“There is no agreement; nothing’s being negotiated,” I told Mama. “You shouldn’t have told her about the book. That’s a dream.”
“No, Clara, listen. If she doesn’t want to break the agreement that we not beg, then that means there is still hope that the sponsors will come through. Yes. Meanwhile, we’ll support ourselves here. We can do this. But we will have to walk.”
“To the charity offices? Please?”
“No, to Brooklyn. Manhattan is too expensive.”
SEVENTEEN
For the Love of Money
1897
I’ll remember Brooklyn for the pans I scrubbed while we lived there and maybe for the little flowers that grew in the window boxes. These were watered by the wet clothes we hung to dry on lines that crisscrossed between the tenement houses, where I could hear languages from a dozen different countries spoken between mothers and their children, between husbands and wives. Families, working things out together—though from the arguments we heard in the evenings, not always successfully.
I wished I could have been cheery like the other working girls, who stopped asking me if I wanted to join them after we finished our duties for a soda or a walk in the park. I didn’t recognize their offers of friendship; I worked to save every penny for tickets home. Besides, my ankle ached after standing for the day, and I found little joy in the daily grind of the labor that split my fingernails and gave me red, harsh-looking knuckles. I remembered with fondness my domestic duties in comfortable Spokane homes. The only advantage to this daily grunge was that the work required no great thoughts. I was free to daydream, to imagine a life with Forest when I got home, to speculate about my mother’s life before she married. I also had time to be frustrated and angry at the sponsors, at my mother for trusting them, at myself for getting sick and spraining my ankle. Any lessons I had to learn had occurred on the journey. New York City had nothing new to teach me, or so I thought.
Spring came to the city with no word from the sponsors about the book. Mama and I walked by the windows of the finer stores naming things we thought Bertha or Arthur or Ida might like, wishing we could buy that wooden horse for Johnny or the doll with a china face for Lillian.
“Seeing you again will be their present, Mama.” She nodded. We stopped in front of shops with elegant jewels and furs, grateful the weather no longer required the worn coats and winter hats we’d bought in Chicago.
“I wish we’d splurged and bought new clothes the day we arrived,” Mama lamented. “At least then the thief would have less of our money and we’d have nice things to show for our trip.”
Sometimes we walked through Central Park, invisible to all but each other in the sea of strangers. I didn’t mind the anonymity, but I think Mama did. I think she missed the applause of her programs about our journey, the attention from the reporters, and reading about ourselves the next day in the paper. At night, she wrote. She seemed content to work and save money for the tickets, believing we remained under the original obligation not to request help but to work for our needs.
We didn’t receive many letters from home, or at least Mama didn’t say we had. She’d taken piecework so could stay in the room with her needles and thread while I found employment scrubbing pans in a restaurant at half the wages of men who did the same task. So she was the one at home when the postal bell rang and everything changed.
“Ole’s written!” Mama shouted. She waved the letter as I came through the door. Outside, April buds woke up spring, and even Brooklyn freshened up with the smell of blossoms. “I hope it’s all good news, nothing about the mortgage.” She put the letter on the table, then stepped back, staring at it as though it might jump out at her and bite.
“Well, open it,” I said. “Maybe Papa’s sent money so we can go home.”
“Not likely,” Mama said. She still stared. Her smile looked pasted. “Everyone’s in bad straights. Even the Brooklyn papers are filled with stories of property worth five thousand dollars sold for three thousand at auction because the original owner owed two hundred in taxes. One bank disgorged a family and allowed another to purchase the house for a pittance because they fell behind on their payments back in ’93.” She picked the letter up, put it back down. “The Brooklyn Bridegrooms hope to put their losing season behind them,” Mama said. “I read that in the paper too.”
“Well, I’d like to put our losing season behind us too,” I said. “Now open it.”
Mama sighed, turned the letter over and over in her hand.
“Maybe there’ll be a little drawing from Lillian,” I said. “She turned three last month. And Bertha is fifteen now. Those two get to celebrate birthdays every March 12 together.”
“I’ve missed a year’s worth of their celebrations,” Mama said as though the thought just occurred to her.
I did quick figuring remembering each of my brothers’ and sisters’ birthdays. “Three March birthdays in our family. June must have been a … special month for you and papa. Olaf was born in March too.”
“Ach,” Mama said. “How you talk.” She actually blushed a little. “All right.” She took a deep breath and opened the letter.
She began to read.
I would not have believed a person’s countenance and demeanor, attitude and hope, could change so profoundly by the reading of another’s words.
Color drained from her face. A slow moan grew as her hands shook, and tears coursed down her cheeks.
“What is it, Mama? What’s happened?”
Mama handed me the letter then lay her arms on the table, covering them with her face as she wept.
“Diphtheria,” I read. Diphtheria had entered our home while we worked away, window-shopped, dreamed of a future. Diphtheria had claimed Bertha.
“Alone,” Mama wailed, holding her stomach as she rocked. “He had to bury her alone, make her casket by himself. Oh, my God, my God. They were quarantined. I wasn’t there! I wasn’t there.”
