Uprising

  That afternoon, Mr. Corrigan had the car ready right on time, with plenty of lap blankets and hot chocolate in a thick jug.

  “Can’t have any of you freezing out there,” he muttered, as the girls piled in.

  “We’ll be going to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, one of the biggest in the city,” Eleanor directed him before climbing into her own car. “In the Asch Building, at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street.”

  “Yes, miss,” Mr. Corrigan said.

  The talk in the car was of the extra credit paper the girls would have to write and of the heavy load of exams coming up at Vassar. Jane, who was facing neither papers nor exams, had nothing to contribute. When the conversation flagged, one girl squealed, “Oh, I just thought—I was going to put on my old boots today, but I forgot and wore my new ones. You don’t think they’ll be ruined, do you?”

  She stuck out a shapely ankle covered in the latest style of boot, the leather so new, it sparkled.

  “We’ll just be walking around, talking to the strikers,” another girl said. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  “Don’t you remember that suffrage rally where those awful men started booing and throwing rotten tomatoes? And the speakers just kept talking, so it would have been rude of us to get up and leave?”

  Jane had missed that event. She started worrying a little about her own boots.

  “Now, Celeste, you know your papa would buy you another pair,” the other girl argued. “You should be thinking about the strikers.”

  “Oh, no—how are we going to understand them?” a third girl asked. “The professor said most of them are immigrants. Russians, Poles, Italians . . .”

  “I know Italian,” Jane offered, and for the first time the other girls looked at her with something like respect.

  They pulled up in front of the factory, and Jane was surprised to see that it was the same building she’d mistaken for a school all those months ago, that time she was on her way to tea. But the girls walking in front of the building didn’t look so happy now. They looked grim and cold. Jane wondered if she should give them the hot chocolate, but then what would she and Eleanor’s friends have to warm themselves with on the way home?

  “I’ll be parked right around the corner,” Mr. Corrigan said. “If you need anything, just let me know.”

  He looked a little worried now, but Jane wasn’t sure what he thought would happen. There were just small clusters of girls walking around. What was dangerous about that?

  Jane and the others piled out of the car.

  “Thank you for coming,” a tall woman in a lovely hat greeted them. “I’m Violet Pike—Vassar, class of oh-seven. I’m so glad Professor Trenton agreed that this would be educational for you. All of us must work together for the women’s rights cause to succeed—”

  “I thought this was a strike,” Jane said.

  “Oh, indeed, indeed,” Miss Pike said. “But it’s all one and the same in the final analysis, isn’t it? The tragedy of the workers’ condition threatens us all. And if women have the vote, then society as a whole will be enriched. We would not allow such abominations to occur, such as these girls being forced to work for pennies, for hours on end. These are our sisters!”

  She gestured toward the strikers behind her. Up close, Jane could tell that Miss Milhouse’s criticisms of the working girls’ clothes had been all too accurate. Some of the girls’ skirts were just one step up from rags. And if they worked in a shirtwaist factory, wouldn’t you think they’d have decent shirtwaists—as advertising, if nothing else? Mostly, though, Jane noticed that not a one of them had an adequate coat. She pulled her own good wool tighter around her shoulders and shivered.

  “Here are the rules for picketing,” Miss Pike said, handing around flyers. Jane read one when it came her way:

  DON’T WALK IN GROUPS OF MORE

  THAN TWO OR THREE.

  DON’T STAND IN FRONT OF THE SHOP;

  WALK UP AND DOWN THE BLOCK.

  DON’T STOP THE PERSON YOU WISH TO TALK TO;

  WALK ALONGSIDE OF HIM.

  DON’T GET EXCITED AND SHOUT WHEN YOU ARE TALKING.

  DON’T PUT YOUR HAND ON THE PERSON YOU ARE

  SPEAKING TO. DON’T TOUCH HIS SLEEVE OR BUTTON.

  THIS MAY BE CONSTRUED AS A “TECHNICAL ASSAULT.” DON’T CALL ANYONE “SCAB” OR USE ABUSIVE

  LANGUAGE OF ANY KIND.

  PLEAD, PERSUADE, APPEAL,

  BUT DO NOT THREATEN.

