Buried Seeds

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Buried Seeds Page 18

by Donna Meredith


  The box smelled of urine and poo. “Prince. What kind of name is that for a smelly puppy?”

  I pulled on a wrapper and slid into slippers before wadding up the newspapers that lined the bottom of the box. I carried the mess and the puppy in one hand and the candle in the other, making my way down the back staircase and into the kitchen. I disposed of the mess in the trash barrel just outside the back door. When I set the puppy down in the kitchen, he went right to the water bowl and slurped. He sniffed an empty bowl beside the water and licked the ceramic surface for any traces of leftover food. Jack must have left the bowls out for the puppy. The puppy sniffed the bowl again.

  “Let me see what I can find.” Rummaging through the ice box and cabinets, I rounded up bread scraps and left over chicken. I minced them with a chef’s knife.

  While the animal ate, I lit a small lantern. When he finished eating, I carried him outside behind the house. A sickle-shaped moon hung low in the sky and the air smelled as if it were going to rain. I closed my eyes, longing for childhood nights when I’d chased fireflies in the creeping dusk and for the innocence of that child who lay in the field wondering how far away the moon was, how many stars peopled the heavens and was each one the shining soul of some person who had passed on—was one my mother? I looked up at the sky, the same sky, now and wondered if my babies were bright sparkles in that velvety darkness. I longed for them. I longed for Timmy, for green hills and pastures. I longed for Jack to come home, the Jack who had swept me away, not the one who’d betrayed me with another woman.

  The puppy sniffed all around the foundation of the house before he finally tinkled in the dirt. Afterward he started sniffing again.

  I picked him up. “Enough of that.”

  Back upstairs, I laid fresh newspaper in the box and set the puppy inside. I went back to bed, but the puppy mewled and scratched at the cardboard. I listened with annoyance for what seemed like a long while, but time had a way of feeling eternal in the middle of the night, as eternal as the moon and stars. I had no idea how much time really passed. Finally I pulled the puppy from the box and laid him on the bed beside me. He snuggled into my armpit and promptly fell asleep. Fantastic. How was I supposed to sleep with a rat-sized pup under my arm? If I rolled over I’d smother him. The little beast would force me to lie awake all night. Eyes squeezed shut, unable to block the furry burden from my mind, I lay there and thought up hateful names for him. Nuisance. Pest. Monster. Maybe the store would take him back. I would talk to a clerk in the morning. In the morning, I would—I would…

  Something poked my cheek. I rolled over. Something wet sandpapered my ear. I squinted through eyelids still heavy with sleep. It was very early, perhaps six judging by the gentle fingers of yellow light creeping through the window. A damp spot bloomed on the sheet where the puppy had peed. “Ewww—nasty, you little cuss! Look what you’ve done now.” Stripping the sheet from the bed, I flung it to the floor in disgust and settled back on the pillow. Immediately whiskers tickled my cheek. I pushed the pup away. “Stop being such a disagreeable pest.”

  The puppy climbed on my chest again, rear end raised, and he lunged toward my chin.

  I put him down on the floor, fighting off tendrils of guilt. The little critter was probably lonely, finding himself in a strange place, surrounded by strange people, none of his own kind around. I knew how that felt. Although I’d polished my speech patterns and customs to match those of San Franciscan society, I was still an outsider and always would feel that way on the inside. I’d hoped children of my own would make me feel as if I belonged here. And for a while, Ben did, he nearly did. But Ben was gone. Jack was gone, and even when he wasn’t, most of the time I wished him gone. His vile disease had killed my babies and the medication I was prescribed made me so violently ill I thought I might follow them to the grave. Yet I refused to complain. What was my suffering compared to Ben’s?

  That woman was expecting—the thought kept returning to me. Her hair, dark as midnight, swung thick and lush about her shoulders, I had seen that much from my window. I hated her— completely and totally—but what if her baby was born deformed? What if it suffered like Ben had? Did I hate her enough to let that happen? Had anyone told her about the syphilis—or had she been kept in ignorance like me?

