Chapter 21
Celia sat between the two men in suits in the back seat of the black sedan, trying to get her mind to function. She’d been
kidnapped, arrested by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Coming out of the settlement house, a place of good works.
A place she had no connection to except for the last week or so.
They’d snatched the notes about college that Miss Renfroe had written on the back of a dirty vitamin sheet out of her hand.
They hadn’t even looked for anything else, though a search might come later.
Her body turned cold at the thought. Her stomach threatened to rebel. She was being arrested, and no one knew. Camille must
have gone back into the settlement house before they pushed her into the back of the auto, or she would have tried to help,
surely.
Her family would never know what happened to her.
Stop it. Stop it! She pushed the rising hysteria down where it belonged. What would Margaret do?
Flee the country, came her treacherous thought. She pushed it aside. She was no coward. Well, she was. Her teeth were chattering from the
fear. She cut a glance at each of her captors, but they were looking straight ahead. It was just a job to them.
They’d take her . . . where? The police station?
Which police station? And then what? Would they let her go?
She hadn’t done anything wrong. At least not today.
At least not since she walked out the door of the settlement.
Didn’t they have to have proof? All they had were Miss Renfroe’s suggestion of college courses written on the back of a vitamin sheet.
It was a page of vitamins, wasn’t it? Please not the pessary sheet. She closed her eyes, her mouth too dry to swallow.
Margaret wouldn’t show fear. She’d been arrested, and she’d come back for more. She’d fled this time only to continue her
work. Margaret was facing forty-five years in prison for distributing birth control information. It was absurd. But what would
Celia face for carrying a paper about college and vitamins? If it was vitamins.
She knew her bag was empty. Ever since the raid on the Tellers’, she’d been very careful not to leave a trace. Deep breaths. What would Margaret do? She’d stay calm, at least on the outside, but she would be thinking on the inside. She would call
on her friends to help.
The authorities had let Margaret out pending her court date. They would have to let Celia out. Did she have enough money in
her purse to pay for bail? She had no idea; she certainly didn’t have ten dollars, or even five. Mr. Henderson would pay her
fine with the Row’s bail fund, if he could find her. Deep breaths.
She was just calming herself when the sedan pulled to the curb and came to a stop. She resisted the urge to cower in her seat.
Be brave—like Margaret. She kept the thought in her mind as the men pulled her from the car. Margaret, knowing she was going to be tried, could have fled weeks earlier, but she didn’t. She stayed and wrote Family Limitations and left the manuscript behind to be printed and distributed.
Did the authorities think Celia had the Family Limitations manuscript? Is that why all the sudden interest in Book Row after months of relative quiet?
She stumbled on the threshold of the police station. She hadn’t expected the step up there. She had to pay attention. She
wouldn’t let Margaret or her mother down. She lifted her chin and walked through the open door.
The next few minutes passed in a blur. Her captors flashing some kind of badge. The desk sergeant looking hard at them. Then
looking Celia over, then scowling back at the men who had brought her in.
“You really expect us to take this young woman into custody along with”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder—“that lot?”
The agents just stood there, not saying a word.
“I have a good mind to—”
“Abetting a known dispenser of pornography, no matter what your position, is punishable by law,” one of the men said.
Celia and the duty sergeant both stared at him. She was being charged with passing pornography? It was monstrous, and the
desk sergeant thought so, too.
“You guys—if I wasn’t ordered not to, I’d show you what we think of wasting police time.”
“We have our warrant.” One of the men thrust a thin rectangle of paper at him. “We demand that you incarcerate her.”
The policeman looked at the paper.
For a moment Celia thought he might refuse to take it. But finally he snatched it out of the man’s hand.
But he just shook his head and slapped it into a dingy folder that sat on his desk. Then he lifted his chin at the two agents, which communicated loud and clear, “Get out.” And they got out, practically shoving each other out the door, leaving Celia standing there alone before the high desk.
The duty sergeant sighed, stepped around his perch, and, with a final shake of his head, motioned to her to follow him.
She couldn’t seem to make her feet move.
He turned back. “Come on, miss. Doesn’t anyone know you’re here?”
She shook her head.
