Uprising (18 page)

“It says Guilia—Gull-ia? Gui-uh-lia?—I'm not sure I'm
saying that right. She succumbed to a fever on July 2, Giovanni and Dominic on July 3, Ricardo and Angelina on July 6,” Jane said grimly.

“July,” Yetta told Bella. “The first week of July.”

Bella gasped. She said something rapidly in Italian-something that sounded like swear words. She was sitting straight up in bed now.

“If Signor Carlotti paid me, first week,” she said, switching back to Yiddish, “Mama and the little ones would have had food, they would have been strong enough to fight off any fever—the blood of my family's deaths is on Signor Carlotti's hands!”

“Signor Carlotti didn't pay you for your first week?” Yetta asked.

“No. He said I was a”—Bella searched for the right word—“learner.”

“That's why we're on strike,” Yetta said. “We're trying to stop Signor Carlotti and the other bosses from doing things like that, cheating us, not paying us what they owe.”

“I strike too, then!” Bella said. “I—” Her Yiddish failed her.
“Vendichero la mia famiglia!”

“Avenge my family,” Jane said. “That I understood.”

Yetta had not even been trying to persuade Bella to join the strike. But Bella was already shoving the bed covers back, struggling to climb from the heap of pillows as if she intended to join the picket line right that moment, in her frilly nightgown.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Jane asked. “You've been sick—you had a fever yourself. You can't—”

At that moment a tall woman pushed her way into the room. She wore a lovely gown of pearl gray silk, and her
silvery hair swept regally away from her face, but there was something ugly about her, an angry set to her mouth, a coldness in her eyes.

“Miss Wellington,
really!”
she snapped. “This is simply scandalous! It's bad enough that you're associating with that Italian girl, but now, entertaining
another
vagrant in your own private quarters—it simply isn't done!”

“Bella and Yetta aren't vagrants,” Jane said stoutly. “They're working girls.”

Yetta heard the admiration in Jane's voice, and suddenly even the holes in Yetta's shoes seemed like badges of honor.

The woman fixed Yetta with a glare that seemed to scorn holey shoes, Jews, Italians, immigrants, and anyone else without marble foyers.

“And you!” the woman practically spat at Yetta. “Even if Miss Wellington has temporarily taken leave of her senses, then I would think a working girl would know her place! What if I rang up your employer and had a little discussion about
your
behavior—invading our home, taking advantage of Miss Wellington's innocence and naiveté? How much of the Wellington family silver have you managed to slip into those pockets of yours?”

The woman couldn't have hurt Yetta more if she'd slapped her.

“I haven't touched your silver! And anyhow—I'm on strike! The bosses don't
own
me, they don't have any control at all over what I do outside of work! I can go anywhere I want!” Yetta argued hotly, just as Jane hissed, “Miss Milhouse! You must apologize this instant! Yetta is my guest! I invited her into my home!”

From the bed, Bella cried, “Stop it! I'll just go!” She spoke in Yiddish, so only Yetta understood. But Jane and Miss Milhouse stopped screaming at each other as Bella threw back the covers and struggled to free her legs from the bedding. And then Bella slipped down to the floor and stood on her own two bare feet. She took a tentative step forward, only a little wobbly.

“No! You're still sick!” Jane pleaded.

“Oh, please,” Miss Milhouse said scornfully. “Did you think she was some stray puppy I'd let you keep? We're just lucky she was too sick to stab us all to death in the middle of the night and steal your best jewelry.”

Yetta was glad that Bella didn't understand English. Yetta reached out to steady Bella, to hold her up. She intended to get Bella out of here safely even if she had to carry her out in her own arms.

“Miss Milhouse!” Jane said, in such a cold, hard voice that it sounded almost like an imitation of the older woman's. It was like a whip cracking in the room. “You will leave my room this instant. You will pack up your things and leave this house as soon as you can. You will not take any family silver or jewelry. You are no longer employed here. And—no, you will not get any references. You ... are .. . fired!”

