Brooklyn (14 page)

“These are colours,” Miss Fortini said.

“Coloured women want Red Fox stockings and we are selling them and you two are going to be polite to anyone who comes into this store, coloured or white.”

“Both of them are always very polite,” Miss Fortini said, “but I’ll be watching once the first notice goes in the window.”

“We may lose customers,” Miss Bartocci interjected, “but we’re going to sell to anyone who will buy and at the best prices.”

“But the Red Fox stockings will be apart, away from the other normal stockings,” Miss Fortini said. “At least at first. And you two will be at that counter, Miss Lacey and Miss Delano, and your job is to pretend that it’s no big deal.”

“The sign is going in the window this morning,” Miss Bartocci added. “And you stand there and smile. Is that agreed?”

Eilis and her companion looked at one another and nodded.

“You probably won’t be busy today,” Miss Bartocci said, “but we’re going to hand leaflets out in the right places and by the end of the week you won’t have a moment if we’re lucky.”

Miss Fortini then led them back to the shop floor, where to the left at a long table men were piling up new packages with nylon stockings that were almost red in colour.

“Why did they choose us?” Miss Delano asked her.

“They must think we are nice,” Eilis said.

“You’re Irish, that makes you different.”

“And what about you?”

“I’m from Brooklyn.”

“Well, maybe you are nice.”

“Maybe I’m just easy to kick around. Wait until my dad hears about this.”

Eilis saw that Miss Delano had perfectly plucked eyebrows. She had an image of her in front of the mirror for hours with a tweezers.

All day they stood at the counter chatting quietly, but no one
approached them to look at the red-coloured nylon stockings. It was only the next day that Eilis spotted two middle-aged coloured women coming into the store and being approached by Miss Fortini and directed towards her and Miss Delano. She found herself staring at the two women and then, when she checked herself, looked around the store to find that everyone else was staring at them. The two women were, she saw when she looked at them again, beautifully dressed, both in cream-coloured woollen coats and each chatting casually to the other as though there were nothing unusual about their arrival in the store.

Miss Delano, she observed, stood back as they came close, but Eilis stayed where she was as the two women began to examine the nylon stockings, looking at different sizes. She studied their painted fingernails and then their faces; she was ready to smile at them if they looked at her. But they did not once glance up from the stockings and, even as they selected a number of pairs and handed them to her, they did not catch her eye. She saw Miss Fortini watching her across the store as she added up what they owed and showed it to them. As she was handed the money, she noticed how white the inside of the woman’s hand was against the dark skin on the back of her hand. She took the money as busily as she could and put it in the container and sent it to the cash department.

As she waited for the receipt and the change to be returned, her two customers continued talking to each other as though no one else existed. Despite the fact that they were middle-aged, Eilis thought that they were glamorous and had taken great care with their appearance, their hair perfect, their clothes beautiful. She could not tell if either of them was wearing make-up; she could smell perfume but did not know what the scent was. When she handed them the change and the nylon stockings wrapped carefully in brown paper, she thanked them but they did not reply, merely took the change and the receipt and the package and moved elegantly towards the door.

As the week went on more of them came and as each one entered Eilis noticed a change in the atmosphere in the store, a stillness, a watchfulness; no one else appeared to move when these women moved in case they would get in their way; the other assistants would look down and seem busy and then glance up in the direction of the counter where the stockings in Red Fox were heaped before looking down again. Miss Fortini, however, never lifted her eyes from the scene at the counter. Each time the new customers approached, Miss Delano stood back and let Eilis serve them, but if a second set of customers came she moved forward as though it were part of some arrangement. Not once did a coloured woman come into the store alone, and most who came did not look at Eilis or address her directly.

The few who did speak to her used tones of such elaborate politeness that they made her feel awkward and shy. When the new colours of Coffee and Sepia came it was her job to point out to the customers that these were lighter colours but most of them ignored her. By the end of each of these days she felt exhausted and found her lectures in the evening almost relaxing, relieved that there was something to take her mind off the fierce tension in the store, which lay heaviest around her counter. She wished she had not been singled out to stand at this counter and wondered if, in time, she would be moved to another part of the store.

