Secrets on 26th Street

by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

  Tears prickled in Susan’s eyes. She fought against the hopelessness that was settling on her. She couldn’t give in to it. She had no one to depend on now but herself.

  Susan stopped in her tracks. It was what Alice Paul had said in her speech! The words came back to Susan so forcefully now: Sometimes a girl would have nothing but her own means to rely on.

  “But what means do I have?” Susan asked aloud.

  Then it came to her. Her barbershop money! Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? She could use her own money to bail Mum out of jail!

  It wasn’t until Susan was down on her knees in her own bedroom, pulling her money out from the bureau drawer where she had hidden it, that it occurred to her she might not have enough to make the bail. When she counted it, the entire stash amounted to only five dollars and twenty-three cents. She couldn’t imagine five dollars being enough to make bail.

  Where could she get more money to add to her own?

  Russell! He’d been saving much longer than Susan had, and he had two jobs. Hadn’t he told her he had saved almost enough to buy a bicycle?

  Susan found Russell at the barbershop on 28th Street. He protested when Susan pulled him away from a potential customer, a man in an expensive, double-breasted coat who Russell was sure would have been a big tipper. But when Susan told Russell what she had discovered, his eyes came alive and didn’t once leave her face. She quickly filled him in on the whole story. He agreed to loan Susan as much money as she needed. “I know you’ll pay me back. You’re a good businessma—I mean woman.” He grinned. “You going to let me come with you to the jail to spring your ma?”

  It was two miles to the Police Central Headquarters on Centre Street, a long walk, but Susan didn’t want to waste any of their precious money on carfare. She and Russell headed south by way of Fifth Avenue, through Greenwich Village, then down Broadway to the edge of Little Italy.

  There, on a block of seedy, run-down tenements, some barefoot children on a stoop stared at Russell and Susan as they walked past. A woman stuck her head out the window and screamed at the children in a language Susan didn’t understand. They scattered and joined the hordes of children playing in the street.

  “Only a few more blocks to Centre Street,” Russell told Susan. Russell had been to Police Central once with his father to bail his Uncle Timothy out of jail.

  Sure enough, as soon as they turned on to Broome Street, Susan saw the dome of the headquarters rising majestically above the clutter of tenements and shabby buildings in the neighborhood. It looked like a cathedral, Susan thought, or a palace—not a jail.

  Susan’s throat closed at the idea of Mum imprisoned behind those stone walls. Would Mum be wearing a ball and chain and a striped uniform like the “jailbirds” Susan had seen in movies? She shuddered at the thought, and Russell quietly put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you want me to go in alone and bail her out?” he asked.

  Susan set her jaw. “No, I can handle it.” She looked straight ahead as they climbed the granite steps of the building, and kept her mind focused on having Mum home again.

  Inside, Susan found herself in a huge rotunda with marbled walls and a marble staircase winding up to a landing above. At a massive desk in the middle of the rotunda sat a very large officer with a very sour look on his face.

  Every ounce of courage drained from Susan’s body. For an instant she feared she could never approach that desk, but she made herself think of Alice Paul’s words—rely on yourself—and her courage returned. She told the officer what she wanted.

  He looked at his ledger. “Ain’t no one by that name in this jail,” he said.

  “No, but there is,” Susan insisted. “She’s my mother. I know she’s here. Rose O’Neal.”

  “What? You think I can’t read? This is my roster, and there ain’t no Rose O’Neal on it,” he growled.

  “Could you check one more time?” asked Russell. “Maybe you missed her name.”

  “Look! I don’t need a couple of kids telling me my business. Beat it. I got work to do.”

  Susan’s brain froze. She couldn’t think. She could hardly move. Where in the name of heaven was Mum? It was all she could do to go back down the granite steps. On the last step she collapsed. She felt like crying, but she wouldn’t dare give in to the urge—not in front of Russell. He sat down beside her and put his hand on her knee. He didn’t say anything, just pushed around some pebbles with the toe of his shoe. After a long time, he spoke. “Are you sure it was your mum Bea was talking about?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. It had to be.” Susan could no longer hold back the tears. One slid down her cheek and dropped onto her knee beside Russell’s hand. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Susan. She swiped her cheek with it. “Mum can’t just have disappeared into thin air. She has to be somewhere, doesn’t she?”

