Working With the Working Woman Part 6

It all sounded truly glowing.

"You married?"

"No."

"Well, don' you do it. Wish I wasn't married. Oh gee! Wish I wasn't married. I'm crazy of my husband, but I wish I wasn't married.

See-once you married-pisht!-there you are-stay that way."

I agreed I was in no hurry about matrimony.

"Hurry? Na, no hurry; that's right. The h-h-hurrier you are the b-b-b-badder off you get!"

The next morning the Italian girl was late. The forelady gave her locker to some one else. Such a row! Louisa said: "I got mad, I did. I told her to go to h.e.l.l. That's only w-w-w-way anybody gets anything in this world-get mad and say you go to h-h-h.e.l.l. Betcha."

A little later the forelady, when the Italian was on one of her trips after a drink, leaned over and gave me her side of the story. She is such a very nice person, our forelady-quiet, attractive, neat as a pin. Her sister addresses boxes and does clerical work of one sort or another. Two subdued old maids they are; never worked any place but right on our third floor. "Ain't like what it used to be," she told me. "In the old days girls used to work here till they got married. We used to have parties here and, say! they was nice girls in them days.

Look at 'em now! Such riffraff! New ones comin' in all the time, new ones worse each time. Riffraff, that's what they are. It sure looks nice to see a girl like you." (What good were the earrings doing?) "We'll make it just as nice here for you as we can." (Oh, how guilty I began to feel!)

She looked around to see if the Italian was about.

"Now you take this Eyetalian girl next to you. Gee! she's some fright.

Oughtta heard her this morning. 'Spected me to keep her locker for her when she was late. How'd I know she was comin' back? I gave it to another girl. She comes tearin' at me. 'What the h.e.l.l you think you're doin'?' she says to me. Now I ain't used to such talk, and I was for puttin' my hat and coat on right then and there and walkin' out. I must say I gotta stand all sorts of things in my job. It's awful what I gotta put up with. I never says nothin' to her. But any girl's a fool 'l talk to a person that way. Shows she's got nothin' up here [knocking her head] or she sure'd know better than get the forelady down on her like that. Gee! I was mad!"

Louisa returned and Miss Hibber moved on. "Some fright, that forelady," remarked Louisa. That night Louisa departed for good.

The second day I kicked over six thousand times. It seemed a lot when you think of the hard stool. It was a toss between which was the worse, the stool or the air. This afternoon, I was sure it must be 3.30. I looked back at the clock-1.10. It had seemed like two hours of work and it was forty minutes. No ventilation whatever in that whole room-not a crack of air. Wonder if there ever was any since the place was built decades ago. Once Louisa and I became desperate and got Tony to open a window. The forelady had a fit; so did Tillie. Both claimed they'd caught cold.

Tony is the Louis of the bra.s.sworks. He is young and very lame-one leg considerably shorter than the other. It makes me miserable to see him packing heavy boxes about. He told me he must get another job or quit. Finally they did put him at a small machine press. So many maimed and halt and decrepit as they employed about the works! Numbers of the workers were past-telling old, several were very lame, one errand boy had a fearfully deformed face, one was cross-eyed. I remarked to Minnie that the boss of the works must have a mighty good heart. Minnie has been working twenty-three years and has had the bloom of admiration for her fellow-beings somewhat worn off in that time. "Hm!" grunted Minnie. "He gets 'em cheaper that way, I guess."

The elevator man is no relation to the one at the candy factory. He is red faced and grinning, most of his teeth are gone, and he always wears a derby hat over one eye. One morning I was late. He jerked his head and thumb toward the elevator. "Come on, I'll give ya a lift up!"

and when we reached our floor, though it was the men's side, "Third Avenue stop!" he called out cheerily, and grinned at the world. He had been there for years. The boss on our floor had been there for years-forty-three, to be exact. Miss Hibber would not tell how many years she had worked there, nor would Tillie. Tillie said she was born there.

If it were only the human element that counted, everyone would stay at the bra.s.sworks forever. I feel like a snake in the gra.s.s, walking off "on them" when they all were so nice. Nor was it for a moment the "dearie" kind of niceness that made you feel it was orders from above.

