Lyddie

by Katherine Paterson

  But of course she didn’t move a step. She didn’t even cover her ears against the assault. She just stood quietly in front of the machine that the overseer had led her to and pretended she could hear what he was saying to her. His mouth was moving, a strange little red mouth peeping out from under his bushy black mustache. The luxuriant growth of the mustache was all the more peculiar because the overseer had hardly any hair on his head. His pate gleamed like polished wood.

  Suddenly, to Lyddie’s astonishment, the man put his red mouth quite close to her ear. She jerked her head away before she realized he was shouting the words: “Is that quite clear?”

  Lyddie stared at him in terror. Nothing was clear at all. What did the man mean? Did he seriously think she could possibly have heard any of his mysterious mouthings? But how could she say she had heard nothing but the beastly racket of the looms? How could she say she could see hardly anything in the morning gloom of the huge, barnlike room, the very air a soup of dust and lint?

  She was simply standing there, her mouth open with no words coming out, when an arm went around her shoulders. She shrank again from the touch before she saw it was one of the young women who tended the looms. Her head was close enough to Lyddie’s left ear so that Lyddie could hear her say to the overseer, “Don’t worry, Mr. Marsden, I’ll see she settles in.”

  The overseer nodded, obviously relieved not to have to deal with Lyddie or the loom he’d assigned her.

  “We’ll work together,” the girl shouted in her ear. “My two machines are just next to you here. I’m Diana.” She motioned for Lyddie to stand close behind her right shoulder, so although Lyddie wasn’t in her way as she worked, the older girl could speak into Lyddie’s left ear by turning her head slightly to the right.

  Suddenly, Diana banged a metal lever at the right of the machine and the loom shivered to a halt. At either end of the shed, made by the crisscrossing of warp threads, was a narrow wooden trough. From the trough on the left she retrieved the shuttle. The shuttle was wood, pointed and tipped at either end with copper. It was about the shape of a corncob, only a little larger and hollowed out so that it could carry a bobbin or quill of weft thread. With her hands moving so quickly that Lyddie could hardly follow them, Diana popped out a nearly empty quill of thread and thrust in a full one from a wooden box of bobbins near her feet. Then she put her mouth to a small hole near one end of the shuttle and sucked out the end of the weft thread.

  “We call it the kiss of death,” she shouted, smiling wryly to soften the words. She pulled out a foot or more of the thread, wound it quickly around one of two iron hooks, and rehung the hooks into the last row of woven cloth. The hooks were attached by a yard or so of leather cord to a bell-shaped iron weight. “You have to keep moving your temple hooks,” Diana said. “Pulls the web down snug as you go.” She pointed to the new inches of woven fabric.

  “Now,” said Diana, speaking into Lyddie’s ear, “make sure the shuttle is all the way at the end of the race—always on your right here.” She placed the shuttle snug against the right-hand end of the trough. “We don’t want any flying shuttles. All right, then, we’re ready to go again.” Diana grasped the metal lever, pulled it toward the loom, and jammed it into a slot. The loom shuddered once more to life.

  For the first hour or so Lyddie watched, trying mostly to stay out of Diana’s way as she moved among the three machines, two opposite and one adjoining. The older girl refilled the shuttles when they ran low and rehung the temple hooks to keep the web tight. Then, without warning, for no reason that Lyddie could see, Diana slammed off one of the looms.

  “See,” she said, pointing at the shed, “a warp thread’s snapped. If we don’t catch that, we’re in trouble.” An empty shuttle might damage a few inches of goods, she explained, but a broken warp could leave a flaw through yards of cloth. “We don’t get paid when we ruin a piece.” She pinched a tiny bag hung from the metal frame of the loom. It spit out a puff of talc, which she rubbed into her fingertips. Then fishing out the broken ends of warp, she showed Lyddie how to fasten them together with a weaver’s knot. When Diana tied the ends, they seemed to melt together, leaving the knot invisible. She stepped aside. “Now you start it,” she said.

