Sisters (17 page)

"I didn't understand."

"Well, you know now,
so just get on outta here. Jesus, just go on."

Sophie took a deep breath.
"Baby, I came out here because of what you said yesterday. I had
to know about what you said."

Baby looked at her, seeming
not to understand.

"You said Helen told
you about what James had done to her."

Baby threw her head back
and laughed. It was a high, discordant sound. "You mean that's
what all this happened for? If that don't top all. Jesus, if that
don't top everything." She looked at Sophie. "So you wanta
know what James done, huh? Mr. Fancypants James? Well, I'll tell you
what it was. What he done is, he raped her." She threw her head
back and laughed again, loosing peal after peal of hysterical
laughter to ring wildly out across the prairie.

Sophie looked at Baby's
round mouth, her rigid body, and she felt a wave of horror pass over
her, like wind over wet skin. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than
to be away from this place. She ran to the buggy, got in, and turned
the horse toward Cheyenne. It wasn't until she had crossed the creek
that she looked back. Baby was still standing outside the cabin, a
spot of red against the brown earth.

*

Sophie scrubbed furiously.
She felt dirty from Wilson's touch, unclean, and sitting in the tub
at the Stevenson home, she rubbed her face, her neck, her arms with a
soap-covered cloth until they began to feel raw. Then she lay back,
let the warm water ease her aching muscles, and thought about what
Baby had said. It could be true. It didn't even make sense. James and
Helen had been married, man and wife--unless of course Baby was
talking about something that happened before they were married. But
that didn't make sense either. It wasn't the way James was. She
thought of the night before, remembered how he had sat apart from her
in the library, waiting for her, wanting to be sure. Rape Helen?
James? It wasn't possible. Oh, he had a quick temper. She'd seen him
take the buggy whip to Wilson. But that was quite a different thing.
Yes, different entirely. As she thought of Wilson again, she found
herself wishing she had a whip and that awful, dreadful man were in
front of her.

As she dried herself,
Sophie thought of Amy Travers. Yesterday Miss Travers had said Baby
was uninformed about Helen's personal life. She'd said Baby was lying
to claim otherwise. Sophie should talk to the schoolteacher, tell her
about the rape story. And of course Miss Travers would say it wasn't
true. And she would know, if anything like that had happened, Miss
Travers would have been the one Helen told.

When she had dressed, she
found out from Mrs. Syms where Amy Travers lived and asked the
housekeeper to have the phaeton hitched up for her. Then she drove to
the address Mrs. Syms had given her. She stood on the porch of the
modest white cottage on House Street and knocked, but there was no
answer. Nor was there any movement from inside. The house was empty,
Sophie decided, but nevertheless she knocked again. Still there was
no answer.

She looked at her watch. It
was shortly before three. And then she remembered the temperance
meeting Miss Travers had invited her to. That's probably where the
schoolteacher was.

*

Sophie entered the
Presbyterian Church on Eighteenth Street and heard the rise and fall
of voices. Standing in the vestibule looking into the sanctuary, she
saw approximately twenty-five women seated in opera chairs facing the
altar. Amy Travers was standing in front, and Sophie realized the
meeting was about to begin. She would have to wait to talk to Miss
Travers, so she slipped into a chair near the back of the gathering.

As she arranged her skirts,
she became aware that the women next to her was looking at her. A
neatly dressed, brown-haired woman, she smiled a lovely smile when
Sophie glanced over. "Mrs. Dymond, let me introduce myself. I'm
Lydia Swerdlow. I'd been hoping for a chance to meet you."

Sophie liked her
immediately, partly for her confident handshake and direct gaze, and
partly for the way she'd introduced herself. It was so pleasant to
meet someone who didn't feel constrained either to pretend she'd
never heard of Sophie Dymond or to go on and on about what fine
publications the Illustrated News and the Ladies' Magazine were.

"This is Alice
Lassawell," Lydia said, indicating a frail-looking woman on her
other side. "Allie, this is Sophie Dymond."

Alice Lassawell murmured a
greeting, and then: "We loved your sister so much."