  “Of course she does, Sue. I suppose there are other jails in this city, but it seems like they’d have brought the suffragists here, don’t you think?”

  Susan didn’t answer. Her heart had nearly stopped at her own words. People did disappear into thin air—in this city they did. Like the dockworkers Dad knew who had angered Lester Barrow.

  Lester Barrow!

  Suddenly the blood pounded through Susan’s head and rammed against her skull. Mum, arrested as a suffragist … She would have done anything to keep people like Lester Barrow and Mr. Riley from finding out. She would have tried to hide her arrest any way she could, wouldn’t she? Now Susan was sure she knew what had happened. Her words tumbled one over the other as she explained to Russell: Mum had given a false name when she was arrested!

  “Maybe that’s it, Susan. But what name would she have used?” Russell asked. “Her maiden name?”

  Susan shook her head. “Mum’s family was German—Protestant, you know. They disowned her when she married Dad. She won’t even talk about them. Besides, with the war in Europe now, nobody likes Germans. She’d have given the jailer her own name before she called herself ‘Rosa Ullman.’”

  “Then what name would she have used?” Russell asked.

  Susan could think of only one possibility—“Lillian,” the name Mum had dreamed of using for her vaudeville career. She explained to Russell.

  “Just ‘Lillian.’ No last name?”

  “I don’t know what last name she would’ve used. She always just said ‘Lillian’.”

  “We’re supposed to bail out every Lillian listed on the jailhouse roster?”

  “Doesn’t look like we have any other choice.”

  Russell’s jaw worked back and forth. After a long silence, he admitted that Susan was right. “I guess it’s back inside then?”

  “I guess so,” said Susan.

  The officer grimaced when he saw them. “I thought I told you two your ma wasn’t here.”

  “We want you to check your list again,” Susan said, “this time for a Lillian.”

  “Oh, your mother’s changed her name, has she? Or is Lillian your grandmother?”

  “Please, just check the list,” said Russell.

  The officer grumbled, but he pulled out the ledger. Susan waited tensely as she watched his eyes move back and forth across the roster. “What’d you say the last name was?” he asked.

  Did that mean he had a Lillian?

  Susan swallowed. If she acted unsure of the name, maybe he wouldn’t tell her anything. She would have to fake it. She glanced quickly at Russell, bidding him to follow her lead. His eyes met hers, and she was sure he understood. “Well, sir, we didn’t say actually. You see, we haven’t seen our mother in a very long time, and we wondered whether she was dead. Now we find out she’s alive, but we’re not sure what her last name is … now.”

  “She might have gotten married again,” said Russell. “Do you have a Lillian?” He craned his neck to try to see the list.

  The jailer looked annoyed. “The only Lillian I have here is Lillian Murphy. Now is that your ma or ain’t it?”

  Doubt to
rmented Susan. Was this person really Mum? Or a total stranger? “Can’t we see her?” Susan asked.

  “Sorry. No visitors allowed. Orders from city hall.”

  Susan was torn. What if they used all their money paying bail for Lillian Murphy, and she wasn’t even Mum?

  “Our mother might have been a suffragist,” said Russell. “Do you know if this Lillian Murphy was arrested at the suffrage rally?”

  “Does it look like I’m running a newspaper office? This is a jail. I’m not in the business of handing out information.”

  Susan pulled Russell aside to talk to him. “It’s mostly your money,” she said. “What d’you think?”

  “I think the decision’s up to you.”

  “But it’s such a gamble—betting every penny we have on a hunch.”

  “Sometimes playing a hunch can be your best bet.” His expression was intense.

  Susan looked back at him with equal intensity. “Then let’s play it,” she said.

