Secrets on 26th Street

by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

Helen and Lucy chorused their agreement. Lucy bounced across the bed and threw her arms around Bea’s waist. Helen hugged Bea’s neck.

  Susan, gripped by a fierce burning in her chest, could only stand back and watch. She couldn’t bring herself to enter in. Everyone else was so ready to forgive Bea, but Susan couldn’t; she just couldn’t. She felt like an outsider, and she turned toward the door.

  “Susan,” Mum called after her. “Where are you going?” There was concern on her face.

  Susan looked back, and Bea’s eyes caught hers. “Let me talk to her, Rose,” said Bea.

  Mum nodded. “We’ll be right here.”

  Susan followed Bea into the other bedroom. Bea seated herself on the bed. She took off her hat and placed it next to her, then patted the bed on the other side of her. “Come sit, love.”

  Something inside of Susan wouldn’t let her move toward Bea. She stood silently.

  After a long moment, Bea’s mouth trembled; then she closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. When she opened her eyes, Susan noticed how bloodshot they were. “It was different between us, wasn’t it, Susan? Different than it was with your mum or your sisters. We had a special friendship, you and I.”

  Yes! Susan’s heart cried out. But all she could do was nod and swallow painfully.

  Bea seemed to struggle for what she would say next. Finally she said, “I know you trusted me, Susan, and I failed you. I wish I could undo it. I wish I didn’t have to see the hurt and disappointment in your eyes.” She paused. “I felt that way about someone once. When I was about your age.

  “You asked me before how I felt about my grandfather. You know I’d lived with him from the time my mother died, when I was quite small. I was so proud of that man, Susan. I wanted to be exactly like him. I told him so one day, when I was your age. Simply blurted it out at the dinner table. We didn’t eat, you understand; we dined. Butlers and serving maids to wait on us. We had a huge mahogany table. I sat at one end and he at the other. And I wasn’t allowed to speak unless he spoke to me first. Which he seldom did.

  “I don’t know why I broke the rule. I can’t recall. For some reason, though, I blurted out there at the table that I wanted to be a member of Parliament someday, like him. I still remember the scowl that came over his face, and his voice, cold as ice, telling me, ‘Females do not vote. Therefore they cannot serve in Parliament. Nor will they ever do so, as long as I have anything to do with it.’ Then he went back to eating, without so much as a glance at me.

  “I simply sat there at that big, long table, crying inside, but not daring to let him know how he’d hurt me. I never quite forgave him for that.”

  “Was that the argument you had with him?”

  “Oh, no, that came much later. When I first became involved with the suffrage movement. My grandfather insisted I give it up, or he would cut me off financially. Of course I wouldn’t, so he did. All I had after that was the money my mother left me, which I learned to live on quite comfortably.”

  Bea seemed absorbed for a moment in fingering the flowers on her hat. “What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that you have to look to yourself, no one else, to make your dreams happen. That’s really all we’re fighting for with suffrage. The right of every human being to rely on him or herself.”

  Susan’s skin tingled. Alice Paul’s words again.

  Susan ached to tell Bea how those words had helped her. She felt shy toward Bea, though, as if all the pain Bea caused her had raised a wall between them. She tried, haltingly, to put into words at least some of what was in her heart. “Bea? Your friend Alice Paul? If you see her again or write her, would you tell her I really liked her speech and what she said … what you just said … about relying on yourself. It’s what got me through these last few days. It helped me … a lot. I’d just like her to know that.”

  Bea’s eyes were shining. “That will mean quite a lot to Alice, Susan.” Susan had the feeling it meant even more to Bea.

  Bea rose, went to the dresser, slid open the heavy bottom drawer, then bent down and reached behind it. Susan’s heart jumped. She knew Bea was retrieving the Trafalgar Square photograph. Bea turned back to Susan with the framed photograph clutched to her chest. “No secrets between us anymore, Susan.” She looked at Susan earnestly. “I want you to have the photograph. Alice gave it to me, as a memento of the time we’d served together in Holloway Prison for our suffrage activities.

  “Alice is a fighter, Susan, very determined, and she’ll get what she wants in the end. We will get the vote, you’ll see, and it’ll be largely because of her. She’s a good friend, whom I very much admire. I hope you’ll remember what she stands for, and I hope someday you’ll again think of me as a friend.” She held the photograph out to Susan.

  Into Susan’s mind flooded all the many kindnesses Bea had performed since she came to live with them. Then Susan remembered what Bea had said to her that night on the roof when she was missing Dad so badly.

  The best we can do with pain is to make something good come out of it.

  Susan looked at Bea, still holding the framed photograph out to her. It would be a good thing, wouldn’t it, to have a friend like Bea?

  Susan smiled and reached out to take the photograph from Bea’s hand.

  “Are we friends, then?” Bea asked.

  “Special friends.” Whatever had been holding Susan back suddenly released her. She rushed forward into Bea’s open arms.

