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  Now, you may be wondering how I know all this since I obviously wasn’t there. It was recounted to me weeks later by someone close to Colonel Pope, a man who worked in his bicycle store on Washington Street.

  After a moment’s silence, John Dowe, his fortune made in the sugar trade, raised a hand. “I’ll take that wager, Colonel.” And with that, one of the butlers was dispatched to bring pen and paper. For the next hour the terms of the wager were argued over and agreed to. Pope could select any woman he wanted for the task, and she would be obliged to meet several conditions in order for the colonel to claim victory. First, she would begin her journey penniless, earn her way around the world, and send home no less than five thousand dollars above her expenses, an enormous sum in those days and a considerable one even today. She was not to accept anything of value without performing some task in exchange. Not just a mere test of a woman’s physical strength and endurance, this would be a test of a woman’s resourcefulness and her ability to fend for herself in the world. Second, the trip had to be completed within fifteen months. This was a clever suggestion by Pope. It added yet another dramatic twist to what would already be quite a bit of theater: a race against time, as it were, just as Phileas Fogg’s and Nellie Bly’s adventures were paced against the clock. Third, to prove she had been around the world, the woman would collect the signatures of American consuls in various cities identified in advance. Finally, she would be required to ride at least ten thousand miles and would receive prize money, a breathtaking ten thousand dollars, put up by Colonel Pope, if she succeeded. One newspaper called it “one of the most novel wagers ever made.” Indeed, the wager would be irresistibly alluring to the papers, always on the lookout for stories that could grab a reader’s attention and hold it.

  Dr. Albert Reeder, a local physician and an Algonquin member trusted by both Dowe and Pope, agreed to hold the money wagered in escrow until the outcome was determined. All that was left to do was to find the woman bold enough, maybe even just crazy enough to accept the challenge.

  * * *

  Let’s be honest. I wasn’t a good mother, and I have tried, as a kind of restitution, I suppose, to be a good grandmother to you, my only grandchild. I mean, what kind of mother leaves three young children and a husband behind to go gallivanting around the world on a bicycle? I was supposed to love my babies, but I felt, to be frank, detached from them. All the women around me spoke of the “maternal instinct,” but I didn’t have a nurturing bone in my body. I didn’t neglect them—well, not until I got on that bicycle—and they were always well fed and had clean clothes to wear. I have my regrets now, but that’s water over the dam. I’ve never been given much to introspection or looking back, and I still think psychiatry is a bunch of hooey. But it’s a fair question you might have: Why was I so distant from my own children? How could I leave them behind for a lark around the world on a wheel? Why didn’t I have the maternal instinct almost all the women around me did?

  Who can really say? Why do some people prefer vanilla and others chocolate? Why do some prefer egg whites and others egg yolks? Why are some shy and introverted, and others outgoing and extroverted? It’s just the way we are, gifted at birth with traits we might be able to suppress but never entirely erase, and some do a better job of conforming than others, though not, I should say, necessarily to their benefit. I can’t tell you why I am the way I am any more than I can tell you which came first, the chicken or the egg.

  But, you might ask, why are some people capable of coloring outside the lines and others not? I was hardly the only child living in America who had been abruptly uprooted at a tender age and brought to a strange country where we didn’t even understand the language. I wasn’t the only teenage girl in the West End whose marriage to an older man she didn’t know had been arranged by her parents. And I certainly wasn’t the only young mother overwhelmed by the responsibilities of being a wife, mother, and homemaker. But I was the only one who broke free to pedal around the world. A restless, spirited, contrarian nature plus opportunity equals rebellion.

  So how was I, a Jewish mother with three small children (your mother was not yet born), who had never even ridden a bicycle before, chosen to settle Colonel Pope’s wager? Can you imagine a less likely candidate for such a thing? I was only about five feet three inches tall then (I’ve lost an inch or two in my old age) and weighed about a hundred and ten pounds. The only muscles I had I earned from lugging groceries and babies around.

