Uprising (9 page)

“Come along,” he said. “If I lose my job because I'm late from walking you home, I'll, I'll . . .”

“Mi scusi,”
a voice said behind them. Bella whirled around—it was Signor Carlotti.

“I couldn't help overhearing,” he said. “If you think it's proper,
I
could escort Signorina Rossetti back to her abode.”

Bella had never heard Signor Carlotti call her a signorina; she'd never heard him use words like “escort” and “abode.”

“Who are you?” Signor Luciano growled.

Signor Carlotti bowed slightly, tilting the brim of his top hat.

“I am Signorina Rossetti's employer,” he said. “She's one of my best workers.”

He'd never said anything like that before, either.

“Fine,” Signor Luciano spat out. He shoved Bella toward Signor Carlotti. With narrowed eyes, he muttered, “She'd better be there when I get home.” He turned his glare on Bella. “And you better finish a lot of flowers!”

Signor Carlotti ignored Signor Luciano. He tipped his hat again, this time directly to Bella. He offered her his arm, but Bella only regarded it suspiciously. What was he doing, being nice to her? What did he want?

After a moment, Signor Carlotti dropped his arm, but he put his hand on her back, gently guiding her through the crowd.

Bella pulled away, and would have run if she hadn't been so tightly hemmed in by the crowd.

Signor Carlotti leaned in close, whispering in her ear.

“This must be very frightening for you, the factory closing down. And you so newly arrived from Italy . . . Poor little one.”

If Bella had been frightened before, she was terrified now. She dived between a group of girls in lacy shirtwaists and skirts, all of them laughing as though the factory closing were a picnic. Signor Carlotti followed her, scattering the girls like geese.

“You are sending money home for your family, no?” he asked.

This slowed Bella down.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Your mother?” he asked. “Brothers and sisters?”

“My mama,” Bella said. “Three brothers. One sister.”

“Ah,” Signor Carlotti said. “And they have no one but you to depend on?”

Bella was glad that he put it delicately, that he didn't ask, “So, is your father dead, or did he just run off?” But she wanted to defend her mother.
Mama tries,
she wanted to say. She remembered Mama marching off to the marketplace, trying to be hired as a farm laborer in Papa's place after Papa died. But there wasn't even enough work for the men; no landowner wanted to hire a woman still suckling a baby. She remembered her brother Giovanni, all of seven years old, saying, “You can't go off to America, Bella-Bella. You're a girl.
I'll
go. I'm the man of the family.”

“What will your family do if you have no job?” Signor Carlotti asked.

Starve. Die.

Bella could not bring herself to say these words. Tears stung at her eyes, and she angrily brushed them away. She walked more briskly again, as if she could run away from Signor Carlotti's questions. In no time at all they were back in Bella's neighborhood, where the voices on the street all carried the rhythm of Italian, even if she couldn't understand each and every word. She saw the ragged urchins sitting on the curb, holding their hands out for pennies, begging,
“Per favore, per favore”;
the peddlers calling out “Peaches! Pears! Walnuts! Buy here!” Suddenly it seemed that they were all saying the same thing.

Please don't let us starve. Please, please. We don't want to die. Please.
A whole neighborhood, hundreds and hundreds of people, all desperate to live.

Signor Carlotti touched Bella's cheek, and Bella let him.

“You are a good worker,” he said. “Don't worry. The Triangle company will always have a place for workers like
you. There are just some . . . troublemakers we need to get rid of. Rabblerousers. Come back to the factory tomorrow. We will be open again then. You still have a job.”

Bella turned to Signor Carlotti, stared up at him through eyelashes heavy with tears.

“Really?” she said. “In truth? You are not just saying this, not just making up a story?”

“In truth,” Signor Carlotti said. He chuckled a little and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a dollar bill, crisp and clean and new, not bedraggled and limp like most of the money that came Bella's way. He placed the money in Bella's hand.

“Proof,” he said. “Let's say I'm paying you for today's work, and you don't even have to work!”

