Uprising (11 page)

But her mind snagged on verbs.
To watch. To see.
It reminded her of the most recent letter she'd gotten from Eleanor at Vassar. The letter had begun with apologies for not writing sooner, because of all the classes Eleanor was taking, the Social Improvement Club meetings, the Hiking Club's outings. Then the letter had taken on a lecturing tone.

It was almost an invitation, almost a plan of action. At first, Jane had been excited, and she dove immediately into Italian grammar and vocabulary. She was good with languages; the French and Latin she'd learned at school had slipped into her brain with very little effort on her part. But the sentences in the Italian phrasebook seemed to taunt her:
Ho bisogno di un portabagagli per le miei valigie.
I need a porter to carry my bags.
Vorremmo pranzare adesso. Che cosa mi consiglia lei?
We'd like to have dinner now. What do you recommend?
Quando in comincia la gita? Vogliami vedere il museo.
When does the tour begin? We want to see the museum.
Vorremmo vedere un'opera. Quale opera presentano?
We would like to watch an opera. What opera are they performing? They made the European grand tour sound like her regular life, just in a different place. Seeing, watching—what if her whole life passed by and she never
did
anything?

Now she blinked up at Miss Milhouse.

“Will Mr. Wright be giving people rides in his aeroplane?” she asked.

Miss Milhouse gasped.

“I should say not!” she said, scandalized. “And even if he were, surely you realize that would be much too dangerous for a girl!”

Surely she did. Surely she realized exactly how many ways she was caged.

Miss Milhouse kept talking, but Jane closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

B
ella heard the music as soon as her sewing machine stopped.

Curiously, she peered far down the row of tables. At the end of the room, between the cloakroom and the elevators, someone had set up a box with a disk and a horn. How could it be? The tinkly, delicate music seemed to be pouring out of the horn.

“Is that a phonograph?” a girl breathed incredulously behind Bella.

“Yes. We'll have dancing at lunchtime now. If you wish, of course,” Signor Carlotti said.

Bella peered up at him, puzzled. He'd been so nice the past few weeks, she couldn't get used to it. Once, when a shirtwaist snagged, he said, “Don't worry about it. I'm sure you didn't do that on purpose.” Once, when he saw that she
had only a crust of bread for lunch, he said, “That's not much to live on. Here's a penny. Go buy something from a peddler.” He hadn't yelled at her at all since that day he'd walked her home. It made her suspicious.

But music . . . With no more will than moths have near flame, she and the other girls drifted toward the phonograph.

The girl who sat at the sewing machine next to Bella, whose name Bella didn't even know, said something. She pointed to herself, then Bella, and pantomimed a swaying movement. Bella understood it to mean,
Want to dance?

Bella nodded. She touched her rough, calloused hand to the other girl's rough, calloused hand, and they slipped out into the midst of other girls beginning tentative dance steps. Heel, toe, whirl . . . Bella hadn't danced since she'd left Calia. This wasn't a dance she knew, wasn't music she'd ever heard before. But she watched the other girls' feet, she let her partner lead, and she didn't do too badly. At the end of the song there was an extra, fancy step, and Bella's feet got twisted. She lost her balance and knocked her partner over, bumping into the first row of sewing machines. She looked around for Signor Carlotti, sure that he would be right there screaming at them any minute. She saw him at the edge of the dancers.

He was smiling.

Bella and the other girl collapsed into giggles.

“Frances,” the other girl said, pointing at herself.

“Bella,” Bella said, doing the same.

That was all they really understood of each other's languages, but it was enough. They danced for the rest of the half hour, stopping to swallow their meager lunches only while Signor Carlotti was changing the phonograph between
songs. Everyone did. The dancing was a tonic after hours hunched over the machines; they didn't want to miss a minute of it.

“Last song,” Signor Carlotti said, and even he sounded regretful.

This one was a livelier tune, and Bella and Frances spun over near the windows. Bella dipped so close to the glass that she could feel the cold seeping in through the pane. It was a chilly day, and she was glad to be inside, dancing. But in that one dip she could see straight down to the street—nine stories down, a frightening sight. She could see the girls holding signs, walking up and down the sidewalks so strangely. They were there every morning when Bella arrived and every evening when Bella left; she hadn't realized they were also there all day, while she worked.

“What are they doing?” she asked Frances. At first Frances didn't seem to understand, but then she released a frightened-sounding torrent of words. Was she that terrified of the girls with signs? Maybe she was just saying that she was afraid of heights.

“It's a strike, isn't it?” Bella asked. “Strike? What does that mean, anyway?”

Another torrent of words. This time Bella recognized one word, repeated several times.
Scab . . . scab . . . scab . . .

“Do they call you a scab too?” Bella asked, for that was the word the girls with signs hurled at her every morning and every evening. Bella thought the word must mean something like “thief or “criminal,” because that was how they said it, as though Bella had stolen their last crust of bread directly from their mouths. But Bella hadn't done anything
to these girls; she didn't understand why they were outside in the cold.

“Back to work now,” Signor Carlotti said, before Frances had a chance to answer. A little of his old sternness had crept back into his voice. Bella wondered if it was because he knew they were talking about the strike.

The music ended and the machines whirred back to life. Guiding one shirtwaist after another under the darting needle, just like always, Bella began to wonder if she'd imagined the whole thing—the dancing, the music. Or not imagined it exactly: misunderstood. The more she thought about it, the more the gaiety reminded her of the time back home when they found their last goat dead.

