A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions, page 2
I smiled to soften the moment. “We saw the car.”
“No. He had engine problems, some gasket or plug or something. I don’t know. So our neighbor picked him up for work. Won’t be home for hours.”
Thank heavens. My neck muscles relaxed as Iris moved to the window and flashed a signal for Greta.
“Do you happen to know how to drive?” I asked.
The woman crossed her legs and turned to face the window. “I’ve been practicing.”
Fascinating. That explained why the car was here, and why they had sent for us. Mira could fix that car as quick as any mechanic. I wondered, Were the Spinsters responsible for the car breaking down in the first place? They were so clever. Some battle plans were as simple as a note, or a midnight unwiring.
While I was distracted by my wonderings, the woman must have lost her nerve. She stood. “I thank you for your visit, and for the cake, but we’re fine here. It was a mistake to mention anything.”
I closed my eyes. We could only offer what a woman could take.
“Do you have enough food?” Iris asked. Her expression relaxed, now that we knew there wasn’t a threat. The light hit her freckles and with her bright eyes softened she looked much younger. I bit my lip. Iris wasn’t trained to hear the finality in the woman’s tone. “Are there any bills we could help with?”
The woman shook her head but didn’t speak.
“We could bring you meals,” I offered.
She smiled brightly. Falsely.
Three words about a woman’s smile: it conceals multitudes. “We don’t need any charity. I have fine children who can help with the cooking.”
“Are you certain?” Iris asked.
“We’ll be fine. We’ll get back on our feet in no time at all.”
She smiled again. My oaths taught me to believe women, but sometimes women were taught to lie in order to keep their husband’s secrets. The clues inside the flyer were clear. Where it said, “Father’s money on drinks,” it meant the husband had been spending all their money on alcohol. And the cracks in the wall and the bruise on her cheek showed he was a mean drunk. They sent us here to look, and I could not ignore what I’d seen.
I would need to charm her into it. “I hear you are an excellent seamstress. Did you do these curtains yourself?”
“Yes,” she said softly, “and the children’s clothes.” The pride in her voice was almost a whisper.
“Perhaps we could send you a few odd jobs, help build up a savings,” I said.
“It won’t work,” she said. “He counts my money.”
The truth. Finally.
So I’d reward her with truth of my own. “We’re friends of Abigail,” I said, eyeing the pamphlets on her shelves. “You know what we can do. We want to help you, and your children.”
“There’s no need,” she said. “Save your resources for someone with a greater call for it. If you’ll excuse me, I do have errands to run, so if you’d…”
I called her bluff. “Very well,” I said. I stood and crossed toward the pamphlets. By the soft pink paper cover it was clear it was an older edition, printed before women had the right to vote. There were condemnations for the suffragettes printed in this edition; where in the latest copies the society almost seem to take credit for the whole Nineteenth Amendment. That was not a judgment on the society in my estimation. Instead, it was proof that they were willing to grow, to change, even if they’d probably pretend they had always been what they’d changed into.
I plucked the pamphlets from their spot on the shelf. “These would only upset your husband if he found them. I’ll take them for you.” I slipped the pamphlets into my pocketbook. She watched them disappear, the side of her lip twitching inward, showing a flicker of regret.
But not enough. She was really going to let us leave?
Iris’s cotton dress wrinkled as she shrugged and stood, but I wasn’t ready to let this go. Not yet. I picked up the woman’s Bible and flipped through the well-worn pages. “Mrs. Rose had a Bible on her shelf too,” I said. The woman stiffened, but I didn’t look up, I simply flipped from Romans to Galatians to Hebrews. “She told us she and her children would be fine, just as you have. And how I wish that were so.” I slammed the Bible shut and met her eye. “But no matter how sacred, words and women burn so brightly in a man’s fire.”
I signaled with two fingers in front of the cover, and Iris moved quickly. “It was good to meet you, and we wish you the very best.” She stepped toward the kitchen and called for Bea.
I didn’t move, and only watched the woman as her facade crumpled, her hands twisted, and her eyes sent a sharp glance toward the window and a soft one toward her children.
I gestured three fingers, and Iris and Bea stilled at the front door.
“I need safe passage,” the woman whispered.
* * *
“You didn’t need to bully her into it,” Bea said softly with rain dripping from her light eyelashes. “Kindness counts.”
Rain had begun to fall, seeping into my hair, pulling my curls straight and as drooping as the willow branches, and my dress was positively ruined. Perhaps that was why I was in a mood. “Kindness would have left her there,” I said as I pulled on my white cotton gloves. “Kindness would have taught those children that how their father acted was permissible. My words were not kind, but they were right.”
Bea touched my arm. I glanced through the rain to the car. The children watched my raised voice like I’d raised my hand with it.
I sighed and ducked my head.
Bea lifted her arm to block the rain from striking her face. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just can’t help but feel for her.” She handed me a letter and a recipe card. “Can you check this for me?”
I looked the message over quickly.
Mrs. Allen,
We’ve had a Request for your delicious blueberry loaf recipe. Please double-check that my memory has recalled the Passage Safely.