Everyone froze. For a moment Yetta thought they must all look like one of those tableaux she'd seen at the Yiddish theater: Yetta clutching Bella's arm, holding Bella mid-sway; Miss Milhouse squinting her mean old eyes at Jane; Jane standing tall with her clenched fists and her pursed lips and her barely contained fury.

Then Miss Milhouse began to laugh.

“Oh, that was very amusing,” she said, her voice rippling with mirth. “You're even more foolish than I thought! You can't fire me! You're just a girl. You're
nothing.
Just a bit of fluff your father's going to use to marry off, to enhance his business. That's all you're worth. That's all any girl is worth. That's why these girls”—she gestured condescendingly at Yetta and Bella—“these girls are worthless.”

Jane sagged against the wall, as if the air had gone out of her lungs.

“I'll tell my father to fire you!” she said, but her voice was thin and reedy now. Even Yetta could tell this was a hollow threat.

“And whom do you think he'll believe?” Miss Milhouse scoffed.
“Moi,
his longtime, faithful servant? Or you, his useless, troublesome daughter, who wants to consort with guttersnipes?”

Yetta saw no point in listening to any more of this.

“Could you please tell me where you put Bella's clothes?” she asked, as haughtily as she could. “Bella and I shall be leaving now.” She thought her English teacher would be particularly proud of that “shall,” even though her accent was as thick as ever.

“Oh, please, you don't have to!” Jane protested.

“We need to get back to the strike,” Yetta said firmly, and that sounded so wonderful all of a sudden, to be out in the bracing wind, carrying a sign, telling the whole world the truth, instead of standing in this overheated, overdecorated room, being falsely polite.

Jane's mouth and cheeks quivered, as if she was trying very hard not to cry. But she whirled around and dashed
toward a large wardrobe at the opposite side of the room.

“The clothes are right in—” she began.

“I had them burned,” Miss Milhouse interrupted. “They were filthy and probably crawling with vermin. I couldn't allow them to be kept in this house.” “What?” Jane said.

Yetta swallowed hard.

“You could have just washed them,” she said. “Those were probably the only clothes Bella owned.”

Something made her want to cup her hands over Bella's ears so she didn't have to hear any of this, even if she didn't understand.

Jane swung open the doors of the wardrobe and began pulling out armloads of dresses.

“She can have some of my clothes, then,” Jane said, her voice swooping dangerously toward sobs. “She can have anything she wants, because Miss Milhouse stole her clothes-yes, that's right, it
was
stealing, taking another person's belongings—and maybe Bella's clothes weren't worth as much as jewels or silver, but if that was all she had . . .”

Jane had practically buried herself in ruffles and frills and lace, and layers and layers of shiny taffetas, silk-embroidered net, heavy velveteen. Yetta had never seen so many dresses in one place, even in a store.

“None of your clothes would fit, and besides, why would a working girl need a party dress or a day gown?” Miss Milhouse asked, putting a particularly scornful emphasis on the words “working girl.” “Just give her a penny or two. I'm sure that's more than her clothes cost.”

“I won't send her away in a nightgown and bare feet!” Jane
said. She pulled out the plainest dress in the stack, a dark blue wool serge, and shook it at Miss Milhouse. “I haven't worn this all season, and it's a little small, so it could probably be cut down to fit. And she can have a pair of my boots—Yetta, do you want a pair too? Yours look a little . . . worn.”

Yetta could feel the holes in her boots, the sore, blistered places on her feet where the holes rubbed, even through her stockings and the cardboard she'd used to try to block the holes. She could feel the slush that had invaded her boots, so that her stockings squished a little every time she took a step and her feet were always wet and cold. She tossed her head.

“My boots are fine,” she said. “I bought them with money I earned myself. I don't need charity.”

“See?” Miss Milhouse said. “Girls like that don't ever appreciate what you do for them.”

Yetta regretted her pride the minute she saw Jane bend her head down, hiding her tears in velvet and silk. But Yetta couldn't back down now, not with Miss Milhouse staring so disdainfully.

