The Pittsburgh Press (March 11, 1943)
I DARE SAY —
Manicure girl
By Florence Fisher Parry
You would have thought I was a lady of leisure, in that booth with one girl at the permanent and the other at the manicure… And who knows, they may have been thinking so too, and envying me; while I, on my part, was thinking how wonderful to be young and beautiful and life ahead., never mind what life, but AHEAD!
O Prospect!
The girl bent over the manicure had soft black hair and a skin like marble. Her eyes were soft, and the corners od her mouth were soft deep dimples. How lovely she would look dressed like a Cinderella at a ball, her creamy skin against creamy brocade, and brilliants in her black hair.
Why yes, she could be the daughter of the proudest dowager.
Yet there she drooped over the manicure at the end of a long day.
And the girl who was timing the permanent, and combing the test curl critically… she had been talking this long while, and her words were as clean and sharp as pebbles, and her thoughts as clear as a seer’s.
Second generation
Two girls in a booth… at a beauty parlor. American youth incarnate. Steady, bright, healthy, young – your girl or mine, America.
So, I asked the girl with the ebony hair and the skin like warmed-up marble:
What is your name?
And she said “Margaret.”
…But your last name?
And with a curious reluctance, she gave me an odd-sounding name.
What country did your people come from?
She said, “Czechoslovakia.” And, encouraged, went on to explain:
Of course, it wasn’t Czechoslovakia then, for that was in 1913. But my father and mother knew no peace, persecution was everywhere, there was always someone to oppress them; so, my father escaped to America and later sent, underground, money to my mother to join him here. She had a hard tome getting away; was held and questioned and nearly was imprisoned; but she would not tell where my father was, and later managed to be spirited out of the country and come here. Now my brother is an aviation cadet and it makes my parents proud.
And as she spoke it was an though I were listening to the story of America. Multiplied by millions, millions, was her story; the story of the people here who are ordained to win for the world an almighty peace such as the world has never known.
For never again, after this war, can we in America who have not been “foreigners” for many, many generations, look upon our neighbors here as “other” people from the Old Country. We will be one.
The awakening
There, but for the grace of God, go I.
That’s what we are beginning to realize, when we look at the pictures out of Poland and Norway and Crete… And when we see our armies gather strength and purpose and watch them embark for the ends of the earth, we are beginning to understand as never before, why we are INVINCIBLE. For we know now that we are made up of the sons of the persecuted from all over the world, who had the spirit and energy to spring free from oppression and come to our shores – whether one generation ago, or three, or six, what does it matter?
WE ARE the oppressed of Europe, freed only by the grace of God and the initiative of our forebears. No wonder our armies are there, there already, and that the second front long since has been established within the borders of Poland and Greece and France by all who await there the coming of their brothers, their deliveries.
And never again will a “second generation,” Czech or Pole or Finn or Greek, hesitate, embarrassed, when she – or he – is asked:
What is your name, your real name, and what country did your parents come from?
Shame on us that all these years, until this war, we “long-timers” in America, gave out the insufferable assumption that we were the superiors of these later immigrants, who are now in the front ranks of our almighty army fighting the fight for Americas with a fiercer consecration than even “early Americans” can summon.