Beyond the Pale: A Novel (45 page)

when I unwind those years

it seems as if I owned a sky full of clouds

and each cloud was an hour,

time to discuss

with neighbors, cousins, aunts,

time to cook, mend, reflect,

look out the window,

time to teach my daughter to read and sew.

How could I have known the needle

was a prophecy?

In New York

every moment I look up from piecework

is bread stolen from my family.

An honor to stay at home!

I long for my grandmother’s pushcart,

my daughter’s factory—

to talk to someone casually

without counting pennies.

Finally there is a cause

that includes me

and gives me a reprieve from

these years of greenhorn isolation

on Essex Street.

Aunt Bina and the housewives of Essex Street got their rents reduced. Pauline told me about two thousand families succeeded. But later, in the cold of January, the landlords issued three-day eviction notices and six thousand families shuffled through the icy streets with bags and boxes, looking like they’d just gotten off the boat. Some of the evictees told Bina the strike was still worth it, to at least raise their voices. Lillian Wald told Gutke it was time to pass a law that capped the rents so the landlords wouldn’t get every cent we made. Gutke and I agreed it would be a long time before men would allow such a law to pass.

Underneath
These Words

J
ANUARY 12, 1908

Dear Sarah,

Finally, finally I can send you money for your studies. This is what I saved for your ticket: forty-eight American dollars. Of course, you can change your mind and use it to come to New York. I would be so happy to see you.

I apologize for being slow to send the money. I almost lost it all! I was keeping it in a bank because I thought this was the modern thing to do. A person I know told me to get the money out last October. The day I went, the bank president himself was standing in the lobby in his top hat, begging everyone not to withdraw. Can you imagine? He was trying to act like a friendly uncle, joking about how saving is better than spending, but his face was pale and sweaty, like a garment worker with consumption. Two days later he locked the doors of his bank. I heard he died last month and the people who still had their money by him will never get it back. It’s a big tragedy for hundreds and I feel lucky to be able to send this to you.

Because many of the Petrovskys were out of work last year I waited to send this—I was sure you’d understand. I was afraid I’d need it to keep a roof over our heads during the winter. But we scraped by and I only had to take $5 from the savings. Now I have a very good job in a bindery and I make almost $9 a week, so you shouldn’t worry. I’ll try to send you more in awhile but I’m not going to keep it in any bank!

I would be glad to get news of you. Esther writes but her letters are more and more formal. How are Aunt Shendl, Uncle Elihu and all the cousins? Cousin Aaron is getting married in the spring. The rest of us continue more or less the same. You remember that picture of Mama and Papa you gave me? I have it in a little frame in the room I share with cousin Rose, and when I look at them I can see you and Esther (and Abraham and Daniel), the way you were when I left. But now it’s almost five years, so quick! and each of us has grown. Since you’re in a big city, you can get a picture taken and send it to me, so at least there will be one way I can keep you close. Underneath these words there are so many stories I wish I could tell you. Someday we’ll be together again, I know.

Your loving sister,

Chava

Two months later I got an envelope with a torn scrap of paper. “I thank you with my whole heart,” it simply said. In the envelope was a charcoal drawing of a young girl, her hair drawn back from her face, with one eye looking out the left side of the page and the other staring directly into mine. Written on the bottom were the words:

Sarah Meyer

Self-portrait

Warsaw, 1908

I tacked the drawing up in our bedroom, over a ragged hole in the plaster.

The metal had begun to dig into my rear, even through the layers of skirt and slip.

“You’ve been sitting out here for hours, Chava,” Rose implored, “won’t you come in to bed already?” She spoke in English, believing, as I did, that her parents couldn’t follow what we said.

I brushed my knuckles against the railing of the fire escape, rapped my fingernails against the iron, plinking restlessly.

“Chava?”

I turned my head a quarter turn away, as if the sound of Rose’s voice was heat, a shaft of air aimed at me, that I couldn’t bear in early summer. Rose wiped the sweat off her forehead with her palm.

“Oh, Chava talk. If you can’t talk, just come inside. I can’t sit out there getting my skirt dirty like you, and my feet ache something awful.”

“Sure, your feet ache so much you just have to go out dancing.”

“Why is this such a big deal by you?” Rose pulled herself through the window and stood over me with her hands on her hips. She looked more exasperated than angry.

“Listen to yourself. You come out here asking me to talk, and as soon as I do, you tell me what I have to say is no big deal. If it’s so unimportant, go back in. What do I care?” I folded my arms across my chest.

“We have to work in the morning, Chava, and people can hear us out here. Come in to bed.”

“Into bed with the dancer? Suppose you kick me in your sleep? Better I should sleep on the couch Aaron left to get married. Or out here on the fire escape where the rats can dance on me.”

“Oy Chava, what a flair you got for dramatics. You should write for the stage.”

“‘I have.’”

“You have?”

“No. You say, ‘you have,’ not, ‘you got.’”

“All right, enough. I didn’t come out for an English lesson, Miss American Lady.”

“American lady? You’re the American lady, going off to dances with factory boys.”

“Chava—.” Rose stopped and listened. Uncle Isadore was snoring. Leon and Shmuel, the new boarder who took Harry’s cot, were playing pinochle in the kitchen. Aunt Bina had the sewing machine going. She wouldn’t be able to make us out over the snoring and the noise, and anyway, her English would have failed her. Still Rose whispered, and her whisper was angry.

“Chava, Reuben is nothing to me, you know it. Why do you make me say it here, over the street? Maybe you want I should yell it, yell what’s in my heart to everybody on Essex. Maybe I should paint it like an advertisement on the side of a building. Come inside, I don’t like this. Please, Chava, come inside.” Her frustration became a small wind, begging at my back.

