A droplet of sweat rhythmically swayed back and forth with each scrub of the stiff brush on her employer’s floor. Intermittently she coughed and pushed back a few loose strands of dark brown hair. Cleaning, feeding, and looking after the children of 1030 5th Avenue, New York City, she was subject to every cold with which they were afflicted. She believed her immune system wasn’t as strong as the Americans. Politics helped occupy her mind during the time spent in manual drudgery. Seventeen-year-old Beatrice hoped that Al Smith would become the next president. She couldn’t vote, but she followed politics. Perhaps more so than follow them, she visualized the personalities behind the parties. Democrat Smith was for labor, housing, and public works. He wanted to repeal the 18th amendment. Moreover, he was a good Catholic––the first to ever be nominated to run for president. Beatrice finally lived in a place where she could read the papers, and after work she devoured them in her quarters.

One brisk November in New York, Beatrice readied her employer’s children for the park. They were always so polite and good-natured, as were their parents. She watched the children play, embraced them when they ran to her, and wiped the dirt from their faces. Beatrice leaned against the cool back of a park bench and listened to a distant motor. She looked up and saw a small-engine plane. Behind it flew an emphatic banner declaring, “HOOVER WINS!!!” They still won’t put a Catholic in the White House, she thought.

Thoroughly disappointed, she continued with her life in the city, mailing weekly letters containing small sums of money to her father in Galway.

Dear Father,

Here is the money for this week, just a couple dollars, but I’ll be getting more soon as I learn how to do up all the beds and set the table for guests way mistress likes them. I know you’re awfully lonely over there. I miss you terribly, though you were right in sending me off. You wouldn’t believe all the things they’ve got here for leisure, let alone the size of the place…

Her father would receive the letter alone in the little white house without even a wooden floor to sweep. Beatrice’s mother had died when she was a young girl, and Mary, her older sister, had immigrated to England. Beatrice was sorely missed, as she had been both a help and a comfort to the widower.

Beatrice looked down into the deep cauldron at just enough chicken stew for herself and her father. The pot simmered over the hearth as her father came out of the pasture. He drew a pail full of water from the well and washed his hands and face before walking into the house.

“Hellooo, Bea! Cookin’ up something special are ya?”

“Yes, father, stew.”

“Smells delicious. Anything come for me today? Rent collector stop in?”

Beatrice’s face delicately saddened as she told her father, “Well, no, no… but, Aunt Mary sent another letter, with three American quarters this time.”

He looked at the floor, quietly sliding his hand into one pocket as he sat down at the table.

“Did she now? Well, that’s grand, Beatrice. You’ll be off in no time, no more chicken stew for you! May I read it?”

“Certainly, father.” Beatrice handed over the one-page letter and set the quarters on the table.

May 5, 1927

Dear Bea,

It’s cold here today, and real wet. The rent seems to be more each week, but I managed to save you these. The last funeral really took a lot from us. Can’t get over how both my babies have gone on to the next world without me. We’ll be glad to have you. With the money it looks like September will be time for you to come. That’ll be good, then you won’t catch cold looking for work. Give your father my love…

Beatrice brought her father a bowl of stew and asked, “Do you think it’s true what they say about America, that it’s warmer there because the sky’s closer to the ground?”

“I don’t know, but you’ll be able to tell me in under half a year, Bea… let’s say grace.”

In mid-September she left for the boat with her father. Boarding with her were several of her Galway neighbors. Once aboard she waved again to father. She was sad but ready to leave her country, the bright green grass and the little white cottage surrounded by vegetables and chickens.

Shortly after departure several of her neighbors who had lived inland swayed up to the deck and vomited over the side of the boat. Beatrice, strong and used to the sea, never did get seasick. She stretched her legs on the deck or lay in her bunk in steerage and waited. On the clear nights of May 20th and 21st, every able passenger stood on the deck surrounded by mid-Atlantic blackness, their lives in transition, watching for the lights of Charles Lindbergh’s airplane. It would be the first transatlantic flight. Later she would be impressed that he hadn’t even finished his four sandwiches in the long 32 hours and only occasionally nodded off to sleep, always waking with a start.

