Uprising (20 page)

This was almost as bad as when the Triangle owners started a fake union. Yetta had to remind herself that this man was supposed to be representing her and the other workers, not the owners.

At least she wasn't alone in her outrage. Around her, others began shouting, “That's a terrible proposal!” “Send it back!” “I won't vote on that!”

Girls who were standing on tables, just so they could see, began stomping their feet; other girls leaned over the banisters, calling out, “For this I've been starving for three months?” “For this I went to the workhouse?”

“Now, calm down,” the man behind the podium said. “We have to be reasonable—”

That's all Yetta could hear before his voice was drowned out by a chant flowing through the hall: “Union! Union! Union!”

The man gathered up his papers and scurried away.

The chanting girls spilled out into the streets, too riled up to notice the cold. Yetta thought it would be great to have another automobile parade now, while everyone was so
excited, or to march to City Hall again, as strikers had done in early December. But it was night now, and dark; there was nowhere to go but home. By the time they reached their own tenement, the cold had seeped through their clothes again. Bella's face was almost blue in the light from the street lamps, and Yetta's teeth were chattering.

“I wonder if that was wise,” Rahel said, as the three of them stood warming themselves over the feeble heat of the stove.

“You mean, rejecting that ridiculous offer?” Yetta asked. “Of course it was wise! That offer was
nothing.”

“Maybe it was the best we could get,” Rahel said.

“Without union recognition?” Yetta said incredulously. “They'd have us back at our machines, and five minutes later some boss would be whispering into some girl's ear, Yes, I know you're supposed to work only ten hours today, but I'll need you to stay late.' Or, ‘I know there were not supposed to be any more fines, but I saw you break that needle. That's five cents off your pay this week. . . .' Without the union, without a closed shop, what could she do?”

“And did you see how excited everyone was?” Bella asked, her eyes shining.

Rahel looked sadly at the two younger girls.

“Excited, yes,” she said. “But it was like a riot of skeletons. Did you see how feeble everyone is becoming? I wager, not a single girl there had a decent meal today. And there was as much coughing and sneezing as cheering. The girl beside me was burning up with fever, and so weak, her friends had to hold her up. And, Bella, you're not completely well yet yourself—”

“I'm fine,” Bella insisted, but she couldn't help coughing. Her face still looked blue, even indoors.

“The rich women are still helping us out,” Yetta argued. “Why, the three of us still have the money Jane gave us—”

“Except for the part we gave to the union,” Rahel said. “And what we spent on rent. And everything we spent on food. We can't live on that money much longer.”

Yetta stamped her feet with impatience.

“There's still a rally with the rich women next week,” she said. “At Carnegie Hall . . .”

But when the night of the rally arrived, January 2, 1910, a brand-new year, Yetta could feel a difference in the air. Maybe it was because of Rahel, who sat staring off into space, her face blank, even as the speakers up on the stage praised the strikers' courage, their perseverance, their cause. Maybe it was because Yetta heard so many of the rich people grumbling as they left: “A little too radical for my tastes, frankly,” and “Isn't it appalling, how those socialists are deluding those poor little girls?”

One man in a tuxedo, pushing his way out the door near Yetta, complained, “I hear the union turned down a perfectly good offer. The girls who are still striking are just lazy. They don't want to work.”

“That's not true!” Yetta yelled, and began fighting through the crowd to get to the man, to make him understand.

“Yetta, no,” Rahel said, and pulled on her arm to hold her back.

“But—” Yetta protested. It was too late—the man had already disappeared into the crowd. Yetta turned around to
complain to Rahel, and bumped directly into Jane Wellington.

Jane was beaming at her.

“I saw you from across the hall,” Jane panted, tugging at her corset as if desperate for air. “I thought I'd never catch up—how
are
you? How's the strike going?”

“Fine,” Yetta said.

“I've been so worried about you and Bella,” Jane said. “I've wanted to come down to the picket line, but Miss Milhouse practically has me under lock and key. I had to sneak out tonight. But I want to help so much. I think soon . . .”

