This is another one of my orphans.
Featured image by DarkmoonArt_de from Pixabay
Ingrid had had just about enough of the snivelling she was hearing from her coworker. It wasn’t just that Ingrid had an old world name, she was old school. She had never been a beauty, nor had she ever possessed a desire to be anything other than a mom. When Ingrid was this girl’s age she had a plain Jane face with a beaker of a nose and a butt which was larger than it should be given the itty-bitty-titty nature of her chest. Whenever she wore a T-shirt without a bra, unless she was particularly tan or the shirt was thin enough to see through, nobody knew. Truth be told, her chest didn’t gain any in size until after she had her fourth child. Something about that birth either activated the “devout Catholic” genes, or the doctors gave her a shot they never told her about.
She had taken this office job after her last college bound kid left for school. With her husband dead and the kids all starting to lead their own lives, she had to do something besides watch TV and stare at four walls. Only four of her ten children went to college. She had seven boys and three girls. The of the girls had opted to work as waitresses while the men they were going to marry worked their way up the blue collar pay scale until they could buy a place of their own. They were all good boys joining her family. She gladly cooked for all of them when they came over. It was Ingrid who insisted they wait until they could buy rather than rent. She did not want her grandchildren to go without.
Ingrid came from a devout Catholic neighborhood, not just a family, the entire neighborhood was devout. There were a couple families of differing faith, but only a couple. Those families didn’t have much trouble because they knew the rules. They also lived by those rules and chose that neighborhood because of the rules. The neighborhood rules were simple.
- You raised a big family.
- You went to church every week, more when holy days required.
- Brothers were to look out for their sisters.
- Nobody called the cops unless there was a robbery with gunshot wounds.
- If the boys chose to use knives to settle their disputes, that was allowed.
- If a girl claimed your son was the father of her child, you forced them into marriage if he wasn’t a piece of shit, otherwise it was your obligation to assist her with the child.
- Be good to your neighbors who follow the rules.
The rules weren’t complicated. Despite their harshness and the number of boys who ended up in the emergency room during any given summer month, it was a neighborhood people tried to move into. Originally it was only Italian and Irish. When you try to mesh two cultures that enjoy drinking heavily and love a good fight together, you end up with this set of rules. In later years, quite a few Mexican families moved in. There were originally some ethnic slurs and a lot of fist fights, but, it was the kind of culture which allowed such things. Eventually the boys all started dating the daughters of the newcomers and most of the ethnic slurs were simply good natured ribbings at backyard barbecues between relatives. It wasn’t just hormones and beauty which thrust the kids together though, it was need. Most of the families had been in the neighborhood for at least four generations. There simply weren’t many girls left the boys weren’t related to somehow.
Had Ingrid been born in any other place at any other time, she might well have lived a lonely life. Her husband had been nothing to make girls swoon when he walked down the street, but he came from a good family and had very loyal friends. He didn’t have the brains to be a doctor or a banker, nor even the desire. More than anything in the world he wanted to work his blue collar job and come home to the family at night. Being a dad meant more to him than anything else in the world. Most would call him a simple man, but Ingrid called him husband and missed him dearly. He hadn’t said two words to her their entire childhood until he asked her to the Junior Prom. Ingrid hadn’t even planned on going. Even though her parents had allowed her to date, she had never been on a date until that point. She wasn’t without a date from Prom night on.
Ingrid was the only member of both families to be shocked when her future husband popped the question. Her future husband had done all of the honorable things. He had asked his parents for permission to ask her father. Her mother had barged into the room when her then soon to be husband was asking permission from her father just to make certain he gave the correct answer without extracting too much angst from the lad. Ingrid didn’t have to be told, though her sisters uttered the phrase in later years, “she got the last good one.”
Of course, devoutness had to be tempered with practicality, and the neighborhood was all too aware of this. Most of the families put the daughters that wanted college and career on birth control pills despite the church’s prohibition against it. Initially every parent was vehemently against it, until the unwanted interracial pregnancies started happening. After that, there was something of a mad rush to the local drug store. Even with those precautions there were still enough “oopsies” to keep the clergy busy preaching about abstinance and the halls busy with wedding receptions, baptisms and first communions.
Quite simply, the rules defined the life. As long as there were some factories, grocery stores, and some auto shops in the area, the way of life and the rules survived. There were even Jewish families buying homes in the neighborhood now. They wanted to live by the same rules, once the definition of “church” got expanded to “religious place of worship” and “Sunday” got changed to “the Sabbath” it fit exactly how they wanted to live. Oddly enough the Jewish families which moved into the neighborhood enjoyed a watching good fight and thought drunks were hilarious.
