Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (30 page)

“Ask for two hundred,” said Josephine. Hannah gulped. “And, Lucia, the Livingstons live off their limestone quarries. It’s nothing to them if garment workers get more. They can easily give five hundred.” The number bloomed before me, almost the cost of a Model T Ford. “You can do it. If you don’t ask, you’ll never get. But go tomorrow.”

I’d have to take Mamma with me to the Livingstons’, Roseanne said. She had been restless all day, looking for me, and might slip out the door to find me. “Besides, she makes me nervous wandering around the halls, looking in all the rooms.” How could I protest after all of Roseanne’s favors for us?

We went in the morning, when Mrs. Livingston might be reliably at home. I had persuaded Mamma to wear a somber dress and bring her knitting, even if was hard to imagine needing a woolen scarf on such a warm, sticky day. We went to the back door, where I implored Agnes to keep Mamma while I talked to her mistress about the strike. Mamma’s eyes darted around the fine kitchen. She tugged hard at my hand, straining to leave.

“No, no,” I said quickly in Italian. “Not to work here, just to wait. Remember what I told you? I have to speak with Mrs. Livingston. We’ll find you a quiet place to knit.”

“Your ma’s touched?” Agnes asked warily.

“No, no, she’s just nervous in new places,” I said, briefly explaining her condition. With difficulty we settled Mamma in the cool of the stone-lined pantry with a glass of iced lemonade.

“You left college to take care of your ma and now you’re helping with the strike? You’ve grown, my girl. Don’t you worry, I’ll watch her.” Agnes leaned closer. “You’ll find the missus in a better mood. The old man died last month. We all thought he’d be tormenting us forever and making the missus miserable. Then bam! Having breakfast in bed he was and the maid goes in to collect his tray. There he is, facedown in oatmeal, stone dead. Scared her silly. I was afraid they’d think I poisoned him. In fact, I’d wanted to often enough, but no, just a heart attack, the doctor says. You go around to the front door now, love, since you’re seeing the missus.”

I passed through a shaded rose garden to the front door. Even Betsy the housekeeper seemed more cheerful. Massive bouquets filled the house; carpets had been replaced and the grand staircase freshly waxed. Mrs. Livingston came floating into the morning room with the smile of her Hiram House days. Masses of curls framed her lovely face, balanced by swoops of pearls against a lacy morning dress. She directed me to a bright brocade divan.

“Oh, Lucia, it’s been like a honeymoon,” she gushed as if we were the dearest friends. “Richard never complained, but his father rode him like a horse, begrudging every penny.”

Betsy brought iced tea and little cakes. In the flurry of setting out dishes and glasses, she whispered that all was quiet in the kitchen. Mrs. Livingston listened sympathetically to my tale of leaving college to care for Mamma, never mentioning the ring she’d sold to send me. It was delightful to talk in that lovely room, to pretend I was a leisured lady with nothing to do all day but receive calls and plan for the evening’s entertainment.

The money, ask for the money,
I heard Josephine whisper. How much money was here in furnishings and art, in Mrs. Livingston’s dress, jeweled watch, lace and pearls, and translucent porcelain plates for the little cakes? How many thousands? But to ask again for help, why had I told Josephine I could do this?

I asked instead if she’d heard of the Shirtwaist Factory fire. “Yes, it was terrible, ghastly. Those poor, poor girls. We gave fifty dollars to a fund for their families.” My mind raced: was this good that she was sympathetic or bad that she had already given to the fund, and so why support another labor cause? I took a breath and spoke about the Cleveland conditions, the long hours, fines, rented machines, illicit services demanded of young girls, and how factory workers were pitted against the even-worse-paid contractors. She listened avidly and asked careful questions. Was she moved by the tale or only being kind to a former student, perhaps proud of my English vocabulary?

I plunged on, explaining the benefits of strikes in other cities, the aid given by the suffragettes, WCTU, and Mink Brigades in New York, educated and far-thinking women who saw in strikers both sisters and the builders of a great nation of work. I cited Mr. Kinney’s argument: workers paid decently could buy more, uplifting every store and business. I explained how workers suffered even in a short strike. I told her the dilemma of those like Alda with sick children and how much depended on the support of the wise, compassionate, privileged citizens of Cleveland.

Mrs. Livingston put down her iced tea, seeming much younger, like a hurt and disappointed little girl. “You came here again for
money,
Lucia? That’s all you want from me, first for college and now this?” She had thought I dared come on a social visit? Words rattled in my throat. Sweat trickled between my breasts despite the cool of the morning room.

