“Oh, I’ve got the shirtwaist and skirt that Rocco gave me for Christmas,” Bella said, reaching out and touching the lace edging on one sleeve. “Where would I ever wear a dress like that? We should hang it on the wall, to show people that we’ve got more clothes than we need.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I never thought, back in Calia, that I’d ever have so much in America.”
It was strange: What was poverty to Jane was untold riches to Bella.
“I know!” Yetta said, bolting upright. She rushed out the door, and came back a few minutes later holding a hat out in front of her, like someone proudly displaying a trophy.
“Sadie across the hall said you could borrow it, just for tomorrow,” Yetta said. “Prettiest hat in the building, don’t you think? Try it on!”
The Miss Milhouse voice that seemed to have taken up residence in Jane’s head hissed, Absolutely not! It’s undoubtedly crawling with vermin, a hat borrowed from a strange girl in a tenement. And, anyhow, see how the velvet’s worn thin at the crown and the fake chrysanthemums don’t begin to cover it? And you know chrysanthemums are dreadfully out of style this season. ... But another voice in Jane’s head, the one that was getting stronger, said that it was incredibly kind of Sadie-across-the-hall to loan her best hat to a stranger. Jane reached forward, took the hat, and placed it on her head.
“Perfect!” Yetta said.
“Lovely!” Bella agreed.
So Jane was in borrowed and resewn finery when she stood on the front step of the Blanck home. It’s much smaller than my house, she told herself, to make herself feel better about the borrowed hat and the made-over dress. Except— was her “house” the Wellington mansion or the tenement she shared with Bella and Yetta?
A butler opened the door. He looked appropriately scornful, as if he knew about the tenement, knew that chrysanthemums were out of style on hats.
“Yes?” he said.
“I understand that Mrs. Blanck is looking for a governess,” Jane said.
“Servants’ entrance is at the back,” the butler said, beginning to shut the door.
Jane stuck her foot in the door.
“I want Mrs. Blanck to understand that I know how young ladies should behave,” she said. “That I can show them how to act. And which door to use.”
The butler looked chagrined and let her in.
“Don’t tell Mrs. Blanck I don’t know proper butlering,” he said. “I’m such a greenhorn, I keep thinking they’re going to fire me. At least you have the accent right.”
“I don’t have an accent,” Jane said.
“Exactly,” the butler said. “You sound like a proper American.”
Jane decided it wasn’t worth protesting that she was a proper American.
The butler led her to a gaudy, overstuffed parlor and went to alert Mrs. Blanck. Jane wondered if the servants at her own house had kept secrets from her and her father. Of course they did, she thought, remembering how Mr. Corrigan had kept the secret about taking Jane to the strike rally. But this made her see things differently, once again. Maybe being a servant wouldn’t be so bad. She’d have allies.
A short, heavyset woman in an overly frilled gown appeared in the doorway of the parlor. Jane remembered to rise, respectfully.
“Mrs. Blanck,” she said. “Je m’appelle Mademoiselle Michaud. I am Mademoiselle Michaud.” She and Yetta and Bella had agreed that she shouldn’t use her own name. Using French— and then translating—seemed deliciously pretentious.
“How very nice to meet you,” Mrs. Blanck said, looking sufficiently impressed. “Please, sit down.”
Her words were heavily accented, in a way that seemed oddly familiar. Where else have I heard ... Oh. Yetta. Everyone in our tenement building except Bella and me. Mrs. Blanck must be from Russia.
At least now Jane knew better than to ask her to say something in Russian.
Mrs. Blanck was twisting her hands in her lap.
“I want the best for my daughters,” she said.
“Of course you do,” Jane said, and she was surprised that her voice came out sounding so warm and supportive. She couldn’t help liking someone who had her daughters’ best interest at heart.
“My husband and I . . .” Mrs. Blanck seemed to be deciding how much she could say. She leaned forward, as if prepared to confide news of a delicate nature. “We were not born to money. Most of our lives have been struggle, struggle, struggle.”