  I clamped my eyes closed and willed my breathing to slow into a normal sleep pattern, but my thoughts were too troubling, and the persistent thumps and grrrs from the floor became alarming. I cracked my eyes. Drat! The puppy was chewing the corner of Nellie’s Persian rug.

  I bolted from bed, blankets trailing to the floor behind me. “Can’t you stay out of trouble for one minute?”

  Since there was to be no peace, I dressed. I poured water into a basin and washed my face. Before I could begin the rest of my toilette, the puppy deposited a sticky brown clump on the carpet.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” I cleaned up the mess as best I could and finished dressing while the puppy sniffed the perimeter of the sitting room. Dark fur clung to the bodice of my nightdress and several tufts already dotted the rug. For such a small creature, he managed to shed an awful lot. I pulled on an old black skirt and a dark shirtwaist I hadn’t worn for ages. No sense in letting the puppy ruin good clothes on the way to the Emporium. The little monster was going back. I would demand a refund.

  The puppy pulled one of my stockings from the wicker laundry basket and scurried with it under the loveseat. I knelt on all fours and tried to retrieve the sock, but the puppy tugged and backed further under the loveseat, shaking his head ferociously. I laughed out loud. “You actually think you can win this war, don’t you?”

  Nellie knocked and peeped in. “How did our little guest fare the night?”

  “Monstrous. I hardly got any sleep at all. Look at the wee devil.” I tried again to pull Jack’s sock away, but the puppy clamped sharp little teeth even more firmly into the sock.

  “You’re a determined little cuss. Give it up.” As the puppy fought with all his might, Nellie and I both laughed. Then for no reason I could fathom, he suddenly lost interest in the sock and smiled at me, tilting his head from side to side as if to say, “Aren’t I cute?”

  And hang it all, he was.

  All young creatures were cute. And precious.

  I had to make sure that woman, that horrible creature, Lourdes Garcia—I shuddered even thinking her name—I had to make sure she knew about the medicine that would save her baby. The hell with her, but that baby didn’t deserve to suffer or die the way my Ben did. I didn’t think Jack was man enough to tell her, so I would assume responsibility. But how would I find her? I had no idea where she lived, if she had family here, or who her employer might be. No doubt Jack knew all this, but I couldn’t bear the humiliation of asking him.

  I checked the street directory. No Garcias listed. But an advertisement in the directory gave me an idea. I would hire an attorney to track her down and deliver a letter discreetly. No one else ever needed to know the contents of that letter, and I could rest easier, knowing I had discharged my duty to that child. I took out a piece of stationery, but when I took up my pen, my hand trembled. I took a deep breath, thought of the blisters on Ben’s feet, his dear, fevered face. I bit my lip and proceeded to compose a brief, pointed letter. I put on my finest hat and set out for Drown, Leicester, & Drown, Attorneys and Counselors at Law, the first suitable firm I found in the directory. If they couldn’t handle the job, I’d move on to the next.

  1905

  Slowly, I found a measure of peace again, especially when Nellie would fix up a picnic basket with ham sandwiches and apples, and Val would drive a wagon north of the city into the redwood forests. Mindy, who had recently lost her mother, often came along if she wasn’t helping her father in the gallery. The four of us took long walks together, silent, each alone with his or her thoughts, listening to the ancient trees sing their hymns. Their towering trunks formed a cathedral that touched the sky. In the half-light filtering down through limbs that had spanned
the ages, I glimpsed the edges of something eternal, and was absorbed into the essence of something greater than myself. If Ben’s spirit was anywhere on this earth, I believed it must linger here like a fragrance in the refreshing air or float along a sunbeam, sacred and warm against my skin.

  Then an extraordinary injustice occurred in Los Angeles that ignited my interest in suffrage all over again. The Central Library fired the head librarian of five years, Mary Jones, simply because she wasn’t a man. A graduate of a library school, Mary Jones, by all reports, was pleasant and professional. And the man chosen to replace her, by all reports, was a drinker and philanderer, with no library training whatsoever.

