A Woman's Place (4 page)

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Nothing.” But he studied her for a long moment before picking up his book and his reading glasses from the nightstand.

Did she look different to him? Had her singular act of bravery—or was it
injudicious
-ness—changed her in some barely perceptible way, like the difference between a properly starched shirt and one that wasn’t? But it hadn’t been courage that had made Ginny hang her apron on the kitchen doorknob this morning and abandon her laundry in the middle of a washday and take coins from her jar of egg money for bus fare. It had been a matter of survival. No one noticed her anymore. And Harold had two ticket stubs in his pocket.

He began to snore. The book he’d been reading dropped to his chest. Ginny loved him, and she wanted him to love her in return, but she also wanted him to respect her, to need her for more than simply cooking his meals and finding the soap and starching his shirts. She reached over to gently remove the book from Harold’s hands. He awoke with a snort.

“Huh? What did you say?”

“Nothing,” she replied, smoothing his hair off his forehead. “You fell asleep. Why don’t you turn off your light?”

He did, and as Ginny lay in the darkness, excitement mingled with fear as she thought about tomorrow and her first day of work.

CHAPTER 2

*   
Helen
   *

Miss Helen Kimball glanced up at the factory’s ugly brick walls as she steered her bicycle into the parking lot. Goodness, how this place had grown. In a mere nine months’ time, the modestly sized Stockton Boat Works, which had manufactured motorboats in the drowsy village of Stockton, Michigan, for years and years, had transformed into the gargantuan Stockton Shipyard, producing landing craft for the war effort. The air around the building had a greasy, electric smell to it, and she could almost sense the throbbing of machinery, hissing and clanging inside.

What on earth was she doing here? A woman from her station in life had no business working here. She considered turning around and pedaling home again, but she was too winded at the moment to make the return trip. It had been farther than she’d bargained for. And there were more hills on this side of town than she had recalled. The trip would be impossible by bicycle in the wintertime, especially for a fifty-year-old woman such as herself.

The brakes squealed as she halted her bicycle in front of the factory. She wasted several minutes searching for a place to park, but the factory didn’t seem to have a bicycle rack. Helen would have to speak to someone about that. She hopped off and smoothed her skirt, then poked at her graying brown hair to rearrange it. The plant manager had advised her to wear slacks, but Helen Kimball had never worn men’s clothing in all her born days and didn’t own a pair. Wearing the drab, shapeless coveralls they’d promised to give her would be horrid enough.

What am I doing working at a factory?
she asked herself again. Then she remembered: trying to stop the walls of the huge Victorian mansion on River Street from closing in on her. She couldn’t bear to remain in that house one more day now that her parents had passed away. She could have applied to teach as a substitute, she knew that. But it wasn’t the same as having her own students, doing things her own way. After twenty years, Helen Kimball knew a thing or two about how to teach. She wouldn’t go back to Lincoln Elementary School until she could have her own class and teach them proper behavior from the very first day. There was just no telling how these younger teachers ran their classes, and Helen wouldn’t put up with wild behavior or slipshod teaching, even if she were a mere substitute.

The last time she had substituted, she’d begun the day by reading from the Psalms, as she used to do before she’d stopped believing in God, and some wise-aleck boy in the back of the room had called out, “Our teacher never reads that.”

She had given him a withering stare and asked, “Do I look like your teacher?” Her icy response hadn’t fazed him. In fact, the boy continued speaking out in that same irritating manner all day, telling Helen how the “real” teacher did things. No, she had no desire at all to be a substitute.

She wheeled her bike into the scraggly bushes that served as landscaping and leaned it against the front of the building for lack of a better place. If someone stole it she would just have to take public transportation—another first for her. But maybe it was time to take another step down the social ladder and see how other people lived. She had never asked God for wealth and social stature, so what did it matter now if she threw it all back in His face? Being a Kimball had been a curse, not a blessing, and Helen was ready, at long last, to prove to God and everyone else that she could live a simple working-class life.

The air felt cooler inside the building, out of the glaring sun, and she paused for a moment to get her bearings before making her way to the same office where she’d applied for a job two days ago. She nodded a silent greeting to the lone woman in the waiting area, then sat down and pulled a handkerchief from her purse to delicately wipe the perspiration from her brow.

The other woman looked vaguely familiar—and very nervous. The mother of a former student, no doubt. She was in her early thirties, attractive, but round shouldered and timid looking. She sat huddled over her purse, her white-gloved hands gripping it as if it contained state secrets. Helen had to bite her tongue to keep from telling her to sit up straight. Good posture was so important. Then their eyes met and the woman smiled.

