The Gilded Years (4 page)

“We do excel in the social arts, especially my mother. You should meet her; she measures the distance between teacups with long mahogany rulers and likes there to be fireworks for every occasion. Recover from the common cold? Fireworks. Home before the rain? Fireworks. You’ll see. Now go sing, and meet me in the J Parlor for the meeting. And beware, Father says I win every argument because I can talk past the limit of most human vocal chords.”

“I should be thrilled to hear it. I’ll see you there at four o’clock,” said Anita, back on the dusty path to Main.

After choir, Belle walked Anita to the debating society meeting and headed alone to the library. Anita promised to come and read Greek with her afterward and opened the door to the ornate, gold silk-lined parlor, one of her favorite rooms on campus, saying hello to two sophomores. Lottie was already present and waved her in. Anita sat down next to her and they greeted the other girls they knew.

“I hear you’re rooming with Lottie Taylor,” whispered Gratia Clough, a girl who had been in debating since freshman year. Anita shot Lottie a glance, but she was deep in conversation with her back to the pair. “You’re the lucky
one. You’ll get to stay at her house in New York. I heard it’s magnificent. Dora Fairchild used to make the trip down with her. She even spent Christmas there sophomore year as she didn’t want to travel home to Georgia. You’ll tell me all about it when you go, promise?”

“I promise,” Anita whispered, already savoring the prospect.

Medora Higgins, the newly appointed debating president, stood up, called for silence, and launched into a recollection of the outstanding debates conducted by last year’s seniors. Lottie leaned over and pulled Anita’s ear.

“Do you bicycle?” she whispered. She offered her a shortbread biscuit, but Anita shook her head no and watched Lottie insert the entire thing in her mouth.

“Hardly,” Anita whispered back.

“Oh, no. We have to change that at once. You’ll adore flying on two wheels. I’m wonderful at it now, though I was miserable for my first few rides. I fell flat on my face and nearly broke a tooth. Tricycling was the thing here in the eighties, but now, I assure you, it’s bicycling. Mastering it is a bit like the French tongue, painful at first but then you’re off and it’s
une très belle vie.
I’ll teach you. I have a bicycle here already; it’s an Orient bicycle from the Waltham Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts. The very best. It weighs a mere twenty-two pounds, has a pneumatic saddle and a very effective dress guard. I’ll have Father send me another, then we can ride to the farm. Do you have a bicycling costume?”

She looked at Anita’s blank face.

“Of course you don’t. Why would you if you don’t have a bicycle? I daresay it’s almost as fun as an automobile. I did that this summer, too.”

“Really? You were in a horseless carriage?” Anita whispered. Hearing that, Gratia leaned over to listen, too, as
Lottie was the only person either of them knew who had even ridden in an automobile.

“Oh, yes, one day they’ll be everywhere. That’s obvious. My father loves modern contraptions, so we took the train up to Michigan to view one. They’re very impressive, but I’m quite convinced they’ll explode past a certain speed and then there goes your new motoring outfit, and perhaps your head. For now, it’s all about bicycling, ladies. I’ll bring several more to school. The ones from Orient or Keating, in New York, are only one hundred dollars. We have to go on many rides before the cold settles in, because after that it’s just skating. But it doesn’t feel like that’s going to be anytime soon, does it? It’s absolutely sweltering in here. I swear old President Taylor has the building heated already. He’ll fry us into working.”

“Lottie Taylor,” said Medora, stopping her speech.

“I’m sorry, Medora,” said Lottie, pursing her lips. “I did so want to make a good impression during our first meeting, but there is just so much to say on the subject of debate. It impassions me. I couldn’t hold my tongue.”

“I’m happy you’re so enthused about joining us this year,” said Medora. “Since you’re clearly the most passionate person in the room, why don’t you and Anita Hemmings share the first debate? You can have something prepared by Friday, can’t you?”

Lottie glanced at Anita apologetically. “Of course, Friday, though Anita does have an awful lot of singing to do between now and then. The school’s most talented soprano. We don’t want to put too much on her dance card at once.”

“I’m sure Anita can handle it all,” said Medora, looking haughtily her way.

