Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress

by Ginsberg, Debra

  “Well,” I told her, “it looks like I’m going to be somebody’s mother.”

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  se ven

  in the family way

  If work at The Columbia was difficult before, it became just about impossible soon after I learned I was going to have a baby. I finally confided in Sherry, another cocktail waitress, and told her that I didn’t know quite what to do. Sherry was rail thin with a witchy shock of curly red hair. Of all my coworkers, she seemed the most competent, energetic, and articulate. It had been Sherry, in fact, who had helped me through my first Buck Night, taking me over to the bartenders before the shift began and telling them to be extra patient with me since I’d never “worked the meat market before.”

  “How exciting!” she gushed. She was my age and already had two small children she was raising without the benefit of a husband.

  “Exciting, yes,” I told her, “but I’m thinking that maybe this isn’t the best environment in which to grow a new life.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she said, taking a deep drag from her cigarette, “you’ll be fine.” She smiled as if to reassure me. “I’ve just got one piece of advice,” she added. “When you have the baby, make sure they give you an episiotomy. That way they can sew you up tighter than before. Know what I mean?” She winked, nudged me, and put out her cigarette. “Back to work, then.”

  I didn’t find Sherry’s advice the least bit comforting, and every day the smell inside The Columbia (a combination of alcohol, grease, cigarette smoke, and bar fruit) grew stronger and more oppressive. On a few nights, the only thing that kept me from running to the bathroom was the fact that it smelled even worse in there.

  I’d gone into something of a “one day at a time” mode since discovering I was pregnant. I had a suspicion, before ever speaking to John, that I’d probably be marching into parenthood alone. We had ended our relationship on bad terms and he was in no way interested in a reconciliation. We hadn’t so much as spoken to each other for weeks. I was almost positive that he had very little room in his future plans for me, much less a child. Given these misgivings, I decided that I could probably manage without John’s active participation. My family’s reaction to the news, on the other hand, would be critical. I knew I would be lost without their support. I broached the subject as diplomatically as I could at a family dinner.

  “You know, I think that possibly I might be . . . that is, I think there’s a chance I could maybe be pregnant,” I said. In the silence that followed, I added, “And I need to know how you all feel about that because I’m going to need your help.”

  Their response, immediate and uncensored, was overwhelmingly positive. Not only were they willing to help, they were actually excited at the prospect of a new baby. Not one member of my family expressed a single doubt or misgiving. How could I even ask, they wanted to know, of course they would be with me 100 percent. When would I know for sure?

  “I know,” I said. “It’s a fact.”

  “I thought so,” my mother said.

  After this discussion, I decided that the best plan for the moment was to continue working at The Columbia until I started to show. Very few shifts later, this plan was rapidly

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  derailed. I scheduled a meeting with Donna and told her that, through no advance planning, I was going to have a baby and I didn’t think I could continue working. To my surprise, Donna literally begged me to stay. It wasn’t at all a problem with her, she claimed, and I could take a leave when the baby came and be assured of having my job when I came back. It would be fun, she said, for all my coworkers to follow my pregnancy. She was sure everyone would be very supportive. She even offered to take me off Buck Night and schedule me for less physically demanding shifts. I must admit that I was actually thinking about this option and had almost decided it would be worth a try when she said something that changed my mind completely.

  “It’ll be great,” Donna claimed. “You’ll probably make twice as much money as before. People will tip you and the baby.”

  I suddenly had a vision of what I’d look like in my last trimester, carrying drinks around the bar. I thought about how much secondhand cigarette smoke I’d inhale and how unhealthy the atmosphere was on every level. It was a fairly disgusting picture.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, “I can’t do it.”

  Waitressing is a singularly difficult job to hold while pregnant, and not just because the physical demands are so great. Rather, I’ve noticed a certain attitude toward pregnant waitresses, made up of both pity and consternation, that makes the work quite trying. Pregnancy just doesn’t fit the commonly accepted profile of a waitress—especially a cocktail waitress.

  I’ve worked with two women who went through their pregnancies in restaurants. Neither had an easy time of it. The first was a young unmarried woman whose pregnancy was totally unplanned. The managers of the restaurant hated the very idea of it and asked her if she didn’t think it would be best to work in a less stressful environment. She didn’t. Powerless to fire her for being pregnant, the managers cut this woman’s hours and scheduled her to work the least profitable shifts. Their efforts to squeeze her out didn’t work and she stayed on until the week before she delivered.

  The second woman was married and had planned her pregnancy. She had also been waiting on tables for most of her adult life and knew her rights as a pregnant employee, having gone through her first pregnancy at another restaurant. Still, the managers weren’t particularly pleased at her expanding presence and griped that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demands of her job. She often got some unpleasant reactions from her customers. Viewing her as a piece of public property, men and women alike would rub her belly and ask her very personal questions, like whether or not she was married and why she was working in a restaurant.

  “They always look here,” she said, holding up her left fourth finger, which was bare due to swelling. “They don’t see a wedding band, so they think I’m some kind of loser. Like it’s shameful or something. As if it’s any of their business anyway.”