* * *
Blueberry Loaf Cake
INGREDIENTS
— ½ cup butter, softened
— 1 cup sugar
— Five Eggs, One Hen
— ½ cup buttermilk
— 1 teaspoon vanilla
— 1¾ cups all-purpose flour
— 1 teaspoon baking powder
— 1 cup fresh or canned blueberries
* * *
“Is it too clear?” she asked.
Five Eggs, One Hen? Couldn’t be clearer if she played it on a gramophone.
I gave it back. “It’s perfect.”
Truth was, most men wouldn’t look twice at the recipe, no matter how clearly she’d hidden the secret message. It wasn’t hard to keep secrets when no one finds your words worth reading.
I crossed through the rain and handed the note to the mother tucking her children into the family car. “You’re doing the right thing,” I said. She wouldn’t meet my eye, but her oldest daughter’s eyes lit with a gratitude that made me feel like this rain had painted me golden. She looked at me like she’d never forget my face.
The engine roared to life, and Mira clenched her fist in a celebration. Grease streaked her nose and darkened her fingers.
Iris glanced at her grandfather’s pocket watch. “Three minutes.”
Mira had fixed the engine in less than three minutes, with only a few curse words and grumbling moments where her feet dangled out of the underside of the car.
She grinned and Iris rolled her eyes. Iris had bet Mira that she couldn’t do it in less than five. Now she owed Mira a quarter.
I slipped the mother a fold of cash.
“Thank you,” the woman whispered as she took her place in the driver’s seat.
We stood back and they drove away, a quiet car on a quiet street heading toward a safety net of women. My sisters and I waved goodbye until those taillights faded. A group of Spinsters would be by soon enough to pack up all they could. But for now, our task was finished. All in all, the Chat had taken less than an hour.
“Nice work, ladies,” Iris said with a grin.
“Race you!” Mira shouted, because of course she did.
Iris took off, but Bea and I were wearing impractical shoes for the rain, so we held each other’s hands and rushed as quick as our slippery soles would let us until we reached the car. A victorious Mira ran circles around Iris and inside the car a rain-soaked Greta waited in the back seat, her rifle tucked away inside the basket.
Unfired.
This time anyway. We climbed back into the car with a simmering satisfaction and a quiet rumble of conversation, and then we left behind us the house with the cracks in the walls and the fine curtains, which by the time the husband was home would be empty of everything but dishes covered in cinnamon icing the woman would not be washing.
A rebellion so quiet we’d left no room for a response.
When the day comes
when I hold a babe in my arms,
I’ll see round cheeks and twilight eyes.
I won’t see a gender.
I’ll see hunger.
I’ll see need.
So I will wrap the thing in white dresses, and all my hopes.
Cotton bonnets, and all my love.
I’ll sing quiet songs and give my milk.
And one day that babe could hit his wife.
Or one day that babe could be shoved against a wall.
Such a simple difference
could lead my child
so well loved
down two very different paths.
CHAPTER TWO
Footsteps sounded behind me as I walked down a drenched street I’d thought was empty.
I tugged the handle of my bag of library books higher and told myself not to look behind me. It was probably nothing, not a large man hiding behind that azalea shrub I’d just passed, or a mobster with a tommy gun who would try to hold me hostage. My imagination jumped ahead of me because I’d simply read too many adventure novels, and I’d seen too much in my society work. But while even simple footsteps could send a chill up my neck, I could also remember my training and slow my breathing. Whatever it was, I could handle it.
Then a large splash sent me spinning with my fists raised and my thumbs tucked inside my fingers even though Iris has told me time and time again the correct way to punch someone.
And it was only a little girl, perhaps eight or nine, in a bright yellow wool coat and too-large galoshes.
Oh. I pressed my hand to my chest. My cursed nerves. Always alerting me to danger that wasn’t there.
The little girl smiled coyly back at me and then jumped from her curb into the rain drainage. Water of a questionable cleanliness drenched her stockings.
I smiled back and then continued my trip through the drizzling rain toward the library, when the footsteps sounded again, but now I could hear the squeak of wet galoshes against the pavement.
I peered back, and the little girl was hunched over, gripping one shoulder as she walked like a caveman. Or … like me, I suddenly realized. I corrected my posture and loosened my grip on my shoulder strap, walking how the society had trained me, and behind me the girl’s gait changed as well. This time she pushed out her bony hips from one side to another, like a sheba from a nickel movie. I grinned and then bowed my legs like a cowboy and walked forward for a few feet. I glanced back, and she copied me and then pinched an invisible brim to a hat in a how do you do.
Oh, she was a hoot. I laughed full out, and I switched to standing on my tippy-toes like a ballerina. She mimicked me, and we twirled together. Then while she was still spinning, I curled my fingers and snarled my lips and turned into a fierce T. rex. She shrieked with delight, became a dinosaur, and pounced on all fours into the puddle.
“Ruby!” Her momma stepped out to her front porch and called the little girl back inside, ending our fun, but possibly saving those stockings.
I folded my hands sheepishly as I recognized her. “How do you do, Mrs. Jackson,” I called.