“Well,
buono,”
Mama had said, putting on a fake smile. “This just means we can have a feast! We'll have all the goat meat we want!”

But only little Guilia was fooled, her tears drying up at the prospect of a feast. All the others understood that the goat's death meant one good meal and then the end of goat's milk, goat's cheese, goat's fur and—most of all—the end of any chance, ever again, of more baby goats. And then, after they'd roasted the goat and pretended to enjoy their one last feast, they'd all gotten sick. Evidently whatever killed the goat wasn't very good for humans, either.

Iam like Guilia here,
Bella thought.
Something is happening and I don t understand.

But it was too hard to figure out. It was easier to lose herself in a daydream of Pietro coming back, whisking her off into those dance steps she'd just done with Frances. In her daydreams, with Pietro, she never stumbled once.

•  •  •

It was quitting time, and Bella squeezed into the elevator with the other girls. Their merry chatter got quieter and quieter the closer they got to ground level; the little box was completely silent by the time the doors slid open. Someone clutched Bella's arm—Bella glanced over and saw that it was Frances.

“There's safety in numbers,” Frances said. Bella was sure that was what she said. Bella clutched Frances's arm right back.

They stepped out of the elevator and pushed their way out of the main doors to the street. The strikers saw them immediately and ran over, screaming.

“Scabs!”

“Scabs!”

“How dare you!”

“You're taking our jobs!”

Was Bella understanding them right? Could that really be what they were saying?

Bella was glad of the burly policemen who pushed the strikers back. All the same, a girl broke through the police line and began pulling on Bella's arm. She jerked her away from Frances.

“No! Don't!” someone screamed. It was another striker, but someone Bella recognized this time: Yetta, the girl who'd walked Bella home.

Yetta dropped her sign and rushed over to help.

“You can't do that!” Yetta was screaming at the first striker, in words even Bella could clearly understand. “Don't hit anyone!”

A policeman saw the girls struggling. He smashed his club down squarely on Yetta's head and clamped his beefy
hand around her arm, jerking her so hard that her feet left the ground.

“No!” Bella screamed. “Don't hurt her! She was trying to help me!”

But the policeman didn't understand. He shoved Bella away and pulled Yetta and the other striker toward a police wagon parked on the street.

Was Yetta being arrested? Just for helping Bella?

Bella stood alone in the midst of the scuffle. Frances was nowhere to be seen now. The other workers had scattered, and it was just the strikers and the policemen battling it out. Bella caught a glimpse of Rocco Luciano on the other side of the street and rushed toward him.

“Papa said I could walk you home,” Rocco said shyly.

“We've got to find someone who speaks English!” Bella said, looking around frantically. “Someone who can understand me and then explain—”

“I can speak English,” Rocco said. “Some.”

Bella stared at him.

“Don't tell Mama and Papa,” he said. “But sometimes, when they think I'm out shining shoes or selling newspapers, I go to school instead. I can even
read
English now. I practice on the newspapers.”

Bella's answer was to grab Rocco's arm and drag him toward the nearest policeman, one who was just standing there watching the others shoving strikers into the police wagon.

“Tell him they arrested the wrong person!” Bella said. “Tell him that Yetta was really trying to help me, she didn't do anything wrong, she shouldn't be in that police wagon—”

“Are you crazy? I'm not going to talk to the police!” Rocco said.

But the policeman was already glaring down at them. He raised his club, like he was going to beat them just for standing there.

Rocco gulped, and said something that sounded like,
“Scusi,
sir-uh,” and then he rattled off a fast string of words. In response, the policeman growled something and shoved them away. Rocco grabbed Bella's hand and they both took off running, dashing around peddlers' carts and shoppers' bundles and horses and cars and the whole crowded craziness that was New York City. It reminded Bella of a time back home when she and her brother Giovanni had seen a wolf in the mountains, and they'd run and run and run, all the way back to their house. Now, Rocco stopped as soon as they got back to Little Italy. He bent over, panting.

“Can't . . . believe ... you made me . . . talk to ... a cop,” he said, grasping for air.

He was still holding her hand. Blushing, he dropped it.

“What did he say?” Bella asked. “Is he going to let Yetta go?”

“What do you think?” Rocco asked bitterly. “He said, ‘So what? Stay out of it or I'll arrest you, too!'” Rocco kicked at the pavement, the sole of his boot slapping loudly where it'd come loose from the leather. “They'd never listen to me. I'm nobody and nothing. But someday . . . someday . . .”

He got a faraway look in his eye, like people back in Italy did when they talked about going to America. Bella and Rocco were already in America, and they still had to look far away for any hope.

Bella leaned over and gave him a light kiss on the forehead, the way she'd kiss Giovanni or Ricardo or Dominic, her brothers.

“Thank you for trying,” she said.

But Rocco didn't respond the way Giovanni or Ricardo or Dominic would, pushing her away and muttering “Yuck!” Rocco touched the place on his forehead wonderingly.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh. Wow.”

Oh, no,
Bella thought.

T
his isn't working,” Rahel said.

Yetta's answer was to lean down and pull off a thick icicle from the bottom of a drainpipe that didn't quite reach the street. It was late November now, and the strike was still going on. That meant it was awfully cold on the picket line—Yetta thought maybe her toes were frozen, and she hadn't been able to feel her fingers for the past hour. But at least now ice was readily available—and free—for bruises and black eyes. She held the icicle up to her throbbing cheek, then shifted it to the knot on her head.

“I'm not quitting,” she said.

Rahel sighed.

“I didn't say we should,” she said.