Page 19 of Hank and Elsie
“This isorganizedchaos.” Miss Taylor’s tone was matter of fact. “I actually know what I’m doing with everything. You neatening up would actually cause me to have to hunt for things, thus causing inefficiency.” She placed her hands on her hips and looked around. “I know it looks dreadful, and I promise my methods aren’t usually like this. However?—”
Elsie held up a hand. “You’ve been too busy and overwhelmed.” She echoed the dressmaker’s earlier words.
With a quick smile of agreement, Miss Taylor opened a drawer and pulled out a nightgown and a thick pair of stockings, handing them to Elsie. Then she moved over to the wardrobe,pushed some garments aside, and took down a well-worn, but still pretty, apricot-colored dressing gown, which she added to the pile in Elsie’s arms. “Ready for your bath?”
Thinking of bathing in arealbathtub made Elsie shiver with pleasant anticipation. “More than ready.”
With a chuckle and a tilt of her head to the doorway, Miss Taylor led the way into the main room. “Let’s see if you remember which is the bathroom key.”
“That’s easy.” Elsie took the single key from the peg.
“I don’t usually lock my apartment when I go to the bathroom and the outer door downstairs is locked. There’s no one else living here right now. Once there are more tenants, we’ll have to be more careful.”
They left the apartment, walked down the hall to the women’s bathroom, unlocked the door, and entered. “These are our shelves.” Miss Taylor brushed a hand inside one of the empty cubbyholes. “Depending on if there are other female tenants, we might only have three boxes each. But for now, you can take half and I’ll take half.
Curious, Elsie glanced at the cubbyholes holding Miss Taylor’s toiletries. She saw a bar of white soap. Several bottles of perfume. A silver comb, brush, and mirror set. A milk glass bottle with Pearl’s Lotion printed on the front. A small round container, which she knew from a similar one she’d seen at Mrs. Smithson’s, held powder.
“Leave your clothes here. You can pick one of the others to store your toiletries and such.”
"Toiletries?”
“Another French word for these items that make us neat and clean,” Miss Taylor explained. “But for now, you can use mine.”
Something else to acquire.Even with her generous wages, the thought of all she needed for this new life was suddenly daunting, especially for a young woman who’d been brought upprideful—to make do, to not accept handouts, to only owe money to the mercantile for absolute necessities.
“Here,” Miss Taylor leaned over the tub and inserted a plug into the drain hole. She twisted the right handle. Water gushed out. “Cold.” She eased back the handle, and then opened the other one. “Hot. You must wait a bit before the water comes out warm.” She glanced at Elsie with eyebrows lifted.
Elsie nodded that she understood.
Miss Taylor turned off the water. “I’ve found that moving the hot water handle this far,” she tapped one of the points, “and the cold, this far,” she touched a smaller point on the cold water handle, “makes for the perfect bath temperature. Hot enough to ease any muscle aches, but not so hot as to burn your toes. You may prefer hotter or colder.”
Elsie let out a sigh of pure anticipatory pleasure. “We have a tub that’s this big.” She made a circle with her arms. “I was about ten when I grew too big to sit in it. I kneel in a few inches of bath water that’s already been used for Pa and Ma, and Ricky. Ma pours a pot of water over me. I soap and scrub up real quick like. And then Ma pours another pitcher over me, two if I wash my hair.”
“Sounds like an arduous experience.”
“Carrying water from the well. Lots and lots of trips with the pail. Heating it in our two pots, one after another. I always like how I feel afterwards. But growing up, I dreaded Saturday bath nights, especially in the winter, which never made sense to me. Wasn’t like we were going anywhere on Sunday to need to get all cleaned up.”
“After this, you’ll no longer dread bathing.” Miss Taylor paused. “Well, maybe still in the winter.” She glanced at the small radiator. “We’ll have to see.”
“Going to feel strange to bathe on a Sunday.”
“You had a long dusty drive out here.” Miss Taylor offered her a bar of white soap taken from her cubbyhole.
Elsie stared at the perfectly formed bar, so different from the gray, misshapen lye lumps they used. “Is this Ivory soap?”
“‘All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia,’” Miss Taylor quoted from the Bible, a teasing light in her eyes. “‘Out of the ivory palaces whereby they have made thee glad.’”
“Psalm 45:8.” Delighted, Elsie took the bar from Miss Taylor. “I love that verse.”
“The ivory palaces?”
“Yes. I’ve imagined them like Banker Livingston’s mansion, but all in white.”
Miss Taylor chuckled. “Palaces are much, much bigger than Mr. Livingston’s home. Depending on the place…think ten times bigger. Maybe twenty times or more.”
Elsie’s mouth gaped. Even her vivid imagination couldn’t help boggling over those immense numbers.
With a chuckle, Miss Taylor gently lifted Elsie’s chin to close her mouth. “Although, I’ve never seen a white one. However, I once attended a party at the American embassy in Rome and met a diplomat from India.”
