Together Apart Page 6

  "You had best close your mouth before a swallow builds a nest," Dru said.

  Still I stood there, saying nothing and wishing I were wearing Pa's shoes.

  "You're the boy the sheriff is looking for, aren't you? Well, you needn't worry about me. My lips are sealed." Dru raised a hand to her lips and turned a make-believe key.

  "Visitors aren't ... aren't allowed back here."

  "Oh, I'm no visitor. I'm Drucilla Callahan, though you may call me Dru."

  "How did ... did you know the signal?" I fumbled.

  "I figured it out by watching Eliza and Hannah. One rap and the door opened, like magic. I love a mystery, and there are none to be found in this town, save for in Elizas novels—and now for you. Tell me everything—how long you've been hiding out here, what dastardly crimes you've committed."

  Another single knock at the door. Hannah. When she saw Dru and me standing there, toe to toe, the skin on her forehead puckered.

  "I'm sorry, Hannah. I simply couldn't bear to wait another minute to learn who you were keeping hidden away behind the door. But you needn't worry—I'll not tell a soul." Dru then moseyed across the room and started tinkering with the press. "So this is where the blasphemous Women's Gazette is printed. Isaac, that's your name, isn't it? Will you show me how it works?"

  "Maybe another time," Hannah said just as I'd started across the room. "The young ones are begging for another of your stories, Dru."

  "My audience awaits." Dru breezed past and then was gone.

  I was about to say that Dru was really something when I caught myself. She was really something, but I sure didn't want Hannah to get the wrong idea, so I said, "I ... uh ... do you think we can trust her?"

  "I think so, but I'll talk to her, make sure she understands the trouble we'll both be in if you are found out."

  And then Hannah was gone, too, and the print shop felt twice, no a hundred times as empty as it'd ever felt before.

  ***

  After the resting room closed for the day, Hannah and I told Dru our story, the same one we'd told Eliza, leaving out the same part, about spending the night together in the haystack. I might have told that part, too, if it'd been just me, but I was afraid the telling would be too hard for Hannah. I'd hoped time would fix things for Hannah, hoped I could fix things for Hannah, but time hadn't and I hadn't. She went about her days, play-acting that everything was fine when she wasn't fine at all.

  Hannah was her bluest after her Sunday visits home. I suggested, once, that maybe she shouldn't go, that she should spend her Sunday with me. "I promised Mama, and this is one promise I will keep," she said before turning on her heel and heading out the door.

  Sundays were the best days for me. And the worst. The best because, as long as I stayed indoors, I had free run of the house, resting room, and stable. Sometimes I did just that, ran. From stable to attic, up the stairs and down, over and again until I thought my lungs would cave in. Sometimes I'd tunnel under a pile of quilts and play my harmonica. Always I worked on my boat. The boat had become a friend I could tell my troubles to. The boat knew the whole of my and Hannah's story.

  And Sundays were the worst of days because there was no Hannah. No Eliza, who visited a different country church every Sunday. No Dru gushing over how like a character in a novel I was or reading me flowery passages from poetry books or pestering me to read the part of Shakespeare's Romeo to her Juliet. No hope of Ma stopping by. No group mumble, company of sorts, drifting out of the resting room. Only me and my silent boat.

  Before the blizzard, I hadn't minded being by my lonesome, preferred it if truth be told, but the boy who crawled into the haystack wasn't the same boy who crawled out.

  Hannah

  A CHILD FIRST TAKES A WOBBLY STEP, THEN TODDLES, THEN walks, then runs. So it was for the resting room. By mid-July, the resting room had found its balance. Wednesdays and Saturdays were "Market Days," days when the town women, market baskets over their arms, came to purchase eggs, butter, preserves, or freshly rendered lard; homespun wool yarn, tatted lace, rag rugs, or bed-sized quilts, to name but a few of the items Eliza and I had arranged for display.

