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The Second Floor of J.C. Penney
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[Originally published in Hard Jobbin’: Women’s Experiences of the Workplace, Ride the Wind Press, Beausejour, Manitoba, 2003]
I led a double life when I worked on the second floor of J.C. Penney's. By day
I was a simple store clerk, a sensitive young woman far from home and going
through a painful divorce. By night and on weekends, I was a dangerous politico, a rabid anti-war protester, a hippie, a radical feminist, an enemy of the
people.
If my co-workers suspected me of leading a secret life, it was probably one
more in line with their experience. On the second floor of Penney's, women
did not leave their husbands for trivial reasons, and certainly never within the
first eighteen months of the marriage! I am sure they assumed I was covering
some shameful and traumatic episode when I gave my pitifully naive and inadequate explanation that I had simply grown tired of being married. It would
have gone without saying on the second floor that I was protecting my shame
at having discovered some adulterous affair—either that or I could not bring
myself to name the horrors my brute of a spouse had inflicted during one of
his periodic bouts of drunken debauchery.
I led a double life when I worked on the second floor of J.C. Penney's. By day
I was a simple store clerk, a sensitive young woman far from home and going
through a painful divorce. By night and on weekends, I was a dangerous politico, a rabid anti-war protester, a hippie, a radical feminist, an enemy of the
people.
If my co-workers suspected me of leading a secret life, it was probably one
more in line with their experience. On the second floor of Penney's, women
did not leave their husbands for trivial reasons, and certainly never within the
first eighteen months of the marriage! I am sure they assumed I was covering
some shameful and traumatic episode when I gave my pitifully naive and inadequate explanation that I had simply grown tired of being married. It would
have gone without saying on the second floor that I was protecting my shame
at having discovered some adulterous affair—either that or I could not bring
myself to name the horrors my brute of a spouse had inflicted during one of
his periodic bouts of drunken debauchery.
In fact, my husband had been a thoroughly nice man. It was I who had been
difficult. I left, because I could no longer bear who I had become in comparison with this consistent, earnest, successful, conscientious, and nice man.
Nor would my co-workers have understood my desire to escape the confines
of home and family. Far from wanting a house of my own, I was actively engaged in eliminating every possession of mine that I could not fit into a backpack— with the exception of my sewing machine, bought on that second floor of J.C. Penneys and resting, even as I type this memoir, not ten feet from the computer.
difficult. I left, because I could no longer bear who I had become in comparison with this consistent, earnest, successful, conscientious, and nice man.
Nor would my co-workers have understood my desire to escape the confines
of home and family. Far from wanting a house of my own, I was actively engaged in eliminating every possession of mine that I could not fit into a backpack— with the exception of my sewing machine, bought on that second floor of J.C. Penneys and resting, even as I type this memoir, not ten feet from the computer.
It was the summer of 1973. I was twenty-one, Nixon was still President, The War was still going on in Southeast Asia. I was living in Boulder, Colorado, where I had been living since the fall of 1971, when I had followed my recently-graduated husband west to his new fellowship in a doctoral program in clinical psychology. A good wife, I had dropped out of school in order to work at J.C. Penney's selling piece goods.
It would be at J.C. Penney's that I became initiated into the mysteries of my tribe. Working on the second floor, I was surrounded by housewares, sewing machines, clothing for infants and toddlers, fabric and notions—and women.
There was not a man who worked on the entire floor.
Irene Manther ran the piece-goods department. She had moved with her husband from Wyoming to Colorado in a horse-drawn wagon, which gives you some idea of her age, and our age, and the speed at which global technological colonization was advancing. And yet, for all her pioneer crossing in the shadow of the Great Divide, in nearly fifty years of service, Irene had been unable to traverse that gulf that lay between management and staff, between men and women in the corporate world. Her lack of promotion was considered a scandal, a source of whispered rage in the no-man's-land of the second floor.
There was not a man who worked on the entire floor.
Irene Manther ran the piece-goods department. She had moved with her husband from Wyoming to Colorado in a horse-drawn wagon, which gives you some idea of her age, and our age, and the speed at which global technological colonization was advancing. And yet, for all her pioneer crossing in the shadow of the Great Divide, in nearly fifty years of service, Irene had been unable to traverse that gulf that lay between management and staff, between men and women in the corporate world. Her lack of promotion was considered a scandal, a source of whispered rage in the no-man's-land of the second floor.
I did not share her rage. I was unable then to understand women's desire to have any part of a position defined by and necessitating congress with men. I considered the second floor of J.C. Penney's to be some kind of heaven. If the price of being overlooked by men was low wages, so be it. Irene Manther was like a goddess to me, presiding over a vast and colorful matriarchate. Through her capable hands flowed miles and miles of fabric, rivers of textiles containing the iridescent visions of women crossing into, and then crossing out of our department, crocheting us briefly into the web of their conversations, snagging our opinions on their projects, and then hooking away as they knitted, knotted, braided, tatted, embroidered, pieced, patched, and wove themselves into the world beyond the second floor.