She looked me up and down and smiled as recognition dawned. “Oh, you’re that Fawcett girl. Nathaniel’s sister, right?”
I swallowed. “That’s me.”
“You tell him to come on by next time he’s in town. I’ve got some cobbler waiting for him.”
I noticed that invitation forgot to include me, but I was used to that. “Will do.”
“He’s a great man, your brother.”
I smiled. “Don’t I know it?” My painted smile faded as I turned away.
It’s not that I wasn’t proud of my brother, or the work he was doing as a lawyer fighting for poor folks who were swindled into making bad mortgages. I was so proud of that. And of him.
I just wanted to be a great person too.
And that was never going to happen.
As I meandered down toward the library, I slunk my hands into my coat pockets. Pockets that I knew for certain were empty when I’d started this journey, and now the right one hid a paper card. I searched down the house-lined street. I hadn’t heard a single step that didn’t have a squish in it, and now the trees and flowers lining the street showed no sign of the Gossip who’d left the message for me. She’d slipped away like she was made of shadows.
I’d not caught a Gossip since I was nine, and even then I was pretty sure the young woman had let me catch her to ease my overactive imagination. She’d had a kind face and thick glasses. I’d often wondered if she needed those glasses to see, or if she needed them for people to see past her. Gossips were the spies of the society, and they were extraordinary at their job. They were almost the Fae from my stories, slipping through shadows into the fairy world.
Their training must have been even more difficult than my own.
I pulled out the card. A simple recipe for Pretty Duchess Potatoes handwritten on a lined card with small roses printed along the bottom. The kind of card no one would look twice at, not when it was coated with specks of flour and smelled of vanilla.
No one would notice it hid a secret message.
* * *
PRETTY DUCHESS POTATOES
INGREDIENTS
— 2 pounds potatoes (peeled, chunked, then boiled)
— salt
— ¼ cup heavy cream
— 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
— ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
— ½ cup raisins
— Dash vanilla
— ½ teaspoon black pepper
— 3 egg yolks
Mix, mash, pipe into stars, and bake at 450 degrees for 20 minutes.
Though why would vanilla go anywhere near potatoes? The first rule of the society was you never actually cooked following the society’s recipes. This recipe contained raisins (with potatoes?), which meant to come to Mrs. Allen’s house; the mention of royalty meant this was a romancing mission; the capitalized Dash meant right this minute; and the three roses penciled in at the bottom of the card meant bring only what you could carry.
I grinned. I so loved an assignment. Most of the time anyway. But what kind of assignment could it be? It was difficult to know what to expect from the information on one recipe card; this could be fifteen minutes if I didn’t want to romance their target, or a week if the attempt at romance failed, or even a lifetime if I won the romance. But I’d gone on missions like this one before and left without a ring, so there was no telling how long to expect.
Mrs. Allen’s home was only a few blocks away. The first time I’d ever gone there I was twelve years old, holding my mother’s hand as she introduced me into the First Ladies’ Society. In the parlor there had been dozens of girls around my age waiting to enter the dining room and leave with a title. Some of these girls would grow up and then would take small children and mold their minds with the right words, the right books. They would decide what history would be taught. They would decide who could be the heroes and who would be the villains.
They’d be called Teachers.
Some would be trained in fighting, and in administering tonics. We all were taught to fight back, but these girls took to it with genuine talent. Some excelled in medicine and nursing, some in punching bad folks right in the teeth. Some of these girls weren’t looking for a love between a man and a woman, and they found a safe place with our stronger fighters. And some just really liked fighting. They would be our warriors.
They’d be called Spinsters.
Other girls were to be trained in espionage. In correspondence. They would watch from the shadows and from behind opera glasses, and report back. They kept eyes on those we elevated. They watched those men and decided when they’d gone high enough. They’d be the ones who decided when to bring them back down.
They’d be called Gossips.
When it was my turn, the Matrons checked my blood pressure, my bone structure, my head for numbers, and my willingness to take an order, and that was it. I was pronounced quality. Scared and pretty and smart. My family was well respected, my mother well trusted, and I’d figured out the message they thought to test me with in record time. And they found I had a real gift for Matchmaking, seeing through people to find who would make a fine pair.
I was twelve when they decided that one day I would marry a powerful man of their choosing. And then after we married, I’d become the influence that would change his decisions and history itself. They’d given all the Wives-to-be dolls dressed in white, and smiled as we all planned our future weddings. I would be trained to charm, and to turn myself into a wave and a smile behind the man we’d lift up. I’d be the beautiful woman you didn’t look at twice.
And they called me a Wife.
I glanced to the north toward Mrs. Allen’s house. The recipe card did say to dash over right away, but … these books were due tomorrow. I’d rather risk the wrath of Mrs. Allen for tardiness than let a library book be overdue. I hesitated for a second before I sprinted down the street and round the corner to my favorite building in my hometown. I ran up the steps, threw open the door, and dumped my books on the front librarian’s desk. Mary flinched back from my rain-soaked bag and shielded her hot-combed hair with her hands. She was a Black woman, maybe in her early thirties, and as the source of all my books, she was one of my favorite people.
