Factory Girls

The Howard sisters were as different as night and day.

Vanessa was the oldest, a tall and slim girl with an inclination toward, as Nana said, unfortunate men. Glory was a few years younger, chubby and short, with a liking for any man at all. My grandmother had put them both on the forbidden list very early, saying they did not come from good stock and would constitute a bad influence on me. Naturally, I couldn't wait to spend time with them both. It was said that their parents had never married and although both were still living on the island, they did not live together and rarely spent time in each other's company or with either of their daughters. Van and Glory lived in a rambling, ramshackle old house in the middle of an open field across from the dance hall. It was rumored that the floors were of dirt and that they allowed livestock to live inside with them but no evidence of either claim was ever produced.

Both girls followed in the footsteps of the majority of the island women and by the time they were in their teens were old hands at factory work. They walked past the house each morning and evening, side by side in identical dress, each carrying a lunch pail and a hair net. They grew up on factory work, spending eight hours a day deep with the old factory building, on their feet, doing assembly line work as mindlessly as everyone else. They talked "women talk" - children, food planning, the latest from the Spiegel catalogue and of course, the standard fare of gossip. At the end of the day, they were two of many weary and worn out women who trekked back home tiredly, heads down and shoulders hunched over. Factory work was no easy life - mind numbing sameness for long hours and low wages and the sisters wanted more than the factory or the island men had to offer. One fine summer morning they simply did not appear for work. The talk began immediately but none of the gossip was even close - they had not run off with the scallop fleet, not been abducted, not eloped with married men, not quarreled and shot each other and neither was pregnant. They had simply pulled up stakes, borrowed a boat and crossed the passage at night and headed for the big city. Neither was heard from for years until a brothel in Halifax was raided and the owners were arrested and got their pictures in the paper. Good God Almighty! Nana exclaimed one morning over coffee, It's Van and Glory!

In time, both girls returned to the island - to retirement, comfort and no small celebrity. They lived the remainder of their lives quietly, chastened, reformed, and well to do. They were different as night and day but still sisters whether in shame and scandal or wonder and awe.