the beautiful hats and dresses of the audience. She marched up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in a hat piled high with fake fruit and flowers, demanding the vote. About her fellow suffragists she wrote to her son, âPeople outside have no idea of the âpush,â interest, and determination of the women to win their cause. There is no such word as âfailâ with them, and that is a force that men will find it impossible to break.â
Sadly, Ruth sliced her finger on the edge of a page in the
Saturday Evening Post
and died of septicemia before seeing women enfranchised. The deciding ballot in favor of national suffrage for women was cast, coincidentally, by a young legislator from East Tennessee. The night before the vote in Nashville, this young man received a letter from his mother in the mountains saying that she counted on him to do right by her and his sisters. The next day he switched his vote from con to pro. Afterward he had to jump out a window to escape an enraged mob of opponents.
In emulation of this refreshing new role model, I volunteer as a birth control and abortion counselor at Planned Parenthood, having been permanently traumatized in high school by seeing the lives of some of my classmates destroyed by a lack of such services.
Wearing a gold enamel bracelet of Greatgrandma Pealerâs that my mother has given me, I march on Washington at the drop of a hat. Each time I round the corner and start down Pennsylvania Avenue through the gauntlet of jeering men who hate everything I represent, I draw courage from the image of Inez Milholland in her white robes, riding a white horse, leading Greatgrandma Pealer and her cohorts through similar mobs in 1913.1 try to do my tiny bit to keep their ball rolling, but I avoid the
Saturday Evening Post
.
3
Insects in Amber
S OON WEARIED BY THE TRAFFIC JAMS of Gotham and inspired by the vision of surviving a nuclear attack with a home garden, Richard and I go back to the land in rural Vermont. Living in a crumbling brick farmhouse on a defunct dairy farm, we discover why our ancestors left the land in the first place. As the communes all around us turn on and tune out, I smoke beehives. As they smash monogamy, Richard faints while castrating baby roosters into capons.
When I become pregnant, I realize that Iâve finally found my calling: Iâm an Earth Mother. Dressed in an Indian-print peasant dress, I attend natural childbirth classes, where I learn the breathing techniques that will allow my baby and me to escape poisoning from narcotics hawked by a drug industry motivated by greed.
One night I dream Iâm holding our new baby. As I inspect its tiny hands, I discover an extra finger on each one. Although I wake up sweating, I laugh this off to Richard, explaining my childhood obsession with the Melungeons. But when Iâm tired, I drive Richard mad itemizing the things that might go wrong. And I know them all from the dinner-table seminars with my father.
When we reach the Burlington hospital, the maternity wing is closed for renovations. My contractions are coming fast as we race for the other hospital. Its overcrowded maternity floor is packed with moaning mothers. I join them on my gurney of pain as a protesting Richard is led away to the fathersâ waiting room.
Itâs hunting season, so many of the obstetricians are stalking deer in the snowy forests. The doctor on call has just had a heart attack during a delivery. Things donât look promising, but I keep panting as Iâve been taught, like a hound with heat stroke. Never in my wildest fantasies have I imagined such pain. The torments devised by the Marquis de Sade would seem like childâs play to any woman whoâs ever been through labor.
Soon Iâm begging for every drug ever invented, delighted at the prospect of single-handedly supporting the entire pharmaceutical industry. I pledge to purchase large blocks of their stock if I survive this ordeal,
Sadly, Ruth sliced her finger on the edge of a page in the
Saturday Evening Post
and died of septicemia before seeing women enfranchised. The deciding ballot in favor of national suffrage for women was cast, coincidentally, by a young legislator from East Tennessee. The night before the vote in Nashville, this young man received a letter from his mother in the mountains saying that she counted on him to do right by her and his sisters. The next day he switched his vote from con to pro. Afterward he had to jump out a window to escape an enraged mob of opponents.
In emulation of this refreshing new role model, I volunteer as a birth control and abortion counselor at Planned Parenthood, having been permanently traumatized in high school by seeing the lives of some of my classmates destroyed by a lack of such services.
Wearing a gold enamel bracelet of Greatgrandma Pealerâs that my mother has given me, I march on Washington at the drop of a hat. Each time I round the corner and start down Pennsylvania Avenue through the gauntlet of jeering men who hate everything I represent, I draw courage from the image of Inez Milholland in her white robes, riding a white horse, leading Greatgrandma Pealer and her cohorts through similar mobs in 1913.1 try to do my tiny bit to keep their ball rolling, but I avoid the
Saturday Evening Post
.
3
Insects in Amber
S OON WEARIED BY THE TRAFFIC JAMS of Gotham and inspired by the vision of surviving a nuclear attack with a home garden, Richard and I go back to the land in rural Vermont. Living in a crumbling brick farmhouse on a defunct dairy farm, we discover why our ancestors left the land in the first place. As the communes all around us turn on and tune out, I smoke beehives. As they smash monogamy, Richard faints while castrating baby roosters into capons.
When I become pregnant, I realize that Iâve finally found my calling: Iâm an Earth Mother. Dressed in an Indian-print peasant dress, I attend natural childbirth classes, where I learn the breathing techniques that will allow my baby and me to escape poisoning from narcotics hawked by a drug industry motivated by greed.
One night I dream Iâm holding our new baby. As I inspect its tiny hands, I discover an extra finger on each one. Although I wake up sweating, I laugh this off to Richard, explaining my childhood obsession with the Melungeons. But when Iâm tired, I drive Richard mad itemizing the things that might go wrong. And I know them all from the dinner-table seminars with my father.
When we reach the Burlington hospital, the maternity wing is closed for renovations. My contractions are coming fast as we race for the other hospital. Its overcrowded maternity floor is packed with moaning mothers. I join them on my gurney of pain as a protesting Richard is led away to the fathersâ waiting room.
Itâs hunting season, so many of the obstetricians are stalking deer in the snowy forests. The doctor on call has just had a heart attack during a delivery. Things donât look promising, but I keep panting as Iâve been taught, like a hound with heat stroke. Never in my wildest fantasies have I imagined such pain. The torments devised by the Marquis de Sade would seem like childâs play to any woman whoâs ever been through labor.
Soon Iâm begging for every drug ever invented, delighted at the prospect of single-handedly supporting the entire pharmaceutical industry. I pledge to purchase large blocks of their stock if I survive this ordeal,
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