SIXTEEN
The Direction of Light

1864

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The next year found Ben doing what he loved. He kept a garden at the Lafayette house, nurturing the tomatoes and marveling over the lettuce sprouts unfolding as delicate as a baby’s tongue. He spent hours away with horses and farmers while Abigail hired a Chinese cook and housekeeper so he could. In the early evenings, Ben and eight-year-old Willis wielded a saw and hammer and wooden pegs, contributing to the cabinets Ben made to furnish the school. He joked with men who came to him for his advice on horses and found “pleasantness,” as he called it, when he worked his young colts, forming teams.

Abigail continued her teaching, but she knew it wasn’t enough. Contentedness wasn’t a part of who she was, she decided. She began making a few loans to women in need. She didn’t always confer about them with Ben, thinking that he didn’t run every detail of his days by her, either. She wanted to help them get back on their feet. She’d made a loan to a divorced woman to help her buy furniture to start a boardinghouse to support her children. As soon as she had the chairs and table and beds to replace what her former husband had taken in the divorce, he returned and gathered up what she’d bought and sold them out from under her.

“Can you imagine?” She told Ben as they sat at the table while Clara and Willis cleared the plates and squabbled at the dishpan over who would wash and who would dry. Hubert played with Wilkie. An advantage of having more than one child—they could look after each other. The boarding girls had already gone upstairs for the evening.

“Tragic,” Ben said.

“Yes. Tragic and perfectly legal. What was hers, was his. Even after the divorce, he could trot right into that house and take what he wished. She had no say. And now she’s in debt, and you can bet no law will make him pay it. She’ll be liable for it and still without a pot to sit on. It’s so unfair.”

She didn’t tell Ben that the money the woman owed was to the Duniways. Instead, she wrote a scathing letter to the editor describing the need for changes in property laws so women would have more choices when deserted by unscrupulous men—some of whom were husbands. She wrote letters to help women, supporting changes dealing with unfair practices, like a neighbor having to pay off a debt incurred by a deceased husband, a debt he had before the couple even married.

“What I need,” she told Ben one evening while she added a patch to a thinning shirt elbow, “is a wider reach.”

“The paper publishes your letters every week now.” He drew on his pipe, the breathy air the only sound she could hear above the crickets. “And you and your ‘flamboyant’ friends attended an open meeting. That sent some tongues to wagging. We men let you.”

“But the reporters barely mentioned it. There is no reason women can’t attend public meetings and even speak at them. We’ll go again. The editor will have to do an article about such a commotion. Editors have total control in deciding what goes in and what doesn’t.”

“Advertisers influence that, I suspect. There has to be a balance or they’ll lose subscribers.”

“If I ever run a newspaper, I’ll find supporters willing to fund my perspectives. Balance won’t be a part of it, because the scales are already tipped toward papers that celebrate men, protect their interests, not their wives or even mothers.”

Ben sucked on his pipe again. He’d been giving up actual smoking, just used the pipe stem to chew on in the evening again. Abigail said she didn’t like the taste of tobacco on her lips, and she kissed him more since he didn’t fill the bowl. He held a sleeping Wilkie in his arm.

“I had no idea you hankered after running a newspaper. When did that happen?”

“Susan B. Anthony owns one, and the Lily has a long history. Both are women’s rags, and they celebrate how life needs to change and offer ways to do it. Anne Royall ran one in the ’30s, and though she was tried as a scold for being so outspoken, she supported herself with it and made a difference fighting corruption and taking on religious leaders who had forgotten that Christians are to be loving souls. My little letters barely scratch the surface to do what that Royall woman did with her paper.” She put the thimble down and grinned. “Besides, with a newspaper I could get my novels printed. Serialize them, then bind and sell them later. I certainly haven’t had any luck finding a real publisher since my first . . . fiasco.”

“You learned from it.”

“I hope so, but until the books are in the hands of others with reviews, I’ll never really know.”

