A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions, page 1
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For my grandma,
and all the poems she couldn’t write.
My mom,
who showed me strength could look like listening.
My husband,
for loving my storm.
My children,
and all the changes still coming.
And me and my one voice,
and all the times that I’ve been silent.
“If perticulair care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
—ABIGAIL ADAMS
“As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh. Your letter was the first Intimation that … a … Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented.”
—JOHN ADAMS IN RESPONSE
“Remember the Ladies, John. Or we will remember you.”
—ABIGAIL ADAMS
SPINSTERS!
Why listen to Gossips when there is work to do?
Don’t spend your father’s money on drinks with your Chatty friends, when you could be home cleaning with new Scouring Kitchen Powder. Even if you are 127, it’s not too late to impress a charming Adam with your thrift and skill!
You’ll be a Wife in no time!
CHAPTER ONE
A storm cloud rumbled above the rooftops, the salted wind tossing a newspaper across an empty street as we parked the Model A two block away from our target—the house at 127 Adams Street. In the seat next to mine, Mira clenched the steering wheel so tightly she creased her leather driving gloves. Well, mine actually. She’d borrowed those gloves from me. But I didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t.
There wasn’t supposed to be a car in the driveway.
I folded the advert in fourths. The coded message clearly stated it was only supposed to be a Chat, an assessment of the safety of the family who lived at 127 Adams. We’d done those plenty of times before.
Behind me, Bea cleared her throat. “Perhaps we should notify the Matrons?”
Thunder rumbled above us.
The Matrons were the leaders of our society, but this was just one car, and one man. There were five of us, and we’d been trained.
“There’s no call for that,” I said. “The advert said the Spinsters and Gossips are watching our backs. One quick Chat and we’ll be home before supper.”
“Meadow Lark?” Iris suggested. She was the Spinster assigned for up-close protection for this assignment, and a dear friend whose usual smiling eyes were focused and deadly as she scanned the street.
I bit my lip. Meadow Lark was a reliable plan, but with children in the home … “That could get messy. We need eyes closer. It’ll have to be Saint Sebastian.”
“Do you think this is a test, Elsie?” Bea asked. With her wide brown eyes she looked younger than she was; her brown hair longer than was fashionable, tucked in two braids, freckles across her upturned nose. A stray shadow darkened her plump cheeks. “Ada told me—”
“Ada was just trying to get under your collar,” Mira said. “I’m glad that milquetoast’s married and minding her own beeswax.”
“Watch your slang,” Greta said in the back seat, squashed nearly against the window as though she thought poor was catching. With her blond curls combed out, she looked like a sunflower or a movie starlet; either way she followed the light and the light loved her back. She stared out the window like she was bored. “It’s unladylike.”
“Yes, Mother,” Mira, Bea, and I muttered in unison. At twenty-two, Greta was the oldest of us Wives-to-be, and we never let her forget it.
I stared at the house beyond the car as if wishing this would go well would make it so.
Mira let go of the steering wheel. “I say we blow the house up and go find a soda fountain.”
Bea pressed her palms together. “Or a bakery.”
Mira grinned back. “Wouldn’t pie be luxurious?”
“Oh pie,” I squealed
“There are children in there,” Greta said with genuine concern.
I fought a laugh. Greta didn’t always understand our sense of humor. I reached over the seat and tapped her knee. “You’re right. I guess explosions aren’t the answer this time.”
“One day they will be.” Mira pulled off my gloves and adjusted her short hair in the rearview mirror. “And I’ll be ready.” Mira was the bravest of us, the first to adopt the garçonne fashions, the first to bob her hair. She wore trousers, a collared shirt and vest, while I stuck to dresses and stockings rolled at my knees. I kept my hair to my shoulders, curled up to be closer to fashionable, while Mira’s dark, slicked-back hair was so short she had the barber take a razor to her neck. Short hair didn’t tend to get stuck in the car engines she liked to tinker with. According to her stories, she’d hot-wired a car, a plane, and the box of explosives they’d used in our training.
But Mira’s stories were fairy tales wilder than the ones I had on my shelves.
“We’re starting to gain attention,” Iris said.
“I’ll act as cover,” Greta said as she opened her door, her bright eyes sparked with worry as she glanced down at her delicate heels. “Those trees will do.”
“I’ve got my work boots in the basket,” Bea offered.
“No offense, Bea,” Greta said with a look, “but I’d rather die than wear boots you wore in a pasture full of cows.”
Mira turned around in her seat. “You can’t just say no offense before you say something really offensive.”
“Don’t be so sensitive,” Greta quipped back. “Bea’s fine! Aren’t you?”
Bea offered a quick smile and shrug. “Of course.”
“Besides, she knows her station in life, so bringing it up won’t hurt her feelings.”
“No.” Bea’s smile faded. “Not the first time anyway.”
