Chapter 7
Life as Lydia knew it changed drastically.
Mavis was right. The mattress felt heavenly!
But she had Lydia up at the crack of dawn to start work with her and her daughters.
She also gave her a pair of pants to work in.
Lydia thought they were scandalous! But the look in Mavis’s eyes threatened dire consequences if she didn’t put them on and get up as she was told.
Her hair was a complete mess of tangles.
Mavis tackled that first. She had her two girls hold her down and she cut off more than a foot of her hair to get rid of the worst of it.
It still fell to more than her shoulders, but not her waist anymore.
She poured vinegar over it and aloe. Then lent Lydia a brush and told her to start brushing her own hair until it was smooth and all the tangles were out. Mavis started up a batch of bread, Martha started up breakfast, and Mary started sweeping the entire resale shop.
Lydia couldn’t believe that they had cut off her beautiful hair…
granted it was snarled beyond redemption, but it was her crowning beauty.
It was what her mother always told her. The vinegar and aloe did make it easier to brush her hair, and with most of the tangles cut off, the brush did go through a lot easier.
It didn’t take as long for her to make some organization of her long curly hair.
Mavis came over after her hair was untangled and helped her learn how to make it into two braids and then coil it on top of her head in a crown of sorts.
She even gave Lydia a mirror to see how simple, yet nice it made her look.
She even had curls all around her face making her look softer.
“Thank you, Aunt Mavis. I like what you did to my hair. It looks so much nicer now than what it did after my stagecoach fiasco.” Lydia told her and smiled.
“Good, I hope you can start fixing it yourself after today. We are going to be splitting up the cooking into four parts, one for each of us. One of us will make breakfast, one will make bread, one will make lunch, and one will make dinner. Can you cook at all?” Mavis asked her hopefully.
Lydia shook her head. “No, I can’t even boil water. Mother refused to let me even enter the kitchen, except to give them messages as to what to make for the meals.”
Mavis closed her eyes as to her sister’s stupidity at raising her daughter.
“Well, that stops today. You will make lunch for us all. Martha made breakfast, I made bread, Mary will make dinner…that leaves lunch for you. You will slice up bread and put some meat on each sandwich. Even a child can do it.” She looked at Lydia and hoped she could manage even a simple meal like making sandwiches. So did Lydia.
After breakfast of mush. They had to scrub the floor of the resale store before they opened for business.
It’s why they were wearing pants. They had to scrub the floor on their hands and knees with a scrub brush.
Mavis told Lydia that they would split the floor of the resale store into fourths.
If they didn’t get their fourth clean, they would have to scrub it again.
Lydia looked at the enormous floor and didn’t think they’d ever get up from their knees before midnight!
Each of the women got a bucket of hot water and a bar of lye soap.
They were to carry it into the store. Mavis showed them the part they were to start scrubbing.
She showed Lydia how to scrub on her hands and knees.
Lydia frowned. This was going to ruin her hands, knees, and back!
But she didn’t say a thing. She saw Martha, Mary, and even Mavis scrubbing…
evidently it didn’t kill you to scrub the floor.
She put her hand into the hot water with the scrub brush and used the lye soap and started scrubbing.
The lye soap burned the cuts on her hands from when she rode the horse to get here, but for once she didn’t complain.
She was a lot slower than her cousins or her aunt, but she was making progress…
or so she thought she was. Mavis looked back and told her to stop.
“Lydia, look at the floor you’re scrubbing and the floor my daughters and I are scrubbing…does it look the same?” Mavis asked her.
Lydia looked and could see the difference. Her floor still looked dirty. She shook her head.
“You’re going to have to go back and do your floor all over again, and this time scrub harder to get all the dirt up off the floor.
It’s what we call using elbow grease. Get some more hot water and get cracking.
We have customers coming in an hour and I don’t want them walking on the wet floor. ” Mavis told her.
Lydia couldn’t believe that she wasn’t almost done, she was going to have to scrub it all over again!
She got up and could hardly walk, her knees were shaking so hard together.
Her arm felt like it was going to fall off, and she had to start all over again.
She knew that tears wouldn’t sway her aunt, but they fell anyway.
She did as she told her to do, and this time she scrubbed as hard as she could, even using her left hand and arm to get the job done.
She finished just as she opened for business.
She was ready to lay down and get some more sleep. But Mavis had other ideas.
She handed her one of their used dresses. “Put this on. We have a teamster wagon coming in and we have to sort out all their boxes and put them where they belong quickly, so it can be sold. Wash your hands, so you’ll be doing it with clean hands.”
Lydia couldn’t believe the dress they had her put on.
It was old and worn from so many washings, and it had no fit.
You could hardly tell that at one time it had been pink.
But she did what she was told. It did look better than the pants and shirt.
She was scandalized that she wasn’t wearing a corset, but since it was so old and had no fit, it probably didn’t matter.
“Lydia,” Martha told her, “We have five boxes for clothing…one for men, women, boys, girls, and baby clothes. Put dishes in this box, pots and pans in that one, and any tools in that box over there. If you have any question about an item, ask Mary or me. Mama will be working out in the store selling merchandise. Work fast, there’s a lot of stuff to go through. ”
The teamster wagon was filled to overflowing with boxes of stuff, Lydia couldn’t believe it!
Each of the girls lifted a box down and started sorting through it.
The same box could have boys’ clothes, dishes and tools in it.
