Bella had forgotten Signor Carlotti too.
“He didn’t really say anything at the end of the day,” Bella said. She decided not to mention how much he’d yelled at her all day long. “Everyone just stood up to go. It was very dramatic. All the workers rushed out at once, laughing and shouting. They kept saying ‘Strike! Strike!’ And a bunch of other words I couldn’t figure out. But that one word they kept saying, ‘strike’—what does that mean?”
Pietro instantly turned three shades paler.
“O, Madonna mia!” he cried. “O, San Antonio!”
Bella wasn’t sure if he was praying or swearing.
“Are you sure that was what they were saying?” he asked. “And you stood up and walked out with all the people yelling ‘Strike!’?”
“Everybody did,” Bella said, defensively. But she wasn’t so sure of that now. Her memory seemed to be a tricky thing. Had Signor Carlotti still been standing there—still sputtering and screaming about unfinished shirtwaists, uncut threads? “I think everybody did,” she added.
“Oh, for the love of God,” Pietro said. “You just lost your job!”
“But why?” Bella said. “I worked so hard!”
“But a strike, see—that’s when workers walk out because they want to get paid more or treated better, or something like that. And usually what happens is that they just all get fired, and the company hires somebody else, who isn’t so picky.”
“I didn’t say I was doing a strike,” Bella argued.
“But you walked out!” Pietro said. “You walked out with all the strikers! Think how it must have looked to Signor Carlotti!”
Bella felt her knees crumble. She lurched toward the ground, and would have fallen hard if Pietro hadn’t grabbed her.
“I didn’t mean it,” Bella whimpered. “I didn’t know. . . .”
Pietro looked down at her with utter contempt. He had his arms around her, but it was completely wrong. Bella jerked away from him.
“I’ll find Signor Carlotti,” she said. “I’ll tell him I’m not making this ‘strike.’ I’ll tell him I’ll work all night if I have to—”
She whirled back toward the door, but now there was a huge man in an official-looking uniform standing there. He held his arms out to bar the door and said something incomprehensible.
“Oh, please,” Bella begged. “You’ve got to let me in!”
The man was shaking his head, pushing Bella away. She landed sprawled on the ground. The other people on the sidewalk had to walk around her.
“Stop it!” Pietro said, pulling her up. “Signor Carlotti’s probably already gone, anyway. I’ll go find him myself. I’ll take you home and then I’ll talk to him—it’s not like he’d listen to a girl.”
Heartsick, Bella trudged along behind Pietro. The jabs and jostling of the crowd seemed like a fit punishment. The faces leered around her; the foreign jabbering hurt her ears. For all she knew, the entire crowd was laughing at her. What did you expect, you foolish girl? You’re just an ignorant peasant! You don’t belong here! Go home! Go starve! We don’t care!
At the Lucianos’, Pietro let her in the door.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said.
And then he was gone.
Bella stumbled on in to the apartment. Signora Luciano and her dirty children were clustered around the table, their hands flying through the bits and pieces of artificial flowers. Bella remembered Signora Luciano’s prediction from the night before—“You watch out, she’ll end up on the streets”— and that made it so that Bella couldn’t even look at Signora Luciano, couldn’t squeeze out the barest of greetings.
“Well, there’s the grand working girl,” Signora Luciano snorted. “Too good for our business, of course. Has to work in a factory.”
Tears stung in Bella’s eyes, but she wasn’t going to let Signora Luciano see her cry. She tried to brush past the table, to go into the other room, but Signora Luciano slapped her hand away from the doorknob.
“Oh, no, you’re not going in there. Our day boarders are sleeping.”
“Day boarders?” Bella repeated, certain she’d heard wrong.
“Mario and Antonio work nights,” Signora Luciano said. “So they use Pietro’s and Nico’s beds in the daytime.”
Bella closed her eyes weakly. What kind of place had she come to? It had seemed so simple, back home: She had to go to America to find work or else her family would starve. Period. But this was too much to think about, day boarders and night boarders, crowded streets, fire escapes, sewing machines, strikes.
