A Flickering Light (7 page)

“I didn’t even ask. He was…scattered in his thinking, Mama. From his injury. Like when Papa fell that last time before we moved.”

“Well, he might have loaned you the bicycle since you’d taken the time to help him.”

Jessie decided to wait to tell about her rental. Perhaps she wouldn’t even have to. “His shop could use some cleaning. I thought I’d see if he might like a cleaning girl after I work at Mr. Bauer’s studio. Maybe a couple of afternoons a week.”

Her mother nodded agreement. Then her eye caught that shirtwaist again. “Well, let’s get them sewn back on, those sleeves.”

Jessie lowered her eyes. “I left them at Mr. Bauer’s studio.”

“You tore your blouse at your new employer’s? But I thought—”

“I tore them before the interview, Mama, and didn’t have anywhere to put them, so I put them in the camera bag. I’ll get them back on Monday.”

“You forgot your camera?” Selma asked.

Jessie took a deep breath. “Mr. Bauer doesn’t like ‘amateur camera girls,’ as he calls them. So I had to agree to…that is, to leave my camera there and not use it for six months. Until I’m certified.” She cleared her throat. “When he’ll start paying me five dollars a week.”

“F-f-five d-d-dollars. Is th-th-that goo—?”

“Yes, it’s very good, Roy,” his mother finished for him. Jessie ached each time her nearly six-year-old brother spoke, his words like a taffy pull stretching out and out but without any sweetness. She didn’t like it when others cut him off and finished things for him either. It just made him lower his eyes and speak less. She’d heard about a hospital in faraway Seattle that treated young children like Roy. She wondered if she might somehow get him there. But Seattle was even farther away than Rochester, which had a fine hospital, but even that would take money they just didn’t have. “Hush now while I get these details.”

“It’s more than twice what I made at the bindery,” Jessie told Roy. “After paying Mama and Papa for my room and board, there’ll be enough left for me to buy you a whistle if you’d like, from my first earnings.” He nodded. “You’ll just have to wait a bit. Because it’s an apprenticeship, and I won’t be paid for…six months.”

She knew the family needed what she could earn, and she hoped her mother wouldn’t just dismiss the Bauer Studio job because of the long delay in payment. This was such a grand chance, as her mother had already noted, to do something she loved.

“Six months. That makes no sense. I’m not sure we can afford—”

“Mr. Bauer will be training us, as though we were at the normal school. When we’re finished, I’ll take a test and be certified, and then I could work for any photographer in the city. I could even go to other cities.” She didn’t add,
And maybe one day have my own studio
. Women didn’t own many businesses in Minnesota, not photographic ones. You had to go to big cities like Chicago or St. Louis to see professional women photographers, and she suspected her mother would never approve of her going to places like that. She wouldn’t approve of such a dream. It wasn’t practical in the least.

“He also said if I wanted to work extra, he’d give me special training in retouching,” Jessie continued. “I’ll have a profession, Mama. Just as if I’d gone on to high school and normal school.”

“But six months… What could take so long to learn?”

“Chemicals.” She made her voice light. “He said sometimes photographers get mercury poisoning and then have to be away from their studios for months at a time. He wants us to learn all the business so we can operate his studio, handle the books, take money, make prints, and such, even when he isn’t there to tell us how to do it. It’s a very responsible opportunity. There’ll be laws passed requiring such certification, Mama. That’s what he said, and this way I’ll learn correct procedures. It’s more schooling. You and Papa always said schooling is important.”

Her mother said nothing, then, “Yes, it is.” Jessie sensed resignation. She thought her mother might not have heard her words about the mercury. “But six months without pay. I think we’d best discuss this when your father comes home, Jessie. Meanwhile, you go change your shirt. Those ragged sleeves look like a dog chewed the edges.”

“Lilly, will you help me sew them back on?”

“If you ever get them returned. Your new employer is a strange one, if you ask me,” Lilly said.

“I don’t remember that I did,” Jessie said. She smiled. She’d gotten through her mother’s and older sister’s objections. She just had her father’s to deal with now.

Lilly, with her perfectly coiffed hair despite a day’s work as a seamstress and packager at Stott and Son, sat across from Jessie at the supper table. Selma adjusted her spectacles and slipped into the chair beside Lilly. Both Selma and Jessie had eyes that required correction with lenses; no one else in the family did. Roy fussed with the oilcloth, and Jessie put her hands over his to stop the fluttering movements. He looked up at her, surprise in his eyes. Sometimes Jessie wondered if he was aware of things he did. She wished she could give those hands something productive to do, but right now she prepared herself for the questioning she knew would come. She only hoped she could carry her arguments through to acceptance.

A parent sat at either end of the dining room table, and her father blessed the food. This was followed by the passing of potatoes and opinions about Jessie’s active day.

“I’ve already decided,” Jessie defended when Lilly told her she was being taken advantage of. Lilly’s comment had surprised her, as she’d thought Lilly would say it was just part of the working world to be apprenticed out without pay. Lilly presented herself as so much wiser all the time. “It’s a fair trade,” Jessie continued. “No different than going to school, but I won’t have to pay for the apprenticeship. Because that’s really what it is.”

“It’s forced labor,” Lilly said. “We’re forming a club at work where we can talk about things that the women workers all have in common, and one of them is how we’re treated at our employment.”

“Stott’s a good employer,” Jessie’s father said. He was a tall man with a full head of hair that had just begun to gray. Jessie thought him handsome. He must have weighed thirty pounds more than Mr. Bauer did. He had wide, short fingers, and Mr. Bauer had long musician’s fingers. Her father’s bushy eyebrows lifted as he spoke to Lilly, passing the potatoes as he did. “That’s a good job, Daughter. One not to trifle with.”

