Threads and Flames (29 page)

“Let her talk,” Gavrel murmured, hugging her and taking another kiss. The Lower East Side streets were never totally deserted, but at that hour there were no hawkeyed, gossip-starved neighbors to see them. He released her from his embrace and added, “If you're afraid of what Mama and Papa will say, you shouldn't be. They love you, too. I don't need to hear them say so to know that. And they adore Brina as much as I do!”

“
Please,
Gavrel ...”

“Oh, all right. For you. But you tell me when you're ready to stop this nonsense.”

Nonsense . . .
Raisa thought as they walked on.
But
is
it nonsense? I've never felt like this about a boy before. I
do
love him. It makes me happy just to be with him, and when he gives me help and strength to go on, there's not a single doubt in my mind, except . . . it's all happening so fast. I need time to think. All I need is time.
She touched her hair self-consciously. It had grown back to just below her ears.

“A penny for your thoughts, Raisaleh,” Gavrel breathed in her ear.

“I was only thinking that I'm very happy.” It wasn't a lie, just a half-truth. She was happy; she just didn't know how long she could stay that way. Nothing was certain or permanent. If people knew that she and Gavrel were sweethearts, whatever happened between them would become a spectacle. If Gavrel woke up with a change of heart tomorrow, or in a month, or in a year's time, she wouldn't be able to save herself from the hurt of losing his love, but at least she could save herself from the unbearable awkwardness of continuing to live under the same roof with so many pitying eyes. The Kamenskys had become like family to her and Brina. She didn't want anything to uproot the child, or herself, from their lives.

“That's what I want,” he said, squeezing her. “But I warn you, I don't come from a stupid family. They know I like you, and as more than just a friend.”

“Then they don't need to know how
much
more,” Raisa said. Boldly she stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

“No, but I bet they'll guess.”

SPARKS

T
he memory of that night stayed with Raisa when she went back to the monotony of her work at Triangle. She and Gavrel stole moments together when they could, but there were very few opportunities for it. Most of their days were eaten up by the factory, and most of his free time had to be devoted to Torah and Talmud studies, just as she still had her night-school classes.

One morning in early February, Raisa came to the ninth floor of Triangle to find another girl at her place on the long table. For an instant she was about to scold the invader and send her packing, or fetch Miss Gullo to make her leave.
Wait a minute, what am I doing? There's no real difference if I sit here or there,
she realized. She asked Miss Gullo to move her to another workstation for setting sleeves, but the small change in her usual way of doing things bothered her the whole day. “I don't understand it,” she said as she, Gavrel, and Zusa waited for Luciana on the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street. “The machines are all the same, the chairs are all the same, so why was I so miserable?”

“Given enough time, a prisoner gets attached to his prison,” Zusa said offhandedly.

“My job is not a prison!” Even as she objected to what Zusa had said, Raisa began to wonder. “I'm not saying this place is perfect. They ‘fix' the clocks so they can keep us at work longer. They make us take the freight elevators because to them we're equipment, not people. They pack us in at the workstations like pickles in a jar. But do you know what? It's the same everywhere, and some places it's worse.”

“Is
that
a reason to leave things the way they are, to put up with bad conditions?” Zusa argued. “If someone drops me into a pot of boiling water, I should accept it and be grateful it's not boiling
oil
? Raisa, if we spend our lives always looking down, only seeing the people with heavier burdens, we'll forget we've got the power to look
up
—look up and then
reach
up, too! And after we've pulled ourselves up to better things, we'll be able to reach back down to help others. When I see a person who's worse off than I am, I'd rather do more for her than mumble ‘Thank God that's not
my
life' and walk away!”

“Listen to you, Zusa!” Gavrel said. “You sound like a regular union girl.”

“And what if I am? I'm not stupid, Gavrel. I know that I can't do anything to change the way things are by myself.” Zusa thrust her hand into her purse and pulled out a union membership card. “There! What do you say to
that
?”

Gavrel took out his wallet and produced his own card. “I say, welcome, sister.” He grinned.

