“Esther?” Myrle said. Her voice was muffled. Her back to me still.
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Phsst,” I said. My feet ached, a pulsing in my fingertips. Myrle sniffled, but I didn’t have anything more to give her. The windows shook and the storm flashed. I had never seen so much coming from a light through our window, as if the world had turned or we ourselves had, the whole place moving every little inch, and no one knew why or when it would stop.
It was another month before Myrle wrote a second letter. She wrote one every week after that. In the morning, she left them on her desk or tucked them in the pocket of my coat. I carried the letters off, swearing to send them. Father, they’d been addressed, or Nan, Lee. Even Agnes. We’re sorry to have left, or Tell Father, we’re sorry. Then she stopped saying sorry and all she wrote about was home. It’s never so nice as home, she wrote. And always a wind. It’s never clean. There’s a lake, she wrote, bigger than all our acres put together, but I’ve only seen it once. I left for the shop at half after six every morning, leaving Myrle to Mrs. Keyes, and dropped the letters in the garbage. Better to let her believe the letters were going out. Better to keep her busy, and me, I could read every single one and know more about my sister than I could ever guess.
“Just give me the money,” she said once. Two months, and we’d never heard a word.
“Don’t you trust me?” I asked.
Her face was pinched, her mouth tight. But those eyes of hers, they pulled on me like water did. “If you gave me some money, I could take them myself.”
I stood at the door, Myrle sitting at her desk. She had that pencil in her hand, but she wasn’t writing a thing. “You don’t, do you?” I said. “You don’t trust me.”
She wouldn’t look at me.
I opened the door, the voices of the other girls in the hall. Who could say it’d make one difference if I sent those letters? If anyone at home even cared? I grabbed my coat, swung the door wide, ready to slam it shut. I yelled at her, “It’s not my fault no one writes you back.”
The next morning, Myrle’s desk was clean as a plate. Not a sheet of paper. Not a pencil in the well. I brushed my fingers across the surface and all I felt was grain. Inside the pocket of my coat, only lint. I walked to work with Charlotte and when we came to that garbage bin, I steered us away.
“Preston had a date last night, couldn’t you tell?” Charlotte said. “He left at seven sharp, even changed his shirt. Who do you think she was?”
In the shop, Charlotte sat next to me at the machines with her mouth still running, her chair inches from mine. That girl with her elbows and knees, she was gone my second week, and I never got her name. But sitting next to Charlotte, that was something. Charlotte was an old hand. She talked a mile our first hour, never got caught. She had three years or more on most of us, from a boondock kind of town where everyone she’d ever known was buried or run off or too dumb for either one. She left when she was little older than Myrle, and she didn’t care if no one married her or kept her in a kitchen, or so she said. She had a cigarette between her lips soon as she walked out the door, wore trousers more than not in winter. The smokes gave her the hips of a girl, and every other week her red hair seemed a different shade.
“What’s up with you?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing,” Charlotte parroted. “Liar.”
My needle stuck. I stopped the machine and pulled the strip. Ten cents fine that would be. Another cent for every word if Charlotte kept on running, even if I tried not to listen.
“She didn’t write a letter,” I said.
Charlotte sighed. “So what? They never write back.”
“Maybe they would.”
“Maybe she’s tired of it.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. All that . . . attention.”
I bit my lip, my machine roaring.
“Come on, Esther, you know what I’m talking about. Everyone in that house of yours always following her around, watching, as if she was some kind of dolly they could dress up. Maybe she’s figured she doesn’t want it anymore.”
“What do you know?”
“Myrle and me, we talk.”
“I’ve never heard you talk about that.”
“We talk a lot when you’re not there.”
I’m always there. But not when Charlotte got off first from shift, because of the old hand she was. Not when she woke up early and helped Myrle in the kitchen. All the time they spent together, without their thinking of me. An odd pair, with Charlotte tall and bright, hard as nails, and Myrle nothing next to her but a pale leaf. The two of them, whispering over plates on the other side of that swinging door. That time opened under me like a dark hole.
“Cheer up.” Charlotte elbowed me and I almost lost a stitch. “There’ll be a raise, did you hear? The union got them for us. Ten percent.”
Another fine if I’d lost that stitch. Another if I couldn’t keep my mind from letters. Myrle must have her reasons, but I couldn’t think. A raise, that might give us enough for a pound of sugar every month, coffee even, the extra in a sock for safekeeping under the bed. I wiped my forehead and started again.
“I’ll tell you more at noon break,” Charlotte said. “Just forty minutes.”
