by Michelle Cox
Her father had been employed at Arnold, Schwinn & Company on Courtland and Lawndale. He had worked on the line making their world-class Excelsior-Henderson motorcycles, but after the big stock market crash in ’29, the dice seemed loaded for him. Two years after the crash, in 1931, with the company dragging along, Frank Schwinn had called together his department heads and coolly announced that they were closing the motorcycle line and focusing only on bicycles for the foreseeable future, effective immediately. Les Von Harmon, along with 452 other men, lost his job that day, and rumor had it that Les, impossibly in debt from gambling, had stood outside the Schwinn mansion on Humboldt and Palmer for hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of Frank Schwinn to beg for his job, any job. After hours of waiting, he apparently gave up and made his way to Poor Pete’s, where he drank himself to near-unconsciousness and then stumbled back to the factory and hung himself in the maintenance shed.
Father Finnegan at St. Sylvester’s had been surprisingly very kind, recording Les’s death in the parish record book as heart failure and allowing him to be buried with full rites in the cemetery as a favor to Ma. He and several ladies from the bereavement committee had often visited Martha Von Harmon after that, offering what help they could, but Ma was fiercely independent and refused their prayers and sympathy, though she was forced from sheer desperation to take the collection they had brought. They had likewise received a note of condolence from Arnold, Schwinn & Company, but nothing else. Ma had thrown it into the fire. While Les had been alive, they had at least enjoyed a certain level of respectability, living in the company apartment building on Humboldt in Logan Square on Chicago’s northwest side, not too far from California and Milwaukee. It was a unique neighborhood in that it was a quite sought-after address of some of the city’s more wealthy, with their large mansions surrounding Palmer Square proper, and yet it was also home to various poor immigrants and laborers living in the surrounding streets.
Though the Von Harmons themselves were working-class, Les Von Harmon had often entertained his brood with stories of how, back in the old country, somewhere called Alsace-Lorraine, the Von Harmons had been part of the landed class, the “gentry,” as he called them. In fact, he had delighted to tell them, they were almost a part of what one could call the ruling class and had enjoyed a sophisticated existence. Les frequently regaled them, as they ate their meager suppers, with stories of their lost wealth and the luxury they had once enjoyed . . . that is, until Les’s great grandfather had thrown it all away, so the story went, when he fell in love with an American woman whom he met while she traveled through the Alps with her family. The young couple, unable to live without each other, had eloped and ended up in Chicago, attempting to create a new life, which had been difficult without any money or family to speak of. But they had toiled on, happy at least in their love, until the present-day Von Harmons had taken the stage, though Les and Martha’s union was perhaps not so romantic as their predecessors’. Ma had usually rolled her eyes whenever Pa told the story of their aristocratic roots, but Les had taken great pride in it, which was why it seemed all the more tragic somehow when that pride wasn’t enough to sustain him at his own moment of crisis. Les, it seemed, had perhaps taken after his great-grandfather more than he realized and had chosen to escape, desperate, from the only world he knew, to the great sorrow of those left behind.
After Les’s death, the Von Harmons had been consequently reduced to extreme poverty and had had to move to a smaller apartment on Armitage with just four rooms. At least the ladies from St. Sylvester’s left them alone now, Ma had said. She possessed a stubborn pride of her own, though she never spoke that much about her own family, saying that it really didn’t matter where she was from. Something always told Henrietta, though, that perhaps she had once come from money. Just the way she held herself and the way she spoke certain phrases seemed different somehow from their neighbors, as if she were from another world, too.
When Les died, Martha was just one month pregnant with the twins, never having had the chance to even tell him she was expecting. Unable to go out to work after they were born early, whimpering into the world, she had taken in mending and washing and had instead sent Henrietta out to be a cleaner, at least to begin with. Elsie, Henrietta’s younger sister by two years, left school as well and managed to get a job sewing at Dubala’s Tailor Shop around the corner. Eugene, just eleven at the time, was still in school, as were Eddie and Herbert, while Jimmy and the twins, Doris and Donny, were at home now with Ma.
