Mrs. D Tries to be Honest In Recommending Her
To Others
Our maid’s name is Virginia. She may not turn out to be the gem for temporary work that I had hoped I was sending you.
She is not the sort who starts out like a whirlwind.
She has a sort of nervous shyness.
She is extremely slow on laundry, but it probably wouldn’t matter so much in your case since you send out more things.
She can’t catch up with the ironing. But if you take a firm hand it ought not to be a problem. Also, you ought to make out a schedule for her.
Mrs. D Reflects on Her Experience of Virginia After Letting Her Go
Mrs. D writes a long description of Virginia:
When she came to see me for her first interview she sat sideways on the chair not looking at me. Sometimes she looked directly at me and smiled, and then she looked intelligent and sweet, but much of the time she had a hang-dog heavy dull look to her face. Her voice was slow, rough, and hesitant, though her sentences were well formulated. She talked to me about her other job. She said to me, “Maybe I’m too conscientious, I don’t know. I never seem to catch up with the ironing, I don’t know. The man changes his underwear every day.”
When she spoke of desserts, her eyes lit up. “I know thousands of desserts I like to make,” she said.
She said she had been left alone very early and hadn’t had much schooling and that was why she had happened to get into domestic service.
She and I tried to work out a good schedule. She did not want to work after putting the dinner on the table at six, but she wanted to have her own dinner before leaving, otherwise she would have to eat in a restaurant. So we tried that, but there is something extraordinarily prickly about waiting on yourself, going in and out of the kitchen, when a servant is sitting there eating. And she did eat an enormous meal.
She had a pathological interest in her own diet. She was a fiend about salads and milk and fruit, all the things that cost the most.
I missed one of the baby’s blankets, the best one, which I had crocheted a border for, all around. Then one day I left the iron on all afternoon on the back porch and that’s when I found the baby’s blanket. She had used it to cover the ironing board. What else might she do? Too soon after, the baby’s playpen came apart in her hands.
Now my distrust was deepened to a certainty: she was not the person on whom to base any permanent plans. It was also obvious that she could not keep up with the ironing or anything else.
She acted dissatisfied and glum if she stayed beyond two o’clock. I had to sympathize, because what she wanted to do was go to the YWCA, where she and a few of the other domestics were taking some very improving courses.
All her friends were urging her to get a job in a defense plant. I asked her about it and she said, “The girls all say I’m wrong, but I just don’t think I’d like factory work.”
I was rushing around most of the morning when I should have been at the typewriter. I offered her the full-time position because the one time we had company she did such a fine job. She put on a beautiful dinner, exquisitely arranged and well cooked and perfectly served. The whole thing went off exceedingly well. But she calculated that the full-time job wouldn’t be worth it to her. She also told me that if she took the full-time job she didn’t see how she could get her Christmas shopping done. That was the crowning remark.
Her experience of our household was not at its easiest. We were moving at the time, and we were still not settled before I had to rush to finish a story. But she could not see that this was a chance to make herself useful to a coming writer who could thereafter afford to pay her better.
Mrs. D, the “Coming Writer”
It is not clear what Mrs. D’s ambitions are. She writes easily and fluently, and has no difficulty conceiving plots for her stories. Over lunch she and Mr. D often exchange ideas for stories or characters, though Mr. D rarely has time now to write fiction. Mrs. D’s plots often involve domestic situations like her own. The characters, usually including a husband and wife, are skillfully and sympathetically drawn; they have complex relationships with recognizable small frictions, hurts, and forgiveness. She is particularly good with the speech of young children. However, the stories often have a vein of wistful sentimentality that works to their detriment.
Her approach to writing is practical. She will “capture” certain qualities in a character, a change will take place, there will be small epiphanies. When the story is done, she will try to sell it to the highest class of magazine, or the one with the best rates. The cash often makes a difference in the family’s economy.
Mrs. D’S Creativity
Mrs. D spends her energies on many other creative projects besides writing. She sews clothes for the children, knits sweaters, bakes bread, devises unusual Christmas cards, and plans and oversees the children’s craft projects. She takes pleasure in this creativity, but her pleasure itself is rather intense and driven.
Hope for Better things to Come
Mrs. D writes:
Now we are looking forward to the new maid, Birdell, who will be starting Saturday. She promises to have all the warm Southern sweetness and flexibility of the old-fashioned Negro servant.
Birdell Does Not Work Out. Another Prospect is Lillian
According to herself, Lillian Savage can do anything from picking up after the children to setting out a tasty snack to “swanky” stuff like typewriting and answering the phone or even taking dictation. She says: “You have to be good-natured to take a domestic job. Nothing flusters me. You’d be surprised at what I’ve taken from men that get to drinking, and I know how to handle it; I don’t get insulted.”
Perfidy
Lillian seems like a good possibility, but then an old employer wants her back. Gertrude is going to help out and fix it so that Lillian can come anyway, but then she doesn’t call and Lillian doesn’t call. After the matter of Ann Carberry, neither one of them ever calls Mrs. D again.
Mrs. D Reflects on Gertrude, Who Didn’t Work Out
She was always pleasant, but was often home with various diseases — colds, etc. Once, she stayed home because, thinking she was getting a cold, she took a heavy dose of physic and it gave her cramps in the stomach and brought on her “sickness” two weeks early. The next time she had an inflammation of the eye; she thought maybe it was a stye. It was terribly inflamed. The doctor put drops on it which stung terribly but helped. The doctor said not to go to her job for fear of infection. She felt fine but supposed she’d have to do what the doctor said.
Her husband had health problems, too. She talked a lot about his bad physical condition and his stopped-up bowels.
Then he got drafted. Well, that was that for her — she wouldn’t be working for me any more. He was set on making her stay with his relatives while he was gone and she was not strong enough to resist. She would just have to work for nothing in the boarding house and be part of family quarrels which she hated and which made her ill. She was a very attractive and interesting personality. Any attractive white girl who was willing to do other people’s housework at a time like this was bound to be interesting for some reason.
Further Reflections, Including Annoying Things About Gertrude
She would leave the house in terrible shape: diapers on the floor, the bathroom strewn with everything, all the baby’s clothes, wet diapers, socks and shoes and unwashed rubber pants. The tub was dirty, the towels and washcloths and the baby’s playthings were all over, the soap was in the water, and the water was even still standing in the tub. She left thick cold soapy water in the washing machine and tubs, diapers out of the water, and the bucket was never upstairs.