I ducked my head. Break I might have to miss to catch up. Besides, I wasn’t keen to climb those flights for a piece of bread. I was sweated right through. “The elevator,” Preston said, “it’s not for factory girls.”
Factory girls. The way Preston said it, the name seemed a trick. Nothing a nice girl would try to be. And after that first day, I’d never seen the inside of that elevator. It made me dizzy, all its cables and strings. Preston as he loomed, his arm reaching over me to press the button. The man smelled strong as metal. Something that made a person want to take a bite. Esther’s got work in the garments, Myrle had written once. Save Sundays, I never see her in the daytimes. Myrle’s empty desk and now Preston in my head. That’s where my daytimes went. Preston, in his office on the first floor, thinking about ten percent. I hated him at my back with his big hands watching us. But I hated it even more when he wasn’t there.
Charlotte dropped back to her machine, half a sandwich in a napkin. Somehow break had come and went, my foot on the pedal still. She snuck the sandwich onto my table, covered it with scrap. All that attention, she’d said. Who didn’t want that? And Myrle, she’d never seemed to mind it before. I gave Charlotte a smile thin enough it wouldn’t bring foremen, but enough to tell her how empty my stomach was. I could eat that sandwich in the stall when they unlocked the doors for bathroom break, two hours off.
“After the last bell,” Charlotte whispered. I could just hear her over the room’s buzz. “Everyone’s been asked to line up at the office. We have to get there in a hurry or we’ll be waiting in that line for hours.”
I frowned though my hands never stopped.
“Don’t be so worried,” she said. “It’s the raise. They want to make a big show of it, give it out by hand.”
“Number 57!” the foreman called. Charlotte snapped straight, her fingers fast. She seemed to work four pieces at once. The foreman circled our line and stood behind our chairs, watching our hands. Girls said he’d be good for a ring, but that ring would be small, his fingers no more than buttons and his ears wide as a chipmunks. I didn’t want a man as hard as that. I eyed the sandwich hidden under that scrap, but didn’t drop a stitch. “A pretty penny it’ll be, right, girls?” the foreman said. Charlotte gave me a wink. A sandwich in the factory, that could cost us plenty. Still the man walked away, humming. I guessed even foremen got a raise after the seven o’clock bell.
At five after seven, we stood in our line. The air outside the windows was cold and black, as it had been that morning and the morning before. The line snaked over the gray tiles, wo
rkers pushing at each other’s backs. A man as round he was tall pulled a chain from his jacket, giving his watch a glance.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please.” He cleared his throat. “Workers, please, just a moment of your time.” The line went quiet. The man slipped his watch in his pocket.
Charlotte leaned close. “That’s Stanley Mills. He’s the fat duck they brought from New York. Say he’s reviewing the books.”
“Ladies and gentlemen. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the concern over market numbers.” A murmur from the crowd. At the far end, shouts. Mills wiped his face. “I’m here to insure you that Kuppenheimer and Company is as strong as ever, and that your company will remain in Chicago, where it was born. To prove this to you, we have decided to go forward with the raises the union negotiated and to which your owner, Henry Kuppenheimer, so generously agreed. We want to emphasize, however, that a company is only as good as the number of products it sells. Therefore, we are keeping the company store open late this week and next, newly stocked with a line of shirts, trousers, and smocks that we believe you’ll find well within your means. These things were made by your own friends. You should be proud to wear them. We hope you understand how essential it is that our workers are not only satisfied with their wages, but that they put this money to good use. So remember, every dime Kuppenheimer’s earns is money in your pocket too.”
“My pocket’s got a hole!”
“A hundred of those dimes ain’t half a nickel to us.”
Mills wiped his brow. “Well, yes. It all has to go around.” He raised his hand again before stepping back. “Thank you for listening. And remember, this week and the next.”
Voices echoed through the hall and the man hurried off. The squeak of rubber shoes, the stink of our uniforms. One by one we stepped into the office, and the guard at the door pushed a finger against his nose as if he’d never sweated once.
“Quarter an hour,” Preston told us. It wasn’t Kuppenheimer behind that door, but Preston, always Preston. The office was dark, save for those green underwater lamps, the curtains so thick they looked like blankets. Mills crouched by the wall, the arms of his chair pinching his stomach. Preston stood behind his desk with a metal box, two men in suits at his side. The men eyed his hands as he passed out the money, a clipboard and pen at their belts to cross off numbers, names. A quarter, that was more than ten percent. Of course they wanted to make a show of it. But when he counted out more for the man ahead of me, that quarter didn’t seem like much. The man worked the looms, a dark knot of curls on his head and skinny as a rail. He pocketed his bills without a glance, as if the suits might take them back.
