What a coincidence, I seethed, managing to keep my face neutral.
March 3rd was dry, almost brittle. Ropes had already been positioned along the parade route and when Karina and I arrived early to access a good spot, I noticed most of the spectators milling around were white men, talking about this or that, patting each other on the back, making sure their bowler hats and wool scarves were securely in place, a few even taking out their flasks to start the celebration early. Several men genteelly stepped aside for us and tipped their hats, murmuring ‘good morning,’ and it occurred to me how serene everything appeared.
Before long, we could hear drums pounding from several streets away. Boom—boom—boom! Boom—boom—boom! Suddenly, excitement replaced pastoral as the growing crowd pressed closer to see what would happen next.
“Look, there's the beginning of the parade,” one man shouted. We all surged forward an inch. “What the—?” he began.
I ducked under his armpit and leaned in towards the route. There, leading the procession was a magnificent looking woman, dressed all in white with a gold crown on her head, riding on top of a white horse; a vision I shall never forget. The crowd drew a collective breath.
“That's Inez Milholland,” Karina whispered. “She's an attorney, hand-picked by Alice.”
How did she know so much about Alice? I wondered. I stepped in further.
Inez, ramrod straight in her saddle, her magnificent steed's four-beat gait matching her own queenly appearance, was proceeded by a huge cloth banner stretched across the width of the avenue: Forward out of Darkness; Forward into Light it read in huge black letters. My heart instantly started pounding double time to the drums.
Ripples of disgust from the men were percolating all around me, but I didn't care; I was mesmerized. I forgot these ignorant He-men, these apes, and I even forgot Karina as divisions of women doctors, nurses, lawyers, business leaders, artists, and educators slowly drilled forward, their faces solemn and determined. Floats passed by with names like Red Cross, PTA, local social clubs, religious groups, and small town political parties printed on their sides.
At one point, there was an outburst from the man next to me. “Look at that nigger! What's she doing here?”
Karina nudged me softly. “That's Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Alice asked her to march with the other colored women at the back of the procession, but she refused. She insisted on being alongside her white suffragists from Chicago.”
“Good for her,” I murmured and concentrated on the colors. Yellow was predominant (yellow for courage, I later learned), on the marchers' sashes, mixed together with red, white, and blue on banners and signs as well as being displayed on yellow badges and buttons sold by makeshift vendors along the sidelines.
Suddenly, there was Alice Paul herself, surrounded by a group of female college graduates. How lovely she was! So pretty, so dainty; not at all what I had expected.
The crowd's grumbles were growing louder, harsher, almost bear-like. I was looking over at Karina, when all of a sudden, a group of young men, their flasks emptied, started to burble on about breaking the ropes to show these women just how unwelcome they were. Before I knew what was happening, two of them had pulled the ropes down and stepped over the hemp to leap up onto one of the passing floats.
All hell broke loose. Shouting insults and obscenities at the participants, many of the men followed the procession itself, pinching and spitting on any nearby woman. They tore off badges, climbed up onto floats and wagons, some of them even tried to touch exposed arms of the startled ladies.
Sickened, I approached a policeman standing idly by. “Why aren't you helping these poor women?” I shouted over the din.
“It's their own damn fault,” he barked. “If you women stayed home, none of this'd be happening!” Planted in a widespread stance, he cocked his head to one side and snorted.
Meanwhile, the parade had slowed to a crawl and with the crowd pressing in from either side, what was once a wide pathway for the women, now only a Model T could squeeze through, as the undeterred Inez bravely led her followers up Pennsylvania Avenue towards the White House.
A Boy Scout troop, present for the Inauguration, came to the rescue. Swinging at the worst offending men with the same sticks they had probably played stickball with just the day before, they attempted to pull the combatants off the floats, frantically calling out for assistance. No one stirred until a large group of college students wearing their campus hats and matching scarves suddenly appeared and locked arms in an all-out effort to clear a broader path for the participants.