  CHAPTER 12

  SUSAN’S GAMBLE

  Susan paced the floor, her stomach in knots. She kept glancing nervously at the heavy door where the jail matron in her dark skirt and blouse had disappeared—the door that led to the cells. Any minute now the matron would return with someone using the name of Lillian Murphy, either Mum or a stranger who’d gotten lucky and been bailed out by two kids playing a hunch.

  Finally Susan heard two sets of footsteps coming down the hall, one heavy, one light. Susan sucked in her breath, tried to prepare herself for anything, as the footsteps came closer. Then the door opened, and she saw Mum—her face strained and haggard—but Mum just the same.

  Susan fell into her mother’s arms.

  After so many days of tension and worry, it seemed too good to be true now to be walking through her own front door arm in arm with Mum.

  Susan tried to stamp every detail of the moment into her mind, to convince herself that it was real. The way the sunlight streamed through the uncurtained top of the window and played against the kitchen wall. The faint odor of ammonia that always lingered in the kitchen. The apron hanging on the stove, and the old gray mop leaning in the corner. Best of all, Mum, at home again.

  Mum was bruised and sore from being beaten at the rally. Russell helped Susan get Mum settled in the girls’ bedroom. Then he went back to his flat to get Helen and Lucy.

  Susan sat beside Mum on the bed and stroked her hair, like Mum always did when one of the girls was sick.

  Mum smiled weakly. “Susie, my big girl.” She clasped her fingers over Susan’s hand. “I’m sorry to be such a troublemaker. I didn’t intend to be. I had the idea I was getting into suffrage to help you girls. I didn’t want to see you weighed down with the same kinds of problems I had.”

  Mum said she hadn’t wanted to support suffrage openly for fear of what her boss or Lester Barrow would do. “I told Bea flat out I couldn’t march in parades or do anything where I might be seen by someone who knew me, but I wanted to help. I was doing a lot of little things, hoping they might add up to something that would make a difference. I did some typewriting, sent out mailings. Sometimes I’d go to neighborhoods where no one knew me and take around petitions for people to sign. Even that scared me, though. I was terrified that Lester or Mr. Riley would find out and we’d find ourselves on the street. And when Lester came by my office and demanded the back rent, I was sure he suspected something. I told Bea I’d have to quit the suffrage work.

  “Well, Bea wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted on using her own money to pay Lester. She said it was worth it if I felt a little more secure. And I did—until Kathleen was fired.”

  For a minute Mum closed her eyes, and Susan saw the gray shadows on her face. “That was like a rug pulled out from under me. I felt like a fool for thinking there could ever be security in this world for a poor widow with children to feed. I told Bea I was through with suffrage.”

  That was the argument Susan had heard. The argument that had started her worrying about Bea’s secret.

  Mum pushed herself up to a sitting position and continued. “I thought that was the end of it, but a few days later Bea came to me and said perhaps I wouldn’t have to work for Mr. Riley anymore. The suffrage organization might have a job for me. They needed someone like me to organize working-class neighborhoods for suffrage, and they’d pay decent wages for the work.

  “Bea said that a good friend of hers—a leader in the suffrage movement—was coming to town to speak at the rally on Saturday. Bea set up an interview for me with her friend and another suffrage leader on Saturday morning. By the end of the meeting, everything was arranged for me to take the job. I went off to the rally with such excitement. It seemed that I might really have some security at last.” Mum’s eyes brightened as she spoke, and Susan saw a spark of the old, unworried Mum, the before-Dad-died Mum. Susan thought wistfully how nice it would be to see that look on Mum’s face more often.

  Mum’s eyes clouded as she went on with her story. “Of course, getting the interview with Bea’s friend depended on my being off work on Saturday. Telling Mr. Riley the truth was out of the question after what happened to Kathleen, so I made up the story about visiting Aunt Blanche, who I said was near death. I figured I’d better tell you girls the same story lest you come by the office looking for me. I hated to lie to you, but I thought it was safer for us all—”

  “Why didn’t you at least tell me where you were going?” Susan said. “I would have kept your secret.”

