The Harlot’s Pen Read Online Free Page A

Department that had seized Mrs. Whitney. In response to complaints at the Congressional hearing immediately following, that the officers had no warrant, the Department of Justice stated, “This is no time to split hairs when our country’s very foundations are at stake.” Mr. Palmer was quoted as saying that membership in the Communist Labor Party was warrant enough. Not everyone in our nation’s capital agreed.
    It was against that frightening backdrop that Leticia and I worried over Mrs. Whitney’s upcoming pre-trial hearing. We hoped they would dismiss the charges against her, but given the arrests of so many, it was hard to feel optimism. We made plans to meet at Leticia’s home to await word, along with other progressives, while men from the Progressive Party staffed the telegraph so we could all know the results as quickly as possible. I was deeply grateful that I hadn’t been caught up in that net back in November.
     
    * * * *
     
    January 7, 1920
     
    They didn’t free her. The judge set her trial for January 28 and continued to hold her without bail. The reports said she was a shadow of her former self, and although she stood proud and adamant, she was thin as a rail and coughed throughout the hearing. Those of us receiving the news in Leticia’s quiet salon vowed a mass attendance at the trial to give her hope.
    Unlike Leticia, whose Albert was stolidly in support of her views, and Jacqueline, who did exactly as she pleased, I was faced with the question of how to attend without Sam’s knowing. The irony of living in an untraditional relationship with a former community leader of the Progressives and fearing his wrath if I attended the trial of the greatest Communist leader of our time was not lost on me.
    It wasn’t always like this, of course. We were approaching the third anniversary of our time together. We had lived together through a long war, an exciting peace, and now, an angry domestic stalemate.
     
    * * * *
     
    January 15, 1920
     
    The fourteenth was the anniversary of the day we met. I could still see him, tall, commanding, his green eyes glimmering as he stood before the group of Progressives at the Bateau Ivre café. I had ventured out with Leticia, who had been my friend in the two years I had attended college in Berkeley before becoming catastrophically engaged. Most assumed it was the war that prevented my marriage. It was only she, and later Jacqueline, who knew the truth.
    The horrors of the war in Europe were far away from us that night, and we were all fired up about the new unions. Sam had given such a stirring speech I stood up and applauded. I had looked around, and mortified, realized that I was the only one. Fortunately, it was a kind laughter that engulfed me. Sam sat down at my table and bought himself a whiskey. A few months later, he took me home, and in effect I never left.
    But that was all in the past, before I got involved in Miss Bary’s Commission, and before Sam went to work for A.B.C. Dohrmann.
    I chilled a bottle of champagne for us to drink together. Sam didn’t get home until it was almost ten. The bottle remained in its bucket.
     
    * * * *
     
    January 29, 1920
     
    “Toil she must, to crumb the empty larder,
    to still the cries of her hungry child,
    while her master scoffs at her plea so mild
    to pay her sex fairly—she begs so meek
    to keep her body off the street.”
    The Rape of the Working Woman, V. Strone
     
    What joy it was to quote myself at the beginning of this entry!
    To my amazement, a check from the Argus arrived in mail: ten dollars! The irony was not lost on me. I didn’t have to stand on my feet for hours for a whole week to earn that, nor lie on my back while strangers took their liberties.
    There was no letter, just a note: “Payment for The Rape of the Working Woman to be run week of Feb. 20-28.” The check was payable to V. Strone. Fortunately, the bank knew my “maiden name,” and would consider it a misspelling of Stone. It was