Bertha. Hedvig. My sister. Gone. And Ida, left behind to care for the little ones. Papa, tending to Bertha. Would he have sent Ida and the others somewhere safe? I looked at the date. It was written April 8. Bertha had died on the sixth.
“Mama.” I put my arms around her as she rocked and cried. “Mama.” I kept my composure. I’d cry later. “We must go to the charities commission. We must find a way to get home.”
“No, no begging.” She looked at me as though I’d suggested she take poison for her pain. “That won’t be good. The sponsors—”
“We have to, Mama. It’s the right thing to do now. It’s what the family needs.”
Those were the words that cut through to her.
“Ja, ja. You’re right,” she said. “You’re right.” She wiped at her eyes. “We’ll go now.” The task would help her set aside her grief for the moment. “We’ll tell the newspapers. They’ll cover the story maybe, put pressure on the charities commissioner or on the sponsors. Yes, that’s what we’ll do.”
“Let’s ask for help, Mama. And accept it.”
“He would send us to the almshouses, Commissioner Brute would,” Mama told the reporters. We’d met with the commissioner but had no success. Neither my mother’s desperation nor charm moved him. “He must be a Swede,” Mama said. “They’re so stubborn and unimaginative.” I hoped the reporter wouldn’t quote that. “I told him we had no time to be housed and fed at the almshouse,” she continued. “We’d be taking food from poor immigrants. We have jobs; we can pay a loan back, but we need it now. We need money for the tickets home. I am good for a loan. I can pay back the commissioner,” she insisted. “Or anyone. But he sent us to the Bureau of Charities on Schermerhorn Street. They cannot help us either. I tell them of all our past trials, all we’ve endured, and that I am a woman good for her word.”
“May I include some of those past trials in the story?” the reporter from the Sun asked her.
“Yes, yes. Say anything. Let them know I will repay. I must go home; my daughter and I must go back. Diphther
ia entered my house.”
Diphtheria could even now be slithering through the barn boards, seeping its way into the throats of my brothers and sisters, choking out more lives. Something sharp forced down the child’s throat could break the membrane that cut off air. I wondered if Papa had thought of that. Of course he would have! They all knew what to do. There’d been that terrible epidemic in Minnesota. Mama’s cleanliness, exceptional housekeeping, keeping food in good condition—those were things that kept diphtheria at bay.
But we weren’t there to do that this time.
At the New-York Tribune office, I told the story. I sounded firm but not desperate, though I’d never felt more powerless in my life. The night before, Mama hadn’t slept at all. She’d scrubbed the floor instead, scraping with the rough brush over and over. I fell asleep to the grating sounds of grief.
When it was published, the Sun article spoke of our “intelligence and perseverance” and suggested that we would be good for a loan.
But no one contacted the paper to offer one.
Especially not the sponsors.
EIGHTEEN
The Right Thing to Do
My teeth chattered less from the cold than from the shock of the past three days. We stood in the entry room of the offices of Chauncey Depew, president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. He’d contacted us, inviting us to come. Mama looked gaunt and wild-eyed at the same time. She’d spilled all our family details of loss and accident and deaths to reporters, so the world now knew of our journey from poor to destitute. There’d be no happy ending even if the sponsors came through, what with dear Bertha gone forever. Since the letter, I never knew what state I’d find Mama in: one moment scurrying about, raving about sponsors or her failure to be there for her family; the next moment sobbing and still as a cemetery on a hot summer’s day.
Could there be anything more pitiful than to be paupers in the offices of a railroad magnate? Wealth shone elegantly in the brass ashtrays on the shiny wood tables that graced the reception room and reflected large pots of ferns. Chandeliers flickered golden light on us as we waited, sunken into the posh leather seats. Glass cases with slender brass labels announced “President Abraham Lincoln’s coffee cup” and “General Ulysses S. Grant’s ivory toothpick.” People collected and touted the strangest things when they had little to do with their money. I used to love such opulence, but now it made me angry. Here we sat, prepared to beg to get us home to our desperate family instead of being able to take care of ourselves.
“Mr. Depew will see you now,” his assistant said. The slender man wearing a tidy suit had kind eyes filled with pity as he showed us into Mr. Depew’s office, then he stepped back and closed the door.
“Please sit,” the railroad president, who was also a lawyer, said. “Would you like tea? I have cakes here.” His oak desk took up a quarter of the massive room. Another glass case displayed what purported to be a “Letter from Shakespeare to His Publisher.”
Mama declined the tea and I did too. I gazed around the room, saw plaques that read “state senator” and a framed diploma from Yale. Another photograph showed Mr. Depew standing in front of a podium. He sported a bow tie like the one he wore now beneath his chubby chin, and I remembered Mama telling me Mr. Depew gave after-dinner speeches as Mama did to raise influence and political supporters.
“I have read with interest your plight, dear lady. Ladies,” Mr. Depew said, nodding to me. He furrowed his brow. We still had no funds to replace my stolen curling iron, and I must have looked the way I felt: pathetic. “I admire the scrappy way you’ve tried to do all you can to save your farm,” he continued, smiling then at Mama. “Your journey for a man would be remarkable; but for two women, I must say it was a truly amazing feat.”
