1 - Start of Something New

Sheila begins

“Next stop… San Francisco!” was the long, drawn out yell Bess heard that woke her. The man across from her in the train was still reading his paper, and the fat woman across the aisle still had her head lolling on her chest. She looked out the window again.

At the station, the steam rolled in swirls around the windows while I waited for the other passengers to inch out of the crowded aisle. I didn’t feel like becoming another ant in the mass just yet. I just gripped the handle on my bag and waited as the world outside kept up its chaos. Even now, I wasn’t sure I was ready for this. But whether or not I was ready or not… it was ready for me.

When I finally found myself on the station platform, I was still surrounded by masses. Dozens of porters with almond-shaped eyes and long braided pigtails ran back and forth with luggage. Bells clanged from other trains and close to everyone on that platform seemed to be talking.

Someone appeared by my elbow and said something. It was one of the porters, complete with a shining grin.

I raised my voice. “Pardon?”

He spoke again. I still couldn’t understand. I leaned in closer. “Say again?!”

“Do… You… Need… Help?”

I blinked once. “Oh. Yes.” I rummaged around in my bag before I came up with a paper, obviously folded and refolded.

I shouted across the million other sounds: “Do you know where this is?” I asked as I handed him the paper.

He took it and nodded, then leaned toward me, raising his voice. “Boarding house of Mrs. Summers. Go out to the street, right, then at the factory turn left. Keep straight for long, long way… then turn right at Chinese restaurant and left at Bank and boarding house is on third street.”

I nodded, thanked the man, and left.

I had no idea what he had just said. But I wasn’t going to try to ask again. So I headed to the street. How badly could I get lost anyway… was it to the left or right that I was supposed to turn…

I decided to take the right; since that was the only direction I could see anything remotely resembling a factory. So this was San Francisco. It sure didn’t smell like much. I coughed and decided to try breathing out of my mouth. Reaching the factory, I rotated my shoulders and switched my bag between hands. That distinct feeling of being lost that had been hanging around for days settled over me again… This should be interesting…

Two hours later I pushed my hair out of my eyes and turned around a last street. It should be noted that I hate asking directions. However, on this occasion, after wandering around for an hour, I had been forced to do so.  The first person I accosted had stared at me blankly, pointed in an obscure direction, and hurried off.

Thus quelled, I wandered around for another set of indeterminate minutes before I stormed a hat shop where I had seen a friendly looking plump lady through the window. She had looked me up and down and then bustled off, returning with a step by step list of directions. A snatch of conversation followed me out into the street: “…Poor dear… looked so lost… passed the shop ten times…”

At any rate, I had found it. Or was about to. From the street number, it seemed that I was going to have to hike up a steep hill to get to “it”... my new boarding house. Or home… Well, it was yet to be discovered if it would be “home”, but we would see... wouldn’t we…

With that, I trekked up the hill, noting the street numbers of the sets of large brick buildings that seemed to lean into each other for support on the way up the hill. I passed a 21… a 33… a 41… and finally, after a great deal of panting, number 55. I leaned against the step post and caught my breath, then caught up my bag, climbed up the five steps, and rang the buzzer.

I caught my reflection in the glass paneled front door and was in the middle of patting my hair down and beating the dust out of my skirt when the door opened. I shot back up and stuck my hand out of the cloud I had created.

“Bess Hiram, here to see Mrs. Summers for a room. I have a recommendation, and I believe my aunt contacted her…”

A silver-haired gentlewoman coughed delicately and returned my handshake dubiously as she peered at me.

“I am Mrs. Summers, and your aunt did… ahrm… contact me about a young lady requesting a room. Come in, please.”

As I and my bag entered the foyer, Mrs. Summers motioned airily to a small sitting room on the side and I followed her in.

“We’ve had a large influx of new personages into San Francisco, so I’m afraid I can only offer you a double room with a roommate.” Mrs. Summers said as she motioned me into a chair.

