Uprising (26 page)

“Triangle? But only two of us work there,” Bella protested.

“No, no, not Triangle like the factory. Triangle like the shape,” Jane said. “With three sides? What we are making, standing here now?”

Bella had thought they were in a circle, but suddenly she understood.

“You mean, like on the sign for the factory? That shape? The name means something? It's not just a word?” She began to laugh at herself. “I can't believe that I've been working there for more than a year and I didn't even know that! I will be a very hard student to teach!”

“No, don't worry—you've learned it now. Your first lesson!” Jane grinned. “There's something in geometry about a triangle being the strongest shape. And that's us. The three of us are a much better triangle than the factory!”

Comari di triangle,
Bella thought. They were only words, but they warmed her heart. As she and Yetta and Jane turned and continued walking home, she felt almost as though she'd gotten one of her wishes. Her family had not come back to life, but it was like she had a family again. She had Yetta and Jane. Her
comari.

I
t happened again: The cutter's assistant, Jacob, was standing behind Yetta when she scraped her chair back at the end of the day.

“Do you like to dance?” he asked.

“Do I look like the kind of girl who has time to dance?” Yetta snapped back, unfolding herself from the chair. She crossed her arms self-consciously, covering the worn spots on her skirt. Then she changed her mind and put her hands on her hips, her fingers all but pointing to the threadbare places. “Do I look like I have the money for the kind of dresses girls need for dancing? I send all my money back to my family in Russia. Anyhow, I'm busy taking English lessons at night.”

“I take English lessons too,” Jacob said.

“You do?”

“Yes, but mine don't meet on Saturday nights. I thought . . . maybe you would go dancing with me then.”

Yetta looked across the factory floor to the row of windows that lined the walls, facing Greene Street. The windows were open, letting in a gentle April breeze. Even in New York City, April smelled of flowers budding and leaves unfurling and green things springing back to life. The breeze
had been teasing Yetta all day, calling her away from her machine, calling her to something that she desperately longed for but couldn't have defined or described.

Maybe it
was
dancing.

“We could practice our English together,” Jacob said.

Yetta jerked her attention back to Jacob, just another arrogant cutter even if he did have those maddeningly handsome curls and honey-colored eyes. The thought of practicing English while dancing made Yetta think of Rahel helping her husband in his store. It made her think of their mother selling eggs and cheese to supply their father's religious texts, but never buying anything for herself.

It made her think that Jacob wanted to dance with her for all the wrong reasons.

“No, thank you,” Yetta said, with great dignity. She held her head high as she walked past him. She deliberately went to the Washington Place door, the nearest one, forgetting that it was locked.
Something else the strike should have changed,
she thought. She had to thread her way back through the maze of tables and baskets and stacked shirtwaist parts, and then wait in line for the elevator. Although she was very careful not to watch—or, not to watch in a way that anyone could tell—she was aware of how Jacob walked back to his table, how he scraped scraps of fabric into the huge bin underneath, how he kicked the bin and slapped his hand against the table.

What is wrong with me?
Yetta wondered.
Would it have killed me to say yes?

When she got down to Greene Street, Bella and Jane were waiting for her, giggling.

“We're picking out a law student for Jane to marry someday,” Bella said, laughing. “How about that one?”

The boy she pointed to had chestnut hair—Yetta thought he might be the same one who'd asked her about the strike, way back in October.

“Better that you should be picking out law students to help us with the union,” Yetta snapped.

The chestnut-haired boy was brushing past her.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said boldly, tugging on his sleeve. “Are you a law student?”

“Uh, y-yes,” he said, startled. This was not the same student Yetta had talked to before. This one didn't seem nearly so sure of himself, and he was walking alone, not with a pack of friends. He looked from Yetta to Bella to Jane, and back to Yetta. “Charles Livingston, at your service.”

“Charmed, I'm sure,” Jane said, automatically, as if that response was required.

“I'm Yetta, and this is Bella and Jane,” Yetta said. “Are you aware that there is a great injustice going on right next door to your law school? At the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the owners agreed to certain conditions at the end of our strike, and I believe every single one of those conditions has now been violated. It's as if the strike never happened. Aren't there any laws to help us?”

