Audacity

by Melanie Crowder

  If I take this thing that I want

  for myself,

  how many thousands

  of ghosts

  will I have to reckon with?

  smear

  On the picket line,

  in the chill of winter,

  drifts of snow smear

  the words on our placards.

  On the picket line,

  it is impossible not to think

  of the girls

  not on strike

  home with their families

  leaning over the stove

  bathing their skin

  in the steam

  rising from the cook pot.

  On the picket line,

  a coat, two sets of stockings

  and a wool skirt

  feel like the thinnest rags

  inviting the wind

  into every unguarded

  flap of cloth.

  decline

  This fight will swallow me whole

  but it is my fight.

  I cannot take my escape

  while so many still suffer

  silently

  though I doubt this chance

  will ever come my way

  again.

  In the morning,

  I will tell the director

  my conscience

  will not let me sit out

  this fight.

  I will tell her

  I cannot accept

  the scholarship.

  But tonight,

  it is as though I sit shiva

  for myself

  for what I might have been.

  I bite into my pillow

  so Mama cannot hear the sound

  of my dreams

  like a surgeon’s tray

  of scalpels

  syringes

  corked bottles

  and vials swirling with ether,

  all

  crashing to the floor.

  Purim

  Three blessings

  and the reading of the Megillah.

  We hold our noisemakers ready

  and rattle them

  whenever the name of Haman

  the enemy

  is spoken.

  The little girls wrap themselves

  in tablecloths

  and bedsheets

  taking turns playing Esther,

  the queen who saved the Jews.

  My brothers wrestle

  dance

  drink Papa’s wine

  when they think he is not looking.

  It is a day of feasts

  to remember the woman

  who rescued our people,

  a day when a father

  smiles at his daughter.

  But behind that smile

  I see

  that he sees

  the daughter he wishes for,

  not me,

  but the woman he prays

  I will one day be.

  I take the smile anyway,

  and hope someday

  he will see

  I am brave as Esther

  standing up to Haman myself

  not asking any husband

  to do it for me.

  planning (i)

  Pauline is teaching me

  how to play poker.

  Instead of pennies

  we cannot afford to risk,

  we make our wagers

  from the button tin.

  While we

  shuffle

  deal

  bluff

  bet

  fold

  we plot

  plan

  strategize.

  I lay my cards flat

  push the last of my buttons

  into the pile.

  All in.

  you have a right

  In some corners of the world

  revolution

  looks like peasants

  fighting soldiers

  or commoners

  petitioning the king.

  Here, revolution

  is everyday people

  working together

  for the common good.

  Are you a union member?

  I ask the girls beside me

  as they walk to work

  and I walk to the picket line.

  I cannot,

  they say.

  I do not want to cause trouble.

  They have so many reasons—

  My father forbids it.

  What if the boss finds out?

  He would fire me.

  I need this job.

  My family has to eat.

  But I know these reasons,

  I have wrestled them down

  myself.

  You have a right,

  I say,

  to work in a shop with a fire escape

  and an unlocked door

  to the street.

  You have a right,

  I say,

  to take Shabbos off.

  You have a right,

  I say,

  to tell the foreman

  to keep his hands to himself.

  You are a worker,

  I say,

  You have rights.

  When the streets empty,

  the doors to the shops close

  and lock the workers inside,

  I make my way back

  to the union offices.

  Against the dawn breaking in the sky

  a kestrel

  glides between the buildings

  small

  but fierce.

  I flip through the signature cards

  memorize the names.

  Make no mistake—

  this is a revolution.

  This morning’s work earned

  four more girls

  to join the fight.

  Joe

  A young

  printer’s apprentice

  comes to the labor meetings

  Joe

  is his name.

  He wears a flat cap

  tilted to the side

  and a wide

  ready smile.

  His hands are clean

  though the inks have stained

  his cuticles

  the creases of his knuckles.

  Last night

  as we filed out

  into the warm evening air

  I heard him say,

  In Russia,

  I rode my bicycle

  through the streets of Minsk

  smuggling revolutionary tracts

  under my coat.

  My family fought

  even though there was little hope

  for us there.

  Why, then, would we not fight

  twice as hard

  here, where hope

  has a chance

  of growing wings?

  He was not speaking to me

  but I found my footsteps quickening

  to linger

  in the space

  behind him.

  Tonight, though he sits

  on the opposite side of the room

  I can feel my skin stretch

  my shoulders opening

  twisting in his direction

  like a sunflower

  pulled along the path of the sun.

  peddling

  In our shtetl,

  as soon as the snows melted

  and the ro
ad between towns

  became passable

  the season of

  traveling salesmen

  and gypsy caravans began.

  I understand

  the pressures

  that make the girls

  want to give up

  give in.

  They understand

  that my wares

  may be the only thing

  between them

  and a fiery death.

  But sometimes I feel

  like little more

  than a traveling salesman

  hawking my ideals

  to anyone

  who will listen.

  Mama

  In the shtetl

  Mama and I worked together

  in everything.

  She may not have

  agreed

  with my need

  to study

  understood

  my desire

  to learn Russian

  condoned

  my disobedience

  but in the day-to-day

  chores in the home

  in the store

  we worked together.

  When we came to this country,

  she cooked and cleaned and took in piecework

  to keep the household running;

  I worked in the shops

  to bring home an income.

