Ashes of Roses

by MJ Auch

  “No, it’s not that,” I said, when she finally took a breath. “I have no coat. If the factory is a distance away, I’ll be too cold walkin’ with just a dress on.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Rose, what happened to your coat? Did you leave it at the shop?”

  “Yes, I just ran.”

  “So not only does Moscovitz get your work for free, he gets a coat in the bargain?”

  I nodded.

  “We’ll go back there first thing in the morning. We’ll get your coat and your money.”

  “But ye’ll be late for work. Won’t ye get in trouble?”

  “One of the neighbors works on my floor. I’ll have her tell the foreman I’ll be late.” Gussie grinned. “Besides, I haven’t had a good fight in a long time.”

  20

  I stayed awake half the night worryin’ about bein’ carted off to jail. Tuesday mornin’, I expressed my concerns to Gussie.

  “We’re just going back there to get your coat, Rose. And the pay that Mr. Moscovitz owes you. He can’t have us arrested for that.”

  “All right.” I could see why Gussie was so successful in the union. She had a way of convincin’ ye to do things ye feared. I wondered how many poor unsuspectin’ girls she had talked into goin’ on strike, when all they really wanted to do was stay workin’ at their machines so they could bring money home to their families. Ma had always taught me to stay out of trouble. Now here I was brazenly askin’ for it.

  “Can I go?” Maureen asked.

  “No,” Gussie said. “We might have to leave quickly, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Maureen’s eyes widened. “Hurt? Is Rose goin’ to get hurt?”

  “Probably not,” Gussie said.

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “Probably not?”

  “I said we wouldn’t be arrested, Rose. We won’t give him time for that. But how do I know how he’ll react when we get there? I don’t know the man.”

  “I don’t need a coat that badly,” I said. “And as for the money, I’ll get another job.”

  Gussie put her hands on her hips and gave me a stern look that reminded me of Ma. “I’m sure you will, Rose. And when that boss decides not to pay you, you’ll run away and find another job, won’t you? There are people running sweatshops all over the Lower East Side who would love to hire a meek little greenhorn like you.”

  I stood up and faced her, but all I managed to say was, “I’m not meek,” in a voice so tremulous that it proved her point, not mine.

  Gussie pulled a woolen shawl from the back of her father’s chair and wrapped it around my shoulders. “You won’t be such a mouse when I get through with you. Now, let’s go show that man how tough you can be.”

  Before I could speak, she had me out the door. She kept her arm around my shoulder, forcin’ me to keep goin’ as we marched down the sidewalk. I half expected her to be wavin’ a union banner in her other hand. My heart was in my throat, but I didn’t dare protest. I knew I had to get a good deal stronger if I was to keep Maureen and me off the streets, and, like it or not, Gussie was the perfect teacher. Still, I balked when we got to the building. “I can’t! I don’t want to see that man again, Gussie. I feel sick to my stomach.”

  Gussie gave me that look again. “Then go over to the curb, be sick, and get it over with.”

  I took a deep breath. “No, it’s all right. I’ll do it. The shop is in the back. We go through here.”

  I led the way through the hall of the front apartment building, but when we stood outside the door of the shop, my legs went weak. I dropped to my knees and vomited on the ground. This was gettin’ to be a habit.

  Gussie knelt beside me and held back the lock of hair that had fallen into my face. When I was finished, she helped me to my feet, and gestured for me to wipe a bit of vomit off my chin. “You should kiss the old coot now. Might not be such a pleasant experience for him.”

  I laughed in spite of myself, and Gussie in one motion rubbed my back and shoved me through the door.

  Mr. Moscovitz looked surprised. “What do you want? You have no business in this shop.”

  “Tell him why you’re here,” Gussie whispered.

  I opened my mouth, but I could feel the bile risin’ in my throat.

  When Gussie saw my face, she spoke for me. “She does indeed have business with you, Mr. Moscovitz.”

  I swallowed the bitter liquid in my mouth and shivered. But when I saw the bandage on Mr. Moscovitz’s nose, where I had bitten him, I suddenly felt a strength I didn’t know I had. I spotted my coat folded up on a chair and went to claim it. “This belongs to me,” I said. Then I walked right up to him and held out my hand. “And I’m here for the money ye owe me for the work I did.”

