What Was I Thinking? (31 page)

“Quite. I regret it as well.” He stood, always
the gentleman, except when he didn’t understand what was going on. Too bad we
didn’t like each other anymore, and probably never would.

I left.

* * * *

After that miserable confrontation, I was much
too agitated for ladylike pursuits around the house. I didn’t want to be alone
with my thoughts, either, though. I went to my room and fidgeted awhile,
opening and closing my notebook of cosmetics recipes.

Too bad I was only a chemist and hadn’t gone on
to medical school. I would really have liked to invent modern painkillers and
muscle-relaxants. Not a hope, though. I’d heard that willowbark tea could ease
pain, but it didn’t sound too promising. I wanted a nice, smooth pill washed
down with a cold soda, darn it!

Thinking of my recipes reminded me of
something, though. I’d been meaning to visit the fair again, to see if I could
track down some avocados for conditioner and facial masks. It wasn’t available
from grocers, but I had hopes that it might be exotic enough to make the
California state exhibit.

I went looking for Augusta and with very little
effort talked her into visiting the fair with me. With her for company, I’d
have to make conversation, and that should effectively block all my unwelcome
thoughts.

I couldn’t talk her into walking to the fair,
though. She thought that was insane, especially since we would walk for acres
once we got there.
A fair point, especially in a world where
ladies didn’t exercise.
I sighed and found a place on the trolley, no
longer enchanted by memories of its movie double. Now I only noticed the
crowding and the smells of unwashed bodies in the heat.

The fair was crowded too, but at least we could
walk around in the fresh air. The need for fresh air and exercise made me
suggest visiting sections of the fair we hadn’t visited before.

As we strolled, we talked about plans for our
business. To my initial surprise, Augusta was just as interested in it as I
was, eagerly participating in all of my experiments, and we had become partners
in it without any formal discussion. Now we needed to find packaging for our
products and a name for the business, and then we would start production in
earnest.

I had thought we might give the business our
own names—
Miss Hull’s Ointments and
Tinctures
had been my first idea, before it became obvious that the
business wasn’t mine alone. Now I was in favor of something with Augusta and
Addie in the name, or, if I were still going to marry Bert, maybe
The Two Mrs. Rolands
, or
Beauty Supplies from the Ladies of Roland
House
.

Augusta was firmly against all of my
suggestions. “It wouldn’t do to emphasize ownership by females, my dear.”

“It wouldn’t?
Why not?”
Every day brought a new and unpleasant surprise about the status of women.

“Well, it would look unseemly, of course.”
Of course.
Grr. “And our potential customers would assume
that products made without guidance of the male would be inferior—”

“Oh,
come
on!
” I really couldn’t believe this. “Even after Marie Curie won a Nobel
Prize? People can’t be that ridiculous!”

She smiled a little sadly. “They can be, dear.
Many people disapprove of Mrs. Curie and even those who don’t assume she is
unusual and unfeminine—a freak like some of those on display here at the fair.
No one would assume that we are as clever and, indeed, why should they?”

Wow, there was a lot to think about in there!
Too much to sort, really.
Freaks at the
fair?
Did Augusta really mean that there were human beings being
exhibited here? It was horrible to think of, but I supposed such things had
gone on well into the century. Before I could decide which of her comments to
be upset about first, she went on.

“We will face enough difficulties in running a
business without turning over ownership to a man, without calling attention to
that fact.”

“What do you mean? Why would we have difficulty
running a business?”

She stopped walking and looked around,
obviously checking whether we could be overheard. There were lots of people
around, but no one was paying any attention to us. She pulled me to the side of
the pathway, out of the flow of foot traffic, and asked, “Addie, just how
different
is
your world? Are you
telling me a woman can own a business, enter into contracts, have her own
money, all of that?”

“Of course.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Are
you telling
me
that none of that is
possible yet? I knew those were problems in history, but by 1904…” I trailed
off, seeing the truth on her face.

“It’s not so much that all of those are
explicitly against laws, you understand. But some of them are and even those
that are legal are against tradition and social acceptance.”

“Well, that I understand,” I said, somewhat
bitterly, “and I guess we shouldn’t try to change the world with our little
business.”

“We
could
try to change the world,” she pointed out gently, “but if we do, that will
become the whole of the business and I thought you wanted to make money from
it. Years ago, when my dear Bertram died, I allowed ownership of the family
business to pass to Egbert and Charles rather than insisting on shares of my
own, though Bertram had told me he had named me as a full partner in the papers
of incorporation. It was just easier not to quarrel with the boys and my own
lawyer at the same time.” She
blushed
a little.
“Please pardon my indelicacy in speaking of such things,” she added.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “No
pardon is necessary, Augusta. I think we need to maintain our habit of speaking
plainly when it’s just the two of us. And you’re right, I do want to make
money—I think I must. As for changing the world…” I shook my head, not knowing
how to put all my tumbled and contradictory thoughts into words.

At last I returned to the immediate topic. “So,
what’s your suggestion of a business name?”

“I’m not sure. Something that gives no hint of
our identities, and that
does
hint of
beauty. I rather liked the word ‘tincture’ in your original business name. It
has a pretty ring to it, somehow.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Tincture, huh?
Well, what else sounds like that? Tint—that would be good, since we’re offering
hair products that protect and enhance color—but it’s not such a pretty word.”

