Angels Unaware

then that I had the idea of taking in wash. “Nobody in Galen has money to throw away on having their laundry done!” Jewel protested, with a laugh. But I was thinking of cities and towns beyond our provincial little Galen. It seemed I was the only one in my family who realized that Galen didn’t reach to all horizons. I certainly never forgot it, and often, it was all that kept me going.
In Parkville—the next town after Galen—people were a little better off, and I was determined to convince all those high-class hicks that they couldn’t do without my service. I went door to door, explaining that I was with the Willickers Laundry Association, located in the heart of Galen, Pennsylvania, in the business district. For a meager sum that would scarcely be missed from the household budget, they could say goodbye to chapped, red hands forever. My pitch would hardly have clinched the deal, but there was, I knew, nobody in the world more competitive and jealous of little things than a Parkville housewife. And I had had the foresight to wait for the mailman and commit to memory the names of women up and down the lane. And so it was that on my first call, when Mrs. Johnson attempted to close the door in my face, I managed to slip in that her neighbor across the way, Mrs. Kelly, had purchased my services because she thought washing clothes too menial and low class for words. Naturally, after that, Mrs. Johnson had to give me all her dirty clothes rather than admit to herself that she wasn’t as worthy of the luxury as Mrs. Kelly.
Thereafter, every Monday, I would pedal my bicycle, with a succession of six wagons tied to the back, up and over the hill to Parkville, where I would pick up dirty laundry. The inn had an old washing machine with two rollers that wrung water from the clothes. Jewel helped for the first week, but it quickly became clear that she had little tolerance for other people’s dirty underwear. Two of my clients were new mothers, which meant mounds of dirty diapers, the washing of which convinced me at fourteen never to have children, and just to be on the safe side, never to have a husband either.
Before long, Jewel found her own way of making money. She hung out a hand-printed sign that read: Sister Jewel, Mystic Reader and Advisor. The paint on the sign was still wet when Reverend Hamilton had her arrested for fortunetelling. Reverends had a way of popping up in Jewel’s life and ruining things. Having stayed overnight in jail before, Jewel wasn’t too put out. The sheriff let her out the next day with a warning.
Two weeks later, I caught four of my fingers in the wringer of the washing machine, breaking them and putting an end to the Willickers Laundry Association.
That was a tough winter. Jewel and the girls caught the grippe, and I had to nurse them with one bandaged hand. Jewel insisted on smoking her Camels and filling the sick room with smoke. Then, she’d cough her brains out, and I’d have to run out for whiskey and lemon. We’d have been able to renovate the whole Inn and travel round the world just on what Jewel could have saved on Camels. But as soon as her cough had calmed a little, she’d light one up again, claiming that tobacco would surely kill the infection. As for me, I never got sick. Whoever my father was, he must have been hardy if not good looking, because an illness never arrived that could lay me low. Not that I would have minded coming down with something so that I, for once, could be the patient instead of the nurse.
While Jewel was sick in bed, she found an advertisement in a magazine for mail-order astrology books. She ordered and read a number of them, and then she hung out a new sign: Jewel Willickers, Astrological Consultant. When the reverend sent the police to arrest her, Jewel claimed that astrology was a science just like any other. It said so in the books she’d read. But they took her away just the same, and I had to pay a large part of the money I’d saved doing laundry to get her out.
Having to give up the money I’d worked so hard to obtain—and for which I had broken four fingers!—left me with a burning hatred for the reverend. I’ve put off telling about Reverend Hamilton because I hate the thought of him, but I suppose I’ve got to confess it all sooner or later.
The reverend and his wife had lived in Galen their entire lives. In fact, they were good friends with the justice, that is until Jewel came to live with the old man. At first the arrangement seemed to suit everything just fine. The reverend and his wife, Gale, used to visit with Jewel and the justice and play a friendly game of cards or two. You might expect Reverend Hamilton to be horrified at the notion of a young girl and an old man living together out of wedlock, but you’d be wrong. The reverend knew which side his bread was buttered on. The justice put a lot of money in the collection box every Sunday and even paid for the pews, so the reverend was reluctant to offend him.
The strain on their friendship began when the justice told the reverend that he was intending to leave his house to Jewel after his death instead of the church. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was the night Reverend Hamilton tried to kiss Jewel and she slapped his face. Hamilton wasn’t bad looking, if you didn’t mind the persnickety type. Unfortunately, Jewel couldn’t stand the persnickety type, and she told the justice of his friend’s advances. The two men came to blows, and Hamilton was humiliated in front of his own wife when