Jane longed to ask questions. Were you starving back in Russia, like Bella was in Italy? Did you live in fear of being killed because you were Jewish, like Rahel and Yetta? Were you a shirtwaist girl when you first came to America? Did you work in a sweatshop? Did you live in a tenement? It seemed, suddenly, as though that could all be true. Jane looked around the crowded parlor, with its stuffed birds under glass and carved Egyptian statues and clashing striped and flowered wallpaper. Miss Milhouse would have sniffed, “A bit overdone, wouldn’t you say? Ostentation by the nouveau riche is never appealing.” But it seemed only sad to Jane, that Mrs. Blanck was trying so hard.
“My husband is a business genius,” Mrs. Blanck said. “Now we are able to provide better lives for our children. We want their lives to be easy, full of wealth and accomplishment.”
This was Jane’s cue to say, “I can speak four languages. I can play the piano. I know which fork to use during each course of a formal dinner. I could be very useful to you.” But she remembered Bella’s advice: What you should decide on is whether or not you think these are children you can care about.. ..
“I should like to meet your daughters,” Jane said.
“Now?”
Jane nodded.
Mrs. Blanck looked a bit uncertain, but she hollered over to the butler, “Brodsky! Tell Millicent and Harriet to come down here!”
If Jane got this job, she could teach Mrs. Blanck that a bell was a much more appropriate way to summon a servant than yelling. Maybe it was too late for Mrs. Blanck, but Jane could teach the girls, at least, that the Victorian era of parlor design was long past, and that stripes and flowers didn’t go together on wallpaper. This was a family longing for her knowledge; they wanted what she’d had and taken for granted.
And had run away from.
The girls appeared at the entryway to the parlor. Millicent, the older one, was about eleven or twelve, a shy-looking girl with a giant ribbon in her hair. Harriet, the younger one, was four or five, and had a look of mischief about her.
“Stand up straight now, girls,” Mrs. Blanck said.
They seemed to be trying to, but Harriet kept wriggling sideways to scratch furtively at a place on her arm along the seam of the sleeve.
Lace sleeves, Jane thought. Itchiest clothing on the entire planet. Especially where the seams meet.
Unexpectedly, Jane remembered something about herself at four or five: the time she’d hidden under her father’s desk during the birthday party. Like Harriet, she’d had lacy sleeves on her dress then. And the reason she’d thought the desk would be such a great hiding place was because no one would tell her to stop scratching if she hid there.
“Say hello to Mademoiselle Michaud, girls,” Mrs. Blanck instructed. “If you are polite enough—and keep your hands down, Harriet!—she might become your next governess.”
Mrs. Blanck turned back to Jane expectantly, her eyes begging, Please, don’t find fault with my daughters. Jane saw that she had the advantage here. Mrs. Blanck was impressed with—even cowed by—Jane’s unaccented English and her upper-class bearing and her lack of bragging or babbling. Mrs. Blanck admired everything that Jane’s father’s money had bought. There would be an interview, and Jane would have to lie a little about how a girl like herself had reached such reduced circumstances that she was applying to be a governess for immigrants’ daughters. Jane would only have to imply some unfortunate tragedy, too delicate a matter to divulge—and really, was that such a lie? Jane would have no problems convincing Mrs. Blanck to offer her this job. The question was, did Jane want
it?
Jane thought about all the reasons on each side: the degradation of being a servant versus the value of earning her own money. The chance to be a subversive influence versus the possibility of turning into Miss Milhouse. The opportunity to spy and help Yetta and Bella’s union versus the dangers of working for an evil man. But it really came down to watching Harriet scratch her arm.
These girls are a lot like me, Jane thought. Like I was.
Someday they would grow up and learn where their money had come from. They’d learn that their father had hired prostitutes and policemen to beat up innocent girls, his own employees. If Jane ever figured out how to deal with the revelations about her own father, maybe she could help Millicent and Harriet.
There’s more to life than ease and wealth and accomplishment, she could tell them. There’s . . .
Well. Surely she could figure it all out in time to teach it to Millicent and Harriet.