“Sometimes I hate my job. But not as much as I hate those thugs and their highfalutin moral superiority. There oughta be a
law. This way.” He led her to a heavy metal door, unlocked it. Waited for her to step through. The smell was the first thing
that hit her, the smell and the noise. He took her down a long, dank hall. Yells, pleas, and obscenities, coughing and the
sound of retching assaulted them from the cells on either side. At the end of the hall, he stopped.
“Only got one cell for all you girls. Least ways it’s not too busy, it being a weekday.” He unlocked another door, waited
for her to step inside. Gave her a gentle nudge when her legs refused to move.
At first, all she could do was peer around the dark squalid square, where several women stood together. At least two of them
had to be prostitutes, if their dresses were any indication. Another woman sat on a wooden bench, her face buried in her hands.
A fourth hunched against the far wall. She was old, with lank greasy hair, hanging long. Why was an old woman in jail? Celia
tried not to think.
The policeman clanked his club against the metal door. “You ladies be nice with this one. Obvious she don’t belong with the likes of you. But you do have something in common. She just got picked up by Comstock’s boys for carrying pornography.”
That set off a round of laughter from the two standing women. An invitation to “c’mon in and show us your wares.” Followed
by several comments that Celia couldn’t begin to understand.
“Shut it,” the jailor said. “And she better look just as good when she goes out again as she did when she came in, or you
won’t,” the policeman growled before he ducked his head and backed out of the door. Celia heard the clink of the key in the
lock. Retreating footsteps on the stone floor, a distant clank. She was alone with the other women criminals.
She didn’t dare move; there was no place to move to.
“We’d ask you to have a seat, but Misery over there’s got it occupied.”
“Ain’t no tea,” her companion said. “The servants got the day off.” She laughed, moving closer and showing off her gown. Once
it might have been bright, if a bit gaudy. It was torn and dirty now, and the woman behind the dirt and bravado didn’t look
much older than Olivia.
The old woman pushed away from the wall and came up close to Celia, so close Celia could smell her vile breath, not from liquor,
she thought, but from rotting teeth.
“You got any money?”
Celia shook her head. “Enough for the subway to Astor Place.”
“Let’s see it.”
The two prostitutes moved closer.
“They took it at the desk.”
“Figures. So how did a nice-looking girl like you get hooked into selling porn?”
The woman they called Misery looked up at that. And all four of them stared full on at Celia.
Any one of them could kill her, beat her senseless, and no one would be the wiser. Her family might never know what had happened
to her.
She would be shoved aside, rolled into a pauper’s grave. Like these women. These women whose smell made her gag. Whose filth
repulsed her. Disease ridden and hopeless, Celia feared that most of all. After a few hours she would be filthy and repulsive,
too. Despised by everyone, including themselves.
Celia tried to swallow but couldn’t. She was thirsty, with nothing to drink. Nothing she dared drink.
“Well? Cat gotcha tongue? You sell dirty postcards to the fancy men about town?”
“Nah, she’s one that poses all respectable then acts out what’s on them cards. Men love it when they can take care of their
selves on fine innocents. And she still looks like an innocent, don’t she, Misery?”
Misery, who had gone back to hiding her face, didn’t respond.
“I don’t sell pornography.”
“Naw, she sings in the church choir. Give us a hymn then. Make honest women out of us, missy.”
They had a good laugh over that, all except Misery, who could be dead for all the movement she made.
Celia tried desperately to hold down the bile that was working its way to her throat. She wouldn’t let it erupt. She wouldn’t
show them her fear, or her disgust.
Margaret wouldn’t do that, and she wouldn’t look down on them. She wouldn’t be disgusted. She would give them a lecture on women’s power and their right to control their own lives. This was Celia’s challenge, if she could just stop her legs from quaking.
And Celia’s fear turned quickly into anger, then to a searing rage that surprised her. That women would be treated with such
callousness, to be stripped of their dignity when they were already groveling to stay alive. It wasn’t right.
“I don’t sell pornography. I distribute birth control information. So women can decide when to have babies.”
“That’s easy,” said the old woman. “Honey.”
At first Celia didn’t understand.
“Huh,” the first prostitute said. “Honey never stopped no fish from swimmin’ upstream.”
“Huh, yourself, Hildy Matheson,” said the old woman. “It does if you add a few drops of pennyroyal. And if it don’t kill you,