Eilis loved her room, loved putting her books at the table opposite the window when she came in at night and then getting into her pyjamas and the dressing gown she had bought in one of the sales and her warm slippers and spending an hour or more before she went to bed looking over the lecture notes and then rereading the manuals on bookkeeping and accounting she had bought. Her only problem remained the law lectures. She enjoyed watching the gestures that Mr. Rosenblum made and the way he spoke,
sometimes acting out an entire case for them, the litigants vividly described even if they were a company, but neither she nor any of the other students she spoke to knew what was expected of them, how this might appear as a question in an examination paper. Since Mr. Rosenblum knew so much she wondered if he might expect all of them to have the same detailed knowledge of cases and what they meant, and precedents, and the judgments, prejudices and peculiarities of individual judges.

It worried her enough to decide to explain to him exactly what her problem was. Just as he spoke quickly in his lectures, moving from one case to another, from what a certain law could mean in theory to how it had been applied up to then, so he disappeared as soon as the lecture was over, as though he had another pressing appointment. Eilis determined to sit in the front row and approach him the very second he had finished speaking, but as it came to the time she was nervous. She hoped that he would not think that she was criticizing him; she also worried that he might begin talking in a way that she would not understand. She had never come across anyone like him before. He reminded her of waiters in some cafés near Fulton Street who had no patience, who needed her to make up her mind about everything there and then and always had a further question for her no matter what she asked for, if she wanted small or large, or if she wanted it heated or with mustard. In Bartocci’s she had learned to be brave and decisive with the customers, but once she herself was a customer she knew she was too hesitant and slow.

She would have to approach Mr. Rosenblum. He seemed so clever and he knew so much that she still wondered as she walked towards the podium how he would respond to a simple request. Once she had his attention, however, she found that she had become, without too much effort or hesitation, almost poised.

“Is there a book I could buy that would help me with this part of the course?” she asked.

Mr. Rosenblum appeared puzzled and did not reply.

“Your lectures are interesting,” she said, “but I’m worried about the exam.”

“You like them?” He seemed younger now than he did when he was addressing all of the students on the law.

“Yes,” she said, and smiled. She was surprised at herself, that she had not stammered. She did not think she was even blushing.

“Are you British?” he asked.

“No, Irish.”

“All the way from Ireland.” He spoke as though to himself.

“I wondered if you could recommend another textbook or a manual that I can study for the exams.”

“You look worried.”

“I don’t know if the notes I’m taking or the books I have are enough.”

“You want to read more?”

“I would like to have a book that I could study.”

He looked around the lecture hall, which was emptying quickly. He seemed deep in thought, as though the question perplexed him.

“There are some good books on basic corporate law.”

She presumed that he was about to give her the names of these books, but he stopped for a moment.

“Do you think I am going too fast?”

“No. I’m just not sure my notes will be enough for the exam.”

He opened his briefcase and took out a notepad.

“Are you the only Irish student here?”

“I think so.”

She watched him as he wrote a number of titles on a blank sheet of paper.

“There’s a special law book store on West Twenty-third Street,” he said. “In Manhattan. You’ll have to go there to get these.”

“And will they be the right books for the exam?”

“Sure. If you know the rudiments of corporate law and tort, then you will get through.”

“Is that book store open every day?”

“I think so. You’ll have to go and check it out, but I think so.”

As she nodded and tried to smile, he appeared even more preoccupied.

“But you can follow the lectures?”

“Of course,” she said. “Yes, of course.”

He put the notepad into his briefcase and turned away brusquely.

“Thank you,” she said, but he did not reply. Instead, he quickly left the hall. The porter was waiting to lock up when she pushed open the lecture-hall doors. She was the last to leave.

She asked Diana and Patty about West Twenty-third Street, showing them the full address. They explained to her that west meant west of Fifth Avenue and that the number she had been given signified that the store was between Sixth and Seventh avenues. They showed her a map, spreading it out on the kitchen table, amazed that Eilis had never been in Manhattan.

“It’s wonderful over there,” Diana said.