Henrietta, being the eldest, was of course the one upon whom Ma relied the most for their meager income and to go down to the armory each month on North and Kedzie to stand in line for the free food given out by government agents to the city’s masses after the country had plunged into the Depression. Ma just couldn’t bear to hold her hand out, but she compromised with her better feelings and allowed Henrietta to go in her place. Henrietta didn’t really mind. In fact, she could never understand why her mother balked so at getting free food—all the neighbors did—and it was a chance, as they all stood in the long lines, to exchange goods or strands of gossip while they waited, though it had admittedly been difficult at first. Though only young when she first started going, Henrietta had quickly become aware of a certain stigma that seemed to have attached itself to them in reference to her father’s suicide. As time went on, she had learned to ignore any whispered murmurings in the armory line, brushing them off with the appearance of nonchalance. She never mentioned the stares and the whispers to her mother, however, who would not have failed to see the ridiculous irony in the situation, the supposedly once-great Von Harmons brought low by the selfishness of a weak man. Somehow, though, Ma seemed aware of the stigma anyway, which perhaps was a reason for her predilection for staying indoors, a habit over the subsequent years that began to border on reclusiveness.
The assumed attitude of indifference that the young Henrietta had developed, combined with her natural flair for the dramatic, proved rather helpful for her, however, in the various jobs she seemed to find, or, rather, which seemed to find her. Two summers ago, for instance, she had worked during the day for a Dutch rubber company at their booth at the World’s Fair before her shift began at Poor Pete’s. All that was required of her was to wear a Dutch Girl costume and hand out neatly printed fliers extolling the virtues of said rubber company. It was wonderfully easy, though it took an age to get down there on the streetcar as well as to braid up her hair and tie it in loops. It was worth it, though, as she had gotten to see the whole fair on her lunch breaks and because it had led to yet another job.
As the fair was winding down at the end of the season, a man had approached her as she stood handing out fliers and had asked if she would come work for him at Marshall Field’s as a curler girl. Henrietta had been hesitant at first, not knowing what a “curler girl” was, but in the end she had agreed to come on a Wednesday morning, the one day she had off each week from the fair, to investigate. She was immediately put at her ease as the job itself seemed innocent enough. All she had to do was look pretty and demonstrate to customers how to apply Baldwin’s new hair curlers on a willing assistant. Her model, it turned out, was a girl named Polly, who luckily—but unbeknownst to the customers—already had naturally curly hair. Henrietta loved performing in front of this built-in audience and found that she had a bit of talent for the stage, never mind that she wasn’t particularly skilled as a hair stylist, and Polly became what Henrietta never seemed to have time for, a friend. Henrietta still worked there on Saturdays, actually, before heading over to Poor Pete’s, and it was Polly who was now encouraging her to try being a taxi dancer with her instead of working at Poor Pete’s as a twenty-six girl. Henrietta considered this prospect yet again as she carried out the second round of drinks, glancing back at Mr. Hennessey as she did so. She couldn’t imagine leaving him after all he had done for her, and yet it was hard to ignore the money Polly claimed to make.
“You do as you like,” Polly had said about a m
onth ago as they shared a seat on the elevated train headed north from State Street, where Marshall Field’s flagship was anchored, “but I don’t know how long you’re going to waste your life in that dump.”
“Polly!” Henrietta said with mock irritation. “It’s not a dump! It’s quite charming, actually!”
Polly grinned as she blew her cigarette smoke straight up above them. Polly reminded Henrietta of a pixie of sorts—petite, with blond curly hair cut short just above her shoulders, and with fine, delicate features, not unlike Carole Lombard. She wore heavy mascara, which made her lashes look unusually long and accented her big brown eyes perfectly. “Really? News to me! Even the name’s awful. Poor Pete’s? Come on, Hen! Come to the Promenade with me. The music’s swell, and Mama Leone’s always looking for new girls; you’d be perfect. You’ll make loads more money . . . isn’t that what you’re always on about?”
