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When
we first came, we expected a struggle. For the first year or so,
it was a struggle to put up a home; to transplant the family,
it's very hard. In any family that transplanted itself from one
country to another, you've got to expect drastic change. My father,
my mother and myself went to work, the other three went to school.
My mother hadn't worked before. She didn't like it, of course,
but we knew that. We were prepared to face that. When I first
came, I didn't expect to work. I had been a schoolgirl before.
Here, I went to work. I resented this because at my age I wanted
to go to school But the situation was such that I had to go to
work; there were six people and the earning was very little.
My
two aunts took my mother and myself to the shop they worked in
and we were hired. My mother found this adjustment hard. Both
Jewish and Italian worked there. Both groups were fresh immigrants
and couldn't speak English. I only heard English from my brothers
and sisters when they came home from school. I was quite miserable
for the first few years. I couldn't speak English. I didn't like
the work or the surroundings. My mother was more miserable. She
found this situation took difficult. I didn't find it as difficult
because I was a child. It was something of an adventure for me.
The
children had to take care of themselves. My brother was twelve,
my sisters eight and six. We were a very close family. My mother
told her son what to buy at the butcher's and the market when
he came home from school. He always shopped the day before it
would be prepared for a meal. She told her two daughters how to
prepare meals from food. We all cleaned the house. My father didn't
help with fmaily and domestic matters though. Forget that. That
was out. He was a man. My mother trained us all in how to work
things out. After she quit, we still did a lot of work but it
was nicer to come home at night when the whole family sat down
together and we could be in harmony again.
Grace
Grimaldi in Ewen, Immigrant Women, 95
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