“They must have an opinion of Jews, don’t they?”
“Oh, I suppose so. We think of them as merchants, maybe a bit slippery, you know. We say ‘I jewed him down’ when we’re talking about bargaining. There was a cattle dealer by the name of Goldberg who came around; people said he was a Jew. I think some of the stores in Rockford are owned by Jews. I don’t think there were any in a little farm town like Stanton Mills. I didn’t know any Jews at Hancock either. I guess there wouldn’t be any at a Lutheran college. Is it so important to you, the Jewish thing? I thought you Reds were atheists. Do you believe in the Jewish religion?”
“Not as the literal truth, no, but it’s an important part of who I am. The people I belong to. When I observe the Sabbath or the High Holy Days, the traditions and rituals, I . . . I guess, it’s always been a part of my life, my family and friends, my background, my history. Do you know what a seder is?”
“No.”
“It’s a gathering where we celebrate Passover. You know about Passover?”
“Um, well, sort of. I remember the story from Exodus. The Angel of Death passed over the Jewish homes.”
“That’s it. Well, we gather for a meal of special foods: matzoh, wine, and so on. There’re readings and prayers in Hebrew. It starts when the youngest child asks ‘why is this night different from all other nights?’” Herschel shrugged. “I dunno. It just feels very close and special. Don’t you have some things like that? I mean, as a Christian, or being Swedish?”
“Not really. We’d go to church at Christmas and on Easter, and I like the music, hymns, and all of that, but I don’t do anything these days. I don’t miss it. And I don’t think of myself as being Swedish. My father’s parents came from Sweden, but my mother’s family is mostly English with some German mixed in. We’re just Americans, I guess.”
“You really don’t know about the persecution of the Jews, do you?”
“No.”
“Well, I could go on and on about pogroms, Jews tormented in Russia and Poland, Jews not allowed to own land or to enter certain professions, being forced to live in ghettos, condemned by the Catholic Church as Christ killers.”
“Not in America.”
“Oh, there’s plenty in America. Did you know that all the good medical schools and law schools have quotas on how many Jews they will let in?”
“Sort of like women, huh?”
Herschel laughed. “Touché.”
EMMA’S EXPERIMENTS WITH Neurospora proceeded slowly. She had difficulty finding conditions for cultivating the fungus so that the cells progressed reproducibly through mating and its sexual cycle of development. Isolating and germinating the fungal spores required her to learn tedious techniques. No one at Cornell had any experience with fungal culture or genetics, so Professor Hutchison suggested that Emma travel to Washington to spend two weeks working with Bernard Dodge in his laboratory at the Department of Agriculture to learn his techniques directly.
Fortunately, Dodge welcomed Emma, and, when he discovered that she had grown up on a poor Midwestern farm, walked through the snow to a country school, and struggled to obtain an education, just as he had, a warm bond grew between them. Working hands-on with Neurospora cultures under Dodge’s experienced guidance and encouragement gave her the tools and experimental competence she needed for successfully carrying out her thesis research.
Emma learned that if she were ever to be so fortunate as to train novice scientists herself someday, she would serve them best by acting as a mentor, teaching them directly in the laboratory how to execute experiments. The “sink or swim” philosophy of graduate education that she saw often at Cornell was inefficient at best and inhumane at worst.
The train journey that brought Emma to Washington required a change of trains at Grand Central Station in New York City. She was so intimidated by the huge city that she never left the vast, ornate spaces of the station to see the sights. When she confessed as much to Dodge, he insisted that she spend a half day touring Washington with him in his car before he took her to Union Station for the return journey. They puttered along wide avenues through far more automobile traffic than Emma had ever seen while she gawked at the city’s famous sights and monumental buildings.
“Let’s go wake up President Harding from his nap,” Dodge joked, as they passed the White House.
When they drove up to the grandiose D.C. station and Emma stepped to the curb to join the crowds, she turned and grasped Dodge’s hand.
