The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [44]
“People won’t want to know how you felt, Mama. They’ll want to know what we did and how we did it, what we saw, who we met.”
“When I read, I want my feelings touched,” she said. “I want the writer’s imagination and his facts. But they’re different things, the walk and writing about it. Each gives me … peace. Its publication will bring honor to Bertha. We’ll save the farm with it.” She switched the grip to her other hand. “I’ll dedicate it to her. You won’t mind, will you?”
Dedicating the book to Bertha meant everyone would know that my sister had died while we lived in Brooklyn, separated from our family, victims of the sponsors’ withdrawal.
“Must there be a dedication?” I said.
“Of course.”
“Dedicate it to the entire family. We couldn’t have made it without them staying faithful at home.”
“You’re absolutely right.” She turned around and walked backward as she said, “They supported us. They’ll support us too with the writing and your sketching. You’ll see. It’ll work, Clara. It has to. I’ll save the farm yet.”
My mother made her own facts. I remembered the looks on the faces of my brothers and sisters when we’d left them. If I’d learned anything from this journey, it was that to take care of one’s family, everyone needed to tell the truth and not make up facts when evidence was lacking.
In Winona, Minnesota, we visited the Daily Republican newspaper but got no coverage. Two women walking home had less appeal than brazen western adventurers walking east. At a park bench where we sat to eat an egg and biscuit, I picked up a copy of an old newspaper lying near the trash basket. I read the headline aloud. “ ‘Two St. Paul Women Fined.’ They lifted their dresses too high as they crossed a muddy road, or so says a peculiar policeman.”
“The paper called the policeman peculiar?” Mama asked.
“No. They said he was ‘keen-eyed’ and that if ‘the simple-minded females had but joined a vaudeville troupe doing barnstorming work around the country or become members of the grand opera company exhibiting in Paris or Chicago, they might have lifted their skirts a good deal higher without incurring official censure.’ Mother, are we going to be arrested in St. Paul? Maybe we shouldn’t wear our reform skirts there.”
“Nonsense. Our ankles are covered with the shoes, and besides, hemlines will be coming up before long; I’m sure of it. Didn’t you get the feel of that back in New York with all the talk of women’s suffrage?”
“I was too busy working, Mother,” I said.
“How does the article end?”
“ ‘St. Paul must be set down as one of the rural villages in the country in questions of female dress—or undress.’ ”
“There, you see?” Mama said. “The newspapers know that change is coming, and they’d like to push St. Paul along toward a more open view of female outfitting. We’ll be inspiration in St. Paul.”
In Minneapolis, we posed at the Anderson Studio on Washington Avenue, wearing our reform skirts so we’d have new photographs to sell. A row of buttons at the top of the side seam added interest to the waistline of the linen skirts. Blousy shoulders with narrow sleeves to the wrist gave a respectable appearance from the waist up. While on the train, Mama had embroidered delicate stitching down the shirtwaist fronts. In the photographic pose, Mama sat revealing the tops of the leather shoes while I leaned on a prop, a tree stump, with my skirt a good eight inches from the floor and my shoe, topped with a canvas overshoe, showing. We gave one print to the reporter at the Times and another to the reporter at the Tribune. Reporters from both newspapers showed up at the Scandia-Excelsior Hotel, where we sat in the kitchen telling stories to the staff.
Complimentary and thorough articles appeared in both papers the next day. “They liked us, didn’t they?” Mama asked.
“I believe so,” I said. I spit on