  Lyddie was a farm girl. She took pride in her strength, but it took all of her might to yank the metal lever into place. She broke into a sweat like some untried plow horse. The temples were not much larger than apples, but when Diana asked her to move one, she felt as though someone had tied a gigantic field stone to the end of the leather cord. Still, the physical strength the work required paled beside the dexterity needed to rethread a shuttle quickly, or, heaven help her, tie one of those infernal weaver’s knots.

  Everything happened too fast—a bobbin of weft thread lasted hardly five minutes before it had to be replaced—and it was painfully deafening. But tall, quiet Diana moved from loom to loom like the silent angel in the lion’s den, keeping Daniel from harm.

  There were moments when all three looms were running as they ought—all the shuttles bearing full quills, all three temples hung high on the cloth, no warp threads snapping. During one of these respites, Diana drew Lyddie to the nearest window. The sill was alive with flowers blooming in pots, and around the frame someone had pasted single pages of books and magazines. Diana pressed down a curling corner of a poem. Most of the sheets were yellowing. “Not so much time to read these days,” Diana said. “We used to have more time. Do you like to read, Lyddie?”

  Lyddie thought of the regulations that she was still trying laboriously to decipher when no one was looking. “I’ve not much schooling.”

  “Well, you can remedy that,” the older girl said. “I’ll help, if you like, some evening.”

  Lyddie looked up gratefully. She felt no need with Diana to apologize or to be ashamed of her ignorance. “I’m needing a bit of help with the regulations …”

  “I shouldn’t wonder. They’re a trial for us all,” Diana said. “Why don’t you bring the broadside over to Number Three tonight and we’ll slog through that wretched thing together.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Amelia was not pleased that evening after supper when she realized that Lyddie was getting ready to go out. “Your first day. You ought to rest.”

  “I’m all right,” said Lyddie. And, indeed, once the noise of the weaving room was out of her ears, she did feel quite all right. A bit tired, but certainly not overweary. “I aim to do a bit of studying,” she said. It made her feel proud to say such a thing.

  “Studying? With whom?”

  “The girl I’m working with in the weaving room. Diana—” She realized that she didn’t know Diana’s surname.

  Amelia, Prudence, and Betsy worked in the spinning room on the third floor, so she supposed they did not know Diana. Betsy looked up from her ever-present novel. “Diana Goss?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Just Diana. She was very kind to me today.”

  “Diana Goss?” echoed Amelia. “Oh Lyddie, don’t be taken in.”

  Lyddie couldn’t believe her ears. “Ey?”

  “If it’s Diana Goss,” Prudence said, “she’s a known radical, and Amelia is concerned—”

  “Ey?”

  Betsy laughed. “I don’t think our little country cousin is acquainted with any radicals, known or unknown.”

  “I know Quakers,” Lyddie said. “Creation! They’re abolitionists, every one, ey?”

  “Hoorah for you.” Betsy put down her novel and made a little show of clapping her hands.

  Amelia was sewing new ribbons on her Sunday bonnet and, watching Betsy’s performance, managed to jab the needle into her finger instead of the hat brim. She stuck her finger in her mouth and looked up annoyed. “I wish you wouldn’t keep saying things like ‘creation’ and ‘ey,’ Lyddie. It’s so—so—”

  “Only the new girls from Vermont speak like that,” said Prudence, whose own mountain sp
eech was well tamed.

  Lyddie didn’t quite know what to do. She had no desire to anger her roommates, but she was quite set on going to see Diana. It wasn’t just the foolish regulations. She wanted to learn everything—to become as quietly competent as the tall girl. She knew enough about factory life already to realize that good workers in the weaving room made good money. It wasn’t like being a maid where hard work only earned you a bonus in exhaustion.

  “Well,” she said, tying her bonnet, “I’ll be back soon.”

  “I’d rather you wouldn’t go at all,” Amelia said coolly.

  Lyddie smiled. She didn’t mean to seem unfriendly or even ungrateful, though it was tiresome to be always beholden to Amelia. “I don’t want you to worry after me. I’m able to do for myself, ey?”

  “Hah!” Betsy’s short laugh came out like a snort.