“You have been so kind and have taught me so much. I can never repay you.”
“Oh, yes, you can. Do wonderful things with my little fungus. Make discoveries. That will be my reward. Good luck, Emma.”
IN THE COMING months Emma had another scientist to thank for supporting her thesis research: the usually reclusive Barbara McClintock. After hearing Emma describe her experiments in a research group seminar, Barbara approached her quietly at her desk.
“Emma, I think you could add a lot to your characterization of Neurospora genetics if you did a preliminary cytogenetic characterization. It would be valuable to determine the number of its chromosomes and follow their behavior through the sexual cycle. You would have to develop techniques for preparing the cells and staining the chromosomes as I did with maize. I could teach you how to get started, but a lot of trial and error experimentation will be necessary.”
It was a generous offer. Emma had been questioned severely during her seminar. There were very few well-characterized genetic markers in Neurospora. How did she expect to do genetics with no genes to analyze? Combining cytogenetic work with her preliminary genetics would give her thesis added significance and novelty. Without saying so, Barbara had provided a way around the shortcomings in Emma’s research plans. If the chromosome staining experiments were successful, the path to her Ph.D. would lie clear. After two months of tedious work at the microscope with Barbara’s stains and advice, Emma had achieved sufficient success to proceed on her own.
Her indebtedness to Bernard Dodge and Barbara McClintock taught Emma a valuable lesson about the collective nature of scientific discovery. She might work alone day after day, but she was not truly alone.
If Emma was gratified by the support she had received from a few fellow scientists, she was troubled by her growing isolation from her family back in Stanton Mills. Some of the fault was her own. She had not been home in three years, and she wrote letters only infrequently.
Her classes, teaching responsibilities, and long hours of research consumed her mental energy, and when she did sit down to write to her mother—no one else in the family ever wrote to her—she struggled with what to write. Her older sister Kirsten, her mother’s favorite, had followed the expected path for a farm girl: early marriage to a farm youth, children, and establishing a home close to the Hansen farm. In contrast, Emma had always had “peculiar” interests, had gone far away to study God knew what and was still unmarried at twenty-seven.
When Emma had written about her biology classes and her struggles to establish experimental genetics of Neurospora crassa, there was no response. What was left in her life to write about? She certainly could not write about her romantic life. Her family would have been scandalized if they knew of her relationship with Herschel. Her family had approved of her friendship with Victor—what little they knew of it—but Emma had not heard from him in over a year. When he transferred to the Transcontinental Mail Service in 1925, he didn’t provide a new mailing address.
The letters Emma received from her mother did not overtly describe her unhappiness, but veiled references to it permeated them. “Life on the farm just goes on and on,” she wrote. “It don’t seem like anything changes. Just cooking and washing and ironing, milking the cows, working in the garden, canning, the same as it was when you were home. Not much to write about, I’m afraid.” Her mother wrote of sultry heat in summer and bitter cold and snow in winter. Emma knew that her mother and her sister-in-law Susan often quarreled, but the letters did not mention it
. Her mother was overworked and depressed, but Emma did not know how to comfort her.
Hannah Oosterfeld regularly sent news of events in Stanton Mills along with polite comments on Emma’s attempts to describe her studies and research, but her most recent letter contained a troubling paragraph: “I am a bit worried about your mother, dear Emma. She seemed rather thin and weak when I saw her in the store last week. It had been some time since I last saw her, as Bjorn and Susan have been getting the groceries for your family lately, so I could see how much she had changed. When I asked after her health, she said she was fine, just rather tired lately, but I do wonder and worry. Has she written anything to you about it?”
In fact, Emma had not received a letter from her mother in three months. When Emma wrote to ask if she was unwell, there was no reply.
Then came a letter from her brother:
May 26, 1927
Dear Emma,
I hope you are doing okay at that college. Seems like you have been gone forever.
