No Job for a Lady (2 page)

Chomping at the bit to do real reporting after I’d had an overdose of silly gossip, I asked my editor to give me a chance to be a foreign correspondent.

Heavens! I thought poor Mr. Madden was going to have a coronary. Being a foreign correspondent is
“no job for a lady,”
he told me flatly.

My rebuttal that neither was reporting silly gossip did not impress him. Which left me with a dilemma. I could either do society twaddle or find a man to support me in return for serving him in the kitchen and marriage bed. Neither option was acceptable.

I have always had the feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction. If you want to do it, you can do it. You just have to work hard and smart.

Since the newspaper would not let me try my hand at reporting from a foreign place, I left my job and set out to tackle an assignment. I chose Mexico for the place from which I would send my dispatches because, as my librarian pointed out, it’s not just a place that’s wild and untamed, with sagebrush and bandidos, that borders our country, but a thousand miles south in the tropics are the remains of civilizations with striking similarities to ancient Egypt, from pyramids to hieroglyphics.

God help me!

Materializing out of the darkness like a wraith in the haunted cavern, Aztecs gods with huge eyes, gaping jaws, ugly, twisted, even demented features stand staring back at me. Each one is adorned in its own tall headpiece, cloaks of bright feathers, and shields befitting Aztec warrior kings. The feathers are long and brilliant—reds, greens, yellows, purples, oranges.

Only one of the inanimate creatures is not in feathers, and I stare at him with my heart racing. His back is to me, but I can still tell it is a man, not a god. He’s almost naked, with strange gray skin that strikes me as
dead
—cold dead as gray marble, but without the shine and luster of polished stone.

He turns and comes toward me as I scream and scream.

Here would be a good field for believers in women’s rights. Let them forego their lecturing and writing and go to work; more work and less talk. Take some girls that have the ability, procure for them situations, start them on their way and by so doing accomplish more than by years of talking.

—“The Girl Puzzle,” Nellie Bly’s first piece, published January 25, 1885, in
The Pittsburgh Dispatch

1

El Paso, Texas
 

I bite my upper lip, a terrible habit when I’m nervous. This time it’s the long line for tickets at the train station causing the chewing. The ticket counter is an opening in an outside wall of the station house, leaving those of us in line to endure the cool of the evening as night falls. A line this long, this late, isn’t a good sign.

The insane trip I set out on has already taken more than one wrong turn, and I don’t need anything else to go sour. I spent four days traveling from Pittsburgh to El Paso, sitting and sleeping on hard seats. My body and soul ache at the prospect of hard seats for the final twelve-hundred-mile—three long days and nights—leg to Mexico City.

I want a Pullman sleeper berth and I am ready to fight for it.

A compartment all to myself would be even better. I need time to digest the fact that
I am going to Mexico alone.
I’m hoping that with a good night’s sleep the sunken feeling in the pit of my stomach and overwhelming fear that I’m being quite foolish will go away. But I have a sick feeling that no matter how much rest I get, I won’t be able to keep a bridle on my doubts.

What was I thinking! Well, as my dear mother says, when I act impulsively, I’m not thinking. For the first time in quite a while I, too, am questioning my good sense. It’s just that when Mr. Madden refused to let me tackle a foreign correspondent assignment on the grounds that it was too dangerous for a woman … well, I became furious. What poppycock!

Like most men, he has little understanding of what women are capable of doing. And that brought us to butting heads because I’m too impatient to keep tackling the boring reporting assignments given to me solely because I wear petticoats.

Rebelling from being exiled to the society page, I set out to do something that no other female reporter has ever done: report news from Mexico.

Why Mexico? I had saved my pennies during my brief sojourn in the newsroom, but what little I had wasn’t enough for reporting from “overseas.” It would pay, however, for the seven days by train it takes to get from Pittsburgh to Mexico City, a journey of close to 2,500 miles.