“I—I don't know,” Charles said. “I'm just a first-year. I'd have to ask my professors.” He hesitated. “I do know, when your strike was going on, they said American laws were designed to protect business owners, not workers.” He recited the last part as though from memory. “They asked us if we thought that was fair.”

“And do you?” Yetta asked.

Charles shrugged.

“What do I know? I'm only a first-year. I'm only eighteen years old.”

“I'm only sixteen,” Yetta said, “and
I
know. I know because I've lived it. It's
not
fair. It's not right.”

“Well, then you could vote—oops, sorry. Forgot I was talking to a girl. You could tell your husband or boyfriend to vote—”

“Forget it!” Yetta said, stalking away.

Bella and Jane caught up with her a few moments later.

“I can't believe you did that!” Bella said, giggling. “Just going up to a man like that, a total stranger, and talking to him—”

“Talking? That was haranguing! That was lecturing! That was incredible!” Jane snorted. “Though I must say, you probably just ruined my chances of ever marrying
that
law student!”

Yetta whirled on her friends.

“Why would you want to marry somebody who doesn't even know what he thinks about injustice?” she asked.

“I suppose he'd be awfully malleable,” Jane said thoughtfully. “You could just convince him to think the way you do. You probably could tell him how to vote.”

“But what if I want to vote all by myself? Cast my own ballot?” Yetta asked. “Stand on my own two feet? It's like . . . dancing. Why does the man always get to lead?” She stamped her feet, because that wasn't what she was trying to say. “Why is the whole world stacked in favor of rich Christian men when God made me a poor Jewish girl?”

“Maybe God thinks you're up to the challenge,” Jane said quietly.

“Mr. Harris and Mr. Blanck are Jewish too,” Bella pointed out. “So that's not—ooh, wait. Dancing. Don't tell me . . . that cutter actually asked you to a dance, didn't he? You're going, aren't you? You can borrow a hat from Sadie across the hall, and—”

“Never mind!” Yetta said, stomping away from them.

“I thought you promised not to be grumpy anymore!” Jane called after her.

Yetta pretended not to notice.

Fueled by indignation, she got back to the tenement building far ahead of Bella and Jane. The sidewalks were crowded, as usual, so Yetta was practically inside the front door before she noticed the woman standing nearby.

“Yetta!” a familiar voice called out.

It was Rahel, leaning against the railing. She reached out and gathered Yetta into her arms. Yetta almost gave in, almost let herself relax into her older sister's hug. Rahel had gained weight as a grocer's wife; she was very solid now. It would be such a relief for Yetta to spill everything to Rahel, to tell her about Jacob inviting her to dance and about feeling confused and about the way the April breeze seemed so determined to lure her away from her machine. Maybe Rahel would even quote something their mother used to say:
Men ken nisht tantsn af tsvey khasenes af eyn mol
You cannot dance at two weddings at the same time. Meaning, maybe Yetta was right to turn Jacob down. He was a distraction. Except, that saying was about weddings, and weddings were a sore subject between Yetta and Rahel. Yetta had barely danced at
all at Rahel's wedding. She'd mostly sat there, in stony silence.

Now Yetta held herself stiff and pulled away.

“It's been so long since you came to the store,” Rahel complained.

“There's another store, closer,” Yetta said, deliberately misunderstanding. She knew Rahel wasn't just trying to drum up business. “You remember what it's like. When you work all day at the sewing machine, you don't want to walk an extra block or two to get groceries.”

Rahel frowned and tilted her head to the side, regarding her sister sadly.

“Let's go sit on the fire escape,” she said. “Just you and me. I've got something to tell you.”

Did you hear me invite you in?
Yetta wanted to say, but that would have been too rude. Rahel led the way up the stairs and through the apartment. She pulled a mattress out onto the fire escape to sit on, and soon they were both outside again, three stories above the street, their backs propped against the wall, the breeze teasing at their hair.