Mama hasn’t written because she didn’t want you to worry, but she asked me to write to tell you that she has got to have an operation. Her insides haven’t never been right since she had such a hard time having Aaron, and seems like they have got a lot worse lately. She has been losing a lot of blood. We took her to a doctor in Rockford and he said she has to have an operation to take out her baby bed and fix things up inside. We’re taking her to the hospital next Monday and she will have to stay for a week or so. The doctor said there’s nothing to worry about, but we figured you’d want to know.
Bjorn
Emma taught her biology classes and worked in the laboratory as usual throughout the week that followed. Bjorn had said that there was nothing to worry about, but she grew ever more anxious as day followed day with no news from home. The Hansen farm had no telephone, so there was no fast way to find out how Mama’s surgery had gone or how she was recovering. Her anxiety rising, Emma obtained permission from Professor Hutchison to use his office phone to place a long distance call to the Oosterfeld grocery store to see if they had any information. They did not, but promised to contact the Hansen farm and call back.
The next day Professor Hutchison summoned Emma to his office to receive a telephone call from Stanton Mills. The first voice she heard was Pieter Oosterfeld.
“Oh, Emma, I’m so sorry. Here, here, it’s your brother, Bjorn.”
“Bjorn, I’ve been so worried. How’s Mama? Is she all right?”
“Naw, Emma, I’ve got real bad news. Mama died day before yesterday.”
“No. What. How could that happen? I thought the doctor said . . . Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Why didn’t you call me?”
“Well, we didn’t know . . . we didn’t have no phone number . . . we was going to send you a telegram. Then Mr. Oosterfeld came out and said we could call you on his phone.”
“But, but, what happened?”
“She was bleedin’ real bad. They couldn’t get it stopped. Just seemed like it was so quick.”
Emma was slack-jawed. A greenish fog enveloped her. She couldn’t think; she began to cry. How was this possible? Her mother dead? Just like that? She had been so far away. Even now she was struggling to understand. Unwelcome emotions overwhelmed her: confusion, grief, guilt.
She had long known that Mama was unhappy and suffered from female troubles, but she had pushed that knowledge away and concentrated on her own urgent struggle to become a scientist. She had never been very close to her mother. She had never told her or written to her to tell her that she was grateful for all she had done for her or to convey her understanding and sympathy with her unhappiness. Such frank expressions of intimate feeling were never exchanged in the Hansen family. Now it was too late to make amends.
“Bjorn, oh, I can’t believe this. I feel so bad.”
“Uh, Emma, the funeral’s the day after tomorrow.” Static fuzzed Bjorn’s voice. Has she heard correctly?
“What? What? Day after tomorrow?”
“Uh, ja.”
“Why so soon? I can’t possibly get there by then. It takes two days by train. There aren’t that many connections from Ithaca to Stanton Mills. Bjorn, I can’t get there.”
“Well, we figured you wouldn’t come anyways.”
“What? Why did you think that?”
“Emma, you ain’t been home in over three years. Besides, the undertaker was kind of in a hurry. He had another funeral.”
“Well, I feel terrible about this.”
“I’m sorry, Emma. It’s too late to do anything now.” More static on the line. Emma struggled to comprehend all she had just heard. Her belly burned; she feared she would vomit.
“Emma?” Bjorn’s voice was distant and fuzzy.
“Well, if I can’t come to the funeral, I’ll wire you some money for flowers. Put them by the casket for me, OK?”
“Ja, OK.”
EMMA TEARFULLY EXPLAINED the call to Professor Hutchinson, thanked him for use of his phone, and fled to her lab, where she wrestled with her emotions. Perhaps attending her mother’s funeral would have helped her to express her grief and soften her guilt. Perhaps the sight of her mother’s waxen body in her coffin would have helped her to accept the finality of her death. Perhaps she and her family could have comforted one another. Perhaps.