It took an unbearably long time to bundle Bella into the blue serge dress, which hung on her small frame in an almost comical way. She kept having to tug the neckline back into place, because the dress threatened to slip off her shoulders entirely. The too-large boots were no better: They flapped on her feet and almost tripped her going down the stairs.

“A coat!” Jane cried. “You can't go out in this weather without a coat!”

“You are not giving that girl one of your coats!” Miss Milhouse snapped. “She didn't have a coat to begin with!”

“Then Mr. Corrigan will drive Yetta and Bella back to
their homes,” Jane insisted. “And here, take some money—”

She crammed dollar bills into Bella's hands, which neither Bella nor Yetta bothered to count until they were both sitting in the car, Yetta getting her third automobile ride of the day.

“Twenty dollars,” Bella said. “It's a fortune. I'd have to work a month for that much money.”

Yetta looked back at the Wellington mansion. She thought she could make out Jane's sad face in one of the windows. And then Jane ducked her head down, as though she were sobbing.

“You couldn't pay me any amount of money to live in that house, with that woman,” Yetta said. “A million dollars wouldn't be enough!”

Bella shrugged, the dress slipping sideways off her shoulders once again.

“Jane took good care of me,” she said. “And now . . .” Her voice was very soft. Yetta had to lean in close to hear. “Now I have nowhere to go.”

Yetta didn't even know the whole of Bella's story, didn't know how she'd ended up in America all by herself, how she'd come to be sobbing in front of the Triangle factory over a letter from Italy. But she immediately put her arm around Bella's shoulders, and the two of them huddled together against the cold of the Wellingtons' car.

“You can come and live with Rahel and me,” Yetta said. “Girls like us, we stick together.”

J
ane stood with her face pressed against the glass, watching Bella and Yetta leave. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“It goes without saying that you will be confined to your room until your father returns home,” Miss Milhouse said behind her. Her voice was as cold and hard as the icy window-pane. “And you can rest assured that he will receive a full report of your indiscretions. Such impertinence! Such behavior! I am simply appalled!”

Miss Milhouse whirled on her heel and left the room, jerking the door shut behind her.

Jane threw herself across her bed, ready to sob into her pillows. And then she experienced something odd. It was like she could see herself from above: a girl in a crumpled dress lying on a messy coverlet and scrambled sheets, her shoulders shaking helplessly, her pompadour trembling.

Fluff,
she thought.
Useless. Only worth marrying off not even worth that if I can't stop sobbing and act normal. . .

Another scene came into her mind: the last time she'd visited her mother's sickroom. Mother was always so fragile, too sick for Jane to hug. That day, she'd been like a shadow in her bed, a wisp in a lacy nightgown. Mother had weakly
clasped Jane's hand and murmured, “Ladies like us, we're too delicate for this world. . . .”

But she'd been sick. Jane wasn't. Jane knew about other kinds of women now: women who stood up and spoke out for suffrage, even when men threw rotten tomatoes and tried to boo them off the stage. Women—and girls!—who walked on picket lines, demanding their rights, even when bums spit at them and police beat them. Miss Milhouse would call those women unladylike or shameful or lower-class; she'd think they deserved the rotten tomatoes, the spit, the beatings. She'd expect Jane to agree.

Willfully, Jane shoved against the pillows, pushing herself back up.

“No,” she said aloud, and it was a denial of so many things.

She grabbed the paper she'd written Bella's translation on. She flipped it over, held it against the nightstand, and began making notes on the back:

1.
Buy coats for Bella and Yetta.

2.
Have. Mr. Corrigan deliver them along with hampers of food. He'll know where they live because of dropping them of today

3.
Go down to picket line and join in. Carry a picket sign . get arrested if I must.

4.
Convince Father to make strike donation. . . .

B
ella had never been part of anything before except her family. Even in Calia, her family had had to struggle so hard to survive that they existed only on the outskirts of village life; in church, they sat at the back, not quite able to believe that they belonged in such a holy place, in the same room as something as grand as the gilded cross. Since she'd left Calia, Bella had always been an outsider: among the families on the ship, in the factory, at the Lucianos', on the street. She spoke the wrong language, wore the wrong clothes, trusted the wrong people.