When you draw nearer, you see your Nan’s stick lying on the ground where she dropped it, next to the lidded milk pail and near the kicked-over step stool, all of which she must have dragged out to the cemetery last night. Nan herself sways and twists gently, her feet a foot and a half off the ground, one end of a stout rope around her neck, the other tied to a branch over your head, a branch high enough to keep her feet from the ground, but low enough that she could reach it from the step stool.
She rocks back and forth, and you watch her, waiting for the tears to come. They don’t, though, perhaps because there’s nothing left inside you at all.
“Oh, Nan,” you whisper, and you don’t even feel the pain as what remains of your jaw and tongue move clumsily.
You sit just near her swaying feet and begin to feel a certain leaden weight in your limbs, beginning at your hands and feet and creeping upward. It is death come for you, you know. As you decide to sit calmly and wait for the leaden feeling to spread, a gust of wind sets your Nan’s corpse to swinging violently. You look up at her contorted face.
It is less repellent than you imagine your own to be.
You get to your feet, straighten the stool, and pick up the axe, so your Nan, who had loved you enough to lie to you, enough to relinquish her place in paradise and her chance to see her lost babbies again, shouldn’t have done so for nothing at all.
For isn’t suicide a mortal sin?
Using the axe, you cut her down and lay the body on the ground, her left arm stretched to the side. And as the sun rises, you bring the axe down on her left wrist.
You move mechanically, so as not to waste a moment, and in any case, the cool, rough skin of your Nan’s hand is less horrifying than the dead flesh of your face and neck. You close her fingers around the candle, and they grip it tightly, as if your Nan is still there, holding on to what remains of your life for all she is worth.
You take a match from your pocket and strike it against the handle of the axe. It flares up, and for a moment the familiar smell of white phosphorus hovers in the air.
* * *
You hide the axe in the bushes on the grounds of the cemetery and walk home carrying the corpse, the burning candle protected by her good left hand hidden in the lidded milk pail dangling from your arm.
The old lady is heavy, so much heavier than she had seemed when she was alive. She’d become small and frail, but the body that lies in your arms is heavy as sin.
Even in the East End, people do not usually stroll out just after dawn carrying a corpse. Heads turn as you go, and your neighbors recognize you, recognize your Nan. Nobody speaks.
You lay your Nan’s body down in the room you shared with her and your sister, her husband, and their kiddies, and then you rouse the rest of the family.
You say little when they ask what happened. But then, you say very little these days anyway. They assume that your Nan’s hand was missing when you found her.
At least, you think they do. You do catch Janey looking at you intently, her brow wrinkled, her head tilted to one side, a bit suspicious-like, and for a minute she looks so much like your late mother, with her constant expression of worry, that it takes your breath away.
Or it would.
You realize that you are no longer breathing. You bring your fingers to your throat, pushing through the layers of your scarf, and feel for a pulse. You find none.
Later, in private, you peer into the milk pail, and the candle your Nan made and holds is still burning.
Early in the afternoon, you go back for the axe.
* * *
Bryant and May gave in, just over two weeks after the walkout. They gave in so quickly and so completely that with the benefit of historical hindsight, one wonders if the matchwomen should have demanded more. On July 18, 1888, Bryant and May acceded to every one of the strikers’ terms.
—The firm agreed to recognize the newly formed Union of Women Matchmakers, the largest union of women and girls in England.
—The firm agreed to abolish all fines.
—The firm agreed to abolish all deductions.
—Matchworkers could take any and all problems directly to the managing director of the firm rather than having to go through the foremen.
—The firm agreed to provide a room for eating lunch separate and apart from the working rooms.
This last item was so that the matchwomen could eat without white phosphorous settling onto their food and from there making its way into their teeth.
It starts with a toothache, after all.
* * *
On August 14, 1889, just over a year after the matchwomen’s victory, a group of London dockworkers walked off the job. These workers were mainly Irishmen: the husbands, sons, brothers, and sweethearts of the matchwomen of the East End. Within two days, twenty-five hundred men had turned out, demanding a wage of a sixpence an hour, a penny more than they had been earning. Solidarity with the dockworkers spread across London. Black workers, usually brought in as cheap replacement labor, refused to scab. Jewish tailors went out. Hyde Park played host to a rally of one hundred thousand people, serenaded by bands playing “The Marseillaise.”
By the end of August, more than 130,000 workers were out on strike, and the families that were making do without their men’s wages were withholding rent.
The strike lasted a month, and the dockworkers won nearly all they asked for. Years later, historians refer to the Great Dock Strike of 1889 as the beginning of the militant New Unionism: the organization of unskilled and industrial labor that swept Britain and replaced the old craft union model. By the end of 1890, almost two million of Britain’s workers held a union card.
John Burns, one of the dockworkers’ great leaders, spoke out at rallies, urging solidarity in the face of the starvation that threatened strikers and their families.
“Stand shoulder to shoulder,” he thundered. “Stand shoulder to shoulder and remember the matchgirls, who won their fight and formed a union!”
* * *
On July 18, 1880, the new terms are settled and accepted by the newly born union and by Bryant and May, still in shock (but also pleased that they’d not had to cede more). That afternoon and evening, there is jubilation in the East End.