“The workers are suffering, Mrs. Livingston, and I—”

She sighed and held up a hand to stop me. “I’m sorry, but since Richard’s father died, do you realize how many people come or write or stop us at church wanting money for good causes? We gave to the diphtheria fund because the need seemed so desperate.”

“I know. These are difficult times.”

“Now the union wants money.”

“It does. If the workers can’t hold on long enough to convince the owners, then all their suffering will be for nothing.”

She sighed. “How much, Lucia?”

Say the words. Think about Alda.
“We need five hundred dollars, Mrs. Livingston. We’ve raised some, but it’s not enough. There are six thousand strikers and their families to feed.” I was holding my glass too tightly and set it on the marble table. “I sing to the eyes,” Mamma had said on my first trip to Chicago, when her star was rising. I made myself look in Mrs. Livingston’s eyes, reposing my face, smiling slightly. She relaxed a little, becoming almost the Miss Miller of Hiram House again.

“I’ll have to speak with Richard. I don’t know how much we can give, but it will be something. And I’ll talk to friends who might be sympathetic, those whose husbands aren’t in the garment business.”

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Livingston.” I let my breath out slowly so she wouldn’t notice I’d been holding it.

“Now,” she said briskly, pouring more tea from a crystal pitcher tinkling with ice, “tell me about yourself. You
are
keeping up with your studies?” She explained why I must read the novels of Mrs. Edith Wharton. I told her I certainly would. Then she glanced at a dainty watch.

“Thank you so much for your time and generosity, Mrs. Livingston. I’ll be going now.”

She rang a bell, conveyed her best wishes for my mother’s recovery, and had Betsy thread me back to the kitchen.

Agnes was waiting. “So, she’ll ask the master for money, will she?”

“How do you know?”

“Now don’t look so surprised. When you were in service, didn’t you listen at doors?” I nodded sheepishly. “So Betsy happened to be dusting nearby and happened to hear you talk. The missus asks him
everything
. ‘This sauce or that one, darling? Which necklace tonight?’ But he’s a good man. And for sure your strikers need help. I’ll be sending over some of my oatcakes tomorrow for the children. And this”—she held up a little bag—“is from all of us here in service. Eight dollars. Payday’s tomorrow, so that’s all we could raise right now. But everything helps, no?”

The weight of it lifted my heart. “Thank you, Agnes. Thank everyone for me. It’s a week’s strike pay for a large family.”

The scullery maid looked up, startled. Agnes gasped. “Well, may the Lord hold you all in the palm of His hand.”

When we went to get my mother from the pantry’s cool, she almost smiled and even asked if I’d spoken to the countess. “She’s no countess, Mamma, but I think she’ll help us.”

A week later, Josephine told me that four hundred dollars had come from Richard Livingston’s account. “Just four? I wanted five,” I said, deflated.

“I never thought they’d give five, but if I’d told you three, they’d never have given four. So you did well, Lucia.” She left me to ponder my first lesson in organizing.

At our next
march, on blazing July 4, four Bohemian women were arrested for “promoting anarchy.” One was pregnant. After she shoved aside a strikebreaker who charged at her belly, she was jailed in a different precinct, and had started bleeding by the time Josephine found her and paid the bail. She lost her baby that night. A few days later, workers loyal to Printz-Biederman broke windows in striking Bohemians’ flats.

“It’s terrible. They’re new in Cleveland and mostly poor,” Henryk said. I had stopped to order vegetables for the soup kitchen. We talked as he sorted potatoes in the slight cool of his shop. Miriam was in Pittsburgh again, visiting her aunt. “There aren’t enough rich Bohemians to help the others. Some of the Jewish strikers are getting aid through a fund at the synagogue. Wealthy families in other businesses have been very generous.”

“Bohemians have the union,” I said stoutly.

“Yes, but who’s in the union? Jews and Italians, some Poles. The Bohemians feel alone.”

“Yes, maybe so.” The announcement of his engagement, difficult as it was, had one small advantage for me: with impossible hopes gone, only friendship was left. Perhaps that was enough. When I spoke of my mother’s good and bad days, Henryk listened with none of the pity or random advice that so many showered on me in those days. The constant coil of worry in my chest began to loosen.

“On bad days the
dybbuk
has her?” he asked lightly.

