Brooklyn (8 page)

She had dozed for a while and now she woke. She looked at the clock: it was twenty to eight. If she got up immediately, she thought, she would reach the bathroom before Patty or Sheila; Miss McAdam would, she knew, have already gone to work by now. She moved quickly to the door and across the landing with her toilet bag. She wore a shower cap because she did not want to destroy her hair, which became fuzzy when it was washed in the water of the house as it had on the ship and took hours then to comb out. When she got paid, she thought, she would go to the hairdresser's and have it cut shorter, made more manageable.

Downstairs, she was glad to be alone in the kitchen. Since she did not want to talk, she did not sit down so that she could leave instantly if any of the others arrived. She made tea and toast. She still had not found bread anywhere that she liked and even the tea and the milk tasted strange. The butter had a flavour she did not like either, it tasted almost of grease. One day on the street as she walked home from work she had noticed a woman at a stall selling jam. The woman spoke no English; Eilis did not think she was Italian and could not guess where she came from, but the woman had smiled at her as she examined the different pots of jam. She selected one and paid, thinking she was buying gooseberry jam, but when she tried it at Mrs. Kehoe's the flavour was new to her. She was not sure what it was, but she liked it because it masked the taste of the bread and the butter, just as three spoons of sugar managed to mask the taste of the tea and milk.

She had spent some of Rose's money on shoes. The first pair she had bought had looked comfortable but after a few days had begun to pinch her feet slightly. The second pair were flat and plain but fitted perfectly; she carried them in her bag and changed into them once she arrived at work.

She hated it when Patty or Diana paid too much attention to her. She was the new girl, and the youngest, and they could not stop giving her advice, or making criticisms or comments. She wondered how long it would go on for, and was trying to let them know how little appreciated their interest was by smiling faintly at them when they spoke or, a few times, especially in the morning, by looking at them vacantly as though she did not understand a word they said.

Having had her breakfast and washed her cup and saucer and plate, paying no heed to Patty, who had just arrived, Eilis slipped quietly out of the house, leaving herself plenty of time to get to work. This was her third week, and, although she had written a number of times to her mother and Rose and once to her brothers in Birmingham, she still had received no letters from them. It struck her as she crossed the street that by the time she arrived home at six thirty a whole world of things would have happened that she could tell them about; each moment appeared to bring some new sight or sensation or piece of information. The days at work so far had not been boring for her, the hours passing easily enough.

It was later, when she got home and lay in the bed after her evening meal, that the day she had just spent would seem like one of the longest of her life as she would find herself going through it scene by scene. Even tiny details stayed in her mind. When she deliberately tried to think about something else, or leave her mind blank, events from the day would come quickly back. For each day, she thought, she needed a whole other day to contemplate what had happened and store it away, get it out of her system so that it did not keep her awake at night or fill her dreams with flashes of what had actually happened and other flashes that had nothing to do with anything familiar, but were full of rushes of colour or crowds of people, everything frenzied and fast.

She liked the morning air and the quietness of these few leafy streets, streets that had shops only on the corners, streets where people lived, where there were three or four apartments in each house and where she passed women accompanying their children to school as she went to work. As she walked along, however, she knew she was getting close to the real world, which had wider streets and more traffic. Once she arrived at Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn began to feel like a strange place to her, with so many gaps between buildings and so many derelict buildings. And then suddenly, when she arrived at Fulton Street, there would be so many people crowding to cross the street, and in such dense clusters, that on the first morning she thought a fight had broken out or someone was injured and they had gathered to get a good view. Most mornings she stood back for a minute or two, waiting for the crowds to disperse.