“Oh, don’t pull that high and mighty act on me, young lady,” Signora Luciano snapped. “You’re no better than us. I bet back home your family slept with goats and chickens in the house.”
They had, actually, back when they’d still had goats and chickens. Pretty much everyone did: animals on one side of the room, people on the other, although Guilia was awful about toddling over in the middle of the night and curling up beside a goat for warmth. She’d cried so hard when the last one died.
Why did Signora Luciano make it sound like it was something to be ashamed of, owning animals? Bella wished that they’d had hundreds of goats and chickens—hundreds of goats and chickens and acres and acres of land for growing beans and wheat.
Because then Bella could have just stayed home.
Bella leaned back against the wall, because there was nowhere to sit. Signora Luciano was still talking, but it was harder and harder to make sense of her strange accent. One of the children said something, and Bella couldn’t understand him at all. And then Bella must have fallen asleep standing up, because the next thing Bella knew, Pietro was shaking her awake.
Bella stared at him in confusion for a moment—who was this handsome man touching her?—then she remembered and burst out, “Did you find Signor Carlotti? Did you talk to him? Did—”
“Ssh,” Pietro said. “Not here.”
He led her through the back room, and, strangely, out the window.
“Oh!” Bella exclaimed, because now they were standing on a metal landing—the fire escape. They were at the back of the building, looking out onto a tiny courtyard and the fire escapes of the buildings behind them. Ropes hung between the buildings, and clothing hung from all the ropes, draped over and attached with wooden pins. Do people here have so many clothes they have to store everything outside? Bella wondered, but then one of the shirts on the line flapped droplets of water onto Bella’s face, and she realized: No, it’s laundry! Drying on the ropes instead of on rocks along the river ... In spite of herself, Bella found this enchanting. The Lucianos’ apartment was on the second floor of a five-story building, so she could look up into three more rows of hanging laundry.
It looks like angels, she thought. Angels fluttering down from the sky...
“You still have a job,” Pietro said.
This was news that only angels could have brought her—perhaps Pietro was an angel too.
“Grazie, grazie, Madonna mia,” Bella murmured.
“Signor Carlotti says there isn’t going to be a strike, people were just acting crazy,” Pietro said. “But if anything like that ever happens again, anybody starts talking about a strike, you just stay put! Strikes are nothing but trouble.”
“I will,” Bella said. “I promise.”
She kept her head bowed, meekly, feeling the last rays of the sunset on her head.
“The only thing is,” Pietro continued, “I had to bargain a little to talk Signor Carlotti into keeping you on. You have to prove that you’re not a radical or an anarchist or anything like that.”
Bella didn’t even know what those words meant.
“How do I prove that?” she asked.
“You have to work four more days as a learner. Without pay.”
Bella gasped. The old Bella, the half-wild girl from Calia who’d slept in the same room with goats and chickens, wanted to reach out and slap Pietro. Maybe Signor Carlotti, too, for good measure. But that’s not fair!
She wanted to scream. That’s cheating! How can they expect me to work for nothing? How is that any better than working for Signora Luciano—at least she says she’ll pay! Why is my work worth so little that I’m supposed to give it away for four more days? Four more days that Mama and the little ones will go without eating. ..
“But, see, then they’ll pay you,” Pietro said quickly. “For Friday and Saturday next week—you’ll get two days pay.”
He was begging her not to scream. He was telling her with his dark eyes, This is a scary place, America. You have to go along with what you re told. I can only protect you so much.
“And then you’ll send everything I earn to Mama?” Bella asked tentatively.
“You’ll have to keep some money out for the rent, and to pay back the padrone for your steamer ticket, but then, yes, everything else,” Pietro said. “I’m sorry, Bella. If I weren’t sending money back to my own mama, I’d—”
“I know,” Bella said.
She looked up again, wanting one more vision of angels. But the sky was dark now; the sun had dipped out of sight. And the hanging laundry was just dim shadows in the dark night.
Oh, Mama-across-the-ocean, she thought. Go out into the fields and find a few more grains of wheat. Look in the garden and see if there isn’t one more shriveled tomato, hiding in the dried-up leaves. I’m doing all I can but you’ll have to wait. Oh, please, Mama, I hope you can wait. .. .
