CHAPTER SEVEN
When Toya left Grayson, she wasn’t thinking about him or their encounter in that bathroom at all.
She was thinking about what that butler had said.
That she was to go into the room where the other ladies were waiting.
What other ladies? She thought she was the only one assigned to the job.
Or was this a job interview after all, and not an actual placement?
But that wouldn’t make sense for a placement agency. They placed.
When she finally made it to the room, which looked like a parlor to her, she saw what he was talking about. There were eight other people in that room: Three were white, three were black, and two were Hispanic. All of the ladies looked younger than Toya.
And Toya was confused. Were all of them vying for the same assignment? Was there a mix-up between different placement agencies in the Baltimore area and every agency sent a representative? From what she’d heard, it wouldn’t be the first time.
But given the way those white girls gave her that up-and-down assessing look, and then looked away from her as if her age alone rendered her no threat to them, and the way the black and Hispanic ladies ignored her altogether, she decided not to ask any of them any questions.
None of them looked as if they would know the answers anyway.
She waited like they waited. And she tried, with all she had, not to show her desperation. Because she was truly desperate. This might have been just another gig to everybody else, but it was everything to Toya.
And then finally, after nearly twenty minutes of more waiting, a tall, thin, fiftyish-looking white woman walked into the parlor room. All of the girls immediately stood up, as if they knew the woman. So Toya stood up too.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” the woman said.
Everybody responded cheerfully. Toya, however, remained silent. She was too anxious to know if she still had the job.
“My name is Lois Javits. I am the house manager of the Carrington estate and have been thus for the past decade. You all were asked to come here because this will be your place of employment. Five of you were selected during an extensive interview process for the seven vacancies in Housekeeping. Congratulations. One of you was selected to work in the file room. One of you was sent over by a temp agency that we contacted this morning to answer the phones.”
Toya sighed relief. She was the only one there for the receptionist position.
“When I call your names, please state which position you are here for.”
She called the three black ladies and the two Hispanic ladies names first. They all said they had been hired for maid work in housekeeping.
Then she called the three white girls. Two of them said they were hired for maid work as well, and the other one said she’d been hired to work in the file room. Then she got to Toya.
“Ja-tee-sha Morgan?”
“That’s Jameesha Morgan,” Latoya corrected her, “and I’m here for the receptionist position.”
“There is no receptionist position. You’re here to answer the phones.”
“Yes ma’am,” Toya said, although receptionist was the title the agency told her. “I’m here to answer the phones.”
The old woman smiled after everybody else said what they were there for, but she gave Toya that look of blanket disapproval. As if Toya was some party crasher who dropped out of the sky and showed up uninvited.
But that was nothing new to Toya. She’d dealt with disapproving looks her entire life. Although she had hoped that this time would be different.
But looking at Miss Javits, she realized right away she had been hoping for too much.
Javits pointed to Toya, the other black and Hispanic ladies, and one of the three white girls. “You seven will report to Housekeeping. You will report to the file office,” she said to one of the two remaining white girls, “and you,” she said to the remaining white girl, “will answer the phones.”
The white girl Miss Javits selected to do the job Toya was supposed to be doing beamed. But Toya was shocked.
“When the young lady who normally answers the phones returns from maternity leave,” Javits said to the beaming girl, “then you will report to Housekeeping on a permanent basis. And you,” she said to Toya, “will go back to your temp agency. Understood?” she asked all of them.
Although the other girls nodded their understanding, Toya raised her hand.
“Excuse me, but there’s been a terrible mix-up.
I was told to come here to answer the phones.
Not to work in Housekeeping.” She had already pulled out her assignment paper.
“See?” She offered it to Miss Javits. “I’m here to be the receptionist.”
But Javits didn’t bother to so much as glance at her assignment paper. “You are here to do whatever job we allow you to do.”
The beaming girl, and a few of the others, grinned. Toya’s heart dropped. Maid work? They wanted her to do the one job she swore she’d never do? She couldn’t believe it!
