Threads and Flames (18 page)

Just before she closed her eyes, she heard Fruma say, “I meant what I said at dinner. I
will
help you, you'll see. It's a promise.”

A promise,
Raisa thought sleepily. She stayed awake just long enough to whisper a prayer of thanksgiving for this new shelter and the good people whose roof she and Brina now shared, then gave herself up to dreams.

 

 

The next morning, Raisa awoke to the smell of strong coffee and hot bread. Brina still slept, her little fist pillowing her rosy cheek, but Fruma was up and dressed. She sat on the edge of the bed, the
Forward
in her lap.

“You should read this, Raisa,” she said. “There are advertisements for jobs you might want. And you should really read this.” She turned the paper so Raisa could see the feature she meant.

“‘
A
...
Bintel Brief
'?” Raisa read unsteadily. True to its name, the column was a bundle of letters, all of them sent to the
Forward
by readers trying to cope with the great puzzle of their new lives. She looked narrowly at the first few lines of a letter from someone who signed herself A Grieving Mother. Piecing together a word here, a phrase there, and sometimes entire sentences, Raisa read the melancholy tale of how Grieving Mother's only child—a daughter she described as “my priceless pearl”—had fallen in love with one of the young men who worked in the same factory, except . . .

“An
Italian
?” Raisa was shocked to the core. “The girl wants to marry an Italian boy? But they're all Catholics, and she's Jewish!” The memory of Renzo's charming smile and manner made her quickly add, “They could be friends, yes, but married? That doesn't happen!”

Fruma didn't look at all scandalized by Grieving Mother's plight. “It happens a lot more than you'd think. Look, I didn't tell you to read ‘
A Bintel Brief
' for that kind of letter. People like you, newcomers, write to the editor with questions about all sorts of American things they don't understand. If you read, you learn, and the more you learn, the sooner you'll feel at home here. It will help you find Henda.”

“How?” Raisa asked.

“If you lose something precious in a stranger's house, it takes a long time to find it again because you don't really know where to start looking. But if you lose it in your own home, where you know every place it might be hidden—well, there it is! This is a big city, Raisa, but as soon as you learn enough to make it
your
city, you'll see how small it can become.”

THE SLOW SEASON

F
or two weeks, Raisa left the Kamenskys' home every morning with her spirits high and her keenness to work practically radiating from every inch of her body. And every evening, she returned with nothing to show for her endeavors but sore feet, rapidly thinning shoe leather, the memory of closed doors, and every so often the apologetic explanation, “It's the slow season.”

The first time she heard those words, she repeated them at the dinner table. The four Kamenskys exchanged knowing looks.

“The garment industry is its own little world,” Gavrel said. “And like the world, it's got its seasons: designing the new fashions, making the samples, sending out the salesmen to show this year's models to the big department stores, waiting for the orders to come in. They don't have people
making
clothing until they know someone's going to
buy
the clothing they make.”

“
That's
when the shops go crazy,” Fruma said. “When the orders are in and they've got to fill them in a hurry. It's all right for the owners to make their people wait for weeks to have work, but God forbid their buyers wait for a minute to get their shirtwaists!”

“What's a shirtwaist?” Raisa asked. She'd heard Fruma use the term frequently when she spoke about her work, the English word standing out like a beacon in the middle of Yiddish conversations. She hadn't asked for an explanation before, fearing she'd look like an ignorant greenhorn, but curiosity finally got the better of her.

“This is a shirtwaist,” Fruma replied, running her fingertips over the pretty white blouse she wore.

Raisa felt a little embarrassed at not knowing the name of a garment she'd seen thousands of women wearing since she'd first set foot on the streets of New York. “Did you make that, Fruma?”

Fruma laughed. “We don't seem to make anything else in the shop!” She brushed an imaginary speck of dust off the crisp cuffs. “We should get you one as soon as possible, and a nice skirt to go with it. Then you'll look like a real American girl!”