It wasn’t until the rest of the country started turning into such a lilly-livered pansy that the rules and the neighborhood started to have serious trouble. Oh, there were a few boys that went to prison. One of Ingrid’s own sons, James, was in prison for killing the vary same priest who baptized his youngest brother. Even though he was serving life, James was a neighborhood hero. Nearly every family in the neighborhood was on the waiting list for their turn to see him on visitor’s day. James had caught that priest buggering a boy from the neighborhood when he went into the Rectory unannounced to schedule marriage preparation classes for himself and Marie. He did what any good boy from the neighborhood would have done. He beat the priest to death with his bare hands before the priest could pull up his pants.
The neighborhood was initially mortified by the news of the murder. Father Donavan had married many of the families in the neighborhood and had taught Catechism to many of the adults under 30. The family was initially shunned and the Cardinal of the diocese had called for an excommunication, until the details came out in the trial. After the trial, that Cardinal wasn’t part of the church anymore, at least the local diocese wouldn’t acknowledge his existence. If the trial had been allowed to happen in the same county as the neighborhood, James wouldn’t have been convicted. Catholics have a long history of being able to justify killing. They will listen to the doctrine telling them to turn the other cheek, then grab both staff and rod to right a wrong. Oh, they well and truly believed that phrase “the meek shall inherit the earth.” They knew it for fact and never questioned it. When they were asked why it was a fact by outsiders, they told them the unwritten portion of the text, “because the viscious will die defending it for them.”
Ingrid allowed herself an inner smile thinking of how even the Jewish families from the neighborhood all took their place in line to visit James. They know and honor the sacrifice he made. Even though their families weren’t in direct danger from a priest they still show respect. One of those families might actually be joining hers soon. One of the daughters followed one of her sons off to college. They had been dating for over a year before going off to college together. Neither family would have tolerated two unwed kids getting an apartment together while going to school when Ingrid was young. Times change. Their siblings helped them find the apartment, moved them in, and were even helping with rent and tuition. Then again, they weren’t really alone that much. They each had nine siblings and somebody was always stopping by to say hi or spend an evening.
A good many people had stated that a neighborhood which allowed a priest to be murdered would see their property values plummet. There had even been stories on the news proclaiming the downfall of the neighborhood. The family of the alter boy in question was so distraught by the situation they put their home up for sale as soon as the trial was over. They received seven offers the first day. Four of the bidders didn’t even look at the place. Despite the “wisdom” of the realtors, the home sold for twice list. It wasn’t a fluke either. The trial had made the rules of the neighborhood widely known. Any home placed on the market sold in under 48 hours, even if the first day on the market was Sunday. Outsiders were now driving around the neighborhood and walking right up to home owners asking if they would like to sell or knew anyone whose kids were gone that might be willing to let them raise their kids in the neighborhood. That last part Ingrid knew from sad experience. It was another reason she had taken this job. She got tired to turning away the women and young couples showing up at her door three to four times per day asking if she would consider selling.
The sad reality was that sentiment was all which kept her there. That old excuse of wanting the kids to come home to a place they knew as home sounded good to others, but wasn’t true. All of the kids said she should take advantage of the house, but, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Ingrid had never lived any place other than the neighborhood her entire life. All of her memories were there, not just in the house, there. If some developer put up a condo building with parking that was walking distance to the church, she could have seen herself moving, but there weren’t any such condos available. She did miss being able to walk to church on pleasant days.
Today’s stress point was her co-worker, Amy. Amy was a little sprite of a girl. An out of the bottle blonde with fashion sense and expensive tastes. Naturally she viewed this job as beneath her. Amy was an only child. It’s not that her parents couldn’t have more, they simply chose to stop at one. Naturally, Amy wasn’t from the neighborhood.
One of Ingrid’s older boys was in the Union and pulled some strings to help get Ingrid a dispatcher’s job at the Union hall. It wasn’t a difficult job. The guys in the back matched up workers off the list to the jobs which called into the hall. In theory, the next person on the list was supposed to be assigned, but you know how it goes. It was Ingrid’s job to call the contact numbers for the workers if they weren’t milling around the lobby. Some of the workers, those with not much of a life or who had just finished a project, would come and hang in the lobby most of the morning waiting for an emergency call. People were plucked out of the lobby for the gotta-have-them-now emergency calls. There usually wasn’t time for someone to drive in from where-ever they lived, especially when you were talking about a broken pipe that was flooding a basement.
