sweatshop, sewing brims on hats. She
made two cents a hat. She didn’t speak
much English. “She had to work eighteen
hours a day, seven days a week, to make
enough money to have an apartment for
us to rent,” Freireich went on. “We
never saw her. We had a little apartment
on the west side of Humboldt Park,
bordering the ghetto. She couldn’t leave
a two-year-old and a five-year-old all
alone, so she found an immigrant Irish
lady who worked for room and board.
My parent, from the age of two, was this
Irish maid. We loved her. She was my
mother. Then, when I was nine, my
mother met a Hungarian man who had
lost his wife and had one son, and she
married him. It was a marriage of
darren dugan
(Darren Dugan)
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