Threads and Flames (37 page)

“You should think about going back to the Educational Alliance,” Fruma remarked as the two of them walked home together. “You always loved your English classes. Why don't I join you? I'd like to read faster.”

“Fruma, I know what you're trying to do,” Raisa replied. “Don't worry, you won't have to come with me. I'm not afraid to go there on my own.”

“You don't have to go alone,” Fruma insisted. “There'll be other girls from the neighborhood, you know. You'll meet new people, make new friends.”

“Of course I will,” Raisa said, but they were empty words that echoed inside her shell.

Day after day, the shell held tight, and yet there were times when hairline cracks snaked across its surface. A fresh one shivered open every time she heard Mrs. Kamensky talking about her latest attempt to find any news of Gavrel in the hospitals that had sheltered the Triangle casualties. It was worse when she made her own hospital visits, certain that her eyes would find him where his mother's had failed. She stole scraps of time and haunted the same places she'd once visited in hopes of finding her sister. Now she carried two wandering souls on her shoulders, and the weight turned her feet to lead.

Worse than her burden of frustration and grief was having to hide it from the family. She learned how to cry in her bed at night so that no one would hear her, but she refused to learn how to give up.

On the eve of Passover, Raisa, Brina, and the Kamenskys walked through the streets in their best clothes to join Zusa's mother and cousin Selig for the first seder. The letter Selig had sent them was more of an entreaty than an invitation:
Your presence would be a blessing for us, especially for Dvorah, who loves you with all her heart and often speaks of you as if we were part of a single family. Be with us, please, so that we may have something left to celebrate.
How could they say no?

The apartment door was flung wide the moment Mr. Kamensky knocked on it. Selig stood before them looking healthier and happier than he had since the tragedy. “Did you hear the news?” he blurted. “They've been indicted! Blanck and Harris were indicted on manslaughter charges yesterday. I only just read about it. They're going to stand trial for their crimes. The murderers have been brought to justice!”

“It's the first step, God willing,” Mr. Kamensky muttered as Selig led them all to the beautifully set seder table with its embroidered eggshell white cloth and the gleaming dishes that were used only during the eight days and nights of the holiday. Zusa's mother was too busy at the stove to realize that her guests had arrived. Their words were lost to her over the bubbling and sizzling of the pots.

“God?” Selig echoed. “If there were a God, the charge would be murder! ‘God willing'? I'd rather put my faith in the law. Raisa, if they come to you to testify, speak for us all! Tell about everything you witnessed. Make every word an iron bar to build a prison around the ones who killed your friend.”

“Be
quiet,
” Mrs. Kamensky hissed. “Do you want your cousin to hear you saying such things?”

Selig cast a nervous glance toward the stove. “Sorry,” he mumbled, looking embarrassed. He didn't say another word about the indictment and upcoming trial of the shirtwaist kings. But that night, when they all sang about how the hand of God had avenged the slavery and deaths of His chosen people, Raisa only had to glance at Selig to know that he was not thinking of the Egyptians.

S
pring passed and summer came. Raisa worked long hours in the factory with Fruma, letting her thoughts glide away along the seams of every garment she sewed.
You hold a priceless gift, a gift, a gift . . .
Why did the butcher's words rattle through her head each day, dancing to the rhythm of the clattering needle? She worked harder, was praised by her foreman, received a small raise in pay, and went home to sleep every night wondering if her dreams would be filled with fire.

She went back to her English classes, just as she'd promised Fruma. Miss Bryant greeted her return with a strange combination of warmth and formality. The tall, elegant teacher asked her to stay after class just long enough to present her with a book of poetry.

“Welcome back, Raisa,” was all she said when she handed her the book, a beautifully bound volume with gold letters on a rich brown leather cover. When Raisa protested that she couldn't accept such a gift, that she was still too ignorant to appreciate it, Miss Bryant replied, “This not a gift, Raisa. I consider it to be my pledge to the future, to
your
future. Accept it for my sake.” She made no mention of the fire or the absence of Zusa and Luciana, but as Raisa walked out of the classroom, she thought she heard a sob behind her. When she turned back, the door swung closed.

