I made a decision to never leave home again, ever . . . except for school, of course. And I’d set up camp next to the mending basket of ripped and rumpled clothes, determined to let mushrooms grow out of my ears before I moved.
Sprawled out on the floor next to my father, space being available now that the O’Donnells had finally gone, I’d been at this basket of mending every afternoon for a week. And even worse than never reaching the bottom of it, I was pretty sure my mother hadn’t noticed my efforts.
“Listen to this, Margaret,” my father said. He was reading Progress and Poverty. He was always reading Progress and Poverty. I’d already read Mr. George’s book, as had every Higgins who could read—on a direct order from Father. Happy was the day we finished it and handed it off to the next Higgins, it being the dullest book ever written.
He cleared his voice and began. “ ‘On the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to us again. We must follow her further. We must trust her fully.’ ”
I rummaged through the basket while he read, looking for seams and hems, anything I could use an easy running stitch to mend. I needed a few successes to keep my spirits up.
His voice got louder, pausing at the points he wanted me to really appreciate.
“ ‘Either we must wholly accept her or she will not stay. It is not enough that men should vote. It is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life. . . . Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light!’ ”
I found a cleanly torn seam in one of my brother’s trousers. I licked my fingers to wet the thread, and then slid the thread, stiff with spit, through the eye of the needle, missing it. God rot it, I hated mending!
“ ‘Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light.’ ” My father slapped his knee. “What do you think of that, Margaret? Mr. George is saying that if we do not treat her right, liberty will abandon this country.”
His excitement infected me. It always did. Plus, thinking about liberty was far better than thinking about trousers.
“Why is liberty always a woman, Father?” I asked. “But women don’t get to vote?” I knew my question would heat him up.
“Yes, Margaret. Women should have the vote. All women. Just as black men now have the vote. How can we call ourselves free in this country when half of our good citizens are kept out of the polls? It’s wrong. This is exactly what George is saying—”
“Michael.” My mother interrupted.
“And here is Lady Justice, before us.” My father smiled. “She will send me on an errand, I am sure.”
Mother nodded wearily. She was sending him on an errand. When Father started in on sipping whiskey and sorting out the world’s problems this early in the afternoon, he needed an errand so that the rest of us could get our work done.
“The coal money,” she said. “We’re nearly out and still have plenty of cold weather to get through.”
My father slowly put down his book and rose from his chair. “I bid you, adieu, my fair Margaret,” he said, bowing down at me miserably holding my needle next to the mending basket, which I swore now looked even more full than it did a moment ago. But then he glanced over at my mother’s back as she consulted with Mary about what to do with the potatoes for dinner, a daily puzzle always needing solving, and we both saw the same thing. Opportunity.
I pinned my needle into the trousers and crept over Clio and Henry on my way to the door, faster than a flash of summer lightning. He scooted me out ahead of him, and then called back into the house, “Stealing Margaret for company. We’ll be back before dinner,” and then slammed the door shut.
Smiling, he gave my long braid a tug. “There be nothing sweeter than liberty.”
I agreed. And all the way into town, he magically transformed Mr. George’s dry words and endless sentences into exciting ideas that bloomed one after another. Free libraries. Free education. And his very, very favorite, freedom of the mind.
“I think I know why liberty is always a woman,” I told him as we wandered down Market Street.
“Why is that, Margaret?” he asked in his Irish brogue, his red hair blowing in the chilly breeze, and his blue eyes looking so closely into mine. He was listening. It was amazing to be listened to.
“Men are allowed to be both good and bad. But women are only allowed to be good or bad. And so if a woman is good, she is only good. And worthy of being something as good as freedom.”
He grinned.
“But . . . ,” I said, not wanting his grin to fade, not wanting to feel like I had that day I stood alone on Emma’s doorstep.
“Yes?”
“I have bad in me,” I admitted, dropping my eyes so I wouldn’t see his disappointment. Instead, he laughed so loud it raised every hair on my bumpy head.
“Always think like this, Margaret,” he bellowed. “For yourself. Always.”
I quickly promised I always would—not caring that I wasn’t sure how else I’d think. His reaction had made me feel as if I’d swallowed the moon whole, my insides glowing mysteriously.