  Mindy came to tea at Nellie’s, all aflutter with excitement. Aunt Susan—Susan B. Anthony herself—was coming to California to protest the firing. “We have to go and march in support of Mary Jones.” Mindy’s pitch careened upward, surely in a range to match the reach of the great soprano Lillian Nordica, whose recording Val had treated us to one evening. “Say you all will come, please, please, oh, say you will!”

  How could anyone refuse such an impassioned plea? Val, always a supporter of women’s rights, agreed to accompany us on the train. Jack was off in Arizona or somewhere—I made no attempt to keep abreast of his travels. We were married in name only.

  It was a short ride down the coast, but our plans were rather hazy other than doing whatever we could to support the fired librarian.

  Despite Mindy’s prior acquaintance with Miss Anthony, we were not fortunate enough to meet with her personally on our visit to Los Angeles. Nonetheless, we found ourselves surrounded by like-minded women, who were appalled by the city’s harsh dismissal of Mary Jones. At first I wasn’t sure how much credence to give to the scandalous tales about her replacement, this Charles Lummis character, but the reports added up. The marchers’ tongues were wagging about his wild parties and dozens of adulterous affairs, the newspapers reported that he swore like a sailor and he had at least one illegitimate child. We did have the privilege of meeting Miss Jones and offering our allegiance to her cause. Little good it did. The city attorney declared she could be fired at will.

  Nellie disagreed with the terminology. “At their merest whim, they should have said.” She had heard rumors Miss Jones had turned away unseemly advances from a member of the library board and that was the real reason she was fired.

  When we returned to San Francisco, we learned a telegram had arrived in our absence. Nellie delivered the envelope into my hands.

  I turned it over and turned it over once more, transfixed, terrified. I took it with me to the sofa and settled onto its cushions, resting the envelope on my lap. I breathed in and out slowly, touched a strand of hair next to my cheek to see if it had come loose from the hair pins. It hadn’t.

  Having followed me into the parlor, Nellie angled toward me on the sofa. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  As long as I didn’t open it, I didn’t have to know. Was I an aunt again? Or suddenly richer? Or bereaved?

  “Shall I open it for you?” she asked.

  “I can manage, thank you.” I sighed, sure the telegram bore news I didn’t care to learn. When I felt I couldn’t put it off any longer, I slowly slid my finger under the yellow flap and withdrew the telegram. As the words sank in, I shuddered and a small cry escaped through the fingers I had instinctively pressed to my lips. The paper fluttered from my hands.

  “He’s dead!” I cried.

  Nellie retrieved the missive and scanned it quickly. Tears shimmered in her eyes. “Oh, you poor dear girl. You must be devastated.”

  Appalled. Stunned. Horrified. I wouldn’t have wished such a horrible death on anyone! I shuddered again, hoping, praying, that Jack had died from smoke inhalation rather than burning when the Grand Star Hotel went up in flames.

  I felt remorse that I hadn’t been able to offer Jack the forgiveness he’d tried to win with all his gifts. Especially the puppy. I should have written to let him know how much I enjoyed having the little terrier around.

  As sunlight slanted through the parlor windows, I remembered how, three years earlier, the sun shone behind Jack as he walked into my father’s church that first morning, how he appeared like a savior, the answer to prayer. How he saved me from marriage to Gunner Beck.

  But I couldn’t help but remember this, too: the disease he brought into our home had killed my babies. When would I be able to stop blaming him for that? Maybe now that he was dead I could bury my bitterness along with his ashes.

  I broke into sobs and bent at the waist until my forehead touched my knees, while dear Nellie held me and muttered comforting words.

  Sometime later, I pulled myself upright and made an effort to tidy my face with a handkerchief.

  “I know what you’re going through.” Nellie patted my back. “I didn’t know how I would ever hold myself together after my husband died. At the time, I didn’t know if I would ever stop crying over losing him.”

