"Didn't work in a factory before."
"'Ain't ya?"
"No, I 'ain't." (Gulp.) "I took care of kids."
"Gee! but they was fresh."
"You said it!"
"Lena!" hollers Ida. "Get ta work and don't talk so much!" Whereat
Lena gives me another poke in my cold ribs and departs. And Tessie and
I pack "assorteds": four different chocolates in the bottom of each
box, four still different ones in the top--about three hundred and
fifty boxes on our table. We puff and labor on the top layer and Ida
breezes along. "My Gawd! Look at that! Where's your cardboards?"
Tessie and I look woebegone at one another. Cardboards? Cardboards?
Ida glues her Eyetalian eye on Lena down the line. "Lena, you fool,
didn't you tell these here girls about cardboards?... My Gawd! My
Gawd!" says Ida. Whereat she dives into our belabored boxes and grabs
those ached-over chocolates and hurls them in a pile. "Get all them
top ones out. Put in cardboards. Put 'em all in again." Tessie and I
almost could have wept. By that time it is about 4. We are all feet,
feet, FEET. First I try standing on one foot to let the other think I
might really, after all, be sitting down. Then I stand on it and give
the other a delusion. Then try standing on the sides, the toes, the
heels. FEET! "Ach! Mein Gott!" moans Tessie. "To-morrow I go look for
a job in a biscuit factory."
"Leave me know if you get a sit-down one."
And in that state--FEET--Ida makes us pack over the whole top layer in
three hundred and fifty boxes. Curses on Lena and her "dopes." Or
curses on me that I could so suddenly invent such picturesque love
affairs that Lena forgot all about cardboards.
About then my locker key falls through a hole in my waist pocket and
on to the floor and out of sight. In the end it takes a broom handle
poked about diligently under the bottom shelf of our table to make a
recovery. Before the key appear chocolates of many shapes and sizes,
long reposing in oblivion under the weighty table. The thrifty Spanish
woman behind me gathers up all the unsquashed ones and packs them.
"Mus' be lots of chocolates under these 'ere tables, eh?" she notes
wisely and with knit brows. As if to say that, were she boss, she'd
poke with a broom under each and every bottom shelf and fill many a
box.
At least my feet get a moment's rest while I am down on my hands and
knees among the debris from under the tables.
By five o'clock Tessie thinks she'll throw up her job then and there.
"Ach! Ach! My feet!" she moans. I secretly plan to kill the next
person who gives me a box of chocolate candy.
Surely it is almost 6.
Five minutes after 5.
The bell has forgotten to ring. It must be 7.
Quarter after 5.
Now for sure and certain it is midnight.
Half-past 5.