The Boston Girl

I liked the idea of getting out of the neighborhood and working in a department store. I wouldn’t get dirty or ruin my hands and strain my eyes like I would in a factory—if I could even get a job in one.

But it turned out that Filene’s wasn’t hiring, and since I didn’t know how to type or operate a switchboard, I went to all the tearooms and sandwich shops I could walk to, but nobody was looking for waitresses. I didn’t have any luck in the stores or movie houses, either.

One Sunday when Betty, Levine, and Celia were visiting, Mameh complained about how lazy I was. “She thinks she’s too good to get her hands dirty. Ethel Heilbron’s daughter has the brains of a donkey and she’s making good money in a shoe factory.”

“It’s not Addie’s fault, Mameh,” Celia said.

Levine said, “She’ll find something. I read in the newspaper about how a Jewish girl is running the whole library in East Boston.” Jewish success stories were one of Levine’s favorite topics.

“Look at me. I’m not even born here and I own a shop with twenty workers. Just yesterday, I went to buy buttons from Glie­berman and he had a girl writing down the orders so he could sit on his tuches like a big shot. And let me tell you, compared to me, Glieberman is a small-time operator.”

Betty said, “But if Glieberman has a secretary, how does it look that you don’t have a girl, too?”

Levine shrugged. “He’s spending a lot of money just to show off.”

“It’s not showing off,” she said. “It’s professional. Besides, I read in a magazine you’ve got to spend money to make money.”

“I heard that, too,” he said.

Betty winked at me. “And it just so happens that you have the perfect girl right in front of you. Addie has good penmanship and an A in arithmetic. Tell him how you worked in that settlement house lady’s office. You were kind of a secretary there, weren’t you?”

Suddenly everyone was looking at me like I was a cow for sale.

Levine slapped the table so hard that the cups rattled. “Mr. Baum,” he declared. “This daughter of yours is a firecracker.”

“She could start this week,” Betty said.

Now everyone looked at Levine, who rubbed his beard and glanced at Celia. “What do you say, Mrs. Levine?”

She was bent over some mending and didn’t answer. So he said it again, louder. “Celia, would it make you happy if I hire Addie?”

When she realized he was talking to her she looked up and said, “Yes?”

“Of course yes,” Betty said, who was very proud of herself for coming up with the idea. She kept talking, and before Levine or I knew what had happened, she arranged for me to start the next day. When I showed up at H. L. Shirtwaists at seven o’clock the next morning, it took him a minute to remember what I was doing there.

His “factory” was one big room on the second floor over a butcher’s. There were maybe twelve sewing machines, a couple of pressing machines, some tables for cutting and finishing, all crowded together. And in those days, people didn’t take that many baths, so you can imagine what it smelled like.

Levine didn’t have a real office, just a corner near one of the back windows where he had stacked some packing crates to make a separation. His desk was a door on top of more crates, and on that was a big mess of papers and envelopes and scraps of material.

I picked up a receipt and remembered how the secretaries I met at Rockport Lodge talked about their bosses like they were little children who couldn’t wipe their noses without help. I said, “Maybe I can straighten this up for you.”

Levine was blinking like he always did when he got nervous and said, “Just what I was thinking.”

By the end of the day I had sorted everything into neat stacks and told him he needed boxes or a cabinet for the paper and ledger books and some new pencils. “All you’ve got here are stubs.”

“You aren’t going to be saving me any money,” Levine said, but I could tell he liked what I had done. “Tomorrow you’ll go shopping.”

At the beginning, I was busy. I put away the old papers and made up a system for paying bills. I entered a whole year’s business in a ledger, and I saw how Levine was doing, which was pretty good. He got rid of the door and bought a real desk that was so big we had to move the dividing crates back to make room for it. He was very proud of that desk, and after I polished it, you’d never know it was secondhand.

On days when buyers or suppliers came in, I stood behind Levine with a new pad and a sharp pencil to write orders: how many shirtwaists in which sizes by such-and-such a day, or how much thread in what colors to be delivered at such-and-such a price.

The men were impressed that Levine could afford a full-time girl, even though I was his sister-in-law and probably working cheap. Actually, I knew from doing his books that I was getting paid almost as much as his best stitchers, who were making some of the highest wages in the neighborhood. I also saw that he didn’t fire people when they got sick and that when one of the men had a baby Levine gave him a whole day off for the bris and didn’t even dock his pay.

Celia’s husband wasn’t such a ganef after all.

But after a few weeks, I didn’t have enough to do and there were days I could have screamed from boredom. Why is it you get more tired from sitting and doing nothing than from running around doing too much?

But even a bad day at work was better than being at home. The best part of the week was going to the Saturday Club meetings, where I was a person who knew how to cook eggs over an open fire and play lawn tennis and do the turkey trot.