by Lydia Davis
She is not the sort who starts out like a whirlwind.
She has a sort of nervous shyness.
She is extremely slow on laundry, but it probably wouldn’t matter so much in your case since you send out more things.
She can’t catch up with the ironing. But if you take a firm hand it ought not to be a problem. Also, you ought to make out a schedule for her.
Mrs. D Reflects on Her Experience of Virginia After Letting Her Go
Mrs. D writes a long description of Virginia:
When she came to see me for her first interview she sat sideways on the chair not looking at me. Sometimes she looked directly at me and smiled, and then she looked intelligent and sweet, but much of the time she had a hangdog heavy dull look to her face. Her voice was slow, rough, and hesitant, though her sentences were well formulated. She talked to me about her other job. She said to me, “Maybe I’m too conscientious, I don’t know. I never seem to catch up with the ironing, I don’t know. The man changes his underwear every day.”
When she spoke of desserts, her eyes lit up. “I know thousands of desserts I like to make,” she said.
She said she had been left alone very early and hadn’t had much schooling and that was why she had happened to get into domestic service.
She and I tried to work out a good schedule. She did not want to work after putting the dinner on the table at six, but she wanted to have her own dinner before leaving, otherwise she would have to eat in a restaurant. So we tried that, but there is something extraordinarily prickly about waiting on yourself, going in and out of the kitchen, when a servant is sitting there eating. And she did eat an enormous meal.
She had a pathological interest in her own diet. She was a fiend about salads and milk and fruit, all the things that cost the most.
I missed one of the baby’s blankets, the best one, which I had crocheted a border for, all around. Then one day I left the iron on all afternoon on the back porch and that’s when I found the baby’s blanket. She had used it to cover the ironing board. What else might she do? Too soon after, the baby’s playpen came apart in her hands.
Now my distrust was deepened to a certainty: she was not the person on whom to base any permanent plans. It was also obvious that she could not keep up with the ironing or anything else.
She acted dissatisfied and glum if she stayed beyond two o’clock. I had to sympathize, because what she wanted to do was go to the YWCA, where she and a few of the other domestics were taking some very improving courses.
All her friends were urging her to get a job in a defense plant. I asked her about it and she said, “The girls all say I’m wrong, but I just don’t think I’d like factory work.”
I was rushing around most of the morning when I should have been at the typewriter. I offered her the full-time position because the one time we had company she did such a fine job. She put on a beautiful dinner, exquisitely arranged and well cooked and perfectly served. The whole thing went off exceedingly well. But she calculated that the full-time job wouldn’t be worth it to her. She also told me that if she took the full-time job she didn’t see how she could get her Christmas shopping done. That was the crowning remark.
Her experience of our household was not at its easiest. We were moving at the time, and we were still not settled before I had to rush to finish a story. But she could not see that this was a chance to make herself useful to a coming writer who could thereafter afford to pay her better.
Mrs. D, the “Coming Writer”
It is not clear what Mrs. D’s ambitions are. She writes easily and fluently, and has no difficulty conceiving plots for her stories. Over lunch she and Mr. D often exchange ideas for stories or characters, though Mr. D rarely has time now to write fiction. Mrs. D’s plots often involve domestic situations like her own. The characters, usually including a husband and wife, are skillfully and sympathetically drawn; they have complex relationships with recognizable small frictions, hurts, and forgiveness. She is particularly good with the speech of young children. However, the stories often have a vein of wistful sentimentality that works to their detriment.
Her approach to writing is practical. She will “capture” certain qualities in a character, a change will take place, there will be small epiphanies. When the story is done, she will try to sell it to the highest class of magazine, or the one with the best rates. The cash often makes a difference in the family’s economy.
Mrs. D’s Creativity
Mrs. D spends her energies on many other creative projects besides writing. She sews clothes for the children, knits sweaters, bakes bread, devises unusual Christmas cards, and plans and oversees the children’s craft projects. She takes pleasure in this creativity, but her pleasure itself is rather intense and driven.
Hope for Better Things to Come
Mrs. D writes:
Now we are looking forward to the new maid, Birdell, who will be starting Saturday. She promises to have all the warm Southern sweetness and flexibility of the old-fashioned Negro servant.
Birdell Does Not Work Out. Another Prospect Is Lillian
According to herself, Lillian Savage can do anything from picking up after the children to setting out a tasty snack to “swanky” stuff like typewriting and answering the phone or even taking dictation. She says: “You have to be good-natured to take a domestic job. Nothing flusters me. You’d be surprised at what I’ve taken from men that get to drinking, and I know how to handle it; I don’t get insulted.”
Perfidy
Lillian seems like a good possibility, but then an old employer wants her back. Gertrude is going to help out and fix it so that Lillian can come anyway, but then she doesn’t call and Lillian doesn’t call. After the matter of Ann Carberry, neither one of them ever calls Mrs. D again.