Yetta
Why isn’t it time yet?” Yetta demanded. “Why not now?”
“Oh, Yetta, because,” Rahel snapped back, shoving open the door of their apartment and reaching up to turn on the gaslights.
“What are you waiting for?” Yetta asked. “The Messiah?”
“Yetta!” Rahel cried, horrified. “If Papa heard you talking like that!”
“Papa’s thousands of miles away,” Yetta retorted, but she felt shame coursing through her. She and Rahel had just worked a full day on the Sabbath; they’d long since given up any concerns about keeping kosher or lighting Sabbath candles. If asked, Yetta would have said she was a socialist rather than a Jew.
But joking about the Messiah was going too far.
“I thought you were a revolutionary,” she complained to Rahel, to cover her shame.
“I was a revolutionary in Russia,” Rahel said. “And you see where it got me.” She bent down and lit the stove. “America.”
“Because you ran away,” Yetta said, reaching into the cup-board for potatoes and carrots they’d bought the night before.
“Because,” Rahel said, beginning to chop the potatoes while Yetta chopped carrots, “I could see when a fight was hopeless and I chose to escape with my life.”
This was an argument they’d been having ever since Yetta joined her older sister in America. Yetta had been ten when Rahel left their shtetl and went to work in the big city, Bialystok. She’d been eleven when Rahel had come back, pounding on the door in the middle of the night, full of stories about plots against the Czar and false accusations and the city in flames. Papa had scraped together every ruble he could to send Rahel to safety. So Yetta had had three years-ages twelve, thirteen, and fourteen—to spend admiring her brave, glamorous, absent sister. When Yetta herself arrived in New York two months ago, it had been a jolt to discover that Rahel didn’t walk around in a blaze of glory. In fact, Rahel looked like a completely ordinary nineteen-year-old girl: dark hair piled on top of her head, squashed hat that was a poor knockoff of Fifth Avenue fashion, threadbare shirtwaist and skirt that had definitely seen better days. And yet, Yetta couldn’t scoff too much at Rahel; without Rahel, Yetta would still be sitting back in the shtetl, milking cows and daydreaming about revolution.
“You think all fights are hopeless,” Yetta muttered. “And maybe they were in Russia”—this was a major concession— “but here! Now! There must have been four hundred workers who walked out today, all yelling for a strike. Even that new Italian girl who sat there looking terrified all day—even she stood up and walked out!”
It had been one of the most exciting moments of Yetta’s life. She’d been living for years on the stories of Rahel’s days as a revolutionary—most of them pieced together from overhearing Mama and Papa’s worried whispers. Now, finally, at the end of another long, boring day of cutting threads, she’d had her own glorious moment of rebellion. It’d been even more incredible than she’d imagined: the surge of solidarity she felt with her fellow workers, the dizzying relief of finally saying out loud, in a way the bosses couldn’t ignore, “This isn’t fair! You can’t cheat us and lie to us and overwork us anymore!”
Rahel snorted.
“Maybe four hundred workers walked out,” she said, setting a pot of water to boil on the stove. “But how many actually went to the union headquarters to plan for a strike?”
Yetta didn’t answer that, because it had been just her and Rahel and three or four others. They’d stood outside the locked door, their excitement plummeting into something more like embarrassment, until Rahel finally said they should just give up and go home. “Maybe everyone else gathered somewhere else,” Yetta said.
Rahel took the knife from Yetta’s hand and laid it down on the table. She slid the carrots and potatoes into the water.
“There isn’t anywhere else to gather,” Rahel said. “Yetta, you have to face facts. Nobody’s ready for a strike. The union barely has any members. We have four dollars in the treasury. Even if we managed to organize, we couldn’t sustain a strike. Everyone would starve. And Mr. Harris and Mr. Blanck know that!”
Mr. Harris and Mr. Blanck were the owners of the Triangle factory—the “Shirtwaist Kings,” they liked to be called. They had offices on the tenth floor, and Yetta had heard the other girls whispering about seeing the men arriving or departing in their limousines. Yetta had never caught so much as a glimpse of either man.
