Blue Thread

by Ruth Tenzer Feldman

  I leaned over my knees to give the back of my head a thorough brushing. “Serakh told me one step, and then another.” I explained to the floor…seventy-eight, seventy-nine…“and to interfere in my own time and place…eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one, ninety-two…“which is just what I mean to do…” …ninety-nine… Done. I piled my hair on top of my head and admired the result. I could be twenty with a hairstyle like that. Old enough to run a printing business, like the Osbornes ran their hat shop. Or help to run the business, anyway. Even at sixteen I was certainly old enough to help women get the vote. And I’ll find my shawl again. I’ll show Serakh how I made a difference in my own time and place. I won’t forget what Tirtzah taught me.

  ***

  When I came downstairs late the next morning Mrs. Jenkins was humming to herself, and I was in an equally good mood. I hugged her good morning for the first time since she came into Papa’s employ.

  She grinned. “Bless you, child. You make me feel as welcome as a laying hen right before Easter. Your mother should be back late this afternoon. Here, let me fry up some sardines for your breakfast. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  By the time I left the kitchen, I was farcie as Mama would say—stuffed. Next order of business: Mrs. Lowenthal. The Portland City Directory had only one listing for Lowenthal, which was lucky. The operator connected me right away. I introduced myself again and got to the point. “Are you still planning to distribute suffrage sashes and boutonnières at Concordia’s masquerade dance?”

  “Definitely. It’s time we stirred up some trouble.”

  “I agree. The new millinery shop at Seventeenth and Marshall has a large supply of yellow ribbon. The Osborne sisters run the store, and they are suffragists through and through. I’m going over there today. Perhaps I can give them your order.”

  “Thank you for your offer, dear, but I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble with your mother.”

  “Or with my father,” I said. Mrs. Lowenthal’s laugh was hearty and infectious. Maybe I’d be like her one day.

  When I arrived at Osborne Milliners half an hour later, Mrs. Lowenthal had already called. Prudence thanked me for the business, and Charity treated me like a long lost relative.

  “We haven’t seen you since Dr. Shaw’s rally,” Charity said. “I was just telling Prudence that we ought to pay a visit, even though we’re not in the same social circles. We’ve got lots of suffrage bows to make and distribute if you’re of a mind to help. No one else in the city is making bows for the campaign. Prudence says it’s a good way to help the cause and to bring in business.”

  Raising a finger and thumb about an inch apart, she explained, “Miriam, we are this close. Prudence thinks the voting amendment will be defeated again this time, and she’s rarely wrong. But I’m optimistic. So is Dr. Lovejoy. Esther Pohl Lovejoy? She got Dr. Shaw to come to Portland, remember?”

  “I think so.” That suffrage rally seemed eons ago, although it had only been last Saturday. Talking to Charity made me think of Tirtzah, my…what did she call me? My sister of the heart.

  “Dr. Shaw was a huge success, you know. Of course we didn’t have the money for the banquet at the Multnomah Hotel on Tuesday. Did you go?”

  I shook my head.

  “Prudence and I heard Dr. Shaw’s talk at the First Congregational Church on Sunday and at the library on Monday. Oh, Miriam, she is so inspirational!”

  Charity slipped her arm around my waist and led me to the back room to work on suffrage bows. “And here’s the best news. Dr. Lovejoy just started the Everybody’s Equal Suffrage League. You’ll join, won’t you? Dues are only a quarter, and everyone who joins is a vice-president. May I sign you up? We have the forms behind the counter. The next meeting is tomorrow night.”

  I felt suspended between two worlds—out in the middle of no place—talking to Moses and then to Charity. “A quarter for justice?”

  “Ooh, that’s a great slogan. Yes, for the price of a pound of pork loin you can be a member for life. It’s a bargain. The Portland Equal Suffrage League costs a dollar a year. If you don’t have a quarter, I can lend you one from the till. Only you’ll have to return it to me by tomorrow or Prudence will have a fit. Miriam?… Miriam?”

  I jerked back to here and now. “Sorry. I haven’t been myself these last few days.” I fetched a quarter from my purse. “Oh, and I need a new bow; I gave the other one away.”

