by Lois Duncan
“You mean it’s like that all the time?” Laura asked in surprise.
“You don’t know the half of it. You should see the place when the guys have their friends over. It’s just since Mom’s been working longer hours. Dad says we need the extra money if the boys are going to college out of state.”
“I should think your brothers would be the ones to donate their time to that cause,” Irene said. “Is there some reason they can’t take over for one afternoon a week and allow you some outside activities?”
“Irene, you don’t know Peter,” Madison Ellis broke in. “There’s no way he would stoop to babysitting. I can just imagine poor Kristy trying to convince him. Pete would explode!”
“It sounds to me as though it’s Kristy who ought to be doing the exploding,” Irene said.
“I think it’s sick,” said Kelly. “Why should it be the girl who gives up everything while the boys get off? At our house we divide up the chores and everybody takes a turn at doing everything.”
“Including your dad?” Paula asked her.
“Well, not him, of course, but the rest of us.”
“Meaning you and your mom and your sister?” Paula shook her head. “It’s not the same, Kelly. You don’t have brothers, so you can’t compare the situations. Take a look at my house. Mom gets up and goes to work at the same time my Dad does, and she’s on her feet all day while he sits at a desk. By nighttime she’s beat, and I help with the housework, and she does the dinner and I load the dishwasher. Dad sits and watches the news. You know what my brother Tom does? He carries out the garbage. Big deal!”
“Is it that way in all your homes?” Irene asked incredulously. “Ann?”
“Well—yes,” Ann said slowly. “I never thought anything about it, though. My mom’s a housewife. That’s what housewives do, isn’t it?”
“Your dad’s retired,” Madison reminded her. “He’s got as much time around the house as your mom does.”
“Dad isn’t well. Besides, Mom likes to cook. I’d hate to think what it would be like to eat a meal Dad made.” Ann strove for a touch of levity. “Everybody’s got their own talents.”
“I’d hate to think that the depth of one’s talents is reflected by who does the best job waxing the floor.” Irene shook her head in amazement. “Honestly, girls, this whole town is stuck in a time warp. This is the way women talked and felt fifty years ago. Haven’t the words ‘Women’s Lib’ ever made their way to Modesta?”
“Modesta is a small town—we’re not as modern as the rest of the world,” Erika said. “It’s just not the way things are done here. Back when my brother, Boyd, was a baby, Dad started a college fund for him. Dad never went to college himself, and he wanted to be sure Boyd had the chance. Okay, great. But did he start one for me when I came along two years later? Of course not. I’m a girl. I’m not supposed to need college in order to be a housewife and maybe just work part-time in a store.”
“Some housewife you’ll make, with a garage full of rats,” Paula said, laughing.
“Who’s got rats?” Holly asked.
“Erika does. Whole cages full. What are you going to do with them, Erika?” Paula prodded good-naturedly. “Come on—you’re among your sisters. Open up.”
“They’re part of a project I’m working on for the science fair,” Erika told them. “I’ve got all this data I’m collecting, and I’ll be making the presentation to Mr. Carncross in December. If he selects my project to represent the school, I’ll go on to the state competition and get a crack at a science scholarship.”
“Good for you,” Irene said approvingly. “The world needs more female scientists. In fact, it needs more females in all areas of advanced achievement.” There was amusement in her voice. “Do you know that at one time it was widely believed that a woman’s brain was smaller in capacity than a man’s?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Kelly said. “Look at our group here. We’ve got the school’s top achievers all in one package. Erika’s vice president of the Honor Society, Ann’s an artist, Holly’s a musician—”
“And none of you are going to have an easy time of it, I’m afraid. Who reviews the arts?” Irene challenged them.
“Who? Well, art reviewers,” Kelly said.
“Male or female?”
“I don’t know,” Kelly admitted. “I never thought about it.”
“The art critics with major art journals are almost all men,” Irene said, “and male artists receive almost all the space in art reviews. In fact, there are only a few women represented by major art galleries.”
“Maybe the women who could be contributing to the art world are busy doing other things,” Ann said.
“That’s very likely. What do you suppose those things could be?”
“Having babies,” Kristy offered. “And working at places like JCPenney.”
“Is that what you meant, Irene?” Erika asked. “Or did you mean they weren’t getting recognition for their art because they were women? That would be a completely different thing.”
“Who’s to say for sure?” Irene said. “One thing that has been proven is that women painters and sculptors in juried shows do a great deal better than in invitational shows. In juried shows the names are concealed, so the judges don’t know the sex of the artist. In invitationals, the artists are known.”
“Does it work that way with music, too?” Holly asked, frowning.
“It’s possible,” Irene said. “I heard that the major American symphony orchestras with the most women in them are the ones that audition their instrumentalists behind a concealing screen.”
“That’s so wrong!” exclaimed Madison. “How sexist can people get?!”
“It can go beyond the arts,” Irene said. “What percentage of the teachers in this school are women?”
