Compromise with Sin Read online

  She sat as tall as she could. “I was just noting that we were all women . . . and that the great social reform movements have been led by women.” Shallow breaths threatened her composure. She forced her voice to remain strong, all the while fearing others could detect her feigned bravado. “That’s why we found your entrance amusing.”

  In spite of being knocked off center by Doc’s presence, Louise was determined to stay the course. “Now, it’s important that we all understand the problem before we devise a strategy for influencing the state legislature to mandate drops. I would advise taking careful notes.”

  All except Doc opened tablets and began writing. Louise was reminded he took pride in his “photographic memory.”

  “Jerrylynn,” she asked, “will you describe the impact of babies’ sore eyes on admissions to the asylum?”

  “It accounts for nearly one-third of our admissions. Usually the parents don’t know that gonorrhea caused the blindness, but we can tell by the appearance of the eyes.”

  Louise took a deep breath. The campaign had yet to begin, and already she would have to defend her reputation. “But there are other bacterial infections that can cause blindness and scar the eyes in a similar fashion.” Although she was looking at Jerrylynn, she could feel Doc’s eyes. “My daughter, Marie, for example, was blinded by the pneumococcus bacteria.”

  “Pneumococcus scars the eyes but rarely blinds an infant,” Jerrylynn said. “I suppose you’ve considered that leading this campaign will expose you to a public perception that Marie was blinded by gonorrhea. I hope you’re prepared to bear that burden.”

  “No, I’m not willing to bear that burden.” Louise avoided looking at Doc and wished she didn’t have to state the lie in the presence of the man she most wanted to acknowledge the truth about Marie’s blindness. Her eyelids fluttered as she spoke. “I intend to make it abundantly clear that my daughter was blinded by pneumococcus, that my interest in the campaign is that of a concerned mother who wants to prevent babies from being blinded regardless of the cause.”

  Doc spoke up, almost as though to rescue Louise. “Mrs. Knudsen, do you have statistics on the number of babies blinded by gonorrhea each year?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Jerrylynn said. “Last year we admitted seven children so afflicted, but most blind children remain at home. In some cases, there’s partial vision or just one eye is affected. A few babies actually die of the infection.”

  Madge frowned. “How can we arouse public support when so few children are affected? It pales compared to the number of children who die of consumption or get maimed falling into farm machinery.”

  “A valid question,” Doc said. “I think the answer is that babies’ sore eyes, unlike consumption and many farm accidents, can be easily eradicated and therefore should be.”

  Louise said, “There’s no question but what we have great obstacles to overcome—social taboos, prejudice, the cost of drops—”

  “And folks get their backs up when government sticks its nose in their business,” Bonita said. “Some people think laws are meant to be broken. Visiting nurses fight that every day. There’s folks that refuse to get their kids vaccinated and some that put their kids to work instead of sending them to school.”

  The campaign faced more obstacles than Louise had ever imagined. If her own core group had so many doubts, how could it succeed? “This is the place to express our concerns. What I would ask you to do is keep it in this room. Outside that door, we represent ourselves as indomitable champions of a noble cause, that because we are doing the right thing we shall not be deterred. Can we all agree to that?”

  The group murmured and nodded.

  “Now we have much to do,” Louise said. “In New York, the campaign showed a picture of children with the label ‘Needlessly Blind.’“

  “That reminds me.” Bonita fumbled in her handbag until she produced a worn photo which she handed to Louise. “My sister’s boy, Vinny.”

  Louise gasped. “I’ve seen this child! Baby Giveaway Saturday at Wilson’s Department Store.” She stared at the picture of a dark-skinned little boy with curly, black hair, about three years old, a Teddy bear dangling from one hand. He was barefoot and wore overalls. One eye was scarred like Marie’s, the other clouded. The picture captured a plea in the upward tilt of his head and vacant expression. “Where is he now?”