Streets and homes fill with happy, loud women in the bright, loud clothing the matchgirls are known to favor. Women talk, laugh, dance, and drink. There might even be a few fights, to tell the truth, but if so, they are all in good fun.
Even journalists are right, some of the time.
You switch out your regular scarf for one in bright blue and your everyday hat for your best one, allover red roses and feathers. You wear your best clothing and spend the evening with Annie at the Eagle in the City Road, even dancing on the crystal platform, just as you did before, when your heart beat and your jaw was whole.
When your Nan was alive.
Your Nan, your poor Nan, not laid in the rich soil of County Cork, not now in a better place clutching once more her babbies to her breast, but lost to heaven completely, for had she not been a witch, and a suicide to boot? Sure, she was laid to rest in the consecrated ground of the Catholic churchyard, but only because when Father Keene had interviewed your sisters and brothers, they had all sworn that she had been out of her head with grief for some time, ever since her favorite granddaughter had started showing the signs of phossy jaw. Sure to God, she’d never have done a thing like this while in her right mind, never.
And Father Keene had looked over at you, you sitting in the corner with your face hidden in shadows, and had felt in his heart that what they said was the truth, and he had thought, Wouldn’t it be a shame to bring scandal and more suffering to this family?
But your Nan hadn’t been out of her head at all. All you had to do to see that was to look into the covered pail where her candle still burned, or to search in vain for the heartbeat that used to pulse under your left breast. Your Nan hadn’t hanged herself because she was out of her mind with grief.
; Your Nan had hanged herself for this: so that this night you could dance a breakdown on the Eagle’s crystal platform, so that you could put your arm through Annie’s and watch the sun come up, knowing that she and the others were going to be all right, maybe. That when she’d told her man, Mick O’Dell, lived over a few streets and worked on the docks, that she was expecting, he’d told her to set the date just as soon she could.
But you aren’t going to hang around for the wedding. Nothing less lucky than a corpse at a wedding, even one that can dance.
You and Annie watch the sun rise from the churchyard at Saints Michael and Mary. You have one arm through hers, and in the other, you hold the pail with the candle inside, still burning, and a small bottle of milk.
Just a bit, you figure, to douse the candle, and then the rest for Annie to drink, for the coming babby, and you’ll do it yourself. No need to make a murderer out of Annie, no matter her offer, and then you’ll follow your Nan to perdition, so she won’t be without family to help her in her trials.
You and Annie turn and walk slowly and a bit unsteadily (the worse for drink, both of you) through the churchyard, toward the freshly filled-in grave of your Nan. There’s a small headstone, just her name, Bridget O’Hea, and the years, 1827–1888. You’d been there yesterday to lay flowers. Other than the pink and yellow wildflowers you’d picked on Hampstead Heath, already wilting and going brown by the time you placed them on the grave, there had been nothing.
But now the flowers you laid yesterday are not wilted at all. They’ve taken root and are blooming. You give them a gentle tug to make sure they’re real, not a trick.
You and Annie clutch at each other’s waists as you watch an honest-to-God oak tree sprout from the grave, from sapling to full grown in an instant, with a rich canopy of leaves, wreathed in mistletoe. You step forward and run your hand across the rough bark. A large snake coils around the trunk of the oak, several times, and the thing must be yards long.
You stare for a moment before turning to look at Annie, to see if she’s seeing what you are, or if what is left of your brain is playing tricks on you. She steps forward and plucks a leaf from the oak and holds it to her lips in wonder.
The snake turns its head to look at you, and you find yourself looking into your Nan’s eyes.
You blink and the snake, the oak, and the mistletoe are gone, but the flowers you brought are still growing from the grave soil. After a moment’s pause, you meet Annie’s eyes and step carefully onto your Nan’s grave. You settle yourself against the headstone, and Annie sits next to you. You take the candle, still held in your Nan’s left hand and set it on the ground and pass the bottle of milk to Annie. She begins to pry the cork loose, but you still her hand.
Instead, you slide the fingers of your Nan’s hand back, and they uncurl as smoothly and gracefully as barley bending in the wind. The candle slips free.
It begins to burn in earnest then, guttering and smoking like the cheap tallow that it is, but burning more quickly than any candle should have a right to, as if making up for lost time. You have ten, maybe fifteen minutes, at the rate it is going.
Annie takes your hand, and together you watch the candle burn down.
Near the end, her grip on your hand tightens, and you close your eyes.
* * *
We have remaining to us two photographs, and only two photographs, of the striking Bryant and May matchworkers. The second photograph is more formal. It is of the official strike committee, and the women in it have done their hair and put on their Sunday best. They are arrayed across a stage, carefully posed in chairs. They seem confident, proud, intent.
But the first photograph is the more interesting one. It is of seven women standing in front of the Bryant and May factory. Their faces are gaunt, taut, and serious. More than one look a bit dazed, as if unsure of what they have done and what future it will bring them.
This photograph is famous now. More than that, it has become a symbol of working-class courage and resolve, displayed in the windows of London union offices.
Two of the seven women have almost certainly been identified by recent scholarship.
