Page 9 of The Harvey Girls

Six

Billie had a hunch that Charlotte had dropped the soup into that man’s lap on purpose, and the thought of it thrilled her. She’d learned that you had to deliver a bit of comeuppance every once in a while to teach someone a lesson or simply to keep your own spirits up.

Her mother took in laundry from one of the wealthier families in town, and once when the maid came to pick up the carefully washed and folded clothing and deliver the next load, the man of the house had come along to complain that in the previous batch, there had been a wrinkle ironed into the back of his waistcoat.

He announced that he felt it necessary to dock Lorna a nickel for her “lack of diligence.”

“An unseen wrinkle, for the sweet love of Jesus!” Lorna had railed as soon as he’d left—more about the insult to her skill than the nickel. She took it upon herself to put an extra stitch into the buttonholes of the man’s union suit that had been left for washing.

“Why’re you doing that?”

“Take him a good few minutes to get it off when he has to go, won’t it?” Lorna smirked.

Some weeks later, Billie was sorting through the family’s mending, and there was the union suit, ripped from neck to crotch. They laughed so hard that Billie had to retrieve a set of dry drawers for her mother.

“Well, he got me back and good,” Lorna said, wiping a last tear of laughter from her chin. “Made me pee myself, too!”

Billie understood that these acts should be small, untraceable, and private, as was necessary to avoid revenge. The soup event had been none of these.

Charlotte had publicly ruined a man’s suit, and not even on her own behalf.

She’d done it to avenge a showgirl with whom she’d likely never cross paths again.

It reminded her of Paul Revere risking life and limb on that cold April morning to alert townspeople he’d never met.

He didn’t have to do it. It was the injustice that spurred him to act.

The spurs of injustice were particularly sharp, in Billie’s experience.

She had wanted to say something to Charlotte that night: that she admired her bravery, or the like.

But by the time Charlotte had returned from brushing her teeth, homesickness had hit Billie like the Navajo Number Nine, and she was already starting to sniffle.

Charlotte huffed an annoyed little sigh and got into bed, and Billie was right back to hating the woman again.

Their mutual loathing only worsened with comments from the other girls about how noisy their room was at night.

Charlotte seemed to think it was all about Billie’s crying and had started shushing her, even though Billie took pains to sniffle into her pillow to the point where she’d nearly suffocated herself on occasion.

She retorted that it was all that yelling Charlotte did in her sleep.

(“No, not that!” and “Stop, stop , STOP!”—bossing some poor imaginary servant around, no doubt.) Billie had even thrown a hairbrush at her once in the middle of an unconscious tirade, but it only served to make Charlotte shriek at the top of her lungs as if she’d been stabbed.

That made it Billie’s fault, of course. Charlotte insisted she slept quietly, though Billie saw doubt behind those fierce brown eyes.

The following Monday, Billie was approached by Phyllis, who, though she had been at the Topeka Harvey House the longest, had never been promoted to head waitress. She was a bit of a sourpuss when she wasn’t dealing with customers, and Billie was scared of her.

“Your turn to wash the oyster shells.” Phyllis handed Billie a bucket brimming with the ghastly smelling remnants.

The oysters were served in shells so everyone would know they came from the sea, but Billie wasn’t sure how they actually grew.

She wondered why the other fish didn’t just eat them up the way they ate worms on a hook.

She had just finished dumping and refilling the enormous coffee urns, wiping down every square inch of her section, and resetting the silverware and bread plates at each place.

She’d been on her feet for thirteen hours and wanted nothing more than to take a hot bath and curl up in her nightgown and her mother’s green cardigan.

She sighed. “Where do I do it?”

“In back. I already set a rinsing bowl and towel out there for you, and a bucket to put the clean ones into.”

“Outside? It’s so cold!”

“Because of the smell. You’re lucky. It’s much harder in the winter when the water keeps freezing on you.” Phyllis turned quickly and took the stairs up to the girls’ dorm.

Billie got her coat, filled the heavy bucket with hot water and dish soap, and headed out behind the restaurant, where Phyllis had, as promised, laid out all the supplies.

She dragged over an old crate to sit on and began the bitter task of washing, rinsing, and drying each sharp shell and depositing it into a clean bowl.

Inside of fifteen minutes her hands were red and chapped from the dishwater, with several small nicks from the jagged oyster serving dishes.

Why did they have to be served in something with such sharp edges, anyway?