  Many of these market goods had been left by visitors as their freewill donation. The other items, especially the more valuable like the quilts and crocheted tablecloths, had been left with us on consignment. Often was the time Eliza had to suggest an asking price because many of the women didn't know the value of their own handiwork. Eliza then added a small percentage to cover our time in tending to the sale in the woman's absence. Always was the price of the items less than that charged by the merchants on Main Street. Always was the quality higher. Always was the smile on the woman's face beaming when she next returned to the resting room and Eliza counted out her earnings.

  The number of gazettes we mailed to women all over the country had remained about the same, but the circulation in and around Prairie Hill had grown from nearly nil to well over three hundred per week. This increase was due in large part to the page of social happenings we inserted in the local copies—weddings, births, country church socials, and the like—items that had been reported to us by women visiting the resting room. Paid advertisements had increased from exactly zero to five or six a week—Maggie's Millinery and The Sisters Trimble Dressmaking Shoppe being two of these. The front page, as before, contained articles Eliza had written or articles sent to her by like-minded women in the East. In setting the type, which gave me plenty of time to think about what the words meant, I was beginning to understand why Eliza was so passionate about changing things, especially when it came to articles about the awful working conditions of children, some as young as my sister Megan. Boys in West Virginia coal mines, girls in Massachusetts textile mills. One such headline read, "Lincoln Freed the Slaves—Who Will Free the Children?"

  Mama had visited the resting room the Wednesday after it opened, Joey and Megan in tow. "Had to see for myself that this is a safe and wholesome place," she'd whispered. Her stay was brief because she didn't want to keep Papa waiting, though Eliza did manage to send her off with several issues of the gazette. I had no idea that Mama had read them until the day she surprised me with a second visit. She'd come into town not with Papa but with the Zellers. Most surprising, she had left all the children at home. Mama discussed with Eliza the price she should charge for her cross-stitched gingham aprons, then asked if I could spare a few minutes from my work for a private word in my room. Madeline Moore's watchful portrait eyes seemed to follow us as we passed down the main hall and started up the stairs.

  Once we were sitting on the edge of my bed, Mama turned to me and said, "I've been reading those gazettes, and what's in them is fine and good, for grown women, city women, but you're little more than a girl, Hannah. Promise me that this is as far away from me as you're planning to go, at least until you're old enough to know your own mind."

  "You needn't worry, Mama. I'm perfectly content here at Eliza's."

  "You've never been content, Hannah. You've been moving away from me, moving toward some faraway place ever since you began to crawl. And worrying is what mothers do. You'll know what I mean when you have children of your own. Now, I've got to have your promise, Hannah."

  "I promise this is as far as I'll go, Mama." I hadn't given a moment's thought to moving on, but, once made, the promise felt like a too-small and scratchy wool coat.

  My promise tucked up her sleeve like a handkerchief, Mama was full of chatter. Papa had finished planting the corn, her snap beans were coming up, Lila had broken one of her best teacups. It was the first time in my memory that I'd had Mama all to myself for more than just a few minutes, and I paid extra attention to the strands of gray that laced her dark hair, the garden scent of her, the warmth that filled the space between us, so I could imagine her into my room whenever I was lonely for her.

  After a bit, Mama ran out of homey news and shifted her talk back to me. "What kind of a life do you imagine for yourself, when you're grown, that is?"

  If
she had asked me this question before the blizzard, I might have answered that my dream was to set off walking and not stop until I'd called out my name from a mountain peak, danced circles in a dense forest, and wet my feet in an ocean. That dream being dead and buried, I gave Mama the safe answer—that I hoped to marry a fine young man. I ached to tell her that Isaac Bradshaw might be that young man. Ached to ask her if she thought Papa would ever approve. But I knew I couldn't and Papa wouldn't.