  “It’s just—” Prudence said “—it’s just that you haven’t been here long enough to know about certain things. Amelia doesn’t—well, none of us—want you to find yourself in an awkward situation.”

  For a moment Lyddie was afraid that Amelia or even Prudence would start in to lecture her, so she grabbed her shawl and said as she was moving out of the bedroom door, “I’ll watch out.” Though what she was promising to look out for, she had no idea.

  Diana’s boardinghouse was only two houses away from her own. The architecture was identical—a four-story brick building—lined with rows of windows that blinked like sleepy eyes as lamps and candles were lit against the dusk of an April evening.

  The front door was unlocked, so she walked into the large front room, like Mrs. Bedlow’s, nearly filled with two large dining tables but with the semblance of a living area on one side. And just as in Mrs. Bedlow’s parlor, chairs had been pulled away from the tables and girls were chatting and sewing and reading in the living area. It was as noisy and busy as a chicken yard. Peddlers had come off the street to tempt the girls with ribbons and cheap jewelry. A local phrenologist was in one corner measuring a girl’s skull and preparing to read her character from his findings. Several girls were watching this consultation transfixed.

  Lyddie pushed the door shut but stood just inside, uncertain how to proceed. How could she ask for Diana when she wasn’t even sure of her proper name?

  But she needn’t have worried. Out of the chattering mass of bodies, Diana rose from her chair in the corner and came to where Lyddie stood. She smiled and her long, serious face creased into dimples. “I’m so glad you came. Let’s go upstairs where we can speak in something less than a shout.”

  What a relief it was to climb the stairs and leave most of the racket two floors behind. There was no one else in Diana’s room. “What a treat,” Diana said, as though reading Lyddie’s mind. “Sometimes I’d sell my soul for a moment of quiet, wouldn’t you?”

  Lyddie nodded. She suddenly felt shy around Diana, who seemed even more imposing away from the looms when her lovely, elegant voice was pitched rich and low like the call of a mourning dove.

  “First, we need to get properly introduced,” she said. “I’m Diana Goss.” She must have noted a flicker of something in Lyddie’s face, because she added, “The infamous Diana Goss,” and dimpled into her lovely smile.

  Lyddie reddened.

  “So you’ve been warned.”

  “Not really—”

  “Well, then, you will be. I’m a friend of Sarah Bagley’s.” She watched Lyddie’s face for a reaction to the name, and when she got none tried another. “Amelia Sargeant? Mary Emerson? Huldah Stone? No? Well, you’ll hear those names soon enough. Our crime has been to speak out for better working conditions.” She looked at Lyddie again. “Yes, why, then, should the operatives themselves fear us? It is, dear Lyddie, the nature of slavery to make the slave fear freedom.”

  “I’m not a slave,” Lyddie said, more fiercely than she intended.

  “You’re not here for a lecture. I’m sorry. Tell me about yourself.”

  It was hard for Lyddie to talk about herself. She’d had no practice. With Amelia and Prudence and Betsy, she didn’t need to. They—especially Amelia—seemed always to be telling her about herself or trying to make her like themselves. Besides, what was interesting about her? What would someone like Diana want to know?

  “There’s Charlie,” she began. And before she knew it, she was explaining that she was here to earn the money to pay off her father’s debts, so she and Charlie could go home.

  Diana did not smile ironically or laugh as Betsy was sure to. She did not once lecture her as though she were a slow child the way Amelia often did—or offer a single explanation as Prudence would have felt obliged to. No, the tall girl perched on the edge of a bed and listened silently and intently until Lyddie ran out of story to tell. Lyddie was a bit breathless, never having said so many words in the space of so few minutes in her life. And then, embarrassed to have talked so long about herself, she asked, “But I reckon you know how it is with families, ey?”

  “Not really. I can hardly remember mine. Only my aunt that kept me until I was ten. And she’s gone now.”

  Lyddie made as if to sympathize, but Diana shook it off. “I think of the mill as my family. It gives me plenty of sisters to worry about. But,” she said, “I don’t think I need to worry about you. You don’t know what it is not to work hard, do you?”

