Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (28 page)

I must have leaned too close. The newspaper snapped closed. “Why don’t you buy your own,” the man said sharply, “instead of reading over people’s shoulders?”

Mamma’s head jerked up, attentive to any insult. I hurried us off the streetcar, bought a paper from a newsboy, and read the article as Mamma clattered in the kitchen. The maestro wouldn’t be touring, I learned with relief. But now at night his hawk eyes softened to Henryk’s, and both men watched me as I tossed in bed.
Go away, you two, let me work at least.

With the passing
of the epidemic, rage seethed in the union hall. My professors might have argued with fine logic that diphtheria did not
cause
this rage but only preceded it. Still, I noted that those who had lost children were inflamed more quickly against the owners. A litany of complaints filled the hall: poor lighting, cold and drafty workrooms in winter, heat and stench in summer, inadequate lavatories, the rising cost of needles, thread, and sewing machine rent, random fines, and wildly unequal pay for the same work.

Luisa, who worked in a small company making men’s shirts, complained of forced overtime. Of three children, only her youngest was left alive. “When can I see my Salvatore?” she demanded. The nursery at Hiram House teemed with babies and tiny children watched for hours by a few harried attendants.

Young boys roamed the streets causing mischief. When I caught two overturning our ash can, Roseanne and I hauled them into our kitchen and extracted their names: Enrico and Pepe. They didn’t go to school because it was boring. They turned over ash cans because they had nothing better to do.

“You could join a boys’ club at Hiram House,” I suggested.

“That’s for greenhorns.”

“If public school is boring,” Roseanne said, “what about reform school?” They looked at each other in alarm and fell silent.

“Meet me at the union hall tomorrow night,” I announced.

“Why should we?”

“Two reasons. First, if you don’t, I’ll tell your mothers what you did.” They swallowed hard. “And second, because there
is
something better to do.”

“What?”

“You’ll find out.”

They came to the meeting. I had sent a message to Josephine, who first terrified them with the fate of two boys she knew well who went from overturning ash cans to worse crimes, broke their mothers’ hearts, and ended their miserable days in prison. She leaned down so far that her black hat shaded them. The soft, driving voice popped out beads of sweat across their brows. When she stood up suddenly, their mouths dropped open. “However, I
could
use two boys to paste up meeting notices and hand out leaflets at the factories. They’d have to be brave, smart, quick boys who aren’t scared of bosses. Are
you
those boys?” They were, so excited they didn’t ask for pay.

Josephine straightened her hat. “You see, Lucia, everyone wants to help if you just find the right job.”

The boys’ mothers thanked me heartily for “saving” their children. Workers’ troubles were less easily solved. Forced overtime brought weariness and accidents. Supervisors found errors and laid fines. “We’re
tired,
” women protested. “Hire more help if you need more dresses.” With a fifty-hour workweek, many sighed, life would be so good. When I walked through the factory floor, breathing in the weight of hours, weary eyes followed me and whispered words scraped my back: “Office work.”

Strikes in Chicago had won standard wages at some factories. That meant, Josephine explained, that desperate women couldn’t be frightened into taking lower pay. “Maybe in Chicago,” someone called out. “Cleveland’s different.” We heard that suffragettes in New York City had supported strikers, marching with them, sometimes paying their bail. Rich women made a “Mink Brigade” and fed the strikers. Would rich Cleveland women do the same? Or would they side with husbands who owned the factories and mills?

Talk spun through the union halls, debates raging until midnight. Even Josephine’s rousing speeches couldn’t lift the dreary certainty that bad as conditions were, change was impossible here. I began finding excuses to miss meetings, stay home, read or work out equations in algebra. At least I could solve
these
problems. What was my place in the vast machine of contractors, factories, the splintering of immigrant groups, cotton prices and garment markets? Equity, justice, even solidarity seemed as impossible as healing my mother’s broken mind.

Everything changed in
late March. I had risked taking Mamma to Youngstown for the day. The air was sharp with foundry smoke and the dust of limestone quarries, but in Charlie and Yolanda’s messy little house we played music on Charlie’s new Victrola. After dinner, Mamma watched our card game. Pleased by this sign of sociability, I casually dealt her in. She played a little, then slammed down her cards and hid, claiming that Toscanini watched us through the window. I had to take her home. But she
had
played two hands of gin rummy.

