Beyond the Pale: A Novel (46 page)

“Just by watching.”

“I don’t pay you to watch. I pay you to work.”

I thought he was pleased. I did him a favor. All right, let him fix it himself next time. “Then I should get back to work—.” I moved as if to leave.

“Hold on.” He made a fist with one hand and slapped the top of it with the other. “Can you read English?”

No, I just folded pieces of paper like a trained bear. I stared at him. “I’ve been going to night school. Next year I’ll be eligible to take the naturalization exam. I read.”

He went to his bookshelf, picked out a book and threw it at me. “Sit down. See if you can follow this.”

It was the instruction manual for the folding machine—diagrams and illustrations followed by pages of text that said things like “Refer to Figure C, Part 13.” What a wonderful book! I found the page that explained about the parts I just worked on, and went back and forth between the text and the illustration. “Oh,” I said, “uh-huh.”

“That’s enough,” Shapiro grumbled. “Well?”

“I understand it.” Then I said it again for myself. “I understand it.” I wondered if my brother Abe, studying Talmud, had experienced a moment like this, when everything came together, when you found there were names for every part, every part was designed to work with the next and the way it worked could be understood. “Can I maybe borrow this book from you? Or read it at lunch?”

Shapiro shook his head and laughed. “Listen, Meyer,”—this was the first time he called me by my last name—”as long as you work here, that book’s going to be yours. And I got some others you might like too. That is, if you want the job of mechanic.”

“Me?”

“You see anyone else in this room? Am I talking for my health?”

“I would very much like the job of mechanic—.” I frowned, trying to take what he was saying in.

“Oh, you want to know about the money? Okay, okay. How much do you make now?”

“Eight-fifty a week.”

He looked something up in a ledger on his desk. “I can’t pay you as much as Frank was getting, you understand? Besides, you have a lot of studying to do. I want you to take that book home and read it from cover to cover. Got me? Okay, let’s see. I guess no one will kick too much if I start you at $12 a week.”

“Twelve dollars?” I never imagined I would make so much. But he misunderstood me.

“All right, thirteen—if you don’t mind being paid an unlucky number. I’m not going higher.”

“Thirteen, thirteen is fine.”

He cracked his knuckles, looked out the window, looked back. “You know this is an experiment.” He cleared his throat. “If the men start to give me trouble about it, I’m going to have to put you back to folding. I’m a forward-looking man, in this business you have to be. I can see you have a natural talent, don’t think I can’t. And I remember we took you on Mr. Greenbaum’s say so. But it’s a hard time. Hard times out there, still plenty of men looking for work. I could get in a lot of hot water for giving this position to a girl, and I don’t want any strikes in my bindery. How would it look?”

Suddenly I realized that Frank must have been getting a lot more than $13 a week. By giving me this job Mr. Shapiro was giving himself a big savings. At the AFL, they could say it was like scabbing, because I would be undercutting men’s union wages. At the League we were always arguing that if the men cared so little about women, why were we trying to join their organizations? Would the men even let me join their mechanics’ union?

“I understand,” I said. “This is an experiment.”

G
UTKE TURNED ON
the new electric lamp in her third-floor study, and continued writing:

How comfortable the girls have become visiting Dovida and me on Suffolk Street. They come over often on Saturday nights now, giving the Petrovskys the impression they’ve gone to a settlement house lecture or a club. Our home is a club, in a way, isn’t it? And tonight we actually went to a hall and sat through two speakers, Emmeline Pankhurst and Harriet Stanton Blatch.

“Why do we keep going to these suffrage talks? We agree, and we still can’t vote,” I said, heading for the kitchen to put water on for tea as soon as I took my shawl off.

“You can’t vote, my dears, but as a brand-new American, I can.” Dovida steered Chava and Rose into the parlor. Dovida was naturalized in early spring as Mr. Greenbaum. Even knowing her as I do, that she would take an oath as a man astonished me. But she said if it was a choice between making a lie that only we would ever know about and appearing to be ungrateful to America, the lie would hurt us less. Everything with Dovida was relative.

From the kitchen, I could hear the girls talking. Rose sounded annoyed.

“You think the solution is for us all to wear trousers and go about as men?”

“Ah, Rose, you always cut me down to size,” Dovida said.