Why couldn’t they use those dainty little butter-pat bowls?

They were the perfect size and so much prettier.

Suddenly the back door of the kitchen flew open. “Did you take my stockings?” Charlotte demanded.

“No, of course not. Why would I take—”

“And what are you doing out here anyway?”

“As you can easily see if you’d bother to look, I’m washing the oyster shells.”

“What on earth for?”

“Because they have to be washed! We can’t serve oysters in dirty shells, now can we?”

Charlotte suddenly burst out laughing. It was an odd thing to see that somber face go wide with hilarity. For a moment Billie wondered if the woman had gone mad.

“You don’t reuse oyster shells!” Charlotte chortled. “The oysters grow inside them. It would be like… like reusing potato skins!” And she fell into another fit of laughter.

Billie’s hands had begun to throb and stiffen in the cold, but they were still limber enough to squeeze Charlotte’s neck, which was exactly what she wanted to do. “WELL, WHY DID PHYLLIS—”

Then it dawned on her, and she looked up just in time to see four or five girls retreat from the windows of the dorm above. But not Phyllis. She just stood there and waved.

“You can’t let her get to you.” It was a man’s voice. Billie turned to see Leif in the doorway. “They do this with all the new girls.”

“Then why didn’t they do it to her ?” Billie pointed at the still-chuckling Charlotte.

“Because she already knew about oysters. It wouldn’t have worked.” He picked up the heavy bucket. “You go on inside and get warm. I’ll clean this up. But, Billie, don’t show that you’re upset. That just makes it more fun for them.”

“He’s right,” said Charlotte, attempting—unsuccessfully—to stifle a grin.

“Don’t you dare speak to me!”

Billie picked up the bucket of clean shells and trudged upstairs.

Phyllis’s room was the first one on the left and it was empty.

Billie pulled back the bedsheets and spread the shells evenly from the pillow to the foot of the bed, flipped the sheets back over them, and smoothed the quilt.

“Sleep tight,” she murmured and headed for the bath.

An hour later when she heard the groan of annoyance from down the hall and the sound of a hundred shells being swept onto the floor, Billie smiled. It was the first time in a week she drifted to sleep without tears dampening her pillow.

The next morning when she came down to breakfast, Leif grinned at her, hazel eyes crinkling impishly. She couldn’t help but smile back, though she had no idea what she was smiling about. “What?” she asked.

“You know what,” he chuckled.

“Darned if I do.”

He leaned closer and murmured, “A bed full of oyster shells.”

Billie bit down on her lips to stifle her pride. “How’d you hear about it?” she whispered.

“Everyone knows. Phyllis is good and steamed.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t meant to humiliate Phyllis, only to teach her a lesson. Had she set herself up for revenge?

“Don’t worry. She knows she deserved it.”

This was somewhat comforting, but it was no assurance that Phyllis wouldn’t try to one-up her. “Will you keep an eye out for me?”

“I already do.” He leaned against the wooden counter and crossed his arms. “Why do you think it took her a whole week to collect that many shells? I kept throwing them out.”

“But why didn’t you warn me?”

“Because I thought I had her. Besides, it was fun.”

“What was fun?”

“Finding the shells and tossing them! Watching her start all over again, thinking no one knew what she was up to.”

“You’re a wily one!”

His face lit up with a grin, cheeks pink behind pale stubble. He really was quite handsome, Billie realized. Until now she’d been too overwhelmed with work and homesickness to pay much attention, but as Leif beamed at her, pleased with himself, she felt her breath go shallow.

“Billie!”

She spun around at the sound of her name to face Frances, the head waitress. “We’re getting some new girls in today. No more coffee for you. You’ll wait on customers at the lunch counter.” She wagged a finger menacingly. “And I expect no mistakes.”

Frances strode away, and Billie turned back to Leif.

She didn’t have anything particular to say, only wanted to catch his eye again.

His face was somehow… reassuring. Yes, that was it.

Not so much handsome as encouraging, and that was far more important.

She had to keep her mind on her work. No time for mooning about bonnie young men.

“You’ll do fine,” he said.

Very, very reassuring.

She made plenty of mistakes, but the errors were generally fixable. Eggs over easy, not poached. Liver with bacon, not onions. Each time she scurried back to the kitchen, one of the cooks would fry her up a new round, and it would then be expertly plated by Leif with a side order of encouragement.