Yetta put her head back down, and her view steadied again. She was lying on a bare wood plank, but one of the other girls had stuffed her jacket under Yetta’s head. Anna and Rosaria and a few of the others were crouched around her. Gradually, Yetta found that she could focus on their faces.
“Getting blood on your coat,” Yetta murmured.
“That doesn’t matter. It’s ripped to ruins anyway. And we’re in jail, so what good is a stupid coat?” Anna gave a laugh that turned midway into a near sob.
Yetta forced herself to sit up; she forced her eyes to keep a steady gaze on the other girls, not the iron bars.
“We’ll be all right,” she said. “We didn’t do anything wrong. They can’t keep us here.”
“They kept my father in prison in Russia,” another girl, Surka, said. “They didn’t even tell him what he was charged with until he’d been there three years.”
“That was Russia,” Yetta said. “This is America.”
At the other end of the jail cell, a ragged old woman began to laugh crazily, the sound pouring out of her mouth like a taunt. Or torture.
“She’s been doing that since we got here,” Anna whispered.
Yetta was noticing the other women in the cell now-scary women with gaunt, blank faces, sores where their mouths should be, ragged clothes that looked to be mostly held together with dirt. Or maybe they weren’t actually wearing any clothes, just the filth.
And then she heard footsteps coming down the hallway outside the jail cell.
“Strikers!” a man’s voice boomed out, echoing off the stone. “Your fines are paid!”
His key scraped in the lock. Yetta found she could scramble up with the others, though the wound on the side of her head throbbed and her whole body ached.
Rahel was waiting beside the jailer on the other side of the iron door.
“Oh, Yetta!” she cried, wrapping her arms around her sister. “I was so scared for you—”
“Tell your sister to stay off picket lines, then,” the jailer growled.
Yetta wanted to fling back a retort: maybe “Tell the bosses to treat us fairly, and I will!”; maybe “Tell your policemen to arrest the right people next time!” But she could only bury her face in her sister’s shoulder, let her sister guide her away from those iron bars and the rats and the crazy laughing woman and the women dressed in filth.
“How did . . . how could you pay the fine?” Yetta murmured when they were back out on the street.
“Union money,” Rahel said. “And they gave me nickels for carfare, too, so we won’t have to walk home. The trolley stop’s right up there on the corner—can you make it that far?”
Around her, the other girls nodded wearily. Yetta was working something out in her head.
“The union doesn’t have much money,” she said. “If we spend it on carfare, we won’t have any left for keeping the strike going. My legs aren’t bad, just my head. I’ll walk.”
“But—” Rahel started.
“I’m walking too,” Anna said.
“Me, too,” Rosaria said.
“And me,” Surka said.
In the end, they all did, one bedraggled, bloodied crew. Everyone on the sidewalk stared and whispered. Yetta wished they still had their picket signs.
“We’re Triangle workers,” she explained to some of the people who stared the most. “We’re on strike. This is what happened.”
The strike meant something different now. It wasn’t just standing out in the sunshine carrying a sign, wearing a fine hat, looking pretty. It was more like . . .
Like a war.
Rahel kept her arm around Yetta’s waist, holding her up, holding her steady.
“You still want the strike?” she whispered. “Even now?”
Yetta answered through split, bloodied lips.
“More than ever.”
Rahel’s face seemed especially pale, out here in the sunlight. She grimaced, then glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one else was listening.
“Yetta, those women who beat you up—they were . . . ladies of the evening. Women who . . . sell their bodies. If Papa knew . . .”
“Papa isn’t here, is he?” Yetta said angrily. “Papa doesn’t sit over a sewing machine ten, twelve hours a day. Papa doesn’t have a contractor breathing down his neck. He doesn’t have a man looking in his hair, patting down his clothes every day to make sure he hasn’t stolen any shirtwaists. Papa doesn’t have bosses who hire prostitutes to beat him up!”