“Oh! I know!” Augusta sounded like a schoolgirl
in her excitement. “Let’s put Titian in the name, like the artist! It sounds
pretty, he painted beautiful women, a lot of them had red hair, and our henna
shampoo for red hair is one of our best products!”

“Now, that’s an idea.” I looked up. “You know,
we should go back to walking. We’re calling attention to ourselves by standing
still.”

Augusta looked around and obviously came to the
same conclusion because she stepped back into the flow of walkers without
comment. I followed her, still musing on the name.

“I like ‘Titian,’ but what else will we put
with it?” I finally said. “Titian Shampoos?
Titian Products?
What can we add to it so people know what we’re selling?”

“Titian Ointments and
Tinctures?”
Augusta offered. “That has a ring to it, don’t you
think?”

“It does, and I know it’s from my own
suggestion, but now it sounds too much like a patent medicine company.”

“Hmmm.
So it does, so it does. Oh!
What do you think of this?
Titian Ablutions Products for Ladies
?”

I laughed aloud. “I like it! I really do. And
in the eighties, when they shorten the names of everything to acronyms, the
stockholders can call it Taple!”

Augusta looked baffled. “What’s an acronym, and
why would anyone change a name to one?”

“It’s a set of initials that can be pronounced
as a word. You see, if you take the first letters of each word in our company
name, you get T-A-P-L—taple.”

“Oh, I do see. And people will someday think
that a good name for a business?”

“Unfortunately, y—” I broke off, stunned by
what I thought I’d seen from the corner of my eye. I turned to get a better
look. I had seen it—I wasn’t imagining things.

It was a zoo enclosure, a big one with a
habitat setup of the sort that was considered very advanced and
forward-thinking for displaying lions and monkeys during my childhood. And
there were
people
in it.

When I could speak, I turned to Augusta and
asked, through lips that felt stiff and strange, “What is this exhibit? What
are those people doing in there?”

She looked at me in surprise. “Why, Addie,
whatever
are
you talking about? There aren’t any
people in there right now—just the Igorot.”

“
Wh-
what?”

“The Igorot, the savages brought back to
celebrate America’s great triumph in the Spanish war when we took the
Philippines.”

I looked around in horror, seeing the vast
expanse of fenced displays we’d walked by while in conversation. Huts of
various descriptions dotted the landscape as far as I could see, and smaller
dots, in shades of brown and black moved among them. I felt sick.
And ashamed.

“Savages?
Au—
wh
—”

She clicked her tongue in exasperation.
“Honestly, Addie, I thought you were educated! We are right in the middle of
the anthropological exhibit, which Mr.
W.J.
McGee
put together at great expense, to illustrate the four steps of
human development: savagery, barbarianism, civilization, and enlightenment.
Didn’t you even take a moment to glance at the wild Africans with their mud and
grass huts? That’s a wonderful exhibit of the barbarous state of mankind.”

My jaw dropped open, and I stared at her in
horror. Did I even know this woman?
And what about
me?
Had I really walked by all
this…this…
this
without noticing? How
could I have been so intent on our conversation that I failed to notice human
beings exhibited in a zoo?

She was still talking, still scolding me for my
inattention to science. “Do you not know that Jessie Tarbox Beals’ photographic
plates of these exhibits are lauded far and wide for their contributions to the
science of ethnology? Why, universities and museums all over the world are
vying to purchase—”

I didn’t hear any more. I turned and ran,
dodging between gawkers, overhearing scraps of conversation as I went.

“Only look, those savages are nearly naked!”
followed by ladylike titters.

“My dear, listen to the monkey-gibberings! It’s
almost as if they’re talking!”
And laughter.
Lots of laughter.

After a time, I slowed down and forced myself
to look at an exhibit. It seemed wrong that I had walked by unseeing the first
time, and now I was averting my eyes. But it was shameful. It was hard to force
myself to look at the humanity living their lives on display. Whole families
went about daily life, right here while the “enlightened” people stared,
leered, and giggled. Children of various ages were running and playing, women
were cooking over fires, men were bent over tasks…I’m not sure what they were
all doing. I’d make no kind of reporter. I couldn’t keep looking.

I turned away again and started pushing through
the crowds, trying to blink back the tears before I called attention to myself.
I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew nothing good could come of an
impassioned outburst among the happy and self-congratulating fairgoers.

Augusta was right. How had I managed to miss
the mentions of this in the newspapers and conversations? How had I not seen
this the other times I’d come to the fair? What was wrong with me that I could
overlook such an appalling thing, right where I lived?

I knew my face was bright red. The burning,
prickling feeling on my face and neck, creeping down my arms, made my earlier
humiliation in front of the crowd at TAPI seem like nothing. No one was
particularly paying any attention to me now. I was just one of the huge,
jostling, chattering throng, but still, my shame was physical.

I finally found my way out of the human
exhibits, and back onto the Pike, which was just routine carnival hurly-burly.
It was just as crowded, and even noisier, with sounds of marching bands and
musical revues clashing in the air above the chatter and the machinery, but at
least I was away from…even in my mind I shied away from putting a name to it. I
put my head down and plunged on, looking for the exit as I reviled myself.

I knew that over the months I’d been here I had
deliberately ignored many remarks and gestures that seemed horribly racist. I
had told myself over and over that these people were behaving correctly
according to their own time and it was not my place to reform them or to despise
them. But what else had I been willfully blind to?