I nodded. “That will be fine. Will the rate be cheaper?”

Mrs. Summers made a wry face briefly. “We can arrange a small discount. However, the other girl occupying the room is a nice sort of young lady and I’m sure the arrangement will be comfortable…”

I discreetly glanced around the room while she continued. It was a bit shadowy, seemed to have been kept largely as a Victorian parlor, and there was a somber grandfather clock that stood impressively and ticked near the entrance from the foyer. It was neat and decently comfortable, I thought. Not too bad…

“…Breakfast and dinner will be served at 7 and 6 o’clock. Lunch is not provided. No visitors after ten, and of course, no male callers will be allowed upstairs. I suppose you would like to see your room?”

“Yes, please.” I nodded emphatically and stood, picking up my bag.

“This way.” Intoned Mrs. Summers, and rustled into the foyer and up the staircase.

At the end of the hall near the front of the house, she jingled a key from her waist and pushed open a door.

“Miss Lachey is off at work right now. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll introduce you to the others at dinner time, since they are almost all away at this time. There’s about 15 of us.”

I thanked her as she left and scoped out the room. After assuring myself of the empty bed, I collapsed on it, bouncing. What a day. A small, rose-colored clock ticked silently away on a bureau. It was still early… just after one o’clock. I had been on the train for two days. Arrived at the station at eleven, and wandered around for hours before finding my little spot in San Francisco. It was so hard to keep my eyes open with that sun beating into the room…

The sun was just coming up and seeping into my eyelids as the little kids ran around slamming doors and windows in the hall… Nonna slammed one of my books shut, just like she did every morning to wake me up… and then again…

“Sono svelgio! I’m up! I’m awake!” I yelled as I bolted up and scowled at…

A very startled looking red-head was staring at me. I blinked. She seemed to be in the middle of picking a stack of scattered books up off the floor near the bureau.

The door opened and a dark head poked itself in, followed by a blonde. Two pairs of eyes peeked around the room as I glanced crazily back and forth between them and the red-head.

“…Hi…” Red-head’s mouth was screwed up at a funny little angle.

“…Hi…” I responded, and then grimaced. My voice had that gravelly note to it that it always did in the morning… Except… it wasn’t morning… the clock pointed at 5, and the sun, instead of brightly lighting the airy room, was lengthening the shadows.

Red coughed. “You must be Bess Hiram… Mrs. Summers said we would be roommates. I’m Sheila Lachey.”

I felt an impish grin on my face. “Well, if I’m not Bess Hiram, you are probably about to be murdered by a homeless wench off the street.”

The one with brown hair opened the door all the way and bounced in as Sheila blinked.

“Murderer’s don’t fall asleep on the job.” She said, and flopped onto the other bed. “I’m Kay; room across the hall with Bridgette.” The indicated blonde draped across the door frame waved languidly.

Sheila straightened with her pile of books and jumped into the conversation before Kay opened her mouth again.

“Sorry about waking you up, I was trying to get a book and they all toppled off at the same time.” She said as she laid them in a tall stack on the bureau. “What did you yell about?”

I laughed, sheepish. “I forgot where I was, I guess. My grandmother always knocked things around to wake me up in the morning.”

The blonde, Bridgette, spoke up. “What did you say, though?”

I blinked. “What did I say?”

“Sono… something.” Kay inserted helpfully.

“Oh. Sono svelgio. It’s ‘I’m awake’ in Italian. My grandmother is an Italian Jew and doesn’t speak English very well… so we all speak Italian… we all yell a lot, too…”

Bridgette snickered. “We noticed…”

Kay bounced again. “Well. Are you unpacked? Need help? Want to wash up? Supper’s in a half hour.”

I shot an amused look at Sheila, whose mouth twitched, then kicked my bag with a dusty shoe. “This is all I’ve got. Well, and a small trunk coming later.”