  Unlike Nellie, I wasn’t even sure what I was crying for. Jack. Ben. Myself—the betrayed wife. All of us who might have occupied the house that Jack built.

  As Nellie fixed me a cup of tea, I was thinking not of Jack, exactly, but of my father. Of this parable from the book of Matthew that he told about a fool who built a house upon the sand and the rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. And I could hear my father speaking as clearly as if he were in the room: Only a fool would marry a railroad man. Might as well build your house upon the sand.

  ~~~

  San Francisco, 1920

  Dusky light filtered through the sitting room window, dulling the color of the walls until they appeared less yellow than beige. “My goodness, look at the time,” I said. “It’s nearly dark outside. We had best return to our rooms, Solina.”

  Nellie and I stood, but Solina, persistent creature that she was, remained seated. “Mama, I don’t understand. If Jack died, why is that reporter calling you a bigamist?”

  Nellie took the girl’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “That story can wait for another day, dear girl.”

  “Later tonight, Mama?”

  I pursed my lips. “I think we’ve dwelled on the past enough for one day.”

  “Tomorrow then?” she asked hopefully.

  “Tomorrow morning I should oversee the uncrating of the collection,” I said, “but I’ll come back here in time for the meeting, Nellie.”

  Nellie had arranged for a gathering of women at her home. I had brought information on the latest contraceptive methods from back east, materials I had picked up after the march on Washington. Now, I was wondering if it was such a good idea to distribute the flyers on pessaries here. Dissemination of such information was still technically illegal, and the newspaper had already drawn unwelcome attention to me.

  We three descended the stairs, chatting as we went along, still in no hurry. A sharp knock sounded on the front door of the boarding house. Nellie swept past us to answer it.

  I stopped on the staircase, instinctively holding my arm out to block Solina from descending any further.

  Three policemen stood outside. The stocky one in front pushed his way past Nellie. “We’re here for Rosella Martin.”

  My heart caught in my throat. Could they really charge me with bigamy like the headline suggested? The kitchen—I could slip out the back door. I grabbed Solina’s hand and tugged her down the last two steps and toward the rear of the house.

  “Who?” Nellie said.

  “None of your dissembling, now,” he said. “We know she’s here.”

  “There she goes.” Over my shoulder I saw the tallest officer pointing. I picked up my skirts and began to run. He charged through the parlor, overturning a small table in the rush to apprehend me.

  One of Nellie’s permanent boarders, an elderly gentleman who had been reading, stood up, his book and eyeglasses abandoned on a needlepoint-covered chair. “There’s no call to behave like an
imals,” he chastised the officers. “This is our home.”

  I was vaguely aware of Solina pulling away from me, heard her shoes clattering up the staircase, while Nellie berated the police. “What right do you have to charge in here like this? Ro hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  Just as I reached the kitchen door, the tall officer seized my arm roughly. “Rosella Martin, you are under arrest for intent to distribute lewd and lascivious materials.”

  Blood boiled in my ears. “Define lewd. Define lascivious.” When there was silence, I continued. “You obviously don’t know the meaning of those words.

  The stocky one held up a handful of pamphlets. “We found these in her hotel room.”

  They had searched through my travel case. “I’ll define lewd for you. Lewd is your grubby fingers slithering through my undergarments to find those educational materials. My husband will be furious!”

  The tallest officer’s bushy mustache quivered as his face contorted with hatred. He yanked me toward the front door. Not to be outdone by his colleague, he added, “We have it on good authority that she planned to distribute that trash tomorrow.”

  “Women have a right to—” Nellie interjected.

  “You’d best shut up or we’ll arrest you, too, for aiding and abetting a criminal,” the tall one said.

  Nellie presented her arms. “I demand you arrest me too.”

  I interceded. “No, Nellie, you mustn’t. Take care of Solina for me. Please.” In my mind I could still hear those footsteps running away from me. I had embarrassed my child again. Maybe Nellie could smooth things over.

 

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