The crowd surged forward, separating Yetta and Jane. Yetta made no effort to get back to her. It was too depressing. Jane had so much money. She lived in a mansion, she owned more dresses than stores did, she had servants waiting on her hand and foot. If a girl like Jane could be kept under lock and key, what hope was there for a girl like Yetta?

“It's over,” Rahel said.

Yetta blinked up at her sister. Normally Yetta wasn't much for sleeping late, but it was February now. Yetta had had six more weeks of picketing through snowdrifts and screaming herself hoarse and being beaten up and arrested. Earlier this morning, Yetta had crawled out of bed and immediately fallen to the floor. Rahel had insisted on tucking her back into the blankets.

“Bella and I can take your picketing slots today,” Rahel told her then. “One day in bed will do you a world of good, and it won't hurt the strike at all.”

Yetta had fallen directly back to sleep. She wondered if she was still dreaming, imagining that Rahel had returned.

“Got to . . . get back ... to striking,” she murmured, struggling to lift her head from the pillow.

“No, Yetta. Didn't you hear me?” Rahel said, her voice firm and all too real. “The strike is over. They sent us home.”

Yetta gasped, fully awake now. She sat up straight, drawing on some reserve of energy she hadn't known she had.

“You voted?” she asked. “Without me?”

Rahel shook her head.

“The union leaders settled,” she said. “They want us to go back to work.”

“No vote?” Yetta croaked out. She squinted into the dim light coming from the next room. “Did we—did we win?”

“Triangle said they'd give us higher wages and shorter hours,” Rahel said.

“But not a closed shop,” Bella added.

“Then—that's not good enough!” Yetta said. “That's just what we turned down in December! What we refused to vote on!”

“Everyone's tired, Yetta,” Rahel said. She sounded tired herself, like some old crone who'd lived a long, hard life.

“But the strike was going so well!” Yetta said. “The college girls are still donating money, the Yiddish theaters had those benefit plays . . . George Bernard Shaw himself sent a telegram about the strike!” Never mind that she hadn't heard of George Bernard Shaw until the telegram—he was some famous playwright in England. In England!

Rahel sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked Yetta's hair, just like she had when Yetta was a little child.

“So much spirit,” she murmured sadly. “Yetta, can't you see? It had to end. The society women are arguing with the socialists, the union leaders want to be done with us so they can get started with the cloakmakers' strike—”

“They just think they can win that one because it's all men,” Yetta said bitterly.

Rahel didn't disagree.

“Our people have been waiting thousands of years for the Messiah,” Rahel said. “You can't expect to change the world in a few short months.”

“Five months,” Yetta corrected her angrily. “Five months of freezing and starving and all but killing ourselves to say, ‘Look, world, we
matter.
So what if we're poor? So what if we're girls? So what if our English isn't so great? The bosses owe us some common decency. We deserve to be treated like human beings.' And now—now you're just going to go sit down at your machine again, quiet as a mouse, and sew when the bosses say sew, and stop when the bosses say stop, and let them tell you when you're allowed to use the facilities, and when you get only an apple turnover for working late, and—”

“No,” Rahel said quietly. “I'm not going to do that.”

Yetta was surprised to see that Rahel was shaking.

“What other choice do we have?” Yetta demanded.

Rahel looked down. She was twisting her hands in her lap, nervously.

“Maybe now isn't the best time to tell you.”

“What?”

Rahel looked back up. Maybe her eyes were blazing passionately; maybe they were dull and glazed. Yetta just couldn't tell in the dim light.

“I'm going to marry Mr. Cohen,” Rahel said, and her voice was as firm as a slamming door, revealing nothing else.

For a minute, Yetta just stared at her sister, speechless. She felt suddenly that she didn't know her sister very well, had never known her very well. Then she gulped and asked, “Who's Mr. Cohen?”

“From my English class,” Rahel said. “You met him on the sidewalk that one night, after we walked Bella home. He's been . . . courting me. If it hadn't been for the strike, he would have been taking me to movies and dances, bringing me flowers. But as it is . . . he's asked me to marry him.”

