Threads and Flames (28 page)

“Everyone in this house thinks they're funny,” Mrs. Kamensky grumbled.

After breakfast, Gavrel offered Raisa his arm. “May I have the privilege of escorting you to work this morning, madame?”

Raisa looked at Mrs. Kamensky. “Go on, take his arm,” the older woman said grudgingly. “He won't go out the door until you do. You know how stubborn he is.”

The two of them walked out of the apartment arm in arm. They had to let go of one another in order to get down the narrow stairs, but once out on the street, Gavrel took Raisa's hand and threaded it back through the crook of his elbow. “In case Mama's watching us from the front window,” he explained smoothly, indicating his mother's possible lookout post with an upward roll of his eyes. “I think she
enjoys
disapproving of things, so who are we to deny her a little pleasure?”

Raisa lowered her eyelids. “We're going to be late.” She left her hand where it was.

Zusa was waiting for them outside her building. “What's this?” she said, raising her voice theatrically when she saw them come strolling up as a couple. “What a gentleman you are, Gavrel, protecting little Raisa from all the dragons on Hester Street!”

Her sally got only a serene “Good morning, Zusa” from the pair in reply. She accompanied them the rest of the way to the Triangle Waist Company in sullen silence, with her chin tucked into the fake otter-fur collar of her winter coat.

It was impossible to keep Zusa's high spirits down for long. By the time the three of them reached the Asch Building she was once more all smiles and kidding remarks. When Gavrel left them to join the rest of the cutters on the eighth floor, she began teasing Raisa unmercifully. “So, when's the wedding?”

“Don't you think you're making too much of this, Zusa?” Raisa replied. “All we did was walk here together, arm in arm.”

“Arm in arm so close you couldn't slip a ray of sunshine between the two of you,” Zusa pointed out.

“That's hardly a marriage proposal. He can't even consider getting married until he finishes his studies and becomes ordained as a rabbi, and I need to know for sure, one way or—God forbid—the other, what's become of my sister before I can think about anything else so big in my life.”

“Mmm, so much attention to details, so much forethought after just one walk together, but
I'm
the one who's making too much out of this?” Zusa giggled as she saw the effect of her words. “And I thought ‘blushing bride' was only a saying!”

As much as she loved her friend, Raisa was secretly relieved when Miss Gullo showed Zusa to a workstation that was far from her own, at a machine that was nearly all the way up against the Washington Place windows.

 

 

At the end of the day, Gavrel waited for the girls downstairs, just across the street from the Asch Building. “Well, how did you like it?” he asked Zusa, taking Raisa's arm as naturally as if it were something he'd done for years.

“I'm glad we've got a fore
lady,
” Zusa replied. “I've had enough of fore
men
to last me the rest of my life.”

“Oh, they're not all bad. I feel sorry for ours. No one's supposed to smoke on the job—you don't want to know how fast some of that fine lawn and linen we cut can burn, once it catches fire, and the paper patterns can go up in flames if you
look
at them the wrong way—but some of the older cutters do it anyhow. They claim that if it weren't for them and how good they are at fitting pattern pieces onto the fabric so there's next to no waste scraps, the company'd be bankrupt, so if they want a smoke on the job, they'll take it. It keeps the foremen jumping, trying to catch them at it and make them put out their cigarettes.”

“What kind of fools are they, smoking around all of that cloth and paper?” Raisa asked. “Do they want to burn the whole building down?”

“That can't happen,” Gavrel responded. “That's what the owners claim, anyway. With one breath they insist that one tiny fire escape down the air shaft is more than enough, that there's plenty of firefighting gear on hand, that we're making a big deal over nothing. With another they say that any changes would be a waste of money; the Asch Building is guaranteed fireproof.”

“Yes, but I'm not!”

“I wouldn't mind smelling cigarette smoke if it covered up some of the other stink on our floor,” Zusa said. “I didn't know how much I hated the smell of oil until I got stuck in a room with that many sewing machines burning through the stuff like there's no tomorrow!”

“If that's your biggest complaint, you're lucky,” Gavrel said.

