Working With the Working Woman Part 9

"An' how are you makin' out?"

"All right, only my feet are awful tired. Don't your feet never get tired?

"Shure, child, an' what good would it do for my feet to get tired when they're all I got to stand on? An' did you ever try settin' nine hours a day? Shure an' that would be the death of anybody.

Mrs. Reilly's indoor sport was marrying the sixth floor off. Poor Lucia's widow's weeds of five weeks were no obstacle to Mrs. Reilly.

She frequently made the whole floor giggle, carrying on an animated Irish conversation with Lucia over the prospects of a second marriage-or rather, a monologue it was, since Lucia never knew she was being talked to. If ever there was a body with a "s.e.x complex it was old Mrs. Reilly! When I asked her once why she didn't get busy marrying off herself, she called back: "The Lord be praised! And didn't I get more than enough of the one man I had?"

At least twice a week Mrs. Reilly saw a ghost, and she would tell us about it in the morning. She laughed then, and we all laughed, but you could easily picture the poor old fearful soul meeting that inevitable 2 A.M. guest, quaking over it in her lonely bed. Once the ghost was extra terrifying. "It may have been the banama sauce," admitted Mrs.

Reilly. And Mrs. Reilly's feet did hurt often. She used sometimes to take off her worn shoes and try tying her feet up in cardboards.

The other workers on our floor were Mabel and Mary, two colored girls who finished off slight rough edges in the press ironing and folded everything; Edna, a Cuban girl who did handkerchiefs on the mangle; Annie, the English girl, lately married to an American. She had an inclosure of shelves to work in and there she did the final sorting and wrapping of family wash. Annie was the most superior person on our floor.

And Miss Cross. In face, form, neatness, and manners Miss Cross could have held her own socially anywhere. But according to orthodox standards Miss Cross's grammar was faulty. She had worked always in our laundry, beginning as a hand ironer. She knew the days when hours were longer than nine and pay lower than fourteen dollars a week. She remembered when the family floor had to iron Sat.u.r.days until 10 and 11 at night, instead of getting off at 12.45, as we did now. They stood it in those days; but how? As it was now, not a girl on our floor but whose feet ached more or less by 4 or 4.30. Ordinarily we stopped at 5.30. Everyone knew how everyone else felt that last half hour. During a week with any holiday the girls had to work till 6.15 every night, and Sat.u.r.day afternoon. They all said-we discussed it early one morning-that in such weeks they could iron scarcely anything that last hour, their feet burned so.

The candy factory was hard-one stood nine hours, but the work was very light.

The bra.s.sworks was hard-one sat, but the foot exercise was wearying and the seat fearfully uncomfortable.

Ironing was hardest-one stood all day and used the feet for hard pressure besides. Yet I was sorry to leave the laundry!

Perhaps it was just as well for me that Lucia could not talk English.

She might have used it on me, and already the left ear was talked off by Irma. Miss Cross stood for just so much conversation, according to her mood. Even if she were feeling very spry, our sixth-floor talk could become only so general and lively before Miss Cross would call: "Girls! girls! not so much noise!" If it were late in the afternoon that would quiet us for the day-no one had enough energy to start up again.

The first half hour Irma confided in me that she had cravings.

"Cravings? Cravings for what?" I asked her.

"Cravings for papers."

It sounded a trifle goatlike.

"Papers?"

"Yes, papers. I want to read papers on the lecture platform."

Whereat I heard all Irma's spiritual longings-cravings. She began in school to do papers. That was two years ago. Since then she has often been asked to read the papers she wrote in school before church audiences. Just last Sunday she read one at her church in New York, and four people asked her afterward for copies.

What was it about?

It was about the True Woman. When she wrote it, she began, "Dear Teacher, Pupils, and Friends." But when she read it in churches she skipped the Teacher and Pupils and began: "Dear Friends, ... now we are met together on this memorable occasion to consider the subject of the True Woman. First we must ask" (here Irma bangs down on a helpless nights.h.i.+rt and dries it out well beyond its time into a nice bunch of wrinkles) "What is woman? Woman was created by G.o.d because Dear Friends G.o.d saw how lonely man was and how lonesome and so out of man's ribs G.o.d created woman to be man's company and helpmate...."

"Irma!" Miss Cross's voice had an oft-repeated tone to it. She called out from the table where she checked over each girl's work without so much as turning her head. "You ironed only one leg of these pajamas!"

Irma shuffled over on her crooked high heels and returned with the half-done pajamas. "That fo'-lady!" sighed Irma, "she sure gets on ma nerves. She's always hollerin' at me 'bout somethin'. She never hollers at the other girls that way-she just picks on me."

And Irma continued with the True Woman: "There's another thing the True Woman should have and that's a good character...."