That trip was on March 25, 1911. On the twenty-sixth, I saw no newspapers and noted only a strange hush among the clerks. I gave it no meaning and worked more quickly without the normal clatter of voices. When Enrico brought news of an emergency union meeting the next day, I nearly didn’t go. But passing through the factory, I overheard whispering: “girls . . . fire . . . jumping.” Mamma was in bed sick with a headache. Roseanne said she’d watch her, so I went to the hall alone.

“Lucia, can you help us onstage?” Josephine asked. She didn’t wait for my response but sat me with Isadore Freith, Father Stephen, and Rabbi Rosen before a large, murmuring crowd.

“What happened?” I asked the rabbi. He shook his head and pointed to Josephine.

“Yesterday afternoon,” she began, “one hundred forty-six workers, mostly young women, died when fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. Stairways were locked. To escape the inferno, girls jumped from eighth-, ninth-, and tenth-floor windows to the sidewalks below. Why were they locked in? Because no law compels owners to provide fire exits. Because workers’ lives are cheap.” Eyes closed, I saw girls like human torches, pausing briefly in the window before that desperate leap. I heard thuds on pavement and saw the crushed and burned and mangled bodies, heads turned wrong, limbs splayed out.

“Now we will honor the dead,” Josephine announced. “Lucia D’Angelo will read the names and ages of those who have been identified. Think of the fallen, their families, and those who loved them. Think of their tireless work for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company and think of their reward.”

I was handed a list and walked to the podium. “Weren’t you nervous?” Roseanne asked later. No, I was only astonished by my own calm and the ranks of upturned faces watching me, quiet and expectant, even small children in their parents’ arms. I settled my feet as Mamma did onstage, took a breath, and began.

“Julia Aberstein, thirty; Lizzie Adler, twenty-four; Anna Altman, sixteen; Anna Ardito, twenty-five.” After each name and age, Father Stephen rang a bell. Ignazia Bellotta’s father identified his daughter by the heel of her shoe. Two Brodsky sisters, sixteen and twenty-one. Dosie Fitze, twenty-four, survived the jump for a day and then died. Pausing for bells, I caught movements in the crowd: signs of the cross; flutters of handkerchiefs; children hushed; adults nudging boys to pull off their caps; bearded Jewish men folding their arms and rocking. “Mary Goldstein, eleven.” Children’s heads jerked up. A woman gasped. So many names were familiar: Sara, Vincenza, Rose, Jennie, Abraham, Ida, Jacob, Max. We could have been the ones falling in flames.

Catherine Maltese died with her daughters, Lucia and Rosalie. Bettina Miale, eighteen, and Israel Rosen, seventeen, identified by their rings; Sophie Salemi, twenty-four, by a darn in her stocking. Someone brought me water. “Should I finish?” Isadore asked. I shook my head.

Candles were handed out and flames passed from person to person. Damp eyes glittered. The lights of the union hall dimmed as I finished the list: Joseph Wilson, twenty-one, found by his fiancée. Tessie Wisner, twenty-seven. Sonia Wisotsky, seventeen. Zeltner, no first name, thirty, died of injuries in St. Vincent’s Hospital. After the final name, Father Stephen and Rabbi Rosen offered prayers for the dead.

“We will have time in the coming days to determine our course in Cleveland,” Josephine said. “Tonight we must go quietly home, remembering those who have fallen, praying for strength that from their deaths will come justice for all workers.” I was given a candle and followed the others to the street, a river of light in the chilly darkness.

W
E
A
RE
T
HOUSANDS

In the months
after the disaster, stories streamed west. Witnesses on the street had thought owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were throwing bolts of burning fabric out the window until they realized in horror that the “bolts” were jumping girls. Nineteen bodies were found melted against a locked door. All the victims had been working overtime; their miserable wages could not support decent life in New York City. Brave men made a bridge of their bodies from an eighth-floor window to another in the next building. A few girls safely crossed before the “bridge” broke and all fell to their deaths. There was one unlocked door at the west end of the factory, but it opened inward and a crush of desperate girls forced it closed. The owners had never installed a sprinkler.