  Mr. Moscovitz dismissed me with a wave of his hand. “Take your ratty old coat, but I owe you nothing.”

  “Ye owe me for a day’s work I did here in the shop and three thousand stems I made at home.”

  Mr. Moscovitz jutted out his chin. “I pay nothing for shoddy work.”

  I was aware that all eyes in the room were on me, but I didn’t look at the other girls. The only sound was the soft rustle of paper petals.

  Mr. Moscovitz raised his hand as if to cuff me on the side of the face. Instead of shrinkin’ back, I stepped forward, almost nose to nose with him. “The lady with me is from the union. She says ye have to pay me.”

  Mr. Moscovitz stepped back. I couldn’t tell if it was from my words or my stinkin’ breath. “Nonsense. This isn’t a union shop.”

  I moved in close again. I could see that, even with the early-mornin’ chill in the room, he had tiny beads of sweat on his forehead. “It doesn’t matter whether ye’re a union shop or not. There are laws, y’know. Laws that say ye can’t take advantage of yer workers.”

  The room that had been so silent before now began to sizzle with whispers.

  “I can have ye arrested,” I said. “Ye know I’m speakin’ the truth. Yer girls know it now, too. I’m sure ye’ve been cheatin’ them as well as me. And maybe been wantin’ a few extra favors from some of ’em, too. Especially the young, pretty ones.” I glanced over and saw Tessa. She raised her eyebrows at me. The buzz became louder now.

  Mr. Moscovitz pushed Gussie and me toward the door. He plunged his hand in his pocket and pulled out some bills. “Take this and leave,” he said, thrustin’ them into my hand. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  “Don’t worry, you won’t!” I shouted over my shoulder as he slammed the door behind us.

  We could hear him yellin’ through the closed door: “Girls! Girls! Stop this nonsense and get back to work.”

  There were some voices shoutin’ back at him, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  Gussie laughed. “You’ve broken open a hornet’s nest for that man. I hope he gets stung plenty.” She looked at the bills in my hand. “Three dollars! That’s a whole week’s pay in some of these places. You turned out to be some fighter, Rose. I couldn’t have done better myself.”

  We ran and laughed all the way home. Maureen came out of our room to greet us when we burst into the apartment. “Are ye all right? Did that awful man hurt ye?”

  Gussie laughed. “No. I think I’d say Rose hurt him instead.”

  “Ye hit him?” Maureen gasped.

  I hugged her. “No, silly. I just stood up to him, that’s all. It felt good to be doin’ the yellin’ at someone else instead of takin’ it for a change.”

  “Your sister has real spunk, Maureen. We could use more like her in the union.”

  “I was only tellin’ the truth,” I said.

  Gussie smiled. “Well, you might have exaggerated just a bit.”

  “About what?”

  “There’s no doubt that Mr. Moscovitz should be arrested for what he does, but I’m afraid that won’t happen. He was right about not being bound by union rules. He didn’t have to pay you a cent.”

  “Well, then, why did he give me all that money?”

&nbs
p; “He wanted to get you out of there quickly, so you wouldn’t give his girls any ideas.”

  “I didn’t mean to lie,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it. Obviously Mr. Moscovitz hasn’t paid enough attention to the labor movement to understand his own rights. If one girl stands up to him, you did a good deed. Now I have to get to work. I’ll find out about getting you a job.”

  “Can ye get me a job, too?” Maureen asked. “I’m twelve. That’s old enough to work.”

  “You have to be fourteen to be legal,” Gussie said. “Unfortunately, the shop owners hire some girls as young as ten. That’s why they hide them in the elevator between floors when the inspectors come.”

  Maureen’s face brightened. “See, Rose? I could work with you and Gussie.”

  “Oh, no,” Gussie said. “I won’t get a job for an underage worker. I don’t approve of child labor.”

  “Neither would Ma,” I said. “She wants ye in school, and that’s exactly where ye’re goin’. I’ll earn the money.”