  Papa had also begun coming to Eliza's. He'd pull his wagon into the drive, drop off Mama or Hester or Lila and the goods meant for the market. When he returned, I'd bring him a glass of ice water, and if there was a strawberry pie or chiffon cake or other delicacy among that day's freewill donations, I'd offer my share to Papa. His stomach seeming to be in greater need of feeding than his pride, he never turned me down. Thinking that perhaps he was softening toward me, I'd once slipped a dollar from my wages in with the money Mama had earned from the market, but Papa, with his quick mind for numbers, saw that the item-by-item receipt didn't add up. He thrust the dollar back at me and then drove off. One step forward, two back. I hadn't tried that particular trick again, but I was still saving my money, hoping for that day in the future when Papa was ready to accept my wage, ready to forgive.

  I'd spent only twenty cents of my savings on myself—for two months' dues in the Working Girls Social Club. Though the club met Wednesday evenings in the resting room, I chose to pay my way like the others. There were nine of us, all farm girls working for families in town. The idea of it came about one market day. Inga Swenson, who worked for Doctor Forbes and his family, had been sent by Mrs. Forbes to fetch back a pint of cream and mold of butter. After making her purchase, Inga took me aside and asked if the resting room might ever be open to visitors in the evenings.

  "Is there a need?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes. I've made the acquaintance of other working girls, but there's no place for decent young women to socialize. Our employers don't allow us to invite visitors to our rooms, not even on Wednesday evenings, which besides Sundays is the only time we're free to do as we please."

  Working girls. Working girls with a need. Maybe not as great a need as the girls in Eliza's articles, but a need all the same. And I could help. So without even thinking to ask Eliza's permission first, I boldly declared, "Spread the word—from now on the resting room will be open to working girls every Wednesday evening."

  When I did tell Eliza at the end of the day, she said it was a splendid idea and that she was proud of me. But I wasn't very proud of myself when I rapped the all-clear signal on the print shop door. In my eagerness to please Inga, to please myself, I'd narrowed Isaac's freedom by one evening a week.

  I told Isaac of the thing I'd done in one breath and promised to undo it with the next. "You'll do no such thing," he said, grinning big. "What red-blooded fellow wouldn't give up a little freedom for the chance to be a wall away from a room full of girls?"

  I thought something then, felt something I had no right to think or feel. Jealousy leaves a sour taste in the mouth, and I was afraid Isaac might sniff it on my breath. "You've become quite the ladies' man, haven't you?"

  Isaac stuffed his hands in his pockets. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down with his swallow. "Naw. There's only one girl for me. I think you know her. Her name's spelled the same forw—"

  My hand flew up and covered Isaac's mouth. I don't know what I was going to say then, but something, because I knew if Isaac finished his sentence everything would change, change as surely and permanently as it had after the blizzard. I'd have to stop pretending that we were just friends, that living and working in the same house with the boy I was sweet on wasn't indecent. Have to stop pretending, pack my things, and go home. But I never got so much as a word out because I started in hiccupping, one right after the other and so loud that they carried all the way into the resting room. "Are you all right?" Eliza asked, rushing in.

  I didn't even try to answer.

  "We'd better get you into the kitchen. Garlic's what you need. It always does the trick for me."

  ***

  The garlic Eliza mashed and told me to hold on my tongue didn't stop my hiccups, nor did her second choice of a cure, gulping cider vinegar. Her remedies only made me reek. Isaac's remedies didn't work either, though they were easier to swallow—dill first, then dried bread, then a spoonful of clover honey.

  So I was sitting there at the kitchen table, hiccupping hopelessly, when Isaac rubbed his chin and, with the most sober of voices, said, "I heard tell of a man who hiccupped himself to death. Eliza, do you reckon I should go out to the stable and start building a coffin?"

  "'Tis a pity, but perhaps you should."

  They later told me that I was so startled I nearly fell off my chair. But my hiccups were cured, and I'd kept Isaac from saying my name.

  ***

  "Something happened here yesterday after I left," Dru said not five minutes after arriving the next morning. "Some tiff between you and Isaac. I can tell by the way you two are avoiding each others eyes."

