Though Waters Roar (2 page)
“Wait! Harriet . . . what . . . you can’t come along!”
I didn’t argue or weep. I simply looked up at him, eye to eye, jutting out my chin a little. That’s how I faced Tommy O’Reilly whenever he tried to bully me at school—I would stare silently back at him, arms crossed, my foot aimed at his shin. The stare I gave Father wasn’t quite as defiant as the one I used on Tommy, but it had the same effect.
“Oh, bother it all, Harriet! I suppose you’re already here . . .” Father turned his attention back to the car as it sputtered and nearly died.
“It needs more throttle,” I said, pulling out the lever. “Advance the spark a little.”
“But you aren’t coming inside, Harriet. I mean it. Jail isn’t the sort of place . . . and your grandmother has no business . . .”
I nodded dutifully—and followed him inside the police station just the same. Father went straight in to see the constable, Thomas O’Reilly, Sr. He told us that Grandma Bebe had been arrested after trying to close down a saloon last night. Most of the other members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union had gone home peacefully once the police arrived to break up the protest, but not Grandma. She had refused to give up the fight against the evils of Demon Rum.
“And I’m afraid we had to confiscate her axe,” he finished.
Father nodded and paid her fine. In no time at all, Grandma Bebe was liberated from jail. We heard her shouting all the way down the hall as a policeman tried to lead her out of the cell.
“No, wait! Unhand me this instant! I’m not ready to leave! This jail is filled with drunkards—the very people I’m trying to rescue.”
Constable O’Reilly rolled his eyes. “It’s been a very long night, John. Get her out of here. Please.”
“Did you know,” Grandma continued as the police handed back her purse and coat, “that there is one saloon for every three hundred people in this country? There are more saloons than there are schools, libraries, hospitals, theaters, or parks—and certainly more saloons than churches.”
We drove Grandma home.
Like the brave soldiers who had gone to war forty-five years earlier to battle the evils of slavery, my grandmother was willing to sacrifice her own liberty, if necessary, to set men free from slavery to alcohol. And that was the ultimate irony, I thought, as I lay on the lumpy jail cot pondering my own arrest and imprisonment. You see, Grandma Bebe had recently won the war against Demon Rum. The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States’ Constitution had become law a few months ago on January 29, 1920, making the manufacture, sale, and transportation of all alcoholiCbeverages strictly prohibited.
And I was in jail for defying it.
Yes, I found my situation very ironic. There would be no tears of sympathy for me from Mother or Alice—much less Grandma Bebe. And Father would undoubtedly say, “You made your bed, Harriet, and now you’ll have to lie in it.”
So how did I end up becoming a criminal? I’ve been pondering that question all night. Perhaps the best way to search for an answer is to start at the very beginning.
My grandmother was young, once, and not altogether sure of herself. I find this unbelievable, knowing the woman she has become, but she has sworn that it’s true and my grandmother doesn’t lie. “Any assuredness that I now possess, Harriet, has been acquired out of necessity,” she insisted. “I was born with no degree of confidence whatsoever. In fact, quite the opposite is true.”
She was born in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania on her parents’ farm, nestled in a valley in the Pocono Mountains. Beatrice Aurelia Monroe arrived on the same day, month, and year that the first Women’s Rights Convention was held: July 19, 1848. Of course she was too young on the day of her birth to realize what a portentous coincidence this was, but she would later declare her birthday a sign from Providence.
While Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and the rest of that august group of women were signing “The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” in Seneca Falls, New York, and firing the first shot in the battle for women’s rights, Great Grandma Hannah Monroe was also doing battle as she labored to give birth to Grandma Bebe—who had the audacity to come out backward. Bebe was destined to do everything in life unconventionally, so arriving feet-first was only the beginning. She also had the audacity to be a girl. Her father, Henry Monroe, had directed his wife to produce a boy—which seems a bit selfish to me, seeing as he already had four sons: James, age nine, William, seven, Joseph, five, and Franklin, who was three.