I turned to her. My mouth twitched as I tried to keep a serious face, looking up into Rose’s eyes. “Really?”

“You know, really. Come on, don’t be such a baby.”

“I had a surprise for you.” I had meant to sound romantic, but it came out more like part of my complaint.

“And now I suppose it’s my fault for spoiling it?”

At least Rose sounded amused. “No, I didn’t mean to imply that,” I said.

“Nu?”

“I was going through my old clothes to give to the ragman, and I found something Gutke gave me when I first met her.”

“When you were born?”

“No,” I said, impatiently. “When I met her on the train.”

“Will you never learn to take a joke?” Rose asked. “So what is it already?”

“That was the surprise.”

“Come inside and show me, then,” she said, holding out an arm.

I grabbed onto her, pulling myself up. “Oy, my foot’s gone to sleep.”

“Just stand here for a minute, shake it a little.”

“Won’t you rub it?”

“When we get inside, you tease,” Rose whispered.

I shifted back and forth, wincing, then followed Rose through the window.

“Don’t close it,” Rose said, “there’s still a breeze. Are you going to drag this surprise out all night?” She spoke so softly now that we were inside I could barely hear her. I limped over to the bed and pulled the old bundle out of my pocket, making a show of unwrapping it.

“This is lovely,” Rose exclaimed, picking the ring out of my palm. When she held it up to the light I was glad I’d polished it up for her. “Gutke gave you this?”

“I don’t know why,” I said, shrugging. “She told me I had to indulge her, so I did. I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.”

“Why didn’t you ever wear it?”

“Too big,” I said, lying, although it was. I had no idea why I didn’t wear it—except maybe that my hands had been stained or rough from work the whole time we’d been in New York. “But I think it will fit you.”

Rose slipped the thin silver band on a finger, admiring the garnet. A perfect fit. “You really mean to give this to me?” She frowned, looking perplexed.

“All you have for me is questions?”

She pressed my hand. “I have a few answers for you too,” she whispered.

As I leaned against her I felt a twinge. “My leg is still a little numb,” I said.

“I’ll take care of that in a minute.” I noticed how Rose’s grin mirrored mine. She stood and took off her skirt and shirtwaist, letting down her hair, putting on her nightshirt. She was always so fast, her movements hardly gave me a chance to appreciate her. I drifted back to how her body looked that night on the Palisades.

“Come back from your trance, Chava. Get in your nightgown and I’ll rub your leg. And other places,” Rose whispered, holding the hand with the ring out in front of her for another look before she gave me her full attention, “if you promise not to be jealous anymore.”

“Promise not to give me a reason,” I said, reaching for her waist.

“There is no reason, love,” Rose breathed into the tunnel of my ear.

It was Saturday morning at the New World Bindery. We had a big rush job for Emma Goldman, herself, no less, a pamphlet to fold and staple. The radicals didn’t always pay on time but most of us put extra effort into their jobs. Mrs. Shapiro, the boss’s wife, had picked up a big contract to bind schoolbooks, which was half our work now. We were lucky to have the schoolbooks, the other girls said, since none of us were laid off during the hard times of the previous year.

In the middle of Goldman’s pamphlet, all the folder tapes tangled and the whole machine broke down. I’d watched Frank, the mechanic, fix the problem, ten, fifteen times already—but Frank wasn’t around.

“Where the hell is he?” Shapiro wanted to know. “Mechanics—they think they can go on a drunk and still have their jobs waiting for them.”

“Maybe he went to shul,” one of the new gluers suggested, which made all the girls laugh.

“Frank’s Catholic,” I told the new girl and she blushed. Shapiro was standing with his hands on his hips, surveying the mess.

“Mr. Shapiro, I think maybe I could fix it, if you let me try.” My voice went up too high when I spoke, even though I wanted him to have confidence in me.

He swiveled and looked at me, looked at Al, the folder supervisor. Al didn’t like to get under the machine with the oiling can, even. He knew how to adjust everything, the tension and the speeds, but for anything serious he always called over the mechanic. Nora and I were the only girls who ever worked by the folder, and today Nora was sewing. Al appraised me, turned back to the boss.

“Can’t hurt to let her try,” he said. “I don’t see a way she could make it worse.”

“All right, see what you can do,” the boss grumbled. “Frank’s tools are in the closet beside the men’s washroom. I’ll give you an apron you can put over your dress.”

I tied the apron tight and low, to gather in the folds of my skirt as much as possible, and crawled under the legs and bracings of the machine. It would have been easier in Dovida’s trousers. She’d have been proud to see me under here, I thought. I repositioned the tapes and rocked the cam shaft back and forth. Some parts were loose and I could see a chip on one of the humps, probably why we’d been having so much trouble lately. I pointed out the chipping to Al, and tightened everything up. The boss was watching, sticking out his lower lip. Finally I crawled out and turned the switch. There was a little clunk. I flicked it off. I knew exactly where that sound came from, so I crawled back underneath and secured the part in place. Then I oiled everything good. When I turned it on the second time, the tapes ran smoothly.

“I think it’s okay now, but soon we’re going to need a new cam, the one I showed Al,” I told Shapiro. He waited. Al fed a sheet of paper and another. Perfect.

Al shook his head. “Never seen anything like it.”

Suddenly all the sewing and the gluing girls were clapping. I faced them. What could I do? I made a curtsey. I had oil on my shirtwaist sleeves and a lock of hair fell over my face.

“That’s enough,” the boss shouted. “Everyone, back to work. Chava, you come with me.”

Except for payday, I had never been in the office before. Shapiro sat behind his desk and stared at me. “Where’d you learn to do that?”