breaks and lunch. They’ve all been working together for almost twenty years. The two Black women, well, they aren’t very friendly. Everybody speaks to me, but none of them have invited me out for break or lunch or anything,” I said sadly. It was true none of the women had tried to establish a friendship with me.
“Have you tried to develop a friendship with any of them?”
“Well no—”
“Annette, you don’t have to wait for them to approach you. Why don’t you ask one of them to go to lunch or somethin’? I bet if you made an attempt to get to know them, they’d help you find an apartment,” Rhoda told me, sounding almost angry. “You can’t spend your life waitin’ for things to come to you, Annette. Life’s too short.”
The next day at work I invited the middle-aged white woman next to me on the line to lunch. “There’s a McDonald’s down the street I usually go to,” I told her. Cynthia Costello, a thin, plain-looking bleached blonde smiled at me and shook her head.
“But I’d love to. With six kids I am on a tight budget. I always bring my lunch unless it’s a special occasion.” Cynthia had the worst case of acne I’d ever seen on a woman her age, and her teeth didn’t look too much better. I ate lunch alone that day but later when it was afternoon breaktime, Cynthia invited me to join her and one of the two Black women. Her name was Viola Jenkins, and she appeared to be in her mid-fifties like Muh’Dear.
“You look a little like my niece in Baton Rouge,” Viola informed me. I sat across from her and Cynthia at one of six plastic tables in our lunchroom down the hall from the assembly line. In the lunchroom were several vending machines with chips, sodas, and candy bars. Cynthia opened a thermos filled with coffee that she had brought from home. Viola was even larger than I was. We each had a Diet Pepsi in front of us. She had beautiful bronze skin, small, tired black eyes, and only half of her teeth left. There were at least half a dozen moles on the bottom half of her face, and her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back into a flat ponytail with a red rubber band holding it together. “I hear you ain’t got no family here. What about a church home?” Viola said, giving me an intense look. She had a deep aggressive voice that was almost masculine.
“Well as soon as I get settled into an apartment I’m going to pick a church. A man I met at the Richland Hotel where I rent a room told me about the Church of God in Christ. Have you ever been to it?”
Viola’s eyes got big, and a wide grin appeared on her face. “That’s the only sanctified church in town, and my stepdaddy is the preacher there,” Viola said proudly. “You Pentacostal?”
“Well no. I’m a Baptist, but I’ve been to Pentecostal churches before,” I told her. I felt bad not including Cynthia in the conversation. I turned to her. “Do you go to church, Cynthia?”
She nodded. “I’m Catholic, and you’re welcome to attend our services, too.” I truly enjoyed talking with these two women. After work, walking to the bus stop a block away together, Viola shared some disturbing information with me about Cynthia. “She’s done every drug in the book and drinks like a fish. All on account of that man of hers.”
“Does he beat her?” I asked.
“Like he gettin’ paid for it, girl,” Viola growled, walking with great difficulty. She was breathing hard and lumbering along like a weak turtle, a lot like Mr. Boatwright used to do. “Poor Cynthia. I went to school with her mama.”
“What? How old is Cynthia?” I gasped, whirling around to face Viola.
“How old you think she is,” Viola muttered, slowing down even more.
“Well…with six kids and the way she looks, I’d say she was in her late forties, maybe even early fifties.”
Viola laughed and shook her head, fanning her face with a flat straw purse she had in her hand. “The girl ain’t but thirty-six.” Viola sighed with a groan so long and deep I almost felt it.
Erie Manufacturing was on the opposite side of town from my hotel. There was a bus that stopped a block away that some of the workers who didn’t own cars depended on. Viola had a car, but because parking was such a problem she