Lydia couldn’t believe all the stuff she pulled out of her box and put in the right boxes.
She thought she was doing all right and then noticed that Martha and Mary were going through two boxes to her one.
She tried to speed up, but that only made her drop things on the floor.
“Lydia, don’t worry about trying to keep up with Mary and me.
We’ve been doing this for a long time. Just keep at a steady speed and put them in the right box.
You’ll get faster as you do it many times.
You’re doing a good job.” Martha told her and smiled at her.
It actually made Lydia feel good that she was doing a good job. Maybe she wasn’t a complete disaster.
It seemed like the more boxes they pulled out, the more there were.
Finally, the wagon was empty. Now they had to take each box and add it to the places in the store.
But first, Lydia had to go in and make sandwiches for everyone.
Mary told her to cut bread, cut meat and just put the slices together.
It would be nice if she put some mustard on each piece of bread or some mayonnaise to give the sandwich some more taste.
It would also be nice if she brought each of them a glass of cold water to drink with the sandwich.
Lydia nodded to her and went in to get the job done.
Sandwiches…she could do this. She washed her hands first. She felt they were filthy from scrubbing the floor and handling all those clothes and items in the teamster wagon.
Then she looked at the loaves of bread and meat on the counter.
She took down four plates and four glasses from the counter.
She filled the glasses with water from the pump…
that wasn’t so hard. She took a long knife from the knife block and began to slice the bread…
two slices for each plate. She tried not to make it too thick.
She put mustard on one side of the bread and mayonnaise on the other side of the bread.
Then she sliced the cooked turkey meat from the cellar.
She put some on each sandwich and covered it with the other slice of bread and then cut the sandwich into two halves making it easier to eat.
She thought it looked nice. She picked up a glass and a plate and took it to Mavis, came back and picked up one for Martha, and then one for Mary.
She cleaned up the kitchen and then brought hers out to eat with the others.
She noticed them not eating very much of their sandwich. And then took a bite of hers.
“Good Lord! This tastes terrible! What did I do wrong?” Lydia asked them and looked close to tears.
“Did you think that the white stuff you put on the sandwich was mayonnaise and the yellow stuff was mustard?” Mary asked her and put her sandwich back on the plate. She just couldn’t eat it as bad as it tasted.
“I did. You said to put mustard and mayonnaise on the sandwiches to give them more taste. What did I put on the sandwiches?”
“You put on horseradish instead of mustard, and some of Mama’s lemon filling instead of mayonnaise.
I’ll come with you and you can start again.
I’ll show you where the mustard and mayonnaise are.
” Mary told her and they collected the plates from Mary, Martha, and Mavis.
Mavis didn’t say a thing, but she did give her the plate with only a bite taken out of it.
She thought making sandwiches was a fool proof job, but evidently it wasn’t.
Mary showed her the mayonnaise and the mustard.
They looked a lot different than the horseradish and the lemon filling.
She put those away and used the right ones instead.
This time, she hoped they tasted all right.
She handed out the sandwiches again and saw the girls and Mavis actually eating the sandwiches this time. Lydia was almost too tired to eat hers.
With the teamster wagon emptied and sorted, now they had to take each box and bring it out to the store and carefully fold it and add it to the tables where they had other clothes for women, men, girls, boys, and babies.
They put the dishes with other dishes, and pots and pans with others.
All tools were put with the rest of the tools they had.
Never had Lydia seen so many things in all her life.
It had all seemed like a mishmash of things, but now she saw how it was organized into what housewives needed, or farmers needed and they could get what they wanted quickly.
Mavis could find anything without having to look for it.
The customers depended on her to find what they wanted quickly, so they could complete their shopping and be on their way.
Lydia was impressed at how well she knew her store…
it was like a map was in her head of where everything was.
Then, Mary took Lydia to the washstand in the back of the bunkhouse.
There were clothes to wash, and Lydia had to learn how to wash clothes.
The only dress Lydia had until her trunks arrived was filthy from wearing it for almost a week.
Mary was going to show her how to wash it and the rest of her underclothes.
Then, she could wash out the towels, and the other dirty clothes they had accumulated.
Mary showed her how to get the water hot and put in lye soap.
She started the fire in the bottom of the washstand and explained that it was important to keep the water hot to get the clothes cleaned easier.
Then she brought out the washboard. She showed Lydia how to scrub the clothes clean, but not so hard as to rub a hole in the clothes.
Then, it was Lydia’s turn. Her hands were already sore from scrubbing the floor, now they burned again from the lye soap in the hot water.
She scrubbed her dress, especially around the hem where it rubbed the grass and dirt the most. Then Lydia showed her how to rinse the soap out and run it through the two rolling bars with the handle to get as much of the soap and water out as they could.
She told Lydia to do this twice, to make sure that the clothes were really clean and had most of the soap out.
Then, you hung it up on the clothes lines with clothes pins.
Never had Lydia worked so hard and never had she wished she had just one of the servants that she had taken for granted back in New Orleans!
It took Lydia and Mary two hours to wash, rinse, and hang up all their clothes.
By then, Lydia was soaked and felt like she had taken a bath just like the clothes.
She collected all the plates and glasses from the lunch she had made and took them back to the kitchen.
And hoped that it was time to take a nap.
She was so tired, she could barely stand up, and it was only two o’clock in the afternoon!