Uprising (22 page)

“When?” she asked, through lips that felt strangely numb.

Father waved his cigar at her impatiently.

“You were a baby,” he said, in a tone that implied she was a baby still, in terms of what she knew about the world.

“Did ... did Mother know?”

“What does it matter?” Father said. “It had to be done. If I'd let the union in, let the workers take control of my factory, I'd have been ruined. It's a battlefield out there, and only the strong can survive. You better be glad I hired strikebreakers, young lady, because otherwise we wouldn't have any of this.” His gesture took in the dark wood paneling of his study, the marble floor of the foyer, the servants waiting outside the door. “I can assure you, you wouldn't have such nice dresses.”

Jane looked down at her frothy dress, a sea of ruffles and frills.

“Then I don't want them,” Jane said. She tore at the
collar of the dress, but that was ridiculous—this dress was so complicated it usually took both a maid and Miss Milhouse to get her in and out of it. And would she really want to be standing there in front of her father in her under-things?

His money paid for my under-things, too. . . .

“I don't want anything your money buys, if that's how you got it!” Jane yelled. “Hiring strikebreakers, hurting people, probably starving them too—”

“Oh, please, Jane,” Father huffed. “That's how the world works! Some people are rich and some are poor, and by God, if I can be on the rich side, that's where I'm going to stand! Would you have us all living in hovels, wearing sackcloth and ashes, eating gruel? That's what the socialists want. They'd pull everyone down to their level if they could—”

But Jane had already whirled away from him. Blindly, she darted out the study door, out the front door ... Mr. Corrigan was standing in the driveway by the car, brushing snow from the windshield.

“Please!” Jane shouted at him, sliding into the backseat. “You have to take me to . . .” Where could she go? Somewhere away from this house, away from her father.

Mr. Corrigan glanced nervously back at the house, at the huge windows staring out at them, where anyone could be watching.

“I'm sorry, miss,” he said. “I'm not allowed.”

“Fine!” Jane shouted. “Be that way!” Her father's tainted money had bought the car, too, and bought Mr. Corrigan's services. She slipped back out into the snow, slamming the car door behind her. She began stomping off down the snowy driveway.

“Wait!” Mr. Corrigan called. “You don't have your coat!”

Jane shrugged, and kept going.

“Then”—Mr. Corrigan chased after her and placed one of the lap blankets from the car around her shoulders— “at least wear this!”

Jane knew she should shove it down in the snow, because her father's money had bought the lap blanket, just like everything else. But it was warm around her shoulders, and it made her feel a solidarity with Bella, who'd also huddled in a blanket in her moment of tragedy: Bella had lost her entire family, and now Jane had to break away from her father, because he was an evil, evil man.

Jane tramped through the snow, past mansions and monstrous estates. Some of them were houses she'd always admired and secretly envied, but now when she glanced toward the twists of wrought-iron gates she thought she saw the twisted faces of workers who'd toiled and starved just so the industrialists could have a fine gate. It was like seeing the grimy engine beneath the car's gleaming exterior: Suddenly she could see how all the glitter and elegance, all the excess and opulence, had been built on the backs of workers like Bella and Yetta, workers calling out for justice.

And workers like Mr Corrigan trying to support seven children on twenty-five dollars a week, because that's all my father pays him.

Jane walked all the way to Eleanor Kensington's house, blocks and blocks away.

She pounded the knocker of the front door, and it wasn't until the butler came to the door and fixed her with a disdainful stare that she realized how disheveled she must look, how many rules of polite society she was breaking. It was
late afternoon, maybe even early evening by now; the Kensington family would be preparing to sit down to their dinner. The time for social calls had ended hours ago.

“I must see Miss Kensington. Eleanor,” Jane said. “It's an emergency.”

And then she realized that Eleanor probably wasn't even there; she'd be back at Vassar. And Jane didn't have train fare with her. She didn't have any money at all.

But the butler was stepping aside, letting her in.

“Your card?” he asked.