“And it’s a good thing she does, too,” I said, coming back to check that everyone was settled while the water heated. “Sometimes I wonder if acting like a man all these years hasn’t gone to your head.”

“Or my pants?” Dovida’s audacity made Chava laugh.

“We have to go to the lectures so we can remember the arguments,” Chava said. “Each of us comes into contact with so many people that it’s easy, for me at least, to get confused in an argument. The more of us who can offer a good quote, the more who turn around and pass it on.”

Chava’s sensibleness pleased me.

“Exactly so,” Dovida said, clipping the end off a cigar, offering the box to Chava and Rose. Years of Chava’s life as a worker were in that box, gluing, stripping tobacco. I could see the shadow of early weariness pass over her face. Would she be able to taste herself in the smoke?

She started to pick one up, examining the union label. “Don’t you dare!” Rose said and she dropped it back in the box, looking sheepish.

“It’s a bad habit—and expensive, better not to start,” Dovida said, winking at Rose. “But you’re right about the panel. When I tell my associates I’m going to vote for suffrage, first they give me a strange look, then they want to know ‘whatever for?’ When I’m fresh from one of these discussions, I know what to say. Sometimes they even listen.”

“But how do they vote?” Chava asked.

Dovida shrugged.

Rose picked up a knickknack we had on the end table, a pink bird, made of quartz. Dovida was always bringing home these tshatshkes. I could have lived without them. I noticed then that the garnet ring on Rose’s hand was the one I’d given Chava on the train. I was gratified to see her wearing it, yet had a sudden unpleasant buzzing in my ears.

“Didn’t Miss Wald look lovely tonight?” Rose’s voice made the buzzing stop.

“Oy!” Dovida slapped her forehead, “Gutke, I forgot to tell you. I invited Miss Wald and that nice young woman Rita Morgenthau over for tea—”

“You didn’t! I haven’t had time to clean up in days.”

“Everything looks fine to me,” Rose said, setting the bird back down carefully.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Chava asked. The girls didn’t seem surprised anymore by who dropped by, whether famous reformers or financiers. Their main concern was deciding if our guests knew Dovida’s secret. Only one or two did, of course, but I could see it was a form of entertainment for them, looking for clues. Dovida or I would try to give them a sign, yes or no. Their preoccupation with the ruse helped them get over Dovida’s guests’ rudeness. Most of them, even the women, paid very little attention to me, let alone Chava and Rose, once they realized they were just East Side factory girls. Sometimes Dovida described them as “Gutke’s Henry Street protégés.” Whatever that was supposed to mean, it seemed to satisfy the important and the rich.

I turned to Chava in resignation. “Come help me bring in your tea. We have no idea if these women are going to even show up.”

“I always come when I’m invited,” Rose said.

“Because you, dear, are our friend,” I answered.

“And Miss Wald isn’t?”

“Technically, she’s my employer, and I’m not sure whether friendship is her motivation when she comes.”

“What then?”

“Fundraising schemes, a haven from everyone grabbing for her attention at the Settlement, curiosity about Dovida. Ah, this Rita, she doesn’t know.” I paused to make sure they understood my meaning. “Come, Chava, help me see if there’s something fit to serve if they do show up.”

Rose was fluffing pillows and straightening the parlor when we heard the knocker, and then Dovida—Dovid, her voice low and formal—welcomed the new arrivals. I’d just put a plate of store-bought kikhl on the coffee table.

“I thought we’d never get away. I hope our invitation is still good, Mr. Greenbaum?” Lillian Wald asked as she came from the hallway, pulling up her veil and setting her flowered hat gently behind the sofa. She looked elegant, as always. Even in the middle of summer, every hair was in place. Lillian Wald emanated a purposeful calm. I knew she went as a nurse into the same tenements that I did, but I felt like an old world bobe when I looked at her, corseted and in style. I
was
an old world midwife after all, nothing to be ashamed of in that.

“My, you look thoughtful tonight,” Miss Wald said delicately. It took me a moment to realize she was addressing Chava, not me. “Thinking over the speeches, I hope?” She gathered her skirt from behind as she sat down.

“I, I was thinking about women,” Chava managed to sputter. That was enough to satisfy Miss Wald.

“We should have had the vote a hundred years ago,” Rita said.

