The Ways of Water by Teresa H. Janssen

Author:Teresa H. Janssen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press

After Papa received his first paycheck, I went to the merc to buy a stock of staples and shoes for Charlie, but with all the purchases, we didn’t clear our debt.

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Papa said. “You’re nearly fifteen, Josie. Old enough to work this summer. It’s the only way we’ll get ahead.”

3

Iwas glad to leave the dreary boardinghouse and let Charlie look after the little ones. I tried to think of what job I could do. I considered knocking at the doors of the bankers and lawyers up on Quality Hill to see whether they needed a nanny or kitchen help, but my chest tightened at the prospect. I didn’t even have the nerve to climb the stairs up to Jiggerville, where the camp foremen lived.

I liked books, so I went into the library above the post office. The room smelled of furniture wax, old paper, and dust. A thin, beetle-browed man at the front desk glanced up at me, adjusted his spectacles, and returned to his book. Intimidated by the rows of silent men reading papers and foreign-language books at oak tables, I didn’t dare ask for work.

I wandered up Main, inquired at several shops, but had no luck. Up a side street at a boardinghouse, I asked a woman cleaning the lobby whether they needed help with the laundry.

“Our washing goes to the Irish. And we don’t need kitchen help.” She lifted her feather duster. “You might ask at a hotel. Sometimes they need maids.”

“Which hotel?”

“Oh, any of them. Why not start with the best? That’d be the Copper Queen.”

I thanked her, hurried to the brick hotel on Howell Street, and mounted the stairs. Standing in the hiring office, I waited while the manager studied his accounting book and grumbled about a problem in the kitchen.

“Rotten fish. Wouldn’t you think they’d know enough to smell it?” He looked up. “What do you want?”

I told him I was looking for work.

“Know anything about cigars?”

I told him that Papa rolled his own but smoked a Prince Albert to celebrate.

He laughed in a nervous way.

“It would help business to have a pretty face behind the counter.”

I turned to go.

“Whoa there. Can you make change? If I buy three five-cent cigars and give you a dollar, how much change will you give me?”

I panicked but then did the arithmetic.

“Eighty-five cents.”

“Good. Can you clean rooms?”

“I was a maid for a while at a hotel in New Mexico.”

“Tell the lady at the cigar counter in the lobby that you’re her replacement. Have her teach you what you need to know.”

I had the job?

“Oh, go on. I’m busy.”

I spotted the tobacco case at the end of the lobby desk and introduced myself to the woman there.

“You’re just a girl. Did he ask how old you are?”

“No.”

She shook her head. “What will they think of next? Schoolboys selling bourbon? I don’t even want to know your age. Come here behind the counter. You don’t have much time to learn this. I leave for Kansas City in two days.

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