  "It was nothing, just my foolishness."

  "There's a story here, and I'll not stop pestering you until I've heard every detail."

  In hopes of turning Dru's attention in a new direction, I said, "I have news. The working girls here in town will be coming to the resting room every Wednesday evening."

  "May I come?" Dru asked.

  Eliza joined us then. "Only if you finally agree to accept a wage for all the work you do around here."

  "I should be the one paying you. Being here has spared me from a summer cinched into my corset unable to breathe properly. And I've learned so many things I otherwise wouldn't have learned."

  It was true, Dru was a tireless worker, pitching in wherever there was a need, be it helping with the laundry or changing a toddler's nappy while a young mother was occupied with a nursing infant. She was especially gracious when serving tea, though her true gift was in her storytelling. She was so good the children often shrieked when she told scary parts. As for the corset, when Dru had learned that Eliza didn't wear one, thought them harmful to a woman's health, Dru had stopped wearing hers, too. I'd never worn a corset myself. Being poor had its advantages.

  "Will you at least accept a token wage?" Eliza asked.

  Dru smiled. "The least amount that will qualify me as a working girl. Could you see your way clear to a penny a day?"

  "A penny it is then."

  "And might I invite Clarice, Mother's hired girl? Though I've tried to befriend her, she is very shy and will only give me a nod. Perhaps meeting with the other working girls will bring her out."

  "By all means, invite Clarice and all the girls who work for your mother's friends," Eliza said.

  Needless to say, Dru's penny wage always found its way into the freewill donation tin.

  Dru held herself back during the first meetings. She sat quietly and listened as the girls told amusing stories about mistakes in etiquette they'd made or charming things the children in their charge had said. It was only when the girls had become better acquainted that their conversations began to circle around the conditions under which some were made to work. Cass, who was seventeen and from a farm to the north of town, worked for a mistress so particular that if a garment or table linen was not ironed to perfection, the mistress would grab it away, crumple it, then require Cass to press the piece again. Mary, who was eighteen, was unhappy that she wasn't allowed to entertain her fiancé, not even on her employer's front porch in broad daylight. Sadie, who was sixteen and the youngest save for me, had the worst of it. She was made to sleep in the same bed with a four-year-old boy who wet the sheets, and then she was assigned the blame for not waking the boy every hour throughout the night. All the girls had unpleasant stories to share—Inga and Carol, Imogene and Gertrude. All the girls save for Clarice, who accompanied Dru to the resting room each Wednesday evening. She smiled politely but spoke only with a nod.

  I said little myself, h
aving no unpleasant stories to share. I did listen, did sympathize, but more often than not my thoughts fell on Isaac locked away behind the print shop door.

  Eliza made herself scarce during the Working Girls Social Club meetings. She spent the time in the print shop with Isaac, writing articles for the next edition of the gazette or, alongside Isaac, working the press. I knew this was a sacrifice on her part, knew she'd have loved nothing more than to join in the girl talk.

  We'd been meeting for about a month when, during a lull in the conversation, Dru finally spoke up. "What we need is a purpose."

  "What sort of purpose?" Inga asked.

  "Oh, I don't know, something to throw ourselves into, keep our minds off our troubles."

  "And what troubles might you have?" Carol chimed in.

  "Oh, I didn't mean to imply—"

  I jumped in before Dru could finish. "Dru's right. We should always make time for those who need to talk, but that shouldn't be our only reason for getting together. You all have talents—perhaps we should think of ways to put them to good use."

  "A pageant," Dru said. "We should have ourselves an end-of-the-summer pageant, right here in the resting room—invite the families you work for, your families at home. It'll be grand."

  Several girls groaned, but it was Mary who spoke first, "Might we invite our beaus?"

  Eliza, who had come out of the print room to see what all the excited voices were about, pulled up a chair, sat down, and said, "I think a pageant is a splendid idea, and you may count on my assistance, if assistance is required. And yes, if you have beaus, by all means invite them."