“Twice?” he bellows. “Twice? Didn't I have this all out with ya yesterday mornin'?”
“Goodness, no!” I try to assure him, but he is putting me off at third and calling after me: “Don't I know I did tell ya all this yesterday mornin'? And don't ya forget it next time, neither.” It must be awful to be that man's wife. But I love him compared to the Vandyke beard in the Subway reading The Gospel According to St. John.
Everybody is squatting about on scant corners and ledges waiting for the eight o'clock bell. I squat next the thrifty Spanish lady, whereat she immediately begins telling me the story of her life.
“You married?” she asks. No. “Well don' you do it,” says the fat and mussy Espaniole, as the girls called her. “I marry man—five years, all right. One morning I say, 'I go to church—you go too?' He say 'No, I stay home.' I go church. I come home. I fin' him got young girl there. I say, 'You clear out my house, you your young girl!' Out he go, she go. 'Bout one year 'go he say he come back. I say no you don'. He beg me, beg me come home. I say no, no, no. He write me letter, letter, letter. I say no, no, no. Bymby I say alright, you come live my house don't you touch me, hear? Don' you touch me. He live one room, I live one room. He no touch me. Two weeks 'go he die. Take all my money, put him in cemetery. I have buy me black waist, black skirt. I got no money more. I want move from that house—no want live that house no more—give me bad dreams. I got no money move. Got son thirteen. He t'ink me fool have man around like that. I no care. See he sen's letter, letter, letter. Now I got no money. I have work.” The bell rings. We shiver ourselves into the ice box.
No Tessie across the table. Instead a strange, unkempt female who sticks it out half an hour, announces she has the chills in her feet, and departs. Her place is taken by a slightly less disheveled young woman who claims she'd packed candy before where they had seats and she thought she'd go back. They paid two dollars less a week, but it was worth two dollars to sit down. How she packs! The sloppiest work I ever saw. It outrages my soul. The thrill of new pride I have when Ida gets through swearing at her and turns to me.
“Keep your eye on this girl, will ya? Gee! she packs like a fright!” And to the newcomer: “You watch that girl across the table” (me, she means—me!) “and do the way she does.”
No first section I ever got in economics gave me such joy.
But, ah! the first feeling of industrial bitterness creeps in. Here is a girl getting fourteen dollars a week. Tessie was promised fourteen dollars a week. I packed faster, better, than either of them for thirteen dollars. I would have fourteen dollars, too, or know the reason why. Ida fussed and scolded over the new girls all day. The sweetness of her entire neglect of me!
By that noon my feet hardly hurt at all. I sit in a quiet corner to eat rye-bread sandwiches brought from home, gambling on whom I will draw for luncheon company. Six colored girls sit down at my table. A good part of the time they spend growling on the subject of overtime. I am too new to know what it is all about.
The lunch room is a bare, whitewashed, huge affair, with uplifting advice on the walls here and there. “Any fool can take a chance; it takes brains to be careful,” and such like. One got me all upset: “America is courteous to its women. Gentlemen will, therefore, please remove their hats in this room.” That Vandyke beard in the Subway!