Starved by Anne McTiernan

Author:Anne McTiernan [McTiernan, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781942094296
Published: 2016-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

I needed love and I needed money. While girls of more advanced ages or other circumstances might have fulfilled these two requirements by, say, marrying well or by turning tricks, for a chubby thirteen-year-old Irish-American Catholic there were few possibilities. I decided that an after-school job would provide both a paycheck and a steady stream of potential boyfriends. Now in the first year of high school, my friends began landing after-school jobs—as grocery store baggers, waitresses, and ice cream fountain clerks. I watched the twin toddlers downstairs, but the pay—twenty-five cents an hour—was too low. And while the babies were cute, sitting for them was exhausting even for a teenager. So as soon as I turned thirteen, I applied for working papers and looked for a real job.

My friend Patty also wanted better pay than her regular sitting gig. So together we perused the Boston Globe’s want-ad page. We found a listing for afternoon and evening shifts for waitresses at Dunkin’ Donuts. How exciting—to work surrounded by the aroma of doughnuts. Chocolate frosted, glazed, jelly, twists, sugar, and grease—couldn’t get any better. Patty pointed out that the ad was for the shop on the Boston Common. That was no problem—I’d been taking the streetcar downtown on my own since I was seven years old. Patty called the listed number and learned that they still needed waitresses. I was on my way to fortune and romance. I’d show my mother just how grown up I was.

Patty and I walked into Dunkin’ Donuts along with a crush of workers and shoppers. My excitement had me walking on tiptoes. I didn’t think it through clearly but I had some vague notion that boys would miraculously appear in Dunkin’ Donuts looking for girls. They wouldn’t know that I was the class nerd, since none would likely be from Brighton and certainly not from my school. I realized that there was no hiding my weight, but even some fat girls had boyfriends. I could begin again with a clean slate.

A crowd milled around the takeout counter, customers waiting impatiently for their coffee and the little waxed paper bag with their two favorite doughnuts. The lucky ones already clutched their bags and coffee cups and looked smug. In 1966, there were only about 100 Dunkin’ Donuts stores in the entire country. People came from all over downtown Boston to get their coffee and doughnut fix at the Boston Common shop.

We skirted the crowd and passed by three bays of counters and stools. The first two bays were populated by women with shopping bags stuffed around their feet and businessmen hunched over the counter. Steam from their coffee cups and smoke from their cigarettes rose to mix with smells of wet coats, cheap perfume, and greasy doughnuts. The women were bright-eyed, perhaps from an afternoon of fighting off competitors in Filene’s bargain basement. The men’s eyelids drooped from hours of tedious work that wouldn’t quite pay the bills. The last bay held an assortment of people: a

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