Jane had forgotten about the whole rigmarole of presenting an engraved name card, of waiting to find out whether a friend was “at home” to receive guests—it all seemed so unbearably ridiculous that Jane didn't even feel embarrassed.

“I said, this is an emergency! I didn't have time to bring my cards with me. Just tell Eleanor that Jane Wellington has to see her!”

The butler retreated. Jane watched the snow from her boots melt onto the Kensingtons' Persian rug. What money bought that rug?

Shipping interests . . . Are there strikebreakers for shipping interests?

Miraculously, the butler reappeared quickly, and silently led Jane up to Eleanor's room. Eleanor was sitting there in a deep-red ball gown, while three maids fussed over her hair.

“You're lucky you caught me,” Eleanor said. “I just came back from Vassar for the Van Renssalaers' Valentine dance. I'm going back to school tomorrow morning—and won't I be tired!” Her eyes took in the gray blanket around Jane's shoulders, the slush-stained ring around the bottom of Jane's dress. “I
assume you've decided not to go to the ball?”

Jane had not been invited. Perhaps she would have been if she'd gone to all the Christmas social events, if she'd been nicer to Lilly Aberfoyle all those months ago when they were having tea.

“I don't care about any stupid dance,” Jane said savagely. “This is about the shirtwaist strike. I found out that my own
father
has hired strikebreakers before. He's just as bad as the shirtwaist bosses! Everything we have is tainted!”

“Hmm. That's an interesting perspective,” Eleanor said. She watched in her huge dressing-table mirror as one of the maids pulled a ringlet down to its full length, each hair gleaming like gold.

“I-interesting?” Jane sputtered. “It's appalling! Horrifying! Devastating!”

Eleanor looked at the maids hovering around her.

“Girls, Jane and I need some privacy,” she said. “You can come back and do my hair later. That way I can be fashionably late and make a big entrance.” The maids froze around her, as if they feared being fired if they didn't finish Eleanor's hair immediately. “I said, go!” Eleanor commanded. The girls scattered.

When they were gone, Jane demanded, “Has
your
father ever hired strikebreakers?”

“Oh, probably,” Eleanor said, toying with a ringlet. “Dockworkers are a pretty rough crowd. So are shipowners.”

“But, then—did your father get upset about your helping out with the shirtwaist strike?”

“He thought it was sweet that I was concerned about the less fortunate girls. But he didn't really take much notice of
it.” Eleanor shrugged. “He doesn't think girls and women matter much.”

“But that's not what you think,” Jane argued. “You think women should vote. You think we should have rights. You think the shirtwaist girls deserve justice. You think strikebreakers are wrong. You think—”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Eleanor said impatiently. “You know what I think. I don't agree with Father about much of anything.”

Jane stared at Eleanor's elegant red ball gown, the perfect flow of silk.

“But you take his money,” Jane said. “You eat his food, you wear dresses bought with his money, you let him pay for you to go to Vassar. . . .”

“What's my choice?” Eleanor said. “Working in some factory as a shirtwaist girl? No, thank you.”

Jane narrowed her eyes. “Sometimes, maybe, to get what you want, I bet you even let him think that you agree with him.” Jane remembered the kiss she'd given her own father, and blushed.

“You want me to apologize for being nice to my own father?” Eleanor asked. She sprang to her feet in a flurry of rustling silk. “I've done nothing wrong. I'm working for all sorts of worthy causes. Some people just use different strategies than others. It's like . . . Here. Feel this.” She tapped her tiny waist.

“I beg your pardon?” Jane gasped.

“All right, feel your own waist,” Eleanor said. “Feel your corset under your dress, those rigid spines that won't let you breathe—you hate your corset, don't you?”

“Who doesn't?” Jane whispered.

“My point exactly,” Eleanor said. “If I ripped it off now, I'd split all the seams in my dress, my mother would faint, my father would have an apoplectic fit—it'd be quite the faux pas if I went to the ball tonight without my corset. Almost as bad as if I wore that blanket of yours!”

She grinned, trying to make a joke, but Jane didn't laugh.

“So?” Jane said icily.