But Raisa's shirtwaist had to wait. The slow season reduced jobs to a trickle. Some factories closed their doors altogether, waiting for the orders to come in and the next busy season to arrive. Any jobs that were available went to experienced people. When the Kamenskys said the blessing before meals, Gavrel's mother always followed it up with her own prayer. Night after night she thanked God for having made her children so skilled with the sewing machine and the pattern-cutting knife that they kept their jobs in spite of the accursed slow season.

At the end of her second luckless week, Raisa sat across the table from Mrs. Kamensky, counted out the rent into her landlady's hand, then gazed mournfully at what remained. She didn't need to add up the coins to know that there was not enough to pay for a third week's lodging.

She looked up and saw pity in Mrs. Kamensky's eyes.
She won't say it, but we both know what's on her mind: if I don't find work soon, Brina and I will have to leave.

Mrs. Kamensky put the rent money into the pocket of her apron. “You know, Raisaleh, we do like having you and the little one living here,” she said slowly. “You've both been a lot of help to me around the house. That Brina! Such an old soul, God bless her. Such a serious little housewife! If she were tall enough to reach the top of the stove and do the cooking, too, I wouldn't have to lift a finger! I don't think I could get along without her, and so ...”

Is she saying what I think she is?
Raisa's heart beat faster.
If I can't find a job this week, she's going to let me owe her the rent, for Brina's sake! Oh, thank God, this is more than I hoped—

“And so if you're ever living somewhere they don't want to look after the child for you, you just bring her to me.” She patted Raisa's hand. “I'm sorry, my dear. The trouble is, at this time of year, no one's got a lot of money. Business is down at my husband's store. The children are bringing home salaries, but they've both had to take deep cuts in their pay. There's nothing they can do about it. Choices are for the rich.”

“It's all right, Mrs. Kamensky,” Raisa replied. “I understand. I appreciate your offer to take care of Brina.”

“I wish I could do more for you both. Listen, if you promise not to tell my husband, I think I can let you have
one
more week without—”

“Maybe you won't have to,” Raisa said, feeling a great surge of gratitude and affection for the older woman. “Today I'll go back to the Protective and Benevolent Association for my shtetl. They're always kind to me, and as helpful as possible, since the first time I went there to ask about Henda. Someone there might have news about where they're hiring. There was nothing the first few times I asked, but things can change.”

“Of course they can,” Mrs. Kamensky said in a voice that added,
But they never do.

“And if that doesn't work, maybe I should go looking for my friend Luciana. Heaven knows, I have the time to do it.”

“Luciana?” Mrs. Kamensky adjusted her glasses to peer at Raisa. “The Italian girl from the ship?”

Raisa bobbed her head. “Her people have a grocery store on Mulberry Street, Delvecchio's. They said that if I needed help, to come see them there. One of her brother's friends works in the garment business, and so does his sister. Maybe they've heard of a job I could—”

“Pfff! The slow season treats Italians the same as Jews. They're good people, but proud! As if every one of them were still Julius Caesar, King of Rome! If you go to them for help and they can't give you any, how will that make them feel? The best they might do for you is a job in their grocery store, a job where you'll never earn enough to pay me—” She paused and cleared her throat, red faced over her accidental indiscretion. “Well, a job that you can't
live
on, that's what.”

“I wish I knew where else to ask,” Raisa said.

Gavrel's mother tapped her lower lip pensively with one work-worn forefinger. “What about the Pig Market?”

 

 

The Pig Market was a raucous, swarming, frantic part of Hester Street, where people selling all sorts of goods competed noisily for customers. It was also the place where those who were desperate for jobs waited to be found by people eager to take advantage of their desperation. Raisa saw how the men and women who shared her situation went about attracting potential employers. They stood in the midst of the crowds and shouted their skills to the world, or else they hung back against the side of a building and plucked at the sleeves of passersby, urgently reciting a list of all the abilities they could bring to a job.