In Bartocci's, she had to clock in, which was easy, and then go to her locker in the women's room downstairs and change into the blue uniform that girls on the shop floor had to wear. She was there most mornings before most of the other girls arrived. Some of them often did not appear until the last second. Miss Fortini, who was the supervisor, disapproved of this, Eilis knew. On her first day, Father Flood had taken her to the main office and she had had an interview with Elisabetta Bartocci, the daughter of the owner, who she thought was the most perfectly dressed woman she had ever seen. She wrote to her mother and Rose about Miss Bartocci's flaring red costume and white plain blouse, her red high-heeled shoes, her hair, which was shiny black and perfect. Her lipstick was bright red and her eyes were the blackest Eilis had ever seen.

"Brooklyn changes every day," Miss Bartocci said as Father Flood nodded. "New people arrive and they could be Jewish or Irish or Polish or even coloured. Our old customers are moving out to Long Island and we can't follow them, so we need new customers every week. We treat everyone the same. We welcome every single person who comes into this store. They all have money to spend. We keep our prices low and our manners high. If people like it here, they'll come back. You treat the customer like a new friend. Is that a deal?"

Eilis nodded.

"You give them a big Irish smile."

As Miss Bartocci went to fetch the supervisor, Father Flood told Eilis to take a look at the people working in the office. "A lot of them started like you, on the shop floor. And they did night classes and studied and now they're in the office. Some of them are actual accountants, fully qualified."

"I'd like to study bookkeeping," Eilis said. "I've already done a basic course."

"It'll be different here, different systems," Father Flood said. "But I'll find out if there are any courses nearby with places open. Even if they don't have places open, we'll see if we can get one open. But it'd be best not to mention this to Miss Bartocci and concentrate for the moment, as far as she is concerned, on the job you have."

Eilis nodded. Soon Miss Bartocci came back with Miss Fortini, who said "yes" after everything Miss Bartocci said, barely opening her mouth as she spoke. Every so often her eyes darted around the office and then, as though she had been doing something wrong, fixed quickly again on Miss Bartocci's face.

"Miss Fortini is going to teach you how to use the cash system, which is easy once you know it. And if you have any problems, go to her first, even the smallest thing. The only way for the customers to be happy is for the staff to be happy. You work nine to six, Monday through Saturday, with forty-five minutes for lunch and one half-day a week. And we encourage all our staff to do night classes-"

"We were speaking about that just now," Father Flood interrupted.

"So if you wanted to do night classes, we would pay part of the tuition. Not all of it, mind. And if you want to purchase anything in the store, you tell Miss Fortini and with most things there will be a reduction in the price."

Miss Fortini asked Eilis if she was ready to start. Father Flood took his leave as Miss Bartocci went to her desk and briskly began to open the post. When Miss Fortini led her to the shop floor and showed her the cash system, Eilis did not want to say that they had exactly the same system in Bolger's in Rafter Street at home, where the cash and a docket were put into a metal holder that was sent through the shop by a system of tubes until it arrived at the cash office, where the docket was marked paid, put back in the container with the change and returned. Eilis allowed Miss Fortini to explain it to her carefully, as though she had never seen anything like it before.

Miss Fortini then alerted the cash office that she would be sending a number of dummy dockets, each with five dollars enclosed. She showed Eilis how to fill out the dockets, writing her own name and the date at the top, then below the item purchased with the quantity on the left-hand side and the price on the right-hand side. She should also, Miss Fortini said, note the amount of money she was sending on the back of the docket, just so there would be no misunderstanding. Most customers would have to wait for their change, Miss Fortini said. Hardly anyone ever came up with the right amount, and most items, in any case, cost some number of dollars and then ninety-nine cents, or an uneven number of cents. If a customer were purchasing more than one item, Miss Fortini advised, Eilis should do the maths herself, but it would always be checked as well in the cash office.

"If you don't make mistakes, they'll notice you and they'll get to like you," she added.

Eilis watched as Miss Fortini wrote out several dockets for her and sent them and then waited for them to return. She then filled some out herself, the first for a single item purchased, the second for a number of the same item, and the third for a complicated mixture of items. Miss Fortini stood over her as she did the addition.

"It's better to go slowly and then you won't make mistakes," she said.

