The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [32]
“Appalling,” Mama said when Mary showed us the photograph in the New York Times.
That picture jogged my complacent fear. Mama had said in the East we’d have sisters. But Cambridge represented civilization, didn’t it? Our bold adventure might not be so welcomed.
Out of Omaha, we followed the Rock Island Railroad lines. In Des Moines, Mama gave two interviews, one with Decorah-Posten, the Norwegian paper, which gave us one sentence. With the English paper, she emphasized the wager again, and the reporter suggested we were “greedy,” trying to take hard-earned money from businesspeople, the sponsors, for our own gain. He said we were women of questionable morals for walking the rails unescorted and fraternizing with men all across the country.
My face burned with the charge that seemed half right.
The weather changed as we trudged toward Chicago, cold stings of snow hitting our faces and melting on our straw hats and shoulders though it was only October. Nothing looked worthy of sketching, so I didn’t. I complained that my legs were cold despite the woolen socks, and my ankle ached by day’s end. The chilly wind roared up our shorter reform dresses. “I never thought I’d miss our long skirts,” Mama said, “but I do.” It was the closest she came to a complaint.
We stepped out behind the curtain onto a stage inside a Chicago department store to stares and scattered applause. Modeling the reform clothes available in the store helped us to earn funds, publicity for our photographs, and advertisements for Mama’s speeches. Best of all, the store had heat. We needed warm jackets, which we’d get as part of our modeling pay. I looked with envy at the women in their fur stoles and muffs. A few sniffed at us, and one even covered her daughter’s face with her gloved hands, she thought we were so provocative.
Mama was her performing self, quoting the Chicago Tribune in an article advocating reform clothes, decrying the suffering of tight corsets and the filth that long skirts picked up. She wove a good story, that was certain, embellishing what I would have reported as just facts.
“One hundred and ninety-five dollars so far,” I said that evening. We splurged after our modeling job and stayed at a hotel. Mama asked for an accounting of our expenses.
“We’ll get that all back once we reach New York and pick up our prize money,” she said.
“You did get the extension, didn’t you, Mama?” My ankle ached as I stood to dab a wet cloth on stains on our dresses.
“Nothing to worry about.” Mama put the accounting book back in the grip. She didn’t look at me.
“You got them to go to January 1, didn’t you?” By my calculations, we’d need every bit of that time to make even that date. We couldn’t possibly make December 13, the date she’d negotiated when I got sick from the stew.
She turned to me, took a deep breath. “December 13. They wouldn’t accept your ankle injury as an illness.”
“Mama!”
“I argued. I did my best. I don’t get to talk to the sponsors, though. Everything goes through the editor at New York World, and men don’t understand. If I could talk to them … It’ll all work out,” she said patting my shoulder. “We’ll make it. Have a little faith.”
“Taking this detour is not right, Mama.” After walking for nearly a month more, we traveled yet another side trip, which took us close to Canton, Ohio. “Can’t you see our problem, Mama? We have to keep going east.”
“Sometimes you have to put goodness over rightness,” she told me. “We’re visiting a cottage. You’ll like it. It’s only a few miles out of our way. And we don’t have to get signatures anymore in these more urban areas. But this one will be worth it. It’ll be our last.”
This distraction bothered me more