Rahel turned to Yetta, her eyes gleaming, and said, “I'm going to have a baby.
We're
going to have a baby. Samuel and me. You're going to be an aunt.”

Of course. That was how these things happened. First the wedding, then a baby. Still, Yetta felt like she'd had the wind knocked out of her. A baby. Another way for Rahel to be different from Yetta.

“Mazel tov,”
Yetta said, weakly.

Rahel stared out over the street.

“Please tell me you're happy for me,” she said quietly.

“Didn't I say
mazel tov?”
Yetta asked. “Didn't you hear me?”

“You didn't sound like you meant it.”

Yetta shrugged.

“It's just . . . this happened fast, didn't it?” She picked at the threadbare patch on her skirt. “I thought you wanted to save money to bring our family over from Russia.”

“The baby won't be here until January,” Rahel said. “We're still saving money.”

“But babies are expensive,” Yetta said. “They need clothes and food, and more clothes because they grow so fast. . . . You'll have this whole new family and maybe you won't care anymore about Mother and Father.”
Or me,
she wanted to say, but that would sound so childish and selfish.

“Yetta, I already have a whole new family, ever since I married Samuel,” Rahel said. “That doesn't change anything about Mother and Father.” She brushed hair back from her eyes and squinted out over the street, with its peddlers hawking wares and women buying food and children squeezing in one last moment of playtime before they went home to do their chores. One huge mass of living, breathing, teeming humanity. “I—I never told you,” she said. “In the pogrom, in Bialystok ... I saw people burned alive. I saw people lighting other people on fire. This one girl—she might have been you or me. One minute, she was just standing there, in the window of her house. The next minute, she was covered in flames. A human torch. Gone in a flash.”

This was the wrong story for a lovely April afternoon when Yetta had been invited to dance. Yetta clenched her teeth together and squeezed her eyes shut, shutting out the
street scenes and the fire escape and the sight of Rahel's intense eyes. But she could still feel Rahel gripping her hand. She could still hear Rahel's voice.

“After I saw that, I thought I would never have a normal life again,” Rahel whispered. “I had nightmares. Remember when that tenement building burned in the next block? That brought all the nightmares back again. I never thought I could get married and have a baby and—and be happy . . .”

Yetta pulled her hand from Rahel's grasp. She opened her eyes again.

“How could you want to have a normal life in a world where people set other people on fire?” Yetta murmured. “In a world where policemen beat up shirtwaist girls? How can that not make you want to change the world?”

Rahel leaned her head close to Yetta's.

“What was I supposed to do?” she asked. “Complain to the Czar? Go to Washington and yell at President Taft? I'm a girl. Maybe having a baby is the best thing I can do. To bring some happiness into this sad world . . .”

Yetta jerked away from Rahel, because she didn't want Rahel to see that she was shaking. She slid back in through the window. The tenement seemed so dim after the fire escape. The door opened, Bella and Jane bursting into the kitchen and crying out, “Yetta? Where are you? Are you all right?”

“I'm in here,” Yetta called, trying to hold her voice steady. “Rahel's going to have a baby.”

And then Bella and Jane were clustering around, saying all the things Yetta should have said: “Such good news!” “How wonderful!” Bella's eyes shone with joy and she hugged Rahel the way Yetta should have.

These are my friends,
Yetta wanted to tell Rahel.
Closer than family. Can you give me credit for their congratulations, for their happiness on your behalf? Can you see that I wish I could react the way they do—so kindly, so unselfishly? It is just that I myself have too many wishes, all tangled together like long hair in a spring breeze . . .

She saw the sorrow and regret in her sister's eyes. She saw it, and did nothing.

Yetta, Bella, and Jane had become very skilled at digging newspapers and magazines out of the trash, so they could bring them home for reading lessons. Jane always read them first, to see what would work best for Bella, who could now pick out small words like “cat” and “rat,” or for Yetta, who could puzzle out how to pronounce just about any word but had no idea what sentences like “A commission has been formed to make a recommendation regarding these circumstances” could possibly mean.