“Gavrel! When did you join the union?” Raisa exclaimed. “Do your bosses know?”

“If they do, they do. You can't be fired just because you're a union member. Some of the longtime cutters here told me that was one of the concessions we got from the owners after the general strike, along with shorter hours and better—a
little
better—pay.”

“Even if they could fire us for joining the union, I'd still belong,” Zusa maintained. “I want to be
paid
like a person and
treated
like a person, not another machine. But I suppose
you'd
want to play it safe,” she said to Raisa.

“You're right, I would,” Raisa answered back, not letting Zusa's taunt touch her. “I need my job. I'm the sole wage earner for Brina and me, and I'm sending money home to help Glukel, too. Reb Avner writes that she's got arthritis in her hands now, so she can't work as much or as fast. She needs my help, even if she'd die before she'd say it. So yes, Zusa; yes, I
do
want to play it safe.” She took the union membership card from her friend's hand. “Tell me how I can join, too.”

Zusa gave Raisa a funny look. “Do you
like
confusing me?”

“I like listening to you, Zusa,” Raisa said. “You know how to use words to make me
think
about things, not just take them as they are.”

“She's right, Zusa; you're very eloquent,” Gavrel said. “You ought to speak at meetings. The general strike went on a long time and took a lot out of us. The owners wanted to starve us back to work by filling our jobs with scab labor. They tried to break us; they bribed the police to look the other way when they sent gangsters to attack us. We got some concessions in the end, but nowhere near enough. Many people are too worn-out from fighting to understand that we can't stop now. Someone with your gift for words could make them see that!”

“You're not so bad yourself,” Zusa replied.

Just then, Luciana came running up to join them. “I am sorry! My foreman is slow today. He takes a long time looking in the girls' purses before he lets us go. You are too cold, waiting?”

“Don't worry, Luciana,” Gavrel said with a gallant tip of his hat. “We found a way to keep warm.”

 

 

Raisa thought that she would be happy to see March come. Fruma had told her that sometimes the month brought warm weather to the city, and always more hours of daylight. She was famished for the sight of new green leaves and tired of coming out of the Asch Building at quitting time into a world of darkness.

Inside the walls of the ninth-floor shop, every day was like the one before. She was bored with doing nothing but setting in sleeves. When she'd worked with Glukel, the work had been hard, but the variety of tasks and dressmaking problems to solve kept it interesting. The same could be said for her time spent with “Madame Odile.” Somehow, knowing that more than a hundred other girls were trapped in the same tedious rut made it all worse. At Triangle there was never any opportunity for creativity, just eternal duplication. She wanted to try her hand at some other part of the process for assembling shirtwaists, but she never had the chance to approach the forelady about it before or during the workday, and when quitting time came, she just wanted to escape.

Raisa was unaware of how much the dreariness of her job was seeping into the rest of her life until one Sunday morning in mid-March. While Mrs. Kamensky and Fruma were paying a reluctant visit to Morris's mother and Gavrel was studying with the rabbi, Raisa took Brina for a walk down to Mr. Kamensky's dry-goods store. It was almost Purim, one of the most joyful holidays of the year, a time for feasting, drinking, and celebrating how Queen Esther had saved the Jewish people of ancient Persia from annihilation at the hands of their enemy, Haman. Brina couldn't decide whether her favorite part of Purim was getting to eat hamantaschen—triangular pastries stuffed with jam or poppy seeds—or dressing up in costume.

“You'll have to wait for the hamantaschen,” Raisa told her. “But today we can see if Mr. Kamensky has any fabric scraps or remnants to give us for making your Purim costume.”

Mr. Kamensky's small store was very close to the tenement where his family lived. Like many of his Jewish neighbors, he kept it closed on Saturday to honor Shabbos, the divinely ordained day of rest. Sunday was neither his Sabbath nor his customers'. KAMENSKY'S DRY GOODS was blazoned boldly in the center of the store window in large letters, with Yiddish words in smaller print at the corners. When Raisa and Brina went in, a little bell over the door jingled merrily.