Eilis did not tell Miss Fortini that she never made mistakes when she did addition. Instead, she worked slowly, as she had been advised, making sure that the figures were correct.

She was surprised by some of the items of clothing for sale. The cups of some of the brassieres seemed much more pointed than anything she had seen before, and an item called a two-way stretch, which looked as though it had plastic bones in the middle, was new to her. The first thing she sold was called a brasalette, and she decided that, when she knew the other boarders at Mrs. Kehoe's well enough, she would ask one of them to take her through these items of American women's underwear.

The work was easy. Miss Fortini was interested only in time-keeping and tidiness and making sure that the slightest complaint or query was immediately conveyed to her. She was not hard to locate, Eilis discovered, as she was always watching, and if you seemed to be having the slightest difficulty with a customer and if you were not seen to be smiling, Miss Fortini would notice and begin to move towards you signalling to you, stopping only if she saw that you looked both busy and pleasant.

Eilis learned quickly where she could have a fast lunch at a counter and then have twenty minutes to explore the other shops around Fulton Street. Diana and Patty and Mrs. Kehoe all told her that the best clothes shop near Bartocci's was Loehmann's on Bedford Avenue. Downstairs at Loehmann's at lunchtime was always busier than Bartocci's, and the clothes seemed cheaper, but the minute Eilis made her way upstairs she thought of Rose because it was the most beautiful shop floor she had ever seen, not really like a shop at all, closer to a palace, with fewer people shopping and elegantly dressed assistants. When she looked at the prices she had to convert them into pounds to make any sense of them. They appeared very low. She tried to remember some of the dresses and costumes and their prices so she could give Rose a precise description of them, but each time she went there she had only a few minutes to spare, as she did not want to return late to the shop floor at Bartocci's. She had had no difficulties so far with Miss Fortini and she did not want to have any problems so early in her time working for her.

One morning, when she had been there for three weeks and was on her fourth, Eilis knew that something strange had happened as soon as she reached the other side of Fulton Street and could see the windows of Bartocci's. They were covered in huge banners saying FAMOUS NYLON SALE. She did not know that they had planned to have a sale, presuming that they would not do so until January. In the locker room she met Miss Fortini, to whom she expressed surprise.

"Mr. Bartocci always keeps it a secret. He supervises all the work himself overnight. The whole floor is nylon, everything nylon, and most at half price. You can buy four items yourself. And this is a special bag to keep the money in because you can only accept exact change. We've put even prices on everything. So no dockets today. And there will be tight security. It will be the biggest scramble you've ever seen in your life because even the nylon stockings are half price. And there's no lunch break, instead there will be free sandwiches and soda down here, but don't come more than twice. I'll be watching. We need everyone working."

Within half an hour of opening there were queues outside. Most women wanted stockings; they took three or four pairs before moving to the back of the store, where there were nylon sweater sets in every possible colour and in most sizes, everything at least half off the regular price. The job of the sales assistant was to follow the crowd with Bartocci carrier bags in one hand and the cash bag in the other. All the customers seemed to know that there would be no change given.

Miss Bartocci and two of the office staff manned the doors, which had to be kept shut from ten o'clock as the crowds surged. The people who normally worked in the cash department had special uniforms and worked on the shop floor as well. A few stood outside and made sure that the queue was orderly. The shop, Eilis thought, was the hottest and busiest place she had ever seen. Mr. Bartocci walked through the crowd taking the cash bags and emptying them into a huge canvas sack that he carried.

The morning was full of frenzy; she did not for one moment have peace to look around her. Everyone's voice was loud, and there were times when she thought in a flash of an early evening in October walking with her mother down by the prom in Enniscorthy, the Slaney River glassy and full, and the smell of leaves burning from somewhere close by, and the daylight going slowly and gently. This scene kept coming to her as she filled the bag with notes and coins and women of all types approached her asking where certain items of clothing could be found or if they could return what they had bought in exchange for other merchandise, or simply wishing to purchase what they had in their hands.