The Hope Chest

by Karen Schwabach

  Some people think that us suffragists (or is it we suffragists?) hate men, but that's not true at all. Lots of men are really nice, like my friend who showed me how to patch tires. There's a difference between liking men and wanting to have them run your whole life.

  Well, that's neither here nor there. I hope you are getting along all right. I remember that when I was in eighth grade and my friend Dottie Armitage died of consumption, I didn't want to be friends with anyone else for a long time. I thought that would be somehow disloyal to Dottie. It wasn't true, though, and I hope you know it isn't true about Flossie either. When a friend dies, some of her always stays inside of us. Write back if you can.

  Love,

  Chloe

  Violet felt peculiar—it was as if Chloe had read her mind. Back then, that is. She had felt just that way, when her grief started to ease enough that she could sometimes laugh and have fun and want to be with people again. She'd felt as if she'd be betraying Flossie if she made other friends. Violet threw the letter angrily down on the riverbank beside her. It would have been great to read this letter back then.

  The last letter was just a note.

  April 15, 1919

  Dear Violet,

  This clipping is a poem that was in the newspaper the other day. It's called “Aftermath,” and it's by a man named Siegfried Sassoon, who was in the British army. I wish you'd read it to Stephen.

  You know there's going to be a League of Nations—everyone says we will never have a war again. I hope that's true.

  Violet looked in the envelope, but there was no clipping. Either it had fallen out or Mother had taken it when she'd read the letter.

  That was what made Violet snap. Mother had read all these letters. Maybe Father too, but it was Mother who she felt ought to have known better. Mother had kept Chloe's interesting news and comforting thoughts from Violet when Violet had needed them most. And there were more letters, besides these few that Violet had managed to rescue. Violet knew they wouldn't be in the desk anymore. They'd be hidden somewhere she couldn't find them. Or even burned.

  All her life, Violet had accepted that her parents made decisions, and whether Violet liked it or not, that was the way things were. But this was too much. The letters had been written just for her, by Chloe, the only person in the family who had ever told her anything except how to behave. And she hadn't stolen them; they'd been stolen from her. It was completely unfair, and Violet wasn't going to put up with it.

  The Dying Mrs. Renwick

  VIOLET WISHED SHE HAD MORE COMFORTABLE clothes to run away in.

  Her navy blue pleated skirt and matching sailor's middy blouse were what Mother called a compromise. Mother liked to dress Violet in fluffy white dresses with lots of petticoats, a sash and ribbons of violet satin, and a hat with artificial violets around the brim. Violet would have preferred overalls. She had seen girls' overalls advertised in the Sears, Roebuck catalog, although she'd never seen anyone actually wearing them. They looked very convenient and serviceable. Violet had ruined several white dresses while exploring along the muddy banks of the Susquehanna River and lost two hats with violets around the brim. Then Mother had given up on the white dresses with violet trim. As far as Violet was concerned, her navy blue clothes weren't a compromise at all. Violet wanted overalls.

  When Violet had finally gone home, after an hour or two of squatting among the trees on the bank watching the Susquehanna water slide indifferently past, she'd been sent to her room without dinner. Violet had tucked the letters into her bloomers, just above the band of elastic around her knee, and pulled her stockings up over them and buttoned the garters to her undervest before she got home. When Mother asked her for the letters, Violet told her she'd thrown them in the river.

  Now it was morning, and Violet sat on an itchy mohair-covered train seat and stared out the train window at the smokestacks and the soot-blackened brick buildings chugging by. She was on her way to New York City. She was through with Mother and Father and their rules. She was going to the Henry Street Settlement House, and she was going to find Chloe.

  Before she left, Chloe had told Violet about settlement houses—they were mostly started in bad neighborhoods in the big cities by young college men and women. They lived in the settlement houses and did whatever they could to help out—taught English classes, took care of sick people, organized children's clubs. There were even some workers in the settlement houses who called themselves social workers, although Violet wasn't quite sure what those were. It had something to do with socialism. Socialism, Chloe had once explained to her, meant the idea that people should take care of each other instead of just themselves.

