by Jae
“Why did they leave?” Giuliana asked as she lifted her pail of dirty water to carry it down the hall.
“It wasn’t their idea, that’s for sure. Mrs. Winthrop dismissed them.”
Whatever the reason for their dismissal, Giuliana didn’t want to repeat their mistake. “What did they do?”
“I’m not sure I should say,” Biddy whispered. She looked left and right as if to make sure no one could overhear them and then blurted, “They were dismissed for an indiscretion. You understand?”
“Indiscretion?”
“They were caught…together.” Biddy’s face turned the color of a ripe tomato.
“Oh. You mean, they…” She didn’t want to appear uncouth by saying out loud what exactly they might have been caught doing.
Biddy nodded. Her eyes shone with the excitement of being able to repeat a bit of gossip.
Well, Giuliana didn’t have to worry about that. No man had ever come calling on her. Compared to Miss Kate’s elegant beauty and her cream-colored complexion that made her skin resemble the finest porcelain, Giuliana looked like Sicilian peasant stock, with her mamma’s big hips and strong arms from working hard all her life. Her appearance didn’t draw the attention of American men, and she had neither money nor a wealthy family that would attract them in spite of her looks. Well, she found that she didn’t regret it at all. She missed Turi, but otherwise, she was content staying on her own, without male company. Love was something for upper-class women who could afford the luxury. She’d never found any man all that interesting anyway.
At eight o’clock, Biddy finally led her into the kitchen for a well-deserved break and a bite to eat. The kitchen was a hot hive of activity. The cook—a blonde, rosy-cheeked woman named Anna Tretow—hurried back and forth between the range and a work table, preparing breakfast for the family.
When Giuliana saw all the food, her eyes almost popped out of her head. Back home, breakfast had never been such a lavish affair. Half a dozen different jams sat on a tray while another held oatmeal and a pitcher of cream. Steam rose off freshly baked rolls, which were sitting next to glasses of freshly pressed orange juice. Strips of bacon and a bowl full of beaten eggs waited beside the frying pan.
How did Miss Kate keep her willowy figure if she ate like this every morning?
A bell rang, calling Biddy upstairs to help Mrs. Winthrop dress. A second set of heavier footsteps indicated that the butler was hurrying up the stairs too.
Giuliana stayed behind but wondered if she should go up too to assist Miss Kate. Being a servant came with a complex set of rules, it seemed, and she had no idea what they were. “I go up the stairs and help Miss Kate, yes?” she asked the cook.
“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Tretow answered. “Much to her mother’s dismay, she goes without a corset as often as she can get away with it, so she doesn’t usually need help getting dressed.”
Which was probably a good thing, seeing how Giuliana had never owned or worn a corset in her life and wouldn’t know what to do with it. But, she admitted to herself, she was a little disappointed anyway. She was curious to go to Miss Kate’s room and see all the beautiful things that she might own.
Giuliana took one of the rolls that had gotten too dark in the oven for herself, but before she could finish eating it, Mrs. Tretow shoved a plate piled high with bacon at her.
“Quick! Take it to the morning room before it gets cold.”
Carefully balancing the plate, Giuliana padded through the hall and entered the morning room. It seemed wasteful to have an entire room just for eating breakfast, but she had to admit that the view of the gardens behind the house was beautiful.
As she approached the table, Mrs. Winthrop—in a rose-colored dress that was different from the one she’d worn the day before—and a salt-and-pepper-haired man that had to be her husband kept conversing, completely ignoring her presence, as if Giuliana were part of the furnishings.
Miss Kate looked up from the snow-white napkin she’d just placed on her lap and gave Giuliana a small smile. A bruise marred the middle of her forehead.
Giuliana blanched and stumbled, nearly dropping the plate in the process. A hearty “minchia” escaped her and then made her pale even more. She could only hope that none of them understood Sicilian. Turi’s favorite curse word wasn’t fit for polite company.