Once in the Mexican capital, I would generate enough money to keep me going by sending articles back to the paper. I am certain Mr. Madden will not fail to publish the articles—even if he refused to underwrite the assignment, interesting stories about events in a land far away sent by a young woman of their community will excite the paper’s readers.

My mother’s elation at my abrupt success at going from laborer to newspaperwoman turned to shock and disbelief when I told her I would prove myself by reporting from untamed Mexico, a land of endless bloody revolutions, fierce bandidos, and wild Indians on the rampage.

Even though it is 1886, the West is not yet completely tamed, and I have read that Mexico is decades behind America in its own struggle to civilize itself. This makes the land south of us either fertile ground for exciting stories or a danger zone, depending on whether one is looking at the situation through my rose-colored vision or my mother’s morbid fears.

I quit the paper, bade my few journalistic friends adieu, packed a bag, grabbed my mother, and set out to prove myself again. And as I said, at my own expense, something else that would never have happened to a man.

My mother insisted upon coming with me, of course, no doubt planning to poke with a hat pin any bandido who bothered me. She is certain that I will end up being kidnapped and having to make tortillas for a bandido chief—after I endured unspeakable things. And I must admit that her insisting upon accompanying me put the minds of my brothers and my editor a little more at ease, for they, too, were positive that I would be putting myself in harm’s way.

Nevertheless, all this changed when last night on the train my mother got stomach problems.

To my dismay, there was no way she could continue. The poor dear had horrible stomachaches. At first, she couldn’t stop throwing up. She was not in a dying state, just an uncomfortable, messy state. We figured she’d eaten something that didn’t agree with her and by morning she’d be better, but she wasn’t. Instead, she had a bit of a fever and just felt that icky, miserable feeling when one is under the weather—not wanting to move, just rest and sleep.

This left me in a pickle, for I felt responsible for her. A decision had to be made. Either I gave up my trip or I found a place for her to stay while I continued on. My mother hated to see me go on alone, but she knew how important it was that I complete what I had started. If I returned to Pittsburgh without having succeeded at my boast that I was capable of being a foreign correspondent, it would be with my tail between my legs and the only employment opportunity that of begging for my old job at the factory.

Before disembarking the train, I asked the porter, who was so helpful and kind when my poor mother became ill, if he knew of a place my mother could stay for a while. He gave me the address of an elderly couple who might rent us a room.

Thank goodness I was able to make safe and comfortable arrangements for her stay; otherwise, I would never have gone on.

I promised her once I arrived in Mexico that I would send letters every day so she would know how I was progressing—and that I was unharmed.

I am determined to prove myself come hell or high water. She knows how important this trip is to me, and no matter how crazy she thought I was in taking this trip, she also believed that it would be the only way for me to prove myself.

A shout from the ticket counter brings me back to reality: “Window closed; come back tomorrow morning.”

“What?” I tap the shoulder of the man in front of me. “Are they really closing the window?”

He turns to me, a rather nice-looking man.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.” He glances down at a railroad pocket watch, an item that reminds me of my own. When my father died, my mother gave me his watch, and it has been with me ever since.

“But why?”

“No idea. Maybe he’s tired and wants to go home and eat. Can’t blame the poor chap. Listen, I know you don’t know me from a hole in the wall, but would you like to join me for dinner? I’m famished and wouldn’t mind the company.”

“I, uh…” I fumble, caught by surprise, not knowing what to say. This is a first for me. I’ve never been asked out by a strange man. To the contrary, my life has been so occupied with helping my mother keep food on the table for my brothers and sister that I’ve had neither the time nor the inclination for courtship or even keeping company.

The first thing I can’t help but notice is his height—I have to look up. He’s tall, probably over six feet; his body hovers over my five-foot frame. I assume he indulges in sports, for he appears to have the build of an athlete. He’s young, maybe five or six years older than my nineteen,
1
with striking green eyes that are framed in silver wire-rimmed pince-nez—another favorite of my dad’s, except his glasses were gold. He’s clean-shaven, which I prefer, and his hair—curly, dark brown—is not long, but not short, either, falling just below his ears. He’s wearing a dark suit, giving him an eastern look, rather than the rough clothes of the westerners I see all around.

