A Woman's Place (7 page)

CHAPTER 6

*   
Helen
   *

The jangling alarm clock startled Helen from a deep sleep. She had been dreaming of the rural, one-room schoolhouse where she’d once taught, and she awoke with surprise to find herself in her bedroom. In the dream, Jimmy Bernard had sat in the front row, looking just as he had the very first time she’d seen him: barefoot and wearing a pair of overalls that were several sizes too large for him. His brown eyes looked as dark and mysterious as secret passageways. She longed to close her eyes and return to the dream, to hear his voice and the sound of his laughter, but it was time to get up for work.

The dream had been so vivid that for a moment Helen forgot she was going to the shipyard instead of the school. Her lapse was understandable; she had worked as a teacher for over twenty years and at the factory for only four days. Today was Friday, the last day of the workweek. She would have the weekend off, but to do what? She couldn’t say that she enjoyed working at the shipyard—not yet, anyway—but it was better than staying here alone all day. Too many ghosts inhabited her parents’ house. If only she could sell it.

“It’s not a good time to put a house as large as your father’s on the market,” her lawyer had advised. “You won’t get a very good price for it as long as the war is on. Why not divide it into apartments or rent out rooms if it’s too big for you?”

“I’ll think about it,” she had told him. But of course partitioning it was out of the question. Father would roll over in his grave if Helen dared to change a single thing in his precious mansion. And the neighbors! Turning it into some sort of rooming house was unthinkable, that’s all there was to it. She often wished she could move back into her own little bungalow near the school, but it wouldn’t be right to evict the people who were renting it from her. Not with the husband away in the service. And who would ever rent this monstrosity if she did move out? Besides, Minnie had been her mother’s housekeeper for more than twenty years and she needed this job. No, there was nothing Helen could do but stay here and suffer in silence.

Silence. That was the worst thing about this place—the silence. Helen climbed out of bed and went into her adjoining dressing room. The first things she saw were her work coveralls lying neatly folded on the chair. She hadn’t made up her mind whether to continue wearing them to work or not. Helen didn’t want to wear pants a moment longer than necessary and hated the thought of someone recognizing her in such an outfit while pedaling to the shipyard. But she hated the locker room at work even more. Undressing in front of so many other women would be even more dreadful than being seen in coveralls. In the end she decided to wear them to work again, as she had been doing all week.

When she was dressed, Helen made her way down the wide, curving staircase and into the echoing kitchen to fix herself a cup of tea and some toast. It seemed ridiculous to carry such a meager breakfast into the immense dining room, but she liked to gaze through the French doors to the backyard and the gazebo beyond. If she closed her eyes she could picture one of the many dinner parties her father used to host, with the chandelier glowing and a dozen guests gathered around the gleaming mahogany table. She imagined Albert sitting beside her again, looking handsome in his uniform. The soldiers she saw on the street every day reminded her of him, but of course Albert had fought in the Great War and his uniform had looked much different.

Thanks to Minnie, there wasn’t a speck of dust in the dining room, and the silver tea service shone softly on the sideboard. But beyond the French doors, the backyard resembled the jungles of Borneo. Her father had hired a succession of gardeners, but none of them had done as fine a job as Joe Bernard had all those years. The current gardener was much too old to keep up with such a large estate—but what else could Helen do? Every able-bodied man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five had either enlisted or been drafted.

Helen finished her toast, packed a lunch, and wrestled her bicycle out of the toolshed. Her legs ached from pedaling to work all week, but she wouldn’t be riding much longer. She would have to drive Father’s car to work—assuming it still ran after all these months. She wondered who would keep it tuned up for her. Father’s chauffeur had enlisted in the navy. And what if she had a flat tire? All of the spare tires in America had been gathered up in rubber drives for the war effort. She saw buses stuffed with people at the factory every morning and evening, but public transportation was for people like that girl Rosa Voorhees, not for her.

An hour later the clamor of machinery startled Helen anew as she entered the factory, especially after being greeted with the high-pitched laughter and squeals of children for most of her life. She was the first member of her crew to arrive, and after punching the time clock, she took a moment to tidy her crew’s tool station, setting all their equipment in order.

