Hannah, Divided by Adele Griffin

Author:Adele Griffin [Griffin, Adele]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9781453297353
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2013-01-02T23:49:00+00:00

19. BLOWN BACK

AS THE DINNER PARTY began to break up, Beverly, Joe, and Hannah helped the guests with their coats. Hannah made sure she got hold of Dr. Claytor’s. She held his hat and gloves for him as he buttoned his overcoat.

“Why are you looking at me that way, my friend?” he asked.

“I wanted to know, sir, who is Dr. Robert Lee Moore?”

“Ah, Robert Lee Moore.” Without changing expression, Dr. Claytor’s features seemed to harden as if glazed by an invisible frost. “The good professor is favored to become the president of the American Mathematical Society next year, and last I heard, women were discouraged from attending his lectures, and coloreds were prevented.” He fell silent, giving the words their space. Then he winked at Hannah and his expression turned to flesh and blood again. “You will learn in time that while some doors are open, others are stuck and need pushing. A good strong push from one is a push for us all.”

He set his hat on his head, raised it to Hannah, and replaced it. “Good night.”

“Good night,” she answered.

She watched as Dr. Claytor departed, leaving her to her thoughts.

While Pa and Ma had expressed a few doubts, Granddad McNaughton hardly ever mentioned the limitations of becoming a woman mathematician. Certainly at Ottley Friends, Miss Jordan and Mr. Cole did not treat Hannah as if doors were closed to her.

But of course some doors would be, Hannah contemplated. In spite of her best efforts. Dr. Curie probably had had to push against a lot of doors. She had likely seen her share of knuckle-heads such as Robert Moore. If she could do it, then so can I, Hannah decided. That’s what Granddad would say. Real learning was harder work than pushing against homesickness, or pretending not to care about a Halloween invitation snub or a cruel cartoon drawing.

Now Hannah envisioned Dr. Moore as another, fiercer caricature, like a storybook painting of the North Wind. Eyebrows like lightning bolts and cheeks rounded, blowing her and Dr. Claytor like seeds in the opposite direction of wherever the fields of math might lie.

It made her shiver, as if some of that wind already had puffed through her. She went to the front hall window and pulled aside the velvet drapes and watched Dr. Claytor as he strode alone down the street, past the last lamppost and into the darkness.

When she rounded the stairs to her bedroom, Hannah found Joe waiting for her, sitting at her desk as if it were his own.

“Counting letters.” He snapped his fingers. “Not a bad trick!”

“Knock it off!” she said, surprising herself because this was not an expression she used. It was Mae West’s, she realized. “My math teacher, Mr. Cole, says it’s better than a trick,” she bragged shyly. “He says some people read numbers naturally in sequences. I’m not bad at breaking codes, either.”

“Christmas, a human cipher!” Joe exclaimed in a voice of genuine envy. “I’da counted you for a lost cause, but you might grab a scholarship out of my hands after all.

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