Attending the funeral would have been a sentimental, symbolic act of little practical value, but such gestures were important to her family and in Stanton Mills. Her absence would be noted, seen as a sign of coldness, of indifference. Emma was ashamed to be thought of in such terms, but she was also relieved not to have to undertake the long, tiresome journey. She had used every bit of her savings to pay for the trip to Washington to work with Bernard Dodge and would have had to borrow funds for the trip. From whom? Emma had never felt so alone. How could they have assumed that she wouldn’t come home for the funeral?
A week after her mother’s funeral she received a letter from her sister Kirsten:
Dear Emma,
Well, we buried Mama the day before yesterday. It was a nice sunny day, but awfully sad. Lots of folks were there. Papa just don’t say much. He says he’ll keep going like before, but I think Bjorn and Susan are taking over the farm.
I hope Mama can rest in peace. It like to broke my heart that of her five children, only two was there. Aaron dead years ago, and no one knows what became of Henrik. And you didn’t bother to come home. I guess your bugs or whatever it is you are doing out there are more important to you than your family. I hope you haven’t gotten to thinking you’re better than the rest of us because you have been to college and wanting to be a lady professor and all.
Kirsten
The letter infuriated Emma. It was so unjust. Had not the family scheduled the funeral so as to make it impossible for her to be there? Had Bjorn described his phone conversation to Kirsten? Probably not. He was so taciturn. Like their father. Kirsten was transforming her grief into resentment of Emma. Did she really think that Emma felt no grief too? How could she respond? Was it even worth attempting? She was desolate: her favorite brother Henrik first destroyed by war, then disappeared, the death of her mother made even more bitter by her regret that they had not loved one another more, now her sister slapping her face like this—from a safe distance with such an unfair, hostile letter.
Sitting at her lab bench with tears flowing down her face, Emma read the letter for a final time, then thrust a corner into the blue flame of the little Bunsen burner that she used for sterilizing her inoculation needles. A yellow flame flared up and quickly consumed the sheet. Delicate black flakes drifted across the stone lab bench like dead leaves.
CHAPTER 10
1928
DEAN ELIAS WOODROW sat back in his upholstered chair and peered over his glasses at Emma, who sat nervously perched on the edge of a hard chair facing him. Her new blue suit—the only suit she owned, recently purchased for this interview—was too warm; or was it tension that made sweat form between her breasts and moisten her back?
The Dean’s decision had the power to transform her life.
Since completing her Ph.D. in June Emma had mailed out dozens of applications for teaching positions in small colleges around the country. Many had not been answered, even after she sent letters requesting a response. Some were curtly declined with no reasons given. She had received no offers or even invitations to interview. Her teaching and research assistantships ended. None of the maize geneticists at Cornell were interested in engaging her for postgraduate work because her research had been with “some fungus.” She was facing unemployment, new Ph.D. or no. Would she be forced to return to teaching in high school, as she had done four years ago? Was all that she had fought for to come to nothing, no professorship, no chance to continue research?
Emma forced herself to sit calmly and willed a pleasant expression onto her face. She sensed that the Dean was savoring the power that his long silence projected. Woodrow, she had learned from her study of Harrington College’s catalog, held a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, which gave him great stature among the faculty, a significant fraction of whom had not earned doctorates. He had been elected Dean of the College while still in his forties, and for the past fifteen years had ruled with magisterial hauteur.
Emma had traveled at her own expense the day before from Ithaca to Harrington, an Ohio town of about fifty thousand people located about halfway between Columbus and Cincinnati, to be interviewed for the position of Assistant Professor of Biology. The invitation had come very late in the summer, which suggested that the college was scrambling to fill the position before classes started next month. Dared she hope that this was the chance she had searched for—the only serious consideration she had received after an agonizing summer?
“Well, Miss Hansen, I have examined your credentials carefully,” Dean Woodrow said, finally.
“Yes, thank you, sir. But, excuse me, it’s Dr. Hansen.”
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