Bottomland

by Michelle Hoover

  The redhead laughed. “Ellen’s dumb as a plate. But don’t let those pigtails fool you. She’s been here for years. Longer than me, at least. I’m Charlotte.” She held her hand out. Like a man, she did.

  “Esther,” I said.

  “And this one?” Charlotte turned her head. “You’re some pretty, aren’t you, and shy too.”

  “That’s my sister.”

  “Myrle,” my sister whispered. When she glanced up, her cheeks colored, seeing Charlotte all at once.

  “Sisters,” the redhead let out. “I never had one myself.”

  “Never?” Myrle asked. “I’ve got three.” She covered her mouth.

  “Never,” Charlotte said again. “Not yet.”

  The table was empty now of everyone but us. Charlotte slapped her hand on her chair. “Come on now, we have to get you to Kupp’s. We’ll be late.” She stood with a rush. Tall as a tree, so much I straightened to see her right. “Meet you in front, five minutes,” she called back and raised her hand to show five long fingers. Without another word, she disappeared down the hall.

  We sat alone, staring at our plates. The blush in Myrle’s cheeks had stayed. I thought about Charlotte. I thought about our room, small as a stable. There wasn’t a Nan at the door. Not a Father with his cane. No Agnes eyeing us, either, watching for what we’d do, as if we’d do anything. Tom Elliot, he was gone. No more lofts, no fires in the yard. That room, it was all our own. The walls pocked with nails and tape, a key for the door, a desk, and a bureau’s empty drawers. All of it, ours, and only strangers in the rooms down the hall. Every morning when the house woke, we could be anything we wanted. Now Myrle stretched her fingers, liking her ring. Already she seemed different. In the café, speaking up the way she did. At the table with Charlotte. Even now, not a drop of worry and me almost out the door.

  We had a room and a bowl of porridge. We had the city and a wide stretch of lake. We had Kupp’s too, and not even a full day yet. Home, it seemed a long ways off. And trains, they seemed hard. Already I felt I’d eaten breakfast at this table for weeks. I’d learned the name of every girl in the house, easy, as if I’d always known them. As if I’d been born here, and I might as well have been. I couldn’t imagine a better place.

  “Are you going?” Myrle asked. For a flash, her eyes watered.

  “Have to.”

  “Remember the paper,” she said. “You promised.”

  “A heap of it. Envelopes too.”

  Myrle brightened, took our plates, the mess heavy in her arms. The kitchen door swung open. Mrs. Keyes steamed out only to pull up short. “My heavens,” she said. “I about knocked you sideways. Don’t you have any sense?”

  Myrle offered up the plates. Mrs. Keyes rested her hands on her hips. “Cleared the plates already,” she said. “You must have some sense after all. Come on in then. You can put them on the counter. Ellen!” she called. The door swung closed behind them. “Watch this new girl with the plates. That’s how it’s done.”

  Charlotte had us down the alley in minutes. The first whistle. That’s why she was running, and I was running too, that red of her hair a flag. While the streets churned with people, that red was the only thing that kept her in sight. When at last we stopped enough to slow our chests, we stood at the foot of a large iron door. The building was stone and brick, as great as a ship, and it breathed the way I guessed a ship might, a wheeze from the upper windows that looked small and black and not really windows at all. “This way,” Charlotte said. When she pulled the door open, the building roared. A line of workers with punch cards and lunches, women and men in dusty blue uniforms. Charlotte swept a sweaty hair off her cheek and took me by the hand. Around the corner, a hall longer than anything ever was, and a sign with the word office in gold.

  “Now listen,” Charlotte said. This close, even her eyelashes were orange. “When you go in there, you pretend you’ve been doing this for years. Longer even. And you tell them I brought you. Charlotte Byrne. Don’t forget.” She squeezed my hands. Then she was off.

  I took a breath. Inside, a large man sat at a desk in a room big enough to store wagons. His lamp glowed through its green glass, the name mr. preston on a block of wood. He bent his face to his papers, a sad circle of hair on his head. When at last he looked up, he grimaced. “Name?”

  “Esther.”

  “Esther what?”

