Linda Rosen

Saturday is finally here. I was afraid this day would never come. Wrapped in my wool coat, the raccoon collar warming my neck, I hurry down MacDougal Street, a scruffy block in Greenwich Village so different from mine across Washington Square where the “Manhattan mink brigade” lives. A Model T passes by, rumbling over the cobblestones, its clanking motor adding to the chatter of pedestrians strolling down the sidewalk. Arriving at number 137, I open the townhouse door and descend the stairs to Polly’s Restaurant. It’s where the Heterodoxy Club meets every other Saturday at 1 p.m.. Though on this particular day, despite the joy of finally being back, the restaurant’s sunny yellow walls do not reflect my mood. I can’t shake the chill from the day or the silent, never-ending, futile argument with my husband. It seems my jaw is constantly clenched, not to mention my neck and shoulders. The tension is always in the air and deep in the oak floors we tread. Thank goodness he’s on rounds at the hospital today. Otherwise, I would never have been able to leave the house.

My mother-in-law, Mama Brandt, or Grandmama as we often call her, is at home with Rosy, our thirteen-month-old daughter. She doesn’t realize her son is ignorant of the fact that I’m out today. She also is unaware of the trouble in our marriage and has no idea of the demands he forces on me. He insists I be home at all times and often grumbles, “Lucy, be the mother you’re supposed to be.”

Mama Brandt believes I’m simply having lunch with girlfriends. I couldn’t tell her I was going to a meeting. That must remain a secret. Mine and the club’s. Even though the New York Tribune blew the lid off it a few years ago, divulging the names of a few prominent members, only the membership and some guest speakers know what really goes on in the Heterodoxy Club. We don’t keep records. As the name suggests, it is a safe place that honors differences of opinion. A place where unorthodox women, artistically minded like myself or politically active, can discuss, doubt, and disagree freely. It’s my haven. A place where I truly fit my skin, away from the crying and the diapers and the incessant demands my daughter makes for my attention.

Here, at Polly’s, I mingle with women of all ages. Bright women. Intelligent. Accomplished. Many the first in their fields. Women with a purpose. For years, they fought to get the vote and finally, last year, the Nineteenth Amendment passed. Today, our purpose, our topic of discussion is one of utmost importance. An option I wish I had. And one I wish my husband had agreed to. Birth control. 
 

“Over here,” Crystal calls from across the room, her arm raised, that ever-present bright red metal cigarette holder between her fingers.

 Crystal is like a sister to me. We’ve been best friends since we were in baby carriages. A few years later, when we were skipping rope and playing Double Dutch, the carriages a distant memory, Helen moved into the neighborhood and we became The Inseparable Threesome, as her father calls us. The only time we were apart was for college. I stayed in the City attending Barnard. Crystal and Helen roomed together upstate at Vassar. And now, we’re together again, all living in the Village though, unfortunately, I have the title of Mrs. and they retain Miss. My townhouse, on the tony north side of the Square, is a short walk across the park from the rooming house where they live on Thompson Street.

I wave, letting Crystal know I see her, and make my way through the wooden tables crammed close together, stopping to say hello to women I haven’t seen in over a year. I reach our table and pull out a chair just as the woman next to me, in a tunic draped over loose pants, says, “We haven’t seen you for ages. Have you been in another play? I imagine that keeps you very busy.”

I recognize this woman as the socialist who was in my class at Barnard. She’s now teaching uptown at Columbia University. Unlike me, who lives with her husband and child in a three-story red brick townhouse on the north side of Washington Square, this buxom woman shares an apartment with her lover. A children’s author. They are like so many lesbian couples who feel free to be themselves in the club, in this intimate, safe setting. Some even have children. Kids they wanted. A tired sigh escapes my lips. Or is it a sad one? Or both?

A local artist whose paintings hang on the walls of the restaurant is seated to my left. “Between acting and the baby,” she says, “I’m not surprised we haven’t seen you. Your little one must be about one by now.”

Crystal shoots me a pinched look. My tiny wave back lets her know I am not going to talk about myself. That’s not what we do here. My fingers find my gold earring with the three tiny birthstones. Rubbing the amethyst, sapphire, and diamond, I smile at the artist, whose pendulous breasts sway freely in her embroidered caftan, and answer, “Just a month over and quite a bundle of energy. I don’t have any time to act, as much as I’d like to.” 

Enough, I tell myself and drop my hands firmly in my lap. Don’t go any further. She doesn’t need to know I’m not allowed to act anymore. A sour tang fills my mouth simply thinking of the word allowed. I swallow the bitter taste. Forcing a brighter smile, I tell the artist how happy I am to be back at Polly’s and talk about legalizing birth control. “I’m anxious to hear Margaret Sanger today. Don’t you agree that birth control will liberate women?”

“Absolutely,” she says. “Sanger is correct. Birth control will liberate women in the bedroom and the home.” 

