Free Half broke horses: a true-life novel by Jeannette Walls Page B

terribly grand, ringing a little silver bell for me to bring in the tea when she had visitors, she wasn’t that bright.
    In fact, I wondered if anyone could really be such a dodo. Once a French woman with a toy poodle came for lunch, and when the dog started barking, the woman spoke to it in French. “That’s a smart dog,” Mim said. “I didn’t know dogs could speak French.”
    Mim also did crossword puzzles, constantly asking her husband the answers to simple clues, and when I made the mistake of answering one, she shot me a short, sharp look.
    After I’d been there two weeks, she called me into the kitchen. “This isn’t working out,” she said.
    I was stunned. I was never late, and I’d kept Mim’s house spotless. “Why?” I asked.
    “Your attitude.”
    “What did I say?”
    “Nothing. But I don’t like the way you look at me. You don’t seem to know your place. A maid should keep her head down.”
    I got another job as a maid pretty quickly, and although it was against my nature, I made a point of keeping my mouth shut and my head down. In the evenings, meanwhile, I went to school to get my diploma. There was no shame in doing hard work, but polishing silver for rich dunderheads was not my Purpose.
    Busy as I was, and pretty exhausted most of the time, I loved Chicago. It was bold and bawdy and very modern, though bitterly cold in the winter, with a wicked north wind that blew in off the lake. Women were marching for the right to vote, and I attended a couple of rallies with one of my roommates, Minnie Hanagan, a spunky Irish girl with green eyes and luxurious black hair who worked in a beer-bottling plant. Minnie never met a topic she didn’t have an opinion on or heard a comment she couldn’t interrupt. After working all day as a zip-lipped maid, keeping my thoughts to myself and my eyes on the ground, it was great to unwind with Minnie by arguing about politics, religion, and everything else under the sun. We double-dated a couple of times, factory boys squiring us around to the cheaper speakeasies, but they were usually either tonguetied or loutish. I had more fun talking to Minnie than I did to any of those fellows, and sometimes the two of us went off and danced by ourselves. Minnie Hanagan was the closest thing I’d ever had to a genuine friend.
    Minnie asked me what my birthday was, and when it rolled around— I was turning twenty-one—she gave me a tube of dark red lipstick. It was all she could afford, she said, but we could make ourselves up to look like real ladies and go to one of the big department stores, where we’d have fun trying on all the things we’d be able to buy one of these days. I’d never been one for makeup—few women were in ranch country—but Minnie applied it for me, rubbing a dab into my cheeks as well, and darned if I didn’t look a bit like a stockbroker’s wife.
    Minnie led me through the department store. It was as big as a cathedral, with vaulted ceilings, stained glass windows, pneumatic tubes that whooshed the customers’ money from floor to floor, and aisle after aisle after aisle of gloves, furs, shoes, and anything else you could possibly imagine buying. We stopped at the hat department, and Minnie had me try on one after another—little hats, big hats, hats with feathers, hats with veils or bows, hats with artificial flowers arranged along the wide brims. As she sat each one on my head, she’d evaluate it—too old-fashioned, too much brim, hides your eyes, this one belongs in your closet—and as the hats piled up on the counter, a salesclerk came over.
    “Are you girls able to find anything in your price range?” she asked with a cold smile.
    I felt a little flustered. “Not really,” I said.
    “Then maybe you’re in the wrong store,” she said.
    Minnie stared at the woman square on. “Price isn’t the problem,” she said. “The problem is finding something up-to-date in this dowdy stock. Lily, let’s try Carson Pirie