The circumstances of her employment amounted to forced labor. The dark circles under her eyes seem to give the truth away: Jennie is a profile in exhaustion. In one hand, she clutches a box of Super Suds detergent, perhaps to wash dinner remnants off Reverend Mother’s plates or clothes-the brand’s tagline was “floods o’ suds for dishes and duds.” A fistful of Jennie’s hair is coiled around a barrette pinned just above her forehead, while the rest falls to her shoulders. Her scallop-edged top and skirt are crisp in a black-and-white photo old enough to be from her domestic tenure.
She smoothed the wrinkles left overnight in her clothes. Jennie made do with her own coat and a small rug-if her minister-turned-master’s Scottish terrier and Siamese cat relinquished a favorite sleeping spot.Ĭome morning, Jennie shook out her coat and any fur that stuck to it. Reverend Mother never even offered her maid a blanket. Unlike the innkeeper in the story of Christ’s birth, Reverend Mother had ample space, especially compared with her parishioners, who lived in packed row houses and cold-water flats that rattled to the roll of Brooklyn’s elevated trains. She was the Lord’s humble servant, too intimidated to ask her employer, the woman she called Reverend Mother, for a spare bedroom. Jennie Otranto slept on the same floors that she scrubbed clean. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Vice, Self, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Dame, The Rumpus, and other publications. Christine Grimaldi lives in Washington, D.C., where she covers reproductive rights and policy and writes essays about history and culture.
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