I could stand it no longer. I jumped up and grabbed Sam’s sleeve. “You can’t fire her for heeding the call of nature. That’s just not fair. And it’s not as if she’s paid by the hour, so she’s not wasting your time. She’s paid by the piece and she stays late to finish her work if she has to.”
Sam shook himself free from my grasp and eyed me with a distasteful leer. “I remember now why we don’t hire no Irish. They stir up trouble. Ain’t none of your damned business. Go and sit at your place and get on with your work if you don’t want to follow her out of the door.”
The encounter might well have ended with my being fired but at that moment there was a diversion. The door opened and a young man swept into the room. He was wearing a top hat and a silk-lined cape and carried a silver-tipped cane. He looked at our little scene with amusement.
“Are you bullying people again, Sam?” he demanded. “What’s the poor girl done this time—dared to sneeze when the filthy lint got up her nose?”
Sam managed a weak smile. “I’m just trying to keep ’em in line, Mr. Benjamin. Making sure they don’t waste your pa’s time and money, that’s all.”
“My father’s in his office, is he?” the young man said, his amused gaze sweeping the room until his eyes rested on me. I saw him register surprise at my Irish freckles and red hair. When I didn’t look down demurely, as most of the girls here would have done, he gave me an outrageous wink. Fortunately I was used to winks too. I smiled politely, nodded my head graciously, and didn’t blush. As he walked toward the doorway that led to the stairs I saw him glance back at me. “I hope he’s in a good mood,” I heard him say to Sam. “The automobile just had an unhappy meeting with a streetcar and the front fender is no more.”
Sam turned back to us. “Well, what are you waiting for, get back to work. The boss don’t pay you to sit around gawping.” He jerked his head at Paula. “You, out.”
I went back to my machine wondering what I could do. The boss’s son had seemed interested in me. Could I appeal to him to override the foreman’s decision? Then I had to remind myself that I was not here to make trouble. I was just playing a part. I would help nobody by getting myself fired. When the boss’s son came down from his father’s office again, he walked waked past us as if we didn’t exist.
“I expect he got a ribbing from his old man for denting the automobile,” Sadie whispered to me.
“That’s Mr. Mostel’s son? Is he part of the business too?” I whispered back.
She shook her head. “Goes to some fancy university—studying to be a doctor.” Her eyes became dreamy. “Imagine that—less than twenty years in this country and already a son who’ll be a doctor. We should all be so lucky.”
“Sadie Blum and Molly Murphy—five cents docked for talking,” came the voice from the other end of the room.
I sat, treadling away furiously, and fumed. Somebody should do something for these girls. Their lives shouldn’t be like this. At the end of the day, we took our wraps from the pegs on the wall and I walked down the stairs with Sadie and Sarah.
“I could hardly wait for seven o’clock to come around,” Sarah whispered, even though work was officially over and we were allowed to talk. “I was near to bursting, but I was too scared to ask if I could go to the W.C. after what happened to Paula. In the future I’m just not going to drink anything at lunchtime.”
“You wouldn’t have a problem, Sarah.” Sadie looked at her kindly. “You’re quiet and shy and you do what you’re told. And you’re a dainty worker too. It’s girls like you that they like.”
“That’s my aim,” Sarah said softly, “to stay invisible and pray to get through each day.”
My annoyance boiled over at the thought of little Sarah, too frightened to ask to relieve herself.
“It’s not right,” I said. “Why doesn’t somebody do something? If you all got together, you’d have strength.”
They looked at me with pity. “You think nobody has tried?” Sadie said. “We’ve had girls here who are all fired up like you and try to do something to make things better, and what happens? They disappear. One day they are here, next they don’t come to work. And if we all joined together and demanded better treatment, Mr. Mostel would just fire us all, send Sam down to the docks and pick new girls straight from the boats. We are at the bottom of the heap, Molly. We have no one to speak for us. We work here with one thought in mind—that one day there will be something better.”