She caught herself just in time before the entire plate, including the sizzling bacon, could slide onto Miss Kate’s lap. Quickly, she placed it on the table.
A single strip of bacon fell off the plate and stained the starched tablecloth.
Oh no!
Miss Kate pierced the errant piece of bacon with her fork, popped it into her mouth, and slid the serving plate over the stain before her parents could notice the mishap. One corner of her mouth curled up into a conspiratorial smile.
Giuliana breathed a sigh of relief and couldn’t help smiling back before hurrying out of the room. Outside, she leaned against the wall for a moment and wiped her brow. She was beginning to think she might not make a good maid. All the luxury surrounding her in the Winthrop mansion was making her nervous, and the harder she tried to make a good impression, the clumsier she became.
Once breakfast was over—thankfully, without further incident—Mr. Winthrop donned his fine wool coat and his black bowler hat and left the house. His wife went upstairs to take a bath while Miss Kate retreated to one of the downstairs rooms Giuliana hadn’t seen yet, maybe the back parlor or a music room.
Without her employers watching, the work went a lot better. She cleared the table in the morning room, dusted in Mr. Winthrop’s study, and polished the furniture in the drawing room.
Freshly bathed and in yet another dress, this one a buttery yellow, Mrs. Winthrop reappeared an hour later. “Make sure you run the sweeper over the carpets in the parlor, the study, the hall, and the staircase. I want them swept at least three times a week.”
The sweeper? Was she talking about a broom? “Yes, ma’am. I clean them always. Where is the…eh, sweeper?”
“In the cupboard under the stairs,” Mrs. Winthrop said and stepped past her on the way to the drawing room.
Giuliana walked over to the cupboard and opened it. To the left, it held a neat shelf filled with buckets, brushes, and other cleaning materials. Leaning against the right side were several brooms. She grabbed one of them—and then realized that it wasn’t a broom at all. The top of the device resembled a broom since it had a long handle too, but instead of bristles, it ended in a flat box. Was that the sweeper that Mrs. Winthrop had mentioned?
She peeked toward the drawing room, but disturbing Mrs. Winthrop to ask was a bad idea. She didn’t want her to think she’d hired a stupid girl who had never cleaned a house before.
Determined to figure it out, she pulled the device out of the cupboard and knelt to examine the lower end of the machine. Inside the box were two brushes mounted on a roller. If she pushed the sweeper along the floor, the brushes would rotate and the dirt would be swept up inside the box. What clever ideas people came up with!
Excited, she tried out the machine on the rug in the entry hall. At first, pushing and pulling the sweeper over the carpets was fun, but after a while, the device seemed to become heavier and heavier. It was tempting to skip the front parlor, which appeared more like a pristine showpiece designed to impress visitors than a room where the family spent much time. But the risk of getting caught was too high.
Instead of flicking on the electric light, she opened the green velvet curtains in the front parlor. Up here on the hill, the sun was already breaking through the morning fog that came in from the bay. She pushed the sweeper over the expensive-looking rug in front of the piano. One stubborn piece of lint refused to be swept up, no matter how often she ran the device over it. With a grunt, she knelt to pick it up.
The sun glinted off something in the corner of the room. Had one of the ladies lost a hatpin? Giuliana stood and walked over to examine it.
It wasn’t
a hatpin. Sparkling in the sun was a gold coin. When Giuliana bent and picked it up, she discovered that it was a half eagle.
Five dollars! That was more than she would earn in a week. So much money was lying around without anyone missing it! How could that be? Giuliana shook her head. She looked down at the coin in her hand and ran her thumb over it. Without her prompting, her mind provided a thousand things she could buy with that amount of extra money. It might even be enough for new pairs of shoes for her two youngest siblings.
As tempting as it was, the money wasn’t hers. It belonged to the Winthrops, no matter if they needed it or not. She dragged the carpet sweeper into the hall and put it back into the cupboard beneath the stairs. Her gaze went to the closed door of the drawing room. Should she bring Mrs. Winthrop the coin? But the lady of the house might not be too pleased at the interruption. Her kind daughter seemed a safer bet, so Giuliana went to the door behind which Miss Kate had disappeared earlier. It was the last room at the very end of the hall, opposite of the larder.