“I know that, Papa,” Lilly said. “But they’d never ask us to work for six months without pay.”

“I’d like to have him take my picture sometime,” Selma said. The big bow she wore at the back of her head dwarfed her pale face, made her look younger than her eleven years.

“I’ll photograph you after I’ve had my training,” Jessie said.

“It just isn’t fair,” Lilly insisted, her arched eyebrows perfectly plucked.

“Your sister could be right, Jessie,” her father said. He combed his thick mustache with his fingers. Lilly beamed as she leaned back into her chair. “Six months is a long time without pay. Most apprenticeships at least provide room and board while their workers are learning.”

Jessie couldn’t explain it, but somehow the sacrifice of no earnings and no photograph taking felt, well, warranted. It would make her success have more meaning.

“But it’s a professional apprenticeship, not just learning a simple skill, Papa. That takes time. Some of the photographers in town charge for such classes. And girls aren’t even allowed to take them.”

Her father nodded. “Well, now, let’s take a look at it. Every opportunity arrives in a carpetbag. Sometimes there are rocks in that bag and sometimes gold nuggets. We all have to decide how to convert whatever we’ve got into whatever we want.”

“I—I—I w-w-want—”

“What? What do you want, Son?” Jessie’s mother interrupted. “More potatoes? Rolls? Eat your greens.”

Roy shook his head. “I-I-I w-w-want…” He swallowed. “I—I—I w-w-want g-g-gold.”

Jessie’s father tousled his hair. “Don’t we all, Son.”

Jessie smiled at Roy. She’d love to give him treasures.

“Jessie will just have to see if she has gold or if she’ll have to lug some rocks before she can fill that bag with what she wants.” Her father smiled at his middle daughter. “I think it’s a fine opportunity.”

“She won’t be able to contribute,” Lilly complained. “And I’ll bear the results of that, I suppose.”

“You’re older. You’re working. You can afford it,” Jessie said.

“Jessie, don’t be sassy,” her mother said.

“I don’t know why you always take her side,” Lilly said.

“She didn’t,” Jessie said.

Jessie’s father frowned. She’d been too quick to snap at Lilly. Why had she been so impulsive when she was so close to achieving what she wanted?

Forks poked at sausages. The clock ticked.

“It’s how we spread the load in this family,” her father said at last. “Each does her part, Lilly, as she can. And we help each other. My parents helped me; we can do likewise.” His voice held a wistful tone, and Jessie wondered what dream he might have planted that never came to bloom. “You’re of fine help and support to us, Lilly. And we need that and appreciate it. Very much.”

“And what part will Jessie be doing? If she’s working all day for nothing, at something she even
likes
to do, and then doesn’t contribute—”

“I hope to get an evening cleaning job,” Jessie said. “And I can help Mama more with the laundry. Or I can rake the leaves this fall. So you won’t have to, Lilly. I know the dust bothers your cough.”

“Well. That would be a start,” her older sister said. The dust from the elm and maple leaves always left Lilly fighting a cold once the cool weather came.

“And you’ll speak to Mr. Steffes since she was so helpful to him this morning,” her mother told her father. Did her mother give some sort of signal to her father? Jessie couldn’t always tell what their raised eyebrows or the set of their jaws might be saying.

“I heard about that. And what were you doing there at that hour of the day?”

“Seeing about…employment,” Jessie said, and hoped the slant of truth would slip the subject on to something else.

But it didn’t.

“Employment? Strange to be applying at Steffes’s when you had the interview with the photographer,” her father said.

Jessie sighed. She may as well tell the whole truth because it always came up to catch her anyway. “I’d rented a bicycle, Papa. So I could ride out past Lake Winona to take a picture of the bluff fires right at dawn. It was going to be so lovely. But then Mr. Steffes fell and I had to get the doctor, and then I got all bloody, and then there was the interview and—”

“You rented a bicycle?” Lilly slammed her fork down. “Papa, why does she have money for such things as that?”

“I didn’t actually rent it,” Jessie said. “So I’m sure I can get the money back.”

“I’m singing on Sunday, aren’t I, Mama?” Selma asked. “Irene and me?”

“Irene and I,” her mother corrected. “It was announced in the paper already. Yes. Hush now.”

“Don’t let her change the subject,” Lilly complained. “Jessie’s always getting by with things, and Selma helps her.”

“I don’t get by with anything,” Jessie said. “I do my part and I’ll do even more in the next six months. I won’t even have the pleasure of using my camera to take my mind off the drudgery.”

“If I couldn’t sing for six months, I don’t know what I’d do.” Selma sighed. “Life would be just…devastating.” She put the back of her hand against her forehead, reminding Jessie of a woman on a theater advertisement looking dramatic, lying back in some swain’s arms. Lilly rolled her eyes, and Jessie’s mother appeared to wiggle her mouth to control a smile.

“I’ll speak to Nic Steffes about your working, but you’ll have to ask for your nickel back, Jessie. And”—to Lilly, her father said—“she’ll be without her camera companion, so there is a sacrifice she’s making too. We’ll see if absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Or if out of sight, out of mind,” her mother answered.

“Just so her body isn’t out of duty,” Lilly said. “I’ve got some dresses in need of a soaking that she can help me with on Saturday.”

“Whenever you wish to begin, Sister,” Jessie said cheerfully. She’d gotten through the supper without committing to anything worse than red washboard knuckles.