“What the hell is the hoochie coochie?”
“You haven’t heard? That’s what they’re calling the danse du ventre. Soph is really peeved about it, but I don’t mind. Hoochie coochie! It sounds like being tickled.”
I laughed. “It also sounds a little naughty.”
“I’d be disappointed if it didn’t.”
The next morning, I stood in the long hall of the Woman’s Building, its soaring walls punctuated by a comically large number of arched doorways and pillars. When I climbed a lacy iron spiral staircase to the second level, the place took on the appearance of a blimp hangar whose curving roof was improbably made of glass.
Sunlight poured into the building, playing over a timeline mural that unspooled the history of U.S. womanhood as I walked toward the Lady Managers Board office. Painted beneath 1700 were white women in pioneer outfits, cooking and cleaning. In 1840, they joined hands with black and brown women, marching for abolition and universal suffrage. At least twenty feet were dedicated to the year 1870, with women dancing beneath the text of the Fifteenth Amendment: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex, race, color, marital status, or previous condition of servitude.”
There was the election of Senator Harriet Tubman, under 1880, the only prominent brown face on the wall. A collage atop a waving American flag showed women voting, running their own stores, teaching children, working as nurses, and smashing liquor bottles in a Temperance march. Eighteen ninety was entirely devoted to the construction of the Woman’s Building, of course, with women looking at blueprints and picking out some of the bizarrely mismatched interior details for the hall’s décor. Beside the office door was a final panel devoted to the far-off year of 1950, where women were looking through telescopes and operating giant dynamos. A white woman’s face, capped by a bulbous, “futuristic” hat, hovered over the words “Lady President.” I stared at the political prediction, still a fantasy in my time, and could imagine Anita adding it to her ever-expanding list of “Great Moments in White Feminism.”
I remembered Soph telling us that the Lady Managers were running an anti-abolition candidate for some office, but they were also devoted to promoting women’s rights. There had to be some sympathetic members of the group, and maybe they would see our point of view.
A short, harried-looking woman with a pile of unruly black hair tangled into an updo answered my knock on the Lady Managers’ office door.
“I’m here from the Algerian Village. Is there somebody I could talk to about hosting a meeting between the women in the village and the Lady Managers?”
She looked dubious. “You’re Algerian?”
“I work there. We’re on the Midway.”
“Oh, you’re one of those.”
“There are a lot of women working on the Midway, but especially in the theaters, and I thought maybe the Lady Managers Board might like to meet with us. For the sake of female solidarity?”
She put one arm akimbo and stared at me like I was an idiot. I had to put this in terms she would understand. I needed something that would lead them gently away from that Great Moments in White Feminism playbook. If they met Aseel and Salina and the others, they might find it harder to team up with Comstock to destroy their sisters on the Midway. What would appeal to these women? There had to be an idea so innocuous that they couldn’t say no.
“There are a lot of women in the villages who could benefit from a… cultural exchange,” I said hesitantly. “They could talk to you about how women live in their countries, and the Lady Managers could teach them about American womanhood. Maybe we could have a… woman’s cultural tea?”
Clearly one of those words was a magical key because suddenly she was smiling and nodding and showing me into the plush, oddly decorated interior of the office. Pink, fluffy curtains hung next to African prints, and Moorish tiles shared wall space with racist caricatures of indigenous Americans carved from corn cobs.
“Sorry about the mess. All this stuff was donated and we have no idea where to put it. I’m Sarah, by the way. This is Augusta.” Sarah indicated another woman at a desk, busy writing something in shorthand.
“I’m Tess.”
“So you’re really not from Algeria?”
“I’m from California.”
“I suppose that’s almost as savage, really. Tell Augusta about your idea for a woman’s cultural tea.”
Fifteen minutes later, Augusta had two pages full of shorthand, and Sarah was already planning how many kinds of biscuits they’d need. None of the other exhibits had done any cross-cultural events yet, and they wanted the Woman’s Building to be the first.
“The Woman’s Building has a hard time selling tickets to our exhibits, but surely people would pay to watch a civilized meal with women in their bizarre costumes from all across the world.” Sarah looked pensive. “Plus, don’t you think it would be the perfect opportunity to teach these wild women some manners?”
The more she talked, the more I felt like I had eaten a spoonful of salt. It sounded like she wanted to turn our tea into a freak show. “I don’t want to sell tickets,” I said. “I thought we’d have more of a private meal, to get to know each other.”
Augusta looked up from her notes, perplexed. “Whatever would we do at a private meal? A lot of those women on the Midway can’t even speak! They use grunts and hand gestures.” She grimaced and mimed grabbing something. “But wouldn’t that be a fun show? Primitives with tea and biscuits?”
I stood up, my face filling with blood. I thought of a million things I could say, cruel and wrathful and right. I thought about how easy it would be to pierce these women’s hearts with the letter opener on Augusta’s desk and blame it on a man. But I did none of that. I cleared my throat carefully and said nothing. When I left, I didn’t slam the door. Aseel had been right. Not all women were our allies.
I bought a hot dog for lunch and took a brief detour around the artificial lagoon next to the Woman’s Building. It was full of paddle boats that bore visitors to an artificial island, planted with invitingly shady trees and dotted with park benches. The avenues here in the White City were wide and clean, and it seemed like every exhibit was devoted to mechanical devices and inventions that would make us richer. It couldn’t have been more unlike the thronged, polyglot alleys of the Midway, where the villages sold trinkets and cheap entertainment. If the White City was the world that Americans imagined for themselves, perhaps the Midway was the reality they couldn’t accept.
Aseel had almost finished her song. The lyrics were set to the complete tune Sol had improvised, going beyond the awful Persian Palace ditty. She belted out the first verse and chorus for a small afternoon audience as Salina danced and the musicians played drums and piano. The result was a cheerful cacophony:
I applauded until my hands hurt, and Soph let out a delighted squeal. She had finished her article about the danse du ventre and brought a copy of it for Aseel and me to read. New York World wanted to publish it, and she was excited that her byline would appear in the same pages that featured the reporting of Nellie Bly.