The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [31]
She unhooked the shoe quickly, tugged at it gently, but the movement still brought tears to my eyes. I sat up on my elbows to look. It already swelled, as big as a bedpost.
I flopped back on the bed. I should never let myself be happy or hopeful. There was always another shoe to drop, and it most likely would drop on me.
FOURTEEN
Negotiations
I’ll telegraph the sponsors,” Mama said. “We’ve got to get an extension. They gave us one for your sickness. Surely a sprained ankle qualifies. You need time to heal. I’ll speak to the hotel manager too.”
“Please, Mama. No talk of lawsuits. We don’t have time.”
“Ja, you’re right about that, but they’re negligent. That carpet wasn’t tacked down.”
“Don’t … don’t bring attention, please.”
Mama looked at me, a frown on her face. “I’ll simply tell the manager that I’ll need work, as we must remain. Any meals or other accoutrements their fine establishment cares to offer will be mentioned when I speak to the newspaper.”
“You have to go to the newspaper about this?”
“Clara. We are here. Now. On this journey. We do what we must and adapt. That’s what an Estby—”
“—does. But I’m not.”
She sighed. “I’ve work to find.”
Mama did go to the newspaper to advertise another presentation. She added to her performance the benefits of walking, how she’d been strengthened despite her accident four years previous.
“You talked about your broken pelvis?” I couldn’t believe it when she rehashed the evening. I couldn’t attend. I spent my time writing letters and making sketches from memory, and I worked on a design of my own.
“No. I wasn’t specific. You wouldn’t have been embarrassed.” She held the quarter heart of Hardanger lace in her hands, moving it between her graceful fingers. “But there are proposed laws in states east of here to prevent women’s ‘walking exhibitions.’ I might not be able to speak about what we’re doing. I just learned that. The intention is to protect us women. But in truth, they don’t want people to hear about women who are not wasting away, not weak, who don’t constantly need a helping hand. People need to see that we are enduring souls willing and able to step up both mentally and physically to help our families.” She might have given her lecture right there, but she noticed the object in my hands. “What have you made there?”
“It’s … something I’ve designed,” I said. “Since my monthlies have stopped—”
“They’ll come back as soon as we’re not walking so much,” she assured me. “Dr. Latham said that might happen.”
“I used the rags to make a binder for my … breasts.” My face felt hot. “Since we’ve been without the corsets, I … My chest …”
She held up the strips of cloth I’d sewn together. “How does it work?”
I put it on over my blouse, showed her how the straps formed a crisscross over my shoulders and wrapped beneath my breast. “It offers support,” I said.
“Why, that’s inventive,” she said. “What good thinking, Clara. Can you make one for me too?”
I lay awake as she slept. Despite my worries over arriving on time, I secretly liked my mother’s company. I enjoyed her descriptions of the women in the audiences, her encounters with the wealthy, her presentation of herself as an equal. She wasn’t a scared child waiting to deliver an unplanned baby; she wasn’t a tired mother looking after her children and husband in the big farm kitchen; she was formidable, a woman making her way. Despite the risky wager, I found I admired her tenacity, her refusal to be a shamed woman for the rest of her life though she hadn’t married for love. I liked, too, that she admired something I’d made, an idea that would ease both of us as we walked. This was an educational journey.
After two weeks, we began again and followed the Burlington rails through the unending horizon heading for Lincoln, Nebraska, where my mother walked right up to the porch of William Jennings Bryan’s home, hoping for his signature. Sadly, he was off campaigning to become