"We've been lost
without her," Lydia said. "She was such a leader. I've
never seen anyone who could inspire such trust and devotion."

"People just opened up
to her," Alice added, "perhaps because she was so open and
loving with them."

The adjectives puzzled
Sophie. They didn't sound at all like the Helen she had known. But
before she had time to think about it, the women all stood and began
to recite something that sounded like a cross between the Apostles'
Creed and a temperance pledge. Sophie stood with them and surveyed
the group. Anna May Bellavance was near the front. The tiny woman who
had been so upset in the ladies' dressing room at the Cheyenne
Club--Cleantha, that was her name--was standing next to Anna May.
Then Sophie's glance happened to fall on the women she had just met,
and he saw with surprise that Lydia Swerdlow was supporting Alice
Lassawell. What was wrong with Alice? She was so pale. Was she about
to faint? But the expressions on both Alice's and Lydia's faces
indicated nothing unusual was happening.

"We believe that God
created both men and women in his own image," the women were
reciting, "and therefore, we believe in one standard of purity
for both men and women." As Sophie looked around the room, she
was surprised at the fierce pride she saw in face after face, and the
voices weren't merely mouthing words, they carried special
conviction. The pledge the women were reciting was about the equality
of male and female, but feeling behind it, Sophie realized, was of
female superiority. The women weren't talking about agreeing with men
on some common standard of purity; they were talking about lifting
the benighted male up until he met the female standard.

The women took their seats,
and up front Amy Travers called for order. "Ladies! Ladies! I'd
like to begin today by honoring one of our members for her special
efforts."

Sophie groaned inwardly as
she realized this was one of those meetings meant to entertain and
inspire rather than accomplish anything. She'd seen such gatherings
go on for hours, and she was starting to think how she could slip
away and come back later when she saw that Alice Lassawell was
struggling to her feet. She was the one being honored, and Lydia
helped her to the aisle. She made her way slowly forward, clutching
onto the backs of chairs.

"Is she ill?"
Sophie asked.

"She's had ten
children," Lydia answered. "Not yet thirty, and ten babies.
Her womb has fallen, and what the doctors haven't put her through!
Pessaries, injections, manipulations."

Sophie shuddered, hoping
Lydia wouldn't go on, but fearing she would. "Female trouble"
wasn't one of those subjects women liked to pass over lightly. But
Alice's thank-you speech closed off the possibility of further
conversation. In a soft voice one had to strain to hear, she talked
about "social purity" and encouraged the women gathered to
participate in a petition drive of some kind. Then she was making her
way slowly, painfully back up the aisle.

As Miss Travers began to
introduce another speaker, Sophie decided there was no way she could
gracefully leave. But she'd been the victim of circumstances like
this before, and she'd learned the trick of looking attentive while
her thoughts were elsewhere. She could use this time to plan a
strategy for approaching Amy Travers with Baby's accusation. Of
course Miss Travers would deny it had happened, but Sophie wanted her
to go on and say what was true. Miss Travers knew things she wasn't
telling, and Sophie was determined...

"The crimes being
committed against women are unspeakable!" The words were loud
and fervent. The speaker was Cleantha, the small woman from the
Cheyenne Club. "The saloons are turning savages loose upon the
women of this land! They lay defiled hands upon us, insult us in the
most horrifying manner, breathe their rancid breath out upon us. And
what right have they? What right?"

Sophie was startled at the
woman's loud passion, startled that this was happening here, in a
Presbyterian church, in the midst of all these polite gentlewomen.

"We are as fully human
as they," Cleantha continued. "More so, for we have not
brutalized our minds with strong drink. We have not brutalized our
passions with alcohol. We are persons entitled to dignity and
respect, and yet they see us as mere instruments for their
satisfaction. And what right have they? What right?"

Sophie began to recognize
in the woman's words a familiar emotion. Yes, she thought, yes.
That's how I felt when Wilson put his hands on me, breathed on me. It
wasn't only fear, it was the affront, the insult I couldn't stand.

