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Really Irene?

By Lora Harrington-Pride
Posted: 08/15/2026

Irene managed the fountain and grill in the drugstore at the newly opened mall on the outskirts of our town.

She hired me that summer as a dishwasher when I was 13 years old.  We put my age up to 16.

I was the big sister of 8-year-old Jackie and 9-year-old Mickey.

Jackie was the best friend of Irene’s 8-year-old daughter, Shirley.  Actually, they were born one day apart.

Irene suggested one day that my sisters and Shirley take the bus and come out to see me in my new job – she’d pay the bus fare and give them all free milkshakes.

When she hired me, she had cautioned me that I must never let anyone know that her husband was Colored.  She had previously lost 2 jobs for that reason, so I was dumbfounded when she did what she did.  When the girls came, Jackie and Mickey were wearing plain unadorned cotton pinafores, tennis shoes, and their hair was worn in kinky braids to their shoulders, and the sun had baked them a little browner than usual.

Shirley wore a fully ruffled, rick-rack trimmed, big bow-belted pinafore and Mary Jane buckled white patent leather shoes with ruffle trimmed socks.

Her hair, though coarse, hung in brown banana curls halfway down her back.  A big bow was at the back of her head.  Her European features were sun-tanned.

I seated them and Irene let me make their milkshakes.

While they sat in the booth enjoying their drinks, Irene brought her co-workers over and introduced the girls as my 3 sisters, then grinning from ear to ear, she asked, “Which one do you think is the cutest?”

Her co-workers turned slowly and looked at her, bewilderment and disbelief on their faces. No one answered. They walked away leaving Irene proudly grinning as she gazed at her daughter.

(Irene is the Romanian woman spoken of in an earlier piece.) 

Lora Harrington Pride  7/21/26