“But I’ve told you, I can’t . . .”
“Yes, yes, I know. You can’t dance very well. But it’s like I’ve said, it hardly matters. It’s not Buckingham Palace. Most of the clods that come in there just want to hold a pretty girl in their arms for a few minutes. Nothing to it!”
“Yes, but . . . Mr. Hennessey . . . I just don’t know . . . ”
“Look, doll,” Polly said, getting serious. “You’ve got to look out for yourself, you know. You don’t worry about Mr. Hennessey; he can look after himself. You worry about you and all those brothers and sisters of yours.”
Unfortunately, she had a point. “Maybe. I’ll think about it . . .”
“Well, don’t think too long; you don’t know when a good thing might pass you by,” Polly said, standing up to get off at her stop in Lincoln Park. “See you next Saturday, then,” she added, giving a quick wave before stepping off the train. Henrietta watched her blend into the crowd before the train pulled away to head north toward Logan Square. She envied Polly sometimes, living alone in her own rooms, with apparently no family or cares to weigh her down. She was her own woman, it seemed, able to come and go as she pleased. Henrietta had sighed as the train lurched forward. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t dance well or that she didn’t want to be unfair to Mr. Hennessey, though both of those things were true; it was that she wasn’t sure she wanted to go down the road of being a taxi dancer. Wasn’t there something wrong with dancing with men for money? Mightn’t it lead to more unsavory things?
She had put Polly off for weeks now, but as Mr. Hennessey counted out the night’s takings on the bar after the last man had stumbled out, she winced at her little pile and knew that Ma would be disappointed tomorrow. She had made a few dollars in tips, but it wasn’t much.
“Sorry, girl,” Mr. Hennessey said as he slid his pile of change off the bar and plopped it into the hulking black cash register at the end of it. “It’ll pick up. Just gotta give it some time. Just gotta wait for the cops to back off.”
Henrietta felt a burst of anger as she slipped her share of the money into her dress pocket next to her notebook. Didn’t the cops have anything else to do? Shouldn’t they be out catching gangsters or some such people instead of breaking up twenty-six games in corner bars on side streets? It just seemed unfair, wrong somehow.
“I know, Mr. Hennessey,” she said, giving him a weak smile as she slipped on her coat and wrapped a scarf knitted by Elsie around her neck. “See you tomorrow.”
As she walked home in the freezing January night, however, she ruminated on what Polly had said. Perhaps she should listen to her. Christmas had been terrible this year. Not only were there no presents except a bar of chocolate and an orange in each of their stockings, which she herself had insisted on buying, but the flu had hit them hard. Herbert had nearly slipped away from them to join Pa in his bed in the graveyard, and Eugene was still very weak. He had also quit school this year, but had so far only found work as a box burner behind some of the shops along Milwaukee. He had been hoping to get on at Sulzer’s, the electrics factory on Western, but each time he inquired, he was told there was nothing yet. Ma kept urging him to ask for a job at Schwinn, seeing as it was the least they could do, but Eugene always refused. He was generally quiet, but he could be stubborn as well. So far the twins had escaped the flu, but when Henrietta had left for work tonight Ma was fussing over them because she thought they might have a low fever. Henrietta prayed it was nothing serious and resolved to stop by Gorski’s tomorrow to see if they had any beef soup bones so that Ma could make them a beef tea. The money in her pocket wouldn’t go far, though. She sighed and remembered that their charge bill at Schneider’s was higher than it had ever been. The last time she had been in, Mr. Schneider had given her a look, something between frustration and pity, as he agreed to put the small pile of things she had set on the counter on their tab once again. She could kick herself now for buying the oranges; she should have gotten them each just a chocolate bar for Christmas. Ma had told her at the time that she was being extravagant, but she hadn’t listened. As she turned the corner onto Armitage, Henrietta decided reluctantly that she simply couldn’t wait any longer for business to pick up at Poor Pete’s; she was going to have to put her reservations aside and go see about the taxi dancer job. The problem was what to do about Ma.