  Well, Violet was big enough to take care of herself and whoever else needed it. She had snuck out of the house in the very first morning light, taking her savings of $3.92 tied up in a handkerchief pinned inside her middy blouse. Violet couldn't face another scene—she hated scenes— and besides, she very much doubted that she would have been able to leave if there had been a fight, since unlike Chloe, she was only eleven and didn't have the Hope Chest.

  She remembered the final scene when Chloe had left and never come back. Father and Chloe had yelled at each other at the door. Mostly Father. Mother had stood behind him saying, “Arthur, the neighbors!” Violet had sat at the top of the stairs, out of everyone's sight. She had hugged her knees to her chest, bunched up into a tight little ball of terror as Father's bellowing rang through the hall and made the crystal in the chandelier hum. Stephen had been in the front parlor, presumably studying the wallpaper. Violet had heard the front door slam shut and the creaking of the crank that started the Hope Chest, then the sudden roar of the Hope Chest's engine as Chloe drove away.

  The Hope Chest had been the final straw, as far as Father was concerned. Not the votes for women nonsense, not the damn-fool crazy college ideas, not Chloe's insisting that she wanted to do something meaningful, but the Hope Chest.

  Granny Mayhew was Father's mother. When she died in 1914, she had left $250 each to Violet and Chloe for their hope chests and $500 to Stephen for his education.

  A hope chest was a big wooden trunk that a girl was supposed to fill with things she'd need when she was married—tablecloths and bed linens and dishes and things like that. But of course money could be a lot more useful than tablecloths. Violet tried not to think about what she would have done with that $250 if they ever really let her have it—travel, maybe to South America. They never would, of course. Not after what Chloe had done with her hope chest money. No, they'd keep it from Violet—keep it safe for her, as Mother would say—and make her spend it to set up housekeeping with some husband. Two hundred and fifty dollars' worth of furniture and linens and housekeeping stuff. The thought of it was oppressive, like high walls closing in on her. But there was nothing she could do about it.

  Stephen had taken his $500 and enrolled at Cornell University. A year later he had gone off to Canada—way back in 1915, long before America entered the War. He had enlisted in the Canadian army and been sent to France to fight the Germans. A few Americans did that. You heard a lot in those days about martyred Belgium, and it made some people mad that America wasn't getting into the War. By the time American boys were being conscripted into the army and sent overseas in late 1917, Stephen was already back—or what was left of him.

  Chloe had somehow convinced Father to let her go to college. Not a big university like Cornell, of course, but a junior college. Violet wasn't sure how this had been accomplished. Chloe had always been able to talk to Father more than Violet had, at least back when they were still speaking to each other. At the time, Violet was mainly concerned that Chloe was going away—although not very far—and wasn't going to sit at the foot of her bed and tell her stories every night or draw her pictures of Alaska. But then college had led to talk about the settlement houses and being a nurse. And then Chloe had taken her hope chest money, all of it, and bought a used Model T Ford. She even had the effrontery to name it the Hope Chest. />
  So it was for sure that Violet wasn't ever going to get $250. She'd had $3.92 in a jar under her bed, saved up from birthdays and her allowance. It was a remarkable sum, or so she'd always thought, until she bought the train ticket to New York. It had cost $3.25. She'd tried to buy a half-price ticket, claiming she was under eight, but the ticket clerk had told her in a bored voice that she could either be old enough to travel to New York City by herself or young enough to travel at half fare, but not both. And Violet didn't dare argue, since she was nervous about the trip to New York, and besides, she really wasn't under eight.

  Well, Chloe would be glad that Violet was coming to live with her. Violet could go to school in New York, and Mother could devote all her time to Stephen. And Father would be positively glad Violet was gone. Mother might worry what the neighbors would think, but Father probably wouldn't even care about that. They'd both be glad. They'd gotten rid of Chloe, and now …

  Violet felt a tear trickle itchily down the side of her nose, and she wiped it away with her sleeve.