Mrs. D Reflects on Gertrude, Who Didn’t Work Out
She was always pleasant, but was often home with various diseases—colds, etc. Once, she stayed home because, thinking she was getting a cold, she took a heavy dose of physic and it gave her cramps in the stomach and brought on her “sickness” two weeks early. The next time she had an inflammation of the eye; she thought maybe it was a stye. It was terribly inflamed. The doctor put drops on it that stung terribly but helped. The doctor said not to go to her job for fear of infection. She felt fine but supposed she’d have to do what the doctor said.
Her husband had health problems, too. She talked a lot about his bad physical condition and his stopped-up bowels.
Then he got drafted. Well, that was that for her—she wouldn’t be working for me any more. He was set on making her stay with his relatives while he was gone and she was not strong enough to resist. She would just have to work for nothing in the boarding house and be part of family quarrels, which she hated and which made her ill. She was a very attractive and interesting personality. Any attractive white girl who was willing to do other people’s housework at a time like this was bound to be interesting for some reason.
Further Reflections, Including Annoying Things About Gertrude
She would leave the house in terrible shape: diapers on the floor, the bathroom strewn with everything, all the baby’s clothes, wet diapers, socks and shoes and unwashed rubber pants. The tub was dirty, the towels and washcloths and the baby’s playthings were all over, the soap was in the water, and the water was even still standing in the tub. She left thick cold soapy water in the washing machine and tubs, diapers out of the water, and the bucket was never upstairs.
She would make pudding using good eggs, when we were out of freshly made cookies.
She was always grabbing dish towels for everything, throwing them toward the cellar door when they were too dirty, along with others that had been used maybe once. She left ashes around in all sorts of dishes, such as the salt dishes.
Then she went and recommended a maid who was too old, feeble, and deaf for the job.
Mrs. D’s Work Habits
Mrs. D likes to start work as early in the morning as she can. Onc
e the children are taken care of, she sits down at her typewriter and begins to type. She types fast and steadily, and the sound is loud, the table rattling and the carriage bell ringing at the end of every line. There is only an occasional silence when she pauses to read over what she has just written. She makes many changes, which involve moving the carriage back a little, x-ing out the word or phrase, rolling the carriage down a little, and inserting an emendation above the line.
She makes a carbon copy of each page, and she types both her first drafts and the copies on cheap yellow paper, aligning a piece of yellow paper, a piece of carbon paper, and another piece of yellow paper, and rolling them together into the carriage. Her fingers, with their carefully applied clear nail polish, sometimes become smudged with ink from the typewriter ribbon or with carbon from the carbon paper.
Mrs. D sits at her worktable with good upright posture. She has full, dark-brown, medium-length hair with gentle curls in it and combed to one side. She has dark eyes, round and naturally rosy cheeks, an upturned nose, and nicely shaped lips to which she applies lipstick. She wears no other makeup except, occasionally, some powder when she goes out. She looks younger than she is. She dresses nicely, usually in a skirt, blouse, and cardigan, even when alone at the typewriter.
Mrs. D Makes Another Attempt
Mrs. D writes:
We are in the throes of trying to get a maid to take with us to the summer cottage.
The Summer Cottage
Mrs. D has found a reasonably cheap cottage close to the sea where they can spend the summer. It is not a very long drive from the college town. Mrs. D goes out to the place ahead of time and puts in a good-size garden. Because of the garden, they are allowed extra gas for the move out there. Gas has been rationed because of the war.
Once they are settled, Mrs. D urges friends to come stay with them. But these friends will probably take the train: there is now a ban on pleasure driving because of the shortage of gas. They are allowed to use the car if they are going to buy food, so they may plan a food-shopping trip around picking up a friend at the station. They are also allowed to use the car if they are going clamming.
Later in the summer, the ban on pleasure driving will be lifted and they will immediately drive to the ocean for a swim.
Drafts of a Letter to an Agency, Written from the Seaside
My dear Miss McAllister,
I find it impossible to keep Ann Carberry whom you sent me through Gertrude Hockaday last week. She has tried, and in many ways she is quite satisfactory. She keeps the kitchen in fine condition and enjoys figuring out ways to use the available food to make tasty meals. But this about uses up all her time and energy; she does not step out of the kitchen on some days except to take her afternoon rest.
Which leaves, of course, the main need unsatisfied: the care of the baby.
It has been necessary for me to do all the washing, and all of his care except for giving him his meals. And she is seventy years old.
Her age, her feebleness, and her deafness combine to make her quite unsuitable for this job
•
nor did she ever notice a full wastebasket standing at the head of the stairs.
