Coming of Age Read online

  Mar … Really, I can’t make you out but I have an abiding faith in your ability to get what you want, if not in one way, then in another. The only way to get what you want is to find out who has the disposal of it, then bring pressure to bear on that person.

  Still miserable, Margaret looked forward to only one thing—spending Christmas with the family. And she was desperate to go home for Christmas. Then her father dropped a bombshell. Writing her that money was short, he said he couldn’t afford to bring her back.

  Margaret immediately turned to her mother. “Please let me come home. We have sixteen days now and surely that is long enough to justify the journey. Please, mother, I never was so homesick in my life.”

  Then Dadda sent another letter suggesting that if the DePauw experience was that unsatisfactory, perhaps she should consider coming home at Christmas and staying for good. She could enroll at the University of Pennsylvania and spend the spring in town.

  Margaret rallied with a storm of protest.

  Dear Dadda … I am not to be tempted. Has not long acquaintance with me convinced you of that? All the alluring things you propose, through mother, are lovely of course. I would like nothing better except to finish what I’ve begun. I stay here the rest of the year, and nothing, not being allowed to come home at Christmas, or the prospect of a winter in town will make me change my mind.

  Telling her parents that “it would be a moral defeat” to give up and come home, she finished out the year. Only when her final exams were behind her did she put in an application to transfer to Barnard, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University.

  Although neither she nor her father acknowledged it, they had come to an understanding: she had earned the right to study in the same city as her beau, Luther Cressman. Now, two years later and looking back on all of it, Margaret was quite pleased with the way she’d comported herself. She didn’t realize it, but Dadda was, too.

  * * *

  On this blustery March day, Margaret made her way across campus, toward Barnard’s small Brinckerhoff Theatre. With her arms clasped around her, she put her head down and marched forward into the wind.

  Three weeks earlier, when the subject of the debate had been posted, Margaret had been thrilled. The topic, “Resolved that European Immigration should be further restricted,” was one that engaged her interest. America, in her mind, had always been a land of immigrants, and should remain so. As the most humane country in the world, wasn’t it incumbent upon the United States to welcome all who sought a better life? She immediately announced, “I’m going out for the negative.” But when the teams received their assignments, Barnard had been selected to represent the affirmative. It would be her job to argue for a tight quota on immigration. In a letter home she wrote that she “did not believe in a restrictive immigration policy” and complained that debate practice was “crawling along,” adding, “I have such a strong emotional bias it is extremely difficult for me to get up any interest in the matter.” Her father, however, dismissed her misgivings, and congratulating her on being chosen to compete in the final debate, told her to “write out every possible argument of the other side” and to make her rebuttal “snappy.”

  For as long as Margaret could remember, Dadda had coached her in the art of public speaking. In high school, before every competition, they’d gone to work on her delivery.

  Dadda, his legs propped up on an ottoman, sat in his chair. Margaret stood in the center of the room, facing him. As soon as she started, Dadda would yell, “Look me in the eye! Pick someone to speak to!” He told her the first rule of public speaking was to avoid “the lawn sprinkler method.” He never wanted to see her “scatter her words” over an audience.

  Thanks to Dadda’s coaching, Margaret had come to understand that the success of one’s presentation had as much to do with body language as it did with the content that was delivered.

  Today’s debate, the final competition between the squads from Barnard and Wellesley, was the most important of the year and, considering Margaret’s emotional bias, it was going to be challenging. She was resolved to view the event as a contest, not as an expression of her personal point of view. She had written to her mother, “Goodness knows whether I’ll do well or not, but I’d like to have you and Dadda here.”

  Once inside the auditorium Margaret took her place among her teammates. The Wellesley girls were already assembled. The Chair directed the speakers to move to the stage.

  A girl from Wellesley spoke first: “The time once was when we welcomed to our shores the oppressed and downtrodden people from the world over, and they came to us because of oppression at home and with the sincere purpose of making true and loyal American citizens.”

  When it was time for her to speak Margaret rose from her chair and walked to the podium. She looked out at her audience, cleared her throat. “It is time that we act now, because in a few short years the damage will have been done. The endless tide of immigration will have filled our country with a foreign and unsympathetic element.”

  The words tasted bitter as she spoke them. Reminding herself that public speaking was play-acting, she went on, “Those who are out of sympathy with our Constitution and the spirit of our government will be here in large numbers, and the true spirit of Americanism left us by our fathers will gradually become poisoned by this uncertain element.”

  As she surveyed the faces that looked back at her, Margaret found she wasn’t nervous. She found that her voice, surprisingly, did not waver. She felt in command of her facts. She felt she knew more than her opponents. When she returned to her chair and sat down, she allowed herself to take a deep breath. She was pleased with both her performance and herself.

  Then it was all over, and the audience was clapping. There were a few nervous minutes while the judges conferred. Then the decision was announced.

  The judges had voted unanimously for the Wellesley team.

  Margaret rose from her seat and began to shake hands with the victors. She couldn’t get over it. How was it possible? Her body felt cold and clammy; she noticed she was shivering. As she walked through the auditorium she overheard someone say that Barnard had all the facts, but had fallen short on style. Someone else said the Barnard girls should have worked harder to master the technique.

