Part 17

Nor have we so much as touched on what it means to live on thirteen dollars or fourteen dollars a week.

"But then you have taken away all the arguments for organization!"

Should organization be considered as an end in and of itself, or as one possible means to an end?

Word was passed this morning that "company" was coming! The bustling and the hustling and the dusting! Every girl had to clean her press from top to bottom, and we swept the floor with lightning speed. Miss Cross dashed to her little mirror and put powder on her nose. Hattie tied a curtain around her head to look like a Red Cross nurse. Every time the door opened we all got expectant palpitations. We were not allowed to speak, yet ever and anon Hattie or Mrs. Reilly would let out some timely remarks. Whereat we all got the giggles. Miss Cross would almost hiss, "GIRLS!" whereat we subsided. It was nerve wracking. And the company never came! They got as far as the third floor and gave out. But it was not until afternoon that we knew definitely that our agony was for naught.

Lucia's machine got out of order--steam escaped at a fearful rate. While the mechanic was fixing it he discoursed to me on the laundry. He had been there nine months--big, capable-looking six-footer. Out of the corner of his mouth he informed me, "Once anybody comes to work here they never leave!" It surely does seem as if they had no end of people who had worked there years and years. Miss Cross says they used to have more fun than nowadays, before so many colored girls were employed. They gave parties and dances and everyone was chummy with everyone else.

To-day, in the midst of hilarity and all unannounced, "company" did appear. We subsided like a schoolroom when the teacher suddenly re-enters. A batch of women, escorted by one of the management. He gesticulated and explained. I could not catch his words, for the noise of the presses, though goodness knows I craned my ears. They investigated everything. Undoubtedly their guide dwelt eloquently on the victrola in the lunch room; it plays every noon. On their way out two of the young women stopped by my press. "Didn't this girl iron that nightgown nicely?" one said to the other. I felt it obligatory to give them the "once over."

The second the door was closed I dashed for Miss Cross. "Who were them females?" I asked her.

Miss Cross grunted. "Them were Teachers College girls." She wrinkled her nose. "They send 'em over here often. And let me tell you, I never seen one of 'em with any class yet.... They talk about college girls--pooh! I never seen a college girl yet looked any classier than us laundry girls. Most of 'em don't look as classy. Only difference is, if you mixed us all up, they're gettin' educated."

One of my erstwhile jobs at the University of California had been piloting college girls around through factories in just that fashion. I had to laugh in my sleeve as I suspected the same remarks may have been passed on us after our departure!

* * * * *

We have much fun at our lunch table. A switchboard operator and file clerk from the office eats with us. She and I "guy" each other a good deal during the meal. Miss Cross wipes her eyes and sighs: "Gee! Ain't it fun to laugh!" and Eleanor and I look pleased with ourselves.

In the paper this morning appeared a picture of one of New York's leading society women "experiencing the life of the working girl first hand." She was shown in a French bonnet, a bunch of orchids at her waist, standing behind a perfumery counter. What our table did to Mrs. X!

"These women," fusses Miss Cross, "who think they'll learn what it's like to be a working girl, and stand behind a perfumery counter! Somebody's always trying to find out what it's like to be a worker--and then they get a lot of noteriety writin' articles about it. All rot, I say. Pity, if they really want to know what workin's like, they wouldn't try a laundry."

"She couldn't eat her breakfast in bed if she did that!" was my cutting remark.

"Or quit at three," from Annie.

"Hisst!" I whisper, "I'm a lady in disguise!" And I quirk my little finger as I drink my coffee and order Eleanor to peer without to see if my limousine waits.

We discuss rich folk and society ladies, and no one envies or is bitter. Miss Cross guesses some of them think they get as weary flying around to their parties and trying on clothes as we do in the laundry. I guess she is partly right.

Then we discuss what a bore it would be not to work. At our table sit Miss Cross, Edna (Miss Cross calls her Edner), the Cuban girl, who refused to eat with the colored girls; Annie, the English girl, who had worked in a retail shoe shop in London; Mrs. Reilly, who is always morose at lunch and never speaks, except one day when she and Miss Cross nearly came to blows over religion. Each got purple in the face. Then it came out that there was a feud between them--two years or more it had lasted--and neither ever speaks to the other. (Yet Mrs. Reilly gave one dollar, twice as much as the rest of us, toward Miss Cross's Christmas present.) Then there are three girls from the office downstairs. Everyone there had had some experience in being out of work or not working. To each of them at such a time life has been a wearisome thing. Each declared she would 'most rather work at any old thing than stay home and do nothing.

Between the first and second bells after lunch the sixth-floor girls foregather and sit on the ironing tables, swing our heels, and pass the time of day. To-day I start casually singing, "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." Everyone on our floor knows the song and there the whole lot of us sit, swinging our heels, singing at the top of our lungs, "A sunbeam, a sunbeam, Jesus wants me for a sunbeam," which is how I got the name of "Sunbeam" on our floor. Except that Miss Cross, for some reason of her own, usually called me "Constance."

I teach them "My Heart's a Little Bird Cage," and we add that to our repertoire. Then we go on to "Nearer, My God, to Thee," "Lead, Kindly Light," "Rock of Ages."

It appears we are a very religious lot on our floor. All the colored girls are Baptists. Miss Cross is an ardent Presbyterian, Annie is an Episcopalian, Edna and Mrs. Reilly are Catholics, but Edna knows all the hymns we daily sing.

And, lo! before many days I am startled by hearing Lucia sing--woebegone Lucia. She sings to no tune whatever and smiles at me, "Sunbeam, Sunbeam, Sunbeam, Sunbeam." So she has learned one English word in sixteen years. That is better in quality than German Tessie did. She told me, at the candy factory, that the first thing she learned in English was "son of a gun."

But as a matter of fact Lucia does know two other words. Once I ironed a very starched nightgown. It was a very, very large and gathered nightgown. I held it up and made Lucia look at it.

Lucia snickered. "Da big-a, da fat-a!" said Lucia.

Mrs. Reilly let out a squeal. "She's learnt English!" Mrs. Reilly called down the line.

"And," I announce, "I'll teach her 'da small-a, da thin-a.'"

Thereafter I held up garments to which those adjectives might apply, and tried to "learn" Lucia additional English. Lucia giggled and giggled and waited every evening to walk down the six flights of stairs with me, and three blocks until our ways parted. Each time I patted her on the back when we started off and chortled: "Hey, Lucia, da big-a, da fat-a!" Lucia would giggle again, and that is all we would have to say. Except one night Lucia pointed to the moon and said, "Luna." So I make the most of knowing that much Italian.

Oh yes, Lucia and I had one other thing in common. One day at the laundry I found myself humming a Neapolitan love song, from a victrola record we have. Lucia's face brightened. The rest of the afternoon I hummed the tune and Lucia sang the words of that song, much to Mrs. Reilly's delight, who informed the floor that now, for sure, Lucia was in love again.