Chapter 3
“Where the hell have you been?” Yannis’s accented baritone became particularly clipped when he was agitated. There was no
mistaking his emotion even in the darkness. “We were afraid you’d been arrested along with Margaret.”
“Sorry, it was a busy day.” Celia turned, groped for where she knew the handrail would be, and carefully navigated the step
down into the printshop. The door closed behind them.
“So I’ve heard,” Yannis breathed in her ear. A chill ran up Celia’s spine. She owed Yannis everything, trusted him as far
as you could trust anyone in this terrible climate. But tonight he was frightening her.
She turned left, paused at another door; Yannis opened it and pushed her inside. Celia stood unmoving, waiting for the light
to come on. Blinked against the sudden glare when it did. Gradually Jon and Selena Farmer came into focus, posed over the
portable Linotype printer, and coming suddenly to life like fairy-tale characters released from a spell.
“Whew.” Selena expelled a giant breath.
Celia had just seen Selena this morning at the meeting. Had she heard something since then? Celia had heard nothing during the day and had had no time to slip out for a newspaper. “Did they get her? Is that why you all seem so nervous?”
“Not yet,” Selena said.
Jon, who had been bending over the printer, most likely preparing to make a dash to hide it, stood and gave his wife a squeeze.
He was a good foot taller than her and much skinnier. He was a poet, among other things, and called the two of them “a marriage
of the moon and the sun.” Baby Estelle, whom they had recently added to their celestial duo, was asleep in her basket on the
roll-back couch, which had been pushed to one side to make room for the press.
“But we were all so jumpy when you didn’t show up on time, we almost put the printer away and closed up for the night.”
They all looked to the far wall, where a portion of the bookshelf had opened to reveal the empty storage space where the printer
was hidden when not in use. A secure place that wasn’t part of the printing shop but borrowed ten feet of the enclosed horse
path from the Arcadia—a space that, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist.
“Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed.”
“Thank goodness,” said Celia, opening her knitting bag and pulling out the pages that needed to be set into Linotype, and
the canisters containing the casters already prepared to print. “I’m sorry I worried you. It was a busy day. I was late getting
back to open the shop after the meeting, which made me persona non grata, and I had to close up and stay to help with the
dishes. I think the knitting excuse is beginning to fray. I may need to come up with a new reason for running out twice a
week.”
“Night classes at Cooper Union?” Jon suggested.
“My sister would expect to see a completion diploma.”
“Well”—Jon raised his eyebrows at Yannis and grinned—“you could . . .”
“No way. I’m not a forger, even for my friends.” Yannis unpacked the casters from their containers. “Please tell me these
aren’t Margaret’s new manuscript. We aren’t set up for bulk printing, and I’m not jeopardizing my family or my business by
using the big printer upstairs.”
“They aren’t,” said Celia. “Margaret wouldn’t leave her manuscript with me. She’d take it with her or leave it with a trusted
friend.”
Both men raised their eyebrows at her.
“We’re not friends exactly; I’m just one of the many . . . like Selena and the others. Anyway, one is an article from the
last issue of The Woman Rebel, since it was banned before we had a chance to send it out. The other is a primer on vitamins. How anyone could call either
of these pornography is mind-boggling.”
“They’ve confiscated every issue we tried to publish,” Selena said, disappointment and exasperation heavy in her voice.
“It’s rather academic now,” Yannis pointed out, taking the first canister for preparation. “Margaret will either be in jail
or—”
“It’s because Comstock hates women,” Selena said, glancing over at the sleeping Estelle. “He wants us all to die.” The last
word came out in a warble of emotion.
Jon rushed to her side and held her close, his chin resting on the top of her head. “No, no. It’s not as bad as that.”
“Have you heard anything?” Selena asked, her voice muffled in Jon’s shirt.
Celia shook her head. “Not since this morning.”
Yannis stuck his head out from behind the Linotype machine. “Well, you can count on one thing. If Margaret does slip out of his snare and gets away, they’ll come after her associates. And they’ll start with Book Row.”
“You don’t know that,” Celia snapped. “Margaret moves in totally different circles than ours.”
“Socially, maybe. But where do you find the most printing presses?” Yannis made an ironic gesture toward the Linotype.