  “Esther . . . Byrne.”

  “Another one,” he said. “Well, Esther Byrne, come out and show yourself. You want a job?”

  Come out yourself, mister. But I didn’t say it. I didn’t for once.

  The workshop at Kuppenheimer’s was long and narrow as a train car, five floors up, the ceiling almost on our heads. When Preston opened the elevator, I saw waves. A line of girls sat at their machines, fingers flying with scissors and thread. Those machines were close to on top of each another, a hundred or so at once, and the needles whirred. Unless a girl watched herself, any bit of hair or skin might catch. Clouds of cotton kept the air thick. Fuzz of every color stuck to their cheeks. The windows were so dirty the day didn’t show itself, the girls closest to those windows sewing by lamplight like all the rest. Preston led me down the line, but not one of the workers turned her head. The girls were sweating through their collars, the muscles in their necks jumping with Preston at their backs, but their machines never quit.

  For me he found a chair at the far end. A large black sewing machine waited on the desk. Preston threw me some scrap and crossed his arms. The man was bigger than me by twice, and those hands of his, they could sure fix fences. “Go on,” he said. “You practice on these, just a hem at a quarter inch. Straight is good but quick is better. If you keep your head about you, we’ll give you a uniform.”

  “What about . . . ?”

  The girl next to me gasped, but she kept on spinning.

  “What about what?” Preston asked.

  “Nothing.” I picked up my scraps, and he went off. The girl wiped her nose on her sleeve, her fingers a blur. Her eyelashes flicked at me.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?” she whispered.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

  “Do it then.”

  I turned to the machine. A dragon, it sure looked, twisted the way it was, and the heat of the wheel every time I hit the pedal. Electric. But this wasn’t light and cups of tea. The place smelled like burning. A single lamp hung over our heads, my face close to the needle so I could see. When I pressed the pedal, that needle pulled fast. The scraps flew, and only my fingers were left. I pushed at the pedal softer then, but still that dragon caught me every other time, just when I was going grand. After an hour or more, my fingers were scraps too. I stuck them in my mouth. The taste of blood. Around me girls worked without even looking, like they’d always been sitting there, cool as dolls, and they were the ones who got the uniform and walked out with their paycheck every week. The room was spinning. I wouldn’t get my papers. Wouldn’t last Chicago more than a day, though I’d promised Myrle something different. Everyone watched me though they pretended they didn’t, sitting as I was with my fingers in my mouth.

  The girl next to me sneezed into her sleeve. She sneezed again, worse than a cat. But with every sneeze, her elbow slipped against my desk. It was then I saw it, a new scrap and then another under that elbow of hers, and not so much as a smile on her face. “Thanks,” I whispered and started my pedal again. This time, I pulled against that needle, kept my fingers light. By the end of the shift, I had that wheel going inside my head, but I’d hemmed the rest of the lot he’d given me and some of the girl’s too, straight as I could.

  A whistle, loud as knives. The girls stood from their chairs, the place going quiet as the machines stopped. “Byrne!” Preston called out. He took up my scraps. “Pretty good, pretty good. What’s this?” He eyed a bloody one. I hid my hands behind my back.

&nbs
p; “Nothing,” I said.

  “These are expensive machines, young lady. They aren’t for fingers.”

  Phsst, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I knew I’d done better than he might have guessed.

  “Practice,” he said. “We’ll give you to the end of the week and see if you’re worth keeping. And here.” He threw me a uniform. Old, with a stain, but it was something. Preston walked off with that heavy gait of his, and I stood from my chair and followed the rest. The girl next to me, she was all elbows and knees, but she grinned. Worth keeping. That’s what the man had said. And there was Charlotte, waiting by the door at the far end with that red of her hair a sign.

  “Guess we’re sisters, now?” She winked.

  I took her arm, strong and muscle-thin, a smell like smoke in her hair. But it was the whir of those machines I remembered. I never thought I would hear so much. I could feel it in my bones. Electric in my skin. With that uniform over my arm, my chance to become something else.