“Almost all of them,” Kelly said. “Tammy’s dad is the only man, isn’t he, except for Coach Ferrara and Mr. Muncy, who teaches the shop classes? And Mr. Carncross teaches science. That’s probably considered a masculine subject.”
“I don’t see why you say that,” Erika said irritably. “How can one subject be any more ‘masculine’ than another? Science is science—period.”
“What about shop?” Kelly said. “You don’t consider that a boy’s subject?”
“I don’t know why it should be,” Erika said.
“Then why aren’t any girls taking it?”
“The point I wanted to make,” Irene broke in quietly, “is that, despite the large number of women teaching at Modesta High, Mr. Shelby, the principal, is a man.”
There was a moment’s silence.
Then Paula said, “That’s true, isn’t it? And the principal at the middle school is a man, too.”
“According to a survey I read, despite progress, women are still a relatively small percentage of secondary-school principals,” Irene said. “Do you want to know how that comes to be? I’ll tell you a story. This is about a friend of mine back at Jefferson High in Chicago. This woman had a master’s degree in education with a minor in her subject specialty, and she’d been teaching at Jefferson for eight years. She asked the principal about the possibility of moving into an administrative position, and he told her she couldn’t be considered unless she had a PhD.
“Well, my friend took him at his word and went back to school in the evenings and got her doctorate. The year she got it, the position of assistant principal opened up at Jefferson. My friend was overwhelmingly qualified, and was assured there was no serious competition. Then, suddenly, she received notice that the position had been filled. Can you guess by whom?”
“By someone from another school?” Erika hazarded.
“No,” Irene said, “by the boys’ PE instructor. This man, Robert Morrell, had only a master’s degree and had been at Jefferson five years.”
“But how could that be?” Kelly asked incredulously. “I thought you said it took a PhD to get moved up like that?”
“That’s what my friend was told.”<
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“But, this guy, Morrell—”
“Was a man.” Irene completed the statement for her. “The principal said he thought Morrell was simply more suitable for the job. But trustworthy sources said the principal really thought a man would be more authoritative when it came to dealing with students and parents on an administrative level—and that he wanted to reward Morrell for coaching that year’s winning football team. He thought that triumph deserved recognition.”
“More recognition than getting a doctorate?” Kelly murmured.
“Ironic, isn’t it? And here’s another twist.” Irene’s normally calm voice had taken on an edge, and her dark eyes were smoldering. “My friend had been quite closely—involved—with Morrell. They were in the habit of spending much of their time together, and she’d been doing a lot of his paperwork for him, filling out grade sheets and so forth. He’d known she was applying for the assistant principal position. He’d never told her that he was also.”
“I hope she gave him his walking papers,” Madison said tersely.
“She did. And, in another way, she got her own. Some of my friend’s students were very angry about what had happened and staged a demonstration in front of the principal’s office. The principal held my friend responsible. She was forced to resign.”
“Do you mean they fired her?” Laura asked.
“She was offered that alternative. Either she could hand in her resignation on her own and come out of the situation with a chance to teach somewhere else, or she would be fired, which would’ve meant an end to her teaching career. She resigned and accepted a position in a rural community in another state at a great reduction in salary.”
“I never thought things like that actually happened.” Kelly’s brown eyes were huge and solemn. “My mom has always said she doesn’t feel like she’s discriminated against, but then she’s never tried to get a job.”
“If she ever does, it’ll be an eye-opener for her,” Irene said. “Men in this town may feel a woman’s place should be in the home, but when the middle-aged housewife gets forced into the workplace because of some emergency situation, the employer doesn’t excuse her lack of experience. Discrimination is a reality. We have to face it, and we have to fight it.”
“But how?” Kristy asked worriedly. “I’m not a servant. I’ve got as much right to do things I want to do as Niles and Peter. I’ve tried to get that across to my parents, but they won’t listen.”
“What if you went on strike?” Paula asked her. “What if you just told them that you’re not going to come home on Monday afternoons?”
“Dad would ground me.”
“So what else is new?” Paula said. “It sounds like you’re pretty much grounded anyway.”
“Would he hit you?” Jane Rheardon asked. It was the first time she’d spoken since the meeting had begun, and her voice rang out thin and unnaturally shrill.
Kristy turned to her in surprise.
“No, of course not. Why would you ask that?”
“You said he’d be angry,” Jane said defensively.
“Okay, so he’ll be angry. He gets angry about things lots of times, but that doesn’t mean he goes totally insane. The worst he’ll do is ground me, or maybe I’ll have to miss dinner. I can pick up a burger at Foster’s on my way home.”
“You’d have to be prepared to stick by your ultimatum,” Irene said. “If you back down, you’ll have done more harm than good. Your parents have to be convinced that you mean what you say.”
“I’ll convince them.” Kristy’s face was pale and determined beneath its sprinkling of freckles. “I’m not going to be walked over anymore.”
“That’s right,” Erika said. “Remember, you’ve got sisters behind you.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Madison, her eyes sparkling, and suddenly the room was filled with applause.