Celia took a controlled breath; it didn’t help the cause to snap at your friends. “If it gets too dangerous, we’ll just have
to lie low for a while.”
“No!” said Selena. “Margaret is counting on us to carry out her work.”
Celia shot a glance at Yannis. He as much as the others was committed to the same ideals, but she knew he had a lot more to
lose than they did. Were they asking too much of him?
Jon straightened a stack of recently printed pages, flyers announcing a talk by the United Garment Workers called for the
coming weekend. Celia wished they could just stick to women’s issues. But she knew it was all wrapped up together—wages, nutrition,
education, and birth control, a term Margaret had coined to describe the right to decide the size of one’s own family.
They couldn’t stop now, especially with Margaret not here to keep the fire lit.
“If we can finish these tonight, I can get the article to my pickup point before work tomorrow, if you or Jon can get the
vitamin sheets to the settlement house. But the information on the second caster is supposed to go down to Mulberry Street
to the pattern factory. I won’t have the time to do both.”
“We can do that on our way back from the settlement,” Jon said. “Who do we see?”
“No one!” Celia’s blood was racing. “Sorry. We’re to fold them in half so all they have to do is slip them in the packets with the pattern pieces.
You’re to leave them in a gap in the clapboard, in the southeast corner of number 143.
Make certain no one sees you. Those poor pattern girls already suffer enough. ”
Jon grinned. “I can see a new campaign on its way.”
Celia shook her head. “They’re already organizing to join a union. We’ll leave that to them.”
“How do you know these things?”
“I keep my ears open and read the newspapers.”
“Then we can keep printing,” Selena said. “We’ve been careful. Comstock has no reason to look here.”
“Honey,” Jon said, “we don’t live or work here, but Yannis and Celia have much to lose.”
Yannis didn’t comment, just exchanged the union meeting caster for the one on vitamins.
“I’m sorry,” Selena said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Jon gave her a loving but patient look. “We mustn’t let our fervor override our good judgment. What do you think, Yannis?
It’s your call.”
Yannis snapped the caster receptacle shut.
“You know I’m committed to ending oppression of all kinds.
But I don’t know how long I can keep up this pace.
Comstock has raided the upstairs printing room twice already.
He found nothing, I don’t do anything more risqué than church socials announcements, party invitations, and theater posters.
But I don’t trust his thugs not to damage the printer just out of stupidity and viciousness.
” He bit on his lip and loaded blank paper to the feeder, then paused to look at the others.
“I brought my parents to America because I thought they would be safe here. Europe is a powder keg, overrun with soldiers. They left everything behind. I have to protect them above all else.”
“Absolutely,” Jon agreed, glancing at baby Estelle. “Families first.” He gave Selena an encouraging smile.
“Absolutely,” said Celia. She’d never forgive herself if her work put Olivia or Daphne—or any of them—in danger.
But she also knew she wouldn’t give up. Not as long as there were women who felt duty bound or were forced to keep bearing
children until they were broken, or maimed, or dead—like her own mother.
But she couldn’t ask Yannis to risk so much. He had the most to lose—his parents, his livelihood, his life, even. For the
authorities would come down hard on him, for being a printer, for being a bookseller, but, most of all, for being a foreigner.
It was almost eleven when the last sheet of paper was spit out of the machine. While Jon and Yannis cleaned the mechanisms,
Celia and Selena divided the printed materials, folded them, then tied them into bundles. Two of the bundles went into Celia’s
knitting bag. Selena lifted baby Estelle, placed the prenatal vitamin pamphlets for the settlement house and others for the
pattern warehouse in the basket and then, with a kiss to her forehead, nestled Estelle on top.
As soon as the printer was covered and neatly hidden behind the bookcase, they swept the outer room for any stray piece of evidence that would give away the true purpose of the room.
It only took two of them to push the couch back against the shelves, delighting Estelle with the unexpected ride.
Celia and Selena rearranged the two small club chairs and a battered table into a pleasant, entirely innocent-looking sitting room.
The Farmers left first by the back door, stepping outside and disappearing into the darkness. They would exit via the alley
that opened onto the Twelfth Street, where they could find a cab or a trolley to take them home.
Yannis locked the door behind them, and he and Celia waited in the dark for a full ten minutes. Even then, Yannis made her
stand in the stairwell while he checked for any noise or movement outside.