  Charity handed me scissors and several spools of ribbon, and I settled into the rhythm of handcrafting bows. Four dozen bows later, Prudence put me to work cutting pictures of hat styles from the newspaper to put in her samples album. “It’s easier to show women a variety of styles than to try to describe everything,” she said. “And we don’t have the money to keep a large inventory.”

  It felt good to be doing something, to feel like I was making a difference, however small. It also felt good to keep my hands and mind busy. By mid-afternoon, I was getting hungry again. “Do you close the shop for lunch?” I asked Charity. “We could stop by Hanneman’s for a quick sandwich.”

  Charity looked at Prudence, and Prudence looked at the cash register.

  “Not today,” Prudence said. “We don’t usually close, in case there are lunch hour customers. Frankly, we don’t usually eat lunch. But I can make you a cup of tea.”

  I bit my lip. I felt ridiculous; I should have realized they were counting their pennies. “No thanks. But I do have a hankering for a sarsaparilla soda, and Hanneman’s has the best. Let’s share a bottle.”

  I brought back three bottles, a small loaf of sourdough bread, and five ounces of liverwurst. Prudence produced a tarnished butter knife for the liverwurst, and we toasted the birth of the Everybody’s Equal Suffrage League.

  A handful of customers came to Osborne Milliners in the six hours I was there. Only two of them bought hats, but Prudence and Charity seemed satisfied. I pinned a new yellow bow to my coat and started for home. I remembered Papa’s reaction to the suffragists about Blotter Day. Only three more days until Tuesday, until my first day at work. How can I make myself an asset at Precision Printers? What I needed was to invent a whole new job.

  That’s when I thought of that album of hat styles, the one that Prudence and Charity showed to their customers. By the time I waltzed into dinner I was practically whistling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  As I passed the pickled beets to Papa that night, I cleared my throat and tried to look as competent and mature as possible.

  “I have a new idea for Precision Printers,” I told him. “It’s sure to increase sales.”

  Papa speared a beet. “I have enough of business at the office,” he said. “At home I want to hear news from the ladies. What is playing at the theatre, how our new nephew is doing, who is going on vacation where. Or I listen to a concerto from my lovely wife.” Papa reached across the table and took Mama’s hand.

  “Certainly, Papa, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Precision Printers, and I’d like to discuss my ideas with you. It won’t take long.”

  He smiled, as if I were the evening’s live entertainment. “You have never composed even one line of type and already you have new ways to run my business.”

  It wasn’t my fault that I had no experience. My typography book said nothing about how to operate the presses, and the closest Papa let me get to printing was an inking pad and a set of wooden blocks with raised letters. He had never let Danny or me on the production floor.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” I said. “I have a plan for how I can be useful at the office starting next week. I’d like to work on an album of our most popular products, a samples album.”

  Mama concentrated so hard on deboning her halibut that you’d think she was a surgeon. Papa sipped his wine. “I do not talk business at the dinner table.”

  “Then let’s talk in the library. Five minutes, Papa.”

  He shook his head and speared another beet. “Not tonight, child.”

  I excused myself dire
ctly after dessert and marched around the block to blow off steam. Wasn’t I worth five minutes of his time?

  I wasn’t worth his time on Saturday either—what little time he had at home after going to the office in the morning and the Club in the afternoon. Mama seemed to welcome his absence. After her usual piano practice in the morning, she practically pushed me out the door.

  “It’s such a lovely day,” she chirped. “Don’t you want to take a long walk? Or go to the library? I don’t mind your going downtown for a bit of shopping on your own, so long as you come home before dark.”

  “I thought young ladies don’t go gallivanting around Portland unescorted.”

  “I’m making an exception today,” she said, arching her eyebrows.

  The exception, I realized, was so she could search for Baloo while Papa and I were away. I would have none of it. “I feel like staying home today.”

  Mama tried a few more ploys to lure me away. I refused to budge. When Papa returned later that afternoon, Mama announced a change in plans. “I’m so sorry, Julius,” she said, “but I have a headache. Let’s dine in tonight. Mrs. Jenkins is making stuffed cabbage, just the way you like it. We’ll go to the theatre another time.”