“Greta,” I started.
Greta looked at me like I’d just scolded her. “Well, I’m sorry for speaking the truth. Bea’s family doesn’t have money. We all know it. You three can’t always be so sensitive about everything. She said she was fine.”
“It’s starting to hurt a little, actually,” Bea said. Mira and I glared at Greta.
Greta rolled her eyes. “I’ll be fine in my T-straps; thank you kindly for offering what little you have.” She pressed the door open. “If it won’t hurt anyone else’s feelings, I’d like to go climb a tree now.”
I sighed and followed Greta out of the car. We’d parked the Model A under a patch of willow trees, which seemed drenched and drooping already, though the storm hadn’t broken yet. Soon though. Even the air smelled of rain about to fall. I pressed down the silk chiffon of my flower-print day dress to smooth out wrinkles, lowered the brim of my cloche hat to cover my eyes, and adjusted my wool coat. My pearl earrings were too tight, but I tried to ignore the pinch. This wasn’t a neighborhood I’d like to lose an earring in.
Greta opened the basket, looked both ways, and then pulled out her twin-barrel Beretta OVP Modello 1918. The gun was Italian, sleek as a pair of pumps, and could fire over a thousand rounds a minute. Greta was the best shot, so it made sense, in a way, to have her cover our backs, while Iris kept close to handle anything that got past her. Though it felt odd as possible to see the wealthiest of us climb up a tree with a rifle over her shoulder. Maybe it was because Greta and her friends liked to go on and on about how much money their families had, or about how her last name was on the new wing of the university I was dying to get into, or that my coat was from two seasons ago, and Bea’s was homespun, and Mira’s belonged on an old man, as if that made Greta and her friends better than the rest of us.
I grumbled some of that under my breath, but then I focused on our mission. The line of sight was good from the tree line, only about two hundred yards to the house. I’d seen Greta nail a can from farther.
“We need someone to cover the back route,” Iris said, looking between Mira and Bea.
Mira glanced at Bea and then ducked her chin. “I’ll do it,” Mira said. “Whistle twice and I’ll flash the rescue signal.”
“Josefa is on relay,” Iris said. “More Spinsters will be there if you need us.”
The Spinsters usually handled dangerous men, but sometimes a man on edge was at the verge of violence against his family, and they’ve found Wives-to-be were the best to trim their fuses.
There’s a privilege to being pretty and in a group.
If I was alone here, he might not tame so quickly. But if an angry man saw a group of pretty girls watching him, he’d stand up straight and uncurl his fists.
Sometimes anyway .
If he wasn’t calmed, then the Spinsters handled it. They were our warriors. Our weapons. They did the work Wives-to-be like me couldn’t stomach.
The society couldn’t tell the future. Sometimes they missed a few bad men. Sometimes the man was angry but nothing would have happened anyway. Sometimes they send Wives when they should have sent a warrior. But in the last 111 years, we’ve learned to see a lit bomb.
And if the society couldn’t stop it, at least we could get his wife and children out of his way.
That was what the First Ladies’ Society was there for. That was why I signed my oaths. That was why the society had become my spine.
Mira threw me a weighty look, nearly a glare, before she took off. I nodded once to reassure her and off she went. Bea would be fine. I’d take care of her, and if my skills at charming didn’t work, Iris would handle it. Our Spinster friend was one of the top fighters they’d trained.
Mira didn’t care for many people, but she had a tender spot for our youngest friend. Not that she looked twice at Bea as she walked away. Mira thought that showing affection would be taken for a weakness.
And she wasn’t wrong. Everything we did here would be watched by women from our society we called Gossips. And if we wanted the society’s approval, which we did more than anything, then we had to be careful. As a Wife-to-be, the society could give me a life brighter than I’d ever dreamed of, if they liked me well enough. But it had to be clear that my loyalty to them was stronger than my loyalty to my sisters. Even though it was the society itself that gave them to me.
The air was damp enough it might as well be raining. I tugged my coat tight. I should not have worn the silk.
“You ready, Elsie?” Iris asked as she joined me, concerns shading her copper eyes. She was a trans woman a little older than me, maybe early twenties, her eyebrows shaved and then painted into thin arches, with a strong nose and lovely bowed lips that had smudged at the crease. The kindness in her eyes gave me something to hold on to that was stronger than my nerves about that car in our target’s driveway.
If the husband was there, we weren’t defenseless. We were trained to de-escalate violence, but if he wasn’t calmed … Iris was close, and a group of Spinsters was not far behind.
I tried to force my nerves to calm.
Bea joined us, holding a basket full of something fresh baked that smelled like a patisserie.
“Ready enough,” I answered Iris.
I glanced at Bea, but I knew bringing up Greta’s ridiculous comments would only make their sting worsen. Bea was trained to put slights like this behind her. We all were. Every one of us was trained to become the wife of a powerful man the society would lift.