As a general rule, the active construction jobs would call the hall in the afternoon and let them know just how many workers were needed for the next day. Dispatchers called all of the workers, gave them the job location, and confirmed they could work the next day. Some jobs were only a day in length and others were months in length. After all of that was done, the next ten workers on the list were called and told to come hang in the lobby for a few mornings. If one of the jobs guessed wrong, or simply didn’t get around to calling on time, those workers would be sent out. If they weren’t in the lobby, then, whoever was got sent, and those workers who should have been there went back on the bottom of the list.
Nothing these guys said shocked or surprised Ingrid. Many of them reminded her of her own sons and some even called her mom. Ingrid certainly didn’t show up to work here wearing a short skirt and heels with a low cut top like Amy did. It’s not that Ingrid hadn’t worn such outfits from time to time, just that she was old enough to know the response such outfits got from a room full of construction workers. If you dress like that in here, you deserved every comment you get. Quite possibly you even deserved the occasional grope. You were certainly asking for it even if few thought you deserved it. There was absolutely no reason for you to go spouting off at a guy because he couldn’t tell you what color your eyes were when you had an outfit like that on!
Yes, the dress certainly was pretty on her. It was much more appropriate for a high end office job or a wedding reception than a place like this. There was no dress code here. They could wear blue jeans six days per week if they wanted. Back when Ingrid was young a single woman only wore a dress like that out around men for one of two reasons: 1) She decided to bag a husband by getting pregnant that very day 2) She had just gotten back from her honeymoon and wanted to really rub it in to a few guys who had wronged or ignored her when she was single and shopping for a man.
Amy had put both of her brain cells together a while back and figured out that the junior lawyers and law office clerks mostly came in on Wednesdays to hand out the new round of court approved garnishment notices. She had gotten it into her head that if she dressed provocatively enough she would catch the eye of one and thus be propelled into a life style to which she would like to become accustomed. Somehow, in her mind, that meant she could wear such an outfit in here without enduring any kind of comment on it, except from her intended target. Ingrid had chastised her sons many times about their comments on female logic. She had even spanked them for it during their younger years. It wasn’t until this very moment in time that she realized just how correct they were. A mother cannot apologize for spankings which were more than 20 years ago, but she did feel compelled to make a few favorite meals and favorite cookies as a moment of atonement.
Fred was one of the two guys in the back which dolled out the assignments. The fact he had managed to procreate pointed out one major flaw in the neighborhood. When women looking to get married attend a wedding reception and start drinking with the guys, there were usually half a dozen more weddings happening in the following months. Fred’s marriage was a product of one such wedding reception. Fred was gruff. He didn’t have much in the way of tact or interpersonal skills. He was a chain smoker and a long way down the alphabet from attractive. His wife Betty must have been well and truly hammered at that wedding reception. Ingrid had heard that Fred showed up at her house the very next day offering to “do the right thing”. If he hadn’t, Betty might well not have known who the father was. She wasn’t a slut, by any means, she simply had little to no memory of the reception when they started tossing one shot for each veil and didn’t think she had sex at all at the reception. Indeed, she got quite vocal about it and had her brother’s toss Fred out of the house for saying such a thing. A few weeks later there was an awful lot of apologizing and welcoming going on. Thus was the story of how Fred got his wife. They had four sons and three daughters and seemed to have shut the factory down for that particular product.
If all you ever wanted to be was a mom, it didn’t seem that bad. Betty was always busy with the kids and Fred seemed to spend a lot of time either here at the haul or stopping off for one on the way home with the guys. As things stood, the entire local would have to shut down before Fred would lose his job. At least that is the way things looked before Amy showed up today.
Gruff was a polite way of describing Fred. A vulgar cursing machine would be a more accurate description. It seemed Fred invented curse words on the fly and could stick at least three of them in every sentence he spoke. Oddly enough it took a man just like that to keep a lid on a local like this. These guys were members of the only local in the city to lose at least five guys every year on the job. Any one of them could be next and they knew it. The most this local had ever lost in one year was twenty, when a basement wall caved and let the concrete and rebar floor above it collapse completely. Most office workers couldn’t understant why people would join, but this local paid $12 per hour more at every level than any other local, so the blue collar dads took their chances while starting families and putting money away for college.
The low level legal worker Amy was badgering today wasn’t getting the kind of badgering he was used to from her. Normally she was informing him of the life she wanted to live and telling him at least 30 times that she was single and available, but not today. When she walked past Fred in her current outfit Fred had made the comment that she “looked fit to fuck” without even slowing down on his way to his own office. Now Amy was badgering the low level legal workers about filing sexual harrasment charges and how often that lead to lifetime support. Fred had heard some of this and made the mistake of coming out of his office to try and rectify the situation, but, well, let’s just say the lawyers certainly aren’t used to listening to someone like Fred talk.