“Look how nice and neat our workstation is compared to the men’s,” Virginia Mitchell said, coming up behind her. She gave Helen’s arm a little squeeze.

“I’ve just been straightening it.”

“Jean Erickson is such a good teacher, isn’t she?”

“A very bright young woman,” Helen agreed.

“She said we might be able to start working on the production line by the middle of next week. Can you imagine? I was afraid it would take me months and months to learn everything because I’m not nearly as smart as you and the other ladies are—”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Mitchell—Ginny—but you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You’re every bit as capable as the rest of us.”

“But there’s so much to learn, and—”

“There are dozens of picky little tasks to master, true, but none of them are particularly difficult. They can be performed one at a time, and I’m sure you’re used to doing several chores at once, am I right?”

“Oh no, I’m just a housewife.”

Helen sighed and gave up trying to convince her.

“You know, I still can’t believe I work here,” Ginny continued. “I was in Harris’s Drugstore down on Main Street last January when a long line of trucks came rumbling into town. Mr. Harris, who knows everything there is to know about Stockton, told me that the owners had applied for government money to expand the shipyard and build landing craft for the war effort. And now here we are six months later, walking through the employees’ gate in our coveralls every morning, carrying lunchboxes. Who would have ever thought?”

Helen didn’t say so, but she certainly wouldn’t have imagined it, even in her wildest dreams. No one in her family had ever worked in a factory. On the contrary, her father’s bank had probably financed the loan to start the shipyard. In fact, if she dug through her father’s papers she would probably discover that she owned shares in Stockton Boat Works, as it used to be called.

Jean arrived and assigned everyone a task. Helen settled down to work, concentrating on learning to do the job well. The other three women on her team were rapidly making friends with each other, and that was understandable. Helen felt like an outsider—which she was.

When the lunch whistle blew, her crew filed into the lunchroom with hundreds of other workers. It was not a very attractive place to eat, with its glaring overhead lights and cheap wooden tables and benches, but is was less noisy than the factory floor. The smell of bologna and tuna fish and egg salad drifted out of lunchboxes, mingling with the aroma of stale coffee. Jean, Ginny, and Rosa found an empty table and sat down to eat together as they had done all week. Helen was searching for a quiet place to eat alone, apart from the others, when Rosa stopped her.

“Hey, how come you never sit with us? You think you’re better than we are?”

“Of course not. I thought you younger ladies would have more in common with each other. I’m trying to give you some privacy.”

“But we’re a team,” Ginny said with a worried look. “I feel bad to think we haven’t included you in our conversation. Please, you don’t need to feel
aloof
. Won’t you join us?”

Helen felt awkward as she sat down at their table. Even their lunches were different from hers, with their thick sandwiches and homemade cookies. Helen had a Thermos of canned soup and some crackers.

“We were talking about all the adjustments we’ve had to make since we started working here,” Jean explained.

“I hate getting up so early in the morning,” Rosa said. “I wanted the cemetery shift—”

“You mean the graveyard shift?” Jean asked, smiling.

“Yeah, that’s it!” Rosa laughed along with the others. “I knew it had something to do with dead people. Anyways, I’m a night owl, so I was hoping they’d let me work here all night so’s I could sleep all day.”

“You could ask for a transfer once you finish training,” Jean said. “They don’t let greenhorns work the graveyard shift right away.”

“But we would miss you, Rosa,” Ginny added. “It’s only been a week, but I think we all work so well together, don’t you?” The others nodded, their mouths full of food. Helen noticed how hard Ginny always worked to make everyone feel important—everyone but herself.

“Yeah, but I’m not getting along too good with my in-laws,” Rosa said. “I wanted to work nights so’s I wouldn’t ever see them. Me and Mr. Voorhees are always locking horns. He just about had kittens when I first told him I took a job here. He thinks women belong at home. Period.”

“So does my husband,” Ginny said.

“Did he have kittens, too, when you took this job?”

