Uprising (15 page)

Was there anyone in the entire city she could trust?

Bella's eyes fell on the strikers walking their path across the street, the strikers who'd yelled and jeered at her every day for the past three months. But there was one girl in that lineup of picketers who'd once shown Bella the best way to snip threads from shirtwaists, who'd walked her home when Pietro vanished, who'd stopped another striker from hitting her.

Clutching the letter against her chest, Bella dashed out into the street.

“Yetta!” she screamed.

Y
etta was sick of society women and college girls. They came down to the picket line in their fancy cars, cooing and simpering and wrinkling their noses in distaste if so much as a speck of mud attached itself to their fancy skirts or fancy boots. They moaned, “Oh, you poor thing,” as if Yetta and the other strikers were the damsels in distress in some movie at the nickelodeon—as if the strike were being put on just for their entertainment.

Rahel said the society women's money was keeping the strike going.

“They've made so many donations, they're paying our bail and court fines when we're arrested, they're hiring our lawyers—and you heard that Mrs. Belmont put up her house as a guaranty to get girls out of jail, didn't you?” she asked, when Yetta complained. “Her house is worth four hundred thousand dollars. Four . . . hundred . . . thousand . . . dollars!”

Yetta had stared at her sister in disbelief.

“So now, because of their money, the judges are sentencing girls to the workhouse rather than just fining them,” Yetta argued. “Thank you so much, that's so much better, going to the workhouse!”

She herself hadn't been sent to the workhouse yet, but she knew that she would, the next time she was arrested. She'd been arrested too many times.

“Anyhow,” she told Rahel. “Their money isn't keeping the strike going. Our spirit is. Our spirit and—and God.”

She wondered if Rahel would comment on the fact that Yetta was talking about God again. But Rahel was staring off into the distance once more, as if she'd forgotten Yetta, forgotten the strike.

There was, actually, one outside girl who'd shown up at the strike that Yetta liked: Jane Wellington. Jane came for the first time in early December. She didn't say “Oh, how awful!” or “How do you survive?” or “You're so brave!” She didn't say much of anything. But when Yetta was telling her about the strike, there had been one moment when it seemed as though she understood, as though a girl who had a fur muff and a gold ring and a hat with six ostrich feathers could actually know what it was like to be in Yetta's battered, holey-soled shoes. Then Jane got scared off by a common bum, and Yetta thought that was the last she'd see of her. But lately Jane had been coming back, mostly on her own, without any simpering, giggly friends. She'd walk alongside the strikers, not saying much, and once, when another girl said, “Thank you for coming,” Jane had shrugged and said, “I'm not really doing anything. Just watching.” And Yetta liked it that Jane knew that, that she understood that the strike was for the strikers, not society women who were just bored with trying on dresses and throwing parties and whatever else society women did.

Now Yetta shouldered her sign in the early winter dawn,
steeling herself against the cold that stole in through her boots, her thin jacket, the tattered hat that had been through more battles than most soldiers. She'd taken the early shift on purpose, because it was the hardest and the coldest and the worst, and she wanted to spare the other girls if she could. But she couldn't ignore the cold herself. And her stomach was growling because she'd eaten only once the day before, and not at all yet this morning—she knew Rahel was worried about being able to afford food. Which was worse, to tap into the strikers' emergency relief fund, or to use up the money they'd been saving to bring the rest of their family to America?

Yetta clutched her sign as if it were holding her up, not the other way around. She needed food to be able to think clearly enough to decide how to buy food. Yet another dilemma worthy of Papa's Talmudic thinking. She shook her head fiercely and glared at all the fancy cars in the street. Maybe one of them belonged to Mr. Harris or Mr. Blanck, and maybe she could go out and talk to them directly.

Please, you were once poor immigrants yourself . . .

She did not think that anything she could say would convince such heartless men, who would let their workers stand out in the cold for three months.

“Yetta!” someone called—or maybe they didn't, maybe Yetta was so tired and hungry that she was imagining things now. But she turned her head just in time to see a flash of color, cars slamming on their brakes, a girl collapsing before a shiny bumper. And then horns were honking, their
ah-ooo-gahs
sounding like despairing geese. A man jumped out of the car that had hit the girl, crying out, “Saints preserve us! I didn't even see her. . . .” But the girl was standing up again,
looking around, dazed. It was Bella, the Italian girl who'd started out as a finisher with Yetta all those months ago.