She knocked softly and then opened the door an inch and peeked in.
What was that? Unlike the other rooms in the house, which were lit by the new electric bulbs, this room was dark except for the glow of an amber kerosene lamp in one corner.
“No!” Miss Kate shouted from inside of the room. “Don’t open the—”
But it was too late. The door was already open.
“Drat! Now it’s ruined for sure!” Miss Kate’s eyes seemed to glow like coals in the amber light. “Never, ever come in here, do you understand?”
Giuliana flinched back at the unexpected anger. “I…I…I am sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Miss Kate said, visibly reining in her anger by taking several deep breaths. “It’s just that my work is sensitive to bright light.”
Ducking even more, Giuliana wanted to close the door and retreat, but Miss Kate grabbed hold of it.
“Now that you’re already here, you might as well come in and tell me what was so urgent.”
Giuliana hesitated in the doorway. “Is not urgent. I just—”
“Come on in.” Miss Kate flicked on the electric light and squinted into the sudden brightness.
Hesitantly, Giuliana shuffled inside and closed the door behind her. Rather than look at Miss Kate, she let her gaze wander around the room. It was tiny and looked as if it might have been converted from a second larder or even a laundry closet. A workbench took up most of the space. Several enamel trays were lined up on top of it, each filled with some kind of liquid. The smell of chemicals wafted up from them, dizzying Giuliana. A pair of tongs rested against the tray to the right, like the one the cook used in the kitchen. Small shelves along the back wall held brown bottles, which probably contained more chemicals. A kerosene lamp with an amber glass globe threw its warm light onto a mahogany box with dark red leather bellows. It took Giuliana a moment to recognize what it was: a camera.
“You are a fotografu…a photographer!” Open-mouthed, she stared at Miss Kate.
“I am.” Miss Kate beamed, her eyes sparkling.
“Madonna mia! And I broke your pictures, no?” Giuliana directed her gaze at her scuffed shoes. “I am so sorry. I did not mean to do that.”
“It’s all right,” Miss Kate said a second time. “It wasn’t that good to begin with. I’ll go out later and take another shot. It’ll be good practice.”
Giuliana slowly lifted her gaze up to Miss Kate’s face. Why was Miss Kate so nice to her? Was she always like that? Surely nothing Giuliana had done had earned her special treatment, especially not that bruise standing out on the fair skin of Miss Kate’s forehead.
“So,” Miss Kate said, “was there something you needed?”
“Oh.” Only now did Giuliana remember the coin still clutched in her fingers. She slowly lifted her hand and presented the half eagle on her palm. “I found this in the front parlor.”
Miss Kate groaned. “Not again.”
“What do you mean? You lose another coin too?”
“No. I probably shouldn’t tell you, but seeing as you passed the test…”
More and more, Giuliana was starting to feel the way she had when she’d first come to America, speaking just the few words of English she’d learned on the ship. “Test? I do not understand.”
“That’s what my mother does every time she hires a new maid. She places a coin in the corner of a room. If the girl doesn’t return it to her, she’s either lazy and skips the corners when she’s sweeping or she’s a thief.”
All of a sudden, it wasn’t just the chemicals making her dizzy. Giuliana gasped. “I would never take money not mine.”
Miss Kate smiled. “I’m glad you don’t. Finding a competent girl is such a hassle nowadays,” she added in a reasonably good imitation of her mother’s voice.
Laughter bubbled up from Giuliana’s chest, but she quickly bit it back. Miss Kate might be allowed to joke about her mother; Giuliana, however, wasn’t. For a moment, Miss Kate’s friendly, unconventional nature had almost made her forget her station. Don’t forget. Never forget, or you will end up like the maid and the chauffeur.
