Chapter 24 Emily #2
“Here, I’ll do it,” Gertrude said, leaning over to help with the sewing machine.
They were on factory duty on a scorching afternoon at the end of August, baking in the sun that poured through the barred windows.
It was a large open room, a little bigger than the dining hall, with rectangular tables set with outdated and mismatched sewing machines.
The Mercer used the women’s labour to produce bedsheets; piles upon piles of plain white cotton sheets, which were shipped to hospitals across the province, as well as to the national military bases.
“Thanks,” Emily said, sucking on the blood until it slowed. She watched Gertrude fit the new needle into the machine in a flash, as effortless and automatic as tying her shoes. “How do you know so much about sewing machines?”
Gertrude didn’t look up, just returned to her own work, threaded a bobbin.
“My mom’s a seamstress,” she said. “I pretty much learned how to use one of these before I could even talk. Certainly before I could read. Small hands are useful. Why should they hold a book when they could be working instead?”
Emily thought uncomfortably of her own childhood, spent surrounded by as many books as she could devour. She’d helped with household chores, of course, but not so that her mother could pay the bills.
“Anyway,” Gert said, “it’s a skill, at least.” She looked over at Emily and smiled shrewdly.
“Speaking of skills, you gave quite the speech in typing class a couple of weeks ago. I’m still thinking about it.
” Emily swallowed, nodded. “Don’t worry,” Gert muttered.
She didn’t need to drop her voice, though.
The room was a cacophony of whirring machines, and they wouldn’t be overheard.
“I like your style, Em. I won’t rat you out.
Besides, I’m not sure how you could get in trouble just for teaching us what we were supposed to be learning, but that’s not how this place works.
God, I can’t wait to be out of here. Five more months. ”
“What are you going to do after?” Emily asked, returning to her work with the fresh needle.
Gertrude kept her eyes on her seam, and Emily noticed she never blinked when she worked.
Her seams were straighter than a ruler. “Not sure. I guess I have to go back home, for a while at least. Figure out where I’m gonna go.
I’ll need some work, though. I can’t stay at home anymore.
And if I want any chance of seeing Susie again…
” She bit her lip. “I don’t even know if she’ll be waiting for me.
She says she will be, in her letters. But they come less often now. ”
Emily knew Gertrude was in the Mercer because she was homosexual, and Gert didn’t deny or dodge the reality.
But Emily was still adjusting to the blatant way she talked about it.
She’d heard mutterings, though, about these sorts of things; her mother speaking in low tones to her father about two neighbour women who spent rather a lot of time together.
But it was always whispered about, never openly stated.
“But I think—” Gertrude was interrupted by a hoot from the table next to them.
“Hey, Mama!”
Emily looked up. The two girls there had ceased their work and thrown their hands up in greeting at a woman who had just walked through the door with a matron at her side.
Emily took in the buxom silhouette and fiery orange hair of June Jones.
Her insides plummeted, and she watched as June nodded her recognition to the two girls, one heavily pencilled eyebrow raised haughtily.
She was escorted to a table at the back as Emily, Gertrude, and the rest of the women looked on.
The room had gone conspicuously silent as the sewing machines paused.
“Settle down, back to work,” the supervisory matron droned lazily from her desk at the front. The machines started up again, and eventually conversation swelled.
Emily’s mouth was dry as paper. She recalled now, with a sickening sense of ineptness, how Matron Grimes had jeered at June Jones that she didn’t want to see her again too soon; that Jones herself had cursed the fact that she was in and out of the Mercer so often it was impacting her “business.” June Jones knew Emily was a reporter.
But the possibility of the madam being sent back while Emily was still there had never even occurred to her.
Although, she thought, it hadn’t occurred to Doris either.
And Doris usually thought of everything.
What would Doris tell her to do now? What would her own father advise?
Surely, they were both used to managing professional curveballs.
She might be able to find a way to ask him, coded, as her occasional letters home—and her parents’ letters back—always were.
But what would happen if Jones blew her cover, and her identity and objective were discovered? Could she actually be arrested then?
Jones was walking smoothly up the aisle now toward the supervisor’s desk.
Emily had never seen anyone move like June did.
Most women took small steps, impeded by skirts, inflexible fabrics, high heels, and persistent finishing school habits.
But June Jones swaggered as a man would, moved slowly and deliberately with her large body as though trying to take up as much space as possible.
It was so unfamiliar it was intimidating, but also somehow admirable.
The supervisor looked up at Jones and sighed. “Back so soon?”
Jones nodded as Emily watched her through her eyelashes, pretending to pick out a loose stitch. “You know me. Can’t get enough of this place.”
“Well, you seem to leave here every time with a few new girls under your wing. Can’t be all bad for business.”
Jones twisted her mouth and glared at the matron, shot half a glance over her shoulder at the assembled women.
“Tick off the wrong cop again?” the matron asked.
Jones shook her head. “Naw. Politician this time. Didn’t like that one of my girls wouldn’t agree to get beat as part of the date.
She punched ’im in the cock and ran for it, and lo and behold, suddenly my liquor licence expired a month earlier than it should have.
Now I’m back in on a six-month, the pricks. ”
Beside Emily, Gert’s eyebrows had nearly disappeared into her hairline and her lips were pressed in an appreciative smile.
“Welcome home, then,” the matron muttered. “Here’s your materials. You know what to do. Get to work.”
Jones took her stack of white cotton and began walking back to her spot.
As she passed in front of Emily’s workstation, she looked down.
Emily cursed silently and tried to duck her head toward her machine before realizing the ludicrousness of the effort.
She would run into June Jones elsewhere: the dining hall, the recreation room, the bathroom.
Her best bet would be to look innocent and detached.
Hopefully the months of confinement, her longer hair and the equalizing nature of the uniform might save her from recognition.
With a surge of apprehension, she met the madam’s eyes and gave a half-smile of greeting. Jones took her in, face impassive.
“You new?” she asked.
Emily tried to wet her lips, but couldn’t. “Yeah.”
Jones’s eyes lingered on her another moment, then she walked away back down the aisle with her fabric. Emily rolled her shoulders and reset her machine. She was behind on the day’s quota; she needed to focus and catch up.
“Sizing you up for a new job, I think,” Gert muttered beside her, shooting her a sly look.
Emily forced a chuckle as her insides clenched. “Yeah. Maybe.”