“But it wasn’t just girls who walked out calling for a strike,” Yetta protested. “It was a contractor who started the whole thing. It was a man!”
Even Yetta had to admit, four hundred girls would have little more power than four hundred fleas. But men were more important; the contractors were practically on the same level as Mr. Harris and Mr. Blanck.
“Mr. Kline was incredibly brave,” Rahel agreed.
Yetta let herself relive the drama she’d witnessed earlier that day. She’d just been sitting there, her hands racing through the shirtwaists, her mind counting down the minutes to the end of the day. She’d seen the contractors getting their pay envelopes, and had begun calculating: if Mr. Carlotti gave her a full four dollars, like he was supposed to, how much would be left over after Rahel took out the money for rent and for food and for sending back to Papa in Russia?
It was amazing that she’d been able to hear Mr. Kline over the clatter of the sewing machines, but he’d been awfully loud.
“I’m sick of this slave driving!” he’d screamed, throwing his pay envelope down on the table. “If I pay my girls enough to live on, there’s no money left over for me! I shouldn’t have to choose between starving my workers and starving my family!”
Mr. Bernstein, the factory manager, had answered in a low, hissing voice. Yetta knew what he said only because she’d asked the girls sitting nearby.
“If you don’t like the way we do business here, get out!” He pointed to the shirtwaist still crammed beneath the needle of Mr. Kline’s sewing machine. “Finish up that waist and get out!”
And then Mr. Bernstein had turned on his heel and walked away. It was that motion that brought the anger surging up inside Yetta. Mr. Bernstein didn’t care if everyone starved. He cared only about finishing shirtwaists.
Girls were gasping all around Mr. Kline, but he made no move to sit back down at the sewing machine. He made no move to leave. Another contractor, Mr. Elfuzin, jumped up and stood beside him.
“He’s right!” Mr. Elfuzin exploded. “You’re starving us all! Blanck and Harris are making millions but they’re bleeding us to death!”
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Mr. Bernstein narrowed his eyes and glared. Then he left.
For a moment, there was a feeling in the room as if anything could happen. Yetta heard one girl whisper, “Is he going to get more money?” Mr. Bernstein reappeared only seconds later from the stairway, but he wasn’t carrying cash. He wasn’t alone, either. He was accompanied by two workers from another floor—cutters, by the look of them. They each had more muscles than the strong man Yetta had seen at Coney Island.
“I said, get out!” Mr. Bernstein yelled.
One cutter shoved Mr. Elfuzin out the door; the other grabbed Mr. Kline. Mr. Bernstein slapped Mr. Kline’s face, knocking his glasses to the floor. He and the cutter jerked on Mr. Kline’s arms, dragging him away. Still, Mr. Kline kept fighting and yelling.
“Will you sit at your machines and watch a fellow worker treated this way?” Mr. Kline screamed out to everyone else.
Yetta was up on her feet before she had a chance to notice that others were standing too. The shirtwaist in her lap tumbled to the floor. She cheered, “Not me!” and then that became, “Not us!” The word “Strike!” seemed to come out of nowhere, a wave of whispers and shouts flowing through the crowd, a wave carrying everyone out the door. . . .
“Eat,” Rahel said, sliding a plate of potatoes and carrots in front of Yetta, bringing her back to their sad, dark apartment—and to the sad, dark fact that there wasn’t going to be a strike. Monday morning, everyone would creep back to work just like always.
Which is worse? Yetta wondered. To be a girl in a shtetl in Russia, milking cows and daydreaming about revolution? Or to be a girl in a factory in America, sewing shirtwaists and daydreaming about a strike that’s never going to happen? It sounded a little like the questions Papa quoted from the Talmud.
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Yetta moaned. “Anything to make the time for a strike come faster?”
Rahel surprised her by nodding.
“Yes,” she said. “There is. We’re going to get ready. So next time something like this flares up—”
“Next time, we’ll stay strong,” Yetta said. “Next time no one will give up.”