“Yes, the terrible
dybbuk
.” We spoke of the strike: I told him about my morning with Mrs. Livingston, how the old man had died in an oatmeal bowl, how difficult it was to ask for money, and yet I’d raised $408 between wealthy masters and poor servants. I described how the confident Miss Miller now deferred to her husband even in matters of sauces.

“I have an aunt like that,” said Henryk. “She left her brains at the altar when she married.”

“Why didn’t someone remind her?”

“Good idea. We should have said, ‘Excuse us, Aunt Gertrude, are you forgetting something?’ ” We laughed until a string of customers arrived, and then I slipped away.

Henryk was right
about the Bohemians. Their union ties were unraveling. Arrests, the loss of the baby, and broken windows frightened them. Their contractors, often deeply in debt to factory owners, pressed and threatened the women relentlessly. A week after the broken windows, Isadore announced what we all feared: Bohemian workers had voted to return to work at the same miserable rate.

Josephine’s voice rose over the waves of angry, fearful talk. “Defectors
do
return when a union seems about to win. We must hope for this.”

“So
we
do all the starving,” someone shouted, “and they sponge off our rewards?” Songs and speeches, impassioned arguments on the strength of union, and prayers of compassion for the Bohemians slowly eased the angry talk. Still, walking home on that hot, muggy night, I couldn’t clear away the fear that we traveled over shifting sand.

Congregations could be swayed against the strike by a single priest who counseled reconciliation. Our numbers were chipped away as workers went to contractors or simply left for other cities. Newspapers breathlessly recounted reprisals against Bohemians, painting us as rowdies, anarchists, socialists, thugs, and bullies, immigrants with nothing better to do than chant and make trouble. If supporters believed this talk and turned from us, how could we keep on striking?

As I walked down Woodland Avenue, now as familiar to me as Via Roma, Cleveland felt fearsome, fraught with risks and dangers. I had grown, as Agnes said, but so had my troubles. From this distance, Count Filippo seemed almost benign. I saw now why so many immigrants longed for home, even with its poverty. But how could this Lucia go back? I couldn’t fit in my old life or ever be only a servant again.

“What’s wrong?” Roseanne demanded when I got home. “You saw a ghost?”

“No, just problems at the union hall.”

“Is the strike ending soon? You’re behind in rent, you know.”

“I’ll pay on Friday,” I told her. But how? I’d already used all my college savings. As I helped my mother with her bath, the only solution that came to me was to sell my cameo, the one beautiful thing that I owned. That night when I opened its velvet box by our window, moonlight frosted Diana’s creamy face. Mamma looked over my shoulder. She must have had a very good day.

“Keeping for your daughter?” she asked, almost smiling.

“Yes, Mamma, for her.” I closed the little box. “Let’s go to bed.”

R
AIN ON THE
L
AKE

The next morning
, I went to a jewelry store on Bond Street. When the owner poked at my cameo with his pudgy fingers, Diana’s delicate face and swirling veil were suddenly so familiar and dear to me that I took her back, stammering that I’d changed my mind. “Miss,” he called out when I’d reached the door. “Happens all the time. Let me know if you change it back again.” I walked around the block to gather strength.

Heat swirled around me like Diana’s veil. My mind swirled as well with anger at the factory owners who’d pushed us to this strike, and at Josephine and Isadore, that they hadn’t magically won it for us. Anger at Roseanne that she dared charge so much for room and board, and anger at my poverty. Mrs. Livingston could have a tray of cameos if she chose. Why couldn’t I keep my one treasure? When I’d nearly circled the block, the anger turned to shame: What of mothers with hungry children and nothing to pawn? On a side street off Public Square, I saw a sign for Cramer’s Jewelry.

Countess Elisabetta had taught me to recognize poor cameos. Cramer’s was full of them: cheap carved silhouettes glued to dyed shell or coral bases, priced by size alone. Mine would get little here. I walked on to Mr. H. W. Beattie’s store on Euclid Avenue. Velvet-lined trays cradled exquisitely crafted gems. His cameos were of fine sardonyx stone like mine. I took a breath, squared my shoulders, and went in. Mr. Beattie carefully studied the deep carving and many layers of my Diana, the perfect beauty of her face, veil, and tempest of curls, and the fine bezel mounting. His pupils bloomed. He noted the plainness of my dress and asked gently if the cameo were a gift. “Yes, from—a friend.”