  Was it true? she asked herself. Had she fallen short on technique? Was her delivery weak? Had she been slumped over while she was speaking?

  Suddenly she was conscious of her hair, which had been coiled in place all day. Reaching up she began to yank out the bobby pins, one by one, letting the hair tumble down.

  When she returned to the apartment all the girls were gone except for Léonie, who was sitting at the kitchen table, bent over her typewriter, furiously pounding the keys. Margaret kept her face averted as she moved to hang up her coat.

  “I’m nearly finished with my article,” Léonie called out.

  Margaret heard a bang as Léonie slapped the carriage return. Walking past her and going into the bedroom Margaret threw down her jacket and began unbuttoning her blouse.

  Then she felt someone’s shadow behind her and heard Léonie’s voice. “Listen to this. Coolidge actually singles out Barnard from all the other schools. Barnard, can you believe it? He says, ‘You can’t go through Barnard without knowing the principles of socialism.’”

  Margaret looked in the mirror and saw Léonie’s reflection looming over her, holding a cigarette in one hand and waving a typewritten page in the other.

  Léonie thrust the paper toward her. “Tell me what you think of this as a title, ‘Cheer up, Mr. Coolidge’?”

  Taking the paper, Margaret began to read.

  Léonie’s editorial was the rebuttal to an opinion piece written by Vice President Calvin Coolidge, published earlier that week in The Delineator, a woman’s magazine. Titled “Are the Reds Stalking Our College Women?” it alleged that anarchists and radicals were overrunning the nation’s best colleges and endangering America’s young women. The i
magined foes, as conjured up by Coolidge, were spreading a gospel that was “hostile to our American form of government, to the established personal right to hold property and the long recognized sanctions of civilized society.”

  Margaret and her roommates had pronounced the Coolidge piece laughable. All week long they’d read parts out loud, reacting with jeers and derision. As far as they were concerned, there were no agitators on campus, unless they themselves were the agitators.

  Now Léonie—known around campus as a rebellious spirit and a budding poet—had taken on Coolidge. Recently named the editor of The Barnard Bulletin, she intended to run her editorial on the front page.

  For Margaret, the coincidence was more than ironic. While Léonie had been concentrated on framing an attack against Coolidge, Margaret had spent the day defending him and applauding his restrictive immigration policy, a policy that was—as far as she was concerned—paranoid, reactionary, and wrong.

  * * *

  That night Margaret and Luther went to dinner at Galati’s. They had planned to try for last-minute seats to see Katharine Cornell in A Bill of Divorcement, but Margaret’s head hurt too much to sit through a play.

  Knowing her as he did, Luther was not surprised that Margaret was taking her defeat so hard. Margaret was nothing if not determined—and competitive.

  Through dinner Margaret pondered the loss, revisiting those pivotal moments in the debate, trying to identify the point when things had gone wrong.

  “What didn’t I do?”

  “You had the weaker argument,” said Luther.

  “Yes, but I knew how to present it. At least I thought I did.”

  “Maybe it’s not losing that bothers you,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe it’s being on the wrong side.”

  “You always refuse to understand how a debate works. I have to be on whatever side they assign me to.”

  “Yes, and you have to exploit whatever weakness you can find in the other side, even if you don’t believe it.”

  “That’s politics,” she said.

  “Well?”

  “Well, nothing. That is politics.”

  Margaret went back to the apartment feeling glum. When she stepped through the door, she found the lights out, the rooms empty. All the girls were out.

  She hadn’t liked what Luther had said and she didn’t accept it. She was good at public speaking, at debating, and that talent might get her somewhere if she went into politics.

  She moved on into the bedroom she shared with Léonie.

  On Léonie’s side of the room, clothes and undergarments were heaped on the floor, strewn about on every available surface. Cigarette stubs filled the ashtray. The desk where Léonie wrote her verse was buried under piles of books and crumpled papers. Apparently, the disorder left Léonie unfazed.

  Léonie’s verse was so good it had already been published in the highly respected poetry journal The Measure. As far as Margaret was concerned, to be recognized as a poet was to achieve near mystical stardom. This was due in part to the cult of personality that had sprung up around the soldier-poets of the Great War, and in part because writing poetry was one of the few endeavors in which women were allowed to shine. Amy Lowell’s name was familiar to every English major and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s voice, low and timorous, was as recognizable as her shock of red hair. Now Léonie—one of Margaret’s own roommates—seemed to be on the verge of joining this elite sisterhood. Margaret was the first to give her credit, saying, “Léonie is a real poet; none of the rest of us is a real anything yet,” but that didn’t make her success any easier to accept. Léonie’s poetry gave her a celebrity status that Margaret desperately wanted for herself.

  Margaret had to wonder, however was Léonie able to pull serious work out of the chaos of her life, the infatuation, the ecstasy, and the heartbreak that always seemed to trail in her wake? For a girl as conscientious as Margaret, who relied on self-will and determination, Léonie’s success was maddening.

  That night in bed, Margaret’s thoughts returned to the question of her future. The talk with Luther had left her even more confused. He had forced her to acknowledge that debating was dishonest.