And the bosses drive their workers to throw themselves in front of cars,
Yetta thought.

Bella didn't seem to notice that she'd just been hit by a car. She kept wading through the traffic, calling out, “Yetta! Yetta!”

She wants to join the strike now,
Yetta thought. In spite of herself, she imagined how much the society women would love
this
story:
And one girl was so desperate to walk the picket line that she got up from being hit by a car and took up her sign right away. . . .

But Bella was sobbing, waving a piece of paper over her head. She had never been one to show up at the factory in the latest fashions—in fact, Yetta suspected that Bella still wore the same clothes that she'd worn over from Italy, and
no one
did that. Even the poorest girl somehow managed to buy a shirtwaist and a skirt and a pair of high-button shoes. But now Bella looked worse than ever. Her hair was tangled and it stuck out all over the place, as if she'd purposely messed it up instead of pulling it back into a pompadour or knot. She clutched a dirty, tattered blanket around her shoulders—and was that just a nightshirt beneath the blanket?

“Per favore, per favore,”
Bella cried, and a bunch of other foreign words that Yetta didn't understand. Yetta shrugged helplessly, and Bella shook the paper in her face.

“What . . . say?” Bella tried again, this time in passable Yiddish. “These words here . . . what them?”

Yetta glanced at the paper, what she could see of it in Bella's quivering hands.

“It's in Italian,” a boy said helpfully, suddenly appearing at Bella's elbow.

“I only know how to read Yiddish. And a little English,” Yetta said apologetically. “Maybe Rosaria—” She looked around, but none of the Italian strikers were picketing that morning. She saw the man from the car that had hit Bella walking toward them, alongside Jane Wellington. “Jane knows how to speak Italian. Maybe she can read it too.”

The man was apologizing and lamenting, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you scared me! I thought I'd killed you! And then when you got back up and walked away, it was like a miracle from the Lord Himself. . . .”

Bella ignored him and thrust her paper at Jane, jabbering away.

“She wants you to read that,” Yetta translated.

Jane looked overwhelmed, but she took the paper. She looked at it, looked up.

“It says people are dead,” she said in a frightened whisper.

Bella stood there, looking from Yetta to Jane, uncomprehending.

“Tell her in Italian,” Yetta commanded. She suddenly felt as though the cold seeping in through her clothes had finally reached her heart.

“‘Mi dispiace informavi che Angelina Rossetti, Dominic Rossetti, Giovanni Rossetti, Ricardo Rossetti e Guilia Rossetti anno perdutto la vita.'
I regret to inform you that Angelina Rossetti, Dominic Rossetti, Giovanni Rossetti, Ricardo Rossetti, and Guilia Rossetti have lost their lives,” Jane read in a choked voice.

Bella's face was still uncomprehending. “They're dead,” Yetta said in Yiddish.

Bella staggered back, like one hit by an unbearable blow.

“All of them?” she whimpered.

“Angelina, Dominic, Giovanni, Ricardo, Guilia—is that all of them?”

Bella threw herself to the ground.

“La mi famiglia e morta!”
she wailed.
“La mi famiglia e morta!”
And even Yetta, who knew no Italian, could understand this:
My family is dead! My family is dead!
It was an unearthly sound, seeming to soar beyond the tenth floor of the factory, higher even than the skyscrapers.

The boy dashed forward and began tugging on Bella's arm, pleading, arguing—Yetta couldn't tell what he wanted. But Bella flung him away, unbelievably strong in her grief. The boy's head slammed into the wall of the Triangle building, but he sprang back up, tried again. “Stay away from me!” Bella seemed to be screaming. “I want nothing to do with you!” Yetta wondered if the boy had killed Bella's family.

Jane peered from Bella to Yetta.

“What should we do?” she asked.