Word had it the parade was supposed to last two hours at the very most, yet the clear spring sky had already rolled into a navy blue as Inez finally reached the front of the White House. With a large megaphone in her elegant hands, she stood up high in her stirrups and denounced the plight of all women, demanding that the new president battle side by side with them for a federal amendment just as the cavalry, called in by worried officials, charged in on their horses and shut everything down.
Two days later, there was a telegram from Sarah, urging me to return home and not get tempted by any radical elements in Washington, D.C. I understood exactly to whom she was referring. Alice Paul. But I was captivated, and seeing as Karina had promised an audience with this brilliant mobilizer the following evening, how could I resist?
From our very first encounter, the depth of Miss Paul's magnetic pull was too difficult to explain. Her aura, her quiet yet commanding presence, made me want to be physically close to her, and these thoughts, these yearnings, were both comforting and simultaneously, somewhat disconcerting.
She spent much of that evening explaining her staunch determination, her polestar: to galvanize the issuance of the 19th Amendment. She recounted the very first time she had gotten arrested for picketing outside the White House and put into solitary confinement in the District Jail, how proud yet terrified she and her compatriots were at the time.
“When can I join your organization?”
She smiled, satisfied with her new recruitment. “Anytime, Adriana, anytime. But don't you have to let Sarah Braunstein know first?”
“How do you know about Sarah?”
“Why, Ka…” She paused.
“Karina?”
She looked off to one side at something. “No, um, Karen, a woman I knew from college had heard about Sarah and her center, that's all.”
Reflecting back on my naiveté, I can now see how being infatuated with someone clouds the brain as well as the heart, and if I had been a wiser, more mature person, not only would I have protected myself better, I would have surely understood how painful my telegram to Sarah and Corlie must have been. Thanking them both profusely, of course, but also informing them I could no longer be a party to their old-fashioned methods, I told them I had found my true calling as a militant for The Cause.
Karina and I moved into Alice's new lodgings (interestingly, Karina's allegiance to Sarah and Corlie vanished instantly). She was placed with two other devotees, while I was relegated to a broom closet of a room up on the top floor.
Our new home was a mansion Alice had rented, six blocks from the White House. Red bricked, Georgian columned, in winter its sparseness contrasted tremendously from the lush under-growth and cherry blossoms in the front yard that exploded each spring. There was no sleeping in, just a six o'clock leap out of bed, then a race down the stairs, two steps at a time, so I could get to the breakfast table in time to hear Alice instructing us on our scheduled tasks for the day. We mustn't ever slow down, she would warn. Don't end up like Carrie Chapman Catt and her followers, who were all so tepid whenever they met with President Wilson, their submissiveness explained why it was taking us so long to obtain our goals.
“I heard that Chapman Catt's husband and she signed a prenuptial that would allow her to do her own work four months out of the year with no matrimonial responsibilities.” I piped in.
Alice snorted. “She may have a prenuptial that says she ca
n travel four months out of every year, but that's not nearly enough time. She is still married and therefore domesticated.”
“Down with husbands!” I acquiesced, hoping for Alice's smile.
She didn't even glance at me. “There are far too many women who are content to have a state-by-state vote for now, but the reality is, unless we get a full federal amendment, total enfranchisement for women is never going to happen.”
I loved it when she slammed her palm down on the desk. It was so at odds with her lady-like appearance.
“How dare these women be content with only state suffrage!” she continued. “That's it! We are going to start picketing next week. ”
“Picketing?” I echoed.
Her eyes had glazed over. “Yes, we're going to be in front of the White House every single day with signs and banners, no matter what. Forward out of Darkness; Forward into Light!”
The winds of war can change everything. In 1861, the women's suffrage movement was stalled for five long years while the Civil War raged, but in 1917, when Wilson at last agreed to enter World War I after the United States' Lucitania was torpedoed, Alice wasn't so patient. She continued plotting endlessly with plans for After The War, grousing about how women were once again being pushed towards helping these poor soldiers rather than helping themselves gain equal rights.
