Swede Hollow

by Ola Larsmo

“And by the way, other people have done this before,” she added. “But I don’t think they did it properly. They just requested a building permit, either before or after they put up their house. That’s cheaper. Only a few dollars per house. Jonson, who lives over by the stairs, did that. I saw the papers, and when I asked him about it, he said he did it mostly so there would be no argument about who owned the house, in case more Italians moved in nearby. I doubt he was thinking about Waggoner. Or bothered to look at a map.”

  Anna was getting uneasy, and it showed. Ellen thought, as she often did, that she could guess what her mother was thinking without having to ask. And she could put her mother’s concerns into words; it was easier for her to speak than her mother.

  “But if you end up arguing with Waggoner,” Ellen now said, “won’t that be dangerous for all the rest of us who live here? What if he gets mad and decides to evict us?”

  Inga stared at her across the table, as if to say, Don’t you think I’ve thought of that?

  “I’m not going to wave the papers under the nose of Mr. Sheriff,” she then said. “And besides, I don’t think he has much to complain about. His men come here to get the rent once a month, and over at the courthouse they probably know all about that. But I don’t think he’s ever bothered to sign any papers saying that he’s the landlord renting out houses. He just registered the land, and there’s nothing that says he owns any houses, because that would cost money. A few dollars for every shack here in the Hollow, and that could add up to a considerable sum. And if more people decided to do what Jonson did and get themselves a building permit, then the sheriff could run into trouble. There’d be a whole bunch of questions about who owned what, and I doubt he’d want to deal with that sort of mess.

  “So I really think you should try to scrape together a few dollars for a building permit too,” Inga went on. “That would make it harder for Waggoner to argue. I can help you with the papers if you want.”

  But when she saw that Anna was still looking uneasy, Inga laughed and said, “Well, talk to Gustaf when he comes home and see what he says.”

  Finally Anna spoke. “But why do you want papers for your house? You’ve never needed them before. And maybe this will just cause trouble.”

  Inga had clearly been waiting for this question, because now she gave a big smile and looked even more pleased.

  “That, my dear Anna, was really the reason I came here to tell you about all this. It’s because I’m going to get married. But before I take the big step, I want papers proving the house is mine.”

  No one said a word. Then Anna laughed. An involuntary and shrill laugh that echoed off the kitchen’s bare walls. Inga looked insulted. Elisabet lowered her eyes, suddenly feeling embarrassed and anxious, which happened to her so often whenever things got too serious. Ellen sensed how her sister seemed to retreat into herself. She looked down at her own hands and saw how dry and chapped they were from scrubbing so many stairs, yet she always managed to keep them clean. Elisabet’s fingernails were rimmed with black. Ellen stared at them and felt a sudden aversion to sitting next to her sister. She had that feeling once in a while. She couldn’t help it.

  “Forgive me, dear Inga. Please forgive me,” said Anna now. “I didn’t mean to laugh. But your news came as such a surprise. Let me put on some coffee while you tell us more.”

  None of them was prepared for what Inga told them, yet Ellen realized she wasn’t particularly surprised. Especially when they heard the name of Inga’s fiancé. It was Jonathan Lundgren, of course. Both Anna and Elisabet were excited to hear it was him. Who else would it be? thought Ellen. She pictured the way Jonathan had been shambling around Inga the past few months, like some big, timid dog, scared of being chased away. And how Inga had let him stay without protest.

  There were no wedding plans yet, and they hadn’t even told Mrs. Lundgren. But the widow was getting old and deaf, and she had a hard time getting around. She would probably be relieved to have another woman as part of her household, even though Inga already spent a good deal of time over there.