Suddenly, Raisa looked back toward the entrance to the Asch Building and began waving, calling out, “Luciana! Luciana!”

“Ah! Raisa! Hello!” The Italian girl ran across the street, holding on to her hat with one hand. Soon all three shipboard friends were embracing and chattering enthusiastically in English.

“Is it not marvelous that this has happened?” Luciana said. “We all work here now, together. It is exactly what we spoke of that evening. When I go home and tell my family, Mama will say it is proof that miracles happen.”

“I wish
this
miracle did not smell so much like sewing machine oil,” Zusa remarked.

 

 

December brought the dreary winter months to Raisa's work at Triangle, and the dreariness wasn't helped by the fact that money was tighter than ever. Gavrel's Uncle Hersch lost his job. The veteran pattern cutter had gotten sick after so many years of breathing in all the little threads and lint in the factory's air. He stayed home coughing so hard he couldn't even get out of bed, so he was fired. The Kamenskys sent his family a little something to help out with the rent, which affected their own household budget, but they refused to do otherwise.

In the mornings, Raisa and Gavrel would go to work with Zusa, and Luciana sometimes joined them along the way. In the Asch Building, Gavrel and Luciana got off the elevator on the eighth floor, while Raisa and Zusa got out on the ninth, not to see one another until the workday ended.

It hadn't taken Zusa long to make lots of friends among the ninth-floor workers. The cloakroom always broke into a storm of welcoming laughter as soon as she came in. As for Raisa, her own group of friends at the shop was much smaller—just two girls, Gussie and Jennie—but she didn't envy Zusa her popularity. The way Raisa's life was, she had scarcely a free moment. Besides her job, nearly every minute was devoted to her schoolwork, Brina's lessons and playtime, writing to Glukel, marking Shabbos and the festivals, and above all, her ongoing search. What good was it to have a multitude of friends if she couldn't do anything more than bid them hello and good-bye at the two ends of the workday? She saw more of Zusa and Luciana because the three of them went to and from work together and shared classes at the Educational Alliance.

Gussie and Jennie didn't need to learn English. Gussie was proud to call herself a born New Yorker, but little, birdlike Jennie could claim even higher status: her mother was American-born, too! Raisa cherished the few instances when she was able to steal a little time with them. Their outings were simple—long walks, window shopping, a free lecture. They couldn't afford much more, but that didn't discourage them. Once, when they were strolling arm in arm along Broadway, Jennie had stood on tiptoe to whisper, “You know, Raisa, your English is getting better and better. You must have a very good ear; when you talk, sometimes you sound like Gussie and me!” Raisa had accepted the compliment modestly, but inside she had danced with happiness.

Raisa's mornings were always brighter when she was able to trade a few friendly words with Gussie in the cloakroom, then wave to Jennie at a machine several tables away from her own, but by December, the brightness had faded fast. As day followed day, the mechanical, mind-numbing repetition dragged her down. She sewed the same pattern pieces in the same way at the same machine, hour after hour. All she could think of as she endured that drudgery was how her sister must have endured it, as well.

I try and I
try,
Henda,
she thought as the needle bobbed up and down and the factory air reeked with sweat and oil and dampness. Every stitch seemed to anchor the winter darkness to her spirit.
I try to discover some new way to find you. Gavrel, God bless him, is there for me. He's doing what he can to learn the names of the big department store owners, to see which of them are German Jews, whether any of them has a son, but when does he have the time to ask such questions? He needs time for his studies, too. He'd give me every free second he had, but I can't let him sacrifice his dreams for mine.

During the second week in December, Raisa was taken from sewing simple bodice seams to the more intricate work of setting in shirtwaist sleeves. It was the high point of her whole month, until what happened on New Year's Eve.

On December 30, as she, Gavrel, Zusa, and Luciana were walking south through Washington Square Park, Gavrel announced that on the following night they should all go to a restaurant for dinner and then on to Times Square to watch the New Year come in.

“I thought the New Year already came for
us
back in October,” Zusa said archly. “And
you
say you are going to be a rabbi!”

