The River Midnight (19 page)

“Emma, you’re an angel,” Ruthie said, hugging her friend. “I promise, when I get home, I’ll show you every plant in the book.”

“E
MMA
,” the Traveler said in the grayness of her delirium. “Emma, you should be going home now.”

“I have to finish this garment.” She began to sew again, furiously, as if she had no time to lose. “My mama’s expecting it.”

“They miss you. Didn’t you hear your auntie crying? Faygela’s gone home and Ruthie went to get Misha. She’s all alone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Great-aunt Alta-Fruma
just left the dairyhouse. Hayim is working for her. Can’t you see him lifting the vat? There she is walking into the house. Oh, she’s mad at me again.”

The Traveler shook his head. “No, Emma. You’re in bed. You’re sick. She’s crying.”

“You have it all wrong. Just take a look.”

Down below in Blaszka, Alta-Fruma was standing in front of Emma, shaking a finger at her. “Here comes Ruthie with a bucket full of raspberries and you want to walk to Plotsk in the hot sun,” Alta-Fruma was saying. She stood between Emma and the door, holding onto Emma’s bag of piecework. Sweat was beading on Emma’s forehead. It was hot in July.

“I have to go.”

“I don’t understand you, Emma. You gave enough to the community council. I’m not so poor that I can’t feed you. There’s always work in the dairy if you have nothing to do. But more piecework? What for?”

“I just want to do it.” Emma pulled on the bag her auntie was gripping with both hands.

“Then tell me. Just tell me why.” Alta-Fruma put the bag behind her back.

“The girls in the prison don’t have monthly cloths or blankets. I just want to get them some,” Emma said.

Alta-Fruma sighed. “If it’s for charity, then I’ll help you.”

“It’s not charity. It’s to free the workers from the oppression of the overseers.”

“Fine. Good. You go and eat raspberry tarts with Ruthie and I promise that you can do some piecework afterward.” She took one of Emma’s hands and turned it over. “But not until these hands are not red anymore. I’ll give you some old rags that you can cut up for monthly cloths. And I’m sure I have an extra blanket somewhere. Look, here’s Ruthie. Go. I don’t want to hear another word.”

As they walked to the bakery, Ruthie and Emma swung the heavy bucket between them. “It’s so dry. What I wouldn’t give for a little rain,” Ruthie said. “So, Emma rainmaker, would you oblige me?”

“Don’t be silly. Clouds bring rain. I bring revolution.”

“Misha’s vegetables are wilting. Just a nice soft rain, Emma.”

“All right.” Lifting her left hand, Emma looked up at the sky and said, “Rain for the revolution!”

When they reached the bakery they were soaked, Ruthie laughing and shouting at her sisters, “Emma made it rain.”

“Shh. It was just a joke.”

“Could Dov make it rain?” the youngest sister asked.

“Even better, he could make a boss pay his employees,” Emma answered.

I
N THE
gray haze, she watched the secret nights of August ripen the blueberries. Below in Blaszka she scratched at the bites of small insects.

R
UTHIE
, seating herself under the shade of a linden tree, pulled Emma down beside her. “All right, all right,” Emma said, setting her bucket on a stump nearby. The girls leaned against the tree trunk, their heads bent over a book dappled with sun and the shadow shapes of leaves. Ruthie held a stalk of comfrey, its roots dangling, next to the book, pointing first to the parts on the plant, then to the diagram in the book. “You see, Emma? It’s a common plant, one of the first ones that Misha told me about. It grows in wet fields like near the river. As a poultice, it’s very good for wounds and bites, and for someone who’s spitting up blood, you make an infusion of it for her to drink.”

“You mean like the girls in the sweatshop?”

“Uh-huh,” Ruthie said. Lying back on the ferns, Ruthie stretched her arms above her head and wriggled her toes inside her boots. “You don’t know how good it is to be home.”

“It’s so hot. Let’s go wading in the river. Come on, lazy.” Emma kicked the sole of Ruthie’s boots.