“Excuse me … Miss Kimball?” she asked. “I don’t know if you remember me or not, but my son Allan had you for his teacher in second grade?”

“Yes, of course—Allan Mitchell, I remember. A bright boy. Well-mannered.”

“Why, thank you. His father insists on good manners—and so do I!”

Helen remembered Mrs. Mitchell’s husband. Firm yet fair, not much warmth, rarely allowed his wife to say more than a peep. But obviously intelligent, articulate, and well-educated. He had reminded Helen of her own father.

Mrs. Mitchell, on the other hand, had struck Helen as a typically dull wife and mother, the sort of woman who does charity work in her spare time, who always buys purses to match her shoes and goes to the hairdresser regularly to refresh her permanent wave. In fact, Mrs. Mitchell was probably the last person on earth that Helen would ever imagine working in a defense factory. She was surprised that Mr. Mitchell had allowed her to. He didn’t strike Helen as the sort of man who would embrace nontraditional roles for women. In that regard, he definitely resembled Helen’s father.

“What brings you here, Mrs. Mitchell?” Helen asked.

She hesitated, blinking in doe-eyed wonder as if asking herself the same question. “I … I’ve taken a job here.” Her voice had a tremor of excitement—or perhaps it was fear. Mrs. Mitchell seemed ready to bolt for home at the slightest provocation. “Now that I’m here,” she continued, “I’m wondering if my decision was
injudicious
. Why are you here? Surely not to work?”

Helen nodded. “Yes, to work.”

Mrs. Mitchell was too polite to ask why, but Helen saw the unasked question in her eyes. It took Helen a moment to recall the reason herself. Five days ago, as the walls of the house had begun to close in on her, she had seen an advertisement in a magazine from the Office of War Information calling for defense workers. The slogan read,
His Life Depends on You
. She had thought of Jimmy.

One would think that after all these years she would have forgotten Jimmy long ago. Heaven knows all the other things Helen seemed to forget at her age, such as people’s names or even what day of the week it was. So why was Jimmy’s face still as vivid to her today as on the day he left for France in 1917?

She knew perfectly well why. It was this horrid war. And there would be lots of Jimmies, truth be told, who would fight on foreign battlefields far from home. Come to think of it, if America had to fight another European war, then what on earth had the first one accomplished? Helen hadn’t wanted to think about any of those things, but the magazine advertisement had forced her to. The soldier in the drawing had even looked a bit like Jimmy with his dark, curly hair and brown eyes.

His Life Depends on You,
the caption insisted. If Helen could have gone to work during the Great War, taking a job that would have saved lives, she certainly would have done it. So why not do it during this war? Heaven knows she was weary of visits from the angel of death. He seemed to be working overtime these days, making sure Helen remained alone in the world. She knew it sounded silly, but she wanted to fight back—to give that angel a piece of her mind.

Helen came out of her reverie as Mrs. Mitchell leaned toward her. “Excuse me again, Miss Kimball. But I just wanted to say how sorry I was when I read in the paper that your father had passed away.”

“Thank you.”

“It seemed such a tragedy after losing your mother only a few weeks before. I’m so sorry.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Helen hated sounding so prim, but as much as she disliked her tone of voice she couldn’t seem to help it. What had been considered proper manners when she was a girl made people call you “prim” or “stuffy” nowadays.

“And I was sorry when I heard that you’d resigned from teaching last year to take care of them,” Mrs. Mitchell continued in her breathless, nervous manner, “because I was hoping that my son Herbie would have you for his teacher. That’s selfish of me, I know, but Herbert is my youngest, and Harold says I spoil him too much. Anyway, he’s more high-spirited than Allan and could have used a firm teacher such as yourself to keep him in line.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mitchell. I hope to return to teaching someday when there is an opening. For now, I’ve accepted employment here.”

“Please, call me Ginny,” she said with a smile. “
Mrs. Mitchell
sounds like my mother-in-law.” Virginia Mitchell laughed, and Helen tried to smile in return.

How weary she’d grown over the years, listening to married women complain, even in a joking manner, about their in-laws and their husbands and moaning about how tired they’d grown of picking up dirty socks. They should try living in Helen’s shoes for a while, waking up alone day after day, living in an empty house that stayed neat as a pin but was vacant and loveless, always wondering what it would have been like to be married. Sometimes Helen thought she would willingly pick up entire rooms full of stinking socks if only she had someone beside her to love.