“Ah, what a wonderful surprise! Come in, my dear children. Come in and tell me to what I owe the pleasure of this visit!” All smiles, Mr. Kamensky rushed from behind the counter to embrace Raisa and twirl Brina off her feet until the child shrieked with laughter. Away from home and his eternal copy of the
Forward,
he was a different man, talkative and jolly.

“We—we're here to find material for Brina's Purim costume,” Raisa said.

“And you've come to the right place. Hey, Louis!” Mr. Kamensky hailed the pimply young man who was still behind the counter. “You take this little princess here back to the storeroom and you show her the brightest, prettiest, best leftover fabric we've got in this place.” He patted Brina on the head and told her, “Take your time making your choice, sweetheart. You may be our princess, but you only get to be a queen once a year!”

“Isn't Raisa going to come with me?” Brina asked shyly. She didn't know Mr. Kamensky's clerk, and she remembered all the lessons everyone in the Kamensky household had taught her about strangers.

“Listen to the wisdom of it!” Mr. Kamensky laughed with pleasure. “It's all right, darling, I wouldn't send you off with Louis if I didn't trust him. Besides, the storeroom is right through that door, which will stay wide open. If you really need Raisa with you, so be it, but I thought you might like having the chance to play that you're a grown-up woman shopping on her own.”

With a serious face, Brina looked from Mr. Kamensky to Louis and back again. “I
would
like that,” she stated.

Louis offered her a kindly smile and his hand. “Anytime you want the young lady to come join us, just holler for her,” he said. “She'll be able to hear you real good.”

Brina sniffed with disdain. “I know that.” She permitted the clerk to lead her away.

“It's true, you can trust Louis completely with the child,” Mr. Kamensky said. “I would sooner cut off my right hand than place her in jeopardy. Now, Raisa, while Brina is busy, I'd like to talk with you.”

Raisa felt her body tense up.
So that's why he sent Brina into the back room! He knows that Gavrel and I are more than friends and he's mad about it. He doesn't think I'm good enough for his son. What's he going to do?

“My dear,” Mr. Kamensky began, “I'm very glad that you happened to come into my store today. If you hadn't, I'd have needed to make the opportunity to tell you what I must. I have seen how things are between you and my son.”

“Mr. Kamensky ...” Raisa's stomach lurched.
Is he going to tell me to leave Gavrel alone? Is he going to say that Brina and I have to move out?

“A blind man could see it,” Mr. Kamensky went on. Then he smiled. “Luckily for us all, my wife is neither blind nor a man. If she's noticed anything, she hasn't said a word about it, which leads me to conclude that she hasn't seen a thing.” He chuckled, but then he caught sight of Raisa's expression. “Child, why such a face? You look as if you're waiting for a death sentence! Believe me, if my Lipke
did
know about you and Gavrel, her only objection would be that you are both still very young and that he has not yet finished his studies.” He took her hand in both of his. “You're a good, honest girl and I know you'll take proper care of our son. I'd have to be a fool to object to him marrying you.”

Raisa could hardly believe what she was hearing. “Mr. Kamensky, I promise you, Gavrel and I haven't even mentioned marriage. If we had, I know he'd tell you and his mother first.”

“I hope not! What is he, our son or our puppet? If he talks about marriage to
anyone
before you, then the first word out of your mouth should be ‘No!'”

Raisa laughed so loudly with relief that Brina peeked out of the back room to see if she was missing anything good.

“It's nothing,
mamaleh,
” Mr. Kamensky told her. “I was just telling Raisa about the time I stuffed chickpeas up my nose when I was a little boy. I know
you
would never do anything so silly.”

“I don't
like
chickpeas,” Brina said firmly, and went back to her search for the perfect costume fabric.

Once she was gone, Mr. Kamensky said, “So, is that why you've been so sad lately, Raisa? Because you were afraid that Lipke and I would find out that you and Gavrel were sweethearts and that we might be angry at you?”