Yetta held more tightly to her picket sign. She swayed a little, hungry, tired, cold. The sound of Bella's keening seemed to whirl around her.
I can walk the picket line for hours on end,
she wanted to tell Jane.
I can go without food. I can defy the bosses as long as they defy us. Or I can pick this girl up, soothe her in her grief take care of her. Don't you see? I cannot do everything.

It didn't matter. Yetta didn't have to say anything. Because Jane suddenly straightened up, suddenly decided.

“I'll take her home with me,” she announced, sounding a little stunned, as if her conclusion surprised even her. “That's what I'll do. Mr. Corrigan, put this girl in the car. Now.”

M
r. Corrigan just stood there.

“But your father—Miss Milhouse—”

“I said, put her in the car!” Jane commanded, and for the first time in her life, she thought she sounded a little bit like her father. He was always that forceful, ordering the servants around.

Mr. Corrigan gave Jane a puzzled glance, but he obediently bent over and scooped the wailing girl into his arms.

“Bella!” screamed the boy hovering nearby.

He clutched at the girl's hand, but she shoved him away.

“I don't think Bella wants you to come with her,” Jane said, and she was just as glad. This boy looked like a complete ragamuffin, one of those urchins who stood on street corners hawking papers or picking pockets. His knickers were in tatters, and no one had bothered to patch any of the holes in his shirt. His thick hair straggled down into his eyes—was his family too poor even to own scissors? Or— just too lazy to use them?

Mr. Corrigan turned his back on the boy, shielding Bella from the boy's grasp. Bella's body must have been very light, because Mr. Corrigan only needed one arm to hold her while
he tugged on the handle of the car door. Then he slid her onto the car seat.

“Miss—?” he said, offering Jane one last chance to come to her senses and cast the girl back out into the street.

“You ran into her!” Jane said fiercely. “She's in pain and in mourning and we can help!”

Mr. Corrigan shrugged, his head bowed—a servant's answer.
It is as you command,
that shrug said.
I will not pretend that I am capable of thinking for myself.

“I will let you know how she is,” Jane said to Yetta, as if Yetta had asked.

Yetta's face was unreadable, but she gave a small nod.

“Miss Wellington, shall I pull the car around for you?” Mr. Corrigan asked.

Jane saw what he meant. He'd put Bella on the side of the car closest to the curb; unless he turned the car around, Jane would have to step out into traffic to get to the door on the other side.

“No, no, I'll be fine,” Jane said airily.

But it was frightening stepping out into the street. A car zigzagged past her, blaring its horn. She had to dodge horse droppings. And she'd moved so rapidly that Mr. Corrigan didn't have time to step out before her, hold the door for her. For the first time in her life, Jane grasped the handle of the car door herself, opening and shutting it without her driver's assistance.

“Home, please,” she instructed Mr. Corrigan.

He pulled away from the curb. Jane turned her attention to Bella, who was no longer thrashing about and screaming but huddled on the seat, sobbing softly. She did not seem to
realize that she'd been transferred from the sidewalk to the car. On the whole, she was not much cleaner or any better kempt than the ragamuffin boy. The hair hiding her face might as well have been tied in knots, and Jane wasn't sure if that was dirt or blood on her arm.

Jane suffered a pang of regret:
What have I done?
But her next thought was triumphant:
I did something! Finally! For once I'm not just standing around watching. . . .

Jane couldn't have said why she'd begun haunting the picket line the past few weeks. Whenever she could escape Miss Milhouse's watchful eye, she'd sneaked out of Christmas brunches, Christmas luncheons, Christmas teas, just to have Mr. Corrigan drive her down to the Triangle factory to stand in the cold, her fingers getting frostbit, her elaborate hairstyles so often destroyed by the wind. She disgusted herself. It would be different if she were actually helping—bringing hampers of food, maybe, or joining her voice with the strikers' as they called out to passersby. Or even, as Eleanor Kensington had done, throwing herself at a police officer, begging, “Arrest me! Arrest me instead of touching even one of these poor, poor girls! They're not doing a thing wrong. So if you have to arrest someone, arrest me!” (The police officer had carefully dodged her and walked in the other direction. As did the next police officer. No one, it seemed, was willing to arrest Eleanor Kensington.) But Jane crept timidly away when the police came; she'd done nothing but watch.