We sold these women the soft cotton flannel for their babies' rompers, the denim and broadcloth for their children's playclothes, the silks and satins for their daughters' prom dresses, the lace and nylon net for these daughters' bridal gowns, the linen for the tablecloths, the gingham check for the kitchen curtains, the fake fur for the stuffed animals, the discounted cotton floral prints for their housedresses, the polyester doubleknit for their new-fangled pantsuits, the cotton batting and fiberfill for their quilts, the nylon tricot for their lingerie.
The women seldom sewed for their menfolk. It went without saying that men's clothing required too much fuss, what with tailoring, french seams, buttonholing, fly-fronts, cuffs, padding, lining. Most of their husbands and sons wore blue jeans, uniforms, or business suits anyway. Cheaper to buy, and, besides, the men were always so self-conscious, worrying all the time about what other men might think of them. No, it was better all around just to buy them the ready-mades downstairs. They preferred it that way.
The section "Men and Boys" in the pattern books was modest, statutory even, and always toward the back. It was the elegant gowns, the riotously bright sundresses, the voluptuous loungewear sashaying and strutting across the pages that courted our attention when we stood before the long counters with the pattern books as large as Manhattan phone directories.
The section "Men and Boys" in the pattern books was modest, statutory even, and always toward the back. It was the elegant gowns, the riotously bright sundresses, the voluptuous loungewear sashaying and strutting across the pages that courted our attention when we stood before the long counters with the pattern books as large as Manhattan phone directories.
The women who sewed back then were good homemakers. They practiced thrift and industry. It was never admitted, never even hinted at, that this might have been a form of art, a creative act, a mode of self-expression. No, these were women sewing for their families, saving money, making do. And as we ran the rainbow fabrics through their hands, and held the bolts up next to them, suggesting braids, and rick-rack, buttons, appliqués, bead-work, we never for a moment acknowledged, even to ourselves, that the women we helped were pleasuring themselves.
And over it all presided Irene Manther. There was not a question about clothing construction for which she did not know the answer. She had sewn it all. There was no quilt pattern she couldn't sketch by heart, no fabric stain for which she didn't know a recipe, no body deformity for which she couldn't make adjustments. Irene was even practiced in the lost art of "turning a suit," that Depression-era economy that involved taking apart the seams of a man's suit and reassembling it again with the worn side of the fabric facing in.
Irene had seen the skirts ascend from the instep to the ankle, then shimmy up the knee. She had seen them plummet to mid-calf, only to scramble up again, this time boldly cresting the knee to establish various base camps along the thigh, in anticipation of a final bid for the summit. Irene had seen shoulders go bare, then shoulders go square; bustlines puffed out like powder pigeons, then flattened down like pancakes, then nosed out like torpedoes, and now assuming the anatomically correct, if sartorially nondescript, contours of human breasts at long last out of harness. Irene had witnessed waistlines cinched in with corsets, then dropped loose to the hips, then smoothed over with girdles, then gathered in with waistbands, then raised up to the breasts, and now riding back down on the hips with bell-bottom jeans.
Irene had seen the skirts ascend from the instep to the ankle, then shimmy up the knee. She had seen them plummet to mid-calf, only to scramble up again, this time boldly cresting the knee to establish various base camps along the thigh, in anticipation of a final bid for the summit. Irene had seen shoulders go bare, then shoulders go square; bustlines puffed out like powder pigeons, then flattened down like pancakes, then nosed out like torpedoes, and now assuming the anatomically correct, if sartorially nondescript, contours of human breasts at long last out of harness. Irene had witnessed waistlines cinched in with corsets, then dropped loose to the hips, then smoothed over with girdles, then gathered in with waistbands, then raised up to the breasts, and now riding back down on the hips with bell-bottom jeans.
Irene had lived through two wars to-end-all-wars, and the Bomb, and the Depression, and Korea, and the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement, and the Women's Liberation Movement, and Vietnam. Through it all she had raised children and grandchildren and seen them married and buried. Irene had milked cows and churned butter and split wood and broken horses and barn-raised and she had come through all of these changes to sell piece goods on the second floor of J.C. Penney's where there weren't any men, and where she would never be a manager.
I felt safe in Irene's matriarchate, and safety had been rare in my experience. Raised in terror, I have spent most of my life trying to prevent what had already happened. Now, at twenty-one, I was in the process of going through a divorce, and on the verge of having to take responsibility for my life—a staggering proposition for someone whose whole prior focus had been resistance. J.C. Penney's provided a refuge for me, an oasis of pure sensory experience in a post-traumatic world where every experience seemed freighted with the moral weight of a life-or-death decision, and yet which was, at the same time, eerily unreal.
