by M. J. Rose
“So, that’s the handsome Paul Soong I’ve heard so much about.”
Mabel smiled when she heard her ah-ma’s comforting voice. That smile vanished when her mother—still a young woman, not yet forty years old and full of joy and good humor—shuffled in with a cane in each shaking hand. Her back was stooped, curled like a question mark. She could barely walk. She could hardly leave their home to shop in the market; she could scarcely do anything outside of domestic work. Even that drudgery was a struggle since her feet had been bound as a child, soaked in herbs and animal blood to soften the tissue as her toes had been curled under, her arches folded, bandages cinched so tight that the bones in her feet had broken again and again, until they finally fit a pair of tiny four-inch lotus shoes.
All for the amusement of men.
“He gave me this as he left.” Her ah-ma held up a calling card. “Everyone in the neighborhood talks about him. We should invite him back for tea sometime.”
“He won’t be coming back.”
Not in this lifetime.
Mabel took the card. On one side was a sepia print of Soong’s smiling face and his signature in English. On the back was his home address. She stuffed it in her pocket.
“That’s too bad.” Her ah-ma put a hand on a wooden beam to steady herself, lest she topple onto the muck-ridden floor. She rested her canes against the wall. “I brought you something.”
Mabel watched as her ah-ma held up a yellow chrysanthemum in full bloom. She pinned it to Mabel’s dress above her heart, hiding a dark stain.
“Good luck with that march of yours, Ping-hua. I’m so proud. And even though your father is abroad, I’m sure he’d be proud, too. I only wish I could be there to watch you. But by the grace of God, I am what I am.” Her mother smiled. “First Corinthians.”
* * *
Mabel rode through the Bowery, Quiet’s hooves clip-clopping on dirty, cracked pavement until they reached Bleecker Street, where Sophie would be waiting along with dozens of members of the College Equal Suffrage League. The student suffragettes were stationed behind a gathering of letter carriers’ and patrolmen’s wives and in front of a brigade of caped nurses. The student group was impossible for Mabel to miss as they were all wearing caps and gowns and had their own marching band. As she listened to the brass section tuning up, Mabel noted the colors and banners, representing at least a dozen women’s universities—Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Wesleyan, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, Wellesley, and of course, Barnard—and that everyone wore matching suffrage pins. Gathered together they looked like a roiling sea of possibility, tidal forces to be reckoned with.
The group cheered when they saw Mabel on horseback. That joyful noise exorcised the demons of doubt planted by Soong. She smiled and spun Quiet around, trotting back and forth across the street until she found her roommate.
“Hey, you forgot your Bible!” Sophie teased.
“A whip is for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the back of fools.” Mabel held up her riding crop, smiling. “Proverbs twenty-six.”
* * *
An hour later Mabel heard the booming of a drum corps thundering in the distance and knew the march had officially begun. A whistle blew and she and the other student suffragettes lined up, eight abreast, each row of marchers carrying hand-painted signs that delivered part of a continuous message:
WE TALK WITH YOU
WE EAT WITH YOU
WE DANCE WITH YOU
WE MARRY YOU
WHY CAN’T WE VOTE WITH YOU?
Mabel rode to the front of the student marchers, where she met four other young women on horseback, each in a yellow dress. The combined collegiate marching band assembled at the rear, their drums pounding in time with others in the parade.
The rider next to her said, “Just look at that. A three-mile-long argument for women’s rights. I hear it’s the largest suffrage parade ever.”
Mabel nodded. Was it also large in its passivity? She couldn’t help but yearn for more pointed actions, not violent like the arson and window-breaking of European suffragettes, but something akin to when British activists dropped thousands of handbills from a hot air balloon on their prime minister as he was attempting to dedicate a statue on the embankment of the Thames. Mabel smiled as she recalled how some of her classmates had stolen acid from a closet in the chemistry lab and burned SUFFRAGE NOW into the fairway grass of the Van Cortlandt golf course.
As they slowly marched past Washington Square Park, the official starting point of the parade, Mabel beheld the crowd of spectators, thousands, at least five or six deep on either side of the avenue, with hundreds more in the windows and on balconies and fire escapes. The parade watchers didn’t boo or yell this time, much to Mabel’s relief, but they didn’t applaud either. Though she couldn’t help but notice more yellow dresses in the crowd than last time, and the sparkling suffragette pins in yellow and purple, worn by quiet matrons along the way, nodding in solidarity as their husbands stood mute.
When the student band played “The New America,” Mabel began to sing:
Our country, now from thee,
Claim we our liberty,
In freedom’s name.
Mabel looked back at Sophie in the front row of the marchers.
She smiled as they sang back:
Guarding home’s altar fires,
Daughters of patriot sires,
Their zeal our own inspires,
Justice to claim!
From horseback, Mabel could see the millenary of marchers stretching into the distance, brass bands and fleets of automobiles, traversing the ribbon of concrete known as Fifth Avenue. They looked like an army of beautiful righteousness, an armada of hope, faith, and aspiration. Mabel sat tall and proud in the saddle, confident they would be heard beyond the city, beyond New York, beyond her own expectations. But when the towering pillars of the New York Public Library came into view, she saw the enormous grandstand that had been erected atop the front steps between the great marble lions, Patience and Fortitude. Gathered in the stand were the city fathers.
