When Women Were Dragons(57)
Again he interrupted me. “Well, it’s been good to hear your voice, Alexandra, but I have to go.” He coughed one last time—a hard, hacking expulsion. “Be good. Stay good. Don’t embarrass me. Think of what your mother would have wanted and don’t disappoint her.”
“I won’t,” I said, but he had already hung up, and didn’t hear me.
Two days later, a letter arrived from my father. It had no postmark and no stamp. It had simply been slipped under the door to our apartment and set on the floor. Had my father been by and refused to say hello? Had he handed the letter to our landlord so he didn’t have to see us? I’m not sure which one was worse.
“Dear Alexandra,” the letter said.
I noticed an implicit question in your wheedling during our conversation the other day, and it appears that you have a bit of a misconception. I thought I had made myself perfectly clear on the subject of a university education for young ladies. But since there is still some confusion, allow me to clarify:
No, I will not fund, assist, or in any way support any attempts at higher education for you, past high school. I do not intend to support either of you after you graduate in June, as I believe you are more than capable of doing so on your own. Finishing your education through graduation is what your mother would have preferred, so yes, in deference to her memory, I will reluctantly support it to its end, arbitrary as that milestone is. Your apartment is paid through the end of August, at which point you will have income of your own, and will be able to take over. I’ve been more than generous, all things considered. I made a promise to your mother, regarding your “sister,” and I pride myself for seeing it through, though I know you and I disagree over my methods. You’ll understand that when you’re older. I have a new family, after all, and concessions had to be made.
I am proud of you, Alexandra. Surely you must know that already. I know your mother would be proud as well. I will wish you well when you graduate.
Regards,
Dad.
I read it. I read it again. I crumpled the paper and threw it into the trash.
So, I thought to myself. That was that, then.
On the day before the Mass Dragoning of 1955, a group of twenty-five well-heeled literature majors from Vassar College took the train to Manhattan and paid a visit to the block where the Feibel-Ross Auxiliary Telephone Exchange Building used to be.
They didn’t tell anyone where they were going. Nor did they seem to have planned their trip in advance. In interviews with both professors and students who were not part of the twenty-five, all report the same phenomenon—that each student, either in class, or in the library, or in the middle of field hockey practice, simply stood up at 9:35 exactly, and exited without a word. They massed on Main Street and made their way to the Poughkeepsie train station, where they boarded the 11:25 to Manhattan.
The Vassar students assembled themselves on the sidewalk, facing the empty lot. They had good posture and clear eyes and a grounded stance. They had spent their whole lives, in their preparatory schools and finishing schools, in their tutoring sessions and ballet lessons and piano recitals and art history lectures, training to become women of substance, like their mothers. They stood in silence before the empty space that once was the Feibel-Ross—another hole in the universe. Their faces were bright, witnesses reported, and beautiful. As one, they lifted their gaze to the sky. And then, all at once, and all in a long, neat line, they took out their notebooks, and began to draw.
No one paid them much mind. The Feibel-Ross lot glared like a missing tooth in the middle of a mouth. It was a loud sort of emptiness. People quickened their steps and lowered their eyes. No one noticed themselves doing this.
The Vassar students remained for the entire afternoon. They drew and drew, well into the evening. People remembered this later, though they couldn’t for the life of them explain why it was important. Why their presence—standing perfectly still in a line along the curb, their faces tilted toward their notebooks in concentration and consternation or tilted toward the sky with an expression that could be interpreted as anticipatory or concerned or flooded with wild joy depending on the viewer—was noteworthy. Or why they didn’t take note of it until it was too late.
The next morning, in the early hours before the Mass Dragoning had begun, people all across Manhattan found—strewn on park benches and on subway staircases and lining the gutters—drawings of women. Thousands of them littered the streets. They blew into the windshields of cars like autumn leaves and swirled outside skyscraper windows like birds. Women in business attire. Women in housedresses. Women in coats. Women manning machinery. Women in cockpits. Women at the plow. Women in their underwear and in the nude. Women at the beach. Women in bridal gowns and in marital beds. Women holding babies. Or swelled with more babies. Or wiping noses. Women on the school steps. Women waving goodbye. The drawings were everywhere.
No one knew what this meant.
And every once in a while, there would be a piece of paper with nothing drawn on it at all. Simply a sentence composed in a lovely hand: “The Martin O’Learys of the world have it coming.”
No one knew what that meant, either.
The Vassar girls never made it to the train that night and did not return to their dormitories. Panicked house mothers called the police and called families and notified the papers. The girls did not return. Ordinarily, this would have made the evening news the next day, of course, but it didn’t. The nation watched its mothers transform in a mass demonstration of rage and violence and fire. Suddenly, there were other things to think about. And so the world forgot about the Vassar girls.