  The stuffed cabbage was tolerable. My parents were not. Mama pretended everything was perfect “chez Josefsohn.” Papa droned on about how the new cheap cigarettes were no substitute for a good, hand-rolled Havana cigar.

  Mrs. Jenkins served chocolate cake for dessert. I took a bite and let the flavor explode on my tongue. I’m going to have my cake and eat it, too, I thought, despite Mama’s motto to the contrary. I’m going to work with Papa, who’s against women voting, and when I’m not in the print shop, I’m going to work on the suffrage campaign.

  Sunday probably dawned gray and rainy. At least that’s how it was when I opened one eye and heard the grandfather clock chime ten. There was a familiar, annoying warmth between my legs.

  Oh, damnation! I shuffled to the bathroom for my menstrual belt and cloths. It felt like a cat was clawing at my insides. A spoonful of Bayer’s aspirin powder with a dollop of honey and a glass of seltzer calmed the cat—barely. A sweet roll helped. So did a hot water bottle.

  I curled up with The Art & Practice of Typography, my favorite fountain pen, and my copybook. I practiced writing “bread and roses” in several typefaces. I block-lettered “VOTES FOR WOMEN.” I wrote “Tirtzah” a dozen times, then “Serakh.” I linked her “k” with her “h,” turning them into an elegant ligature.

  I wondered if Serakh was in the Exodus part of the Bible. The time and place she had taken me to on the olam was the end of those forty years the Israelites left Egypt. It was worth a look.

  Exodus, chapter one:

  1 Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt with Jacob; every man and his household came with Jacob.

  I ran my finger down the columns, skimming the verses. The story was familiar from Religious School and from the Passover Seders we had at Aunt Sophie and Uncle Hermann’s house. Chapter five: Moses and Aaron telling Pharaoh “let my people go.” And then the ten plagues that happened in Egypt because Pharaoh wouldn’t listen—until that last plague, in chapter twelve: the slaying of the firstborn.

  The spring after Danny died, Uncle Hermann had skipped the ten plagues part when he read the Passover story at our Seder. But I had just turned eight. I could read. Those words rose up from the page and frightened me. I hated Passover ever since.

  The first part of Exodus was about the exodus from Egypt. That made sense. There was nothing about Serakh, though. Chapter twenty listed the Ten Commandments. Chapter twenty-one had a whole passel of other laws. So did chapter twenty-two, down to this one:

  18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

  My stomach lurched. Meh-khah-shay-fah. Witch. That’s what the man with the scar shouted at us on the hill. Had he thought that Serakh was a witch when I disappeared? Horrid man. Stupid law!

  When I dragged myself down the stairs later, Mrs. Jenkins was just starting Sunday dinner. “I have another Bible question,” I told her. “Do you remember reading about someone named Serakh?”

  “I can’t rightly say if I’ve heard that name before.”

  “So she wasn’t mentioned as a witch or anything?”

  “No.” Mrs. Jenkins aligned the pepper mill and saltcellar. “But there are witches in the Bible. King Saul consulted the witch of Endor. It’s in First Samuel, I believe.”

  “I thought God told Moses that witches had to be killed. It’s part of a long list of laws in Exodus.”

  Mrs. Jenkins eyed me with interest. “You’ve been studying Scripture, I see. Walk in the path of the righteous, I always say. Let’s talk about the prophecy of the new covenant one day real soon.”

  “Your cherry cobbler smells wonderful,” I said, hoping to steer the conversation elsewhere.

  She grinned. “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

  I doubted Papa would suddenly take me into the business even if I prepared his favorite meal: sauerbraten, braised red cabbage, and apple strudel.

  Still, I got lucky on Monday morning. The telephone rang and I heard Mama answer. A few minutes later she handed me a sheaf of papers.

  “That was Mr. Jacobowitz from the shop. Your father left these contracts here by mistake, and he needs them for a meeting this afternoon. Would you mind taking them to him, Miriam? I’m terribly busy.”