“Oh, you know. You never let a lesson pass you by.” He set his pipe aside and motioned for her to put her mending away. “I’ll put Wilkie to bed, then let’s take a look at the garden. We’ve a full moon. You can almost see the melons grow.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got a lesson to plan.”

“You’re giving up a good moment, Mrs. Duniway.” His voice had teasing to it, and for an instant she thought she might succumb, allow affection to soothe the tension in her shoulders, the racing of her mind.

“Those melons will grow without my admiration. And the moon will shine as bright. But if I’m not ready to stimulate those young minds in the morning, who knows what ideas they might walk away with.” She saw the frown on his handsome face. “I’ll only take an hour,” she said.

He grunted. “I know your hour. I’ll be long asleep by the time you notice you’re still working at midnight.”

She rose, bent to kiss him and Wilkie too. “Good night, Ben.”

And so, she gave up tenderness, let it slip away, turned to thoughts of commerce. She didn’t let herself wonder why.

It was late in the year, the children napped, and Abigail sat on the floor, a rare moment of pause as her back leaned against the couch. She’d bought a rag rug from a woman with arthritic hands, marveled at how that widow persevered to feed her family. Abigail ran her palm over the wool braids.

Ben sat above her reading an agricultural magazine.

“I’ve been battling the unfairness of a woman’s life ever since I watched Momma go along with Father’s decisions that failed. I hear these stories of women suffering through no fault of their own but from laws that mistreat them—as they mistreat our free-black and Chinese neighbors. It’s the laws that have to change.”

“You’ll have to get men to vote the changes in.”

“Fat chance of that.” She crossed her arms. Maybe I could start a cooperative where women sold their work and encouraged each other at the same time. She sighed. “I thought the West would be a vibrant place for women’s rights. Women work right beside their men. But here we are, still chattel.”

“You should write about the importance of women securing the vote,” Ben said. “It may be that the only thing that will really make a difference in a woman’s life is her having a chance to make her mark at the ballot box. Men will have to grant that permission, and our lives might be made easier if we do, though we’re a stubborn lot.” He set his magazine down, stroked her hair. Tender. “It’ll take good wisdom to create that end in Oregon. You could make the case better than anyone I know, if you find the right way to ride that horse.”

“Do you really think so?” She turned to him. “I want women to have so much more control over their lives, so many more options to excel with their talents, their economic progress, their education. Removing barriers to either gender’s excelling would help both sexes. Why can’t men see that?”

“You’ll have to show us. Become a suffragist.” He smiled.

She turned back to stare at the mirror on the far wall. It reflected her mother’s portrait behind the divan. “I never saw myself as being one of those kinds of ‘Hurrah’ suffrage women.”

“Much as I hate to say this, perhaps you’ve been hiding your light under a bushel.” Ben patted her shoulder.

“But back east . . . they hold parades and bang kettles on the streets and are so . . . strident. I don’t see that going over well here. I don’t want to compromise a woman’s reputation. I want to expand it by showing that she can make good decisions, as a man can.”

“Perhaps try another tactic.”

What might that be?

Ben added, “They could vote out taxes they now have to pay.”

“Yes. Women have taxation without representation. I believe the founding fathers had something to say about that. Not to mention the founding mothers. Bless Abigail Adams. But she couldn’t get the word ‘woman’ added in either, though we all thought ‘man’ meant ‘mankind’ and not just the sex bearing whiskers.”

“Expand that meaning. You can do it.”

“I wish I knew for certain this was the best path to take. And I so wish we had a map to get us there.”

“There’s little certainty in the world, Jenny. Except attitude and effort.”

A beam of light came through the window then as they sat together, the shaft illuminating a circle on the carpet’s burgundy-shaded cloth. Abigail’s whole body warmed, whether from having the luxury of a husband who understood and supported her or from that light pouring through the window like a period at the end of a most meaningful sentence. And then she did know.

“Do you see that light, Ben? You’ll think me foolish, but I think that’s God sending me a sign.” Maggie, her faithful sister, would say that too. “In women’s suffrage lies the answer to women’s liberty. I don’t know why I never saw that light before.”