  Even I had felt sorry for pregnant servers who waited on me. I felt as if I should be doing the work, not her. It was this feeling, more than any other, that convinced me I couldn’t stay on at The Columbia.

  Donna had asked me to work through New Year’s Eve and I agreed to do so. The week before Christmas, however, I developed a bad cold and found myself unable to move from my bed. I called Donna and asked if I could be relieved of a shift or two.

  “Why don’t we just call it a day?” she snapped at me. “It’s obvious you don’t really want to be here.” I suppose I should have felt some remorse, but I was merely relieved. She wasn’t wrong, after all.

  On the face of it, things were starting to look a little bleak. I now had no job at all and no steady income for the foreseeable future. My office job had recently come to an end as well, since

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  Hank and Tim could no longer afford to pay me a salary of any kind. Tim had promised to keep me on as a freelancer for the paper, but those assignments would provide very little income.

  I was also about to experience motherhood without the help or even the presence of the baby’s father. John had not reacted well to the news that he was to become a father. He had, in fact, given me a series of conditions under which he would provide me with support. Since most of these conditions involved terminating the pregnancy, we soon came to an unbreachable impasse. There followed arguments, tears, and plenty of accusations on both sides. The end result was that John left the city, the state, and any hope I might have had of his involvement in my life before I felt the baby’s first kick.

  In addition, I had no idea what I was going to do once the baby came or where I was going to live. There was only so long I could manage in a studio apartment with a child, and besides, I didn’t know how the apartment managers would react to my adding a new tenant.

  This was one side of the situation. There wa
s a much rosier outlook on the flip side. I had no income, to be sure, but I did have all the money I’d saved from working so many jobs over the previous months. It wasn’t going to last forever, but it was something. I obviously wasn’t going to be using it to move anywhere. I didn’t have John, but I had the unconditional support of my entire family along with their promises to be with me every step of the way. This was no small thing; it was an absolute lifesaver. As for my impending motherhood, there are some things in life it’s just better to know less about before they happen. My lack of vision into my own future was a blessing that allowed for unlimited optimism.

  It also looked as if there might be something of a solution to my joblessness. My father had been wanting, once again, to venture into the restaurant business, and by the time I quit The Columbia, he had rented a storefront in northeast Portland. This time the theme was New York–style pizza, and again he wanted it to be a family-owned-and-operated business. After much voting, debate, and names drawn out of hats, Peppy’s was settled upon as the name of the new place. My sister Maya was taking some time off from college to lend her culinary talents, and the rest of the family planned to muck in as needed. My father’s hope for Peppy’s was that it would soon support our entire family. While the idea for Peppy’s had been germinating, I had gone from working at Molto’s to The Columbia and had thought I’d be able to help out only when I had days off. A few weeks into the construction of our new business, however, it became clear where I’d be spending most of my days.

  My father had a vision of the way he wanted Peppy’s to look, which was a return to the old-fashioned diner style of his childhood. With this in mind, we laid down black-and-white checkerboard flooring, installed Naugahyde booths, and painted the walls in pinkish lavender. There were little touches, too. We bought old-style fountains for lemonade and grape juice, had a neon sign made for the front window, and I painted a giant pizza on the back wall so that it was directly in the line of vision of anyone ordering at the counter. We even rented a jukebox and two pinball machines. The jukebox, played only by members of our family, was a complete failure, but the pinball machines were extremely popular.

  The menu was simple but specific and the taste had to be just right. My father had grown up in New York and both Maya and I had spent a good portion of our childhoods there. All of us had distinct memories of what New York pizza looked, smelled, and tasted like. Anyone who is a fan of real New York pizza knows that there are very few substitutes. There is a certain je ne sais quoi to a large, cheesy, aromatic slice of Brooklyn pizza that my father was determined to replicate. To this end, Maya and my father experimented with a variety of doughs, sauces, and cheeses until

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  they produced something that satisfied their palates. I can’t say that New York–style pizza was unheard of in Portland at that time, but it was certainly a novelty. Franchise pizza shops and thick-crusted Canadian-bacon-and-pineapple–laden pies were more the accepted norm. Nevertheless, a couple of places featuring Big Apple pizza had recently sprung up and were developing devoted followings. My father was hoping for the same kind of response.

  Our summer in the luncheonette had been the last time we’d all worked together like this and the memories were inevitable as we set up the restaurant. But while the dynamic in my family remained relatively unchanged, almost everything else about this venture was different. The luncheonette had been temporary. Peppy’s, we hoped, was permanent. The stakes, both financial and emotional, seemed quite a bit higher. As for me, I didn’t view Peppy’s as the gateway to romantic adventure as I had the luncheonette. The butterflies in my stomach had been replaced by morning sickness. I was still waiting to meet someone who would change my life, but this time around that someone was growing inside my own body. During the early days of Peppy’s, I couldn’t see much farther than that. Nor did I want to.

  Pizza was one of Peppy’s selling points. The other was the fact that it was owned and run by a family (our family). My father felt that capitalizing on the whole family-values theme would appeal to our customers and make them want to buy pizza from us instead of a nameless, faceless franchise. With this in mind, we went around to introduce ourselves to our neighbors, all of whom we hoped would be eating their weights in pizza in the near future.

