Secrets on 26th Street (12 page)

With a mixture of apprehension and excitement, Susan pushed the door open a crack and peered in. The reception room was empty, but she heard voices coming from an inner office behind a door that was slightly ajar. The voices were female, all of them. One she recognized. It was Bea.

Susan stepped into the reception room and closed the door behind her. Now she could hear most of the conversation, but she couldn't figure out what the women were talking about. Something about some friends of theirs who were in trouble. Then Susan realized—they were discussing the suffragists who'd been arrested at the rally and jailed.

“The organization is getting valuable publicity from this,” someone said. “We used to get scarcely a mention in the papers. Now we're on the front page every day.”

“And it's favorable publicity. People are outraged at the way our women are being treated by the authorities. Tammany Hall charging them with inciting a riot and trying to slap long prison sentences on them—it's ridiculous,” said someone else.

“And it's not that our sisters aren't willing to serve prison time for the cause,” said a third voice. “You know they are; we've all done it before. It's just so encouraging to see that the citizens of New York are on
our
side. People see the Tammany bosses as the underhanded villains they are.”

Then Susan heard Bea speak. “Yes, yes, the publicity will help us—that's clear.” Susan thought she heard impatience in Bea's voice. “But a problem's arisen from the rally—a serious problem.”

Bea sounded so grave and so urgent, Susan wondered what kind of problem she could be talking about. She strained to hear what Bea would say next.

“You remember the friend I told you about,” Bea went on, “the one who had so much potential for aiding the cause?”

A chorus of voices rose in acknowledgment; yet, over the noise, Susan could hear her heart pounding against her chest. Was Bea talking about Mum?

Bea continued slowly, as if each word were painful to pronounce. “We were near the front of the crowd when the violence broke out. In the commotion, we got separated, and I lost sight of her in the crowd. I was pushing forward to find her when I was set upon by a policeman with a club, and I took a nasty beating before I could break away. By then, my friend had completely disappeared. When I couldn't find her after the crowd dispersed, I was certain she'd been arrested and carted away to jail, but—”

Jail! Mum arrested and taken to jail
.

The room began closing in on Susan. Her throat felt tight. Suddenly all the scattered pieces that had made no sense fell together in Susan's mind. The mysterious bits of conversation between Mum and Bea. Mum's reaction to Kathleen's being fired and the argument over Kathleen's stand on suffrage. Bea's urging Mum to “do more for us.” Mum's strange meeting with the society ladies at Hearn's. And most telling of all, the connection between Bea's letter and Mum's disappearance.

Susan couldn't bear to stay in the room one minute longer. Fighting the urge to run, she crept out of the room, but the outer door creaked as she closed it.

“Who's there?” one of the voices called from the inner office.

Panicking, Susan fairly jumped into the hall and tripped over a loose floor tile. She was on her feet in an instant. Behind her, she heard Bea calling her name. She hesitated, only for a second, but that was long enough for Bea to catch up with her.

“What are you doing here?” Bea asked. Her expression was pained.

“Maybe I should ask you the same question,” Susan flung back. “This isn't the Nabisco factory, is it, Bea?”

“I can explain that—”

“With more of your lies?”

Bea looked stricken. “Susan, I had to have a cover for my work. You don't understand the opposition we're up against, from blokes like Lester Barrow I couldn't very well pop into your flat and announce I was here to organize your neighborhood for suffrage.”

“Hold on. What do you mean?”

“We need the working class, Susan. We can't win the vote without their support. The movement's been upper and middle class until now, and it's failed. We need the masses, the immigrants, the working people. And the working class will only listen to their own.

“That's why I was sent to find someone to lead them from their own class—like your mother—to win them over. Me, a blue-blooded Brit, they'd never listen to. So I needed to go among you, with a cover, until I could find those leaders. Working at the factory was my cover. I wouldn't have lied to you without reason, Susan.”

Susan's mind was a jumble; she was trying to comprehend what Bea was saying to her, but all she could think about was the anguish Bea had put her through. “What was your reason for lying about where Mum was?”

