Free The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters Page B

Eiderlings—I’ll have Gerda take a note to the Acklen household tomorrow morning.”
    â€œThank you.”
    Silence wedged between us again. I assumed he was waiting for me to turn around and face him, perhaps even to fling my arms around his shoulders and tell him,
You were right, Father. My life is so much better now that I hallucinate and can no longer articulate my anger
.
    When I showed no signs of moving, he retreated down the hall, his house slippers swishing across the floorboards.
    â€œTime to ready yourself for bed, Olivia,” he said as he went. “I’ll be finishing my nightcap in my office if you need me.”
    My stomach clenched into a knot. I steadied myself against the little marble-topped side table we used for collecting mail, and my palm crinkled the copy of the newspaper that featured the illustration of Henri and me. Farther down on the page, a headline I had failed to see that morning jumped out at me in boldfaced letters:
    WHY THE WOMEN OF THIS STATE
SHOULD BE SILENCED
    The author: Judge Percival R. Acklen.
    Percy’s father.
    I grabbed the paper off the table and tore up the staircase.
    Behind my closed door, seated on the edge of my bed, I devoured the entire piece, still buttoned inside my coat and shoes. The letter stated the following:
    As nearly everyone knows, in June of this year, the men of Oregon voted down a referendum that would have given the women of this great state of ours the right to vote. As this upcoming Tuesday’s presidential election draws nearer, irate females have taken to the steps of the courthouse in downtown Portland to complain about their lack of a voice in American politics—and to bemoan their jealousies over their voting sisters in neighboring Idaho.
    What these unbridled women lack is a thorough knowledge of the female brain. Two of my closest friends, Drs. Cornelius Piper and Mortimer Yves, two fine gentlemen educated at East Coast universities, both support the staggering wealth of scientific research that proves women were created for domestic duties alone, not higher thinking. A body built for childbearing and mothering is clearly a body meant to stay in the home. If females muddle their minds with politics and other matters confusing to a woman’s head, they will abandon their wifely and motherly duties and inevitably trigger the downfall of American society.
    Moreover, we would never allow an unqualified, undereducated, ignorant citizen to run our country as president. Why, therefore, would we allow such a person to vote for president?
    Women of Oregon, you preside over our children and our homes. Rejoice in your noble position upon this earth. Return to your children and husbands, and stop concerning yourselves with masculine matters beyond your understanding. Silence in a woman is feminine, honorable, and, above all else, natural. Save your voices for sweet words of support for your hardworking husbands and gentle lullabies for your babes—not for American politics.
    I ground my teeth together until my jaw ached. This man—this silencer of women—was raising the first boy who had ever looked at me with longing and affection in his eyes.
    Poor Percy.
    Poor
Mrs.
Acklen.
    Poor Oregon.
    We were all being lectured by a buffoon.
    I thought of Frannie’s mother and everything she did to keep their wild household
and
their bookstore running in tip-top order. A fire kindled in my chest, burning, spreading, crackling loudly enough for me to hear it, until I worried my breathing might singe the bedroom walls. My mouth filled with the taste of thick black smoke.
    I pulled a sheet of writing paper out of my rolltop desk, dipped the nib of my pen into a pot of velvety dark ink,and wrote a response to his letter with my neatest display of penmanship.
    To Judge Acklen:
    You state that women were made for domestic duties alone. Have you ever stopped to observe the responsibilities involved with domestic duties?
    What