  “I couldn’t have burdened you with that. Suppose Lester Barrow had come by while you girls were there alone—”

  Just then, the front door slammed, and Helen and Lucy pounded into the hall, shouting for Mum. They were on Mum in a minute, hugging and kissing her. Lucy settled into Mum’s lap and Helen snuggled up against Mum.

  “Oh, I missed my girls,” Mum said, smiling and hugging them close.

  Susan was the first to see Bea, still wearing her brimless hat, appear in the doorway. Bea had an astonished look on her face. “Rose! You’re … home.” Her voice was trembling. “But how did you get here?”

  The smile vanished from Mum’s face. “Bea, didn’t you know Susan had come to get me?”

  Bea took a few hesitant steps into the room. “I didn’t even know where you were, Rose. I had assumed you were in jail. I even wired my grandfather for money—I’d figured to bail you out, and I thought you might need to see a doctor, and I knew the rent was due, and—” Her chest heaved as though she was choking back a sob. “But my grandfather refused me the money. And when I went to the jail, they told me you weren’t there. You can’t imagine how frantic I was. I spent hours telephoning and running about the city, checking police stations and hospitals. Then I went down to suffrage headquarters, praying the leadership could help me find you.”

  Susan was breathing hard and fast. She had barely heard the rest of what Bea had said because she was stuck on the very first sentence. Bea had been telling her the truth this morning!

  Mum was sitting on the edge of the bed now, looking sheepish. “Oh, I was foolish, wasn’t I? Making up a name to give the officers? All I was thinking about was Mr. Riley or Lester reading my name in the newspaper.” Her expression changed to bewilderment, and she turned to look at Susan. “But Susie, if Bea didn’t know where I was, then how did you know?”

  Susan willed her voice to be steady. “I followed Bea to her suffrage headquarters and heard her telling her friends you’d been arrested. I—” she glanced at Bea—“left … before … before I heard the rest of what Bea said. Then Russell and I went to the jail and figured out about your name.”

  “What on earth possessed you to follow Bea?” Mum asked.

  “Yes,” Bea added, “I’ve been wondering that myself.”

  “You shouldn’t have wondered, Bea!” Susan cried. “Did you think we were just dumb little kids, swallowing all those lies you were telling us?”

  Then Susan couldn’t talk fast enough. Bea and Mum listened witho
ut comment as Susan spilled out her story. She told them everything that had happened, all the way from her job at the barbershop to the girls’ visit with Mrs. Flynn. When she finished, both Bea and Mum looked stunned.

  Bea spoke first. “Susan, I don’t know what to say. Except that I’m sorry. I thought I was sparing you from worry.”

  Bea took a small step toward Susan, then stopped. Susan could feel Mum’s eyes on her as well. Susan supposed they were waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t—couldn’t.

  “Try to understand, Susan,” Bea pleaded. “I was sick from worrying over your mother myself, and wanting so to shelter you girls—” Her voice broke, and she looked down.

  Suddenly Susan remembered feeling just that way with Helen. This morning, on the landing. And earlier, at D’Attilio’s Bakery, after Lester’s threat. Both times, hadn’t Susan been less than truthful with Helen, trying to shelter her from fear? But those were little lies, Susan told herself. Not like Bea’s.

  Bea had regained her composure. “I see now that I’d have frightened you less if I’d simply told you the truth. Why, Susan, you could even have helped solve the dilemma.” Susan thought she heard pride in Bea’s voice, and that made her heart ache, though she wasn’t sure why.

  “But I didn’t.” Bea sighed deeply. “I’m ignorant, not used to family matters, I’m afraid.” She looked at Susan again and added softly, “I handled things badly, and I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”

  “And you needn’t say anything else.” Mum rose and put her hands on Bea’s arms. “Part of being a family is understanding when we make mistakes. You did your best at the time.” Mum’s gaze swept to Helen and Lucy, then to Susan.