I felt meek on my first day at the factory. Ruthie always says she would’ve thought it was a doe walking in if I hadn’t had red lipstick on. I was not like the other girls then, just proper and pretty, that’s all. My momma taught me that a girl should always look pretty. Nothing else, just pretty. I knew no better than to believe her then. Now I know that there are so many other things a girl should always be.
My momma thinks it’s disgraceful, me working here in a factory like this. A woman’s place is at home with her children, she says all proper again and again, like she is so much better than me because she stayed at home and played pretty all day while my papa did the real work, the productive stuff.
It always makes me angry. Harlen will kill the Nazis a little easier and when he comes back home little Leo can have a daddy, I tell her, all because of me, cause I’m making these planes for him to fly. I’m keeping him alive, momma, what did you do for papa that’s like that? And then she always gets mad and I have to say sorry, I didn’t mean it.
The girls at the factory taught me how to stand up for myself like that. Ruthie was my first friend and she’s taught me the most. I walked in the first day and saw her, all lipstick and big hips and honey-rich voice, and she intimidated me so much I nearly turned around and left. She walked over and took me by the arm when she saw me standing by the door, smiling the way you smile when you talk to a child. You new here, honey? her voice sung. That’s alright. C’mere and I’ll show you the ropes.
The first thing she did was show me how to use a drill. I’d never used a drill before. As Ruthie handed it to me, the first thing I thought of was my mother’s face, weeping over my loss of propriety, and my father next to her, all stern and disappointed like the sharp-jawed fathers in movies. The image nearly kept me from taking it. I wanted to run away and go back home to little Leo, but when I paused too long and Ruthie raised a well-manicured eyebrow at me, I thought of my baby and their father and took the heavy tool from her hands.
She led me over to one of the airplanes, big and huge and majestic against the harsh grey of the factory walls, and Ruthie invited me to sit in the small pilot’s seat as she went over to get her own big contraption and show me the magic of the tool. I peeked over to the side of the plane, thinking about my Harlan sitting here sometime soon, and it made me feel a little better, a little less guilty. Her face was relaxed as I sat in awe of her, so pretty and with such a big man’s tool in her hands, and when she was finished with the nails on the plane she said it was my turn to do one. I spotted the callouses on her hands and felt self-conscious.
All the other women paused from their work, taking a moment to look at me, some of them sniggering and the negro one in the corner trying to look all kind and inspiring at me. The negro one was Mary Janelle and she is very nice and I love her now but I would never tell my mother that. I did what Ruthie did, her watchful eye looming over me, positioning a nail and driving it into the metal with my new contraption that Harlan would’ve loved and the thought of him flying my work and it serving him well and my little baby seeing his father made my soft hands steady. There was a big boom of laughter, large and small mouths, all painted different colors, opening to let the humor loose. I felt my eyebrows knit together in confusion.
Oh, honey, Ruthie drawled as she came to rest her hand on my back. This ain’t bad laughter. You’re the first one of us to do that right on the first try. Mary Janelle leaned over, her face all amused, and told Ruthie that she owed her a milkshake.
Ever since that day I’ve never felt meek again.