A Woman's Place

by Lynn Austin

  “I … I had a busy day. How many shirts will you need? I think I’ve ironed five—will that be enough?” She unplugged the iron, anxious to get upstairs to help him pack, desperate to change the subject. Her words ran endlessly like water from an open tap. “Are you driving to Detroit or taking the train? Which suitcase will you need, the big one or the small one? How many suits?”

  She followed him upstairs and took care to fold his shirts the way he liked, rolling his socks in pairs, and neatly tucking everything into his large beige suitcase. She wished she could go someplace different, even if it was only to Detroit.

  When Harold disappeared into the bathroom, Ginny breathed a sigh of relief. She sank down on the bed and finally took a moment to reflect on her first day in the factory. It had been exciting in a frightening sort of way, giving her that shivery, exhilarated feeling she always got when she listened to ghost stories. The bustle and bigness of it all had thrilled her—she was part of the war effort, just like the soldiers! She could do this job. She wanted so badly to do it, to prove to herself and to Harold and to whoever he might be having an affair with that she could make it on her own.

  Soldering wire wasn’t as hard as Ginny had thought it would be. She was sure she could get the hang of it before too long. She didn’t dare think about what would happen if she made a mistake that caused the boat to sink, or she would freeze up with fear. Her heart had pounded with excitement when she’d seen the ship floating in the test pond. Imagine helping to build a ship like that, helping to win the war. Imagine having three new friends to talk with while she worked and while she ate lunch every day.

  She’d had one frightening moment when that dark-haired girl, Rosa, had tripped and almost fallen into the water; Ginny’s quick reflexes had saved her. And wouldn’t Harold be surprised to learn that Allan’s former teacher, Miss Kimball, worked there? Harold had always said that Miss Kimball was a fine teacher. Maybe that’s how she should prepare him for the news. Maybe she could use Helen Kimball as an example of how every woman ought to do her duty.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Harold said. He had emerged from the bathroom and caught her staring into space. For a long moment she couldn’t reply. Why had he picked this very moment when her thoughts were all jumbled together to suddenly become un-aloof? Was there such a word as un-aloof?

  “Oh … um … What time do you leave tomorrow?” she asked, stalling for time.

  “You already asked me that, and I already told you. What’s wrong with you tonight? You seem … distracted.”

  “I had a busy day. You’ll never guess what I did—”

  “Did you finish packing my suitcase?”

  “Yes. Harold, I need to tell you that I—”

  “Did you remember clean pajamas?”

  He wasn’t listening. He was within view, but at a distance—aloof. And even if he hadn’t been aloof, Ginny was afraid to tell him. Maybe his trip to Detroit was a good thing. It would give her a few days to adjust to her new work schedule while he was away. She decided to wait until he returned home to talk to him.

  She stood and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly, savoring his clean scent and the familiar comfort of his solid chest. She didn’t think she could ever live without him, and it terrified her to think of losing his love. But it was even more frightening to feel as though she was losing herself. She stood on tiptoes to kiss him.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said.

  ————

  In the morning, Ginny got out of bed an hour earlier than usual so she could do a few household chores and pack lunches for herself and the boys and make breakfast for everyone before work. By 6:30 she was frantically watching the clock, waiting for Harold to leave so she could leave, too. He was acting aloof once again.

  “Boys!” she called up the stairs. “You need to stop dawdling or your pancakes will get cold.” Ginny could save time by wearing her coveralls to work, but how would she explain such an unusual outfit to the boys? They probably didn’t pay much attention to what she wore, but she didn’t want to take that chance.

  “Listen, I have to go,” she told them as soon as Harold’s car pulled out of the driveway. The boys had finally slouched into their places at the breakfast table, but Herbie sat up with a worried expression on his face when she told him she was leaving.

  “Where are you going, Mom?”

  “We’ll talk about it when I have more time. Here are your lunchboxes. Don’t forget them. Listen, I probably won’t be here when you get home from school.”

  “Again?”

  “Just let yourselves in like you did yesterday. I won’t be long, okay? Maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Let Rex out when you get home, but I want both of you to stay inside until I get here, okay?”

  “Can’t I go play with Tommy?” Allan asked.

  “You’ll have plenty of time to play after I get home. Start your homework while you’re waiting. I want to find you sitting here, doing homework.”

  “What’s going on, Mom? Where are you going?” Allan was staring at her, his frown a miniature version of his father’s.

  Ginny grabbed her own lunch. “I’ll explain later. Please do what I ask, okay? Bye.”

  She had no time to worry about them as she sprinted two blocks to catch her bus. Harold was always chiding her for smothering them—well, she certainly wasn’t smothering them now. He would get his wish at last.

  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 cov
eralls. 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.