The Boston Girl(38)

In the kitchen, Miss Lettis handed me over to Mrs. Morse, who hadn’t changed at all. She took one look at me and sighed. “Not very strong, are you? I just hope you don’t run away after the first week like the last girl.”

I promised I’d be there all summer but I could tell she didn’t believe me. She showed me my “room,” which was the old pantry and only big enough for a cot, a stool, and a few pegs for my clothes. And it was right next to the stove, so when the oven was on I had to get out of there or I would bake, too.

After a week, I thought I might have been better off with four boys than sixty girls who never picked up their magazines and were always losing their socks and hankies. I didn’t understand how they could get the bathrooms so dirty or how they managed to track in pounds—and I’m not exaggerating—of sand. I never stopped sweeping. If I wasn’t so busy, I would have felt sorry for myself.

But it wasn’t until the first Saturday changeover that I understood why that other girl had run away. As soon as the group that was leaving brought their suitcases downstairs, I started stripping and making beds, dusting and mopping floors, and carrying out heaps of trash. I lugged baskets and baskets of dirty linen to the laundry shed, where a tall African-American lady with white hair was boiling a huge pot of water. I barely finished before the next group arrived. I was so pooped that I ended up sleeping straight through supper.

Mrs. Morse was offended that someone could be too tired to eat her food, so she told Miss Lettis that either she get me some help on Saturdays or she would not be back the next summer. “And I will tell the board that you were the reason why.”

Lucy Miller showed up the very next week. I couldn’t imagine how a bony thirteen-year-old kid with blond pigtails would be much help, but she’d been cleaning up after six brothers her whole life, so she could strip and make a bed in half the time it took me. Thanks to her I never missed a Saturday lunch out of tiredness again. And believe me, that was a meal I didn’t want to miss.

The food in the kitchen was better than what they got in the dining room—especially Saturday lunch. When we finished eating, Hannah, the washerwoman, tipped her chair back on two legs and said, “That was a real Sunday dinner we had, even if it is only Saturday.”

I had never sat down with a black person before and I was a little shy of her at first. I had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, so what was I going to say to someone whose grandmother had probably been a slave? But Hannah was easy to be around and a great storyteller. She even got Mrs. Morse to laugh about the summer people in the big houses in town; they seemed to think that the locals were deaf, blind, and too stupid to see that Father was drunk every night or young Miss was doing more than just talking to the gardener.

After a few weeks, my arms and legs were stronger and I wasn’t dead tired at the end of the day, so one evening when the girls were playing charades, I changed clothes and went to join in. There were a lot of puzzled faces when I walked into the parlor, but once they figured out that I was the girl who washed the toilets, nobody would look me in the eye.

I don’t think they were being mean. If the cleaning girl had shown up for charades when I was a guest at Rockport Lodge, I probably would have done the same thing—more out of embarrassment than snobbery, I hope. There must have been someone doing the cleaning when I was there on vacation, but I can’t remember seeing her. To this day whenever I lay eyes on a chambermaid, I smile and say hello.

After that night, if there was music or a lecture I wanted to hear, I pulled up a chair on the porch and listened through the window. On quiet nights when it was really dark, Mrs. Morse gave me an oil lamp so I could sit out where it was cool and read a book.





A girl should always have her own money.

Where I grew up, it would have been bad manners to sit in a woman’s kitchen without asking about her children and her parents, her opinion of the neighbors—even her digestion. Mrs. Morse and I talked about the weather and what was on tomorrow’s menu and that was it.

But on Friday nights, when she stayed late to get ahead on the weekend baking, I watched her make bread, rolls, cakes, and cookies and she’d tell me how she came up with her recipes and why she used butter for some things and lard for others. She kept her eyes on the dough or the batter and chatted away like a different person—a happier person.

Mrs. Morse made pie for the girls the first week, but Miss Lettis decided it wasn’t fancy enough for the dining room, so she baked them just for us in the kitchen. I told Mrs. Morse I’d eat her pie three times a day if I could. She said, “Too much of a good thing can make you bilious.” But after that, she always gave me the biggest slice.

I knew Mrs. Morse liked me, even if she didn’t say so. She told me to get out of the lodge in the evening sometimes: “Go into town, have an ice cream, look in the shops. Lucy can show you around.” But Lucy was too young and silly and I told Mrs. Morse that I was saving my money.

She approved. “A girl should always have her own money so she’s never beholden to anyone.”

I said that was very modern of her, but she didn’t think so. “As far as I can tell, common sense hasn’t been in fashion for a long time.”

What I knew about Mrs. Morse—and it wasn’t much—came from Lucy, whose grandmother was a second cousin or something. I think everyone in Rockport was related to each other.