  Ellen glanced at her sister. Elisabet was listening to Anna and Inga talk with a look in her eye that Ellen found increasingly unsettling. Elisabet seemed to be taking far too much interest in the news, as if she thought it would really change anything. But they would all go on exactly as before. The only difference would be that someone would be coming out a different door at dawn, on his way to work. But Elisabet looked elated as she intently followed what Inga and her mother were saying, though she didn’t say anything herself. If they had been younger, Ellen might have kicked her sister under the table, or pinched her hard on the arm, to try and rouse her from this strange spell into which she seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper with every word that was spoken. But both girls were older now, and Ellen sat there quietly, with a peculiar anger simmering inside. She didn’t know where it came from, but it was directed at her little sister’s gullible cheerfulness.

  As if sensing the dark mood growing in and around Ellen, Inga suddenly glanced at the girl and gave a start. Then she sat up straight.

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Inga. “Ellen, there’s something else I wanted to say. We shouldn’t just be talking about me. I have a question for you. We talked about this some time ago, that you might try some other type of work, now that you’re a big girl.”

  Elisabet looked disconcerted. She realized that the topic of conversation was about to change direction again, but she wasn’t sure in what way. Ellen found Elisabet’s discomfort just as annoying as her previous cheerfulness. But she pushed all that aside as she listened to Inga.

  “There’s an opening,” said Inga now. “I talked to the pastor of the Baptist Church when I went there to clean on Thursday. Some of the girls in the congregation have found work at the Klinkenfuer factory up on Margaret Street. But now their family is moving to Superior, so three of them will be quitting all at once. If you go over there early tomorrow morning, there are three places to fill, no matter what the foreman may say. I know that for certain.”

  All of them sat in silence for a long moment, feeling that various changes were about to take place, perhaps too many and too fast. But that’s what could happen whenever Inga got it into her head that something needed to be done.

  Elisabet was smiling again, a big, trusting smile, now that whatever had threatened was gone. Inga was smiling too, that inward-turned smile of hers, the way a cat seems to smile. It was a look mostly seen on the faces of older women who wanted to hide the gap in their front teeth. Yet Inga was still in full possession of all of hers.

  :: :: ::

  The Klinkenfuer factory was housed in the upper two floors of a three-story building made of brown sandstone, located a good distance up Margaret Street. There was no entrance to the factory from the street. Workers had to go through the wagon entrance to the back. When Ellen arrived at six in the morning on Monday, a group of young women was already waiting outside at the foot of the stairs for the wrought iron gate to be opened. They were talking to each other in loud voices, speaking Italian. Ellen thought she recognized from the Hollow a thin girl with a dark complexion and long curly hair. But she wasn’t sure.

  She went to stand a short distance from the others and waited. After a few minutes a dark-haired man wearing a waistcoat and striped shirt appeared to open the gate, not saying a word. The girls hurried up the stairs. Ellen gathered her courage and went over to the man, who studied her with a stern look as she stammered what she’d planned to say.

  “Are you one of the Baptists?” he said at last. “The girls who quit were from Swede Hollow too. They were Baptists.”

  She didn’t know what would be the right answer, so she simply stated the truth: she was not a Baptist, but her neighbors were. The man continued to stare at her without comment.

  “You speak better English than they did,” he said then. “But can you sew?”

  “I made the dress I’m wearing,” said Ellen, standing up straighter. She
waited for the foreman, if that’s what he was, to pluck at her sleeve and examine a seam. Instead, he headed up the stairs without looking back. Hesitantly she followed.

  The foreman continued on to the top floor, where the air was filled with the clatter of sewing machines, the sound merging into something like a buzzing chorus of insects. Ten tables were scattered around beneath the ceiling rafters. Light came from two windows at floor level, and from a solitary electric lamp bulb hanging from the rough ceiling boards. Some of the girls she’d seen in the courtyard were already sitting at the row of tables closest to the windows. They were silent and focused, their eyes fixed on the work their hands were doing as they continuously slid the fabric under the double needles. They were sewing work pants from dark blue material. Moving quickly and efficiently, they set one pants leg after another onto the worktable and stitched the seams as the sewing machine needles pumped up and down. Ellen couldn’t understand how their fingers could move so fast.

  The foreman had gone over to an unoccupied table in the corner, farthest away from the windows. From a pallet on the floor, he picked up a bundle of fabric tied with string.