“Because they weren’t forced to,” Isadore and Josephine tirelessly reminded us, adding that strikes and walkouts in other companies had won higher wages, safer factories, and the right to arbitrate grievances.
Those
workers didn’t have to rent sewing machines or buy costly thread from owners. They enjoyed Saturday afternoons with their families. Workers who did the same job got the same pay. Fines were listed, not imposed at will.

“We could have all this, Mamma,” I related one hot April night after a meeting. She didn’t look up from the dance of her knitting needles. “Remember the fines you paid at Stingler’s?” She jerked her head away. Dr. Ricci had warned me to avoid distressing subjects and follow her lead. But she gave so little lead. On many days, she barely spoke. Yet sometimes she stroked me as one might stroke a pet, small comfort to light the years of caretaking that rolled out before me.

Much of that spring she spent in our darkened room, plagued by headaches with no one to sing them away. Chamomile tea didn’t help. Even the tread of stocking feet pained her. I confess to using her troubles for my purposes. I ran home after work, ate quickly, helped her to the bathroom, sponged her with rosemary water, and then hurried to a union meeting.

There were many meetings, for the plan was to call a general strike in early June. Success would require meticulous organization. “If we build the will to strike,” said Josephine, “we must prepare the means to win.” The strike might last eight weeks. We hoped for five thousand strikers. Few would have savings. Even now, on nights before paydays, many ate only beans and bread, especially those still paying off doctor bills and funeral costs from the epidemic.

“How will we eat when we strike?” many asked anxiously.

Supporters in Cleveland—wealthy women, suffragettes, enlightened industrialists, philanthropists, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and Jewish charity groups—would all help, Josephine replied. With this support and union dues from other cities, we could give out strike pay: four dollars per week for single workers; six for those with small families; eight for large families. With exceeding care and union soup kitchens, nobody would starve.

Josephine asked me to keep the ledger books for strike pay. They must be meticulous. Hungry, tired, and frustrated, some might try to collect twice. Then others would have nothing. All the ledgers I ever kept for Kinney’s and Printz-Biederman, the streams of money I tracked, even my studies in college seemed so insignificant now.
This
work could help families hold on for justice. “Yes,” I told Josephine, “I’ll do it.”

“Good, or
brava,
as you say.” Her accent stretched the word, eating the
v,
kneading the
a
’s into soft and windy
ah
s
,
little chills in the stuffy room. She needed a translator to help recruit Italian workers. When had I been included in great plans? In Naples, aside from reading to distract my mistress from her headaches, I was needed only to clean. As Mr. Sutherland often told me, bookkeepers could be easily replaced. The fact that Josephine needed
me,
Lucia, was thrilling. For the first time I was swept into a cause larger than my own troubles. Perhaps my strength would grow to meet this challenge.

Yes,” I told Josephine, “I’ll translate too.”

There were so many tasks: finding a printer for signs, leaflets, and bulletins to report the strike’s progress; collecting water barrels, cups, and wooden stakes for picket signs. We’d need bandages, iodine, smelling salts, splints, stretchers, and crutches. We must enlist messenger boys and translators in other languages, observers and photographers to record disturbances, sympathetic lawyers, doctors, and nurses, reporters who might support the strike, rabbis and priests to lead prayers and speak well of us to their congregations.

“You’re writing this down, Lucia?” Isadore asked. My fingers had cramped around the pen. I shook out my hand and kept writing. When he and Josephine stopped to debate a point, I read over the list. Splints, stretchers, and crutches? Outside, the streets seemed peaceful enough. Women passed in feathered hats, men in homburg hats and straw boaters. Two boys raced by with their hoops, dodging an ice wagon. We’d soon be at war, needing bandages? Here in Cleveland?

“Don’t worry, Lucia,” said Josephine as we hurried to a shop on Woodland Avenue to meet ten dressmakers from Calabria. “That’s why we’re planning, so we can build a great swell of support, a tide to carry us to victory. Because we
are
right. We
will
win.” That May was buoyant with promise. I was lifted up by speeches and songs, even by the tedium of pay lists I prepared in our parlor after work.