A look of distress flashed across Bea's face, and Susan read guilt in Bea's eyes. Susan blinked back sudden tears. Deep down, against all the evidence, a part of her had kept on hoping that Bea's deceptions would somehow turn out to be a simple mistake. Now Bea's guilty face had destroyed that hope.

Bea opened her mouth to say something, but Susan stopped her. “Just tell me one thing, Bea. Where is my mother?” Susan knew the answer now, but she wanted to hear Bea say it. To hear Bea tell her the truth just once.

Bea was silent for a long time. When she finally answered, her voice was quiet and small. “Oh, Susan, I don't know where she is.”

Another lie. Susan's throat ached. “I heard what you said in there. About what happened to Mum. You've done nothing but lie to us since the day you came.” Now the tears were coming fast, and Susan didn't try to hold them back. She turned and bolted for the stairs. She heard Bea calling her, but she didn't stop.

Susan didn't feel like going home, but she didn't know where else to go. Fourteenth Street was crammed now with shoppers, jostling and bumping and hurrying. Susan's head was pounding; she wanted time—and space—to think. She decided to head up 12th Avenue along the river. It was a longer walk, but the sidewalk wouldn't be so congested.

Once on 12th, Susan tried to gather her thoughts. There was no point to thinking more about Bea. The only thing that mattered was Mum. Susan hated the idea of Mum spending even one day in a stinking, rat-infested cell—much less weeks or even months. She had to think of a way to get Mum out of jail.

Susan knew she couldn't trust Bea to help her. Who else could she turn to? Aunt Blanche? The Cochrans? Mrs. Flynn? What could any of them do?

Across the street, Susan could see a band of river between two warehouses. A tugboat was butting through the water, leaving shimmery green ripples in its wake. On the other side of the river, she spied a patch of trees—the wooded hilltops of New Jersey. She had hazy memories of a long-ago ferry ride and a picnic there on the Jersey slopes. That was before Lucy was born, before Dad died, before Mum disappeared. Such happy memories seemed so distant it was as if they had happened to another person.

Tears prickled in Susan's eyes. She fought against the hopelessness that was settling on her. She couldn't give in to it. She had no one to depend on now but herself.

Susan stopped in her tracks. It was what Alice Paul had said in her speech! The words came back to Susan so forcefully now:
Sometimes a girl would have nothing but her own means to rely on
.

“But what means do I have?” Susan asked aloud.

Then it came to her. Her barbershop money! Why hadn't she thought of it sooner? She could use her own money to bail Mum out of jail!

It wasn't until Susan was down on her knees in her own bedroom, pulling her money out from the bureau drawer where she had hidden it, that it occurred to her she might not have enough to make the bail. When she counted it, the entire stash amounted to only five dollars and twenty-three cents. She couldn't imagine five dollars being enough to make bail.

Where could she get more money to add to her own?

Russell! He'd been saving much longer than Susan had, and he had two jobs. Hadn't he told her he had saved almost enough to buy a bicycle?

Susan found Russell at the barbershop on 28th Street. He protested when Susan pulled him away from a potential customer, a man in an expensive, double-breasted coat who Russell was sure would have been a big tipper. But when Susan told Russell what she had discovered, his eyes came alive and didn't once leave her face. She quickly filled him in on the whole story. He agreed to loan Susan as much money as she needed. “I know you'll pay me back. You're a good businessma—I mean woman.” He grinned. “You going to let me come with you to the jail to spring your ma?”

It was two miles to the Police Central Headquarters on Centre Street, a long walk, but Susan didn't want to waste any of their precious money on carfare. She and Russell headed south by way of Fifth Avenue, through Greenwich Village, then down Broadway to the edge of Little Italy.

There, on a block of seedy, run-down tenements, some barefoot children on a stoop stared at Russell and Susan as they walked past. A woman stuck her head out the window and screamed at the children in a language Susan didn't understand. They scattered and joined the hordes of children playing in the street.