  “Here,” he said to Ellen. “Try sewing these shirts. The pieces have already been cut, so it shouldn’t be hard. When you’re done, come and show them to me. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Liz, here . . . Liz! She’ll show you how to get started.” He motioned to a woman sitting at a nearby table. “Liz, honey, will you come over here f’awhile?”

  Then he turned on his heel and disappeared down the stairs.

  Liz, who appeared to be in her forties, didn’t bother with lengthy explanations as she showed the newcomer the ropes.

  “You just do like this. Start pumping the pedal under the table and keep moving steadily so the fabric doesn’t bunch up. Don’t pedal faster than you can slide the seam along. Single needle. Double needle. Like this, up-down, right? Have you ever used a sewing machine before?”

  Ellen lied and said yes, but she didn’t think the woman believed her.

  The bundle consisted of the back and front pieces of collarless work shirts and sleeve pieces with the cuffs already sewn on. Liz showed Ellen briefly how to place the pieces together and also gave her a soiled shirt as a sample, so she could see how the seams should look. Then she said simply, “You’ll have to work on your own. Okay?” And she went back to her own table.

  It took Ellen a while to figure out how the soiled sample shirt had been made. Her eyes welled with tears, whether from nervousness or the heat in the room, she wasn’t sure. She blinked but stubbornly refused to raise her wrist to wipe her eyes because she didn’t want anyone to see, though nobody was paying any attention to her. Everyone was bending over their work with the clattering needles. She blinked again. Then she started sewing. “Mind your fingers, honey. No blood on the garments,” said Liz quietly from her table.

  The first shirt was a disaster. Ellen could tell that at once. The fabric crinkled and tugged around the armholes, and the sleeves were sewn in crooked. She pretended not to notice and folded the shirt as neatly as she could. Then she started on the next one.

  This time the hem of the shirt ended up crooked and sticking out.

  “Careful with the needles,” Liz told her from her workplace. “If they fall out or the machine breaks, they’ll take the cost out of your wages.” She seemed to notice everything without even looking up from her own work or slowing her pace.

  Ellen folded up the shirt and started on another. The needle and thread seemed to flicker before her eyes; she was sweating and scared that she might drop the fabric.

  The next time she looked up, the room was cloaked in a dirty yellowish glow. Dust floated up and down through the light from the windows, and the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling had been switched off. Otherwise everything was exactly the same. The other women were bending over their tables. The clatter from ten feet pressing the sewing machine pedals, and the numbing, monotone rattle of twenty needles piercing the coarse cotton fabric formed an undercurrent for the whole world. No one had said a word all morning. Now Ellen was no longer sweating. Instead, she was cold. Lying on the bench next to her were the ten flannel shirts she had sewn. She stood up unsteadily.

  When she went downstairs she found the foreman standing there with his back turned, bending over a belt-driven machine on which the drive wheel seemed to be jammed. As if he had eyes in the back of his head, he raised one hand to signal her to wait. For a long time she stood in the dim light near the stairs, holding her pile of folded shirts. Finally he came over, a shadowy figure between her and the daylight coming in the window, and took the shirts from her hands. One by one he held them up to the light and laughed.

  “This one and this one we can’t use. Or this one.”

  Ellen stood there without moving, her head bowed. After a few minutes of silence she looked up. The foreman was holding one of the shirts in his hand, running his finger along the seam, as if trying to pull out the thread. But he couldn’t. Without looking at Ellen, he said, “Did Liz help you a lot with this one?”

  She shook her head vigorously, not daring to speak because her voice would have quavered.

  “You won’t get any wages today. Not for these. But from now on you’ll get five cents for every acceptable shirt. Understand?”

  Ellen nodded.

  “We start work at six, including Saturdays. Don’t be late.”

  Then he turned away and left. Nobody paid her any mind. For a moment she didn’t budge. Then she headed downstairs on wobbly legs and went out through the wagon entrance to the street.