  It was mid-March, a few weeks after that day I slipped outside the apartment and scattered the groceries, the day I was, for the umpteenth time, wondering if this was all there was to be in my life. For about a year, I had been calling each week at Colonel Pope’s bicycle store on Washington Street, the largest of his many shops that sold Columbia bicycles, Pope’s brand, to take their adverts for the various newspapers I served as an ad agent. I made my money by commission, and they were a reliable customer, advertising almost daily, such was the interest in bicycles in those days. There, I would sit in the small, cluttered office of the store manager, a kindly man named Alonzo Peck, and discuss their advertising needs for the coming week. Peck was a likable, well-meaning fellow, with a well-groomed handlebar moustache and a head nearly devoid of hair (which had the effect of making his ears seem especially large), and was always well dressed, a loyal foot soldier to the domineering Colonel Pope.

  On that day in mid-March when I called on him, I chanced to see a familiar figure looking over the new 1894 models that had recently arrived in the showroom, a young, light-skinned Negro woman about my age, perhaps a little younger. I’d never met her and did not know her name, but I must have seen her dozens of times, always fleetingly, sometimes in our West End neighborhood, sometimes downtown, sometimes in the Public Garden or the Common, and always speeding by on a wheel. She was ubiquitous on her bike, a familiar sight in the city, but no one really seemed to know who she was.

  That day, as I sat down with Alonzo Peck, he seemed unusually excited and eager to share some news.

  “Mrs. Kopchovsky! As always I have been looking forward to your visit, and today I have good news to share!”

  “And what is that?” I asked.

  He fairly burst with pride as he told me he’d been made a captain.

  “A captain in what?” I asked. “Have you joined the navy?” He was too old to be joining the navy, but I asked anyway. He laughed heartily.

  “Oh, Mrs. Kopchovsky,” he chortled. “That’s a good one! Of course not. A captain in the League of American Wheelmen.”

  The L.A.W., as it was called, was an organization well known to Bostonians and beyond. It was organized by Colonel Pope to advocate for the betterment of roads for cyclists, who often had to contend with roadways covered in deep sand, or so badly rutted as to be virtually impassable, especially in wet weather when they turned to mud. Few roads were paved in those days, and those that were mostly were made of cobblestone, hardly conducive to riding a wheel. The whole effort became known as the Good Roads Movement. As usual, though, Colonel Pope was thinking ahead. The first gasoline-powered automobiles had started to appear in Europe, and he foresaw the day when he would, with both feet and a lot of capital, jump from bicycles into the automobile trade. The Good Roads Movement was designed to serve the needs of cyclists, but it was also a stalking horse for the coming age of the automobile. The L.A.W. was rigidly structured, and Alonzo was proud of having been made a captain in the organization’s hierarchy.

  “You know, Mrs. Kopchovksy,” he said, “I don’t meet many women with a sense of humor, or at least not willing to use it so easily in the company of men. You’ve a lot of pluck.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” I replied, giving him a mock salute, which set off another round of hearty laughter on his part.

  When he regained his composure, he looked at me as if a light had gone on in his head.

  “You might be just the person,” he said, almost to himself, his fingers stroking his impressive moustache.

/>   “Excuse me? Person for what?” I replied.

  Alonzo continued stroking his moustache, an affectation common among hirsute men.

  “A week ago, the colonel summoned me to his office, and told me he wanted me to be on the lookout among our customers for a young woman with spark and determination, someone who might be fearless enough to take an extraordinary journey,” Alonzo answered. He leaned forward and spoke in a near whisper.

  “Please keep this between us for now,” he continued, and he then proceeded to tell me the story I’ve told you about the wager Colonel Pope had entered into with John Dowe.

  “Alonzo,” I said. It would have been unseemly in public but in private I often called him by his first name. We had become well acquainted in our weekly meetings, chatting about family, business, the weather, and life; the usual things. “You know I have a husband and three small children to care for. It would be impossible.” In fact, it seemed utterly preposterous. Until he said this:

  “You could become the next Nellie Bly!”