Bella
Spring came, just as Bella had predicted. The best part of every day now was walking to and from work, in the soft spring breeze. It wasn’t hot enough yet that the garbage in the street stank, but the snowdrifts and the ice chunks and the cruel winter winds were long gone. Sometimes, walking home, Bella linked her elbows with her friends’ and skipped down the sidewalk, pulling them along.
“Aren’t you tired from working?” Yetta asked, one sunny Saturday afternoon.
“Yes,” Bella said. “Too tired to walk like this.” For the next few steps she imitated Yetta’s walk: trudging along with her head down, sliding her feet against the pavement as if they were much too heavy to lift.
Jane laughed.
“That’s a science experiment I should have Millicent and Harriet do,” she said. “Which takes more energy, trudging or skipping? At the very least, it might wear Harriet out before she completely exhausts me!”
Jane had been working as the Blanck girls’ governess for a month now. Early on, she’d worked out an arrangement with Mr. Blanck’s chauffeur: Each morning, Jane walked to the Triangle factory with Yetta and Bella, and then the chauffeur, who’d just dropped off Mr. Blanck, would take her back to the Blancks’ house. They reversed the process each evening when they could. If Mr. Blanck needed the chauffeur for some other purpose, Jane took a trolley.
Bella loved having Jane walk along with them. She loved hearing Jane’s stories of Millicent and Harriet and their lives: their trips to Macy’s, their trips to Florida, their picnics and museum outings and walks in the park.
“You said Mrs. Blanck wanted you to take Millicent and Harriet shopping today,” Bella prompted now. “Did Millicent get the pink gloves she wanted? Were they as soft as a feather, like the advertisement said?”
Yetta jerked her arm away and stopped on the sidewalk.
“How can you?” Yetta fumed. “How can you want to hear about Millicent buying her thirteenth pair of gloves at Macy’s when her father cheats you out of being able to afford any? There’s a direct connection—our underpaid labor paid for those gloves!”
“Well, if I paid for those gloves, shouldn’t I want to know what they look like?” Bella joked, trying to jolly Yetta into a better mood. Yetta only glowered more. Bella tugged on her arm, pulling her forward again.
“You have to understand,” Bella continued, speaking seriously now. “I am so much richer in America than I ever was in Italy. I have food now. Why should I worry about not having gloves?”
“Don’t you want more out of life than potatoes and bread?” Yetta asked.
Bella considered this. Jane was waiting for her answer too.
“I want to see my family again, but no amount of money could bring them back to life,” Bella said slowly. “I want Pietro to come back from South Carolina and marry me and whisk me off to the castle that he deserves because he’s as handsome as a prince—” This drew a reluctant giggle from Yetta and an outright chuckle from Jane.
“But that’s not going to happen,” Bella admitted. “I didn’t ever really know Pietro, so it’s more like he’s just a dream to me. A fantasy.”
“Besides, if he came back and asked for your hand in marriage, Rocco Luciano would challenge him to a duel,” Jane teased. “He’d scream in his pipsqueak voice, ‘Unhand the lady! Bella Rossetti is the love of my life!’”
“Oh, please,” Bella protested. “Rocco Luciano is a little boy.” But she blushed. She did look forward to seeing Rocco every Sunday when he came with his penny or two to pay off his family’s debt. He’d even showed her the calculations he’d made, that he’d have the whole debt paid off in twenty years.
“What else do you want?” Yetta asked quietly.
Bella looked around to make sure no one else on the sidewalk was listening to their conversation.
“I—I want to know how to read,” she said. “If I’d been able to read the letter from back home, the one about my family ... It wouldn’t have changed what it said, but I wouldn’t have felt so helpless, so stupid. Back in Calia, it didn’t matter. I didn’t know five people who could read. But here—I can’t read that street sign.” She pointed high over her head, to a green sign filled with squirmy letters. “I can’t read the advertisements. At the factory, I can’t read the signs on the walls. There could be a sign saying All Italian girls get a five-dollar raise’ and I wouldn’t even know it. Signor Carlotti could go on cheating me forever!”