Where the river ran fast and white around the silver rocks, the girls held hands, balancing themselves precariously. On the shore, their dresses and boots were slung over a tree branch. They could see the ruins of the mill on the other bank, ancient under the dome of blue sky, a single swirl of cloud skirting the bridge. An orange cat, one ear tilted forward, the other half-chewed, was creeping across a mossy log that joined the bank to a rock in the river, where a pair of turtles were basking in the sun. Overhead a family of black ducks quacked, and
the cat, torn between the turtles and the birds, leaped awkwardly, falling into the river. Ruthie laughed and Emma wasn’t quite sure if she fell accidentally or on purpose, pulling Emma with her, but soon the girls were drenched, braids undone, their shifts transparent, water dripping like a fountain from their chins, and when Ruthie drank from Emma’s fountain, she had to laugh and scream and push Ruthie away, her hands tingling strangely where they had touched Ruthie’s chest.

Breathlessly the girls climbed up the bank. They put their dresses back on over wet shifts, pulling stockings and boots onto muddy feet, and as they squelched under the trees, they decided to check on the hut in the woods. A summer storm might have pulled off the roof and the type should be put in order. It was there that they found Hershel the butcher, head of the community council, in the process of dismantling the press.

I
NSIDE HER
delirium Emma yelled at the Traveler, “It’s not fair. The printing press didn’t belong to the community council. We worked hard to fix it up. It wasn’t anybody’s business what we were doing. Hershel had no right to boss us around. I tried to stop him. Ruthie was trying to pull me away, but I stood right in front of the printing press. Hershel threw me aside like I was nothing. Nothing. Then he hacked at the press. All our hard work gone for nothing. I promised Dov I’d carry on. I promised.”

D
OWN BELOW
, Emma was tossing her head from side to side in Alta-Fruma’s bed. She moaned, tears running down her cheeks.

I
N THE
nothingness, the Traveler put an arm around her, but she shrugged him off, laying her head on her arms over the white garment on the table. He waited until, with a half-sob, Emma said, “Without the printing press, how will I carry on the work? I promised Dov I would. Before I left America. He was in the hospital and I held his hand and I told him I’d carry on. My mama said that somebody has to fight for a decent life for everyone. My mama told me. You understand? And that nurse said … she said that Dov couldn’t understand a word. But I didn’t believe her. He didn’t have the bandages on his head anymore. He looked like he was just thinking with his eyes
closed. The nurse said he was in a coma, he couldn’t hear anything. But how did she know?” Emma waved at the Lower East Side floating above the grayness. “Don’t you see?”

“No,” the Traveler said.

“Why can’t you see? Just look up there. You can see it all. Delancey Street. Elizabeth. Hester.”

The Traveler took Emma’s hands. “It’s Tishah-b’Av, Emma. The Holy Ark in the synagogue is draped in black. It’s time for you to go home.”

“Just look up. Please. You have to see.”

The Traveler looked up. “I don’t see the hospital. I see you carrying cloaks. And it looks like there’s a strike.”

“I had to,” she pleaded. “I had to work to keep Izzie in school. I swore I’d never break a strike again. But we needed the money. I did the finishing so my mother could work in the factory. The Miracle Cloaks factory. She made twice as much. And then she … it was all my fault. If she’d been working at home … Some days I can’t even remember her face. It was a year ago. Exactly a year ago. Oh, just look.”

O
N THE
Lower East Side of New York, Hester Street was thick with placards.
WE WANT
8
HOURS WORK
.
IN UNITY IS OUR STRENGTH
.
FEREINIGUNG IZ MAHT
.
LUNIONE FO LA FORZA
.
CLOSED SHOP AND OPEN DOORS
. Men and boys in dark coats, white shirts, ties, bowler hats, and woolen caps walked ten abreast between the tenements, arms linked, small American flags tucked under elbows. Behind them strode the women and girls, solemn and scrubbed and shawled, singing,
“We swear our stalwart hate persists, Of those who rob and kill the poor; The Tsar, the masters, capitalists. Our vengeance will be swift and sure.”

The sun was a moonlike disk in the west, burnishing the red jacket of the man walking beside Emma. He was a big-shouldered man and tall, his beard curling silver, around his neck a medallion of Karl Marx on a black ribbon. He nodded kindly at Emma even though she was obviously breaking the strike, her head and shoulders loaded with finished cloaks. Emma kept her head low as she hurried through the market toward Elizabeth Street.