From our floor boss down, they were people who were born to treat a body square. All the handicaps against them-the work itself, the surroundings, the low pay-had so long been part of their lives, these "higher ups" seemed insensible to the fact that such things were handicaps.

To-day was sunny and the factory not so dark-in fact, part of the time we worked with no electric lights. The crisp early morning air those four blocks from the Subway to the factory-it sent the spring fever through the blood. In the gutter of that dirty East Side street a dirty East Side man was burning garbage. The smoke curled up lazily.

The sun just peeping up over the hospital at the end of the street made slanting shafts through the smoke. As I pa.s.sed by it suddenly was no longer the East Side of New York City....

Now the Four Way Lodge is open, Now the hunting winds are loose, Now the smokes of spring go up to clear the brain....

Breakfast in a canon by the side of a stream-the odor of pines....

The little bobbing doors went to behind me and there I stood in floor three, the stale gas and metal smell ... the whirs of the belts ...

the jarring of the presses....

Next to me this glorious morning sat a snip of a little thing all in black-so pretty she was, so very pretty. I heard the boss tell her it's not the sort of work she's been used to, she'll find it hard. Is she sure she wants to try it? And in the course of the morning I heard the story of Mame's life.

Mame's husband died three weeks ago. They had been married one month and two days-after waiting three years. Shall I write a story of Mame on the sob-sister order to bring the tears to your eyes? It could easily be done. But not honestly. Little Mame-how could her foot ever reach the press? And when she walked off after a drink, I saw that she was quite lame. A widow only three weeks. She'd never worked before, but there was no money. She lived all alone, wandered out for her meals-no mother, no father, no sisters or brothers. She cried every night. Her husband had been a traveling salesman-sometimes he made eighty-five dollars a week. They had a six-room apartment and a servant! She'd met him at a dance hall. A girl she was with had dared her to wink at him. Sure she'd do anything anybody dared her to. He came over and asked her what she was after, anyhow. That night he left the girl he'd taken to the dance hall to pilot her own way back to home and mother, and he saw Mame to her room. He was swell and tall.

She showed me his picture in a locket around her neck. Meanwhile Mame kicked the foot press about twice every five minutes.

Why had they waited so long to get married? Because of the war. He was afraid he'd be killed and would leave her a widow. "He asked me to promise never to get married again if he did marry me and died.

But,"-she leaned over my way-"that only meant if he died during the war, ain't that so? Lookit how long the war was over before he died."

He was awful good to her after they got married. He took her to a show every night-jes swell; and she had given him a swell funeral-you bet she did. The coffin had cost eighty-five dollars-white with real silver handles; and the floral piece she bought-"Gee! What's your name?... Connie, you oughtta seen that floral piece!" and Mame laid off work altogether to use her hands the better. It was shaped so, and in the middle was a clock made out of flowers, with the hands at the very minute and hour he'd died. (He pa.s.sed away of a headache-very sudden.) Then below, in clay, were two clasped hands-his and hers.

"Gee! Connie, you never seen nothin' so swell. Everybody seen it said so."

Once he bought her a white evening dress, low neck, fish-tail train, pearls all over the front-cost him one whole week's salary, eighty-five dollars! She had diamond earrings and jewels worth at least one thousand dollars. She had lovely clothes. Couldn't she just put a black band around the arms and go on wearing them? She took a look at my earrings. Gee! they were swell. She had some green ones herself. Next morning she appeared in her widow's weeds with bright-green earrings at least a quarter of an inch longer than mine.

From the first Mame clung to me morning and night. Usually mornings she threw her arms around me in the dressing room. "Here's my Connie!"

I saw myself forced to labor in the bra.s.sworks for life because of Mame's need of me. This need seemed more than spiritual. One day her pocketbook with twelve dollars had been stolen in the Subway. I lent her some cash. Another time she left her money at the factory. I lent her the wherewithal to get home with, etc. One day I was not at work.

Somehow the other girls all were down on Mame. I have pondered much on that. When it came to the needed collection Mame found it hard pickings. She got a penny from this girl, another from that one, until she had made up a nickel to get home with. Irish Minnie gave her a sandwich and an apple. The girls all jumped on me: "The way you let that Frenchie work ya! Gee! you believe everything anybody tells ya."

