A Pretty Little Doll

Grandmother sewed. When she earned her first money at age twelve, after quitting school so she could work, she bought some black silk and made a dress for her mother. She told me she had done a terrible job on it, but her mother wore it proudly anyway. Grandmother took any job she could get, from picking strawberries at ten cents a day, to working at the Hunter Fan Company weighing fan blades to find matching sets, to working in a woolen mill and finally to sewing in a sweatshop that made ready-to-wear clothing. 

Grandmother explained to me how she loved that job. Instead of taking breaks she went to the various parts of the shop and asked to be taught how everything there worked. She explained the dies that were used like guillotines to cut piles of fabric into, for instance, the left side of a size 8 bodice. It all fascinated her. She ran her sewing machine with speed and accuracy and since she was getting paid by the piece, earned more money than most of the other, mostly older, women there.

Several years later, married and with a two year old daughter (my mother) she moved to California and got a job in another clothing sweatshop. But she had a dream and she figured out how to network decades before the word even became a verb. She wanted to work in Hollywood making clothes for the movie stars. She told everyone and eventually a connection led to an opening.

When I moved in with her she worked for one of the major studios, I’m not sure I ever knew which one. She had advanced to the role of “Cutter and Fitter.” She explained that she had started as one of the many seamstresses, moved up to “Table Lady” in charge of a table with seven other seamstresses, and finally Cutter and Fitter, the lady who interacted with the stars and the designer, making dress forms of the stars and fitting their clothes to them, and making patterns from the designer’s drawings from which to cut the fabulously expensive fabrics often used to make costumes. She sewed all day.

Then she came home and sewed all evening. She truly loved to sew. And in me she had a new model, a little girl she could dress to the nines. Oh, the clothes I had; if I had been vain of my appearance I could have strutted arrogantly in any company. But for me it meant standing absolutely still with perfect posture, or turning just a bit and lifting my arms when asked, and suffering the occasional stab of a straight pin all while smiling agreeably. It meant sitting still before bed as Grandmother wrapped rag curls tightly around her finger and pulled my hair fiercely as she wiggled her finger out of each curl. It meant sitting in my small chair on the kitchen counter as she polished my white ankle boots each morning before sending me out to play: “Now don’t get dirty,” she admonished. 

“Yes Grandmother.” I’ll do everything you say, only please don’t abandon me.