One day at work, she overheard one of the girls tell another that a friend of hers had been approached by the assistant district attorney to give testimony before the grand jury that had indicted Blanck and Harris. “There were some men hanging around the court who tried to get her to change her words, but they were thrown out. As if she would have listened to them! They could try to beat her or buy her, and she'd still give the same evidence.”

“That's nothing,” her friend replied. “You want to talk about buying? I heard that those murderers have been pouring money into the newspapers, trying to excuse their crimes by taking out ads week after week.”

“That was nice of them,” the first girl said. “My family always needs toilet paper.” She laughed.

Raisa found herself laughing, too, laughing so loudly that the two girls looked her way. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to eavesdrop.”

The first girl peered at her from behind her sewing machine while she continued to feed the fabric under the needle. “You look familiar,” she said at last. “I see you every morning. You're sometimes walking with a little girl. You take her into a building in the middle of my block.”

“That's Brina. I've taken care of her since she was orphaned.”

“You do? She's a relative?”

“She is now, the only one I know I've got. I have a sister, too, but I don't know where she is.”

“You poor kid.” The girl's machine stuttered to a stop. “Was she
there
?”

“You know, at the Triangle,” the second girl put in, trying to be helpful. Her friend elbowed her sharply.

“Do you think we have to say the name? What else is everybody in this city
still
talking about?”

“We'll see how long
that
lasts.” The second girl was openly skeptical. “The slack season is coming. People will be scrambling to make a living. Nobody cares about justice on an empty stomach.”

“It will last as long as we make it last,” Raisa said, drawing the girls' attention back to her. She had no idea what moved her to speak up like that, only that she
had
to do it. “It will last as long as someone in this city can't go to sleep without seeing flames. You”—she addressed the first girl—“You remind me very much of my friend Zusa. She always knew how to make me laugh. That was her gift. Mine—mine is to remember her.”

“God in heaven.” The first girl laid one hand to her throat. “
You
were there.”

She would have said more, but just then the foreman came over to scold them all for sitting idle at their machines. When the workday ended, the two girls sought out Raisa and walked home with her and Fruma. They introduced themselves as Sophie—the one who was so much like Zusa—and Lena. Nothing more was said about the fire. By the time they reached the stoop outside the Reshevskys' building, the four-some were joking and gossiping like old friends.

They parted ways, promising to share the journey to and from work every day for as long as they all stayed in the same shop. Before she went on to her own home, Sophie kissed Raisa's cheek and said, “You're right, you know; this
will
last. We'll make it last until we've won.”

 

 

Early summer days warmed the city. Raisa, Fruma, and their new friends rejoiced when their shop's contracts for uniforms carried them through the slack season in a way that orders for more fashionable garments never could. One fine morning, Raisa took some of the money that she didn't need for rent, or for clothes and shoes for herself and Brina, or to send back to the shtetl to help Glukel, and used it to pay her first dues in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Fruma, Sophie, and Lena accompanied her and treated her to an ice cream sundae afterward, to celebrate.

As they sat in the ice cream parlor, Raisa heard a piping voice call her name. She set down the spoon that was halfway to her lips and turned to see little Jennie come rushing toward her.

“Oh, Raisa! Raisa! I never thought I'd see you again!” she exclaimed as the two girls hugged. “Gussie said you were on the ninth floor when ...” She couldn't go on.

“Gussie? Gussie's all right?” Raisa asked.

Jennie nodded. “She was up on the tenth floor that day. Nearly everyone up there survived and I—I wasn't in the building at all. My cousin Joseph was becoming a bar mitzvah that Saturday and his family lives in Queens. I put in extra hours before that and made an arrangement with Miss Gullo so I could take the time off. My family and I were gone all day.”