Rahel slumped, and for a moment it seemed that it was Yetta holding Rahel up, not the other way around.
“You figured it out, then,” Rahel said sadly. “That’s what we thought down at union headquarters, too. The bosses hired those . . . those women. They bribed the police to arrest you.”
Yetta nodded, not surprised.
“What I don’t understand,” Rahel said, “is, why those women? Why not just have the police beat you up and keep it simple?”
She attempted a wry smile, but it failed miserably.
“Because they’re women,” Yetta said. She remembered the police looking from her to the prostitutes, saying, You’re a striker, aren’t you?... Then I can’t see much difference. “They want to say we’re just as low as those women, just as unclean.”
It was all of a piece, somehow, with the men back in her shtetl praying, “Thank you, God, for not making me a woman.” Men thought women were worthless, stupid, easily cowed. Yetta narrowed her eyes, thinking thoughts she never would have dreamed of back in the shtetl. They weren’t even thoughts that fit with her old socialist fervor. But they were what she believed now.
God made me, too, she thought. And He made me to fight.
Jane
Jane pulled the comforter up to her chin. There seemed no reason to get out of bed this morning. Ever since Eleanor and her friends had gone back to Vassar a few weeks ago, Jane’s life had felt emptied out and pointless.
“Miss Wellington?” It was Miss Milhouse, sweeping the drapes back from the floor-to-ceiling windows, letting sunlight splash into the room. “You’ve slept quite late enough. You have a dress fitting at half past eleven, and you’ve not had breakfast yet. You’re leaving yourself no time to prepare your toilette. . . .”
Jane sighed, barely listening. What did a dress fitting matter? The new dress had ruffles where many of her old dresses had bows, and it was a butter-cream color she’d not had in her wardrobe before. But it was really the same as every other dress she owned. Along with her corset, it would pinch in so much at the waist that she’d barely be able to breathe; it would seem not so much an article of clothing as a cage.
Ever since her father had forbidden her to go to college, everything seemed like a cage.
No, some nitpicky, precise part of her brain corrected.
He didn’t forbid it. He just called women’s colleges preposterous, and you were scared to say anything else.
Jane sighed again.
Miss Milhouse whirled around from the windows and marched directly toward the bed.
“Really, Miss Wellington,” she said briskly. “You must expunge yourself of this . . . this torpor.”
She came to the side of Jane’s bed and reached out as though she were going to fluff the pillows. Instead, she grabbed Jane by the shoulders and began shaking them.
“You simply must—”
A look like horror crept over Miss Milhouse’s expression. She dropped Jane’s shoulders and turned away, plunging her face into her hands. Her whole body quivered, as if shaken by silent sobs.
Miss Milhouse—crying?
“I’m sorry,” Jane said in a small voice, like a small child who doesn’t quite understand what she’s being scolded for.
Miss Milhouse spun back around, brushing tears away, pretending they’d never happened.
“You will be ready for the dress fitting on time,” she said. “I insist on it. And then, this afternoon, perhaps . . . perhaps I can take you for a treat.”
An ice cream sundae, probably, Jane thought. Who cares?
But Miss Milhouse was rushing out of the room. She quickly reappeared, carrying a newspaper. She waved it in front of Jane’s eyes, so quickly Jane could only focus on a few words at a time: WILBUR WRIGHT, and then SURE TO FLY.
“He did it,” Miss Milhouse said. “People are saying he flew his aeroplane twenty miles this morning, up the Hudson River. In the city! Can you imagine? If the weather holds out, he’ll be flying an exhibition this afternoon, for everyone to see, at the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. If you’d like, I could take you to watch.”
Jane felt a flicker of interest. An aeroplane—a machine taking a man high into the sky. Incredible. She remembered how excited everyone had been when the news came out that the Wright brothers had flown the first plane. And now, for the first time, Wilbur Wright had brought his contraption to New York City. It was probably the most amazing thing she’d ever get the chance to see.