Why were there never any city mothers? The joy and satisfaction Mabel had felt moments before seemed to vanish, like the fading memories of a pleasant dream. Why were there only male politicians and business magnates with their hands on the wheels of progress, steering the city and the state in the direction of their choosing at the speed they alone cared to travel? As their wives smiled in ornamental beauty?
Mabel found Soong standing atop the riser, looking down at her as she sang, “Sons, will no longer see, mothers on bended knee…”
Her voice quavered and she stopped singing.
Soong smiled.
Mabel drifted along in the current of marchers. She looked away, rocking in the saddle, staring into the distance. She felt Soong’s eyes upon her, illuminating her fears and insecurities, but also her determination and convictions. Heart pounding, she pulled on the reins and turned Quiet around, veering off the parade route. She cantered down a side street as she heard Sophie calling her name.
Clear of the parade, Mabel galloped down vacant streets. Quiet’s hooves echoed through the canyons of brick and mortar, leaving marchers and spectators and music in the distance. She rode hard, back to Chinatown, until Quiet’s neck was wet with perspiration. She was comforted by the sights and sounds of home, the smells of freshly caught fish and sesame oil. But home was not enough. She dismounted in front of her family’s mission, bursting through the front door, shouting until she found her mother.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Mabel returned, nearly out of breath as she caught up to the parade, which was far from over. She slipped through an opening in a crowd of spectators who had gathered at the crossing of Forty-Second Street. There she found a space just ahead of a group, two- or three-thousand strong, carrying banners representing Empire State Teachers. That group was marching behind the delegation from New Jersey. Mabel knew that the New Jersey suffragettes had just lost their referendum by fifty t
housand votes, though if they had been discouraged by their setback, they didn’t wear their defeat. Instead they wore smiles, proudly marching in purple and yellow gowns, and had a horse-drawn victory float adorned with a Junoesque woman dressed as the Scales of Justice.
Mabel was happy to be back, walking beside Quiet, lead rope in hand.
In the saddle sat her ah-ma, beaming.
“Are you certain we’re allowed to do this?” her mother asked.
Mabel had to adjust the leathers on the saddle since her mother’s bound feet were so tiny and narrow they wouldn’t rest in the stirrups. Her feet risked slipping through entirely, so Mabel kept her eye on them as her mother held on to the saddle horn with one hand and waved to the crowd, who seemed amused and delighted by her presence.
“What do you think, Ah-ma?”
Mabel looked up as her mother sighed happily. She hadn’t been uptown in nearly a year. She didn’t like to travel, even on streetcars, and had never taken the subway, which began service ten years ago. Boarding on and off was simply too hard.
“I think I am blessed to have you as my daughter.”
Mabel looked up as the sun began shining through the pale October sky.
They followed the New Jersey delegation, which began singing as they passed the grandstand. Mabel’s eyes once again met Soong’s. She smiled, knowing she was right where she was supposed to be, no matter what, and that she wouldn’t trade this moment for all the vainglorious pretensions in the world.
Soong simply nodded, tipping his hat.
Then she heard a soft click and looked down.
In front of the crowd of onlookers, halfway into the street, stood a little girl, no more than seven or eight, in a white dress and coat fringed with lace. She was magnificent in a sash of purple, green, and white that read Miss Suffragette City. The girl was peering down into the viewfinder of a small handheld camera.
She looked up, delighted. “That’s going to be a good one. Would you like me to send you the photograph when my auntie gets the pictures finished for me?”
Mabel stopped her horse. She glanced at her ah-ma, who was still in awe of the parade and being part of such a grand occasion. Then Mabel knelt down, held the little suffragette’s hand, and said, “Thank you. I’d like that very much.”
She reached into her pocket and found Soong’s calling card. Then she handed it to the little girl. “Please be so kind as to send it to this address, at your convenience.”
Mabel stood and led Quiet back into the parade, waving good-bye, searching for an appropriate scripture. Something about a little child, leading the way. Mabel forgot the verse and for once it didn’t matter.
American Womanhood
DOLEN PERKINS-VALDEZ
On the morning of the New York City parade, I wake up early and open the dining room windows. The breeze billows the sheers. I did not sleep well, but the cool air refreshes me. I have been following the planning of the parade closely in the Chicago papers, and I know they are expecting a crowd. Not being in New York feels like adding insult to injury, but I refuse to let it get the better of me.
On Saturdays, my family typically enjoys a late breakfast, and the whole house smells of bacon. I hope the scent will awaken my daughters and remind them of their morning duties. We take all our meals in this dining room, and though our sons are older now, with their own schedules, I still manage to gather the family for weekly Sunday dinners. Our table is set with a lace tablecloth every day of the week. On the wall above the sideboard hang portraits of me and my husband in oval wooden frames.