  The district we’d set up in had no clear identity and was an eclectic mix of small businesses. One thing it had plenty of was character, and our neighbors, as it turned out, were quite an interesting group.

  Our neighbors on one side were the husband and wife owners of a Vietnamese bakery. The wife was always there, day and night, sweating over various doughy creations. The husband came in and out, making deliveries and buying supplies. He spoke no English at all and the wife spoke very little. Nevertheless, she was usually quite chatty in a broken-syllable kind of way. There were always a few of her family members around the bakery: young girls, babies, sometimes a boy or two. We had no idea what relation any of them had to each other. The wife (who never actually told us her name) appreciated the fact that we were a family working together. Every morning, we’d come in and buy a baguette for breakfast and she’d give us coffee on the house.

  “No, no pay,” she’d say. “F’ee for you.”

  Later, when my “delicate condition” started becoming obvious, she’d attempt to press pastries and strange turnovers with fillings of undetermined origin into my hands.

  “When baby come?” she asked.

  “July,” I told her.

  “Good. You take. You eat. Good for baby.” I took, but couldn’t eat. I believe she and her family felt more or less the same way about pizza. Although they were very friendly and very generous, they never came over to eat at Peppy’s.

  Our neighbor on the other side was a cobbler. A tiny Asian man who spoke even less English than the bakery owners, he kept very much to himself. In the entire time that we owned Peppy’s, we heard only two words from him. We could set our watches by him as every day at 5 P.M. he’d walk into Peppy’s, slap a couple of quarters on the counter, and say, “Small Coke.” He never ordered pizza.

  There was a faded single-screen movie theater across the street, which hadn’t yet figured out that it would have to become either an art house or a historical monument to compete with the multiplexes everywhere else. The theater manager, Leonard,

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  was unkempt and extremely grumpy. When we devised a pizza special for matinee goers, Leonard flatly refused to place any flyers or menus in the lobby but came in himself to take advantage of the price breaks.

  There was a florist on one side of the theater, owned and operated by a couple of middle-aged men, both named Ben. The Bens eschewed traditional arrangements for their flowers in favor of more artistic designs, most of which tended to be rather depressing if exotic. Because we liked to support all the local businesses, Maya and I purchased an arrangement from the Bens for our mother’s birthday that year. “You decide,” we told them. “It’s her birthday, so something cheerful and springlike would be good.” The resulting bouquet looked like it had been taken from the back of a hearse. It was so grim, in fact, that my mother actually laughed at the sight of it. The Bens, at least, stopped in for pizza once in a while, although neither one of them could tolerate tomato sauce, so we ended up designing a special “white pizza” just for them.

  On the other side of the theater was a store that defied definition. Everything in this warehouselike space looked as if it had either fallen off the back of a truck, been manufactured in a Third World country, or both—a dizzying collection of televisions, bicycles, baby strollers, lunchboxes, kites, and brightly colored plastic toys (the kind that had several removable parts suitable for choking small children). The store kept odd, erratic hours and was never staffed by the same people two days in a row. None of the staffers ever came in for pizza, incidentally, even before a fire swept through that store (and only that store) several months after we opened.

  We set up an account
for Peppy’s at a local bank at the end of the street. The tellers, all women, were usually dieting at any given moment, so we added salads to our menu to accommodate them. They were generally a very pleasant group and took a genuine interest in how well we were doing. Unfortunately, they were often too traumatized to lunch at Peppy’s. Whether it was the location, lax security features, or simple bad luck, this particular bank seemed to be one of the most often robbed institutions in the area. One particular teller, Rose, a divorced mother of two teenagers, had the misfortune of staring down the barrel of a gun twice in a two-month period.

  Our happiest neighbors and our favorite customers by far were Kev, Mike, and Jeff, a trio of flamboyantly gay hairstylists located next door to the bakery. Kev was tall, barrel-chested, and had a long mane of ringlets. He dressed in billowy shirts, boots, and tight pants. The overall effect was Robin Hood meets the Cowardly Lion. Both my mother and I went to Kev to get our hair done and he regaled us with one outrageous story after another. Kev had little regard for public health warnings and swore to live his life exactly the way he wanted to. He told us tales of various hustlers he’d picked up, which we didn’t believe until one of them showed up at the salon one day and ended up eating pizza at Peppy’s. While he waited for an additional slice to go, Kev’s boy toy offered to marry me and “give your baby a name.” When I politely declined, he said, “No, really, I think pregnant women are very sexy.”

  Mike was a little more restrained in both looks and attitude. He actually admitted to having a crush on my father, with whom he flirted shamelessly. Subject to huge mood swings, Mike either complained bitterly about the state of the world and all the people in it or was in a state of giddy ebullience. We never knew which it would be on any given day. Mike’s bipolar behavior bothered Kev, and Kev’s unapologetic posturing bothered Mike. The two would often come in separately, eat lunch, and complain about each other. On the fringes of these dramas was Jeff, who came in only a few days a week to service an established clientele. His uniform was simple: tank top, leather jacket, jeans,