My mother claims I will fall for an older man because I worshiped my father, who died when I was six. He was prominent in our little community and became a judge. When not out tending to the horses, he wore suits.

“Cat got your tongue? It’s just dinner. I thought you’d like the company. Frankly, I felt sorry for you because you appear to be a woman alone. A bit worried, are you, out in the world all by yourself?”

Well I’ll be! What a turkey!

I square my shoulders. “I was concerned about getting a sleeper, not about traveling alone. I am quite capable of taking care of myself, thank you. And for your information, I’m not alone. I’m with my mother. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to her.”

“Fine, have it your way.” He starts to leave, but then turns back and tips his hat. “Good day.”

He walks away, leaving me agitated—more at myself than at him. The invitation had been polite and my hesitation had annoyed or perhaps even embarrassed him. But he is also insensitive enough not to realize that I have a right as a woman to travel alone if I care to and that I am not hiding my head in fear. However, I also realize I am oversensitive about setting out alone, not only because of what it will do to my career if I fail but also about how it will shatter the high expectations of those who encouraged me.

I have to admit that it probably would have been nice to have shared dinner with the gentleman. And he might even be heading in the same direction I am by train. But as usual, I’ve thrown caution to the wind and am doing it alone, going to a foreign country with a reputation of being wild and lawless, and with no one to lean on. No one to protect me or at least have for companionship and comfort, as my mother would have been. Oh, I am going to miss her sorely. Especially after I have turned down an invitation to dinner in this strange, rather wild, and backward town.

“Chin up, Nellie,” I mumble to myself in the most confident voice I can muster, “you can do this.”

One thing is for certain: Without a doubt, I will be here tomorrow at the crack of dawn to secure a private sleeping berth. Maybe I can sleep my way to Mexico and avoid the likes of him.

Once there, I will just take it day by day. I’ll be fine.

In the meantime, I might as well head into the station building to wait. I’m not hungry and have crackers left over from lunch to nibble on. I want to be right here, even if I have to sit on a bench all night long. Besides, as much as I’d like to, I can’t go back to my mother.

Since there was the possibility she might get better and try to continue on despite the fact she was weak and could relapse, I told her a little fib: I was leaving tonight. Right or wrong, I saw this as an opportunity of a lifetime, to experience traveling on my own, so I seized the opportunity. How could I pass it up?

Never before have I gone out of town all by myself, because it’s not proper etiquette for a single woman to travel without a companion. Well, why is it proper etiquette for a man to travel alone? Once again, rules made by men. Why should they have all the fun? Besides, this is something I have wanted to do forever, and even though I realize this is probably not the smartest time to make this decision, being that I am going into a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, I’m glad I’m doing it.

And without a doubt, I am scared.

But I can’t, I won’t let that stop me.

When I was five years of age, my father took me down to the stables to learn how to ride a horse. I was so scared. I didn’t want to get on—the horse was a monster, even though it was only a pony—but my father insisted he wouldn’t let the reins go.

Instead of giving in to my tugging and pulling to leave, my father knelt down and looked me square in the eyes and said, “Nellie, you’ll never get anywhere in life if you don’t face your fears. Worse, you will miss out on a lot. So hop on.”

So here I am—facing my fear.

Tomorrow I will make sure to be first in line, before I lose my false courage.

2

Oh, no, I groan as I enter the station waiting room—men, women, children, and dogs, and stacks of baggage of all shapes and sizes are all about, so crowded together they appear to be one big, unwieldy mass.

The dim light of a large oil-lamp fixture hanging from the center of the ceiling falls with dreary effect on the scene. Some people are sleeping sitting up, lost for a while to all the cares of life; some are eating; some smoking; while a group of men are passing around a bottle occasionally as they deal from a greasy pack of cards.