This was the moment when Mama would have waxed eloquently about the escapades, the people we’d encountered, the beauty of the landscapes we’d crossed. She would tell stories that brought gasps to people or made them laugh. My mother the showwoman, raving about the adequacies of women.
But that woman didn’t show up.
Mama sat silent, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes blinking back tears. We had nothing to offer, nothing to trade. What would he ask for? Would he grant us the loan?
I’d have to speak, be the one to beg.
“We’re desperate,” I said. “But we are respectable women who keep their commitments. We will repay you if you grant us a loan. Can you help us?”
“I believe I can,” he said. “The newspaper provided the details of your plight. My offer is to provide you with a pass on my rail line to Chicago. It is not a loan but a gift. You’ll have to make your way from Chicago to Minneapolis; walk, I imagine. But I’ve arranged for a ticket from Minneapolis on to your home in Spokane.” He tugged at his bow tie. “Hopefully you can garner publicity between Chicago and Minneapolis, as you did before.”
“For what purpose?” I asked.
“Oh, to let the world know of your amazing feat. And perhaps of a New Yorker’s assistance in your return home.” He smiled. “One never knows what the future may bring. New York did host the first convention for women’s suffrage, in Seneca Falls, all those years ago. The fairer sex will appreciate a man who supports the remarkable feats of women. Perhaps you’ll come back and help campaign for such a thing.”
“Mange takk. Thank you,” Mama said.
“One more thing,” Mr. Depew concluded. “I would like a signed copy of the book you must write about your journey. It would please so many to hear of your exploits and all you did and saw.”
“You think there’d be interest?” I asked.
“I do. Both in Europe and in these United States. What you did was beyond belief for many, and it’s a story that ought not to be forgotten.”
“First, we must go home,” I said. “Thanks to you, now we can.”
Mr. Depew pulled a bell cord, and the male assistant who had shown us into the room returned with an envelope in his hand. He gave it to the railroad president. “Will you have trouble earning your way between Chicago and Minneapolis?”
“We’ll work and walk,” I said. “It’s only four hundred miles.”
The hopeful Mama reappeared at the news office. “In addition to Mr. Depew’s generosity, I have the first sale for my book,” Mama told the editor of the World after relaying the gift of tickets and thanking him for running the story. “Mr. Depew wants a signed copy. There is interest in this story.” She took a deep breath. “I can write it and promote it too. You’ve seen that. Clara will illustrate. I’ve already written to newspapers that covered our journey along the way. To get their clippings. They’ll help re-create the walk. I’m sure we can generate good publicity for the book. Why, three papers here in New York covered our terrible need this week alone. Of course, I’ll want the clippings from the World,” Mama said. “How could I tell the story without mentioning you? You printed the first photographs nearly a year ago. I hope you’ll consider reviewing the book when it comes out.”
“We have been in on this story from the beginning,” the editor said. “I did notice that the Times urged financial help for you. And the Sun. They’re such rags,” he sneered. He tapped his pencil.
“Did the sponsors ever respond to the suggestion of a book when we spoke of it earlier?”
“Let me make a phone call,” he said. “Could you wait a moment? I know you’re anxious to leave.”
We waited. Mama tapped her fingers on her lap, looked up at the wall clock. This was what persistence looked like. I was anxious to be on the train, but coming to the World to report on Mr. Depew’s generosity, Mama said, was a small price to pay for the tickets. “And if at the last minute we’re able to pull off financial assistance from the sponsors, then it wouldn’t all be for naught. We gain for Bertha.” Her breath caught. “A small portion of our loss might be redeemed with the book and money.”
“All right,” the editor said, returning. “You write the book. Clara illustrates it. She gets a rid
e back on the railroad this fall, repeating your trip to make the illustrations authentic, but this time she comes by rail. The book gets published and you get ten thousand dollars, and we split everything else the book might earn.”
Mama reached to clasp my arm. “They changed their minds,” she whispered.
“It appears … they’ve adapted to this new possibility.”
“Is there a contract?” I asked.
“Shush,” Mama said.
“No contract, but I have the sponsors’ word.”
“The sponsors’ word isn’t reliable,” I said.
“Clara, please—”
“They didn’t break the contract,” the editor said, his eyes shining with a hint of condescension. “You did, by not making it here on time. It’ll all be up to you with the book. You don’t get the money until the book is published.”
“And the train ticket for Clara, for illustration purposes?”
“Contact me when the manuscript is finished and you’re ready to retrace your steps to develop illustrations, Miss Estby. I’ll see that things are arranged. By the way, the sponsors aren’t requiring that you walk back home now,” he added. “But the condition of earning your expenses along the way continues, though you may accept the train tickets, given the passing of your child. The sponsors aren’t heartless. I’m authorized to give you the five dollars you started out with to help you depart as soon as possible, under the circumstances.”
Mama nodded. “I thank you, I thank you,” she said. “Isn’t that wonderful, Clara?”
Outrage knotted my stomach. Not heartless. May accept the tickets. How dare they! But I had to think clearly.
“When we arrived here last December, before our robbery, my mother gave you the signatures of all the dignitaries we’d met and who verified our arrival in their towns. We’d like them back.”
“We would?” Mama said.