But her mind snagged on verbs. To watch. To see. It reminded her of the most recent letter she’d gotten from Eleanor at Vassar. The letter had begun with apologies for not writing sooner, because of all the classes Eleanor was taking, the Social Improvement Club meetings, the Hiking Club’s outings. Then the letter had taken on a lecturing tone.
I am sorry that your father will not allow you to attend college. Perhaps you can eventually persuade him to take a more enlightened view. But, if that is not possible, then one must make the best of one’s situation and set one’s sights on achievable goals. Some of my friends are planning a grand tour of Europe next summer. I am certain that your father would allow you that; everyone’s father allows that! If I were you, I would endeavor to show him a good faith effort that you are mature enough and responsible enough for this trip. Study your French, study your Italian, study the tour guides we poor college girls don’t have the time to glance at. . . .
There was a postscript, too: I am such a dunderhead with languages that you will have to be the one who translates. Study your Italian most especially!
It was almost an invitation, almost a plan of action. At first, Jane had been excited, and she dove immediately into Italian grammar and vocabulary. She was good with languages; the French and Latin she’d learned at school had slipped into her brain with very little effort on her part. But the sentences in the Italian phrasebook seemed to taunt her: Ho bisogno di un portabagagli per le miei valigie. I need a porter to carry my bags. Vorremmo pranzare adesso. Che cosa mi consiglia lei? We’d like to have dinner now. What do you recommend? Quando in comincia la gita? Vogliami vedere il museo. When does the tour begin? We want to see the museum. Vorremmo vedere un’opera. Quale opera presentano? We would like to watch an opera. What opera are they performing? They made the European grand tour sound like her regular life, just in a different place. Seeing, watching—what if her whole life passed by and she never did anything?
Now she blinked up at Miss Milhouse.
“Will Mr. Wright be giving people rides in his aeroplane?” she asked.
Miss Milhouse gasped.
“I should say not!” she said, scandalized. “And even if he were, surely you realize that would be much too dangerous for a girl!”
Surely she did. Surely she realized exactly how many ways she was caged.
Miss Milhouse kept talking, but Jane closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
Bella
Bella heard the music as soon as her sewing machine stopped.
Give me your hand,
Turn out your toe,
All lovers know
The way to go....
Curiously, she peered far down the row of tables. At the end of the room, between the cloakroom and the elevators, someone had set up a box with a disk and a horn. How could it be? The tinkly, delicate music seemed to be pouring out of the horn.
“Is that a phonograph?” a girl breathed incredulously behind Bella.
“Yes. We’ll have dancing at lunchtime now. If you wish, of course,” Signor Carlotti said.
Bella peered up at him, puzzled. He’d been so nice the past few weeks, she couldn’t get used to it. Once, when a shirtwaist snagged, he said, “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you didn’t do that on purpose.” Once, when he saw that she had only a crust of bread for lunch, he said, “That’s not much to live on. Here’s a penny. Go buy something from a peddler.” He hadn’t yelled at her at all since that day he’d walked her home. It made her suspicious.
But music . . . With no more will than moths have near flame, she and the other girls drifted toward the phonograph.
The girl who sat at the sewing machine next to Bella, whose name Bella didn’t even know, said something. She pointed to herself, then Bella, and pantomimed a swaying movement. Bella understood it to mean, Want to dance?
Bella nodded. She touched her rough, calloused hand to the other girl’s rough, calloused hand, and they slipped out into the midst of other girls beginning tentative dance steps. Heel, toe, whirl . . . Bella hadn’t danced since she’d left Calia. This wasn’t a dance she knew, wasn’t music she’d ever heard before. But she watched the other girls’ feet, she let her partner lead, and she didn’t do too badly. At the end of the song there was an extra, fancy step, and Bella’s feet got twisted. She lost her balance and knocked her partner over, bumping into the first row of sewing machines. She looked around for Signor Carlotti, sure that he would be right there screaming at them any minute. She saw him at the edge of the dancers.