  “My mother took him and his sister after their mother died,” Bonita said. “His sister got adopted. Mother has a weak heart, has to take it easy. Keeping Vinny corralled was too much for her. So now he’s at the Asylum.”

  Alice became teary-eyed, the others solemn, as the picture went around the table. The campaign had a face.

  In the time left before the library would be open to patrons, the group discussed how they might respond to challenges and divided up responsibility for refining those responses to bring to the next meeting the following Saturday.

  Louise closed the meeting. “I would like to paraphrase Daniel Burnham, architect of the great World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His formidable task was to mobilize forces to build a veritable city in two years. He said, ‘Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.’ I say, Make magnificent plans; with their magic we shall soar over insurmountable obstacles.”

  As the meeting was breaking up and library patrons were arriving, Doc approached Louise. His manner was businesslike. “Have you given thought to how your campaign will be funded?”

  She made a study of placing papers in her satchel just so. While she might hide from his gaze, there was no hiding from his maple syrup fragrance and velvety smooth voice and the memories they stirred of feeling his touch on her neck and all that it promised. “I didn’t raise the issue today because in my experience talking about how to obtain resources too early in the discussion inhibits a group’s ability to create a vision.”

  “You are absolutely right. But I know of two companies that manufacture silver nitrate, and I suspect one of them would be most eager to support this cause as it will open up a new market. Shall I pursue it?”

  Louise wished she had thought of it. “By all means.”

  “I’ll attend to it immediately. Meanwhile when it comes to legislative process, I have connections in the Bureau of Hygiene who can help.”

  Louise said, “So do I.”

  As she walked home, Louise tried to make sense of the morning’s events. Thoughts careened in her head. The little boy from Baby Giveaway Saturday. The awkwardness of having to pretend that Marie was not blinded by gonorrhea, in front of Doc, no less. Doc swooping in without any warning, welcomed like a knight in shining armor. Could she work with him? Did she have a choice? Would anyone else have thought to solicit funding from silver nitrate manufacturers?

  With a well-heeled campaign she could pay to have tracts and letters printed. Postage, long distance telephone calls, travel—all would be within reach. She wanted to be hopeful. Instead . . .

  At the first Tuesday Bibliophiles’ meeting in July, following the book discussion, Gertrude served applesauce cake, smothered in buttery brown sugar frosting and black walnuts.

  Dovie licked her fingers. “Gertrude is on her church committee that’s trying to persuade Rev. Garnet Horton to bring his revival meeting to Riverbend. If he had a taste of this cake, he wouldn’t be able to resist.”

  Amid a chorus of approval, Gertrude had a satisfied look that relaxed her usual pinched expression. “Not next year─Garnet already has a full revival schedule─but the following year.”

  Louise decided there was no good time to make her announcement so she might as well get it out of the way. “Changing the subject, I haven’t been fair to you with my intermittent attendance and lack of preparation.”

  Seeming to know what Louise was about to say, Dovie gasped.

  Louise could not look at her friend. Her throat was closing around the finality of the words she was about to speak. Her voice quivered. “My duties with the Nebraska Committee to Save
Babies’ Sight have multiplied, and . . . I regret more than you can know that I must resign from the Tuesday Bibliophiles.”

  Alice cried and blew her nose. “Louise, you’ve been our rock.”

  Louise tried to lighten the moment. “Now don’t be crying, Alice, or you’ll bring on an asthma attack.”

  “We’ll all miss you,” Dovie said. “Maybe you can visit us from time to time.”

  “Thank you, Dovie. When I founded The Bibliophiles, I thought I never wanted it to end,” Louise said. “I feel that sentiment even stronger today. The friendships, the opportunity for self-improvement have made this one of the richest experiences of my life. But I have to respect the demands on my time. This is a very sad day for me.”

  The handkerchiefs came out amid hugs and promises of continued friendship and regular reunions.

  Dovie asked Louise to remain for a few minutes. After the others left, she placed a brown paper bag in Louise’s hands as though it were something very fragile. “I want you to have this. For your work.”