  I shook my head and smiled. I was flattered. I was intrigued. That would be a dream come true. But I knew in my heart it was completely out of the question. Besides, I’d never ridden a bicycle in my life!

  “Well, I would love that,” I said. Nellie Bly was everything I wanted to be: independent, wealthy, a globe-trotting celebrity, a woman unbound by convention and tradition, a woman who called her own shots. “But the children…”

  “I know,” Alonzo said sympathetically. “It’s just a thought. You’re clever and cheeky enough, though. The woman the colonel chooses has to be possessed of more than strong muscles. She will have to be resourceful, daring, and, of course, good at making a spectacle of herself. This is, after all, going to be one of the greatest publicity stunts of all time, and you’re already in the advert business. It’ll put Barnum and Bailey to shame.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find the right woman,” I parried. “There doesn’t seem to be a woman in Boston these days who isn’t riding a wheel. There’ll be one plucky enough for this. As a matter of fact, maybe there’s one here in the store right now.”

  “What do you mean, Mrs. Kopchovksy?” he asked as I gathered my things and we walked out into the showroom.

  “Over there. The Negro woman admiring that new wheel.” I moved my chin in the direction of the woman across the showroom who was running her hand along the frame of a beautiful new Columbia. “Do you know her? I see her all over the city in all seasons going here and going there on her wheel. She seems to be everywhere, but nowhere for very long, as she is constantly on the move.”

  “Ah, yes, of course,” said Alonzo. “Kittie Knox. She’s making quite a name for herself in the cycling world, and running into some strong headwinds, too. Some don’t welcome her presence in the L.A.W. or at the racetracks, seeing as how she is a mulatto woman.”

  “Interesting,” I said. Such prejudice was not at all surprising. “But she would seem to be the answer to your search, would she not? Young, athletic, and experienced on the wheel? Have you proposed the colonel’s scheme to her?”

  “It’s quite out of the question, Mrs. Kopchovksy,” he said, “for obvious reasons.”

  “Well, it’s not obvious to me, Alonzo,” I said, though it was perfectly obvious what he was suggesting. I just didn’t like it, and I wanted Alonzo to acknowledge it explicitly, for I simply believed that if women should be the equals of men, that applied to people of the Negro race, as well. Alonzo shifted uncomfortably. He was an open-minded man; the colonel not so much.

  “I did raise her name with the colonel,” Alonzo replied sheepishly. “You are quite right. She would be an ideal candidate. Experienced on the wheel, young, adventurous, and audacious, too. Everything you have said. But the colonel wants a woman all women will identify with, and a Negro woman will not do. He is firm about that. And the obstacles she would face in the going because of her race would make her success nearly impossible. The decision was not mine, Mrs. Kopchovsky, as I’m sure you understand.”

  The last he said as an apology. I think he knew that while the colonel had a point about the obstacles, he only had a point because Negroes, like women, were second-class citizens and a Negro woman even less than that. He was eager to change the subject.

  “Just think about it,” he said, as he helped me on with my coat. “You might really be just the woman to do this.”

  I smiled politely and thought to myself, I think you might just be right.

  “Good day, Captain!” I said, and again lifted my hand to my forehead in a salute.

  “Good day, Mrs. K,” he answered, straightening his back and returning my salute. He held the door for me, always a gentleman, and I stepped out into the late winter sunshine on Washington Street.

  Two

  That night, as usual, Grandpa ate in virtual silence as the children fussed about. Grandpa had arrived in Boston as a young man from Ukraine. He spoke English with a heavy accent. When he wasn’t in shul he was often bent over a prayer book he kept on a small table next to the one comfortable chair in our living room. He was a kind and gentle man, but an inward-looking one. It’s why I enjoyed my job so much. Talking to Alonzo and other customers was often the only conversation I would have for days on end, though Bennett and Baila lived just one floor down and I had a warm relationship with them. We often talked, of family matters mostly, world events, politics, and the like. Grandpa wasn’t much for conversation, and he was also a passive man, a counterpoint to my flintiness.

