The Boston Girl

  Suddenly everyone was looking at me like I was a cow for sale.

  Levine slapped the table so hard that the cups rattled. “Mr. Baum,” he declared. “This daughter of yours is a firecracker.”

  “She could start this week,” Betty said.

  Now everyone looked at Levine, who rubbed his beard and glanced at Celia. “What do you say, Mrs. Levine?”

  She was bent over some mending and didn’t answer. So he said it again, louder. “Celia, would it make you happy if I hire Addie?”

  When she realized he was talking to her she looked up and said, “Yes?”

  “Of course yes,” Betty said, who was very proud of herself for coming up with the idea. She kept talking, and before Levine or I knew what had happened, she arranged for me to start the next day. When I showed up at H. L. Shirtwaists at seven o’clock the next morning, it took him a minute to remember what I was doing there.

  His “factory” was one big room on the second floor over a butcher’s. There were maybe twelve sewing machines, a couple of pressing machines, some tables for cutting and finishing, all crowded together. And in those days, people didn’t take that many baths, so you can imagine what it smelled like.

  Levine didn’t have a real office, just a corner near one of the back windows where he had stacked some packing crates to make a separation. His desk was a door on top of more crates, and on that was a big mess of papers and envelopes and scraps of material.

  I picked up a receipt and remembered how the secretaries I met at Rockport Lodge talked about their bosses like they were little children who couldn’t wipe their noses without help. I said, “Maybe I can straighten this up for you.”

  Levine was blinking like he always did when he got nervous and said, “Just what I was thinking.”

  By the end of the day I had sorted everything into neat stacks and told him he needed boxes or a cabinet for the paper and ledger books and some new pencils. “All you’ve got here are stubs.”

  “You aren’t going to be saving me any money,” Levine said, but I could tell he liked what I had done. “Tomorrow you’ll go shopping.”

  At the beginning, I was busy. I put away the old papers and made up a system for paying bills. I entered a whole year’s business in a ledger, and I saw how Levine was doing, which was pretty good. He got rid of the door and bought a real desk that was so big we had to move the dividing crates back to make room for it. He was very proud of that desk, and after I polished it, you’d never know it was secondhand.

  On days when buyers or suppliers came in, I stood behind Levine with a new pad and a sharp pencil to write orders: how many shirtwaists in which sizes by such-and-such a day, or how much thread in what colors to be delivered at such-and-such a price.

  The men were impressed that Levine could afford a full-time girl, even though I was his sister-in-law and probably working cheap. Actually, I knew from doing his books that I was getting paid almost as much as his best stitchers, who were making some of the highest wages in the neighborhood. I also saw that he didn’t fire people when they got sick and that when one of the men had a baby Levine gave him a whole day off for the bris and didn’t even dock his pay.

  Celia’s husband wasn’t such a ganef after all.

  But after a few weeks, I didn’t have enough to do and there were days I could have screamed from boredom. Why is it you get more tired from sitting and doing nothing than from running around doing too much?

  But even a bad day at work was better than being at home. The best part of the week was going to the Saturday Club meetings, where I was a person who knew how to cook eggs over an open fire and play lawn tennis and do the turkey trot.

  My mother never let me out of the house on Saturday night without making a stink. “Those women, they smile in your face but behind your back they’re laughing at you and calling you a filthy Yid.”

  I didn’t say anything back. We both knew that I was going to go—no matter what. Levine was paying me good money, which meant she could buy chicken every week and didn’t have to do as much piecework sewing at home.

  I kept enough to save for Rockport Lodge and even buy myself something now and then. The first thing I bought was a green felt cloche. You know what I’m talking about? A hat that’s shaped like a bell and fits around your face.

  In my whole life I never enjoyed buying anything more than that hat. It wasn’t expensive but it was stylish and I felt like a movie star when I wore it. I loved that hat.

  My mother took one look and said it made me look like a meeskeit, ugly. That hurt my feelings and made me so mad, I told her I wasn’t going to talk to her unless she used English. And by the way, she knew enough to understand every piece of gossip she heard in the grocery store.

  I said it was for her own good. “What if you had an emergency and I wasn’t there?”

  “So then I’ll be dead and you’ll be sorry,” she said, in Yiddish, of course.

  After that, when she suddenly needed me to run to the store or get my father at shul—always on a Saturday night—I shrugged and slammed the door on my way out. I was feeling my oats, as they used to say. What could she really do? Without what I earned, she would be back to sewing sheets ten hours a day and eating potatoes every night.

  Money is power, right?

  Maybe I wouldn’t be a wallflower after all.

  I’m not sure how much you want to know about your grandmother’s love life. Not that I had so many boyfriends.

  My first kiss was that summer in Rockport when I was sixteen. There was a dance, and since there was a coast guard training camp in town, there were always more men than women, so all the Rockport Lodge girls knew they’d be dancing.

  I had never been to a dance so Rose taught me the fox-trot and the waltz. She said I was a natural. “If anyone asks you to do anything fancy, just say you’re out of breath and would he like to sit this one out with you.”