“Oh, so now you've learned enough English to be a smart aleck in two languages?” Gavrel replied, taking Zusa's jibe in stride.

“Four!” she said proudly. “You forget that I also speak Polish and German.”

“Then bring all four of your sharp tongues to the party, and we'll welcome nineteen eleven in real American style!”

“What does that mean?” Raisa asked.

“What, they haven't taught you about it in your English class? And they call themselves an
Educational
Alliance?” He chuckled, obviously pleased to have a real surprise in store for them.

Raisa was positive that what Gavrel had planned would never happen. All the way home that day she imagined how his mother would react. Mrs. Kamensky could not forbid her son from going wherever he pleased—he was a wage earner and a Talmudic scholar, and he'd counted as an adult in the Jewish community since becoming a bar mitzvah four years ago—but she
could
make his life very unpleasant, before and after the fact, if she wasn't happy with his choice. He might decide that the price of her disapproval was too steep to pay for one night of fun.

To Raisa's surprise, Mrs. Kamensky not only told them to go and have a good time; she also suggested that Fruma and Morris join the group. She put her foot down only the following night, when Brina saw Raisa, Fruma, and Gavrel getting ready to leave. She begged to come along, as well, and kept up her clamor until Tante Lipke gave her a cookie as a consolation prize.

That night, Raisa stood in Times Square, in the middle of a mass of tens of thousands, huddling close to her friends. Morris kept whispering warnings about pickpockets until Fruma made him stop. Luciana had brought Paolo along for security, and now she held on to his arm like a drowning woman clinging to a life preserver. Zusa sized up the handsome young Italian and took his other arm, announcing that she was afraid to be an unescorted girl in such a mob.

“Are you cold, Raisa?” Gavrel asked.

“A little.” She looked around in awe at the boisterous crowd choking the streets.
So many people, pressing so close, and yet when a crowd gets this big, it makes you feel like you're all alone.
Then she felt the warm weight of Gavrel's arm slipping around her shoulders and the sense of isolation vanished. She let him draw her closer. With her head leaning on Gavrel's chest, she couldn't tell if Zusa was watching them, making mocking comments, or if she was too busy bantering with Paolo to bother.

Let her say what she likes,
Raisa thought.
I don't care. This feels right.
She closed her eyes with a happy sigh.

“Raisaleh, are you falling asleep on your feet? It's almost time. Look!” Gavrel's gentle voice called for her attention. The noise level of the mob around them was mounting by the second, a slowly growing rumble of anticipation. Raisa watched, starry-eyed, as the mammoth wood-and-iron ball made its descent from the peak of the flagpole atop the Times Tower, its galaxy of electric lightbulbs dazzling in the night. When it reached the bottom of the pole, the crowd's rumble exploded into roars of
“Happy New Year!”
and thousands of wooden rattles, horns, and other noisemakers added their clashing sounds to the din.

“Happy New Year, everyone!” Zusa shouted, throwing her arms wide, as if she wanted to hug all of Times Square.

“Buon anno nuovo!”
Paolo and Luciana cried.

“Happy nineteen eleven,” Morris said, smiling affectionately at Fruma. “I know one reason why it's going to be the happiest year of my life.”

Gavrel turned so that he and Raisa stood with their backs to their friends. “Happy New Year, dear Raisaleh,” he whispered, and kissed her. She closed her eyes, swept away by a sweet thrill unlike anything she had ever experienced, and when she opened them again she knew that she'd awakened to a wonderful new world.

 

 

They told no one about how things had changed between them, though it seemed impossible that the people they knew best noticed nothing different. Whenever she and Gavrel were together in the house—at dinner, at breakfast, or simply when everyone was home—Raisa often found herself casting secretive glances at his mother, checking for any hint that Mrs. Kamensky was aware that her son and her boarder were in love.

It was Raisa's idea that they say nothing. She mentioned it to him as the two of them walked home on New Year's Day after parting ways with Zusa. Gavrel wanted to tell the world, but she asked him to keep quiet, for her sake. When he asked for a reason, she answered, “If we say one word about it, Brina will start talking about us as if we're getting married tomorrow and you
know
she won't stop.”