  Without the debate squad, she would be cut adrift. She needed a focus for her prodigious energy. Believing that a unique talent must be lurking within her, she was impatient to identify it. As one friend had said, she was “like a missile waiting to be directed.”

  By the time she closed her eyes, she’d come to the same conclusion she’d reached on many other nights: that no one—not Dadda, not Grandma, and not even Luther—was going to set her on her path. That was something she was going to have to discover for herself.

  * * *

  The pair of scissors in the barber’s hand was silver, sharp, and shiny.

  Margaret sat in a swivel chair in the barber’s shop, looking out the big plate glass window. She wore a smock over her dress and her dark golden hair was spread like a canopy over her shoulders.

  The barber grabbed a handful of hair and pulled it taut.

  Scissors make a distinct sound as they cut through hair, a crisp slicing sound, very final. The sound seems even more distinct when the hair in question falls to a girl’s waist and hasn’t been cut in years.

  Margaret watched clumps of it fall to the floor.

  Suddenly she thought about her grandmother, her tiny little grandma who ruled the family with her kindness. When Margaret was a little girl, she used to love to sit at Grandma’s dressing table, with its frosted glass jar full of cold cream and the hand-painted handkerchief box. There, every night before bedtime, Grandma brushed her hair and told her stories of what it had been like for her, growing up.

  She told me about … Great Aunt Louisian, who could read people’s minds and tell them everything they had said about her and who had been a triplet and so small when she was born that she would fit into a quart cup … and about the time … Lida cut off [Louisian’s] … curls, and said, “Now they won’t say ‘pretty little girl’ anymore.”

  * * *

  Margaret looked down at the pile of hair accumulating around her feet. Straightening the spectacles on her nose as the barber turned her chair toward the mirror, she looked at her reflection.

  The heaviness had dropped away from her.

  She reached up to feel the short blunt ends of her hair. They felt healthy and strong. She stared at herself. Her newly shorn locks stuck out around her face, untamed, unruly, and boyish. The scissored-off hair would be easy to take care of, certainly a plus.

  Now, like Aunt Louisian, no one was going to call her “pretty little girl” anymore.

  Yes, somehow this new haircut was going to be more in keeping with who she was, and with the person she wanted to become.

  4

  A COURSE IN OLD MAIDS

  So much of the trouble is because I am a woman. To me it seems a terrible thing to be a woman. There is one crown which perhaps is worth it all—a great love, a quiet home, and children.

  —RUTH BENEDICT

  November 1922

  On the days she was teaching, like she was scheduled to do today, Ruth Fulton Benedict made a point of walking the full forty blocks from Columbia University to the American Museum of Natural History. She traveled first down Broadway, and then cut across at 86th Street over to Central Park West. The purposeful rhythm of her long, athletic stride, the swing of her arms, the feel of the air against her face, all calmed her nerves, helped her to mentally prepare. Good, hard physical exertion—whether it be rowing, hiking, or chopping firewood—was the thing she’d always relied on to focus her mind.

  Today Ruth was scheduled to take a group of anthropology students through the Museum’s Plains Indian Hall. As one of only three PhD candidates in Columbia’s Department of Anthropology, she had been asked to help Professor Franz Boas teach his introductory course.

  Ruth was thirty-five years old, tall and slender, with an athletic grace. Upon first meet
ing she projected an outward calm, causing one female colleague to say she “resembled the platonic ideal of a poetess.” Yet there was tentativeness to her nature, a hesitancy that always seemed to dog her. When she dropped by the anthropology office, her colleagues pronounced her a disappointment. Rather than engage in department gossip, she held herself apart, responding to their overtures by nodding assent or offering a vague noncommittal smile.

  On this November morning, Ruth was doing her best to mask her discomfort. Even though the dimly lit hall, with its cool marble columns and lofty depths provided cover, she found the prospect of delivering a lecture daunting. What was so difficult, she wondered, about standing in front of a dozen young people, many of whom were actually receptive, to talk about a subject she knew like the back of her hand? Whether it be the Sun Dance of a Cheyenne brave or the consecration of a Pawnee tribal bundle, these were rituals that sprang from a world she had made her own.

  Ruth stopped in front of a tall, sun-bleached pole cut from pine, an artifact from a Cheyenne Sun Dance, and turned to face the students. “Today we must ask, what was the Vision Quest, and how was the Vision obtained?”

  A few of the students opened their notebooks and began to take notes.

  “In spite of a diversity of local setting,” said Ruth, “the tribes of the Plains all sought communication with the Spirit. That Spirit might be some animal, bird, or voice. And the thing that spoke to the suppliant—animal, bird, or voice—that thing became his ‘Guardian Spirit.’”

  As usual, Ruth’s explanation was coming in fits and starts but this morning, as she attempted to describe the Vision Quest, she seemed even more uncomfortable, at times pausing so long between thoughts the more sensitive of her students felt embarrassed for her.

  Ruth, unaware that she was having an effect on her students, would have been stunned to know that any of them worried about her lack of composure. As it happened, however, one of them did. A diminutive girl was registering her concern by nudging her elbow into the side of a classmate.