The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [105]
We marched all the way into town, to the park. There was a big table and several women handing out flyers about the right to vote, and other flyers, too, a page I’d seen before and saved. “What Every Girl Should Know”. But this time it was blank below the headline, and stamped with black letters at the top saying “NOTHING! Outlawed by the Post Office”. I was standing by the table listening to the speeches when an officer came up and took me by the arm and put me into handcuffs. I was very scared. But Mrs. Elliot was arrested, too, and a dozen other women. We spent all night long sitting on the hard benches in the jail, telling stories and singing. They fed us nothing and gave us water in the morning, and by noon the tempers of all of us had begun to fray. That was when we decided we would not be powerless. They brought lunch and we refused to eat it! Dinner, too, we sent away untouched. We declared a hunger strike, and this was reported in the papers.
Joseph came to visit me. He brought food but he was angry. He said I should be reasonable and understand my loyalties. If not to myself, to you. I told him that I was in jail so you might have a better life one day, and then he got a little less gruff, because he loves you, and he said you were safe and well with Cora, even though she was furious with me. So I felt a little better.
Our hunger strike lasted three days. When we were released we hugged one another and spilled out into our separate lives. I walked back to the house, eager to gather you in my arms.
But when I got there, the door was locked. No one answered when I rang the bell and pounded.
I tried the back door, too. I tried the windows and the cellar door, all locked.
They had gone. I did not know where. They had taken you with them.
I did not know what to do. I sat on the porch, too hungry and too hurt to weep.
Mrs. Elliot took me in. Cora and Jesse refused to have me back, they said I was a disgrace and no longer welcome.
So I have come all this way to live with strangers. Mrs. Elliot said I would find work in the city and could save enough money to bring you here, but when I told this to Vivian she shook her head in clear amazement and said her sister was a hopeless romantic and what did she think, there were jobs hanging from the trees?
She asked what I could do and I told her that I sewed. This was the work I did all winter for Cora, her best velvets and silks, while you played at my feet. Some days I staggered out of the room so tired from bending over little stitches that my head felt stuffed with cotton, my eyes burned. But it was better work than scrubbing floors or doing laundry, and you were with me.
“And they paid you how much?”
“They fed us”.
She sat back in her chair and swept her hand through the air in disgust.
“I’m very good”.
She sighed. “Yes. I’m sure you have the finest stitches”.
I flushed, because then I knew she was mocking me, but I did not know why.
“I don’t know”, I told her, speaking slowly. “I had the finest stitches in my village, yes. But it was a small village”.
She glanced at me again, her eyes faintly kinder. “Don’t pay attention. It’s just—so many arrive, every day. I see them streaming off these ships with their suitcases, and then I see them later, spilling out of the factories that take them in when they can find no other work. Take them in and wear them out. I see them when they are ill. I am a nurse. So I have become cynical, I fear. Trust me—you do not wish to work in a factory”.
“Do you like your work?” I asked.
She considered this. “No. I like bringing comfort to people when that’s possible, though often it is not. I earn my own money, and that brings me freedom, which I do like”. She looked at me then. “Have you any nursing experience?” I said I did not.
“I felt free on the boat”, I said, remembering the trip we made across the ocean.
She nodded. “Oh, yes. On a boat you are no place at all”. She was