Forgiveness was our first lesson.
Being forgotten was our second.
Our heels clicked in unison as we walked toward the door, making a fine picture no one looked out the window to see—Iris tall and lithe with subtle curves, while Bea and I were round, and buxom. The two of us were the largest of our group, my body wide at the curves and soft at my stomach, while Bea was made of softness and size. The cold wind played with our skirts.
“What a quiet day,” Bea murmured. She made a good point. Even on a stormy day, children should be playing in the yards, riding bicycles, tossing marbles. I didn’t know how the Matrons had done it. Perhaps they dropped off new puzzles or indoor games the day before. Or perhaps they handed out free tickets to something in town. Days or even weeks of planning, all to keep this one street quiet enough that our clicking heels echoed as we marched up it.
I lowered my shoulders. If they could do that, then we could handle a car in the driveway.
The house at 127 Adams wasn’t too different from others on the street. Weeds grew between cracks in the cement; a bicycle lay on its side on the lawn. Crocuses sprang brightly from the front bed, but the daffodils had lost their petals. All perennial flowers. Nothing freshly planted. Nothing that marked how deep the women’s roots were.
Iris knocked twice, and I folded the advert in fourths and slipped it into my pocketbook. No neighbor eyes were watching. No one except Greta through her scope.
A babe cried from within the house, and a curtain fluttered, a small red-cheeked face peering at us as we counted under our breaths how long it would take their mother to open the door.
Seven seconds. Near enough we were welcome.
A white woman in a pale green housedress tucked a baby against her hip. The shine of sweat lit her forehead, but her cheeks were powdered to hide a bruise. She’d been hit. I stilled my face to not show a reaction, but for a moment I felt my seventeen years had not prepared me for what this woman was facing, what this woman had seen. I was a child here, out of my depth.
But the society was old, sturdy, and powerful. It would be enough to help her where girls like us alone could not.
“Hello,” I said, not giving my name, and not asking hers in turn. She paused at the door, her fingers turning pale as she clutched the frame. My trained eyes were sharp as I peered around her into the house. I spied a Bible on her bookshelf and, tucked away between novels, the spine of the society’s pamphlets. I noted the crack on the wall from an impact, and children hiding in the safety of the shadows. I saw the secrets of her marriage in one glance, though she still blocked the door as if she were trying to hide the truth from us.
“May we come in?” Bea asked with a smile. It was important to always ask permission. Mira would have walked straight in and scared the poor bunny into sending us away.
The woman nodded her consent, and we entered. Then she closed the door behind us and locked it. We removed our cloche hats. I tucked all three into my bag with our gloves while Iris peered into the darkened hallway.
“We heard one of your children had a cough,” I said. It was a friendly remark, seeing as she didn’t know our names, and we didn’t know hers. And it was a safe-enough reason for a visit. It was always wise to offer to help the children first. Mothers sometimes could take help for their children before they took help for themselves.
The woman in green touched the door with one finger, but wouldn’t turn to us. The moment stretching long enough I could feel her children wondering why we were here. I glanced to Bea.
“Would you children care for a treat?” Bea asked in a soft voice as she held up her basket. “I baked a blueberry loaf with cinnamon and sugar icing. It’s my grandmother’s recipe and she used to make it for me every Sunday, but I miss her so much I make it nearly every day now. Can you tell?” She gestured to her large rounded stomach, and the children smiled warmly with her. “Would you share it with me?”
The youngest children waited for their mother’s permission. Iris sent me a shadowed look.
She was right—the children were too quiet. Too skittish with strangers.
I glanced back into the shadowed hallway. Not a creak or a whisper of movement.
But a fresh-baked treat was a siren song even to frightened children. The youngest three followed Bea into the hallway. The eldest, a girl of eleven or twelve, stayed put and watched us with clear distrust, her small hands bound into fists.
In the hall behind me, Bea must have stumbled on something, sending a clatter and a crash, and then her own rumbling laughter accompanied by a child’s soft giggle. I fought a smile. Bea could wield a pretended clumsiness like a knife, carving away distrust, until she’d worked her way into your heart. The children giggled again at another of her unseen antics.
The woman turned and handed her eldest child the babe at her hip. “Join the others, Anne. I’ll be fine.”
The girl, Anne, sent us a sharp glare before she fell to her duty and we were left alone to hear the story her mother couldn’t tell to her children.
“Would you care to sit down?” she asked finally. Her voice seemed skeletal, like her throat was bleached dry. We followed her gesture into a well-scrubbed davenport couch. She knew of the society well enough to recognize this for what it was. Wives-to-be only came if she’d reached out already. She didn’t seem to have questions about what we could do for her; she only questioned whether or not she wanted it.
“Is your husband home?” Iris asked with a soft high voice. The woman startled at the mention of her husband.