Bella let him press her fingers around the dollar, to hold it tight. But she squinted at him suspiciously. She was confused.

“I don't make a dollar a day,” she said.

Signor Carlotti laughed again.

“Ah, but maybe you will soon,” he said. “Let's say . . . let's say we raise your pay to five dollars a week. Deal?”

Bella almost dropped the money, she was that amazed.

“Deal,” she said quickly, before he could change his mind.

They were in front of the Lucianos' apartment now. Signor Carlotti tipped his hat to her one final time.

“See you tomorrow,” he said. Bella could have sworn he winked as well.

Signor Carlotti faded back into the crowd, but Bella didn't climb the stairs yet. When the peddler called out “Peaches! Pears! Walnuts!” behind her, it didn't sound like a desperate cry for help anymore. It just reminded her there was food she could buy.

Five dollars a week,
she thought.
I could send money home and save up to bring my family here....Or save up to buy land there . . .

These were such daring thoughts that Bella laughed out loud.

The door to the tenement building creaked open, sending out puffs of foul, fetid air. The small form of Rocco Luciano appeared in the doorway.

“You're laughing,” he said, the same stunned way he might have announced “It's snowing in July” or “Some swell gave me fifty dollars for shining his shoes today.”

“The factory closed,” Bella said, grinning ridiculously. “But it's all right—they'll be open tomorrow and Signor Carlotti paid me anyhow, a whole dollar, and I still have a job and I'm going to make more money now. And I'm just . . . just . . . happy.”

Rocco kept staring at her. Bella could see the darkness behind him—the dark hallway, the dark stairway that led to the Lucianos' dark apartment, where Bella was supposed to spend the whole day hunched over a table making fake flowers. Her grin faded.

“I should—your father sent me back here to work,” she said. “Signor Carlotti walked me home. I'm supposed to be making flowers right now.”

She put her hand on the railing, because suddenly it seemed that she needed that to hold herself up. She pulled herself up the first step.

Rocco put his hand over hers.

“Don't,” he said. His dark eyes blazed. “Don't go in there.”

“What else can I do?” Bella asked, shrugging helplessly.

“What would I tell your parents? They'll know if I don't make the flowers. . . .”

“Come with me,” Rocco said. “I'll show you the city. You can tell Mama and Papa ... uh, we'll tell them I needed help with the papers, or I had so many shoes to shine, I gave you some of my business—it might be true! It's a lucky day! You can help me and then it won't be a total lie. . . .”

Bella considered. The soft autumn breeze tugged at her hair, the sunshine seemed to tease at her back. She reached behind Rocco to pull the tenement door firmly shut.

“I will,” she said.

It was exactly what the old Bella would have done.

L
etta held the sign high over her head.
TRIANGLE WORKERS ON STRIKE
, it said, in Yiddish and English. She'd lettered the sign herself, carefully copying the English from a sheet of paper another girl gave her. She'd dressed with extra care that morning, even borrowing Rahel's fancy hat.

“You'll be the public face of the strike,” Rahel had said, placing the hat at precisely the right angle, to ride the swell of Yetta's thick hair. “I'm just going to be in the union office.”

“That's important too,” Yetta said loyally, but secretly she was glad that she wasn't quite as good at English as Rahel, wasn't quite old enough to be trusted with coordinating picketers and registration and funds for strikers who were already beginning to worry where their next meal would come from. They'd been on strike for exactly one week now, and Yetta had signed up for all the picketing time she could.

Now, in the light of an early October dawn, she paced outside the Triangle factory doors with a dozen other girls who held their signs equally high, kept their backs equally straight. She remembered all the men back in her shtetl who prayed each day, “Thank you, God, for not making me a woman.”

They're wrong,
she thought. If she was still Jewish, she
would be thanking God
because
he'd made her female. The strike leaders had decided that it was best to have the girls picket, because they would attract the most sympathy. And Yetta had seen how the bypassers looked at her and the other strikers. She'd heard them murmuring “Those poor things,” and “But they're so pretty. . . .”