But she was in no position to turn it down right now.
She had little money left, less than a hundred bucks to her name, and zero prospects of any other employment.
She needed to get out of her mama’s house – that was a big must. As much as she hated it, and believed it to be so unfair, she couldn’t turn it down. Her back was against that wall again.
And like every unfair thing that ever happened to her, nobody cared anyway. She had to suck it up and get over it.
Miss Javits certainly had. She had already moved on.
“Mr. Carrington is a stickler for detail,” she said.
“The downstairs is his home office. He does a lot of work from home and has many of his executives coming and going during the course of the day. But the second and third floors houses his private residence. Nobody goes up there. Nobody. He doesn’t allow anyone, and I mean anybody, to so much as spend the night in his home.
Not even his parents or his girlfriend or anyone else has ever spent the night in his home.
That’s how uncompromising he is about his abode and you had better never forget that.
He will fire you on the spot if you mistreat his home. ”
It seemed a bit much to Toya. The idea that his own parents wouldn’t be allowed to spend the night, or even his girlfriend, was just weird to her.
What kind of man, she wondered, was this big man?
But the very rich were very different. She’d been taught that all her life.
Now, she assumed, she was about to see it in action.
But Miss Javits wasn’t done. “He also does not allow anybody to work in his home until he has personally met them. Which is what you’re about to do.”
The other ladies seemed intimidated by the very thought of meeting the big man.
But Toya perked up. Getting to see somebody of Mr. Carrington’s apparent wealth would be a first for her.
Leonard and Lowe, the accounting firm she once worked for, were wealthy individuals in their own right.
But nothing, she thought as she looked up at the massive chandelier above their heads, on this scale. This was going to be so different.
But Javits was still talking. “You will follow me to his office. He’s a very busy man who has no interest in you whatsoever, other than to personally eyeball you, so do not ask him questions or say anything whatsoever to him.
You will simply smile and nod to whatever greeting he gives to you collectively.
And that is all you shall do. Understood? ”
They all voiced their understanding, and Javits wasted no more time.
She escorted them through a few more corridors that led to another busy space.
There were several huge offices in that section of the home where people were busy on computers or conducting meetings or just standing around in the corridors talking amongst themselves.
They all wore suits. They all were white men.
They all gave all of the ladies, including Toya, assessing looks.
As if they were mentally picking out their favorites. Which creeped her out.
But the younger girls, and even some of the ladies in their upper twenties, were all smiles and flattered.
They enjoyed the attention from those obviously highly-successful men.
But Toya would rather eat spikes than have anything to do with anybody who worked where she worked.
Her job was her livelihood, and she knew better than to allow some man to whisper sweet nothings in her ear and expect him to provide for her.
That was the stuff of fairytales. It rarely, if ever, happened in real life.
Although many of the men gave her looks that showed serious interest, she didn’t give them a second glance.
What she was most confused about was how the house they were in looked more like a business space than anything remotely resembling a home.
Yet Miss Javits made it sound as if this was a sacred kind of home that the owner just cherished.
With all of these people everywhere and all of this activity, Toya didn’t see how anybody could cherish this place.
But that was the least of Toya’s concerns.
Her main concern was about the theft that had just taken place.
That theft in broad daylight. Miss Javits had taken her assignment and given it to another person without batting an eye.
Was this that kind of job? No matter what she did somebody else would get the glory?
Would it take her thirteen more years to get a solid promotion?
She’d be a middle-aged woman before she hit her stride again. If she ever hit her stride again.
She walked behind everybody else as they made their way to tall double doors with knockers the size of horseshoes.
She wondered if this job, if the hope she had had for this job, was going to turn out to be horseshit too?
Like when she worked thirteen years for Leonard and Lowe and gave them all she had, only to lose it all the morning of her greatest achievement just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the wrong man walked through that door.
This, she hated to admit, was beginning to feel a lot like that.