  “I hate you both!” Maureen went off into our room in a huff.

  “Too bad she didn’t have a door to slam,” I said.

  Gussie laughed. “The swish of a curtain just doesn’t have the same dramatic effect, does it?” She cut herself a slice of bread and a hunk of cheese, wrapped them in paper, and slipped them into her purse. “You should get Maureen signed up for public school right away, Rose. I can see how that one could get herself in a lot of trouble if she had too much time on her hands.”

  “Ye’re right about that!” I said, surprised that Gussie had sized up Maureen so quickly.

  Maureen sulked after Gussie left, refusin’ to speak to me. That was fine with me. I could use some thinkin’ time. I certainly wasn’t about to drag her through the streets to find a school. We could go in the afternoon. I spent the mornin’ mendin’ the torn sleeve of my dress. Luckily, it was just a ripped seam, so it was an easy fix. Besides, it got my fingers back in the habit of sewin’ again.

  I wondered what it would be like to work in a big factory. How many girls did Gussie say worked there? Hundreds? I couldn’t even imagine it. Still, it would be steady work if I could get it. And the conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory must be fair and safe, or Gussie wouldn’t be workin’ there. As soon as I had the job, I planned to write to Ma and tell her how my luck had changed.

  21

  That night, Gussie came home with a handsome young man who was carryin’ a sewin’ machine. “This is Jacob Gerstein, a cutter from work. We got this machine from the Jewish settlement house. They said you can keep it for a week.”

  “I’m … I’m grateful to you,” I stammered. “I only hope I can learn how to use it in a week. And does it matter that I’m not Jewish?”

  Jacob set the machine in the corner of the kitchen. “First, you’ll forget about the hoping and just learn quickly. And as for not being Jewish, the machine won’t know the difference, unless you make a big thing of it.”

  His first remark stung, but he was grinnin’ when he looked up, and I realized he was makin’ a joke.

  “I’ll work very hard,” I said.

  Jacob pulled two chairs over to the machine. “Good. Let’s get started.”

  He showed me how to work the treadle with my feet. It stuck at first, until Jacob gave the flywheel on the side of the machine a pull. Then it took off like the horses on a fire wagon. I thought my feet would break off at the ankles from rockin’ back and forth on the treadle. “How do I stop it?” I shouted. “It’s gettin’ away from me.”

  Jacob laughed. “You’re keeping it going with your feet.”

  As soon as I took my feet off the treadle, the machine stopped. I pushed my chair back. “This thing has a life of its own. Aren’t there some jobs at the factory where you just do yer sewin’ by hand?”

  Maureen, who had been hangin’ over my shoulder, tugged at Jacob’s sleeve. “Teach me. I’m not afraid. I’ll learn faster than Rose.”

  “Leave him be, Maureen,” I said. “Ye’re not workin’ at any factory.” I pulled my chair back to the machine. “All right, Jacob. Teach me more.”

  Jacob took a scrap of cloth and showed me how to run it under the needle. “You have to watch what you’re doing. The machine doesn’t know the difference between fabric and fingers and would just as soon stitch you to the bone as make a seam.”

  I shuddered at that remark, pullin’ my hands away as the fabric approached the needle. The scrap suddenly turned to the right, jammin’ itself under the needle and breakin’ the thread.

  Jacob pushed my hands away, straightened out the mess, and rethreaded the machine. “Now, you want to be cautious, but you need to hold the fabric until it’s all the way past the needle. If you had done that at the Triangle, you would have ruined the fabric. It’s lawn, very sheer and hard to handle. The machine can tear it to shreds if you’re not careful, and that will be taken out of your pay.”

  “I’m sorry.” I blushed, but only partly from embarrassment at my lack of sewin’ skills. I wasn’t used to bein’ this close to a young man. He was leanin’ in so far to watch my hands, our cheeks almost touched. This certainly wasn’t helpin’ me to keep my hands steady. I wondered if Jacob and Gussie were sweet on each other. She was payin’ little attention to him, busyin’ herself with makin’ tea, but I thought her face looked a little rosier than usual, and she did glance over at us several times. There was no need of her to be jealous of me. Jacob was obviously interested only in my fingers and their ability to guide the fabric without gettin’ themselves stitched into a mitten.