She saw a group of young men stop on the sidewalk, watching. Yetta lowered her gaze demurely, but she made sure that her sign was turned so they could read it. One of the young men detached himself from the group and strolled over to her.

“What's your gripe?” he asked, in English.

“Gripe?” Yetta repeated uncertainly. This young man had chestnut hair and brilliant blue eyes, and it was so clear that he was rich, with that good wool coat and those perfectly shined shoes. If she weren't so blinded by the whiteness of his teeth, maybe she could remember her English a little better.

“Yeah,” the man said, gesturing up at her sign. “Why are you on strike? Do you have some reason, or do you just not feel like working today?”

“We want”—Yetta struggled to pronounce the English words correctly—“we want union recognition. We have that right! We were forming a union, we had one hundred and fifty workers go to a secret meeting, but there were spies there, and our bosses said we couldn't have our own union, we could only join this fake union the bosses made up, the Triangle Employees Benevolent Association. All the officers of that union were related to the bosses! I ask you, what kind of union is that? And then they locked us out, everyone who was trying to make a real union. They said there was no
more work, but the next day they advertised for more workers in the papers! They say they just got a big order, unexpectedly, but if that were true, why wouldn't they just hire us back?”

The young man shrugged.

“So, what good's a union?” he asked. “Sounds to me like it just lost you your job.”

“That's not how it's supposed to work!” Yetta said indignantly. “If everyone unites, all the workers together, a union can . . . can protect everyone. If there's a union, the whole shop all together, then the bosses cannot cheat you anymore. It's not just one girl, standing alone, saying, ‘Why did you only pay me three dollars this week? Why did you lie to me? Why did you cheat me?' It is everyone saying, ‘This isn't fair! You can't do this to us!'”

The young man stroked his moustache thoughtfully.

“You make three dollars a week?”

“No, but some girls—”

“Ah-ha!” the man said. “Who's lying now?”

“I have worked my way up,” Yetta said, trying to keep proper dignity. “But even so, some weeks the bosses only pay—”

“You probably have a boyfriend, anyhow, to give you your finery,” the man interrupted, actually reaching out to touch the feather on Yetta's hat. “And I'm sure your parents are still supporting you, so it's just funny money you're earning, just for the little luxuries every girl craves—”

“No! My parents, they—”

“Come on, Harry,” one of the other men called from the corner in a bored voice. “Quit flirting. We're going to be late for class.”

“Nice talking to you,” Harry said, turning to go.

“My parents are not supporting me! I am supporting them!” Yetta yelled after him, but she was so upset that she accidentally yelled it in Yiddish.

“I couldn't understand a word she said,” she heard Harry tell the rest of his friends when he rejoined them. “But those are the prettiest strikers I've ever seen.”

Yetta was furious. He
had
understood her, she was sure of it.

Anna, the girl picketing behind her, leaned forward.

“Those were law students,” she said, in an awestruck voice. “Law students, actually paying attention to us. To our strike.”

“What?”

Anna pointed.

“There's a law school right behind the factory building. New York University School of Law. Haven't you seen the sign?”

Yetta hadn't. Before the strike, she'd barely seen any of the city by daylight.

Law students . . .
Some of Yetta's anger drained away into pride. She'd just explained the strike to a law student. Maybe he hadn't really listened closely enough, maybe she'd have to work on her arguments for the next time, but still ... law students!

“Watch out,” Anna called out. “The scabs are coming.”

Yetta tightened her grip on her sign. Policemen barreled through the strikers.

“Make way! You're blocking the sidewalks!”

Remember. Stay calm. Just tell them the truth. . . .

“Please!” Yetta called out to the scabs. “Please don't cross our picket line! We're striking for you, too, so we all have rights as workers! Don't go in to work today—go sign up at the union office! Join us!”

She was careful to speak in her best English, because most of the scabs were Americans or Italians. She was glad to hear one Italian striker, Rosaria, calling out in her language too, the words strangely musical.