  We needed each other

  we relied on each other.

  But this strike

  is something Mama

  cannot abide.

  To her,

  when I walk out of the shop

  willingly

  when I forsake my income

  when there is no strike fund to pay

  for our time

  on the picket line

  I forsake her trust

  I forsake our family.

  I have never felt such loneliness

  as this morning

  when I readied myself for the picket line

  and Mama

  turned her face away from me.

  planning (ii)

  shuffle

  deal

  bluff

  bet

  fold

  plot

  plan

  The police

  will not find it so easy

  to beat us with their billy clubs

  haul us away to jail

  if we lay our fight before the silk skirts

  the mink stoles

  of society ladies searching

  for a worthy cause

  to champion

  for a worthy target

  for their pity.

  trash

  I have so much

  to say.

  I wish that my English

  were

  sharp

  as my mind.

  But if we speak

  it is obvious

  we have not been long

  in this country.

  So we close our lips,

  march our pickets up to Fourteenth Street

  to the storefronts

  where the waists

  we make

  are on display.

  We hold our signs high

  wear the best

  clothes we own:

  shirtwaists pressed and white,

  pleated skirts,

  spit-shined boots.

  We dress like ladies

  so they cannot call us

  trash.

  kestrel

  She follows me, I think—

  my kestrel.

  For her, I walk too slowly,

  so she takes the idle time

  to circle on summer currents of air.

  Only then do I hear her:

  killy killy killy killy.

  It is probably only

  that my walk to the picket line

  is along her hunting territory.

  But I like to think

  she follows me,

  at least in part

  for the company.

  menagerie

  Today I am scheduled to speak

  at a ladies’ club uptown

  to lay out the crimes against us

  to speak for all the girls

  to sway the opinion

  of those with the means

  to help.

  It is little different

  than my sidewalk conversations

  my soapbox exhortations

  but today, I feel like an animal

  on exhibit,

  an exotic creature

  paraded before

  a marveling audience.

  silence

  I didn’t see you at yesterday’s lecture,

  Joe says

  as he makes his steps

  small and quick

  to match mine.

  No, I had English class.

  He does not ask where I am going

  but he walks with me

  talking, as if

  it were the most natural thing

  in the world.

  At the library

  he sits across from me

  a book of revolutionary poems

  open before him.

  I have never known

  silence

  to feel so full.

  meshuggeneh

  Papa’s brow is creased

  his eyes dark

  as drawn blood.

  I forbid you,

  he says,

  to attend such meetings.

  You will come home

  immediately

  after work.

  The banging

  in my chest

  is so loud

  surely

  he can hear

  my heart

  pounding against

  my ribs.

  I say,

  I have worked hard

  for this family

  but Papa,

  do you want me working

  in a firetrap?

  Do you want me working

  for a tyrant?

  I will bring home an income again

  when the work is just.

  Until then, I will strike

  and I will spend my evenings

  as I choose.

  The hiss of Mama’s

  indrawn breath

  is sharp.

  I walk out the door

  before Papa’s anger has time to uncoil

  before Papa’s hand has time to curl

  into a fist.

  But before I leave

  I catch

  a glimpse

  of Benjamin’s stricken face,

  the rosy blooms of color

  high on Nathan’s cheekbones,

  I hear

  Marcus’s coarse whisper

  meshuggeneh.

  My own family

  thinks I am crazy.

  How can I blame them?

  What sane person would believe

  after all we have seen

  after all we have suffered

  that this world

  will ever

  change?

  blaze

  1909

  divide

  Two months we held out

  held the line

  held our heads high.

  We were so close . . .

  then,

  last night the bosses

  hired translators

  told the It
alian girls

  we hate them;

  we strike only

  to be rid of them.

  No matter how we tried

  to lay bare

  their lie,

  this morning

  the Italian girls

  returned to their workstations.

  By day’s end

  our strike was broken.

  It is a tactic as old

  as the stars:

  divide

  and conquer.

  blacklist

  When a strike is over

  when it is broken

  most of the workers

  go back to their stools

  go back to their stitches

  even if nothing

  has changed.

  But for a special few

  the instigators

  the ringleaders

  our names go on a blacklist;

  we cannot go back to work

  even if we want to.

  waltz

  Because I have been out of work so long

  Mama could not afford

  the kosher butcher this week.

  When I come home

  long after the others have gone to bed

  a plate of oily lung goulash

  waits for me,

  cooling on the stove.

  Because I have been out of work so long

  Nathan has left school

  has taken a job

  at a pyrography shop.

  When I come home

  long after the others have gone to bed

  our apartment smells of sawdust

  and singed wood.

  Strikers like marionettes

  dance through my dreams,

  waltzing

  through fields of orange-tipped flames.

  uptown

  I know I will have to give a false name

  find a new shop

  soon

  but I cannot stay cooped up

  like so many pigeons

  on the rooftops of this city

  waiting for a chance to fly.

  If I do not speak the words

  that have been building up

  like a tower inside me

  ready to topple,

  I will last little more than a day

  in the next shop

  before they tumble out of me

  again.

  I do not even have

  the nickel fare

  for the subway running uptown

  so after I drop six more membership cards

  at the union office

  I walk all the way to Herald Square,

  where shiny storefronts

  sell the wares made