Stumbling along Elizabeth Street, her vision blocked by the load
of cloaks, Emma couldn’t see what was going on when she heard the sound like a gunshot. “Cops,” she yelled. “Run.” Then a blast of heat lifted her and flung her against an iron fence. Something thick and sticky trickled into her mouth. Emma threw her arm over her face. There was a flash of red and green, like fireworks, the stench of tar, black smoke bursting like a tornado, the scream of a horse, running feet, rasping voices, “Where are you? This way!” A brick clanged against the metal bar above her left shoulder. Her eyes streaming. She squinted through the gritty, wavering air that juggled streetlamps. Fire wagons. Horses. Hoses. Water hissing in slow motion. The whole street seemed to be burning. Dear God, Emma prayed. Let it not be them. I’ll go to synagogue every week, just let them be safe. One of the strikers squatted beside her. The man in the red jacket. “Get along, miss. It’s not safe here.”

“The factory. Which one is it?”

“Don’t know. The whole street could go up. You’ve got to get out of here.”

He pulled her to her feet. “No,” Emma said. “I can help. It’s a cold night. I have cloaks. Someone might be cold.”

He slung an armful of cloaks over his shoulder. “We’ll take them with us. Come to the strike office.”

Emma clutched his hand like a little girl.

In Doc’s Drugs on Chrystie Street, Emma sat on the counter, hanging onto a mug of coffee laced with brandy. Emma Goldman wrapped the girl in one of the cloaks, stroking her cheek with hands red and scraped from heaving bricks.

“Where’s Dov?”

“The cops hit him on the head,” Emma Goldman said. “He’s in the hospital.”

“Is he all right?”

“We don’t know yet.” She put an arm around the girl’s shoulders. Young Emma was shivering. “Damn cops,” Emma Goldman said.

“Did you hear where the fire started? My parents were working.”

“On Elizabeth Street?”

Young Emma nodded. “In the Miracle Cloaks factory.”

“Listen, I’ll go out and find out what’s going on. Don’t you budge.”

Every time the door swung open, Emma whispered, “Please,
please,” fingers crossed, heart rapping. The last straggler was settled, wounds dressed, and still Emma waited.

She was slumped in a sleeping heap on the counter when Emma Goldman’s voice woke her. “Little Emma Blau.”

“Did you find out?”

The woman took one of Emma’s hands in hers. “It was the Miracle Cloaks factory. An explosion in the basement. Probably the benzene from the cleaners.”

“My parents? Did you see them?”

“No.”

“Are they at the hospital? Can you take me there? You can say I’m sixteen. I’ll visit Dov, too. Let’s go right away.” Young Emma jumped off the counter.

The woman held her back. “Wait a minute. Here, drink this.” She held out a bottle and Emma took a swig, gasping at the bitterness of it. “The firemen couldn’t get anyone out of the building,” Emma Goldman said, her arm around young Emma’s waist. “The doors were locked so the boss could inspect the workers for pilfering before they left. I’m sorry, dear.”

“My mother?”

“No, Emma. Nobody got out.”

T
HE GARMENT
was finished. Emma looked at the
kittel
she had sewn. Her father used to wear a
kittel
at the seder and on Yom Kippur. “A simple and pure garment,” he would say. “Unadorned. And so in this we greet God on the holiest days, and in this we shall greet Him when we are buried.”

“So you’re finished,” the Traveler said.

“Yes.” Emma leaned back in her chair. “Finally it’s finished. And I’m going to wear it.” She began to shed her woolen patchwork—the jacket sleeve, the blue shirtwaist. From below came crying and Misha’s voice. “She’s burning up.”

“Ready to go then?”

“Yes.” Emma reached for the
kittel.

The Traveler snatched the white robe and held it behind his back. “Just a minute. I had a look up there at the old days. Now it’s your turn Emma. Come on, now.”

Emma tilted her face upward. “But that’s our old apartment,” she said. “We moved out when I was five.”

A
WOMAN
in a cotton nightgown, the collar threaded with red ribbon, sat on a narrow, straight-backed chair, rocking a cradle with her left hand. Her hair was in two long brown braids flecked with gold, her lips quivering in a half-smile. Between her knees stood a little girl about five years old, with eyes like midnight, her hands balled into fists and her cheeks red with indignation.

“Next time Papa hits me, I hit him back,” she said.

“A little girl should respect her papa. He was very sad to hit you. He only did it to teach you. How could you throw his holy book onto the floor and jump on it, Emma?”

“I wanted to see if God’s in the book. God isn’t. The book tore. It’s just paper. I told Papa. If God was in the book it wouldn’t tear.”

The woman lifted her onto her lap. “I will tell you a secret if you promise not to aggravate your papa.”

“What?”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

“Good, and I know my daughter will keep it. The secret is that miracles aren’t as important as what you say.”