“Only a few more blocks to Centre Street,” Russell told Susan. Russell had been to Police Central once with his father to bail his Uncle Timothy out of jail.

Sure enough, as soon as they turned on to Broome Street, Susan saw the dome of the headquarters rising majestically above the clutter of tenements and shabby buildings in the neighborhood. It looked like a cathedral, Susan thought, or a palace—not a jail.

Susan's throat closed at the idea of Mum imprisoned behind those stone walls. Would Mum be wearing a ball and chain and a striped uniform like the “jailbirds” Susan had seen in movies? She shuddered at the thought, and Russell quietly put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you want me to go in alone and bail her out?” he asked.

Susan set her jaw. “No, I can handle it.” She looked straight ahead as they climbed the granite steps of the building, and kept her mind focused on having Mum home again.

Inside, Susan found herself in a huge rotunda with marbled walls and a marble staircase winding up to a landing above. At a massive desk in the middle of the rotunda sat a very large officer with a very sour look on his face.

Every ounce of courage drained from Susan's body. For an instant she feared she could never approach that desk, but she made herself think of Alice Paul's words—
rely on yourself—
and her courage returned. She told the officer what she wanted.

He looked at his ledger. “Ain't no one by that name in this jail,” he said.

“No, but there is,” Susan insisted. “She's my mother. I know she's here. Rose O'Neal.”

“What? You think I can't read? This is my roster, and there ain't no Rose O'Neal on it,” he growled.

“Could you check one more time?” asked Russell. “Maybe you missed her name.”

“Look! I don't need a couple of kids telling me my business. Beat it. I got work to do.”

Susan's brain froze. She couldn't think. She could hardly move.
Where in the name of heaven was Mum?
It was all she could do to go back down the granite steps. On the last step she collapsed. She felt like crying, but she wouldn't dare give in to the urge—not in front of Russell. He sat down beside her and put his hand on her knee. He didn't say anything, just pushed around some pebbles with the toe of his shoe. After a long time, he spoke. “Are you sure it was your mum Bea was talking about?”

“Yes, I'm sure. It had to be.” Susan could no longer hold back the tears. One slid down her cheek and dropped onto her knee beside Russell's hand. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Susan. She swiped her cheek with it. “Mum can't just have disappeared into thin air. She
has
to be somewhere, doesn't she?”

“Of course she does, Sue. I suppose there
are
other jails in this city, but it seems like they'd have brought the suffragists here, don't you think?”

Susan didn't answer. Her heart had nearly stopped at her own words. People
did
disappear into thin air—in this city they did. Like the dockworkers Dad knew who had angered Lester Barrow.

Lester Barrow!

Suddenly the blood pounded through Susan's head and rammed against her skull. Mum, arrested as a suffragist … She would have done anything to keep people like Lester Barrow and Mr. Riley from finding out. She would have tried to hide her arrest any way she could, wouldn't she? Now Susan was sure she knew what had happened. Her words tumbled one over the other as she explained to Russell: Mum had given a false name when she was arrested!

“Maybe that's it, Susan. But what name would she have used?” Russell asked. “Her maiden name?”

Susan shook her head. “Mum's family was German—Protestant, you know. They disowned her when she married Dad. She won't even talk about them. Besides, with the war in Europe now, nobody likes Germans. She'd have given the jailer her own name before she called herself ‘Rosa Ullman.'”

“Then what name would she have used?” Russell asked.

Susan could think of only one possibility—“Lillian,” the name Mum had dreamed of using for her vaudeville career. She explained to Russell.

“Just ‘Lillian.' No last name?”

“I don't know what last name she would've used. She always just said ‘Lillian'.”

“We're supposed to bail out every Lillian listed on the jailhouse roster?”

“Doesn't look like we have any other choice.”

Russell's jaw worked back and forth. After a long silence, he admitted that Susan was right. “I guess it's back inside then?”

“I guess so,” said Susan.

The officer grimaced when he saw them. “I thought I told you two your ma wasn't here.”