The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [107]
At six-thirty the foremen arrived, standing on a makeshift platform of orange crates, scanning the crowds and pointing out those they wanted. The women jostled to the front, eager to be noticed, but Missie hung back, waiting. The foreman wearing the black homburg caught her eye; he stared at her for a second and then passed on. She looked down at her feet dejectedly as he shouted, “That’s all for today,” and the chosen ones hurried off, their work chits clutched in their hands. “Try again tomorrow, darlin’” a hefty Irishwoman advised her. “Maybe you’ll be lucky then.”
The snow was a foot deep the next morning as Missie waited with the others, a shawl thrown over her head and icy water seeping through the paper-thin soles of her boots. The same man was there, the one in the homburg hat, and again he glanced at her, pausing, considering for a second or two. Hope lighted her eyes but then he passed on, choosing the woman next to her. Missie moaned and the woman said sympathetically, “Push yourself to the front next time, girl, that way he’ll be sure to see you. They always notice the pretty ones,” she added grimly.
She awoke late the next morning, coughing and sneezing as she threw on her clothes and hurried to the door. Slipping and sliding on the ice, she ran the four blocks to Hester Street. The foremen were already there, choosing, and remembering the woman’s advice, she elbowed her way determinedly to the front. She stood there panting, clutching her shawl at her throat, her eyes raised to the men like gods on Olympus on their orange crates.
The man in the homburg was thin and wiry with sharply chiseled features and sharp black eyes. His thin lips curved in a half smile as he saw her and this time he nodded. “You,” he said, pointing.
She glanced from side to side; did he really mean her? “Me?” she mouthed, pointing to her chest.
He nodded. “Come here and get your chit,” he said roughly. His hand brushed hers as she took the slip from him. “Zimmerman’s, three days, on Canal Street,” he said sharply. “Don’t be late.”
Her feet had wings as she ran back to tell Rosa. After wrapping a slice of bread and herring in newspaper for her lunch, she ran all the way back to Canal and was at Zimmerman’s promptly at seven o’clock.
Zimmerman’s factory was a big one, running almost half a block over three floors. Missie crowded through the doors with the others, showing her slip to the foreman the way they did, edging through the narrow spaces between the sewing machines. The big Irishwoman she had seen the first morning on Hester Street smiled at her as Missie stared around, lost. “So you got yourself a job did you? Come, take this machine, there’s more light over here by the window.”
Missie sat down in front of the treadle machine, staring at it in bewilderment. A young boy ran past and thrust a basket heaped with cut and basted fabric at her.
The Irishwoman watched her shrewdly. “Sleeves,” she said. “You’ve done ‘em before, haven’t you?”
Missie shook her head. “I’ve never even seen a sewingmachina before,” she confessed, “but I needed the job. I’ve a little girl to keep, you see. I thought I could learn.”
The woman sighed. “Course you can learn,” she said, “we all had to learn once. But you’d best not start on sleeves. Here, I’ll show you how to thread up your machine and what to do, and then I’ll get Sammy to change your basket for straight seams. Them’s the easiest.”
She was kind and practical and Missie found the machine wasn’t difficult to work after all; in fifteen minutes she was sewing a straight seam. They were on piecework and she said guiltily, “But I’m taking