“It’s no trouble, Medora,” she replied. In truth, Anita rather shied from debate. The prospect of taking part in the
year’s first debate terrified her, but it was much in vogue on campus, so she had debated for all three years, even if it meant heart palpitations and locked knees when she stood behind the podium.

“What topic would you like us to fight like savages over?” asked Lottie.

“Plessy versus Ferguson,”
said Medora, returning Lottie’s smile.

“Delightful,” said Lottie. “I’ll take Plessy, and Anita can argue Ferguson.” Anita nodded, then turned toward the wall of wide glass windows that overlooked the walkway to the Lodge, letting the sun create spots in her vision.

Plessy v Ferguson:
the Supreme Court case over separation versus equality between races. Anita remembered the man’s face. Plessy. Homer Plessy. A shoemaker from New Orleans. Pale-skinned, yet Negro. Guilty, but only because he admitted his crime. And made an example of, forever.

With Plessy’s image burning in her mind, Anita’s anxiety began to mount. At Vassar and well before, she had always acted with deliberate decorum—reining in her words, declining to speak out, repressing herself. But could she now? She tried to blink away the image of the man’s face, but it stayed with her, a line drawing that had been printed again and again in the
Boston Daily Globe
. Anita had survived lengthy discussions of the trial in class, endless talks about justice since the Civil War, but no one had forced her onstage to speak alone on the matter. No one had compelled her to take one side instead of another.

She could not protest. So she sat, nodded again, and went through the motions she had perfected through so many years of practice. And inside her thin shirtwaist, her heartbeat took off like a deer in the woods.

“Is that topic even worth a debate?” said a voice suddenly.
It came from directly behind Anita. The roommates both turned to see Sarah Douglas, a senior from North Pleasureville, Kentucky, and president of the school’s Southern Club. “This is Vassar, not an abolitionist meeting. Shouldn’t we debate something more relevant?”

Medora, who was from Ticonderoga, New York, merely smiled politely and said: “It was the most-talked-about Supreme Court case of the year, Sarah. I think that makes it important enough to debate here, don’t you agree? This is an esteemed debating club, not the school’s floral society, am I correct?”

Sarah shrugged, and because Medora was the president, which meant she was going to win that or any other argument, the topic turned to which other issues of the day were worthy of dialogue.

For the last half hour of the meeting, Anita sat as if someone had nailed her to her chair and taped her mouth shut. She was afraid of what she would do or say, so she said nothing. She was still sitting there rigidly when Lottie alerted her that the meeting had been adjourned. They stood up together, said goodbye to the other girls, and headed down the wide hallway. It was then that Anita realized that from the nape of her neck to the back of her knees, she was covered in a slip of sweat.

“Can you believe Sarah Douglas speaking out at the meeting the way she did?” said Lottie, when they were a few yards from the parlor. “I know I uttered a few words out of turn, too, but I’m much more agreeable than she is and no one seemed to mind when I did. But then Sarah had to carry on with that nonsense. I do not care for her jejune opinions, not one bit. And she’s very set in her ways, that one. Her grandfather was one of the wealthiest slave owners in South Carolina before the war. Rumor has it they owned two hundred
slaves, can you imagine? But the war hit them hard, as did the hurricanes in ’93, and the family moved to Kentucky. Brought their belief system up with them, too. I’m surprised her parents let her come up here at all. The wicked North. She rooms with Alice Sawyer from Jacksonville.”

“Oh, Alice,” said Anita, thinking of the quiet brunette with the beautiful dresses who had sat next to her in French class the year before. “She’s a lovely girl.”

“Lovely!” said Lottie. “Maybe if you’re Bloody Bill Anderson she’s lovely. She’s the one who told the story about the Negro children being used for alligator bait down in Florida. She swears up and down that it happens. Calls them pickaninnies when she tells the story. She said the mothers are given two dollars and their children may or may not come back alive after being tossed in a swamp to lure the animals. Something about their black skin that attracts them, she said. Tourists are captivated by it.”

“That cannot be true,” said Anita, horrified.

“It is Florida,” said Lottie, with big eyes. “Who knows what happens in that uncivilized swamp country. But of course, she loves boring old mouse-faced Sarah Douglas. Five girls from the South in our year, and two are rooming together. Certainly not a coincidence. Sarah’s father even fought in the war, under P. G. T. Beauregard, defending Charleston in ’63. I suppose he did a decent job, as the city is still standing. But don’t get her talking about all of that because she will never cease. She speaks about her father like he’s the unacknowledged fourth member of the Holy Trinity.”