  It was already early afternoon. She stood still, not sure where to go. Everything had changed. And yet everything around her looked exactly the same as before. From a great distance she heard the whistle of the Duluth train as it passed the Hollow, muffled by the leaves still crowning the trees.

  :: :: ::

  A few years earlier the Klar sisters had gone with Inga to pay a visit to a woman who lived somewhere along Seventh Street. Inga had merely intended to bring greetings from back home, since the woman’s relatives in Sweden no longer had her address. But when they arrived at her simple rented room, the landlady told them that Inga’s friend was still at her job, working in a basement factory sewing sacks for the big mills in Minneapolis. The girls followed Inga down the stairs to enter the premises, located well below street level. The place consisted of one long, dark room where women stood at big workbenches in front of rows of crude sewing machines. With swift, abrupt movements, they sewed together rough jute sacks that were stamped WASHBURN-CROSBY GOLD MEDAL. The dust from the jute hovered in the air of the big, low room, with no means of escape. Ellen had started coughing after only a few minutes, and Elisabet did too. When Inga found her friend, she followed them up the stairs and outside. She spoke with a nasal voice, as if she suffered from a chronic cold. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and the strands of gray hair that had come loose from the pins trying to hold them in place were plastered to her sweaty face. Ellen watched as the woman made use of this brief pause to re-pin her hair and then realized that she was actually the same age as Inga. All the gray in the woman’s hair was from the dust.

  So that’s how Ellen had pictured her work as a seamstress. But the Klinkenfuer factory was different. The work was hard, and anyone who did not meet her quota would receive a stern reprimand. But the room was swept every evening, and the foreman kept the workplace and machines in good condition. It took Ellen a number of weeks before she could manage to produce an acceptable number of garments each day, which provoked several stinging reproofs from the foreman, Mangini. But as Liz rather acidly remarked after he’d left, Ellen was the one who suffered most when she lagged behind because she was being paid per shirt. The next few weeks had gone better, and she’d received a semi-promise from Mangini that she’d be allowed to sew overalls and pants as soon as she picked up her speed.

  Life now assumed a different kind of rhythm. She got up very
early, along with her father, and they ate whatever food there was and drank a cup of leftover coffee. They said very little to each other in the morning, mostly because they didn’t want to wake Elisabet or Anna, who were usually still asleep. But Ellen noticed that her father appreciated her quiet companionship at the kitchen table. Then they would step outside into the morning, walking together over to the stairs and up to Seventh Street, where they would go their separate ways. Ellen would wrap her shawl around her head and walk as fast as she could, leaning into the wind and heading for Margaret Street. Her father, often along with Jonathan Lundgren, would join the group of muttering men moving in the opposite direction, down toward the train depots.

  Ellen knew that Elisabet was jealous. Her sister continued to help with various cleaning jobs, “going off to work,” as Inga liked to say. But on some days Elisabet would sit at home with no particular tasks to do other than helping her mother with the housecleaning or going over to Larson’s or Palmqvist’s or one of the smaller shops to buy whatever was needed. Anna had never liked doing the shopping. She was scared of walking through the long Drewry Tunnel, and she would take big detours whenever she had to go up to the street. In the shops she always felt uncertain and would fix her eyes on the floor, speaking so softly that the shopkeeper had to ask what she’d said. Yet the family always did their shopping on the Swedish street where everyone understood Swedish. Anna never ventured far from the Hollow unless it was absolutely necessary.

  What felt like a safe place for their mother soon began to seem too small and confining for the two girls. Ellen had now gone much farther, and her domain suddenly extended quite a distance along Margaret Street. But Elisabet remained behind in the old world.

  And then there was the money. Only after a few weeks did Ellen start earning wages that amounted to anything significant. Mangini had promised five cents per shirt, and that’s what she got, although she knew girls who got seven or eight cents. They were slightly older, and Mangini favored them, maybe because they were Italian like him. Some of the girls were German. Liz was American. Ellen was the only Swede. After a couple of weeks she began to work faster, and Mangini praised her, saying that she was a “big girl now.” She had mixed feelings about that.