  I momentarily forgot the urgency of guarding Baloo’s hiding place in my eagerness to get to the shop earlier than Tuesday, even if it was just to drop something off. And while I was downtown, I could replace my black shoes. Surely Meier & Frank would have the same pair. I took four dollars from my rainy day fund—a serious depletion, but it couldn’t be helped. Then I bundled up against a stiff breeze, tucked Papa’s papers under my arm, raced to the streetcar, and breathed in the bustle of downtown.

  Newsies hawked The Morning Oregonian and Oregon Journal. Some of the boys looked no older than the Chinese girl at Han Lee’s laundry. Many were not nearly as well dressed or healthy looking. Why were they working instead of in school? Where were their parents? Why hadn’t I noticed before?

  Four women walked toward me, each wearing a yellow sash. “I see you support votes for women,” one of them said, eyeing the suffrage bow pinned to my coat and the papers under my arms. “Tell your boss to vote ‘yes’ on the fifth of November for Amendment One.”

  “I don’t have a boss,” I said, flattered at being mistaken for a clerk or secretary. “But I do have a father. Same thing, I guess.”

  Precision Printers filled a large brick structure—two storefronts wide—next to the new Wells Fargo Building at Sixth and Stark. It was the perfect location. You could see Wells Fargo’s twelve-story skyscraper from everywhere in the city, so everyone could find our shop. The plaque on Precision Printers’ front door read “J. and H. Josefsohn, proprietors.” The brass doorknob was polished to a high gloss and the windows sparkled—Papa was as fastidious at work as he was at home.

  I waved to Kirsten through the window, and she rushed to meet me at the door. “You’d better get rid of that bow before he sees it.”

  I slipped off my coat instead. “I’m starting work here tomorrow,” I told her. “Isn’t that terrific?”

  “What about school?”

  “They’re not letting me go this fall. It’s a long story. Anyway, will you show me that VOTE NO card you mentioned at the rally? One of my mother’s friends was talking about it.”

  She shook her head. “It will only get you upset. What’s done is done. There’s nothing you can do about it now.”

  “You must have kept one. I promise I won’t get you in trouble.”

  “Forget the whole thing, Miriam. Suppose you had one. What would you do? Show it to your father? Give it to the Osborne sisters? Why raise a ruckus? Women might think it’s awful, but it’s their husbands and fathers and brothers who will vote in a few weeks.”


  “First I have to see that card,” I persisted. “Then I’ll figure out what to do.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Kirsten glanced at Papa’s office. “I’d better get back to work.”

  The tangy, floral smell of kerosene and inks tickled my nose and the ka-chunk ka-chunk of the presses lifted my spirits. I exchanged hellos with several of the men and even greeted Mr. Jacobowitz. He was only in his early twenties, but he behaved like someone twice his age. Stodgier than Papa, if that’s possible.

  “What a pleasant surprise to see you, Miss Josefsohn,” he said softly, in his Polish-Russian accent. “Thank you for bringing those contracts. I trust I have not inconvenienced you.”

  “Not in the least,” I answered politely. As Mr. Jacobowitz reached for the contracts, I took a step back and clasped them to my chest. “I’ll take these in to my father personally.”

  As usual, he didn’t argue. I wondered if Mr. Jacobowitz ever argued with anyone. And I wondered what he had been doing when I saw him across from Han Lee’s laundry.

  I knocked on Papa’s partially opened door and stepped inside. “Good morning. I brought you the papers you needed.”

  Papa looked up from his accounting ledger and stretched out his hand for the contracts. “Your mama is too busy again?”

  “I think she had a prior engagement. Besides, I like coming to the shop.”

  “You like to visit with Miss Svenson,” he said, reading the papers I had given him.

  “No, I really love this place, Papa.”

  He grunted. “I’m glad it brings you pleasure.”

  “Where is Uncle Hermann?”

  “Not here where he should be. Now, I will call your mama to tell her you are on your way home.” He gave the operator our number while I looked around the office. “Last night’s dinner was delicious, Mrs. Jenkins,” I heard him say. “Yes, I am coming home at six. I am sending Miriam home now.”

  “Ask her if she needs anything from the shops while I’m downtown.”

  Papa put his hand over the speaker and glared. “You interrupt me to tell me how to treat my own employee?”