CHAPTER 2
As expected, Polly had been delighted when Henrietta had turned up inquiring about a job the very next week before the Promenade had opened for the day. Polly had happily led her across the dance floor to the tables at the back where Mama Leone, the floor matron, could be found. Mama Leone had a tiny office in the backstage area, but she preferred instead to sit at one of the tables in the elevated back row, just off the dance floor, where she could presumably see the whole expanse of the hall, thereby keeping better tabs on the girls. In truth, however, she spent more time reading cheap novels and smoking.
As they approached the table littered with various newspapers, empty highball glasses, and ashtrays, Mama Leone looked up, annoyed, from the crossword puzzle she was attempting.
“Who’s this?” she asked with a scowl, peering at Henrietta. She reminded Henrietta of a bulldog of sorts, short and squat with rolls of fat around her neck and bottom teeth that protruded out beyond her mouth in a permanent sort of grimace. “Whoovya drug in now, Polly?”
“This is Henrietta, the girl I was telling you about. She’s wondering if you have any openings.”
“Can’t she speak?” Mama Leone asked, settling back heavily into her chair to look Henrietta over.
Henrietta held out her hand to shake Mama Leone’s. “Pardon me, Miss . . . Miss Leone,” Henrietta stumbled. “My name is Henrietta Von Harmon. Pleased to meet you,” she added nervously.
Mama Leone did not take Henrietta’s outstretched hand but instead looked at it with a type of disgust. “No need for niceties. Or brown-nosin’, for that matter. Whatdya say yer name was? Henrietta? That’ll do. And it’s Mama Leone to you; I’m no Miss. Never was.”
Henrietta lowered her arm and awkwardly folded her hands in front of her, feeling Mama Leone’s gaze upon her.
“Turn,” she barked.
Bewildered, Henrietta looked at Polly for direction, who twirled her finger in a circle to show Henrietta what was expected.
Slowly, then, Henrietta spun around and looked back at Mama Leone hopefully.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” Henrietta lied.
“The truth.”
Henrietta felt her face grow warm at having been discovered in her attempt at a lie. “I’m eighteen next month. Honest.”
“Ever work as a taxi dancer?”
“No.”
“But she’s a twenty-six girl!” added Polly quickly.
“What’s that matter?” Mama Leone said, still staring at Henrietta.
“Just that, you know, she’s used to working with the public . . . with men . . . ” Polly’s voice trailed off.
“You’ll do, I suppose,” Mama Leone said, glancing back at her crossword. “There’s no hanky-panky, thoug
h,” she said looking up at her again sharply. “Got that? That’s what you want, there’s other places.”
“No, of course not,” Henrietta replied nervously. “I . . . I prefer it that way, actually.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Mama Leone said sarcastically.
Henrietta felt herself blush, but she did not respond with the angry retort that had come into her mind.
“When can you start?”
“Any time, I suppose.”
“Tomorrow night, then. Polly, you show her what to do.”
Excitedly, Polly grabbed Henrietta’s hand to lead her to the backstage lounge, but Henrietta merely bit her lip, stunned that it had been that easy and wondering if this was what she really wanted after all.
“Wait . . . ,” she said, turning back toward Mama Leone. “Don’t you want to know if I can dance?” she asked.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Mama Leone answered irritably, looking up from the crossword she had already returned to.
“Told you,” Polly whispered as she led her away to show her where she could store her hat and purse and change shoes.
“But that’s so soon . . . what am I going to tell Mr. Hennessey?”
“Oh, God, why are you always so worried about him? You’re becoming an awful bore, Hen,” Polly had said.
As it turned out, Mr. Hennessey was very understanding when Henrietta told him the next day, which somehow made it worse. She had slowly made her way to Poor Pete’s that morning and had sat opposite him at the bar as he went through his morning routine of unlocking the cash register and lining up glasses near the taps.
“Well, I figured you wouldn’t stay ‘round here forever,” he had said with a wry smile after she broke the news. “Just glad you stayed with me for as long as you did.”