To her horror, Helen felt tears burning in her eyes. She simply must stop this foolishness! She despised self-pity in others, and here she was indulging in it herself.

“Of course, Ginny,” she replied. “Thank you.” But she didn’t offer to let Virginia call her Helen in return. It didn’t seem right. Ginny couldn’t be more than thirty-two or three, and Helen was fifty—old enough to be her mother.

The door to the personnel director’s office opened suddenly, and a young, dark-haired woman emerged with him. “You may take a seat with the others,” Mr. Wire said. “We’ll be getting started in just a few minutes, ladies.”

Helen recalled Mr. Wire’s doubtful expression as he’d interviewed her for the job, as if he didn’t expect her to last a week. Why did everyone seem to doubt that she could be ordinary and do menial work, simply because she’d been raised with wealth? Helen lifted her chin, resolved to succeed, determined to prove everyone wrong.

CHAPTER 3

*   
Rosa
   *

The persistent knocking on her bedroom door awakened Rosa Voorhees from a sound sleep long before she was ready. Her head hammered along with the pounding, and at first she couldn’t recall where she was. Not in her apartment in Brooklyn, that’s for sure! For one thing, it was much too quiet—except for the knocking. She rose to her elbows and looked around the darkened room. Even with the curtains drawn she recognized the blond-wood furnishings of her husband’s boyhood bedroom, his high school pennants on the wall, his baseball glove on the dresser top, his books and comics arranged neatly on the shelf beside his desk.

She remembered standing before a Justice of the Peace with Navy Corpsman Dirk Voorhees—who had looked dazzlingly handsome in his U.S. Navy whites—and becoming his wife. She recalled their brief month of married life before his transfer to Virginia. She remembered the long train trip alone from New York to Michigan in the overcrowded rail coach. And she remembered the looks of dismay on his parents’ faces when she’d arrived at their home one week ago yesterday. Rosa sank back on the bed again and closed her eyes. The knocking continued.

“Rosa …” her mother-in-law called. “Are you awake?”

She licked her lips before replying. The bitter remnants of too much gin had left a sour taste in her mouth. “Yeah … I’m awake … .”

“The water is now hot for doing the laundry. You can do yours with me. … No sense in wasting the water.”

Even if Dirk hadn’t told her that his parents were immigrants from Holland, Rosa would have figured it out by their funny accents. But Dirk hadn’t told her how blasted picky and old-fashioned they were about everything. Rosa’s head throbbed. She pushed her dark hair out of her eyes and turned to look at the clock that was ticking loudly on the nightstand. Ten minutes to six in the morning! Was the woman crazy? Rosa had been asleep for less than four hours!

“I’ll do my wash later,” she mumbled, pulling the covers over her head.

“There won’t be hot water later. And we do not do the washing again until next week … .”

Rosa groaned. Would it break one of the Ten Commandments to do laundry on a different day—or at a time later than dawn? You never knew with her in-laws. According to them, God had more rules than Rosa had ever dreamed of.

“And I need to wash your bedsheets,” Mrs. Voorhees insisted. Rosa almost swore aloud but stopped herself in time.

“Right now?”

“Yes … please.”

“Oh, all right. Give me a sec.”

She lay unmoving for another minute, eyes closed, wishing she could open them and be back in Brooklyn. What was the point of getting out of bed so early when there was nothing to do all day after the laundry? But Mrs. Trientje Voorhees—or “Tena” to her husband, Wolter—ruled her household with a strict routine. And every time Rosa had tried to help out this past week, whether peeling potatoes or sweeping the porch or washing the dishes, her mother-in-law had come along behind her and done it all over again. She had even gone into Rosa’s bedroom every morning and remade her bed.

All day long Tena never stopped working, cleaning every last inch of the bungalow, scrubbing the floors until they shone, cooking three huge meals a day, and tending the vegetable garden. If this was daily life as a housewife, Rosa wanted nothing to do with it. Besides, at twenty-three years old she was much too young to be a housewife. She had better things to do, a life to live.

Then she remembered that she was a married woman now. Dirk expected her to learn things from his mother, like how to cook and keep house. His parents had gone easy on her all last week, not asking too much of her, allowing her to sleep late and get settled in, but this morning she had a feeling her real initiation was about to begin.