“I’d tell you about that sign,” Yetta said. “But then I’d complain because the Jewish girls weren’t getting the five dollars too!”
“I can teach you how to read,” Jane said, squeezing her arm. “I didn’t know you wanted that.”
“I’d help too,” Yetta said. “But I’m not very good at reading much besides Yiddish.”
“Then I’ll teach you both to read English,” Jane said quickly.
Bella made a face. “Here you are, wanting to go to college,” she said. “And I’d just be learning my ABC’s, like Harriet Blanck.”
“At least you know there are ABC’s,” Jane said comfortingly. “So you’ve made a start.”
Bella was glad that her friends hadn’t made fun of her. She was surprised when Yetta stepped forward and linked arms with Jane as well as Bella, so they made a closed circle on the sidewalk.
“We should make a pact,” Yetta said. “I haven’t been back to English class since the strike. But we should all keep learning things—Jane, at her college level, and Bella and me at our beginner level—”
“Oh, you’re so far ahead of me!” Bella protested.
Yetta shrugged that off.
“And I will try not to be so grumpy all the time, because if I’m learning I will feel like I’m getting somewhere,” Yetta continued.
“Hear, hear to that!” Jane cheered.
“So we will not be stupid girls,” Bella said.
“And we will not be useless girls,” Jane added.
“And we will not be powerless girls,” Yetta finished.
Somehow it had become a serious vow they were making, standing there in the middle of the sidewalk with the crowds streaming around them. They kept their arms linked, a protection against the rest of the world.
“And someday we will vote, just like men,” Jane said.
“And we will stay not stupid and not useless and not powerless—and, and we will stay friends!—even after I marry Pietro and Yetta marries that cutter who’s always hanging around her machine—” Bella began.
“What? I would never marry Jacob!”
Bella ignored Yetta’s protests.
“And after Jane elopes with Mr. Blanck’s chauffeur!” Bella finished.
Jane went pale at those words. Too late, Bella remembered that Jane really was a rich girl who still probably expected to marry a millionaire, not an immigrant chauffeur.
“I’m sorry!” she gasped. “You won’t marry a servant! You’ll marry . . .” Bella hesitated. Then she thought of something Yetta had told her. “You’ll marry one of those New York University law students next doo
r to the factory!”
“That’s okay,” Jane said, shrugging. “Who knows whom I will marry? Or if I ever will? It’s just—have you ever seen Mr. Blanck’s chauffeur? He’s fifty years old and bald as a post. He’s as old as my father!” She winced, as if even mentioning her father was painful.
Bella wanted to recapture the feeling of unity they’d had, just a moment ago.
“In my village,” she said, “on midsummer’s night, June twenty-third, men can pledge to become compari di San Giovanni, friends that can be even closer than family. We are not men, and it is not June, but—I think that is what we just did.”
The other two nodded solemnly.
“We’re—wait, don’t tell me—because we’re females, it’d be . . . comari. Comari di ‘triangle,’ Jane said.
“Triangle? But only two of us work there,” Bella protested.
“No, no, not Triangle like the factory. Triangle like the shape,” Jane said. “With three sides? What we are making, standing here now?”
Bella had thought they were in a circle, but suddenly she understood.
“You mean, like on the sign for the factory? That shape? The name means something? It’s not just a word?” She began to laugh at herself. “I can’t believe that I’ve been working there for more than a year and I didn’t even know that! I will be a very hard student to teach!”
“No, don’t worry—you’ve learned it now. Your first lesson!” Jane grinned. “There’s something in geometry about a triangle being the strongest shape. And that’s us. The three of us are a much better triangle than the factory!”
Comari di triangle, Bella thought. They were only words, but they warmed her heart. As she and Yetta and Jane turned and continued walking home, she felt almost as though she’d gotten one of her wishes. Her family had not come back to life, but it was like she had a family again. She had Yetta and Jane. Her comari.
Yetta
It happened again: The cutter’s assistant, Jacob, was standing behind Yetta when she scraped her chair back at the end of the day.
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