The piercing shriek of the factory whistle at 4:30 a.m. was the loudest sound she had ever heard. It made her teeth ache. She lifted her head from the pillow, blinking at the sight of girls flinging themselves out of bed, pulling off nightdresses, putting on blue work shifts, and heading for the door. No washing up? She saw a basin and pitcher behind the door, but no one approached it.
“You’re late already, hurry up.” The lighthearted voice of the night before was husky in the morning chill. She looked into Lovey’s face, which didn’t quite match what she had imagined in the dark. It was all motion: thin and lively, not exactly pretty, but with a mouth that smiled easily and eyes that flicked restlessly about. She looked capable of switching moods with great speed. Right now, her eyes showed impatience.
“Breakfast, rotten or not, in five minutes,” Lovey said, clapping her hands together. “I can see I’m going to have to push you along.”
With a twinge of annoyance, Alice pulled on the smock she had been issued last night and ran her fingers through her long, chocolate-brown hair. “Nobody has to push me along. I’m ready,” she said.
Lovey shook her head. “Pull your hair up, twist it tight. Here’s a knitting needle to hold it.” She grabbed a needle from a bag filled with yarn and held out her hand.
“I don’t like braiding my hair up.” Really, who was this person ordering her around?
Lovey’s eyes darkened. “Just do it.”
Alice jammed the needle through her sloppily twisted bun with more force than necessary. She wasn’t going to get in an argument with anyone on her first day.
The boardinghouse dining room, papered in a tight gold-and-brown windowpane pattern, was immense and claustrophobic at the same time. On the narrow mantel, perched perilously close to the edge, sat a worn-looking chiming clock. A watercolor of a child playing with a rag doll hung slightly askew next to the swinging door that led to the kitchen. There were five tables covered in oilcloth, with up to ten girls from each of the dormitories squeezed in, chattering at the top of their voices as they took turns ladling out breakfast from a tureen filled with pumpkin mush. A kitchen girl was squeezing through the crowd handing out slabs of fried codfish. Alice looked around and saw not a single seat was empty.
“There’s quite a few of us at number fifty-two, six to each dormitory. I don’t know half of them, but we’re all about the same age. How old are you?”
“I turned twenty last week,” Alice said.
“Ah, I’m an old lady, then. I’m twenty-three.” Lovey nodded toward the table. “Just nudge somebody over, only ten minutes for breakfast,” she said. “Move over, Tilda, make room for Alice.” She gave the placid, plump Tilda a small shove, tipping the chair. Tilda almost fell off.
“You can be so rude,” Tilda said indignantly.
“If your bottom weren’t so big, there’d be room for two,” Lovey murmured.
A sudden sharp voice cut through the chatter. “That’s enough from you, Lovey.” A large, pale woman emerged from the kitchen. Her chin looked permanently dusted with fine, dark hair, and her nose was round as a potato. She planted herself across the kitchen entrance. “We’ve got a new girl this morning, so show your manners.” She nodded in Alice’s direction. “It’s Alice Barrow, right?”
Alice nodded.
“Your papers say you’ve worked spinning and weaving on hand looms.”
Alice nodded again, quickly. “I’m quite good at it,” she said.
“Don’t get overconfident; running these machines is much harder than handwork. The foreman said to tell you you’re being tried out on the looms today. Tilda will teach you.” The woman’s gaze swept now around the table. “So what’s the most important thing she should know? Who wants to answer?” After a pause, “Don’t all jump up at once, now.”
“Make sure the bobbin doesn’t run out of thread; if it does you have to stop the machine, and that’s money lost,” Tilda said.
“Your money gets docked, too,” Lovey murmured to Alice. “Fewer jingling coppers in the paymaster’s money box.”
“Who is she?” Alice asked, once the woman was out of earshot.
“That’s Mrs. Holloway, the house mistress. She worked the looms until she got too old, so now she keeps busy making a ton of rules. You break them, you are out.”
Almost on cue, Mrs. Holloway turned back and pointed to a cardboard sign hanging next to the fireplace. “There are the rules,” she said. “Read them and heed them. And know this—we’ll have no loose girls at Lowell. Your conduct here at the mill and in town will be watched. And church is mandatory, Saint Anne’s Episcopal.”