  Louise opened the bag and picked up one of the rubber-banded stacks of currency it held. “Dovie, your rainy day fund?”

  “Only part of it. I’d give anything to work on your Committee, Louise, but J.D.―”

  Louise embraced Dovie and made a silent promise that nothing could come between them.

  30

  August 1906

  August brought welcome rain that moved on just before the Chautauqua arrived. Again this year Louise would avoid the shows. The thought of some other girl taking the stage as the child elocutionist trapped Louise in a spiral of grief chasing guilt and guilt chasing grief that left her breathless and sobbing. This year she would leave town.

  With her energies focused on a trip that could result in a big boost for the babies’ sore eyes movement, she re-opened the suitcase on her bed to pack Marie’s Braille slate and stylus. What had set her on this journey was receiving The Ladies’ Home Journal and a letter from Miss Keller in the mail on the same day. Somehow a thought about the magazine’s crusade against venereal disease collided with the notion that readers could hardly get enough of Miss Keller, and from that collision came a “eureka” moment. What could be more influential than an essay on babies’ sore eyes by Helen Keller?

  Better not to risk a written rejection. In spite of her anxiety over traveling alone, Louise decided to go to Chicago where Miss Keller, with help from Anne Sullivan Macy, would be keynote speaker for the annual meeting of the Chicago Federation of Women’s Clubs. She telephoned the Palmer House and left a message that Mrs. Francis Morrissey would like to meet with Miss Keller.

  Louise was about to close her suitcase when she thought to pack Marie’s little doll Sunny for good luck, which she would need if her impromptu scheme was to work. Its boldness made her giddy.

  The ringing telephone interrupted.

  “I know you’re busy so I won’t keep you,” Dovie said. “But you remember Giovanna planned to retire from the Chautauqua tour? Well she’s here now, and Yonder isn’t with her.”

  “What happened?”

  “J.D. says she was using Yonder to make her old fiancé jealous, and it worked. She’s showing off a ruby engagement ring.”

  “Where is Yonder?” Please say he’s coming home.

  “That I don’t know. I’ll call you if I hear anything more.”

  Louise blamed the taxi driver’s surly manner on the heat wave that gripped Chicago. He wasn’t the only one in a foul mood. As the taxi approached the Palmer House, Louise saw placard-carrying protesters with signs that read “Unions Against Foreign Scabs” and “Foreigners Go Home.” Her concern about traveling as a woman alone was heightened when she got out of the taxi and encountered police with nightsticks shoving the men away from the hotel.

  She went to her room to freshen up, then unpacked the Braille slate and stylus and wrote a brief note which she carried to the ballroom where Miss Keller and Mrs. Macy sat with other dignitaries on the podium. Serenely beautiful, Miss Keller seemed so young—indeed, she was merely twenty-six. Wearing a navy blue suit and ostrich-plumed red hat, she looked as fashionable as any woman in the room.

  Louise asked a woman who was handing out programs to deliver the note. The woman looked from the note to Louise’s face, which she scrutinized. Louise gave her a congenial smile and only later realized the woman thought she was blind.

  When the note was delivered to Mrs. Macy, she looked at it and gave it to Miss Keller.

  Seeing Miss Keller’s fingertips glide across the page brought a lump to Louise’s throat as she remembered the last time she watched Marie doing her lessons.

  Miss Keller’s placid expression did not change. If she was glad to know of Louise’s presence, her face did not register it.

  When it was time for Miss Keller’s address, Mrs. Macy translated the speech urging women to join the cause of improving the lot of downtrodden workers whether they be American citizens or the despised class of new immigrants. Louise admired Miss Keller’s courage in speaking so forthrightly to an audience in which it was likely that a significant number of the upstanding women had husbands who were the very employers she railed against.

  Mrs. Macy translated: “Why is it that so many workers live in unspeakable misery? With their hands they have built great cities, and they cannot be sure of a roof over their heads. They have gone into the bowels of the earth for diamonds and gold, and they haggle for a loaf of bread. They plow and sow and fill our hands with flowers while their own hands are filled with dust.