1918 brought with it the end of global bloodshed, our soldiers' return home, and a massive flu epidemic. Once again, mothers, daughters, and grandmothers were expected to aid the sick as Suffrage in Congress sat as dormant as the jar of preserves in our pantry.
Then one day, Alice bubbled over with excitement. Finally, the Women's Vote issue was being revisited, and her “We're back in business!” was met with a barrage of thunderous applause.
And we were. Picketing in front of the White House took up the majority of our time. Rain or shine, drenched in perspiration or shivering from the eye-stinging cold, I was out in front of those iron gates, holding up a sign that read:
MR. PRESIDENT HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?
In the mornings, as we hopped up and down to keep warm, there might be a kindly little old man carrying a warm brick for us to take turns standing on, by noon, a gathering of Anti's, recently organized into the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, telling us we should go home to our parents or our husbands where we belonged, and by nightfall, a rowdy group of men, all liquored up, bombarding us with rotten fruit.
I'll never forget the day Alice caught me leaning against the White House fence, my sash askew, my banner drooping like a soft curtain. “Adriana! This is not how soldiers behave.”
I stared at the whites of her wildly protruding eyes as I struggled for something to say. The ladies around me were beginning to shuffle their boots and clear their throats, when from out of nowhere, a familiar voice rang out.
“Adriana!” Sarah cried.
“Sarah! Why in the world are you here?” I threw my arms around her like a long lost child. It wasn't timed, but I swear we must have held onto each other for a good half minute before Alice came charging over.
“Sarah Braunstein, I presume?”
“Yes, it is I.” I had never heard Sarah's voice so frigid. “I'd like to speak to Adriana alone, if you don't mind.”
Alice stepped back, then retreated further down the line to give support to her girls and sharp words to any Anti's standing nearby.
Sarah pulled me away towards a street vendor. “Adriana, what are you doing?”
“Sarah, let's not have this conversation. I'm fighting for our cause.”
Sarah lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Yes, but with Alice Paul? Are you aware of what she has just done?”
I straightened up. “What, pray tell? What thing has she done that is so terrible, besides looking out for all womankind?”
“Why, she's been sending out the word to women and men advocates across the country to vote against the Democratic ticket next election, just because Wilson is a Democrat and she feels he hasn't been doing enough for us.”
“So?”
“So, that means even Democrats who are in full support of our cause might not be re-elected, just because Alice is so dogmatically against Wilson. It also means that all the states that already have full suffrage for women might go down in flames because if their Democratic leaders are not re-elected, once the Republicans get in, they'll try very hard to disenfranchise us and we'll have to begin all over again.”
“Oh.”
“Look, dear. Just promise me you'll think about this woman you are following so blindly, that's all I ask.” Her hug good-bye felt bittersweet, and in hindsight, I wish she hadn't left so early. By four o'clock I was sitting in a cramped, foul-smelling paddy wagon with Alice and eight others, on our way to jail.
“Remember, stay silent and strong, like the true sentinels you are. Refuse to eat! Refuse to eat!” Alice kept reiterating, and like good little draftees, we did as we were told. But after they split us up, Alice off to a solitary cell. I, crammed in next to Karina and three others on a hard, cold bench in an unidentified hallway, my bladder weakened, causing an accident on the urine-steeped floor.
We could hear Alice's crazed voice hurling directives in the background, growing weaker by the minute. “Never give in, never give in,” she cried, as two guards grabbed me by my arms and flung me into a five-by-five foot room, fit for a medieval torture session. Once there, I was handed over to someone who looked like a doctor, and who, along with three nurses, shoved me down unceremoniously onto a large, scratch-worn chair and tied me up like one of those hogs Mama and I had seen in a Ma and Pa Kettle movie so long ago in Detroit.
As they tented around me, sucking out what little air was left in the threadbare chamber, I thought of Mama. Perhaps her docility wasn't so terrible, maybe none of this was worth it. I thought of Tony, how young he was when I had left, and I pictured Sarah and Corlie. Suddenly, without warning, I began to cry.