We were passing a large display of bananas outside of Iszard’s Groceries. Mr. Iszard was busy carrying them inside because it was getting late. My father plucked one up and handed it to me.
“For my Lady Liberty.”
“They’re two for a penny today,” Mr. Iszard informed us. “They were late coming to me, and don’t have much left in ’em.”
“Well, well,” my father said. “Now that is an honest deal, sir.”
He turned to me, looking into my eyes, and then glanced up and down the busy street.
The shift was changing at the factory. Market Street was crowded with men and women trudging home, as well as young boys making their way to the evening shift. A shuffling and shouting of dark woolens against the backdrop of a muddy spring sleet, each huffing a cloud of white into the fading day.
My father stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out the coal money, staring down at it in his open palm. The banana felt heavy in my hand.
Again, he grinned.
“My dear Lady Liberty, care to free these bananas? The choice,” he said with great fanfare, “is yours.”
My lips quivered. Coal or bananas. The choice was mine. But I knew the choice he was hoping I’d make. It was shining straight out from under his massive red brow. Freedom was everything. There was only one choice.
“Free them,” I mumbled.
“What is that?” he laughed.
“Free the bananas!” I yelled.
And we bought them all.
* * *
The way home was a fantastic journey. We had three boxes full of overly ripe bananas. Father stacked them on top of one another and carried them on his shoulder. My job was to pick a bunch and pluck off one for the postmaster, and three for Mrs. Alterisi and her twins, and an especially large banana for Officer Cowley.
A banana for every person we passed.
People laughed at us. People laughed with us. They smiled, shook my hand . . . even hugged me. I chased the citizens of Corning up and down Market Street handing out fruit. Only old Mr. Keeler wouldn’t take one.
“Foolish man,” he grumbled at my father. “You’re as poor as Job’s turkey.”
“ ‘It is not from top to bottom that societies die,’ ” my father quoted Mr. George. “ ‘It is from bottom to top.’ ”
Mr. Keeler waved my father away with one hand, walking off. “Can’t see a hole in a ladder,” he growled over his shoulder. But my father wasn’t listening because we were now surrounded by a mighty swarm of children, and as he handed a banana to each child, he looked them directly in the eye and told them, “Leave the world better, because you, my child, have dwelt in it.”
Every pair of eyes listened to him carefully until the banana was in their possession, and then they were off.
By the time we hit Hamilton Street, I’d eaten three bananas. My father had eaten six! We pretended our bananas were the torch of the huge statue they just finished building of Lady Liberty. She now towered over New York’s harbor, a gift from the French people.
“They say the torch alone is almost thirty feet high,” my father said.
I stretched out my arm and held my banana even closer to the darkening sky, and smiled so big it hurt my frozen cheeks.
When a wagon passed us on the road, we tossed three bunches of bananas to the children in the back and belly laughed at their happy screams. My father hugged me with one arm as the wagon rolled away, a brawl developing over the bananas.
“Share, citizens!” my father howled at the tail of the wagon. “Share!”
One little boy stood and saluted us. We saluted him back.
“ ‘Let no man imagine that he has no influence,’ ” I sighed, quoting Mr. George.
Father tugged me closer. “Or no young woman.”
Who knew fruit could change the world? Even if it was just our little corner of Corning. But the best part of bestowing bananas was not how happy it made everyone, and not how happy it made me, but how happy it made us together.
A few miles of uphill trudging and we were finally home. We entered the yard with only half a box of bananas left. It was dark. My ears and fingers burned with cold. The fruit sat in an unsettled lump at the bottom of my stomach. Lady Liberty had vanished—it was Margaret Louise Higgins who would face my mother without coal money. Or coal.
“We will be cold,” she snapped. Not at him, but at me. Because I should have known better. Just as Eve should have known better in Mr. Milton’s poem.
I looked to my father for help, but he had returned to his chair . . . to his book, where he would stay until he was called for dinner. Was my father the serpent or Adam? Did it matter? Men were never wrong. Only women.
I turned back toward my mother, reaching for her, because I was so sorry. So, so very sorry, and I needed her to know it, really know it. And there were no words for being so sorry you couldn’t breathe.
But she hurried away to finish setting the table, leaving me trapped alone with my useless apology.