At the leftmost edge of the photo stands a woman half cut out of the picture. We see her left arm, the left half of her body, and most of her head, which she must have turned toward the camera. She is wearing a velvet hat, like some of the other women, and has a fringe of straight hair reaching almost down to where her eyes should be. Her face is nearly impossible to make out. It is a blur. Perhaps she moved as the photograph was being taken, though nothing else is blurred, not her hat, not her hand, not the scarf knotted around her neck, not a hair of her fringe.
The original print, now lost, belonged to John Burns, the leader of the dockworkers’ strike, who urged his men to remember the matchgirls, who had won their fight and formed a union.
But her face is gone.
BALLROOM BLITZ
I remember when the very air pulsed with music, raucous shouts and double-time beats mixing with the eerie wailing of tortured guitars. We were all of us young and wild; my brothers and I wore tight black jeans and ripped T-shirts and stood around looking tough and combing our hair ’til it was slicked back just right to show off our sideburns. The girls wore short skirts and strong boots, ripped fishnet stockings ending inches below their hemlines. We all wore boots, come to that, engineering boots or motorcycle boots or combat boots or Doc Martens, as though we had to be ready for a forced march. And we may have been under a curse, but I remember us always laughing. The air was gray with smoke and our heads spun—not a full glass but we emptied it, not a pill but we popped it, not a leaf but we smoked it, and we laughed even when we were on our knees. The air was drenched with beer and whiskey, and we danced those boots so thin we could feel the floor through our socks.
We were young, I said, but of course my brothers and I couldn’t age, could we? We were bound, and that kept the twelve of us from growing any older no matter how much time passed. We couldn’t set foot outside the club, but inside we couldn’t grow old, couldn’t die. Bands appeared and disappeared, DJs spun in and out, and we were always there, game for anything, hopped up on speed and lack of sleep, dancing our boots thin and shouting our voices hoarse. We’d been there for years before we found the girls, or before the girls found us.
I remember the rest of it, too, waking up wanting to die, the hacking coughs, the bleak despair driving me—driving us—to drown ourselves in the neon darkness, the impossible wish to see sunshine just once more, the imprisonment. But when I look back, everything glows with false freedom, and I remember us always laughing.
The music never stopped, even when your head was screaming, when the beats that had blasted you off your feet drilled behind your eyes, and it felt like your head would break open from the pain. The air never cleared, and the smoke that had sustained us and cushioned us like amniotic fluid turned harsh, bitter, and sticky like tar with sharp teeth, extending tendrils to wrap around our limbs and keep us moving but stop us escaping. And the dancing that had transported us became a cage of knives, spitting electrodes forcing us to move, even when our very bones were splintering in agony.
Each morning I woke up shaking, my vision blurred and doubled. I was begging Cynthia for a drink before my eyes were even fully open, but she just stood behind the bar with her arms folded, black hair tightly braided back, and shook her head.
Even picking my head up off the bar made my guts flip over. I’d forgotten what it felt like to sleep in a bed, to wake up without pain and nausea. Staggering a little, I would wake up my brothers.
We all woke up like that: black eyes, broken jaws, teeth missing, nausea, spitting blood. I woke up shattered and begging like the rest, but I was oldest, the one in charge, the one who looks after his brothers, cleans them up, gets them out of trouble, gets them in trouble. And it was my fault. So I would get to my feet somehow and go to wake up my brothers. My hands shook, my whole body trembled, and I could feel blood trickling out m
y ears, my ribs cracking and shattering every time I tried to draw a breath.
We felt like that every morning, and we’d heal by nightfall.
So I’d go to wake up my brothers, and for me that was the worst of it. My third brother, who’s always been an asshole, woke up spitting with rage, calling me names and blaming me for our troubles, which was fair enough, I suppose, and my twelfth brother, my youngest brother, just wept silently at every waking, tears running down his face like rain against a window. At least one of us would wake up choking on vomit. Sometimes it was me.
We had to wash the place down, and the bar was like us: no matter how well we’d scrubbed the toilets, the bar, the floor, the basement, by the next morning they’d be covered in puke and grime and shit again. And with joints cracking, doubled over and hunched up like old men, we had to shine it up again. We had to take care of that hellhole like it was our baby, and afterward, if we’d done it well enough, Cynthia would order us some food from the diner down the street. Never enough, though. I remember always being hungry. Also dirty. There was a small sink in the men’s room where I rinsed out my shirt every so often and tried to splash myself clean, but there wasn’t much in the way of soap, and I lived in a cocoon of sweat and bile and dried blood.
My youngest brother, I had to make sure he didn’t get ahold of my pocketknife. He’d cut himself if he did—maybe he still does, I don’t know anymore—and the cuts wouldn’t heal by evening. He’s got scars up and down his arms and legs. One of the cuts got infected once and he ran a fever like I’d never seen before. I pleaded with Cynthia to bring in a doctor, promised her I’d do anything, but as she pointed out, I had nothing to bargain with. Eventually she tossed me some antibiotics, but the fever singed his brain, and he hasn’t been the same since, and none of this is his fault. He just fell in with the wrong crowd. Me.
Burning Girls and Other Stories Page 8