“School!” she shouted. “School?!” She tried to buck free of Reed’s grasp but he was too tall and too strong. She kept yelling at Overman, her voice coming out in a husky scream. “Let me tell you something,” she said. “I can’t even send my own children to school. They ain’t got decent enough clothes to wear and I can’t afford to buy them none. I make nine dollars a week, and I work all night and leave them shut up in the house all by themselves. I had one of them sick this winter and I had to leave her there just coughing and crying.”
Ella’s voice dropped and she was quiet for a moment. She looked from Overman to the faces of the girls from Greensboro. Her eyes met Claire’s, and something cold and wretched shot through Claire’s heart. Ella shrugged Reed’s hands from her shoulders. She looked over at the young girl whom Overman had commanded to return to school. The girl wore a dirty white dress and loose gray stockings. She was shrouded in a long black coat that seemed to have been cut for someone twice her size. Her face was sharp, her eyes sunken, ringed in pink.
“And this one here,” Ella said, putting her arm around the girl and pulling her toward her. “Binnie here’s fourteen years old, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her, would you? This girl here ain’t been to school in years. She makes five dollars a week, and that’s more than her mother and daddy make. She used to have a brother who worked in the mill too, but tuberculosis ate at him till he died.”
The senator sighed loud enough for everyone in both groups to hear him. He rolled his eyes and looked over the heads of the girls from Greensboro and toward the back of the group, where Mrs. Barnes had been standing silently. He mouthed the words I’m sorry and turned back to Reed.
“Sir,” Senator Overman said, “I appreciate your plight, but let me advise you and your people in saying that the streets are not the place to solve issues like these. I suggest you all return home, and, sir, I suggest you return to New York City and leave these people alone.” He looked at the group of college women. His eye caught Claire’s. “Ms. McAdam, I’m sure your father’s people don’t carry on this way,” he said. “I apologize that you came all the way to Washington to encounter this behavior.”
The senator brushed past Reed, and Claire and the rest of her party followed him. The group of strikers parted, and the girls walked between them, up Maryland toward the Capitol. Claire kept her eyes on the sidewalk. The woman named Ella coughed, cleared her throat. “You ladies enjoy your visit to your nation’s capital,” she said.
They walked in silence behind Senator Overman. A chilly wind tumbled down the steps on the west side of the Capitol and into Claire’s eyes. She felt the sun on her back, saw her shadow thrown out before her. She heard someone sniff, did not realize it was herself until she felt the tears streaming down her cheeks. She looked to her right and found Donna walking beside her, tears streaking her face as well.
“My father’s people aren’t like that,” Claire had said. “Those aren’t my father’s people. My father takes care of his people.”
Claire felt Donna’s arm around her waist. She leaned her head on her friend’s shoulder.
A few hours later in their sleeping berth, Claire lay on the top bunk in her nightgown and flipped through a copy of Vanity Fair. Donna sat on the bunk below, spreading cold cream over her face, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“You would’ve thought Overman could’ve shown a little more kindness to those people,” Donna said.
“What people?” Claire asked. She looked at an advertisement for the film Coquette that featured Mary Pickford in a beautiful peach chiffon party dress, a smile on her face as she gazed over her shoulder at a number of male suitors. Claire could not imagine anyone aside from Paul ever desiring her.
“Those strikers from Gastonia,” Donna said. “He treated them like trash.”
Claire studied Mary Pickford’s dress, noted the beautiful floral design that had been sewn on the front. “Well, did you see how they were dressed?” she asked.
Claire heard Donna gasp, heard the jar of cold cream land on the floor. Donna stood, and Claire saw that the two were now eye-level. “Are you serious, Claire?” Donna asked. Claire smiled but did not speak, did not take her eyes from Mary Pickford’s face. Donna put her hand over the advertisement so that Claire could not look at it. “It’s not funny. It’s not a joke.”
Claire closed the magazine and laid it on her chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s awkward for me, that’s all. My father owns a mill. Those were millworkers. It was awkward.”
Donna shook her head, lowered herself to her bed. “Well, I’m sorry it was awkward for you, Claire.”
Claire sat up on the edge of her bunk and let her feet dangle over the side. “I told you, Donna, my father’s people aren’t like that. He treats his people better than that.”
“Are you even listening to yourself?” Donna asked. “You talk about your father’s employees as if he owns them.”
“Of course he doesn’t own them,” Claire said. “Of course not. He says they’re his people because they’re like family. Everyone lives in the village together, Donna. It’s like a big family.”
“And you and your parents live in the big house that looks down on the rest of the family,” Donna said. “Just like on Paul’s parents’ plantation. I bet they viewed their slaves as family too.”
“That’s not fair, Donna,” Claire said. “And you know it. Paul’s mother and father had nothing to do with that. That was years ago.”
“Look down at that diamond on your finger, Claire,” Donna had said. “You can thank Paul’s family for that. All of them.”
Now Claire lay in the dark berth, spinning her engagement ring on her finger. She considered what Donna had said, and she pictured Paul’s face, his family’s home in Wilmington, the portrait of his great-grandfather that hung in the sitting room. She thought of Manassas and wondered what she’d missed of it by not looking out the train’s window. Could she have seen the field across which Paul’s great-grandfather had ridden the white horse of her imagining? She pulled back the curtain and looked through the window. Out there, the blackness was barely decipherable from the black things impressed upon it. Nothing but dark shapes passed her. She inched her body closer to the window and cupped her hands and peered through the warm tunnel of her fingers: outside, a quiet town somewhere near Manassas, perhaps Manassas itself; the train passed the station without stopping; a Main Street where hours ago the shops had been closed for the night; trucks parked and waiting against the curbs outside of buildings.