  “So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me ‘archpriestess of the sightless,’ ‘wonder woman,’ and ‘a modern miracle.’ But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics—that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world—that is a different matter!”

  At the end of the program, women rushed to surround Miss Keller. Most merely stared at this remarkable curiosity, made famous by the popular press. Louise imagined them taking in details they could share later with eager listeners and so acquire a modicum of fame themselves. One admirer shook Miss Keller’s hand and gushed compliments, then stammered an apology upon seeing her unchanging blank smile.

  At one point Miss Keller spoke to Mrs. Macy, who then asked, “Is Mrs. Francis Morrissey present?”

  Louise felt a flutter of nerves and exhilaration at the same time. She rushed forward. “Hello, I’m Mrs. Francis Morrissey.”

  Miss Keller’s face brightened as Mrs. Macy signed Louise’s words on her palm, and she placed both her hands on Louise’s face, tracing her features. A silent crowd watched.

  The three adjourned to the hotel suite of Mrs. Macy and Miss Keller, who insisted that because they all shared a bond through Marie they should interact on a first-name basis.

  Helen talked about the exploitation of workers and her efforts to bring about labor reform, the abysmal hotel food, her determination to eat a Chicago hot dog before she left town, and Marie. “She became very special to me in the short time I knew her. She was so full of promise. Truly a credit to you and your husband.”

  As much as she strained to make out Helen’s words, Louise grasped only a few. Upon hearing Annie speak the words, she winced at the praise she didn’t merit. Then she wondered if Helen might have extra-sensory perception that would enable her to detect guilt and other emotions. “Thank you. I know she cherished your friendship.”

  The women talked for another hour or so, with only a short break during which Annie got glasses of water for them all.

  Finally Helen said, “You came to see me for a reason.”

  “I heard you say today that women can accomplish anything they set their minds to. As you know from my letters, I’ve been speaking to women about babies’ sore eyes legislation, trying to convince them that they can move the legislature to act if they will get b
ehind it.”

  “Good for you. It’s a big task you’ve set for yourself. Don’t get discouraged.”

  “There’s are two major obstacles. The women we need to mobilize have never heard of babies’ sore eyes, and they’re too polite to concern themselves with anything involving gonorrhea.”

  Helen smiled. “It’s a process of education. Getting out leaflets, getting material in libraries, setting up a speakers bureau—”

  “There’s one thing that will have women all over America, not just in Nebraska, talking. As you know, Edward Bok has been writing editorials warning women about venereal disease in The Ladies’ Home Journal.”

  Helen nodded.

  Louise went on. “Women have read with great admiration your articles about your life. You’re a hopeful symbol of personal triumph over misfortune. But you are so much more. You are an influential champion of causes you believe in. Do you have any idea how much good might be accomplished if you would write an editorial to educate women and urge them to demand drops?”

  Louise held her breath, waiting for Annie to finish signing her request.

  Helen spoke, and Mrs. Macy interpreted her words. “Do you know I was studying for exams at Radcliffe College when Mr. Bok asked me to write the story of my life? I was a nervous wreck. I wanted to do both perfectly. The dean made me take my exams in a room all alone to make sure that I didn’t get any help from Annie. There were always rumors that she did my work, that a blind and deaf girl could not do what I did, but my exams proved otherwise.”

  Louise found herself growing impatient for Helen to answer her question. “That’s an extraordinary accomplishment for anyone.”

  “Thank you. Now about babies’ sore eyes. You are a good strategist and a persuasive one.” Helen smiled. “I am most impressed that you traveled here just to present me your intriguing proposition.”

  Louise sensed a “however” coming.

  “I shall talk to Mr. Bok; however his editorials on venereal disease have cost his magazine upwards of twenty-five thousand subscribers. While I know him to be a man true to his convictions, I cannot promise you his publisher will be keen on printing another controversial article.”