Page 7 of In These Hills

Breath coming hard, her palm raw and aching, she opened the door to the car and stepped inside, and quickly realized it wasn’t only the one woman who had been watching her.

All eyes in the passenger car were fixed on her, and Josephine, a teacher for close to half her life, could think of nothing to say that her actions hadn’t already announced. They looked at her and knew her story. Or thought they did.

She moved to claim an empty space on one of the cushioned bench seats but the older woman occupying it scooted to the middle, preventing it. Eyes lowered, Josephine looked to the right and although the elderly man seated there didn’t move an inch, his demeanor exuded unwelcome. Same as every other person she passed as she walked toward the back of the car.

She reached the last row and glanced outside to see a porter looking in that direction. Instinctively, she ducked, fear outweighing shame even as the back of her neck heated. Once the passenger car was clear of the terminal, she raised her head.

“I hope you done give him hell right back,” a woman said, her voice barely audible.

Josephine peered up to see the woman she’d exchanged glances with before she boarded.

Similar in age, judging by her appearance, the young woman stared unblinking, challenge in her eyes. “Did you? Give him hell back?”

The image of Clay Darden’s lifeless body returned with painful clarity. “Yes,” Josephine whispered. “I . . . think I did.”

“Good for you then,” she said beneath her breath and indicated with the slightest nod that Josephine could share her bench. Yet no sooner did Josephine sit than the woman abruptly stood and moved a few rows up. Josephine stared after her. Had she mistaken the woman’s kindness? Or perhaps that kindness, if made known, would come at too great a personal cost.

Grateful no matter the woman’s reasons, Josephine rested her head on the window, the glass cool against her forehead. Recalling what Sarah had said, she lightly pressed her cheek to the chilled pane and winced at the sting, but forced herself to repeat the act several times.

As the train sped north, eating up miles of countryside and leaving behind everything and everyone she knew, the air inside the compartment grew colder. Which came as no surprise, because this particular car lacked the customary amenities such as cast-iron wood stoves, overhead luggage compartments, and even a water station. A few of the many injustices her father and the firm he worked for had addressed repeatedly with the railroad commission, including the harsh working conditions of the nearly twenty thousand black men who served as porters on the railroad.

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. How often her father had quoted that. Yet when it came to fighting for women’s rights, he had explained that the wheels of justice ground exceedingly slowly, and that just as in a great war, battles had to be fought strategically. Yet the battle for women’s rights was one he had never seemed eager to fight. Only later had she begun to understand why.

He’d long attempted to dissuade her from joining the suffrage movement, stating his and her mother’s concern for her safety. Those attempts had only intensified following Todd’s death. Yet as she’d learned more about the movement and witnessed repeated efforts by local authorities to stamp it out, Todd’s mantra had become like a steady drumbeat deep inside her.

One specific exchange with her father returned with striking clarity. Even now, she felt the heat of her anger from that day, and the deep disappointment she’d felt in him, both emotions exacerbated by Todd’s death just weeks before. “But Father, it’s impossible to struggle for civil rights, or even equal rights for black men, without including all men. And all women. Every tribe, nation, tongue, and people. Isn’t that what you always say? Because equal rights, fair pay, justice, all of it . . . It’s like the air we breathe. Either we all have it or none of us do. That is why women must be granted the right to vote, same as men. You of all people must understand that and take up the cause of suffrage now . . . as I am doing. And should have done a long time ago.”

Steeled determination had slipped into her father’s eyes. “Daughter, you well know that I forbid you from joining that organization. The women involved are not of sound mind or judgment, so again, I must—”

“Todd died fighting for justice, Papa. For a cause he believed in. He was doing something lasting with his life. I want to do that, too.”

“You are doing something lasting with your life. Teaching children is helping to prepare you for marriage, Josephine. To be a wife and a mother. For raising children of your own and organizing a household. That is what is most important for you.” His placating smile seemed intent on shutting down argument. “Your mother and I knew you’d be a wonderful teacher. That’s why we encouraged you to sit for your advanced certificate when you were yet so young. The youngest but most mature candidate they’d ever considered. And now look at you. Already instructing upper grades for years now.”

“Redirecting the conversation no longer works, Papa. I’m not seven years old anymore. I’m a twenty-three-year-old woman with a mind of her own that you helped shape and mold, inadvertently as those efforts might have been . . . now that I look back.”

He rose from his desk chair, his movements slow and deliberate, more frail now than fierce, as though he’d aged decades in the weeks since Todd’s death. “Politics is dirty, ruthless, and unfeminine, Josephine. Women are emotional creatures by nature, guided by sentiment, and are not equipped for political decisions.”

“But that’s simply not—”

“Allowing you to participate in such an organization,” he continued with force, “would expose you to ridicule and hostility. And I will not have you, or this family, thus humiliated.”

How small he’d looked in her eyes then, regardless of how still beloved as her father. “I attended my first meeting some weeks back, and will march in an upcoming rally. We must fight for change or change will never happen.”

The gaze he turned on her felt almost foreign. “As your father and spiritual head, I will not allow you to throw away your education or to tarnish this family’s reputation by associating with that group of women. And that is my final word.”

“I know what you believe, Father. But I simply do not hold the same—”

The slam of his fist on the edge of his desk all but choked the words in her throat. “I will not abide this, Josephine! I did not raise my own daughter to disrespect me. To cast aside good reason for this foolish notion of equality with men. Men and women were made for very different purposes. The Scriptures clearly establish this. Women are to submit to men. It’s God’s divine order, and seeking the vote violates that sacred structure. If women get the vote, what next? Women running businesses? Women demanding to have a say in legal matters? Running for public office?”

“I would say yes to all of those things, Papa. Women are equally as intelligent as men and have every right to choose the course of their lives. How many times in our studies were my marks equal to, or oftentimes higher, than Todd’s?”

“You dare compare yourself to your brother? To try to establish equal footing with him? As if you could ever take his place?”

The words sliced deeper than she would have imagined, even having long suspected them to be true. But to hear them stated aloud and without the least trace of regret . . .

“You always were far too curious,” he continued, eyes narrowing. “I was wrong to have indulged you as I did. But try as you might, one cannot change the natural order of things. The change you desire must be tempered with the immutable truth of a woman’s God-given duty toward hearth and home, and for childbearing. So with my opinion on the subject firmly established . . .” He eased back into his chair, his mouth a firm line. “You will align your actions accordingly, daughter. And you will govern yourself by what you have been taught to be good, and right, and true.”

How often that conversation replayed in her mind, awaiting a resolution that, with her father’s passing weeks later, had never come. Her mother followed him in death soon after. The doctor said they both succumbed to pneumonia, but she wondered if grief had not been the real killer. And if she’d been partly to blame.