I hopped off the bed and dumped the contents of the carpet bag out where I had been sitting. Three pairs of curious eyes poked about the meager scrambled collection on the sun-bleached bed. It wasn’t much, I had to admit. Not much to arouse female admiration, at least… Not that any male admiration would be aroused, either… but I doubted they would have been as curious about the contents of by bag… Just some books, a few shirts, extra skirt, etc, etc.

Sheila opened up a drawer in the bureau. “There’s empty drawers below here, and then in the armoire over in the cubby hole over there, we can scoot my things to the side when your trunk gets here.”

Half an hour later, when my things were stowed away, and all four of the group of us were un-dusted, combed out, and washed up, a shrill bell made me jump. Sheila’s mouth twitched again. I wondered if she ever really gave a satisfying laugh at you…

“That’d be supper.” Bridgette said, poking her head in again.

The stairs were conquered, and a maze of short halls presented to confuse me before I ended up in the dining room, trotting behind Sheila’s elbow.

Supper, complete with potatoes, introductions, a menagerie of names, and a blessing from Mrs. Summers, was a confusing affair to my travel-muddled head.

The porch and the small sitting rooms in the front of the house seemed to be a gathering place for the few free hours everyone had, unless they were meeting boys or going off to the movies. I found myself sitting on the steps, absorbing the atmosphere in this different place.

All the houses on the steep, narrow, street were uniform. Red and brick, short steps reaching up to small porches, and large windows on the second stories. There was a rather foul smell that pervaded the air, but the breeze, when it blew in from what I assumed was the ocean, carried a fresh, fishy smell that made my nose tingle with interest. Fresh and fishy. I laughed to myself. What an oxymoron. But it’s true! The smell conjured up images of ocean stretching from here to Singapore and huge rolling waves on stormy nights tossing around massive ships like little pea hulls. Then on calm days, white sails dotting the bottomless breadth, skipping across that water like some kind of kite.

“So.” A girl named Florence plopped down next to me, green eyes sparkling with curiosity. “What are you here for?”

“To get a job.”

“Isn’t everybody. What do you do?”

“A lot of things. I can sew, take dictation in shorthand, type…”

“Oh! How about a secretarial job. Sheila was mentioning one the other day… Sheila!”

Sheila’s red head popped up, almost glowing with the setting sun behind it. “What?”

“What was that job you were talking about the other day? The one with old what’s-his-face on the dock down the block from you?”

“Oh… the one with Magnus? Yeah, down on the docks. Fishery looking for a secretary… Want’s somebody to get the sales end organized, I expect. Why?”

“Bess here works as a secretary. Give her the address, will you?”

Sheila glanced at me. “Sure thing. Remind me when we get upstairs. Sure hope you don’t mind the smell of fish…”

And with that, she disappeared behind the chair again.

After drilling me for a few more minutes, Florence, or Flo, as she preferred, seemed to get bored and went to find someone else, leaving me to bask in the silence of street. One by one, the streetlights flickered on, and house by house, yellow light began issuing from windows. I’d rather sit and watch things happen, anyway. I was a horrible conversationalist. I could never think of anything to say unless I was talking to myself…

It was round about then that dusk finally ended and the dark began. Sheila appeared from her chair and looked at me.

“Coming up?” she asked, waving her book.

“Of course.” I said, and hopped up, following her through the door. Upstairs, a low sing-song of conversations echoed through the halls, with girls coming out of the bathroom with wet hair, toothbrushes, and bottles of face potion, in turn.

Back in our room, as I pulled my nightgown over my head, I asked Sheila “So, what about this secretary job?”

She was brushing her hair. “Well, it’s down at the docks from where I work, for a fishery run by a Mr. Magnus. They all call him Sol. He’s… well… a bit ferocious sometimes, but all in all not too bad. They’re looking for someone to get their business and paperwork organized. The men and all that aren’t too depraved.”

I wrestled with the nightgown some more and finally managed to overpower it, then pulled back the covers on the bed.