“What do you mean he’s a girl?” an indignant Henry asked the midwife when she told him the news. He stomped into the bedroom in his work boots and peeked into the baby’s diaper, convinced that the midwife had missed an important detail. When it was obvious that she hadn’t, he handed the howling bundle back to his wife. “This was supposed to be a boy, Hannah. A man can never have too many sons to help him out.”
“I know, my dear,” she said gently, “but the Good Lord has seen fit to bless us with a girl this time.”
Perhaps the Good Lord realized that Hannah also could use some help around the farm, feeding and clothing her strapping husband and four growing sons. That’s how Hannah chose to view her little daughter—as God’s good gift. She gazed down at the baby and smiled as Henry tromped out of the room. “Don’t mind him, my little one. He always gets testy when his dinner is late.”
Dinner was late that day on account of Beatrice coming out backward and taking more time to arrive than she should have. But Hannah was a devout Christian woman, and as soon as the midwife spread the news of the baby’s arrival throughout the little farming community of New Canaan, Pennsylvania, the other church women quickly drove out to share portions of their own dinners with Hannah’s disgruntled husband and four hungry sons. Of course the pantry was filled with the provisions that Hannah had prepared for her time of confinement, but Henry and the boys were incapable of crossing into such feminine territory as the pantry to forage for their own food. They were even less capable of reheating any of it on the stove.
Once Henry’s belly was filled, his attitude toward his new daughter did seem to soften, slightly. “I suppose we can learn to make the best of it,” he grumbled as he removed his boots at the end of the day and climbed into bed beside his wife. “There’s always next time.”
Hannah swallowed a rash reply at the mention of “next time,” the memory of her harrowing breech labor still fresh in her mind. She whispered a swift, silent prayer to the Almighty, instead. Then she rested her hand on her husband’s arm and said, “She’s a beautiful, healthy baby—thanks be to God. I would like to christen her Beatrice, if it’s all the same to you. Beatrice Aurelia Monroe.”
Henry didn’t reply to Hannah’s request until after she’d finished cooking his breakfast the next morning and had set it on the table in front of him. He crunched into a piece of bacon and said, “That name would be acceptable, I suppose.”
Hannah had learned patience during her ten years of marriage. She hadn’t expected a reply any sooner than noon. Henry required a sufficient amount of time to pray about such matters and didn’t like to be rushed. Three-year-old Franklin, who couldn’t pronounce “Beatrice,” shortened the baby’s name to Bebe. The name stuck, and my sister and I still call her Grandma Bebe seventy-two years later.
The first few years of Grandma’s life passed uneventfully, by her account. She grew to be a quiet, nervous child, which was understandable since everyone else on the farm was bigger and louder and stronger than she was. With four older brothers to dodge— along with a team of horses, a pair of oxen, and a herd of milk cows—at times it felt as though there were a conspiracy to trample poor Bebe underfoot. The first useful phrase she comprehended as a toddler was, “Get out of the way, Bebe!”
“I was a skittish child,” she told me, “perhaps because I spent a great deal of time skittering out of danger. And so shy! I would cry at the drop of a hat—and there were plenty of hats to drop, not to mention hoes and hay bales, wheels and winches, boots, buckets, and butcher blocks.”
I tried to imagine growing up in a home that had butcher blocks dropping from above, and I cringed involuntarily. When I questioned Grandma about it, she laughed and said, “Don’t ask, Harriet! The butcher-block incident was my brother William’s doing. He was always into some sort of mischief, risking life and limb. That’s why it surprised all of us when it was Joseph who lost his life and Franklin who lost a limb. Of course those tragedies happened
years
after the butcher-block episode, but we all remembered it.”
Grandma Bebe never did tell a story in a straight line. In order to make any sense of her life, I’ve had to piece together all of her astounding statements as if working a huge jigsaw puzzle. But I happen to have a lot of spare time as I languish in this jail cell, and her peculiar stories are beginning to make sense to me as I endeavor to figure out how I got here—and what to do about it.
