“Do you like it so far, Neva?” Aunt Ida said to her from the other end of the table and Neva looked down and said, “I like that blue-bottle tree.”
Neva didn’t like some of the food, such as mashed sweet potatoes, but some she did, like the fried chicken, which was just like her mother’s. Her mother looked happy, and her father seemed almost like himself again, telling a story about starting the car on a steep hill in Colorado. They all ate three helpings and then Uncle Hurd walked her father and Clare around the place, standing before one rusty machine after another, telling them where he got it, what it used to be, and what he planned to make with it. Neva sat down between the piles of stones and glass bottles and made little houses by arranging them into rooms and furniture. The glass girl lived in the biggest house, with a broken Blue Willow cup for a bathtub and a three-legged china elephant as a pet. The women were washing up inside, and Neva could hear the watery thudding sounds and the high laughter of her mother and Charlotte, as if they had never left their cats behind or sent Miss McKenna away in the middle of the night. She wondered suddenly where Milly Mandy Molly was.
Uncle Hurd came up to Neva’s crossed legs and crouched down. His work boots were thick and heavy-looking, and he wore a turquoise ring whose stone was larger than the space between his knuckles. He looked down at her houses and said, “Nice setup you’ve got there.” He was grinning so hard she couldn’t look at him. “You like California?”
Neva nodded, knowing it was what she was supposed to say. “Can you see the sleeping Indian from here?” she asked.
“Just the head,” Hurd said, pointing beyond a car with three wheels. “See that strange hummocky thing over there?”
Neva stood up and followed his finger to a hill like a camel’s hump. It might have been the same shape as the head in the postcard. She wasn’t sure.
“You can see the whole body from that hill,” he said. “Shall I carry you over there?”
“All right,” Neva said. She let him put her up on his shoulders, and she held on to the hand that wore the ring.
“Ansel?” Uncle Hurd called. “You and Clare want to come see the Chief?” Neva kept her eye on the Indian’s head as Uncle Hurd walked, trying to see if the Indian’s face would be clearer than it was in the postcard. Uncle Hurd huffed a bit as they climbed a hill that gave off a green prickly scent.
When they reached the top, he didn’t have to point. She saw it. She could see the hummocky hill, only now it was connected by a valley to a high table that looked exactly like a chest with a pair of hands crossed high up by the neck. The chest sloped down to the Indian’s flat belly. His long legs connected to a hill that poked up like feet. She couldn’t see the stones that made eyes or the tree that made his nose, but the body was huge and wonderful. Clare whistled and said, “That’s swell as anything.” Even her father said, “Sure enough.”
“Beyond that lies the ocean,” Uncle Hurd said. “Some days, from the really high hills, you can see it. The air has to be perfectly clear. Morning is the best time to look.”
Suddenly Neva reached out her arms for her father. He came close so she could move from Uncle Hurd’s shoulders to his. That was better. She could see even farther. She sat on her father’s shoulders and imagined the sea on the other side of the sleeping Indian. The hillsides around them were planted with rows of orange and lemon trees. Clouds with rough gray edges hung down into a clear blue sky. It made her think of the curtains for the Winter Entertainment and then she wondered if this could possibly be the same earth as the one Kansas was on, and she touched her knitted cap to see if it was still there.
50
No nail polish, no gum, no makeup,” Mrs. Gore told Aldine. She was the head waitress; Ansel’s friend Gil was the manager. “No smoking, no cursing, no drinking. And absolutely no men in your room.”
There were four other waitresses, Aldine was told, and one of them was her roommate, Glynis Walsh, who looked too young to be on her own. She was even shorter than Aldine, with freckled skin, a raspy voice, and dark brown, wavy hair cut close to her head. It was midafternoon and Glynis and Mrs. Gore were wearing stiff black-and-white dresses that, to Aldine’s eye, made them look like nuns. The badge on Glynis’s apron said 4.
“You’ll start out as a ten, like everyone else, and work your way up,” Mrs. Gore said and handed Aldine a badge, a starched apron, a black long-sleeved dress, black stockings, and a pair of black lace-up shoes that were shockingly ugly. Mrs. Gore was at the top of the system: no badge at all, just a pin that said her name. You wouldn’t call her pretty; she was instead the type Aunt Sedge would refer to as handsome. She and Leenie always knew what that meant: a plain sort made less so by community stature. Mrs. Gore said, “It’s not seniority but hard work that moves you up. Do you play softball?”
Aldine shook her head.
“Well, you will when it gets warmer. We all do. We have uniforms and you can play any position you like except pitcher. I’m the pitcher.” She ran her finger across one of the window-blind slats and frowned. “Curfew’s ten o’clock. Sneak out and you’re gone for good. Don’t date Harvey employees, and don’t think I won’t find out. Glynis can help you with lunchroom protocol if you forget, but you need to put on that dress right now and comb your hair so I can run through the routine with you before the evening train.”
Aldine’s head buzzed with exhaustion. She’d slept some on a bench in Dorland, where she’d waited five hours for an eastbound train, then had taken little naps with her head against the train window. Less than a whole day since she’d been in Ansel’s arms, and now he was gone. Fallen woman, that’s what she’d be in books and such. She wondered if she could be a fallen woman even if she didn’t feel like one.
“I’ll help you with the apron,” Glynis said. “And the cup code. Cup code’s hard the first day.”
Aldine nodded. At least she knew that much—Neva had taught her the cup code.
“Don’t worry, dear,” Mrs. Gore said, touching Aldine’s arm and softening her voice. “I know you’re tired but it’s best to dive right in. Did Mr. Dorado tell you that for the first month of training it’s just room and board? The sooner you start working, the sooner your pay starts. I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes.”
“Did you sign a six-or a twelve-month?” Glynis asked when they were alone, holding open the black dress like she was waiting for Aldine to undress.
“Six,” Aldine said, dropping her coat onto the bed, which she was glad to see was covered with a good thick blanket.
“That means you get a fireman,” Glynis said. “For twelve months, you get an engineer.”