“So, instead, I've been letting my corset out gradually. My friends and I took a vow at school. Now, every time I go to a dress fitting, I make sure the corset is a little looser, a little less confining. . . .”

“You're still wearing a corset,” Jane said.

“But eventually I won't be,” Eleanor said. “Don't you see? It's a matter of doing things gradually, changing the world one corset string at a time.”

“That's easy for you to say,” Jane retorted. “But you can't tell the shirtwaist girls, ‘Eventually you'll have fair wages, eventually we'll stop having the strikebreakers beat you up, eventually maybe you'll be able to afford a coat.' They're freezing
now!
They're starving
now
!”

Eleanor sighed.

“Jane,” she said. “Go home. Tell your father you love him no matter what. Tell him you just feel sorry for the poor girls who don't have wonderful, rich fathers like him. You play your cards right, I'm sure he'll come around!”

Jane felt betrayed. Eleanor was the one person she thought would understand.

“I walked all the way over here,” Jane said. “I thought—”

“I'll have my chauffeur take you home,” Eleanor said
briskly, as if all that mattered was Jane's transportation.

Jane let herself be led out to the Kensingtons' car. What else could she do? She slumped in her seat. She couldn't face the thought of walking back into her own marble foyer: defeated, humbled, lost. Couldn't, couldn't, couldn't. She leaned forward.

“Excuse me, sir?” she called out to the Kensingtons' chauffeur, over the rumble of the motor. “I gave you the wrong address. I actually need to go to another location. I'm not sure of the exact street number, but it's the Asch Building, near Washington Square.”

She would go back to Triangle.

B
ella and Yetta were walking home from work. They'd been back at Triangle for a week now, and Bella was still rediscovering the twinges and aches that went along with hunching over a sewing machine all day. She stretched, twisting her head this way and that, raising and lowering her shoulders. This brought a puff of air up her skirt, but for once it didn't seem unbearably cold.

“I think spring is coming,” Bella said. “Can you feel it?”

She held out her hand, experimentally. A snowflake immediately landed on her outstretched palm.

“I think spring's still a long way off,” Yetta said, kicking at the slush on the sidewalk.

Yetta had been in a bad mood ever since the strike ended, ever since Rahel's wedding, ever since she'd started back to work. Bella had tried again and again and again to cheer her up, and failed each time.

Suddenly Bella heard a screech of brakes out in the street. The sound reminded her of the worst morning of her life, so she didn't bother looking until she heard someone screaming, “Bella! Yetta! Wait for me!”

It was Jane, the rich girl who'd rescued Bella that awful
morning. She came rushing toward them through the traffic, prompting honking horns and more screeching brakes. She was wearing one of her usual fancy, frilly dresses, and her beautiful gold ring gleamed even in the weak winter light. But she looked crazy: wild-eyed, wild-haired, coatless, hatless, and dragging a gray blanket behind her through the snow.

“Where are your picket signs?” she yelled. “I came to help you with your strike. I'll stand with you every day on the picket line. I will! If I can't give money, I'll do what I can. And if I'm arrested—well, fine! That would serve my father right!”

She was sobbing or gasping for air—Bella couldn't really tell which. In New York, Bella had discovered, people rarely moved out of the way for anyone else. But the crowd on the sidewalk moved out of the way for Jane, as if they were all glad that she wasn't yelling at them.

When Jane was right in front of Bella and Yetta, blocking their path, Yetta finally replied in a flat voice: “The strike's over. Go home.”

Jane froze in her tracks.

“What? It can't be! I've been watching the
Times
every day—”

“The
Times
didn't even bother writing about us when the strike ended,” Yetta said, and Bella could hear the barely suppressed rage in her voice. “The
Call
did, the
Forward
did— do you want to know what the Forward wrote about Triangle? With blood this name will be written in the history of the American workers' movement, and with feeling will this history recall the names of the strikers of this shop—of the crusaders.' And yet the factory can reopen, just
like the strike never happened, and do business with stores all over the country—who would do business with criminals like that?”