  1914

  GOING BACK IN TIME

  LOOKING BACK: 1914

  By 1914, when Susan’s story takes place, suffragists had been fighting for women’s right to vote for more than 60 years. Suffragists had to battle the popular belief that women should tend to their homes and families, leaving politics and business to men. Some people even insisted that females were too emotional or not intelligent enough to be trusted with complex matters like government.

  By the time of Susan’s story, early suffrage leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had given decades of their lives to the struggle. During the years these women worked for suffrage, the nation fought the Civil War, freed its slaves, and gave black men the right to vote with the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Anthony and Stanton worked tirelessly for an amendment giving women the vote, but Congress defeated it again and again. Eventually, a few western states allowed women to vote—Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho—but by the time Anthony died in 1906, not one state east of the Mississippi allowed women to vote. And much of the suffrage movement’s fire seemed to die with Anthony.

  Soon, though, a new generation of women—including Alice Paul—brought fresh energy to the suffrage movement. While studying in England from 1907 to 1910, Paul met the Pankhursts, a mother and her daughters who were setting England’s suffrage movement ablaze. The Pankhursts and their followers were called “the wild women of England” because they were willing to face arrest and jail to carry their message to the public. Some even resorted to throwing rocks and smashing windows. Many Pankhurst followers, including Alice Paul, served prison sentences. In jail, they endured mistreatment and protested with hunger strikes.

  Alice Paul didn’t agree with everything the Pankhursts were doing, but she was inspired by their energy and by their success at drawing attention to suffrage. In America at that time, people barely noticed the suffrage movement. In 1910, Alice Paul returned to the United States determined to change that.

  By then, most American suffragists had given up on changing the Constitution. Instead, they were trying to win the vote for women one state at a time. Alice Paul insisted there was a better, quicker way—passage of the Constitutional amendment Anthony and Stanton had fought for, guaranteeing every woman the right to vote.

  Alice Paul and other young leaders used some of the Pankhursts’ ideas to win support for the amendment. They held outdoor rallies and parades, carried signs, and gave speeches in public places. And, for the first time, American suffragists looked beyond the wealthy and the middl
e class for support. Under Paul’s leadership, they began to bring the movement to poor, working-class, and immigrant women, much as the fictional Bea Rutherford did.

  In large cities, poor families like the O’Neals—many of them immigrants—lived in ramshackle buildings called tenements. Large families lived in apartments of only two or three rooms. Thousands of people were crammed into a few blocks. Most, like Mum, needed jobs so desperately that they worked long hours under terrible conditions. Many took jobs in filthy, unsafe factories, often working 12 to 14 hours a day for less than a dollar.

  Such neighborhoods were usually controlled by apolitical machine—a powerful group of local politicians much like Lester Barrow and his men. Such men, called political bosses, had great influence over the poor, uneducated people who lived in their districts. Political bosses helped families in times of sickness and trouble, but they expected absolute loyalty in return. People were thrown out of their homes and jobs if they displeased the bosses, just as Mum’s friend Kathleen was. New York City had the most famous political machine in America. It was called Tammany Hall, after the building where the political bosses met. For years political machines in major cities opposed suffrage. They feared that women voters might limit their power or even vote them out of office.

  Alice Paul not only brought the suffrage movement into tenements and factories, she also made the White House take notice. In 1913, Paul organized a huge parade to take place in Washington, D.C., on the day that President Woodrow Wilson took office. The parade ended in a riot, and the police refused to help the suffragists, just as Susan experienced at the rally she attended. The event made headlines across the country. American suffrage was getting noticed at last.

  Over the next few years, suffragists gained more and more attention. They staged parades and rallies in every state. They picketed, carried signs, collected names on petitions, spoke in lecture halls and on street corners—wherever they could get someone to listen. Sometimes they were arrested and jailed, but like Mum, they came out even more determined to win their rights. The national organizations that worked for suffrage grew by leaps and bounds, counting among their members men and women from all walks of life. The cry “Votes for Women” echoed in towns and cities all across America.

  Finally, in 1918 President Wilson decided to support the suffrage amendment. He helped convince other lawmakers that the time had come to grant women the vote. On August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was signed into law, giving women full rights as United States citizens.

  Yet Alice Paul and other suffrage leaders knew the fight for women’s equality had only begun. Perhaps someday American girls could not only look forward to voting for president, they could even hope to be president.

  About the Author

  Elizabeth McDavid Jones is an English teacher and the author of nine books and many magazine and serial stories for young people. She has won the Edgar Award and other accolades for her work. She now lives in North Carolina with her husband and children, where they share their home with a big brown dog and a mountain of dirty laundry. Please visit her at www.elizabethmcdavidjones.com.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text Copyright 1999 by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

  Map Illustration by Robert Sauber

  Line Art by Greg Dearth

  Cover design by Amanda DeRosa

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-4659-9

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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