  Of all the girls, I really did not have anything to wear, but Filomena tucked and basted one of Helen’s dresses so it looked like it had been made for me. Irene pomaded my hair and piled it on top of my head and Gussie pinched my cheeks for color.

  When they were finished, I went to look at myself in the bathroom mirror. It was like one of those before-and-after pictures. When I looked in that mirror on the first day I was there, I saw a pale, scared girl with circles under her eyes. But here was a grown-up woman with a daisy behind her ear, smiling to beat the band.

  My brown hair was lighter from the sun and with it pulled back and all fancied up, I could see that Celia wasn’t the only Baum girl with an oval face and wide eyes. Maybe I wouldn’t be a wallflower after all.

  The dance was in an empty barn that smelled of bleach and horses. There was a Victrola in the corner playing a waltz, but the town girls were all bunched up in one corner, whispering and staring at the coast guard cadets in their sharp white uniforms, who were leaning against the opposite wall, smoking cigarettes.

  “Elegant, ain’t it?” Irene said.

  When we walked in, the cadets straightened up, and right away Helen, Irene, and Filomena were out on the dance floor. Rose took me to the refreshment table, where a very tall cadet was standing near the punch bowl. “Allow me, ladies,” he said and filled us each a cup.

  He was so tall that I had to tilt my head up to look at him. His hair was as black as Filomena’s but very fine and parted on the side. His eyes were dark blue—almost purple—with the kind of long eyelashes girls dream about. He looked me over and said, “Green suits you.”

  I was so nervous I almost said, “You, too.”

  He asked if I liked to dance.

  Rose said, ‘‘Addie can really cut a rug. What about you?”

  “I’m not bad, if I say so myself. My mother taught me. By the way, I am Harold George Weeks from Bath, Maine.”

  Rose shook his hand. “I’m Rose Reard
on and this is Addie Baum. We’re from Boston.”

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Reardon. First time in Rockport, Miss Baum?”

  Just then the record changed and he grabbed my hand. “The turkey trot is a snap. Four steps in a box and then you hop.”

  Before I knew what was happening, we were on the dance floor and he had his hand on my back. He leaned down and whispered, “Don’t think,” and the next second, I was hopping and spinning around the room and having the time of my life. We were practically flying in circles but somehow I wasn’t getting dizzy.

  I was completely out of breath when the song ended but Harold didn’t let go when a fox-trot started playing. I was counting the steps in my head, but I kept losing track and stumbling. Harold pulled me closer to him—he smelled like lemons and leather—and said, “You’re thinking. Just follow me and you’ll be fine.” He really knew what he was doing, because the way he steered me around the floor made me look good.

  When that song ended, he bowed and strutted over to the other cadets, who shook his hand and slapped him on the back. My friends ran over to me and Gussie said, “I thought you didn’t know how to dance.” Helen asked what his name was. Irene said he was the best-looking man in the room.

  But Filomena made a face. “He knows it, too.”

  “How can you say that?” I said. “You didn’t even talk to him.”

  “I know a wolf when I see one.”

  Rose pinched Filomena’s cheek. “Oh, she’s just jealous that he asked you instead of her.”

  I danced with a few other cadets, but they were flat-footed and clumsy compared to Harold Weeks. I kept hoping he’d come back but he was dancing with one of the local girls who knew how to tango and wore rolled stockings and a lot of rouge.

  I’d given up on dancing with him again when he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Can you spare a waltz?”

  I didn’t want to sound like I’d been dying for him to ask, so I said, “I could ask you the same question.”

  “Jealous, eh?”

  I just smiled and tried to flirt like the other girls. I tilted my head to one side and opened my eyes really wide. Someone had told me that men like it when you let them talk about themselves, so I asked him why he joined the coast guard.

  “I was supposed to take over from my father at the ironworks, but I hated the idea of building ships and never going to sea.”

  “What did he say when you enlisted?” I asked.

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  “You mean you ran away?” I was thrilled to think we had so much in common.

  He said, “I told my mother so she wouldn’t worry. I’m a lot like her and she has a mind of her own. You should have seen the looks in church when she walked in with her hair chopped off, like Irene Castle.”

  So much for having anything in common.

  When the song ended, I heard Miss Holbrooke calling me and the other lodge girls off the dance floor.

  “I see I have to let you go,” Harold said. He took my hand up to his lips and said, “Meet me outside on the porch at midnight. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  And just like that, I had an assignation! I don’t know how I knew that word but I knew it meant something romantic—maybe not so respectable but completely thrilling.

  I told Filomena about it on the way back, but instead of being happy for me, she said, “Don’t you dare. He thinks he can take advantage because you’re so young.”

  “Maybe he likes my eyes,” I said. “Maybe he thinks I’m a good listener.”

  “You think he’s coming over in the middle of the night to talk to you? I thought you were smarter than that.”

  We went back and forth. She told me he was a skirt chaser and to wake up but I thought she was just being mean or maybe Rose was right and she was jealous.