Rosa climbed out of bed and got dressed; Mrs. Voorhees had already spoken to her about “parading around” in front of Mr. Voorhees in her nightclothes. She stripped the sheets from her bed as if she had a grudge against them, then kicked all the dirty clothes that lay scattered around the room into an untidy pile on the floor. She tied her long, dark hair back with a red scarf and staggered out to the kitchen.

The dawning sunlight made her headache worse. It wasn’t even six o’clock, but the day was well underway in the Voorhees’ household. Tena had set a huge breakfast on the table for Wolter, who would leave for work shortly. He sat in his place at the kitchen table like a kingpin in coveralls, his toolbox waiting on the floor near the back door. Wolter and Tena Voorhees, now in their sixties, had raised two daughters before Dirk had come along as a late surprise. Rosa knew that Dirk’s new Italian wife from Brooklyn had been an even bigger surprise.

She glanced around the spotless kitchen, saw the bread dough rising on the stove, the kitchen table neatly set, the laundry tubs waiting on the back porch, and she stifled a groan. She had wanted this, she reminded herself. After living in tenements all her life, Rosa had often dreamed of a cozy cottage like this one. It was everything that Dirk had described to her, everything he’d promised her it would be. Just goes to show you’d better be careful what you wish for.

She slumped into her chair at the table. “You would like some eggs?” Mrs. Voorhees asked. Rosa gagged at the thought. How could anyone eat food at this hour of the day—let alone
eggs
?

“Just coffee. Black.”
Gallons of it
.

Her father-in-law cleared his throat. “There is something I must ask you, Rosa.”

She cringed. Mr. Voorhees rarely spoke, communicating with gestures and grunts that Tena seemed to understand perfectly. When he did speak, his stern voice and stiff accent made Rosa feel like she was in the principal’s office. He never quite looked at her, as if he thought it was a sin to gaze at his son’s beautiful young wife.

“Where were you last night—or should I say early this morning?”

“Down at that place on the next block … the Hoot Owl,” she said with a shrug. “I wanted a bite to eat, a few laughs … you know.” She also knew, after going to the Voorhees’ stuffy little church last Sunday, that having a drink and a few laughs was frowned upon.

“We are happy to share our home with you since you are the wife of our son. Dirk loves you and he has asked us to make you welcome here. But you should not bring shame on our family.”

“I haven’t done anything shameful!”

“But you have. It brings shame to our family when you spend your evenings in a bar, drinking alcohol and carrying on with the wrong kind of people.”

“Hey! I wouldn’t have to ‘carry on’ in a bar if there was something else to do in this godforsaken town.” She saw them both flinch at the mention of God and was sorry for her choice of words. “Listen, I’m not doing anything wrong—just hanging out, dancing a little, having a beer or two. It’s no big deal.” But Rosa saw by the way that Tena’s hands trembled as she placed a saucer and a cup of coffee on the table in front of her that it was a big deal.

“Since you now bear our name, you must try to adapt to our way of life,” Mr. Voorhees continued. “This is the life that Dirk will have when he returns home. You must get used to it so you will live here happily with him after the war.”

“What makes you think we’ll stay in this crummy town when he gets out of the navy?” Dirk had liked New York. He had gone with Rosa to all the clubs, danced to Big Band music, drank his share of beer. He would look for a job someplace fun after the war.

“But he will want to work as a plumber with his father,” Tena said in alarm—as if Rosa had spoken blasphemy. “This is his home.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not my home.”

She was sorry as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She didn’t have a home, and if she lost this one she didn’t know where she would live. She had wanted out, and Dirk had been her ticket—out of the diner, out of New York, out of a life that was going nowhere. Sweet, wholesome Dirk Voorhees had helped Rosa imagine a better place than the streets of Brooklyn, a place with green grass and blue skies and cows.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m not used to getting up this early. It makes me crabby … and I don’t feel up to snuff this morning.”

She saw them exchange glances, probably wondering if she was pregnant. Rosa knew very well that she wasn’t, but to admit that she had a hangover would prove Mr. Voorhees’ point.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I won’t stay out so late next time.”

“There cannot be a next time.”

“Yeah … all right … sure.” She would just have to sneak out of the house after the old sourpuss was asleep, then sneak home again. “What did you want me to do today?” she asked Dirk’s mother. “Besides the laundry?”

“This afternoon there is a Bible study meeting at church, and—”

Rosa groaned aloud. She couldn’t help herself. She had gone to church with them last Sunday—morning
and
evening—and didn’t think she could stand to go there again. But groaning had been the wrong thing to do.