  IF A POLICEMAN ARRESTS YOU AND YOU ARE SURE

  THAT YOU HAVE COMMITTED NO OFFENSES, TAKE DOWN HIS NUMBER AND GIVE IT TO YOUR UNION OFFICERS.

  If a policeman arrests you ... ? Jane thought. What had she gotten herself into? What would Father say if he knew she was here?

  “Don’t worry,” Miss Pike said, because some of the other girls were looking a little pale as well. “The police have been very respectful of us. It’s just those poor factory girls . . .”

  Jane and all the Vassar girls turned and looked at the strikers again. This time Jane saw beyond their ragged clothes, their laughable attempts at fashionable hats, the poor quality of the “rats” holding up their pompadours. She saw the girls’ faces now, the courage in their gaze, the intensity in their eyes. These girls didn’t just look cold and grim. They looked determined.

  “What are all these funny symbols below the rules for picketing?” one of the Vassar girls asked Miss Pike. “Some sort of code?”

  “Oh, that’s Yiddish,” Miss Pike said. “Many of these girls are of a Hebraic background, and they can’t read English.”

  Hebraic? Hebrew? That made the girls seem even more foreign and exotic. Jane felt like she did at the Central Park Menagerie, watching completely different species. Here are the bears, the swans, the Hebrews and the Italian girls . . .

  “But don’t let me keep you,” Miss Pike said. “I’m sure you’ve got so much you’ll want to ask them!”

  A bit timidly, Jane fell into step beside one of the strikers. The girl smiled at her and nodded, making an unbelievably battered hat sway on the tower of her thick, dark hair. Jane tried to think of something she could say in Italian.

  “Ti piace andare a l’opera?” she finally asked, which she hoped was close to “Do you like to go to the opera?”

  The girl looked at her blankly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in accented but precise English. “I don’t understand.”

  Embarrassed, Jane looked down at her feet.

  “I thought maybe you were Italian,” she said.

  The girl looked like she wanted to say “Are you crazy?” but she only shrugged politely and said, “No, I came here from Russia. I’m Yetta.”

  “Jane Wellington,” Jane said. “Can I hear you say something in Russian?”

  “I don’t know Russian, just Yiddish,” the girl said. “And English of course.”

  Well, that was confusing! How could somebody be from a certain country and not even speak the language? Jane wondered if she’d misunderstood. She didn’t know what to say next.

  “Would you like to hear about our strike?” the girl offered.

  “Oh, yes,” Jane said, relieved that she wouldn’t have to keep the conversation going.

  “We—the Triangle workers—have been out on strike since September twenty-seventh,” Yetta said quickly, as if she’d had to recite this many times. “That’s two and a half months we’ve been without pay. The bosses locked us out. Then, on November twenty-second, our union, Local 25, voted for a general strike and shirtwaist workers all across the city walked out.”

  “But the strike’s almost over, right?” Jane asked.

  Yetta broke off her recitation, her mouth shaping into a round O of surprise. She brought both hands up to clutch her cheeks, which were suddenly flushed.

  “Did you hear something new?” she asked excitedly. “Did Mr. Blanck and Mr. Harris agree to recognize the union? They agreed to a closed shop? How about limiting our hours—”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know,” Jane said, strangely embarrassed to have sparked such excitement. She struggled to remember exactly what Eleanor had told her. “I just heard, lots of the manufacturers have settled already. . . .”

  “Oh,” Yetta said. Disappointment passed over her face, then was replaced once more by determination. “Yes, that’s true. The smaller shops, they couldn’t afford to have their workers out, so they agreed right away to the workers’ demands. We’ve won in those shops. But the big manufacturers like Triangle, they’re hiring scabs; they won’t talk to us . . .” Her expression, so rosy a moment ago, seemed chiseled out of stone now. “The strike is not almost over.”

  Jane burrowed her hands deeper into the fur muff she usually wore only when she was ice skating. She was cold already, and she’d only been out here a few minutes.

  “Why does it matter so much?” she asked.