  “Tickets!” The conductor was coming through the car. Violet nervously held out her ticket, trying to look like she rode on trains all the time.

  The conductor read the ticket and frowned at her. “Kind of young to be going to New York City alone, aren't you, miss?”

  “I'm almost twelve,” said Violet defensively.

  The conductor shrugged, punched a hole in the ticket, and handed it back to her.

  At the next stop a woman got on and took the seat across from Violet. Violet could tell at once that she was a meddlesome woman. She was dressed in the fashion of twenty years ago, in a sweeping black bombazine gown, and she smelled of mothballs. She was tightly corseted into a perfect S shape, with a pigeon bosom, a wasp waist, and a bustle to exaggerate her rear end. On her head she wore a black hat with an enormous lopsided brim—two feet to starboard and a foot and a half to port, Father would have said. The corpse of a large bird, dyed a dismal purple, was diving into a mass of black ribbons heaped around the crown of the hat.

  Involuntarily Violet clutched at her own neat straw hat, as if the woman might try to trade with her.

  The woman sat down stiffly and with great difficulty. She tilted her head back slightly, probably to balance her hat, and scowled down her nose at Violet.

  “I,” she said with great emphasis, “am Mrs. Albert Renwick of Huntington, Long Island.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Violet lied. Mother would probably have wanted Violet to stand up and curtsy.

  “And you?” said Mrs. Renwick.

  “Miss Violet Mayhew of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania,” Violet said.

  Mrs. Renwick twitched her nose suspiciously, as if she thought Violet might be making fun of her. “You're very small to be traveling alone. Where are you going?”

  “New York City,” said Violet, thinking it was none of Mrs. Renwick's business.

  “And what takes you there, if I may ask?”

  “I'm going to visit my sister. My grown-up sister.”

  “Young ladies,” said Mrs. Renwick, “should not travel unaccompanied on the train. Is your sister married?”

  “No,” said Violet shortly.

  “Then why is she not living with your parents? Are your parents still living?”

  “Yes,” said Violet. “But they're very busy with my brother, Stephen. He's still recovering from the War.” Violet hoped that would silence Mrs. Renwick. A recovering war veteran was a very impressive thing to have in the family.

  “All the more reason your sister ought to have stayed home to help. In my day a girl's greatest joy was being of service to her brothers. I myself worked my fingers to the bone in a glove factory to pay my brother's tuition at Harvard. And I felt privileged to do so,” Mrs. Renwick said defiantly, as if Violet had suggested she hadn't. “Privileged to do so. But I suppose your sister is one of these New Women.” She made it sound like a disease.

  Violet glanced around surreptitiously for another empty seat. It would be very rude to get up and walk away from Mrs. Renwick, but Mrs. Renwick was pretty rude herself.

  Mrs. Renwick seemed to sense what was on Violet's mind and changed the subject. “I am dying, you know, Violet,” she said.

  Violet stared at her. She felt bad for thinking uncharitable thoughts of Mrs. Renwick. “I'm sorry.”

  “Too kind,” Mrs. Renwick murmured.

  “What of?” said Violet, and then realized that this was an extremely rude question.

  Mrs. Renwick didn't seem to think so. “Have you heard of tuberculosis?”

  “Yes,” said Violet. Regretting she'd been rude, she added, “I'm sorry you have tuberculosis, Mrs. Renwick.”

  “I do not have tuberculosis,” said Mrs. Renwick.

  Violet stared again. “But I thought you said …”

  “Those foolish doctors don't know what I have,” said Mrs. Renwick with proud finality.

  “Oh,” said Violet.

  “Dozens of doctors have seen me, and none of them can say what is the matter with me. Not one.”

  “Maybe nothing's the matter with you,” Violet ventured.

  “Excuse me. Are you a doctor?” asked Mrs. Renwick coldly.

  “Of course not,” said Violet, irritated.

  “I should think not,” said Mrs. Renwick. “It's a revolting thing for a female to do, becoming a doctor. Absolutely revolting.”