Bebe’s brothers were wild, uninhibited boys who took great delight in risking their lives each day in newer and more creative ways. One summer they tied a rope from a branch of the tall oak tree that stood near the river on the edge of their farm. They drilled a hole through an old plank and threaded the fraying rope through the center of it, knotting it beneath the plank to form a seat. Bebe watched from a safe distance as they took turns swinging wildly from it, pumping higher and higher, sometimes falling off and skinning their knees, adding more lumps to their knobby heads. She wondered what it would feel like to fly freely through the air on that swing, the blue sky above her, the wind in her hair. But even though she longed to try it, fear always stopped her.
One day when it was hot enough to roast the chickens right on their roosts, William decided to sail out over the river on the swing and let go of the rope, splashing into the water some twelve feet below, oblivious to the unforgiving rocks. Rain had fallen for weeks that spring and the rushing river looked eager for a victim to drown. But when William bobbed safely to the surface, Bebe’s other brothers followed his example, leaping into the water as if eager to meet Jesus. Bebe watched from the side of the path, wary of the snakes that lived in the tall grass near the river. James and Joseph had once caught a thick, glossy black snake three feet long and had scared Bebe half to death with it as they whooped into the barnyard, dangling their prize from the tines of a pitchfork.
After the first five years of Grandma Bebe’s jittery life had passed, a momentous change occurred. Harriet Beecher Stowe had published her book
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly
in 1852, and when it made it’s way to New Canaan, the ladies from church passed around a well-worn copy of it. Hannah read it by lamplight in the farmhouse parlor and wept. Bebe had never seen her sturdy, devout mother cry before, and she quickly hurried over to comfort her.
“What’s wrong, Mama?”
“It’s this book I’m reading, Beatrice dear. It describes the daily lives of slaves in our country, and it’s simply horrifying. Imagine being
owned
by someone! Just think how horrible it would be to be considered someone’s property and thought of as inferior. Imagine having no life of your own, forced to do someone’s bidding day and night, body and soul, with no power and no voice.”
Hannah talked about the plight of the slaves continually for the next few months as she and Bebe kneaded bread and plucked chickens and scrubbed laundry. She spoke as they weeded the garden and peeled potatoes and mopped the floors and sewed new clothes for the family.
“I believe the Almighty is calling me to do something to help those poor, pitiful people,” Hannah decided one fall afternoon while rendering fat to make soap for her household. With her conscience as her guide, she gathered all of the other women who’d read the book and held a meeting in the village church. They decided to form a local Chapter of the Anti-Slavery Society. Henry sympathized with the cause after reading the book himself. He even allowed Hannah to hitch the team to the wagon if he wasn’t using it and drive into town for the society meetings. Bebe accompanied her mother, watching and listening.
At first the anti-slavery meetings resembled a Sunday church service with lots of praying and hymn singing. But then the women devised a plan, mapping out their battle lines and the course of action they would take. They wrote countless letters and sent innumerable petitions to the government officials in Washington. They raised money to help publish and distribute anti-slavery pamphlets. Hannah contributed to the cause by raising an extra dozen chickens and selling the eggs, along with any spare produce from her vegetable garden.
Every once in a while the Philadelphia Chapter of the Anti-Slavery Society would send a special speaker up to New Canaan to give a progress report. One orator told how the society was helping slaves escape, one by one, on an invisible “Underground Railroad.” With millions of men, women, and children still enslaved, it seemed to Bebe that it was going to take the society a very long time to reach their goal if the slaves had to escape one at a time.
Then one spring night Bebe awoke to a vicious thunderstorm. Terrified by the howling wind and blinding lightning, she ran downstairs to her parents’ bedroom and crawled into bed beside her mother, trembling from head to toe. “ ‘God is our refuge and strength,’ ” Hannah whispered to her, reciting her favorite psalm. “ ‘Therefore we will not fear . . . though the waters thereof roar and be troubled. . . .’ ”
Bebe thought the banging noise she heard was caused by the wind until her father said, “I think there’s someone at the door.”
He rose to answer it. Mama put on a dressing gown to follow him, and when a flash of lightning lit up the room, Bebe scrambled out of bed and ran after both of them, clinging to her mother’s leg.
“Come in, come in,” she heard her father say as he opened the heavy oak door. “It’s a terrible night to be out on the road.” Henry was as tall and sturdy as that massive door and not afraid of anything. He invited the dripping stranger into the house without a second thought.