I felt safe in Irene's matriarchate, and safety had been rare in my experience. Raised in terror, I have spent most of my life trying to prevent what had already happened. Now, at twenty-one, I was in the process of going through a divorce, and on the verge of having to take responsibility for my life—a staggering proposition for someone whose whole prior focus had been resistance. J.C. Penney's provided a refuge for me, an oasis of pure sensory experience in a post-traumatic world where every experience seemed freighted with the moral weight of a life-or-death decision, and yet which was, at the same time, eerily unreal.
For eight precious hours a day, I could be present for these bolts of sensuous fabric. It was safe to define myself in relation to them. The demands were not complex. I would move between these parti-colored islands, allowing my hands to trail over the satiny bolt ends that hung like bright flags into the aisles. When a careless customer had disturbed the arrangements of these pennants, it was my job to restore symmetry. I would reach my hand up under the loose fabric, as if running my hand up the smooth thigh of a woman, then in a deft and impersonal gesture, flip the fabric up over the bolt end and wedge it back into the soft and yielding space between the other fabrics.
It had also been my job to restore order to the spool rack. The spools of thread were displayed on a tall metal frame with sloping dividers, where they beckoned to the children like a giant busy-box while their mothers selected patterns and passed the time of day with the clerks. The threads were arranged by color in the dividers, and it was a great game to the children to see how many they could put in the wrong dividers before their mothers noticed what they were doing.
I had my own game that I played as a keeper of the spools. I would try to see how many I could sort by color without checking the dye number stamped on the end. As many of the hues were similar, especially the blues, this posed something of a challenge to my powers of discrimination.
I had my own game that I played as a keeper of the spools. I would try to see how many I could sort by color without checking the dye number stamped on the end. As many of the hues were similar, especially the blues, this posed something of a challenge to my powers of discrimination.
Sorting spools was an aesthetic, a kinesthetic job, and one of my co-workers was as fond of it as I. Her name was Bobbi, and she would try to beat me to it, especially if there were other tasks, like marking remnants, less to her liking. I enjoyed Bobbi. She was not quick like Irene, but soothing and rhythmic in her movements. My own biorhythms would slow whenever I found myself transiting her orbital.
On the nights when I closed the register with Bobbi, she would insist on examining all the nickels and all the pennies. She was a coin collector, and in those days buffalo nickels were still fairly common. She would always buy them from the till. I was never clear exactly what markings Bobbi was looking for on the pennies, but in her methodical way, she would turn and look at them all. In what appeared to me to be the constricted stream of Bobbi's life, she was clearly panning for gold. Still expecting to stumble across the mother lode, I could not appreciate the ritualistic value of Bobbi's actions, which lay entirely apart from the capture of precious metals.
On the nights when I closed the register with Bobbi, she would insist on examining all the nickels and all the pennies. She was a coin collector, and in those days buffalo nickels were still fairly common. She would always buy them from the till. I was never clear exactly what markings Bobbi was looking for on the pennies, but in her methodical way, she would turn and look at them all. In what appeared to me to be the constricted stream of Bobbi's life, she was clearly panning for gold. Still expecting to stumble across the mother lode, I could not appreciate the ritualistic value of Bobbi's actions, which lay entirely apart from the capture of precious metals.
Women were making quilts in Boulder. Sometimes they would bring as many as a dozen bolts of fabric to the counter, from which they would ask us to measure only a quarter of a yard apiece. Of course, this must have seemed unspeakable dilettantism to a woman like Irene, whose quilts I imagined to have been meticulously pieced together from the scraps and rags carefully hoarded during an era when nothing could be taken for granted.
Women who considered themselves not clever enough to work outside the home, would stand at our counter and perform split-second mathematical calculations in their head as they figured for selvedge, for nap, for shrinkage; making allowance for alterations, customizing patterns by combining features from other patterns. And some of them, the old-timers like Irene, worked without patterns at all, using old newspapers or no paper at all.
Women who considered themselves not clever enough to work outside the home, would stand at our counter and perform split-second mathematical calculations in their head as they figured for selvedge, for nap, for shrinkage; making allowance for alterations, customizing patterns by combining features from other patterns. And some of them, the old-timers like Irene, worked without patterns at all, using old newspapers or no paper at all.
Everything in the women's world is ritual, and the fabric department was no different from the beauty parlor or the baby shower in this respect. We spoke about sewing, but this was only the most superficial aspect of our communication rituals. Like bees inspecting new arrivals at the hive, we stroked each other gently with a thousand psychic feelers; taking readings, checking orientation. As Irene explained the intricacies of pattern-alteration, she would be teaching, approving, exchanging. We were the keepers of the flame, we women. We were the ones who were responsible for the well-being of the children, for seeing that we and that they survived. Our communications, no matter how trivial, were all informed by this shared understanding, and here on the second floor of Penney's we were not compelled to restrict the dimensionality of our language, as women always must in the presence of men.
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