  Since this was what Father had always said and Mother had (as always) agreed with him, Violet figured that was what most people thought. She had never wanted to be a doctor herself. She'd never really thought about being anything. She had known what was in her future— the hope chest, and the marriage, and that was it.

  But Chloe had wanted to be a nurse. And Flossie, before she died in the Influenza, had wanted to be a reporter. And some of Flossie would always be in her— Violet remembered that from Chloe's letter.

  That was why Violet found herself answering, “I don't want to be a doctor. I want to be a reporter.”

  Mrs. Renwick gaped. “A re-what-er?”

  “A reporter,” said Violet. “Like Nellie Bly. She filed news from the trenches in Europe, you know. During the War.” Somehow Violet felt that she had to say this to Mrs. Renwick for Flossie's sake.

  “How absolutely appalling,” said Mrs. Renwick, rolling her eyes upward and fluttering her eyelashes at the same time, which had the disconcerting effect of making her eyes go all white. “A female, in the trenches!”

  “There were plenty of females in the trenches,” Violet said. “At the end, the Germans were sending in women, and boys fourteen years old. And the Russians—”

  “A young lady does not need to know anything about trenches,” Mrs. Renwick interrupted firmly. “Nor about Germans and Russians. Let us change the subject. Where does your sister live?”

  Violet felt instantly dejected. She didn't know where Chloe lived. The return address on the envelopes was 265 Henry Street, New York City, but she had no idea where that was. She had a vague idea that New York was bigger than Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. This part of her plan was not figured out too well.

  Mrs. Renwick was watching her closely. “I'm not sure exactly where,” said Violet.

  “Ah. Well, she's meeting you at the station, anyway,” Mrs. Renwick said. And having settled Violet's travel arrangements to her satisfaction, she went back to the main problem. “Violet, a female can't be a reporter, and that's final.”

  Violet didn't know what to say. She knew it was very wrong to contradict adults. And she didn't even really want to be a reporter. That had been Flossie's dream. Chloe had always told her that a girl could be anything she wanted to be. So had Violet's sixth-grade teacher, Miss Elliott. But Violet had certainly never heard that from anyone else.

  So she bit back any response. She turned and looked out the window at a smoke-blackened brick factory, its hundreds of windowpanes too grimy to see through.

  “I'm glad you've decided to see reason,” said Mrs. Renwick. “I'm an
old woman, and a dying woman to boot, and my words are worth hearing. A woman can't be anything she wants to be, because that's not the way the good Lord made us. He made us to be the helpmeets of men and to be protected by them. If women go out being doctors and reporters and demanding to vote, then how can they expect men to protect them anymore?”

  Violet hadn't said anything about voting. Getting the right to vote was Chloe's project. Father had said that it was sending Chloe off to college that had filled her head with damn-fool crazy ideas, but Violet knew that Chloe's head had been filled with crazy ideas before. Violet didn't much care about voting. She was only eleven, and nobody was talking about giving eleven-year-olds the vote.

  Mrs. Renwick went on, “The Lord has given females the wonderful gift of being able to bear children, and that's the work that women do. So let's hear no more of this nonsense about wanting to be a reporter. Now, how many children do you want to have, Violet?”

  Violet felt deflated. She flopped back on the prickly green train seat, even though she could hear Mother in her head scolding that a lady doesn't ever let her back touch the back of her chair. There was no point in arguing with Mrs. Renwick, even less point than there had ever been in arguing with Mother or Father. What Mrs. Renwick was saying was the same thing that Violet had heard again and again for as long as she could remember.

  “Seven,” Violet said. People were always asking her how many children she wanted, just as they asked boys what they wanted to be when they grew up. She had learned that seven was a very impressive answer.

  Certainly it impressed Mrs. Renwick. “Seven! Gracious, that's quite a lot, my dear!”

  Violet managed a smile. Mother had always told her, “Smile even if it breaks your face.”

  “Well, that's a much better idea than being a reporter. Seven! My, aren't you an ambitious little chick.” Mrs. Renwick leaned forward creakily to pinch Violet's cheek, which Violet submitted to despite an overwhelming smell of mothballs.