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If there's any concern it's “the boss he should worry.” He must know how every night girls depart never to cross those portals again, so help them Gawd. Every morning a new handful is broken in, to stay there a week or two, if that long, and take to their heels. Praise be the labor turnover, as long as we have such brassworks.
Sundays she'd go to a show and a dance. Bella tried it one week and had to lay off three days of the next week before she could get back to work. Lost her twenty-one dollars. No more of that for Bella. Just once in a while was enough for her. They did not talk about “vamping dopes” at the brassworks.
From the first Mame clung to me morning and night. Usually mornings she threw her arms around me in the dressing room. “Here's my Connie!” I saw myself forced to labor in the brassworks for life because of Mame's need of me. This need seemed more than spiritual. One day her pocketbook with twelve dollars had been stolen in the Subway. I lent her some cash.
It hurt something within my soul at first, but my head and hands and legs and feet and neck and general disposition felt considerably better. Lunch times suited me exactly at the brassworks, making me feel I was getting what I was after. Three of us used to gather around Irish Minnie, put two stools lengthwise on the floor, and squat along the sides.
Once Louisa and I became desperate and got Tony to open a window. The forelady had a fit; so did Tillie. Both claimed they'd caught cold. Tony is the Louis of the brassworks. He is young and very lame—one leg considerably shorter than the other. It makes me miserable to see him packing heavy boxes about. He told me he must get another job or quit. Finally they did put him at a small machine press.
I lacked the nerve, anyhow, and they put on the finishing touches. A bricklayer would not have been so bad. How did I know the chauffeur was not working for a friend of mine? That, later on, would make it more embarrassing for him than me. I should think he would want to wring my neck. It was about time to find a new job, anyhow. But leaving the brassworks is like stopping a novel in the middle.
For the rest, I merely clamped a round piece on the top of a nail-like narrow straight piece—the part that turned the lamp wick up and down. Hundreds and thousands of them I made. The monotony did not wear on me there; it was mixed with no physical exertion. I could have stayed on at the brassworks the rest of my life—perhaps.
Tillie said she was born there. If it were only the human element that counted, everyone would stay at the brassworks forever. I feel like a snake in the grass, walking off “on them” when they all were so nice. Nor was it for a moment the “dearie” kind of niceness that made you feel it was orders from above. From our floor boss down, they were people who were born to treat a body square.
What experience had I? I was experienced in both foot and power presses. He phoned to the “family” floor—two vacancies. I was signed up as press ironer, family. I wouldn't find it so hard as the brassworks—in fact, it really wasn't hard at all. He would start me in at fourteen dollars a week, since I was experienced, instead of the usual twelve.
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