Helen looked up from her soup, waiting for Ginny’s response. She had been wondering all week how Virginia Mitchell had ever talked her husband into allowing her to work. Ginny didn’t meet anyone’s gaze as she folded the sheet of waxed paper that had held her sandwich into smaller and smaller squares.

“He doesn’t know I’m working here,” she finally said.

“How on earth have you kept it a secret?” Helen asked.

“I … I didn’t mean to. He has been working out of town all week. … I plan on telling him as soon as he gets home.”

“When’s he coming home?” Rosa asked.

“Tonight.”

That will be the end of her working career,
Helen thought. Harold Mitchell definitely wore the pants in that family, and if he didn’t want Ginny to work, she wouldn’t.

“What if he makes you quit?” Rosa asked.

“I’m hoping he won’t. I really like working here. I feel like I have a real purpose in life for the first time since the boys were babies. They don’t really need me anymore—in fact, they hardly even notice me—and I feel so useless at home.”

“Is that why you took this job?” Rosa asked. “To get your husband’s attention and make him notice you?”

“No, I … I don’t think so. I wanted to do something that really mattered for once, besides cooking meals and washing clothes. I went from living under my father’s roof to living under my husband’s in a single day and never had a chance to make my own decisions. I felt like I … like I was losing myself! Anyway, don’t mind me,” Ginny added with a wave of her hand. “It’s the same way for all women, isn’t it? What else is there for us to do besides be wives and mothers?”

Helen was about to enter the conversation and set Ginny straight, but Rosa spoke first.

“Just stand up to your husband,” she said. “That’s what I did with my father-in-law. I told him I’d move back to Brooklyn if he didn’t quit trying to boss me around, and he don’t want that because he knows it would upset Dirk. He finally stopped giving me a hard time about it, but he shoots me dirty looks all the time, and he doesn’t talk to me much—which is fine by me. The next fight is going to be about church. I went with them for two Sundays and I’m not going back. Ever.”

Helen understood. She hadn’t been to church in nearly a year and didn’t miss it in the least. She hadn’t thought about God at all since then, and she was quite certain that He hadn’t given her a second thought, either.

“Your in-laws go to that little white church over on Front Street, don’t they?” Jean asked. “I thought I saw you there last week.”

“Yeah. You go to that church, too?” Rosa unwrapped an enormous piece of apple pie that made Helen’s mouth water.

“I just started attending,” Jean replied. “I only moved to town a few months ago.”

“And you actually like that place?” Rosa asked.

“I do. The people seem very friendly—and the minister is a good preacher. I’ve got five brothers in the service who I need to pray for.”

A lot of good prayer will do,
Helen thought.

“I don’t fit in too good in that church,” Rosa said with her mouth full of pie. “Everybody is so stiff and straight-laced—especially my in-laws. Dirk’s father shoots daggers at me with his eyes every time I move or make a peep. His mother thought my dress was too short to wear to church, and she kept motioning for me to pull it down every time I crossed my legs. She even made me wear one of her hats to church. Me—in a hat! Hah! It had flowers on it and one of those fishnet things. I’m telling you, it was torture.”

Helen couldn’t imagine Rosa sitting primly in church. Nor would a hat help her look any less seductive—even with flowers and a veil. She would attract male attention in a gunnysack.

“Listen, why don’t you sit with my sister Patty and me next week?” Jean asked. “I’ll introduce you to some people our age.”

“Gee, I don’t know. Religious people are always condemning girls like me, telling us we’re going to hell and stuff like that. I only went because my in-laws practically forced me to, but I don’t really belong there. I see the church ladies smiling and hugging and being holy, and I know I’ll never fit in. I’m nothing like them. Those people started learning to be good from the day they signed up for Sunday school, and they have parents and grandparents who went to church for ages and ages, too. I never met my father, much less my grandparents, but I’m pretty sure they never set foot in no church. Dirk knows the truth about me, but his parents sure don’t.”

“But it sounds like going to church is important to your husband’s family,” Ginny said. “Why not give it another chance, Rosa? Sit with Jean next time. It’ll help keep peace in your household if you do go.”