Lottie pulled another shortbread biscuit out of her bag and popped it in her mouth. Like an animal hunting its prey, she required constant refueling and was forever grazing on delicacies her mother sent up from New York. “Was she in the club last year?” she asked, her mouth full.

“Yes, but she didn’t attend many meetings,” said Anita, thinking back.

“I hope the same can be said for this year. I find her very tiresome.”

“Did your father fight in the war?” Anita asked, just the slightest hesitation catching in her voice.

“No. He was too young, I suppose. But I assume he would have if he were older. For the Union. Like I said, Pittsburgh. Did yours?”

“No. For the same reason. He was eighteen when the war broke out, and I suppose he felt too young.”

“And what does your father do now?” asked Lottie, pausing between snacks. “He’s a lawyer of sorts?”

“That’s right,” Anita said, spinning the line she had first used freshman year. “He’s a lawyer in Boston.”

“No wonder you’re so intelligent,” said Lottie, sighing. She had been put on academic probation her freshman year and still showed signs of the shock. “Though I still plan on beating you flat in that debate. I excel under bright lights. Even if they are powered by gas.” She rolled her eyes and took Anita by the arm. “I knew we’d get along, Anita Hemmings. I think I’m glad Dora decided to stay in Europe, after all. It’s nice to have a change for our final year, don’t you think?”

“I do,” Anita replied honestly. Unfortunately for Lottie, Anita couldn’t let her best her in the debate. Not on this topic, and certainly not in front of Sarah Douglas.

For the next four days, Anita ignored her studies of the artistry of the Virgilian hexameter for Professor Macurdy’s Greek class. She also put aside her physics, Latin, French, and ethics. She attended choir practice, sang with the Glee Club, went to nightly chapel exercises, took her meals, and did the mandatory physical exercises in Alumnae Gymnasium, but otherwise, she slept, ate, and studied
Plessy v Ferguson.

As she pored over the case documents from the past spring in the J Parlor after dinner on Thursday, Medora walked by her table, leaned over, and turned down her burner, which she had cleverly rigged to increase the stream of gas.

“As seriously as I take it, the Federal Debating Society is not worth the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, is it, Anita?”

Anita looked up at Medora standing above her, and turned the gas a pinch lower. “I suppose not. I just want to do a respectable job in the opening debate for the year. Set a precedent for excellence. That’s what Lottie said we should do, and I agree.”

“I suppose rooming with Lottie Taylor does mean a lot of ‘that’s what Lottie said we should do,’ ” said Medora. “Between us, I heard that Dora did fall for London during her tour this summer, but that another reason she stayed was that she wanted to return to school and not live under Lottie Taylor’s nimble little thumb. She intends to reenter Vassar next fall.”

“Is that so?” Anita asked, thinking that Dora had seemed happy during her first three years at the college.

“That’s what they say,” said Medora, motioning to the other girls in the parlor. Medora prided herself on being the sort of college girl who refused to gossip, unless it was for the right cause. “I don’t know how much I believe,” she added. “People delight in gossiping about the seniors, and if you’re going to pick one to whisper about, I suppose you would pick Lottie Taylor as she’s the richest—and loudest—girl in school. If we go on as we do about Lottie, imagine what it was like for Bessie Rockefeller or the Japanese princess. A tunnel of never-ending hearsay, I imagine.”

Imagining life for a Rockefeller or royalty was not something Anita was in a position to do.

“You’ll do well, Anita,” said Medora, looking down at the papers on the desk. “You always do. Though I must say Lottie did you a favor choosing
Plessy
. The court went Ferguson, and I imagine our girls will, too. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said as she left to study elsewhere.

Anita returned to her notes. As the affirmative speaker, she had to open the debate. She was terrified her voice would quaver, that her conviction would come off as fabricated, and that with one short sentence, everyone would know. They would know everything. She pushed her fear to the far-off recesses of her mind and looked down at her writing table, drumming her fingers quietly to calm down. A moment later, Belle Tiffany came into the room and placed a hand on Anita’s shoulder, causing her to shudder in surprise.