“Fifth Avenue is the most heavenly place,” Patty said. “I’d give anything to live there. I’d love to marry a rich man with a mansion on Fifth Avenue.”

“Or even a poor man,” Diana said, “as long as he had a mansion.”

They told her how to take the subway to West Twenty-third Street, and she decided she would go when she had her next half-day free from Bartocci’s.

When the prospect of Friday night arose Eilis could not face asking Miss McAdam or Sheila Heffernan if they were going to the dance at the hall and she knew that it would be too disloyal to
go with Patty and Diana, and maybe too expensive as well, since they went to a restaurant first and since she would need to buy new clothes to match the style that they were wearing.

On Friday night after work she came to supper with a handkerchief in her hand, warning the others not to come too close in case they caught the chill from her. She blew her nose loudly and sniffled as best she could several times throughout the meal. She did not care whether they believed her or not, but having a cold, she thought, would be the best excuse for her not to go to the dance. She knew as well that it would encourage Mrs. Kehoe to discuss winter ailments, which was one of the landlady’s favourite subjects.

“Chilblains, now,” she said, “you’d want to be very careful with the chilblains. When I was your age they were the death of me.”

“I’d say in that store,” Miss McAdam said to Eilis, “you could get all sorts of germs.”

“You can get germs in offices as well,” Mrs. Kehoe said, taking in Eilis with a glance as she spoke, making clear that she understood Miss McAdam’s intention to belittle her because she worked in a store.

“But you’d never know who’d—”

“That’s enough now, Miss McAdam,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “And maybe it’s best early bed for all of us in this cold weather.”

“I was just going to say that I heard there are coloured women going into Bartocci’s,” Miss McAdam said.

For a moment no one spoke.

“I heard that too,” Sheila Heffernan said after a while in a low voice.

Eilis looked down at her plate.

“Well, we mightn’t like them but the Negro men fought in the overseas war, didn’t they?” Mrs. Kehoe asked. “And they were killed just the same as our men. I always say that. No one minded them when they needed them.”

“But I wouldn’t like—” Miss McAdam began.

“We know what you wouldn’t like,” Mrs. Kehoe interrupted.

“I wouldn’t like to have to serve them in a store,” Miss McAdam insisted.

“God, I wouldn’t either,” Patty said.

“And is it their money you wouldn’t like?” Mrs. Kehoe asked.

“They’re very nice,” Eilis said. “And some of them have beautiful clothes.”

“So it’s true, then?” Sheila Heffernan asked. “I thought it was a joke. Well, that’s it, then. I’ll pass Bartocci’s, all right, but it’ll be on the other side of the street.”

Eilis suddenly felt brave. “I’ll tell Mr. Bartocci that. He’ll be very upset, Sheila. You and your friend here are famous for your style, especially for the ladders in your stockings and the fussy old cardigans you wear.”

“That’s enough from the whole lot of you,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “I intend to eat the rest of my dinner in peace.”

By the time silence had descended and Patty had stopped shrieking with laughter, Sheila Heffernan had left the room, but Miss McAdam, white-faced, was staring directly at Eilis.

Eilis could see no difference between Brooklyn and Manhattan when she went there the following Thursday afternoon except that the cold as she walked from the subway seemed more severe and dry and the wind more fierce. She was not sure what exactly she had expected, but glamour certainly, more glamorous shops and better-dressed people and a sense of things less broken-down and dismal than they seemed to her sometimes in Brooklyn.

She had been looking forward to writing to her mother and Rose about her first trip to Manhattan, but she realized now that it would have to join the arrival of coloured customers in Bartocci’s or the fight with the other lodgers on the matter; it would be
something that she could not mention in a letter home as she did not want to worry them or send them news that might cause them to feel that she could not look after herself. Nor did she want to write them letters that might depress them. Thus as she walked along a street that seemed interminable with dingy shops and poor-looking people, she knew that this would be no use to her when she needed news for her next letter unless, she thought, she made a joke of it, letting them believe that, since Manhattan was no better than Brooklyn, despite everything she had heard, she was missing nothing by not living there and by not planning to go there too soon again.