  I started as a shirtwaist maker. Not a cent those first weeks, though at home I’d worked Mother’s pump machine to turn out plenty. “Nothing more than a bicycle,” Preston said to that, but soon he gave me six dollars a week. If I could make a year, he promised seven. But I would never take all of that seven home. If I laughed or spoke, I was fined ten cents. Five cents for a mistake. Five off our checks every week for needles and five for benzine, what they used to clean collars and waists, even if I never soiled a waist once. If I was one minute late, I was fined a cent. If five minutes, I lost half a day’s pay. I got five cents an hour except breaks, thirty-three dimes a week, though those fines made it less. Seven to seven we worked, twelve hours a day. Saturdays the same. Still those dimes were mine. Mine and Myrle’s. It was more than I ever thought we’d get.

  Factory girls. That’s what they called us. It wasn’t women with pink dresses and washing machines, but it was something. In any case, the heat from those machines made me think electric could be anything I wanted. And Chicago, it was the only place I knew other than home. Chicago. Even if the name sounded like spitting. Charlotte told me better. “I’ve seen plenty of girls leave the factory for a ring, but I’ve never seen one leave this town. It sticks.”

  III

  Every night after shift, I came home with my fingers curled, my feet pinched from the throb of that pedal. I was almost asleep when Keyes cleared the dinner plates. Upstairs, Myrle sat at our desk with a stack of paper. At the end of the month, she’d run through so many fits and starts, her balled-up letters filled the garbage pail. But that night when I came in, she stopped her pencil, closed it in the drawer. She was more pale than ever, a milky glow to her skin. She folded up a single sheet and dropped it in an envelope, licking that envelope twice.

  “Can you mail a letter tomorrow?” she asked.

  I lay on our bed with my eyes closed. “I’ll try.” I told you, I’d argued. They’ll find us. Tom Elliot will be wanting his money, sure. She slipped her letter in the pocket of my coat. I heard her pat that pocket twice. Then she was out the door and down the hall to the washroom.

  I waited until her footsteps faded and slipped out of bed. That pail was full to spilling. Dear Father, one scrap said. And the others: I wasn’t sure . . . I couldn’t help . . . I’m sorry that we did. The pencil blurred, a scratch where she’d tried to black out what she didn’t want. I wondered how that letter in my coat was different. How she’d finally gotten it right.

  The doorknob turned. I hurried to bed. Coming in, Myrle wiped her mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She dropped beside me, her hands to her face. I threw my arm over her stomach where I could feel her breathe.

  “Esther?”

  “What?”

  She turned until our noses almost touched. “You’ll send my letter, won’t you?”

  I swallowed. The house below us had fallen to a sure hush.

  “I’ll send it,” I promised. “First thing tomorrow.”

  She lay on her back, gripping my wrist. Soon her breath was slow and even, but her grip on me never let up. At night my hands snapped and flinched the way they did on the line. Threads and needles, that’s what I dreamed about. Pinpricks up and down my arm. Myrle had her dreams too. But after a month, I didn’t have a clue what they were. As long as she stayed in this room, in the house, I didn’t have to worry if she was safe or not.

  The next day, I took her letter before shift like I’d promised. I opened it a crack and read what I could. But when I tried the postbox, the door wouldn’t budge. The Elliot boy and his money, that’s why we couldn’t write. And the Elliot boy’s new wife, the way we’d left without a word, and how they’d track us if they had an address. Myrle wouldn’t listen, but I’d never have to tell her what I did with that letter. Right where I stood, a garbage bin loomed big as postboxes, and no doors to get stuck. I dropped the letter in, wiped my hands on my thighs. No matter what Chicago did, that old house we’d left didn’t have anything new for us. Everything would be forgiven as long as we never went back.

  The next night at dinner, one of the girls was missing. Her chair stood empty at the far end, and Mrs. Keyes hadn’t set a place. Keyes stayed in the kitchen, and the girls were quiet. All I could think of was Myrle’s letter. Dear Nan, she’d written with her pencil. We’re safe in Chicago and working hard. She talked about her work in the house, how I came home in the dark every night and didn’t have a breath to talk. And then: . . . I should have explained before, and now we’re so far away. Just let me try. But why would Myrle write about Chicago if she didn’t want them to find us? What did she have to explain?