“Thank God,” Raisa said. Holding Jennie's hand, she introduced her to the other girls at the table. The conversation soon turned from Raisa's new union membership to the matter that was never far from any of the young garment workers' minds.

“So, Raisa, do you think you'll be asked to testify?” Sophie asked. “You know, when the trial happens.”

“
If
it ever happens,” said the ever-cynical Lena.

“If I'm called, I'll go,” Raisa replied.

But the call never came, and the trial still did not happen.

One hot evening in late June, Mrs. Kamensky folded her hands on the dinner table and said, “I'm done.”

“Done?” her husband repeated, at a loss. “Done with what?”

“Looking for him. May God witness, I have gone to every hospital in this city, looking for my boy. If he ever was in any of them, they have no record of his name. If I hadn't fallen ill, if I'd begun to look for him sooner, maybe it would have been different.” She took a deep breath and let it out so slowly that Raisa thought she'd never speak again. But then: “And maybe not.”

“Lipke, my dear, don't talk like that. You burdened yourself too much. You know we would have helped you, if you'd let us,” her husband said.

“It's true, Mama,” Fruma chimed in. “We would have helped you look. The four of us could have searched the hospitals faster.”

“For what? So we'd know even sooner that there's no hope?” Mrs. Kamensky closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I'm too tired even to cry.”

Raisa looked down at her plate and said nothing. What good would it do to say that
two
pairs of eyes had been looking for Gavrel all this time and still had failed to find him?

That night, Raisa had Brina help her drag their mattress to the roof. They had the vast, flat space all to themselves. The really steamy summer weather hadn't arrived yet, but ever since the fire, Raisa couldn't sleep at all if she was cooped up in a room when the temperature began to climb. Brina cuddled up next to her contentedly.

“I like it up here,” she declared. “Can we live on the roof?”

“Ask me again when it rains,” Raisa teased her.

Brina fell silent. For a while, Raisa thought the little girl had fallen asleep. She began to drift off herself, but then she heard Brina ask, “
Is
Gavrel gone?”

Half asleep, vulnerable, Raisa hadn't been prepared to hear that name. It pierced her like a spear. All she could do at first was echo, “Gone ...”

Brina mistook the word for Raisa's answer. “But gone
how
?” she demanded. “Like my mother? Like Luciana? Like Zusa? Like your sister?”

“No, Brina,” Raisa spoke firmly. “My sister is
not
gone. Not like that. You know I haven't been able to look for Henda for a long time, but that doesn't mean she's gone.”

“Good,” Brina said, satisfied. “Then Gavrel isn't gone, either. Tante Lipke got so tired that she had to stop looking, but that's all right. Now it's my turn.”

Raisa had to smile at the child's determination. “And will you let me help you look, too?”

Brina gave the question lengthy thought, then said, “Yes, but only if you promise that you won't get tired of looking for him, not
ever.
”

“I promise.”

 

 

That fall, when Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur came, there were empty places in Raisa's synagogue.

Not only here,
she thought.
In the other synagogues, in the churches . . . I don't think there's a single house of worship in this neighborhood that's been untouched.

The divine Book of Life, which the faithful believed was opened on Rosh Hashanah, was sealed on Yom Kippur. The name and fate of every mortal creature was inscribed there by God's own hand. In the year just past, too many of those names had been written in letters of fire.

Mrs. Kamensky herself refused to attend services. She and Zusa's mother had become friends, and she claimed that Dvorah needed another woman's understanding at such a time. She took Brina with her, since the child was still too young to sit calmly through the long ceremony.

Before she and Brina left the apartment, Mrs. Kamensky said, “God knows, this is how it must be. If Dvorah has to hear prayers of praise all around her when the only prayer she can utter is ‘Why? Why? Why?' then her heart will never be whole again and her soul will drown in bitterness. Better that she takes the time she needs to heal. God will forgive her, and—may it be so—someday she will forgive God.”