  “Do you know what it is like to work in a shirtwaist factory?” Yetta asked. “In the wintertime, I’m there before the sun comes up, and if the boss wants to make me work until midnight, he can do that. What could I do to stop him? I’m just a girl. Just one girl. I can work, day in and day out, hour after hour at the sewing machines, and then at the end of the week if he decides he doesn’t want to pay me for all my work, what can I do? He can make all sorts of excuses—‘Oh, I had to charge you for the use of the sewing machine—for the electricity to run it—for the needles that broke. . . .’ He can make up any excuse he wants, but if he doesn’t want to pay me what I’m owed, he doesn’t have to. What can I do? I’m just one girl.”

  Jane had not supposed that it would be any different than that, working in a factory. But she hadn’t really thought about it before.

  So why don’t you just find another job? she wanted to say, but feared it would sound insensitive. Or just plain ignorant. What did she know about jobs for factory girls?

  “And,” Yetta continued, “the bosses lock us in—”

  “What?” Jane said.

  “They. Lock. Us. In,” Yetta said, very distinctly, as if she’d feared her English wasn’t clear enough. “They lock the doors so we can’t sneak out—not that we could, anyway, because they’re always watching us, even when we have to use the . . . facilities. But they’re so afraid that we’ll steal the shirtwaists that they keep us under lock and key. It’s like we’re in prison just because they think we might commit a crime.”

  This was something Jane could relate to. Being locked in was like being caged.

  What can I do? I’m just a girl ... The words Yetta had repeated were still echoing in Jane’s head.

  “You broke out,” Jane said. “The strike is how you broke out of those locks.”

  Yetta gave her a look that Jane remembered from school—the same look that teachers used when Jane gave a correct response to a question the teachers thought was too hard for her.

  “Yes,” Yetta said. “I don’t mind working. This strike”—she gestured at her sign, at the path ahead of her on the sidewalk— “this is harder than sitting at a sewing machine all day. It’s harder than milking cows and baking bread and all the other work I’ve done in my life. But this strike is for something. It takes me somewhere. It helps us all. If the bosses at Triangle recognize the union, then . . .”

  Jane was not really listening. She wanted to talk about breaking locks again. She started to say, “So you’re an escape artist. Like Harry Houdini.” She wanted to know how it worked. But before she could open her mouth, a pair of hands shoved at Yetta’s shoulders. Yetta’s head pitched forward, then back, the battered hat sliding precariously low.

  “Ya dirty striker! Blocking the sidewalk!” a voice snarled.

  Jane whirled around and saw a disgustingly filthy man with a scar zigzagging down his cheek and an eye that sagged in its socket. He reached into his pocket and waved a bottle high in the air, as if toasting his assault on Yetta. Then he lowered the bottle to his lips and gulped. He puckered his lips, as if contemplating what to do next. Slowly, almost elegantly, he spat his mouthful of whiskey full into Yetta’s face, the liquid dripping down her eyebrows, her cheeks, her lace collar. He turned and leered at Jane, as if planning to attack her next.

  “No!” Jane screamed. Terrified, she took off running. She didn’t stop until she was safely back at the car. She scrambled in, pulled the lap robe over her legs, and cowered against the leather seat.

  “Miss Wellington! What’s wrong?” Mr. Corrigan asked.

  “Take me home!” Jane begged. “Take me home and lock all the doors and please, please, protect me, somebody protect me . . .”

  “There, there, miss. It’s all right. Here come the police,” Mr. Corrigan said soothingly.

  The police rushed up in their wagons and scrambled out in waves. But they paid no attention to the filthy man. They paid little attention to the Vassar girls. They were too busy beating their clubs against the strikers’ backs, grabbing the strikers and shoving them into the wagons. From the safety of her car and her fur-lined lap robe, Jane saw it all. She watched to the very end, when she got one last glimpse of Yetta in the police wagon, being carried off with her fellow strikers. Even then, behind bars, with blood and whiskey and spittle smeared across her face, Yetta held her head as high and proud as an Astor, as a Vanderbilt, as the loftiest society grande dame.

  “She’s that free,” Jane whispered to herself. “That free, even on her way to jail . . .”