  I began to get the feel of the machine, so it didn’t frighten me as much. What small, even stitches it produced! Ma had made me practice sewin’ for hours on end, and here was a machine that could do it for me. I felt a pang of homesickness for Ma. Did she miss Maureen and me, or had she already washed her hands of us?

  After Jacob was satisfied that I was safe to be left untended, he stood up. “You’re getting the idea now. I’ll try to nip some scraps of lawn from work tomorrow to let you practice on the real thing.”

  “You know you’ll get in trouble if you get caught,” Gussie said.

  “They don’t check the men as carefully as they do the girls,” Jacob said. “Especially the cutters.”

  Gussie frowned. “That’s another thing that makes me angry. We have to open our purses for inspection before they let us out of the building. The men get to waltz right through with Lord knows what in their pockets, and they get paid more in the bargain.”

  Jacob kissed her on the forehead—a sort of brother-to-sister kiss, I thought. “Ah, always the union activist, Gussie. Don’t you ever just relax and enjoy life?”

  “I’ll relax when things are fair,” Gussie snapped.

  Just then the door opened and Mr. Garoff came in carryin’ a loaf of black bread. Jacob’s manner changed right away, and he became serious and proper.

  “What’s this I have in my kitchen?” Mr. Garoff bellowed. “We’re now a sweatshop?”

  “I was just teaching your roomerkeh to work a machine, sir,” Jacob said.

  Mr. Garoff slammed the loaf down on the table. “A school I’m running?”

  “It’s only for a week, Papa,” Gussie said. “Rose needs to learn so she can get a job at the Triangle. You want her to be able to pay the rent, don’t you?”

  Mr. Garoff’s bushy eyebrows met in the center of his forehead. “I want? It matters what I want? Well, I want a tenant who has a job and money to pay the rent.”

  Gussie patted her father on the shoulder and gestured with her head toward the door.

  Jacob got the message. He backed quickly toward the exit, tippin’ his hat to Mr. Garoff. “I was just leaving, sir. It’s a pleasure to see you in such good health, sir. I was just…”

  Mr. Garoff turned toward him and gave him such a look, Jacob shrank through the door, closin’ it quickly behind him.

  Mr. Garoff pulled one of the chairs away from the
machine and over to the table. “So—this Jacob. He is courting you? No?”

  “No, Papa,” Gussie said. “I know him from work. I needed someone strong to carry the machine home.”

  “You need someone strong for a husband. Someone to support you. A man can only take care of his children for so long, then they should take care of themselves.”

  I saw Gussie bite her lip. I knew she must be supportin’ her father instead of the other way around. He didn’t seem to have any sort of job. Still, I could tell she didn’t want to hurt him. “I’m a long way from marriage, Papa. I have much work to do first.”

  “Pah! You and your union. The mice in the walls think they own the whole house. The owners of that factory could fire you all tomorrow and hire what comes off the next boat. You fight a battle you cannot win.”

  Gussie raised her chin and looked her father in the eye. “No, Papa. We fight a battle we cannot lose.”

  22

  By the end of the week, I was confident in runnin’ the machine. I had even practiced on some scraps of the sheer fabric that Jacob had smuggled out of the building. Still, when Gussie took me to work with her Monday mornin’, I was full of doubt. “What if somethin’ goes wrong? What if I jam up the fabric and ruin it before I’ve earned any money? How will I pay for the damage?”

  Gussie shook her head. “You worry too much, Rose. You’re starting this job knowing how to use a machine. Some of the girls are complete novices when they begin.”

  In spite of Gussie’s encouragin’ words, I dreaded my first day of work. But as we walked along, I noticed that more and more people were comin’ out into the streets, walkin’ to their jobs. And I imagined that they had all felt scared on their first day. After all, wasn’t this why I had wanted to come to America in the first place, so I could make my way on my own instead of bein’ taken care of, first by my parents, then by a husband? Would Da and Ma be proud of me if they could see me now?