Rita was only a few years older than Chava and Rose. I’d seen her at the Settlement, always rushing by or showing benefactors around. They said she was one of Miss Wald’s pets. Chava was staring at her intently. In the calm of the parlor, she looked particularly pleasing, not the haughty rich girl I took her to be.

“I don’t see how we’ll ever get the vote if we can’t vote for it,” Rose said, giving Chava a where-are-you look.

“But surely Mr. Greenbaum will vote for it, won’t you?” Miss Wald turned to Dovida.

“Surely, Miss Wald. It makes perfect sense to me. Either we have a system of nobility or we have a true democracy. If women don’t vote, men have the position of nobility in relation to women. I have no desire for Mrs. Greenbaum to be a serf in relation to me.”

“But you don’t mind if I serve our guests, do you?” I went into the kitchen to get our best silver tea service.

“Let me get that for you, my dear,” Dovida was on her feet, relieving me as soon as I returned.

I had to chuckle. “Always a gentleman for company.”

“Where else?”

“Mr. Greenbaum is a perfect gentleman,” Miss Wald emphasized “perfect” in a way that made us all nod in agreement. “Don’t you think so, Rita?”

Rita looked a little puzzled. Our parlor had become like a play I saw once—Molière in Yiddish, though Miss Wald’s Yiddish was nowhere as good as her manners. Rita mumbled agreement.

“I’m so impressed with Harriet Stanton Blatch, aren’t you, Mr. Greenbaum?” It was beginning to grate on me, that Miss Wald gave so much attention to Dovida. Didn’t she care what I thought? I was the one she turned to whenever the nurses and midwives had a disagreement. I didn’t give Dovida a chance to open her mouth.

“What’s impressive to me,” I said, “is how she broke with her mother, after Mrs. Stanton said all those regrettable things.” I wanted to let the girls know I had followed contemporary politics.

“What things?” Rose asked.

I sighed. “You know the National Women’s Suffrage Association has taken the position that by giving women the vote, women will be able to counterbalance the influence of Negroes and immigrants—”

“I never have understood that argument,” Rita said softly. She had very thick, long eyelashes. I watched her lower them. Chava responded by looking at her own knees.

“It’s true that when you take it apart it doesn’t make all that much sense,” Miss Wald said. “They believe, I’m sure, that it’s a tactic to win the Southern vote.”

“There are plenty of people in New York against immigrants,” I said.

“You wouldn’t believe how many anti-Semites and anti-Negroes I meet in my business,” Dovida agreed. “Of course they would never describe themselves that way because it’s too much of the foundation of their thought.”

“We’re always the last to see our own prejudices, I’m afraid,” Miss Wald said. Everyone looked at her, wondering what she meant, exactly. She took no notice. “And yet you can see how Miss Pankhurst’s radicalism has influenced Mrs. Blatch.”

“Well, I like how she said that working women can offer more realistic solutions to our problems than the rich,” Chava offered.

“Exactly, dear,” Miss Wald said. She could agree with Chava and be patronizing in two words. “That’s why she founded the Equality League. Did you know that Rose Schneiderman is already one of their most popular speakers?”

“How come she didn’t speak tonight?” Rose asked.

“She’s out of town, organizing, I think.”

“Are you going to join the Equality League, Miss Wald?” Dovida asked, stretching her legs out. Chava snuck a sideways glance at Rita, who had her hands folded neatly in her lap.

“Oh, Mr. Greenbaum, I’m asked to join every suffrage group, to lend the weight of the Settlement’s good name to it, and so I’m afraid I must join none.”

“But don’t you think by joining none your intentions might also be misinterpreted?” I asked, pouring myself another cup of tea. The rest of them could help themselves.

“I doubt anyone would suspect us of betraying the immigrant’s cause, if I understand your implication.”

“No,” Dovida said, “everyone knows the good work of the Settlement. I can understand why Miss Wald chooses not to make an official alliance in this, dear.”

“And,” Rita added, “so many organizations come and go. We want to provide a forum for them, while avoiding any internal strife that might come up.”

Miss Wald nodded at Rita, approvingly. “Of course everyone knows we believe in, and work for, the advancement of women. I do serve on some other boards when duty calls, but I must reserve most of my attention for Henry Street.”

“Duty,” Rose said, standing, “that reminds me that it’s my duty to get up at five tomorrow for work. You’ll excuse us?”