My shoulders relax. The focus is no longer on me. I can speak on this topic for hours. I would love to be liberated. Before I can utter a word about it, she continues. “Liberate not only in the home but the larger community. Think of all the young women, girls, who should never have had their babies.” 

My hand goes to my earring again. I need to break this habit, so I grab a glass of water. It doesn’t comfort me the way touching the earring does, but I sip the cool drink and think. I am certainly one of those women who shouldn’t have had a baby. And suddenly, the night I conceived comes back to me playing like a silent movie. I had just slipped my ankle-length nightgown over my head when Charles came into the bedroom, furiously waving Marie Stopes’ book, Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties, in the air. 

“Have you read this garbage?” He shouted. 

“Yes. But it’s not garbage.” I tried to keep my voice even.

His head shook. Anger blew from his mouth. I could see the fire in his eyes and how he tightened his shoulders, something he did whenever he needed to tamp it down. Whenever we argued about having children. 

“Then you know,” he grumbled, “that she suggests waiting two years after marriage before a couple has children. Even though I told you over and over again that I did not want to wait that long. And now,” he tossed the book across the room. “We’re married almost three years. When will you ever want to be a mother? What’s wrong with you?”

I force myself to shake away those thoughts and join the conversation at the table. A contagious buzz flows through the room with Democrats, Republicans, socialists, anarchists, radicals, and liberals all voicing their opinions. Ideas burst forth as they always do in this intimate setting as the women consume plates of goulash, with its smokey paprika, or savory liver and onions. All prepared by Polly’s lover, the anarchist Hippolyte Havel. It’s simple, inexpensive fare. Food is never the important part of being at Polly’s. It’s merely to be consumed while we discuss radical ideas, Hippolyte’s and others.

“Did you know Sanger went to jail?” one woman says. “All because of her talk about birth control.”

“Not all because of her talk,” Crystal says. “It was in 1916, only five years ago. I remember it well since it was the year I entered law school. The court in Portland, Oregon, where she was speaking, arrested her and the men who were selling her pamphlets. It was all political. Against the Comstock laws. The judge claimed her talk and written words which described birth control methods, pessaries, condoms, sponges . . .” 

“I use the sponge,” a woman across the table interrupts.

“Yes,” continued Crystal. “Some of us do, but sponges as well as all the other methods, including vaginal tablets that Sanger supports, and douches were all in the pamphlet that sent her to jail. The court claimed her writing was obscene and, can you believe, a danger to the well-being of the nation.”

Silverware clinks against dishes. Waiters pour water into cut-glass goblets. Women utter their frustration with the strangling laws prohibiting their personal freedoms. Yet I cannot get the discussions I’ve had with Charles out of my head. 

“It is against the law,” he reminded me when I first pleaded he use a sheath or allow me to use a cap. In the same didactic tone, he told me he could lose his medical license. That’s a laugh. I doubt he would ever be arrested, as he claims. I can’t imagine any officer of the law would actually look into what married couples do in the privacy of their bedrooms. Yet my argument holds no weight with him.
“It was only three months after her arrest,” Crystal is saying when I bring myself back to the conversation, “that Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the US. It was over in Brownsville, in Brooklyn.”

Helen, seated next to Crystal, scrunches her nose. The tiny scar on its tip wiggles. It’s from a cut she got years ago falling down the banister in the tenement house where, as new immigrants, she and her parents lived. “But that clinic closed,” she says. “Then Sanger reopened it and they closed it down again. It went on for a while. She and her husband were arrested several times. One of my early assignments for The Tribune was an article on the clinic.” She shakes her head and grumbles, “It’s that damn Mr. Comstock and his preposterous laws.”

A waiter approaches with a pot of coffee. The aromatic scent of chicory perfumes the air around the long wooden table. “You’re talking about Mrs. Sanger?” he asks. “I heard she just started something called the American Birth Control League. They’re talking about it over at that table.” He points across the room.

“That has to help,” the Columbia professor says. “Did you know Sanger was a midwife?” I nod. Some mumble “Mmm hmmm.” Some look surprised. “That’s why she calls this fight for birth control her life’s mission,” the professor adds. “She’s going to talk about that after lunch, and I am one thankful woman to have someone like her lead us in this fight. She’s seen so many tragedies from butchered abortions and all those unwanted pregnancies. It’s . . . it’s . . . just too awful.”

A wave of sadness covers me like a shroud. Could my pregnancy have been termed a tragedy? I definitely did not want it, although now I do love my little girl. Yet I’m not like the women Sanger saw. I’m not poor, unwed, or an immigrant. I’m married. Unhappily. And grateful to be well-off. I sit back and cannot control the sigh that escapes my lips. Voices hum around me. I act as if I’m part of the conversation yet thoughts and scenarios play in my mind. One option keeps coming back to me, as frightening as it may be. For so many reasons. Yet it won’t leave. I just have to figure out the details and if I really can do it.