"Irma!" (slight impatience in Miss Cross's tone) "you ironed this nightgown on the wrong side!"

Irma looked appealingly at me. "There she goes again. She makes me downright nervous, that fo'-lady does."

Poor, persecuted Irma!

During that first morning Irma had to iron over at least six things.

Then they looked like distraction. I thought of the manager's introductory speech to me-how after two weeks I might have to make way for a more efficient person.

"How long you been here?" I asked Irma.

"Four months."

"What you makin'?"

"Thirteen a week."

"Ever get extra?"

"Na."

Suspicions concerning the manager.

Irma had three other papers. One was on Testing Time. What was Testing Time? It might concern chemical tubes. It might be a bit of romance.

And she really meant Trysting Time. No, to everybody a time comes when he or she must make a great decision. It was about that.

"Irma! you've got your foot in the middle of that white ap.r.o.n!"

Another paper was on Etee-quette (q p.r.o.nounced).

"Irma! you creased one of these pajama legs down the middle! Do it over."

I pondered much during my laundry days as to why they kept Irma. She told me she first worked down on the s.h.i.+rt-and-collar floor and used to do "one hundred and ten s.h.i.+rts an hour," but the boss got down on her. It took her sometimes three-quarters of an hour to do one boy's s.h.i.+rt on our floor, and then one half the time she had it to do over.

Her ironing was beyond all words fearful to behold (there must be an Irma in every laundry). She was all-mannered slow. She forgot to tag her work. She hung it over her horse so that cuffs and ap.r.o.n strings were always on the floor. Often she was late. Sometimes Miss Cross would grow desperate-but there Irma remained. Below, in that little entryway, were girls waiting for jobs. Did they figure that on the whole Irma wrecked fewer garments than the average new girl, or what?

And the manager had tried to scare me!

The noon bell rings-we dash for the lunch-room line. You can purchase pies and soup and fruit, hash and stew, coffee and tea, cafeteria style. There are only two women to serve-the girls from the lower floors have to stand long in line. I do not know where to sit, and by mistake evidently get at a wrong table. No one talks to me. I surely feel I am not where I belong. The next day I get at another wrong table. It is so very evident I am not wanted where I am. Rather disconcerting. I sit and ponder. I had thought factory girls so much more friendly to one another on short acquaintance than "cultured"

people. But it is merely that they are more natural. When they feel friendly they show it with no reserves. When they do not feel friendly they show that without reserve. Which is where the unnaturalness of "cultured" folk sometimes helps.

It seems etee-quette at the laundry requires each girl sit at the table where her floor sits. That second day I was at the s.h.i.+rt-and-collar table, and they, I was afterward told, are particularly exclusive. Indeed they are.

At 12.45 the second bell rings. Miss Cross calls out, "All right, girls!" Clank, the presses begin again, and all afternoon I iron gentlemen's underpinnings. During the course of my days in the laundry I iron three sets round for every man in New York and thereby acquire a domestic att.i.tude toward the entire male s.e.x in the radius sending wash to our laundry. n.o.body loves a fat man. But their underclothes do fit more easily over the press.

I iron and I iron and I iron, and along about 4.30 the first afternoon it occurs to my cynical soul to wonder what the women are doing with themselves with the spare time which is theirs, because I am thumping that press down eight hours and fifty minutes a day. Not that it is any of my business.

Also along about five o'clock it irritates me to have to bother with what seems to me futile work. I am perfectly willing to take great pains with a white waistcoat-in one day I learn to make a work of art of that. But why need one fuss over the back of a nights.h.i.+rt? Will a man sleep any better for a wrinkle more or less? Besides, so soon it is all wrinkles.

The second day I iron soft work all morning-forever men's underclothes, pajamas, and nights.h.i.+rts. Later, when I am promoted to starched work, I tend to grow antifeminist. Why can men live and move and have their beings satisfactorily incased in soft garments, easy to iron, comfortable to wear, and why must women have everything starched and trying on the soul to do up? One minute you iron a soft nights.h.i.+rt; the next a nightgown starched like a board, and the worst thing to get through with before it dries too much that ever appears in a laundry.

After lunch I am promoted to hospital work. All afternoon I iron doctors' and interns' white coats and trousers. It is more interesting doing that. But a bit hard on the soul. For it makes you think of sickness and suffering. Yet sickness and suffering white-coated men relieve. It makes you think, too, of having babies-that being all you know of hospitals personally. But on such an occasion you never noticed if the doctor had on a white coat or not, and surely spent no time pondering over who ironed it. Yet if a doctor wore a coat Irma ironed I think the woman would note it even in the last anguished moments of labor.

Irma did an officer's summer uniform once. I do wish I could have heard him when he undid the package. While Irma was pounding down on it she was discoursing to me how, besides papers, she had cravings for poetry.