The Sister's Tale by Beth Powning (e reader for manga .txt) 📕

“We’ll catch the four o’clock train back to the city.” Carrie’s words tumbled over Lucy’s and she laughed, unwinding a red paisley scarf. “I know it’s awkward, too late for lunch, too early for tea. Never mind. We wanted to see all of you.”

Another knock came on the door. Carrie opened it. Her mother, Azuba, stood on the doorstep. Azuba’s hair was still dark and glossy, streaked with grey. She bore the brisk competence of a woman who cares for a husband’s hidden illness—Nathaniel suffered from dizzy spells, induced by a pirate’s bullet. She began speaking and removing her gloves as soon as she stepped over the doorsill.

“Darling.” She kissed Carrie, hugged Lucy, turned to take Josephine’s hands. “Nathaniel had to see the cooper about ordering apple barrels. I knew Carrie was coming here after her meeting, Josephine. Well, I decided to come up with Nathaniel. I wanted to hear about the meeting.” Her voice softened. She looked into Josephine’s eyes with an understanding that accepted its own limitations, allowing Josephine the singularity of grief.

“And I needed to see you, my dear.”

Maud flew down the stairs, thrilled to see her sister, cousin and aunt. The women trooped through the kitchen.

“Hello, Ellen, how’s…Flora, isn’t it?…How did you…when…so much snow…”

“Tea. Some cookies,” Josephine whispered to Ellen.

Flora stirred the coals, took split maple logs from the wood box and worked them into the stove. Ellen foraged in the cookie jar.

“Should have made…” she muttered.

Mothers and daughters—Josephine, Lucy and Maud, Azuba and Carrie—went down the hall and out to the turret room.

“It was a special meeting of the suffrage committee,” Carrie said. She spoke in a firm, declamatory voice, accustomed to teaching. She laid out a petition on the round, carpet-covered table, smoothed it with the palm of her hand. “They are going to expand their mandate to include social issues of concern to women, not only the problems of alcohol. They’ve agreed to endorse our petition demanding universal suffrage. The WCTU has great influence over both men and women. Their endorsement will carry weight.”

In the front half of the parlour, Mr. Sprague and Miss Harvey were playing checkers. Mrs. Beaman observed, making wry clucks at moves whose consequences she could foresee.

Josephine listened as the women embarked on a lively discussion, so absorbed by the content of what they had to say that they did not notice her silence, nor bother with etiquette—dashing away statements with the back of a hand, interrupting, correcting or contradicting without apology.

“…federal Franchise Act? Yes, it does, truly. It explicitly excludes all women, most status Indians, and all Asians.”

“Only white men merit full citizenship?” Maud was hesitant, taking her lead from Lucy’s excitement. She glanced at her mother.

Lucy set down her teacup. “Well, of course. If we vote, it could lead to a decline in the birthrate. Didn’t you know this? No, really, I read this in the paper. The vote would ‘unsex’ and degrade us, it would ruin ‘domestic harmony’ and therefore lead to a decline in the birthrate. Does it not make your blood boil?”

“The States are ahead of us,” Carrie said. “Wyoming and Utah territories granted suffrage to women in sixty-nine and seventy.”

“Well, but we have Emily Stowe. Without her, the University of Toronto would never have opened their medical school to women. Now she is working for better factory and health laws.”

Azuba looked up from a calm perusal of the petition. “What does Premier Blair think?”

Lucy rushed to answer. “He argued for the enfranchisement of spinsters and widows, didn’t he, Cousin Carrie? But his bill was quashed by the legislative council.”

A silence fell. Josephine felt a rush of anger towards the unknown men. She knew none of this. She had not attended any of Carrie’s meetings.

“They do not reckon on our independence,” Carrie said, pointing a finger as if at Premier Blair. “They have no idea what is coming. Look at Emily Stowe. A woman doctor. Look what will happen when we have women lawyers. We will make a Married Women’s Property Act…”

She looked intently at Josephine, raised her voice.

“…that is not liable to a man’s interpretation.”

Lucy’s cheeks were flushed; she pressed hand to heart as if to slow its beat. “And then, once we have a proper property act, perhaps Maudie and I will get married. And provide you with grandchildren, Mother. Otherwise, there’s really no point, is there. In marrying and giving away our freedom.”

Azuba glanced up sharply. She flicked her eyes between Lucy and Josephine. Carrie pulled the petition across the table, perused what she knew by heart.

No marriage for my girls? No happy companionship with a man, no babies, no grandchildren? Josephine realized, suddenly, the extent to which the girls had been influenced by Simeon’s death. They could see what happened to a woman upon marriage, everything—belongings, beloved home, sense of self—invalidated upon a husband’s death.

She gazed at the women’s hands variously arranged on the carpeted table—loose, folded—and imagined a future in which Lucy might become a lawyer, Maud, a doctor. No matter if they had husbands or not. She envisioned her daughters, coming home to visit. Vigorous, intense. Telling of their work, their happiness. She felt a shift inside herself, like a room pierced by sunlight after days of cloud.

“Do you want us to sign this petition, Carrie?” she asked.

Carrie looked up at the clock. Squat, on the mantelpiece, with a hand-painted scene of a Dutch windmill. Delicate hands touching three-thirty.

“Yes, of course.”

Lucy ran for a pen. Maud slid the chess board beneath the petition.

Josephine angled the paper and signed it in black ink, her signature firm.

Josephine Linden Galloway.

Not Mrs. Simeon Galloway.

Click of a checker piece. Jump, jump, jump. Mr. Sprague’s exclamation of disgust.

—

Lucy sat at the foot of Maud’s bed and looked around the narrow space. Deal floorboards, uncarpeted. Clothes draped on hooks. Faded wallpaper, curling from the plaster above the door. One small window.

The house in which she had grown up was now a boarding establishment.

“Was this Margaret’s room?”

“Mary’s, I think. Mother is