The Steep and Thorny Way(82)
“Yes, Mama, of course.” Fleur smiled and hustled up to the car door on the opposite side of the seat from me. “Is there room for me in here?”
“We’ll make room,” said Uncle Clyde, and he and Mama got out to rearrange our belongings, while Fleur squeezed into the backseat beside me.
She scooted over and tucked herself right next to me, minding my cast, and my parents crammed her bags and our bags between her and the door. She smelled of lilacs again, and she slipped one of her hands into one of my hands.
“I brought flowering almonds for you,” she said, and she handed me the flowers, which she had wrapped in a white handkerchief and secured with a ribbon the same pink as the petals.
“Are these for luck, too,” I asked, “like the alfalfa?”
“No, for hope.” She squeezed my hand. “An entire bouquet full of hope.”
My parents climbed back into the winter coats and the pots and the pans up front, and Uncle Clyde maneuvered the car around in the opposite direction and steered us out of the Paulissens’ driveway. Just as I had watched our house disappear from view behind me, I peeked over my shoulder and observed the trees swallowing up Laurence’s blond hair, his blue eyes, his lanky figure—his sorrow—until all that I saw were leaves and branches and sparrows flitting across the boughs.
Yet Fleur remained, sitting right there beside me, with her fingers laced through mine and the pink bouquet spread across both of our laps.
Uncle Clyde drove us past the sweet-smelling fields and rolling hills of northwestern Oregon, and we traveled through the growing metropolis of Portland until the bridge crossing the Columbia River to Washington rose into view. We left the state of my birth behind and entered a new world, with different laws, different adventures and challenges; a state in which I’d taste even more of love and heartbreak, hate and triumphs; where I’d dance with Joe in jazz clubs, grow into a woman with Fleur, sharpen my brain, start a career, and meet people with skin colors similar to mine. A state in which I would eventually marry and give birth to children with their own beautiful colors.
For me, the rest was not silence.
It was loud and powerful and melodic.
PORTLAND CHAPTER OF THE NAACP, 50TH ANNIVERSARY, 1964.
POST-1923 CHANGES TO OREGON LAWS
1925: The Supreme Court overturned the Ku Klux Klan–sponsored 1922 Compulsory Education Act, which would have required children in Oregon between the ages of eight and sixteen to attend public schools—and only public schools. The KKK had pushed for the law in an attempt to close down private Catholic schools. The overturning of the act came at a time when internal struggles and public opinion against the organization ended the KKK’s brief control over Oregon and its politics.
1926: Oregonians voted to repeal the “exclusion laws” from the state constitution. The laws, first enacted in 1844 and written into the original 1857 state constitution, were aimed at preventing African Americans from settling in Oregon. Though not rigorously enforced, the laws deterred African Americans from entering the state in the latter half of the nineteenth century and kept the state predominantly white.
1927: Oregonians removed a clause in the state constitution that denied African Americans the right to vote. They also removed restrictions that discriminated against African American and Chinese American voters.
1951: The federal government repealed all legislation banning interracial marriages in Oregon. In 1967, the United States government lifted the nationwide ban on interracial marriages, after the landmark case of Loving v. Virginia.
1953: Governor Paul L. Patterson signed Oregon’s Civil Rights Bill, outlawing “any distinction, discrimination, or restriction on account of race, religion, color, or national origin” in public places.
1972: Oregon repealed laws that criminalized same-sex sexual activity.
1983: Legislation abolished the Oregon State Board of Eugenics, called at that time the Oregon State Board of Social Protection, responsible for 2,648 forced sterilizations on children, teens, and adults from 1923 to 1981. Nineteen years later, in 2002, Governor John Kitzhaber issued a formal apology for Oregon’s use of eugenics. Between 1900 and 1925, thirty-two other states enacted eugenics laws in an effort to prevent the birth of “unfit” Americans.
2002: Oregon removed racist language from the state constitution.
2014: A U.S. federal district court legalized same-sex marriages in Oregon. In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States lifted a nationwide ban on same-sex marriages.
2015: Oregon became the third state to ban “conversion therapy” on minors. The practice was used in an attempt to change sexual orientation or gender identity.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
LIKE MOST OF MY NOVELS, THE STEEP AND THORNY Way grew out of a series of different story ideas that one day, without warning, exploded into a full-fledged book plot that gripped me by the shoulders and refused to let me go. In fact, I had to put this particular novel aside to write another contracted book, but the story called out to me the entire time and begged for me not to forget it.
Inspired by the HBO TV series Boardwalk Empire and my interest in World War I history, I at first thought about writing a novel focused on female bootleggers trying to survive with their war-widowed mothers in the 1920s. I also envisioned a completely separate novel involving a teen boy who’s hiding the fact that he’s gay in early-twentieth-century America. Those two threads eventually worked their way into the fabric of The Steep and Thorny Way in the forms of the Paulissens, the Markses, and Joe Adder.