“If you do not eat much, you will not have the strength to work today,” I tell Ferdinand as he takes his seat at the table. He has been working late all week, and exhaustion sits beneath his eyes in dark rings. His new case involves a Negro man who was fired from his job after white union workers claimed the position. Last night, Ferdinand admitted he may not be able to win against the powerful union.
I am worried about my husband. His hair and mustache have turned entirely gray in just the past two years. He has spent the better part of the year working on behalf of colored laborers while I worked on city council and mayoral races. Both of us are tired, but there is no time to rest. After the elections, the racist film Birth of a Nation was released in Chicago theaters. Then I became involved in defending a prisoner, Joe Campbell, who had been accused of murdering the prison warden’s wife and, in late August, I learned of the lynching of a Jewish factory superintendent, Leo Frank, in Marietta, Georgia. No, there was no time to rest at all for either of us.
“I see the way you look at me,” he says suddenly, jarring me out of my thoughts.
“You do?”
“I will get through this. But what about you, Ida? Have you come up with a plan to keep the Negro Fellowship League afloat?”
“Not yet,” I say. I have been out of work for months, and our funds are running low. My decision to fund the league out of my salary as a probation officer was supposed to be a temporary solution, but I had been too busy working to find an alternate source. First, men needed housing and jobs. Then there were political meetings to be held. Voters to organize. A women’s suffrage club to run.
Ferdinand and I are a comfort to each other when the sun goes down, but each of us must march out alone in the morning. The newly elected alderman, Oscar De Priest, promised me a judgeship for Ferdinand if he were elected. I worked day and night to canvass black voters and get De Priest elected as Chicago’s first black city councilman. In the end, black women in the city cast over twenty-five hundred votes for De Priest. My Alpha Suffrage Club played a significant role in his election, and everyone knows it. Becoming a judge is Ferdinand’s dream, so I merely tried to accomplish two things at once by offering my candidate support while also enabling another worthy colored man to rise in the ranks. Wasn’t that the purpose of enfranchisement for women? To open the doors of powerful political opportunities for colored people in the city? I am still hoping the alderman will deliver on his promise, but there have been troubling signs. I have not mentioned them to Ferdinand.
I am disappointed by the way colored women are being treated by the politicians we helped elect. After the debacle at the Washington march two years ago, I decided to focus on local politics, help the women in my own city. Now even that city has forsaken us. At our meeting today, I must help lift the morale among the clubwomen.
I kiss Ferdinand on the forehead. His hand shakes and he spills a little coffee on the table. The brown liquid spreads on the lace, to the vinyl beneath.
“I’m sorry, darling.”
“It’s fine,” I say, though I waste no time blotting the stain with a napkin. My husband has been married to me long enough to know that my household has to maintain a certain rhythm of efficiency. I just wish my entire life were as simple as running a household. I kiss him on top of his thinning hair before I leave, glancing at the clock as I put on my wrap. The women at the parade in New York are probably preparing to walk to their meeting points. They are having the last of their breakfast, chatting excitedly among themselves. They are hopeful, optimistic, newly recharged with their mission. Parade or no parade, I need to do the same for myself.
* * *
When I arrive at the State Street building where the Alpha Suffrage Club holds our weekly meeting, I am early, but there are at least a dozen women milling about. The meeting is held in the reading room of our Negro Fellowship League building. It is a long, rectangular room with a line of bookshelves along one wall. Typically, the tables are surrounded by chairs, but now the tables are adjacent to one another and covered in a long white tablecloth. Two women arrange plates of food. At the end of the row, a third club member sets up a beverage station. As the president of the Alpha Suffrage Club, I am not expected to help with the refreshments. I go to the lectern and consult the program for the meeting.
My assistant, Bettiola, has written everything out. The young woman is a poet and journalist, and at twenty-four years old—twenty
-nine years my junior—she reminds me of myself when I was her age: opinionated and fiercely committed to the cause. She has no interest in marriage, though her beauty is well known. She carries herself with a steady sense of purpose. What I also like about her is that she is one of those rare young people who listens.
“How are you feeling today?” she asks me.
“I am feeling much better,” I say. I had been a little sick with a cold, but thankfully, the weakness has passed. I am too busy to tolerate illness.
“Why are there only three people speaking tonight?” I ask. “That will hardly fill the entire first hour.”
“Mary will perform a recitation that is quite long. Each of the other two women will speak for twenty minutes. I have left time for discussion.”
More women enter the room. They remove their stoles and hang them on a rack. The din of conversation grows.
“You penmanship is difficult to read. Did you hear back from Mr. De Priest?” I ask her.
“I did not. I have sent him three letters now requesting a meeting.”
“Maybe you should appear at his office in person.”
“Yes, Mrs. Barnett. I will do that.”
I know I am difficult. My daughters say this about me. Yet this world countenances very little patience for inept colored women. We must be excellent in all areas, or we shall be trampled. This is especially true when we are trying to be taken seriously by men. Even so, I must be honest. I am especially churlish today because I am not in New York marching with the other women. The current financial affairs of the Negro Fellowship League also weigh on me. I am unsure how to take a step forward when the walls are closing in on all sides.