move to 9:30, 9:45, 10:00.

  “Where is she, Susie?” Helen kept asking. Susan just shook her head. If she spoke, she might betray the fear rumbling in her belly. What a time, Susan thought, to be here alone without Mum.

  Finally, finally, came the sound of a key turning in the door. Maybe it would be Mum; maybe it would be Bea. Susan didn’t know who she wanted to see more. The knob turned. The door opened, and Bea appeared. Relief washed over Susan, but concern instantly replaced it.

  Something was wrong with Bea. She was moving slowly, with the greatest of effort, like old Mrs. Hannish with her rheumatism.

  “Bea! What’s wrong?” Helen exclaimed.

  Bea claimed to be fine. “I’m sorry to be so late, girls. I hope you didn’t worry. I’m just a bit tired and sore from a long day at work. I’m going straight to bed.” Yet the spark was missing from her voice. She hobbled across the kitchen, not looking to right or left, not speaking, not even noticing Mum’s absence.

  Bea’s bedroom door clicked shut.

  For a minute Susan and Helen stared at each other, then at Bea’s closed door. “Something’s not right,” Susan whispered. “I’ll try to talk to her.”

  Susan tapped on Bea’s door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me, Susan.”

  Susan thought she heard Bea sigh. “Come in.”

  Susan opened the door. Bea was standing, facing her. “What is it, Susan?” Bea’s voice sounded strained, and Susan noticed with a twinge that she hadn’t called Susan “love.”