“Are you sure you don't want to eat, love?” A nurse sing-songed with an Irish lilt.
I was tempted to shake my head no, but Alice's presence loomed too near. Instead, I nodded twice and as the nurse jammed a twenty foot tube, topped off with a funnel on one end, far up into my right nostril, all my senses heightened. I could smell the stench of urine in my underwear, feel the ties on my hands digging into my skin, the hard chair under me prodding my backbone, and just before the steady flow of liquid food descended into my nasal cavity, I heard the nurse heave the tiniest of sighs.
The liquid came down surprisingly fast, swirling around in my sinuses and making my ears feel as if they were about to explode. My constant gagging, coughing, and shifting of position must have posed a problem for them because at one point the doctor growled, “Strap her down tighter, for God's sake. She's a handful, this one. Tie her down!”
The gag, cough, shift routine seemed to carry on forever, but dragging me away for an overnight rest bit before the morning replay, I caught someone's comment. “Thank God that's over. What did it take, just ten, fifteen minutes? It felt like hours.”
Back in our cell, Karina was lying in a fetal position on a lice-infested mattress, with Alice, in the cell across from us, stretching a frail arm out through the bars towards me and whispering, “God bless you. God bless you.”
The following days were a blur of repeat performances; gag–cough–shift. The third time out, I vomited. Or tried to. All I could manage was what the doctor called the dry heaves. Returning to my cell a fourth time, Alice waved a limp hand across the way and croaked, “Keep going, Adriana. Keep going. Show them what we're made of.”
I stared at her dazed, inert eyes, the outer edge of her right eye twitching uncontrollably.
By the fifth morning I had made up my mind. No more force-feedings.
Prison food was barely edible—some sort of unidentifiable gruel. But at least after I had something in my stomach I could stand without help, and more importantly, I could breathe regularly again. Unt
il Alice refused to talk to me, that is. For the remaining time in prison, she was cold as ice.
Finally released, we sentinels returned home, Alice and Karina walking together arm-in-arm, verbalizing softly about how amazing it was that our presence in the upstairs gallery was permitted for the upcoming vote on the House floor, while I stayed a good two paces behind, pretending I was still part of their group.
The House floor balcony reminded me of the top cheap seats in a theater. Congested, dank from overactive rains, and a reminder of our peripheral status. Not knowing what else to do, I filed in with Alice and her entourage right before the Montana Republican representative Jeanette Rankin opened the debate on the long, enduring suffrage amendment.
After various deliberations, a vote was demanded. I knew the House needed a two-thirds majority, which after a harrowing tally, some representatives claimed they had, others claimed not. A free-for-all ensued, and from our bird's eye perspective, we watched people's arms flying up into the air like so many flocks of birds as the delegates argued and a roll call had to be issued three separate times to ensure accuracy.
Sitting across several aisles from us, I spotted Sarah and Corlie and without thinking, gave a broad wave. They enthusiastically waved back in turn.
“Adriana, stop it!” Karina hissed.
I waved a second time. “Adriana!” Alice joined in.
I never felt as sure of myself as when I rose up and inched my way across the aisles, squeezing by muddied petticoats and boots coupled with fur-lined collared coats, to my two friends who happily sandwiched me between them. Back in the bosom of my family, I looked back over at the Paul camp and laughed when they arched their noses high into the air.
By five p.m., the House passed the 19th, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, later calling it the closest margin in its history and with the Senate an unsure entity, both the Alice Paul and the Carrie Chapman Catt circles recognized a victory might not be so eminent.
Back in Detroit, my fervor had been reinstated, this time, with patience and a bit more wisdom as I continued our center's work and watched the amendment process from a safer distance. Month by month, one senator after another promised support for women's suffrage and with each new conquest, Sarah, Corlie and I toasted each other with fine, apple cider by the fireplace. Still, no Senate passage.
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