Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [33]
The greater skills Mama taught me were less tangible than rules about speed and smiling. What I needed most from her had a lot to do with being as young as I was, as naive, and quick to believe the stories put across the counter by all those travelers heading north. Mama always said I was the smartest of her daughters and the most foolish. I believed everything I read in books, and most of the stuff I heard on the TV, and all of Mama’s carefully framed warnings never seemed to quite slow down my capacity to take people as who they wanted me to think they were. I tried hard to be like my mama, but, as she kept complaining, I was just too quick to trust—badly in need of a little practical experience.
My practical education began the day I started work. The first comment by the manager was cryptic but to the point. “Well, sixteen.” Harriet smiled, looking me up and down. “At least you’ll up the ante.” Mama’s friend Mabel came over and squeezed my arm. “Don’t get nervous, young one. We’ll keep moving you around. You’ll never be left alone.”
Mabel’s voice was reassuring even if her words weren’t, and I worked her station first. A family of four children, parents, and a grandmother took her biggest table. She took their order with a wide smile, but as she passed me going down to the ice drawer, her teeth were point on point. “Fifty cents,” she snapped, and went on. Helping her clean the table thirty-five minutes later I watched her pick up two lone quarters and repeat, “Fifty cents,” this time in a mournfully conclusive tone.
It was a game all the waitresses played. There was a butter bowl on the back counter where the difference was kept, the difference between what you guessed and what you got. No one had to play, but most of the women did. The rules were simple. You had to make your guess at the tip before the order was taken. Some of the women would cheat a little, bringing the menus with the water glasses and saying, “I want ya’ll to just look this over carefully. We’re serving one fine lunch today.” Two lines of conversation and most of them could walk away with a guess within five cents.
However much the guess was off went into the bowl. If you said fifty cents and got seventy-five cents, then twenty-five cents to the bowl. Even if you said seventy-five cents and got fifty cents you had to throw in that quarter—guessing high was as bad as guessing short. “We used to just count the short guesses,” Mabel explained, “but this makes it more interesting.”
Once Mabel was sure she’d get a dollar and got stiffed instead. She was so mad she counted out that dollar in nickels and pennies, and poured it into the bowl from a foot in the air. It made a very satisfying angry noise, and when those people came back a few weeks later no one wanted to serve them. Mama stood back by the pharmacy sign smoking her Pall Mall cigarette and whispered in my direction, “Yankees.” I was sure I knew just what she meant.
At the end of each week, the women playing split the butter bowl evenly.
Mama said I wasn’t that good a waitress, but I made up for it in eagerness. Mabel said I made up for it in “tail.” “Those salesmen sure do like how you run back to that steam table,” she said with a laugh, but she didn’t say it where Mama could hear. Mama said it was how I smiled.
“You got a heartbreaker’s smile,” she told me. “You make them think of when they were young.” Behind her back, Mabel gave me her own smile, and a long slow shake of her head.
Whatever it was, by the end of the first week I’d earned four dollars more in tips than my mama. It was almost embarrassing. But then they turned over the butter bowl and divided it evenly between everyone but me. I stared and Mama explained. “Another week and you can start adding to the pot. Then you’ll get a share. For now just write down two dollars on Mr. Aubrey