She is a very sweet person, very eager to please. She seems to enjoy cooking. She likes to cook her specialties, such as Parker House rolls, and I think she would suit an elderly family who could afford to pay a high wage for the light work of which she
and in a place where there were no other more pressing duties
would be very welcome in a house where other pressing duties need not be neglected to make these treats, such as Parker House rolls. Because of these weaknesses, which made her obviously very fluttery and apprehensive, I had not the heart to break the news to her suddenly. I thank you for your kind cooperation with Gertrude in finding me any maid at all.
Two Weeks
Ann works for one week and is then given a week’s notice.
Some Other Annoying Things About Ann
She became dizzy-headed if she kept going all day.
She snored.
She panted when serving at the table.
Ann’s Parting Wisdom
Ann comes in with a very small tray and remarks: “They say an ounce of help is worth a pound of pity.”
The Brava
Mrs. D writes:
We now have a little Brava girl aged fourteen. She is colored, but not regarded as Negro—she must be treated as Portuguese.
She is wonderful with the baby and can do dishes and other simple things. So far, however, she has been very irregular in her comings.
But After the Brava
Mrs. D is distressed. She has no help. She cannot write. Her family requires a great deal of work, and she is with them too much. She confides to a friend:
I am without a smitch of hired help. I cannot even behave myself like a civilized being, much less do any writing. The main reason of course is overwork on my part.
And to another:
I am in a complete state of jitters, due to the search for a maid.
And to another:
We have been intending to get in touch with your friend but haven’t had company for quite a while because of our maid crisis. I should improve greatly this next year if I can only get some help. I am not too sanguine about that.
Family Finances
Mr. and Mrs. D, always short of money, have debts they must pay. One of their debts is to a friend named Bill. Bill himself is now in straitened circumstances and politely tells them that he must have the money back.
The two children are now enrolled in the same private school, one in fifth grade and the other in nursery school. Mrs. D asks the director for a tuition reduction, and he grants the children half scholarships.
Mrs. D Tries a High School Girl
Mrs. D writes:
We got a little high school girl but she was worse than nothing.
Mr. D Does Not Have Time to Write
Mr. D teaches three days a week, and on each day he teaches three classes. He has 150 themes to correct each week. His students are very bright.
The Englishwoman
One of Mr. D’s colleagues recommends a cleaning woman. Mrs. D writes:
With his tips as to her temperament, I was able to apply the right pressure when I called up, and now she is with us. Our fingers are crossed as we say it. She is—if I can believe my luck—exactly what we need. She likes to go ahead without any instruction and she adores to work for disorderly people because, as she says, “they appreciate coming in and finding things clean and neat.” She is English, experienced, quick, and able. Her name is Mrs. Langley.
All Goes Well, for a Time
Mrs. Langley is downstairs in the playroom ironing.
But Mrs. Langley Will Not Stay
Mrs. Langley has left us.
Miscarriage
Mrs. D has been trying to have another baby, but she miscarries early in the pregnancy. It is her third miscarriage. But she will not give up.
Our Splendid Marion
For a time they are joined by what Mrs. D considers a wonderful girl, a nineteen-year-old commercial-college student. She lifts an enormous load from their shoulders, but they worry because she seems to have a life of all work and no play and never sees boys.
Then she, too, goes on her way.
Mrs. D Sees a Doctor
Mrs. D consults a doctor about her trouble conceiving. She tells him that an earlier doctor had helped her to conceive by blowing some sort of gas into her.
Mr. and Mrs. D Are Both Writing
Mrs. D will be having a story published soon, and she has just finished writing another one, after working every day from nine thirty to three. As for Mr. D, he is not writing stories anymore, but he has begun writing articles.
They hope her latest story will sell, too, because they find themselves without much money.
Mrs. D Is Pregnant Again
Again Mrs. D places an ad, shorter this time:
COOK-HOUSEKEEPER�
��12 noon to early dinner, in considerate home. No washing, no Sunday work. $20 week. Tel. 2997.
Minnie Answers in Flowery Handwriting
Regarding the enclosed “ad” does it mean I may have a room in your house, or does it refer to one who has a home, and who would come in each week day to fill your needs? I did not just understand from the wording of the “ad” just the conditions so thought I’d inquire and if interested I’d like to hear from you if the position has not been taken and details of duties.
Minnie Will Be Given a Chance. She Writes to Accept
Your gracious letter at hand and I hope my earnest efforts may prove satisfactory, and of course I expect to consult with you as to your wishes regarding all things pertaining to your home management. My idea, after I become familiar with things, is to relieve you as much as I can, so you may have more freedom to care for your health, and other duties of your own. I very much appreciate the fact that you have not asked for references etc. as I prefer to come on my own merits, yet it is a gracious gesture on your part to receive into your home an entire stranger, with no introduction except our correspondence. I hope I may prove worthy of your confidence and that I may soon adjust myself to your house hold.