  Finally she gave up. “If I can’t talk you out of it, swear that you’ll stay on the porch or else I will go out there with you.”

  After I promised not to leave the porch, Filomena didn’t say another word to me all night. She just turned off the light and pulled the pillow over her head. I hated that she was mad at me, but Harold was so handsome and no man had ever paid me that kind of attention. And when was I ever going to have another assignation?

  I was lying on top of the bedspread, waiting for the first stroke of midnight, like Cinderella except I had both of my shoes on. I flew down those stairs and out the kitchen door, which they never locked.

  It was very dark—no moon or stars—and I didn’t see Harold anywhere. I waited and worried and was starting to give up when I saw his white uniform moving through the orchard.

  He took my hands and kissed them really slowly, and not just on top but on the palms, too. It made me shiver. But when he tried to pull me toward the trees, I sat down on the step and tucked my skirt around my legs.

  “Oh, so you are a good girl,” he said and sat down with his leg right against mine. “Good girls don’t usually dance like that.”

  I said, “Like what?” trying to act as if I’d had this kind of conversation a million times.

  “Free. Willing to go along and let loose. We were special together, Addie. Didn’t you feel it? I could have gone on dancing all night with you.”

  He sounded so much like a character in a magazine story that I giggled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I guess I’m not used to compliments.”

  “You should be.” He put his arm around my waist, I leaned my head on his shoulder, and imagined how romantic we must look.

  Then he turned my face up to his and kissed me on the mouth.

  “Your first time?” he said.

  “Oh, no. I’m not a baby, you know.”

  “Of, course not,” he said. “I wouldn’t do this to a baby.” He kissed me again. He was as good a kisser as he was a dancer, and I followed him like I did with the fox-trot—without thinking.

  It was very exciting and, well, let’s just say that I didn’t realize how far along things had gotten until I heard the church bell.

  That’s when I sat up and said I should go inside.

  Harold had his arm around my waist and said we should go out to the hammock in the orchard where we could look at the stars. “It’s so beautiful, Addie,” he whispered.

  I said no and that I had to go inside. When he didn’t let go of me, I said it again.

  A window upstairs opened and somebody coughed.

  Harold let go of me. “I shouldn’t have come.” He sounded mad.

  I said, “Don’t be mad.”

  “Come with me and I won’t be.”

  But I didn’t move and the coughing got louder.

  Harold stood up, lit a cigarette, and walked away. No goodbye. Nothing. It was awful.

  Filomena pretended she was asleep when I got in bed, which was okay with me. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened or how I was feeling and, boy oh boy, was I feeling things. I didn’t know if that meant I was a floozy or if I was in love. And what was Harold Weeks feeling? Maybe he was a wolf after all or maybe I had done something wrong.

  The last thing I wanted to hear from Filomena was “I told you so.” Especially since I would have done anything to see him again and I was miserable because I knew that was never going to happen.

  We got a suffragette in the family.

  Starting in September, Levine wouldn’t stop talking about Thanksgiving. “The Americans say a prayer before they start eating,” he said. “What do think, Mr. Baum?”

  “By us it’s not a holiday,” Papa said.

  “Why not? We live in America so we should celebrate like Americans. This week I filled out citizenship papers for Celia and me. My boys were born here so they don’t have to worry. Not Addie, either. But the rest of us, we have to apply.”

  “For what?” P
apa said. “So they can find us easier to throw us out? Or put boys into the army?”

  “For voting,” said Levine.

  Betty sniffed. “So why should I bother if they don’t let me?”

  Levine clapped his hands. “We got a suffragette in the family. What do you think, Celia? Is Betty right? Should women vote like men? Celia?”

  Like always, Celia was mending clothes and not paying attention. She had dark circles under her eyes and she’d gotten so thin that her clothes hung off her like they were pinned to a clothesline.

  Levine said it again. “What do you think about votes for women?”

  She looked lost, so I said, “Of course women should be able to vote. In Australia, they vote, and in Denmark.” After a year in the Saturday Club, I’d heard a lot of lectures about suffrage and I was about to tell him all the states where women were already voting in America when Levine put his hands up.

  “I’m not fighting with you. Mr. Louis Brandeis says that in Palestine women should vote; that’s good enough for me.”

  “You are a modern man, Mr. L.,” said Betty.

  “I hope so. And I want you all to come to eat by us for Thanksgiving, like real Americans with turkey and apple pie!”

  Celia did hear that. “You never said anything before.” She looked terrified.

  “Maybe you should have given her a vote,” I said.

  “It’ll be fine, Celia,” he said. “Addie will help you. I’ll give her the whole day off from work—with pay.”

  Mameh made a face. She had tried to teach Celia to cook, but Celia burned everything she put on the stove and nicked her fingers whenever she picked up a knife. She couldn’t boil water and chop carrots at the same time and whenever Mameh tried to correct her, she covered her face with a dishcloth. “Who would have thought a girl who sews with such golden hands would have trouble peeling a potato?”