  Bella

  The Luciano baby was sick. Bella could hear it crying late into the night, its thin, high-pitched, unnatural-sounding wail interrupted only by spasms of coughing. The baby’s crib—a drawer pulled out of a chest and laid haphazardly on the floor—was right on the other side of the wall from the bed where Bella slept with the two little Luciano girls, so each wail seemed to drill straight into Bella’s head. Even with her hands over her ears, Bella couldn’t block out the sound. She was so tired, so desperate to sleep. But she was torn—she also longed to storm into Signor and Signora Luciano’s bedroom, snatch up the infant, and whisper the same soothing lullabies that she’d heard her mother croon to Guilia when Guilia was a baby.

  What kind of mother was Signora Luciano, that she could let the baby cry like that and not do a thing?

  Other tenants in the surrounding apartments began pounding on the walls.

  “Make that baby shut up!”

  “Can’t a man get any sleep around here?”

  Bella rolled away from the wall and leaned toward Serefina, the little Luciano girl lying right beside her.

  “There’s a poultice my mama used to make,” Bella whispered. “For when we had coughs. But it uses flaxseed. Is there any flaxseed in New York City?”

  Bella’s relationship with the Luciano children had changed in the last few weeks. She still hated Signor and Signora Luciano, but Rocco must have said something to his younger brothers and sisters. Now, sometimes, when Bella fell asleep over her unfinished pile of flowers, one of the Luciano children would nudge her awake before Signora Luciano noticed and began screaming at her. When one of the Luciano girls scooped out macaroni for the boarders, Bella’s bowl always seemed to contain extra noodles. And at night now, she and the girls huddled tightly together, uniting their body heat against the winter chill of the tenement. Sometimes, in the haziness of nearly falling asleep at night or nearly waking up in the morning, Bella could imagine that she was cuddled up again with her own siblings, children she loved. Coupled with Signor Carlotti’s new, unexpected kindnesses at work, and the dancing every day at lunchtime, being friends with the Luciano children made Bella’s life downright bearable. Maybe even happy.

  Except for the wailing baby.

  “You know how to make the baby better?” Serefina whispered back.

  “It might work,” Bella said.

  Serefina slid out from under the thin cotton blanket, being careful not to disturb her younger sister, who had somehow, miraculously, managed to fall asleep despite the baby’s crying. She climbed over the top end of the
bed, her nightshirt dragging pitifully on the floor. She pushed open the door to her parents’ bedroom.

  “Bella says you need flaxseed,” Serefina said. “For a poultice.”

  Bella heard Signor Luciano swearing, cursing “useless peasant remedies.” She climbed over the top of the bed herself, suddenly full of righteous indignation on the baby’s behalf. You’re going to let your own baby cough itself to death without trying to help at all? she wanted to scream. But she stopped short when she reached the doorway. Signora Luciano wasn’t lying in her bed, lounging around while her baby screamed. She had the baby in her arms and was pacing up and down the floor. She was pounding on the baby’s back, bouncing it up and down, trying everything to soothe it.

  And still the baby screamed.

  Signora Luciano had her back turned to Bella; she couldn’t have known Bella was standing right there.

  “We have to go to a doctor,” Signora Luciano was pleading with her husband. “We can use Bella’s money to pay for medicine.”

  What? Surely Bella had misunderstood; surely Signora Luciano’s voice was distorted by the strain of trying to make herself heard over the baby’s wails. But Bella felt a chill go through her that had nothing to do with the cold wind rattling through the tenement or the iciness of the floor beneath her stockinged feet.

  “What do you mean, use Bella’s money’?” Bella demanded. “What money?”

  Signora Luciano turned around, a motion that made the baby wail louder. It also made Signora Luciano’s shadow loom larger in the dim light from the kerosene lamp.

  “I mean, the money from you paying rent,” Signora Luciano snarled. “Now, leave us alone. Go back to bed. This is family business that doesn’t concern you.”

  Bella hadn’t paid any rent since the beginning of the month, almost three weeks ago. She was certain that the Lucianos had already spent that money long ago, on potatoes and flour and kerosene and the rent to their own landlord. All she could think about was the coins she’d placed in Signor Luciano’s hand only the day before, Saturday afternoon. Coins he’d promised to wire to Bella’s mama back in Calia, immediately.