  “That was Isabelle’s place,” Charlotte whispered.

  “Isabelle,” I said, as if tasting it.

  “Don’t you remember her?”

  “Jezebel, more like,” I heard. In the chair next to me, Dolores stared at me like the nit she was.

  “What did you say?”

  “Jezebel.” Dolores grinned. “It’s not like a person couldn’t guess what was going to happen to her.”

  From across the table, Abigail let out a chirp. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean?” Dolores aped. “I mean that anyone in their right mind could tell she’d get herself in trouble, going out every night. I don’t know why Mrs. Keyes didn’t throw her out months ago.”

  “Heard they sent her to Loretto Hall,” added a girl at the other end.

  “The Catholics!” another said.

  “She’ll be a sister next,” Dolores laughed. “Hey, Abigail, what kind of girl are you, pins or needles?”

  “What?” Abigail looked around.

  “She doesn’t get it,” the girl at the end said.

  “I mean pins . . .” Dolores sat up straight and blinked, her hands clasped in front of her like praying. “ . . . or needles?” Making a circle with forefinger and thumb, she stuck her finger through. The girls shrieked. Dolores crooned, “Here comes Abigail in her white . . .”

  “Knock it off,” Charlotte snapped. The table went quiet. Every eye shot to the kitchen, but Keyes was humming to her radio. “Just wait until your chair is empty too,” Charlotte said. “Nobody’s here for good.”

  The others went back to their food, not a word. For good, she’d said, but what if this place was everything I wanted? I’d thought Myrle had wanted it too, but when I looked, my sister was staring at the empty chair. Her plate was full. She hadn’t even touched her spoon. “Myrle,” I hissed. Abigail elbowed her. Myrle’s head snapped back, her eyes wide. She pushed at her chair and was up the stairs in a rush, the others staring after her. In the kitchen, a bell rang. A creak as Keyes opened the oven door and dropped a pan of bread on the counter to cool. That bread smelled like earth. Our room upstairs, it smelled like that.

  “She’s sick,” I said.

  “Mr. Preston was sick something awful today,”
Abigail let out. “Every time he walked by, I was scared he’d sneeze on my head.”

  “You wish,” Dolores said.

  Abigail giggled.

  “She’s got a crush,” Dolores went on. “And the man is old enough to need bifocals.”

  The kitchen door opened. Keyes bounded out. “You girls have been awfully quiet. Where’s Myrle?”

  “She’s sick,” Abigail said.

  I would have kicked her if it had done any good. “She’ll be fine by morning. She’s never sick for long.”

  “See to it that she isn’t,” Keyes said. “I’ve had just about enough of sickness and who knows what else. You girls have got to learn to take care of yourselves. Terrible things can happen. The kinds of things you can’t take back.” She shook the thought out of her head. “Now hurry up, the rest of you. It’s time for bed. Esther, you can help me with the dishes if your sister can’t.”

  Keyes blew into the kitchen again, the radio louder by a good turn of the knob. The chairs at the table banged, everyone off in a rush. Everyone except Charlotte. She squeezed my knee, her face hard as Nan’s. “Myrle’s all right,” I said. But that look on Charlotte’s face, it didn’t change. Not an inch. What business was it of hers? Charlotte squeezed my knee all the harder. “She’s fine,” I spat and tore my leg away. With her sitting there, I snapped up the plates and rushed into the kitchen to wash.

  After an hour Keyes let me go. I climbed the stairs and opened our door. Myrle stood in front of the mirror in her nightgown, staring down at herself.

  “I thought you’d be asleep.”

  She jumped to the bed, covered herself with the sheet.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  She didn’t move. Her eyes were closed, the rest of her curled toward the wall.

  “Myrle?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said.

  “If it’s nothing, you do the dishes next time.” I dropped onto the mattress and let out a groan. I couldn’t bend enough to take off my shoes, my hands swollen. The chain clicked against the lamp as I turned it off, the heaters kicking for who knew what, and outside an icy rain scraped the windows. Lightning flared, flashing shapes on the wall: a tree, a bird, the face of a stranger.