  By the time I’d gotten the children settled down for the night in the small room that was our second bedroom, and finished the dishes, Grandpa was asleep in his chair, as usual, his prayer book open and resting upside down on his chest. I flopped onto a kitchen chair, weary from a day of work selling adverts (I often walked several miles) followed by several more hours of domestic labor that started as soon as I walked through the door and retrieved the children from Bennett and Baila’s. As our household grew, Jake and Rosa, now in their teens, took to sleeping regularly at Bennett and Baila’s, for their apartment had a small den ours lacked that could be used as a makeshift bedroom. Both were quiet and studious and occasionally helped out watching the children, sometimes ours and sometimes Bennett and Baila’s.

  It was just before midnight when I washed my face and brushed my teeth to get ready for bed. How many nights had Grandpa slept in that chair, snoring heavily, slumbering too deeply to come to the bedroom? Countless. I slid under the covers and looked through the window. I could see a few stars twinkling brightly in the clear night sky. Maybe, just maybe, my own stars were starting to align, too.

  * * *

  Albert Augustus Pope, the colonel, was a Civil War veteran, a man of about fifty when I first saw him in his store, though we had never formally met. He was a man of great distinction and regal bearing, with a full white beard and moustache and a full head of silver hair. He’d fought at Antietam when he was just nineteen, a brutal day that saw the deaths of nearly eighty men from his unit. He would live to fight another day at Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, and Knoxville, facts I would learn later in my life when I became more curious about his, given the impact he had on me. Everything Pope touched seemed to turn to profit. By 1894, he had been in the bicycle trade for nearly two decades.

  A week after Alonzo Peck first told me of Pope’s plan to find a woman for his great publicity stunt, I saw Alonzo again while making my usual rounds. Though I mentioned it to no one, not even Grandpa, especially not Grandpa, I had become obsessed with the proposition. I could think of little else. I was looking for an escape. Maybe it would be by bicycle.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Kopchovksy,” Alonzo said when I found him buried in his ledger books in his cramped and cluttered office.

  “Good morning, Captain.” I stood up straight and gave him another mock salute. It was becoming a ritual we both enjoyed.

  We chatted about the weather; a touch of early spring was in the air. The snow that lined the sides
of Washington Street was draining into puddles in the roadway. I was looking for an opening to raise the subject of the publicity stunt without seeming overeager, in case a candidate had already been found.

  “I’ve been thinking about that bicycle trip you mentioned,” I said, understating the level of my interest, which had grown steadily by the day. “Have you found a candidate?”

  “The colonel has met with a few, but none have sufficiently impressed him,” Alonzo replied. “Why? Are you considering the prospect? The colonel might find it unseemly for a young mother with children to undertake such a venture. You told me it was impossible yourself.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, lowering my gaze and staring into my lap. Then I lifted my head and looked Alonzo right in the eye. “Can you schedule an appointment for me with the colonel?”

  “He’s leaving presently for Hartford to attend to business, but he will return in two days’ time. I’ll have a word with him. If he wants to meet, I’ll send for you. I will give you my highest recommendation.”

  A few days passed before one of the shop boys from the store came by Spring Street with a note for me. I was home, washing the children’s clothes in the bathtub, when I heard a knock on the door. The knock-knock didn’t even register with Grandpa, who was deep into his Torah studies in the living room. I swear, that man could focus even with three screaming children bouncing off the walls of the apartment. Inside the envelope was a note from Alonzo: “Colonel Pope would like to see you in his office at the store tomorrow at 10 A.M. sharp. Good luck!”

  Nothing had been decided, but I was beginning to feel as if this was somehow my destiny, that my moment had come. That night, I slept fitfully. I breathed a word to no one.