Yetta leaned back against the iron frame of the bed, trying to make sense of this, trying to make sense of her sister.

“Do you love him?” Yetta asked, her voice strangely shy and husky.

Rahel shrugged.

“I think so. But what do I know about love? How can I be sure?” she asked. “He's very handsome. His English is good. And he owns his own grocery. I can help him in the store, so he doesn't have to hire anyone else. And maybe later, when there's more business or when we have babies, he could hire you, too, so you wouldn't have to work in the factory either. You can live with us, of course. . . .”

Yetta tried to picture this life Rahel was describing: Rahel as a storekeeper's wife, Yetta as the spinster aunt/servant, juggling a crying baby as she stands on a ladder reaching for cans of food, trying to calm customers who grumble about broken crackers, rotting potatoes, spoiled bologna. That wasn't Yetta! Yetta was a shirtwaist striker!

Not anymore . . .

Yetta glared at Rahel.

“If you wanted Mama's life, why did you bother leaving the shtetl?” Yetta asked coldly. “Are you a revolutionary or not?”

“Oh, Yetta,” Rahel said despairingly. “I was always a better revolutionary in your mind than in reality.”

“But in Russia . . .”

“I was just an ignorant girl from the shtetl. Everyone in the movement was so sophisticated and they knew everything—and the boys were so handsome—so of course I joined. The leaders didn't even know my name. I didn't know anything about the plot to kill the
Czar.”

“But you had to run for your life—”

“Mostly because I was Jewish,” Rahel said. She shifted positions, and now Yetta could see that her eyes were fierce and blazing. “There was a horrible pogrom in Bialystok— houses burning, Jews beaten to death, tossed out of windows and killed . . .”

Yetta had known this—known it without wanting to. But she'd tried not to remember it.

“And, Yetta, it's not safe for Mother and Father even in the shtetl,” Rahel continued. “I've been reading the papers, and it's just a matter of time until the Russians pick our shtetl, pick our family for the next pogrom.”

“That's why we're saving money to bring them here,” Yetta said, as if she were the older sister and Rahel was some small child who needed everything spelled out for her.

Rahel gave a harsh laugh.

“Yes, and do you know how long that would take on our wages? Years and years and years . . . Unless there's a bad
season when we're out of work, or there's another strike, and it will take even longer.”

Yetta hated the way Rahel made it sound like it was selfish to have a strike, like it had been selfish of Yetta to take the first ticket to America that Rahel could afford.

“Why did you go out on strike at all?” Yetta demanded in a choked voice.

“Because I thought it would last a week,” Rahel said. “I thought we'd get a little more money out of it. I thought . . . I thought having the union would help. But I'm not like you. I don't need the world to know that I matter.”

Yetta jerked back, as if she'd been slapped.

“Then why didn't you quit?” she asked cruelly. “That second week, why didn't you say, Oh, well, this isn't working, back to my machine'?”

“They'd beaten you up by then,” Rahel said. “Everything changed. And then I took the oath.”

If I turn traitor to this cause I now pledge, may this hand wither. . . .
Yetta looked down at her right hand, unwithered but badly chapped, cracked along the fingertips because of the cold, bruised where she'd hit the pavement once when a policeman knocked her down.

“So it's all right to quit now?” Yetta asked. “You can break the oath if you're getting married?”

“The union settled,” Rahel said. “I'm not breaking the oath. I'm going on with my life. And Yetta—with Mr. Cohen, we'll keep kosher. He closes his grocery for the Sabbath. He's a good Jew.”

“Father would be so proud,” Yetta said, but she wasn't praising Rahel. She wondered how Rahel could do it—
willingly plunge back into a world where the men made all the decisions, where only their opinions mattered, where women just worked to help their husbands.

“Yetta—”

“I won't work in Mr. Cohen's store,” Yetta said. “I won't live with you.”

“But you're my sister!” It was a strangled cry, like something ripped from Rahel's throat. Rahel's face twisted, painfully, as if holding back her sobs hurt worse than letting them out.