  “I don’t mind work. The noise—”

  Diana laughed. “Yes, the noise is terrible at the beginning, but you get accustomed to it somehow.”

  Lyddie found that hard to believe, but if Diana said so …

  “And I don’t suppose you think a thirteen-hour day overly long, either.”

  Lyddie’s days had never been run on clocks. “I just work until the work is done,” she said. “But I never had leave to go paying calls in the evenings before.”

  “And the wages seem fair?”

  “I ain’t been paid yet, but from what I hear—”

  “What did you get at the inn?”

  “I don’t know. Fifty cents the week, I think. They sent it to Mama. Triphena said the mistress was like to forget as not. I suppose Charlie—” Lyddie stopped speaking. Neither Charlie nor her mother knew where she was!

  “Is something the matter, Lyddie?”

  “I haven’t wrote them. Charlie nor my mother. They don’t know where I am.” Suppose they needed her? How would they find her? Lyddie felt the panic rising. She was cut off from them all. She might as well have gone to the other side of the world. She was out of their reach. “When will they pay me?”

  “If it’s paper you need—”

  “It’s postage, too. I’d have to prepay. They don’t have the money to pay at that end.”

  “I could manage postage.”

  “I can’t borrow. I borrowed too much already.”

  But Diana quietly insisted. Lyddie owed it to her family to let them know right away, she said. She brought out paper, pen and ink, and a sturdy board for Lyddie to write upon. Lyddie would have felt shy about forming her letters so laboriously in front of Diana, but Diana took up a book and made Lyddie feel as though she were alone.

  Dear Mother,

  You will be surprize to no I am gone to Lowell to work. I am in the weving rum at the Concord Corp. I bord at number 5 if you rit me. Everwun is kind and the food is plenty and tasty. I am saving my muny to pay the dets.

  I am well. I trus you and the babbies are well to.

  Yr. fathfull dater,

  Lydia Worthen

  It seemed extravagant to take another sheet to write to Charlie, but Diana had said that she ought to write to him as well.

  Dear Bruther,

  Do not be surprize. I am gone to Lowell for a factry girl. Everwun is kind. The work is alrite, but masheens is nosy, beleev me. The muny is good. I will save and pay off the dets. So we can stil hop. (Ha ha)

  Yr. loving sister,

 
Lydia Worthen

  P.S. I am at Concord Corp. Number 5 if you can rit. Excuse al mistaks. I am in grate hurry.

  She folded the letters, sealed them with Diana’s wax, and addressed them. Before she could ask further about posting them, Diana took the letters from her hand. “I have to go tomorrow anyhow. Let me mail them for you.”

  “I’ll pay you back as soon as I get paid.” She sighed. “As soon as I pay Triphena—”

  “No,” said Diana. “This time it’s my welcoming gift. You mustn’t try to repay a gift.”

  The bell rang for curfew. “We haven’t looked at the silly regulations,” Diana said. “Well, another time …”

  Diana walked her to Number Five. It was a bright, cool night, though in the city, the stars seemed dim and far away. “Until tomorrow,” Diana said at the door.

  “I’m obliged to you for everything,” Lyddie said.

  Diana shook her head. “They need to know. They’ll worry.”

  The roommates were already getting into bed. “You’re late,” Amelia said.

  “I come as soon as the bell rung—”

  “Oh, you’re not really late,” said Betsy. “Amelia just doesn’t approve of where you’ve been.”

  “It was Diana Goss, wasn’t it?” Amelia asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And?” Lyddie was taking off her bonnet, then her shawl. And what? What did Amelia mean? Amelia answered her own question. “Did she try to make you join?”

  Lyddie folded her shawl, still uncomprehending.

  “She means,” said Betsy, “did she tie you up and torture you until you promised to join the Female Labor Reform Association?”

  “Oh, Betsy,” said Prudence.

  “She never mentioned such,” Lyddie said. She made her way around Amelia and Prudence’s bed and trunks to the side of the bed that she shared with Betsy. She sat on the edge and began to take off her shoes and stockings.