He was smiling.
Bella and the other girl collapsed into giggles.
“Frances,” the other girl said, pointing at herself.
“Bella,” Bella said, doing the same.
That was all they really understood of each other’s languages, but it was enough. They danced for the rest of the half hour, stopping to swallow their meager lunches only while Signor Carlotti was changing the phonograph between songs. Everyone did. The dancing was a tonic after hours hunched over the machines; they didn’t want to miss a minute of it.
“Last song,” Signor Carlotti said, and even he sounded regretful.
This one was a livelier tune, and Bella and Frances spun over near the windows. Bella dipped so close to the glass that she could feel the cold seeping in through the pane. It was a chilly day, and she was glad to be inside, dancing. But in that one dip she could see straight down to the street—nine stories down, a frightening sight. She could see the girls holding signs, walking up and down the sidewalks so strangely. They were there every morning when Bella arrived and every evening when Bella left; she hadn’t realized they were also there all day, while she worked.
“What are they doing?” she asked Frances. At first Frances didn’t seem to understand, but then she released a frightened-sounding torrent of words. Was she that terrified of the girls with signs? Maybe she was just saying that she was afraid of heights.
“It’s a strike, isn’t it?” Bella asked. “Strike? What does that mean, anyway?”
Another torrent of words. This time Bella recognized one word, repeated several times. Scab . . . scab . . . scab . . .
“Do they call you a scab too?” Bella asked, for that was the word the girls with signs hurled at her every morning and every evening. Bella thought the word must mean something like “thief or “criminal,” because that was how they said it, as though Bella had stolen their last crust of bread directly from their mouths. But Bella hadn’t done anything to these girls; she didn’t understand why they were outside in the cold.
“Back to work now,” Signor Carlotti said, before Frances had a chance to answer. A little of his old sternness had crept back into his voice. Bella wondered if it was because he knew they were talking about the strike.
The music ended and the machines whirred back to life. Guiding one shirtwaist after another under the darting needle, just like always, Bella began to wonder if she’d imagined the whole thing—the dancing, the music. Or not imagined it exactly: misunderstood. The more she thought about it, the
more the gaiety reminded her of the time back home when they found their last goat dead.
“Well, buono,” Mama had said, putting on a fake smile. “This just means we can have a feast! We’ll have all the goat meat we want!”
But only little Guilia was fooled, her tears drying up at the prospect of a feast. All the others understood that the goat’s death meant one good meal and then the end of goat’s milk, goat’s cheese, goat’s fur and—most of all—the end of any chance, ever again, of more baby goats. And then, after they’d roasted the goat and pretended to enjoy their one last feast, they’d all gotten sick. Evidently whatever killed the goat wasn’t very good for humans, either.
Iam like Guilia here, Bella thought. Something is happening and I don t understand.
But it was too hard to figure out. It was easier to lose herself in a daydream of Pietro coming back, whisking her off into those dance steps she’d just done with Frances. In her daydreams, with Pietro, she never stumbled once.
• • •
It was quitting time, and Bella squeezed into the elevator with the other girls. Their merry chatter got quieter and quieter the closer they got to ground level; the little box was completely silent by the time the doors slid open. Someone clutched Bella’s arm—Bella glanced over and saw that it was Frances.
“There’s safety in numbers,” Frances said. Bella was sure that was what she said. Bella clutched Frances’s arm right back.
They stepped out of the elevator and pushed their way out of the main doors to the street. The strikers saw them immediately and ran over, screaming.
“Scabs!”
“Scabs!”
“How dare you!”
“You’re taking our jobs!”
Was Bella understanding them right? Could that really be what they were saying?
Bella was glad of the burly policemen who pushed the strikers back. All the same, a girl broke through the police line and began pulling on Bella’s arm. She jerked her away from Frances.
“No! Don’t!” someone screamed. It was another striker, but someone Bella recognized this time: Yetta, the girl who’d walked Bella home.