“Our faith is very important to us,” Mr. Voorhees said, “and to Dirk, as well. Why do you belittle it?”

She could have told him that religion certainly hadn’t been part of Dirk’s life when she’d met him. Wouldn’t they be shocked to know what their son had done before he’d eloped with her? But she wasn’t going to snitch on him.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to
belittle
your
faith
. Church is fine for you. It’s just not for me.”

“You must try to understand how we feel—”

“You’ve made it plain as the nose on your face how you feel. You don’t like me. You wish your precious son had never married me.”

Mr. Voorhees’ face turned as red as a stoplight, but he didn’t raise his voice. “Nevertheless, Dirk has asked us to give you a home and make you part of our life. We will do that in the best way we know how. But you have not tried to fit in with us.”

“I’ll never fit in to your world.”

“That is up to you, Rosa. But I think there is one thing that we do agree on: We all love Dirk—at least, I hope it is true for you.”

“Are you saying you don’t think I love him?”

“Dirk must return home safe and sound,” he said, ignoring her question. “We must not say anything in our letters or do anything that would upset him and put his life in danger. He needs to put all his thoughts into fighting this war, and he must imagine that we are all getting along and keeping a happy home for him to return to.”

“I do love him! I want to spend my whole life with him!”

“Your actions while he is away don’t show me that you care about him. You were out until two o’clock last night, and—”

“What gives you the right to keep tabs on me?”

“You live under my roof. We have opened our home to you until Dirk returns.”

Rosa scraped back her chair and stood. “I don’t have to take this.”

“Rosa, please,” Tena begged. “Don’t be angry—”

“I can wash my own clothes, you know. I been doing it all my life—maybe not to your prissy standards, but I do okay. Just leave my stuff alone. I’ll wash them when I’m good and ready.” She grabbed her purse from the chair where she had dumped it the night before and strode to the door.

“Where are you going?” Tena asked.

“Out!”

Rosa slammed the door and stalked down the street to the bus stop. It was what she always did after fighting with her own mother. Rosa would ride the New York subways awhile so her mother would know that she wasn’t taking any of her garbage. Maybe Wolter and Tena Voorhees would mind their own business and treat her a little nicer, too, after this.

She boarded the first bus that happened along and slouched down in a seat beside the window. At first she paid no attention to her surroundings as she replayed the fight with her in-laws. She had lived with them for only a week, and she already knew she couldn’t stand living there much longer. But what else could she do? She really, truly did love Dirk and didn’t want to lose him. What if he took his parents’ side?

The bus lurched through the downtown area, stopping every block or so to let people on and off, then it continued toward the river on the other side of town. The erratic motion, along with the exhaust fumes, made Rosa’s headache worse. Finally the bus stopped in front of a sprawling factory—Stockton Shipyard.

“End of the line,” the driver announced. “Five-minute break, then we turn around.” The bus emptied as all of the men and women on board made their way toward the brick building. People streamed out of the factory, too, and boarded the bus. A tired-looking woman no older than Rosa sank down in the seat beside her with a weary sigh. She wore dark-green coveralls that were coated with grease, and she carried a shiny metal lunch pail.

“You work in there?” Rosa asked in amazement.

“Yeah. I started two months ago. It’s not bad—I like the graveyard shift.”

“What’s that?”

“Eleven at night until seven in the morning.” She yawned, then laughed at herself. “I’m on my way home to bed.”

It was the perfect solution. Rosa knew a godsend when she saw one. She had always been a night owl. Not only could she avoid her in-laws by working all night and sleeping all day, but she could earn a little money, too.

“They pay good?” she asked.

“Thirty dollars a week to start.” Rosa’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. “They’re still hiring, if you’re interested. They got a government contract to build ships and they need a lot more workers if they’re gonna produce on time. My foreman told me they’re training another group, starting today. You got kids?”

“No, not yet. Me and Dirk have only been married a month and a half.”

“If you tell them you’re willing to work the graveyard shift, they’ll hire you on the spot. A lot of women have families and can’t work those hours.”

“Thanks for the tip. I think I’ll apply.” Rosa stood and stepped over the woman’s outstretched legs, which were shod in heavy work boots, then made her way down the aisle to the back of the bus. The driver ground the gears and released the brakes with a hiss just as Rosa hopped off.

The workers had been going in and out of the factory’s side entrance, but Rosa strode straight up the walk to the main door. She went inside, then halted in front of a Negro janitor who was mopping the foyer.