“I go and help Mrs. Tretow in the kitchen.” Not waiting for a response, she put the coin down on the workbench, backed out of the small room, and closed the door between them.
* * *
As always, Kate found her mother crocheting and sipping tea in the drawing room. “You can stop testing her.”
Her mother looked up from what might become a shawl. “Whatever do you mean, dear?”
Kate walked over and put the coin on the small, round table. “This is what I mean. She brought me the coin, so you can stop testing the poor girl.”
“Just wait until you marry and run a household of your own. Then you’ll understand why I’m doing it. A good wife has to protect her husband’s assets.”
Oh, so that’s why you’re spending Father’s money on a new dress every week. Kate bit back the words before they could slip out. Don’t be mean. She was the one who was unusual, not her mother. All of Kate’s childhood friends delighted in the newest fashion and would have willingly gone along not just with her mother’s shopping trips but also with her attempts to marry her off to the son of a well-to-do family.
“Being too friendly to the hired help is never a good idea,” her mother continued.
“How can it be wrong to be friendly?” Maybe if her mother were friendlier to the servants, they wouldn’t have to find a new maid every few months.
Her mother shook her head. “There’s no need to be cruel, but you have to keep in mind that these people are not like us. Most of them grew up in the dirt. They don’t care a whit about cleanliness and will try to get away with the least possible effort. You have to keep a close eye on them—and make sure they know. In fact…” She glanced at the golden pendant watch she wore. “If she wasn’t dawdling, Julie should be done dusting the parlor and the study by now. Let’s go see if she did a good enough job.”
As her mother strode from the room, Kate followed her. Not to learn how to run a household and deal with idle servants, but because she had a feeling she might need to intervene. Her need to protect their newest maid surprised her. Before, she had rarely gotten involved in the interactions her mother had with the servants. Must be the bump on your forehead. She chuckled to herself.
They found Giuliana just leaving the study, a feather duster in her hand.
“Have you dusted the entire room?” Kate’s mother asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, then let’s see.”
They all trooped back into the room.
Kate leaned against the doorframe and watched as her mother walked around the room, checking for dirt beneath the Persian carpet and running a white-gloved finger along the golden frame of Grandfather’s portrait on the wall. She held out her finger. No dust. Grudgingly, she nodded in Giuliana’s direction.
Just when Kate wanted to breathe a sigh of relief and leave the room,
her mother waved her over.
“Would you mind, dear? You’re taller and can reach the top shelf of the bookcase.”
Giuliana paled beneath her olive complexion. “I did not dust there, ma’am. Biddy…Obedience said she cleaned it on Monday, and the glass…it keeps the dust away, no?” She pointed at the shelf’s glass front.
“And that is exactly the reason why you need to keep a close eye on the servants,” her mother said to Kate in a triumphant tone. “They can’t think for themselves, so you’ll have to do it for them.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little too harsh, Mother?” Kate hadn’t missed the way Giuliana had flinched at practically being called dumb.
“Not at all.” Her mother turned to Giuliana. “If I say I want the furniture dusted, I want all the furniture dusted, no exceptions. Do you understand?”
Giuliana’s fingers tightened around the feather duster until her knuckles blanched. “Yes, ma’am. I understand. It will not happen again.”
“You’d better see that it doesn’t. I won’t employ an untidy girl.”
For a moment, a spark seemed to glimmer in Giuliana’s dark eyes, and she opened her mouth as if about to defend herself. But then she snapped her mouth shut and ducked her head. “Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am.”
Kate wanted to whisper an apology, but Giuliana slipped past her into the hall without looking up, her gaze fixed to the floor.
CHAPTER 5
Winthrop Residence
Nob Hill
San Francisco, California
March 31, 1906
For the rest of the week and the next one, Giuliana was on her guard every day, knowing Mrs. Winthrop was watching her every move, double-checking every bit of work she did. Working as a servant no longer seemed easier than selling crabs, but at least she’d been paid for the first time on Saturday.