"Inflamed by liquor,"
Cleantha went on, "men turn upon the physically weaker sex, they
turn upon innocent women whose only crime is to have attracted their
glance--or to be joined to them by the sacred bond of marriage."

Sophie was brought up
short. This woman was talking about more than the kind of outrage
Wilson had attempted. She was talking about husbands and wives.

"They indulge
themselves selfishly, sensually, with no thought of the consequences
for us. For their own pleasure, they condemn us to early graves,
murdering us as surely as if they had knotted a cord around our
necks."

Sophie looked over at
Lydia. Her face showed no surprise as she watched and listened. When
Cleantha had finished and was taking her seat, Sophie leaned over to
Lydia. "Is this... usual?"

"I'd say so, yes."

"I... I thought the
WCTU was about temperance."

"It is, but it's all
connected. 'Intemperance and impurity are iniquity's Siamese twins.'
That's how Miss Willard puts it."

"But impurity--that's
outside marriage."

"Conjugal excess is
impurity!"

Sophie stared at her
blankly, unable to relate her words to the vehemence with which she
had spoken. Abstractions, abstractions, some part of Sophie's mind
kept repeating. How could words so far removed from reality arouse
such feeling?

"Don't you see?"
Lydia said. "These women used to think they had no right to
refuse their husbands. But they do, that's what Cleantha's saying.
Why should men make the decision when it's women who must suffer the
consequences? There's no pleasure in it for women. For them it's
simply submitting to the ungoverned male one more time, risking the
childbed one more time."

Sophie found it hard to
believe that the notions of a woman who seemed so bright, so
well-balanced, could be so rigidly fixed. She spoke impulsively.
"There are ways to prevent conception, of course."

Lydia raised her eyebrows.
"For some, perhaps, but not for us."

Sophie caught her meaning
immediately, indeed, had expected the words. She had often
encountered this idea that no respectable woman would use protective
devices. It seemed senseless to her, but it was, she knew, the way
most people believed. Sophie wondered: would she herself have felt
differently if her life had taken another path?

Lydia was watching her, and
Sophie sensed hostility in her gaze now. "We're wives and
mothers," Lydia said. "What is against nature has no place
in our lives. We would never do anything unnatural."

The words had an ironic
ring in Sophie's ear, since to her these women seemed caught in a
perversity. In her mind's eye she saw the lacquered box with its
sheaths and powders and sponges, devices which greatly eased the
female lot. How could these women condemn them?

She stood and bowed her
head for the closing prayer, fully aware that Lydia Swerdlow had
edged a step or two away from her, as if to avoid the contagion of
her ideas. When the prayer had ended, Sophie took a determinedly
cordial leave of both the women next to her. Then she went to wait
for Miss Travers.

Standing in the vestibule,
nodding to the departing ladies, she kept thinking of the
conversation she'd just had. These women had loved Helen, adored her,
seen her as an inspiration. She had shared their thoughts and
beliefs--and did that help explain what had happened between James
and Helen? It could be. It could very well be. The births, the
miscarriages, one after another--Helen's response had been to move
out of her own room, to be apart from James. And probably from time
to time he had... sought her out. Ah! She hated thinking about it,
but that probably was what had happened. As for Baby and what she'd
said--well, she was wrong, probably guessing at things and viewing
the relationship between men and women from a perspective so
different from Helen's, it was little wonder she had erred.

Still, Sophie wanted to
speak to Miss Travers, and she motioned to the schoolteacher when she
saw her. "Miss Travers? I need to see you for a moment. Is there
someplace where we could talk alone?"

"You came," Miss
Travers said. "I saw you sitting in the back, and I thought how
happy Helen would have been."

"Could we talk?
Somewhere alone?"

"Of course, of course,
as soon as everyone leaves." She took Sophie's arm and insisted
on introducing her to a few of the departing women. She singled out
for special attention a very tall older woman with iron-gray hair.
"Sophie, this is Esther Morris. She was one of the first women
in the territory to hold public office after we got the franchise.
She was justice of the peace up in South Pass City."