Sheila finished brushing her hair and bounded into her bed, “I’ll show you where it is tomorrow on the way to work.” And the light flicked out.

I sighed and wriggled under the covers. I didn’t feel the least bit sleepy. That was the thing about falling asleep in the middle of the day… you never felt sleepy when you needed to afterwards… that, and everything that had come before felt like a dream.

Which it did. That long train ride from her home and its overflowing roof, then the trek through the new city and the hordes of new people. It all had a very surreal quality that Bess’ mind kept spinning for hours after the light had flicked off and Sheila’s breathing slowly regulated itself in the other bed. Her eyes followed the light of the moon across the ceiling, around the echoes of shadows of the furniture in this new room, and to reassure herself that it wasn’t a dream, at her tousled black hair and eyes in the bureau mirror… until finally she drifted to sleep…

Author's Note

Does it sound forced?

Reviews

[Priya]

Very well written :) I see you were just being modest when you told me that you find it difficult to characterize and to write dialogues well. This chapter proves the opposite. I find you skilled in describing activities that people are wont to do in real life. I could put myself in Bess's shoes.
I also liked the subtle humor running through the piece. God knows I love humor in fiction :) "“…Poor dear… looked so lost… passed the shop ten times…”, that line in particular had me giggling!
Overall, a well written story, not forced at all, which leaves me wanting to read more. Nice job!

[Ellis Vervain]

Not forced but a bit all-over-the-place, for an opening chapter. Doesn't capture me as I think it could. Unless, the idea is to create the feeling of 'new place, taking a lot in, culture shock, etc.' then it works well! Will read the second chapter and see if it pulls together! Hope that's not too forward! :-)

[Lauren]

In general, I think you write beautifully and you truly captured the girl’s emotions of feeling out of place with this chapter. Also, the teenage, maybe early twenties girls seemed very realistic. The italicizing of her thoughts was weird. Here are some notes are specific lines: There are a few lines that I find to be particularly strong, such as, “Whether or not I was ready, it was ready for me.” I find it interesting that you are so subtly describing Asians. Is that because the character is not familiar with that racial group? The way you slightly added improper grammar to the Asian’s sentences was great, too. The line, about being forced to ask for directions seemed very awkward. There were a few lines like that where the reader already knew what you were explicitly telling them. I really don’t know this, I’m just questioning it, so please ask someone else if I’m right or wrong: she said Victorian parlor, but I have to wonder if they used the word, Victorian, right after the Victorian era. For example, they didn’t use the word World War One during the war, but they did use the term Cold War in the 1950s. Great job! I do hope you’ll be interested in reading some of my historical fiction.

[Austin H.]

By turn of the century, and given the context, I'm assuming it's turn of the 19th into the 20th. You've used an interesting combination of first-person and third. So far, I see it as serving to help guide the reader. Which is good. I use a similar method, although I usually do third-person completely. I've never really understood how male writers could write from a female perspective. I myself find the thought challenging. I'm not aware if you've done it before, but I do look forward to how you pull it off. As to the issue of sounding forced, the answer is no. The usual set of questions one has when reading a book for the first time (who is this, what's their story, why are they doing what they are, etc) have arisen quite nicely in my mind. I shall look forward.

[Carmen-Rose McGill]

Maybe it is the fact that both of our books include a girl from the turn of the century finding a hom e and job in a foreign place, but I quite like this. It doesn't sound forced at all, and I like the way that you describe life in a lodging house. Keep writing, and I will keep reading!

[Leigh]

No it doesnt sound forced and makes good sense, I like it please keep writing

[Wendy Seames Garner]

OK, I went back to see if you had any other writing and I see this is a book that takes place at the turn of the century.

[Wendy Seames Garner]

Very nicely written. Is this historical fiction- maybe a romance novel? You don't mention the time period of this story, but I assume it is from sometime in the past. Just one thing: You have Bess saying "For sure" which is a modern day term.