They were so innocent, the lot of them, so totally naive. Irene’s eyes moved in amazement from one young face to another. They might have sprung from the pen of Louisa May Alcott, products of an earlier era when men spoke and the women in their lives leaped to obey.
Perhaps it was fate that she had come here to this improbable hamlet that did seem stuck in a time warp. These girls needed her in a way the ones at Jefferson hadn’t. Those had been city teens, tougher, more aggressive, able to recognize injustice and react to it. They had understood the situation immediately.
All she had to do was to repeat the conversation to them.
“I didn’t tell you I applied because I wanted to surprise you,” Bob had told her. Smiling. So pleased with himself. “I thought I’d wait and see how things turned out. You can’t be mad, Renie. After all, it’s for us.”
“For us?” She had forced out the words.
“Well, sure. I love you, honey. I want to take care of you. How do you think I’d feel, getting married to a woman who earned more than I did?”
Even now, almost a full year later, she couldn’t think back on that scene without feeling sick with anger. Rage rose within her, and a sour taste flooded her mouth. “I love you, honey”—the meaningless words were tossed out so easily! And she’d allowed herself to think he might be different!
He was exactly like the rest of them, shallow and arrogant, ready to crush her into nothing in the name of “love.”
The newspapers had implied that she had incited the riot. That wasn’t true. She’d only told her girls what had happened, and they’d risen on their own. How proud she’d been of them, all those fine young women, showing their love and loyalty in the only way possible!
Some of them had cried when she left.
“We’ll never forget you,” they had told her.
Irene, herself, had been too furious to cry.
But here, in Modesta, there was a chance for a new beginning. Here, she was truly needed.
“… will form our circle,” Erika was saying, “and all join hands.”
Irene rose to her feet with the others. She felt Erika’s strong, fine-boned hand close upon hers on one side and Laura’s smooth, plump one on the other. The circle of vulnerable young faces swam before her eyes, blending one into another, to form a ring of light, and her heart lifted from its depression with a strange sense of pride.
These are my girls! These are my lovely children! No one will hurt them! No one will hold them down!
“Daughters of one mother—sisters to each other—”
The light, sweet voices rose all around her, and Irene joined them with her own.
Chapter 6
During the second week of October the weather turned. It happened quickly; people who drifted off to sleep beneath cotton sheets got up in the night to hunt for blankets, and in the morning the air held a chill and the indescribable tang of autumn. All across Modesta, homeowners scrambled to switch out screen doors for storm ones, and people sorted through summer clothing to pack it away in storage closets. Laura Snow’s mother served hot cereal for breakfast (“With raisins, honey, to give you energy”), and Madison Ellis reluctantly zipped a hoodie over her sleeveless T-shirt.
Erika Schneider brought her rat cages in from the garage and installed them in her room.
“Your mom’s going to freak out,” Paula Brummell said. Paula, who lived next door, was Erika’s closest friend and had come over to help with the moving. Between them the two girls had managed to carry the four heavy cages in through the back door and up the stairs into Erika’s small bedroom, where they were now piled in layers separated by plywood sheeting. Within their confines, the plump white rats scurried anxiously about, peering through the chicken-wire siding at their new surroundings with sharp, pink eyes.
“Probably,” Erika agreed without concern. “She freaked out last winter. She refused to come into my room for four whole months. She’d leave the sheets in the hall outside the door and yell in to me to come get them.”
“Won’t she try to get you to move them out?” Paula asked.
“Sure, but after a while she’ll give up.
I can’t move them out, and that’s all there is to it. They’d die in the garage when the winter cold sets in, and I might as well get them in here now so I don’t risk losing them.” Erika bent to look in at the rats on the lowest tier. “Are you guys all right in there? I’m sorry we had to jolt you around so much.”
“Ugh,” Paula said. “I don’t see how you stand them. Doesn’t it give you the creeps to sleep in the room with them?”
“Nope,” Erika said. “I’m used to them. Besides, they’re working for me. Every day they’re putting me one step closer to that scholarship.”
“You’re really counting on winning it, aren’t you?” Paula regarded her friend with respect. “You’re not worried about the competition?”
“There isn’t any on the local level,” Erika said matter-of-factly. “I’ve checked it out. It’s me against Gordon Pellet, and he didn’t even decide to enter until last week. What can he throw together before December? It’ll be stiffer at the state level, but I feel pretty confident about that, too. What I’ve got is something special.”
“What is it?” Paula asked. “You’ve been working with those things for over a year now, but you’ve never explained to me exactly what you’re doing.”
“I didn’t want to talk about it,” Erika said. “I knew if I told people they’d think I was nuts. I wanted to test it first and see if I could back up my theory with statistics. It’s amazing—I mean, really amazing.”
“What is it?”
“You promise you won’t tell? Especially not Mr. Carncross. I want to spring it on him right before the competition. This will knock him dead.”
“I promise,” Paula said. “I give my word as a Daughter of Eve.”
“Okay.” Erika gestured toward the top cage. “Do you see those ones?” She drew a deep breath. “They’re alcoholics.”
“They’re what?” Paula asked blankly.