"But," says I, "she's been a widow only three weeks and I'm terrible sorry for her."

"How d'ya know she ever had a husband?" "How d'ya know he's dead?"

"How'd ya...."

The skepticism of factory workers appals me. They suspect everybody and everything from the boss down. I believed almost everything about Mame, especially since she paid back all she ever borrowed. No one else in that factory believed a word she said. They couldn't "stand her round."

"How d'ya know she lost her pocketbook?" (Later she advertised and got it back-a doctor's wife found it on the early Subway.)

"Doctor's wife," sniffed Minnie. "Who ever heard of a doctor's wife up at seven o'clock in the mornin'?"

And now I have walked off and left Mame to that a.s.semblage of unbelievers. At least Mame has a tongue of her own she is only too glad of a chance to use. It is meat and drink to Mame to have a man look her way. "Did you see that fella insult me?" and she calls back protective remarks for half a block. Sentiments that usually bring in mention of the entertained youth's mother and sisters, and wind up with allusions to a wife, which if he doesn't possess now, he may some day. Once I stopped with Mame while she and Irene phoned a "fella" of Irene's from a drug-store telephone booth. Such gigglings and goings on, especially since the "fella" was unknown to Mame at the time.

Outside in the store a pompous, unromantic man grew more and more impatient for a turn at that booth. When Mame stepped out he remarked casually that he hoped she felt she'd gotten five cents' worth. The dressing down Mame then and there heaped upon that startled gentleman!

Who was he to insult her? I grew uneasy and feared a scene, but the pompous party took hasty refuge in the telephone booth and closed the door. Mame was very satisfied with the impression she must have made.

"The fresh old guy!"

Another time Mame sought me out in the factory, her eyes blazing.

"Connie, I been insulted, horribly insulted, and I don't see how I can stay in this factory! You know that girl Irene? Irene she says to me, 'Mamie, you plannin' to get married again?'

"'I dunno,' I says to her, 'but if I do it'll be to some single fella.'

"'Huh!' Irene says to me, 'You won't get no single fella; you'll have to marry a widower with two or three children.' Think of her insultin'

me like that! I could 'a' slapped her right in the face!"

I asked Mame one Sat.u.r.day what she'd be doing Sunday. She sighed.

"I'll be spendin' the day at the cemetery, I expect."

Monday morning I asked Mame about Sunday. She'd been to church in the morning (Mame, like most of the girls at the bra.s.sworks, was a Catholic), a show in the afternoon, cabaret for dinner, had danced till 1, and played poker until 4 A.M. "If only my husband was alive,"

said Mame, "I'd be the happiest girl on earth."

One night Mame's landlady wanted to go out and play poker. She asked Mame to keep her eye and ear out for the safety of the house. Every five minutes Mame thought she heard a burglar or somethin'. "Gee! I hardly slept at all; kep' wakin' up all the time. An' that landlady never got in till six this mornin'!"

"My Gawd!" I exclaimed. "Hope she was lucky after playin' poker that long!"

"She sure was," sighed Mame. "Gee! I jus' wish ya c'u'd see the swell prize she won!-the most beau-teful statue-stands about three feet high-of Our Blessed Lady of the Immaculate Conception."

Mame's friends.h.i.+p could become almost embarra.s.sing. One day she announced she wanted me to marry one of her brothers-in-law. "I got two nice ones and we'll go out some Sunday afternoon and you can have your pick. One's a piano tuner; the other's a detective." I thought offhand the piano tuner sounded a bit more domestic. He was swell, Mame said.

Mame didn't think she'd stay long in the bra.s.sworks. It was all right-the boss she thought was sort of stuck on her. Did he have a wife? (The boss, at least sixty years old.) Also Charlie was making eyes at her. (Charlie was French; so was Mame. Charlie knew six words of English. Mame three words of French. Charlie was sixteen). No, aside from matrimony, Mame was going to train in Bellevue Hospital and earn sixty dollars a week being a children's nurse. She'd heard if you got on the right side of a doctor it was easy, and already a doctor was interested in getting Mame in.