Arriving in New York, Beatrice’s papers were inspected and proved to be authentic. She was examined and tested for infectious diseases. The eye doctor took out a short dowel rod with a device drilled into it that was once used to attach buttonhooks to coats. Using the metal hook he gingerly lifted her eyelid. Not seeing any red round swelling or white scarring, the doctor blandly said to his assistant, “All clear, no trachoma, stamp her papers and send her through.”

Carrying a suitcase containing only underwear and a spare dress she sat on a wooden bench and waited for Aunt Mary.

“Bea? Bea?”

“It’s me, Aunt Mary––here!”

“Made it all right, I gather. Let’s get on, we’ve got to make dinner, and I still have to do a few chores before your uncle gets home.”

Beatrice hurried along next to her Aunt and boarded the streetcar. Squeezed on a crowded bench, she silently gazed up at the buildings they passed on her first streetcar ride through New York. Aunt Mary sporadically chattered about the week’s banalities and the unemployment office where Beatrice should go to find a job. Gradually the grandeur and height of the buildings lessened as their dilapidation grew.

After eating dinner with her Aunt and Uncle, Beatrice soundly slept through her first American night. She needed her rest in order to look for work, hard work, in the morning.

The next morning Aunt Mary briskly set a cup of coffee and a piece of toast in front of her and her uncle. During breakfast Aunt Mary recited the directions to the unemployment office. Beatrice listened intently and recited them back.

A few days later she began working as a maid in an upper-middle-class residence in order to learn the etiquette and the nuances of housework that she would need in upper-class homes. The experience was like going to a series of finishing schools where the help, rather than rich girls, were polished enough to be presentable. In each establishment she was employed, the walls contained more wallpaper and less whitewash, a more intricately adorned parlor, more cars and servants, but to her it meant a few more pennies and more trips taking the children to the park or vaudeville theatre.

Her first employers were German and were known in maids’ communities for working the girls especially hard.

Seven hours one day per week she spent on her hands and knees washing, drying, and waxing the floors. One of the toughest days of the week was laundry day. She scrubbed the family’s clothes on a washboard and hand wrung them. Often, she worked so late that it was useless to go back to Aunt Mary’s. She stayed over at her employers, making her available at any hour for more work.

On the weekends she could spend her small amount of free time and perhaps the few pennies that she kept for herself after subtracting the money she sent to her father and spent on necessities.

Aunt Mary had promised her brother in Ireland that she would watch closely over Beatrice, so she carefully questioned her niece before she left for a night out with her friends. On the weekends she was allowed to go to Coney Island with some of her pals, who were also household help. The year that she arrived, America’s first wooden roller coaster was built, The Cyclone, for 25 cents per ride. Beatrice cautiously approached it. She waited in line with her girlfriends. As they got into their wooden car, each girl tightly grasped the other’s hand, and they shot down the wooden rails. In the summer they would go to the beach all day for free.

Occasionally, Irish dances were held. At the dances Aunt Mary realized that her young niece might be courted by young men, but she still allowed her to go. It was simple to garner permission for these events. For many of the dances, she was escorted by a fellow whom she called a “real Yank”––Thomas Cornell. He didn’t know any of the dances and preferred to listen to baseball on the radio but tried his best to please his young Irish gal.

These quick distractions would soon end. The next Monday she would get up early from her bed at Aunt Mary’s and go back to work. Three years of work and she had become a maid in a mansion on 5th avenue. One afternoon a fellow maid was swooning in the kitchen and was about to fall as the man of the house came in. Beatrice carefully watched what was going on, a bit worried for her companion, but more worried about the consequences of helping her. Her employer watched Marie’s face become sweaty and her skin more pale.

“I’m going for the doctor! There’s something wrong with Marie… she… she looks just terrible,” he called to his wife.

The man returned with a doctor who quickly examined the young girl, made a disapproving face and said, “The only sickness Marie’s got came from the bottle.”

Beatrice felt the weight of her chores increase as she heard, “Get out of here!! Out on the street where you belong!”

A young immigrant woman must walk a fine line to “keep her character” in the New World.