Raisa decided to shout rather than to beg. It wasn't in her nature to make a spectacle of herself, but she was afraid that if she tried the quieter style of seeking work—reaching out to grab total strangers by the sleeve—she might be mistaken for a prostitute. She'd already seen plenty of those unlucky women on the streets, and she knew how they solicited customers. Better to shout like a peasant at a cattle fair!

She bellowed her qualifications and experience as a seamstress for what seemed like hours. A few people gave her curious looks as they walked past, and a handful stopped to speak with her but continued on their way as soon as they learned that she didn't know how to run a sewing machine. Her voice was almost gone by the time a thickset woman stopped and asked her a question in an unintelligible language. Raisa replied hopefully in Yiddish, but only got a puzzled look in return.

A busybody peddler manning a nearby pushcart overheard and called out to Raisa, “That's Ukrainian! She said you look like a good worker and she asked what jobs you can do, but she don't speak Yiddish. You know Polish, maybe?” Raisa nodded. “So let's see if she understands that. Hey, you! Lady!” He tossed a few words of Polish at the woman. Her doughy face broke into a big smile, and she began jabbering back.

Her name was Orynko, and she was looking to hire someone to work in her dress shop. She didn't seem concerned that Raisa wasn't a sewing machine girl. “I'll teach you how to use the machine,” she said. “Until then, you will sew for me by hand.”

Orynko ran a tiny dressmaker's shop in the basement of a building on Delancey Street, a neighborhood very much like the one where the Kamenskys lived, though just a bit shabbier here and there. Even though the big woman didn't speak Yiddish, the sign in the shop window advertised MADAME ODILE'S FINE TAILORING FOR LADIES in that language as well as in English. As soon as Raisa crossed that dank threshold, her new employer made it clear that Orynko no longer existed and that she was to be addressed exclusively as Madame in the shop. She then put Raisa to work sewing linings into women's jackets, skirts, dresses, and coats.

As Raisa expected, it was piecework. Madame told her she would get a certain amount of money for each finished garment. Two more girls worked in the badly lit basement—one running the rickety sewing machine, the other draping and pinning the articles of clothing. Once a day, a spindly little boy arrived at the shop hauling a bundle of cut pattern pieces. Madame handled the customers, who came to order new clothes, to have old clothes remade, and to collect their finished orders. In addition to Polish and Ukrainian she seemed able to do business in English, but neither she nor the girls in the shop knew a word of Yiddish.

Once or twice, Raisa tried to chat in Polish with her coworkers. She didn't know whether or not the sewing machine girl would understand her, but she'd heard the draper speaking that language with a woman who'd come in for a final fitting. Her attempts at striking up a friendly conversation hit two brick walls. The sewing machine girl gave her a blank look, paused just long enough to cup one hand over the silver crucifix she wore around her neck, and went back to work. The draper shook her head, as if Raisa had spoken to her in Chinese, but before she turned her back, she made the face of a girl who had encountered an open cesspit and in perfect Polish muttered, “She had to hire a filthy Jewess.”

Raisa felt the tips of her ears go hot with humiliation, but she said nothing. What good would it do? If she spoke up, Madame might take the draper's side and then—

I'd lose my job. I can't afford that risk.
Raisa's frustration settled into a hot lump in her stomach. She remembered times in the shtetl when peasants had come to town to trade but stayed to get drunk. They'd swaggered through the streets, shouting horrible insults at any Jew they met, pulling the beards of respected old men as a “joke,” sometimes starting fistfights. But unless their antics turned murderous, no one did anything to stop them. The specter of pogroms was always there, along with the knowledge that the Jews were few in number compared with their neighbors. Glukel herself had taught the girls that it was better to endure insults than to retaliate and bring down something worse on their heads.

“It's just the way things are,”
Glukel had said sadly. Raisa understood, and complied when she had no other choice, but she didn't like it at all.