I did the math. “That man got forty cents. His raise was almost twice.”
Charlotte hushed me. “Keep your voice down.”
Preston looked away as he counted bills into my hand, his fingers on my wrist as if I might drop so much at once.
“That man got more,” I said.
Preston closed the lid on his box. “You’re going to rob that man of his wages?” He pressed his knuckles into the desk. I smelled that metal on his breath, the suits tapping their pens. “He supports a family on that, missy.”
“Fifteen cents difference?”
“As your husband will make when you marry and no longer have to work.”
“Phsst,” I let out. The man from the looms, so thin you could see right through him, his fingers spindles, not enough for a woman to put a ring on if she tried.
“Girls can’t work the looms,” Preston went on. “A man could lose a finger every day when he does.”
“I wouldn’t lose a finger,” I said.
“A girl like you,” he said, “she’d look better outside this shop than in.”
“Phsst.”
Charlotte stamped my foot. For fifteen more cents I could buy myself a finger.
“That’s right,” Preston said. “You don’t know what hurt is. That man does. He’s a veteran. That’s why he’s forty cents.”
Charlotte pinched my arm and hurried me out. Behind us, Preston went back to his box. Outside in the hall the workers were asleep on their feet. So much for the show, I thought. But a quarter, that was something at least. And Preston, he was even more. Every time he pushed at me he was, though I had to work him until he paid me any kind of attention. A girl like you, he’d said. Finally somebody paid a little.
It was almost curfew as we rushed through the streets. The line had made us late, and Keyes wasn’t keen to open the door after she’d turned the lock. That’d be a lesson to us, she’d say. The woman was dropping the bolt when we hit the steps. “Good heavens,” she let out. “Like the dark raised you up.” She shook her head. “You missed your supper. I can’t keep plates for you. If I ever started that, they might as well stop the clocks, but you’ll find bread in the kitchen.”
“Only bread?” Charlotte asked.
“It’ll be a lesson to you, coming in late. So many of you girls late tonight. A half dozen I haven’t laid eyes on yet. It’s none of my business where a girl keeps herself, but if you want supper, you’ll sit at the table tomorrow as you’re intended.”
Twenty-five cents, I almost said. That’s what happened to the other girls, that and the line, while me and Charlotte stood up front and passed the others with our pockets full. Charlotte caught my arm. I guessed what she was thinking. If Keyes found out about the raise, she’d up the rent before we could turn our backs.
We hurried to the kitchen. A loaf of cracked wheat left from the morning, no butter. We broke off pieces with our hands. Charlotte stopped with her ear to the hall and went swift as a broom to the icebox. “I know just where she keeps the jam.” The bread was dry as my fingers, but I didn’t need iceboxes, not if Keyes might catch us. “Don’t you worry,” Charlotte went on. “I heard her tell Ellen she wanted to get rid of the whole lot. ‘Can’t fill the girls with sweets,’ she said. ‘It’ll spoil them something terrible.’”
“That’d be a lesson,” I said.
Charlotte grinned, pulling out a jar the color of blueberries. “Keyes is softer than she looks.”
“Soft as cracked wheat.”
“The nervous mother type. Anyone lays a hand on us, she’d give a limb to fix it. You and Myrle stay long, you’ll find out.” The way she said my sister’s name, it sounded sweet. Charlotte popped the lid, her ear to the hall again should Keyes get curious, and we dipped our fingers. On Charlotte’s wrist, a scar. It looked like a cut from a knife, poorly healed. It took the light in that old kitchen to see it at all.
“What’s that?” I pressed a finger to her wrist.
Charlotte jerked back. She rolled up her sleeve to show the scar. It traveled several inches up her arm. “This? It’s something I did once, long time ago. I was paying too much attention.”
“To what?”
She shook her head. “There are better ways to disappear from a place. You already know that.”
She rolled down her sleeve. The jam had left our nails sticky and cold. No matter how we sucked, we couldn’t get them clean.
“I know about you, Esther,” she said. “You think people don’t get you. But that’s just you, giving them too much say.”
We climbed the stairs stomach-sick. I opened our door and Myrle was hunched in bed under the dim lamp, her nightgown a tent from throat to shin, her head in a magazine. The cover of it was upside down. “I thought you’d never come.”
I dropped my bag.
“Mrs. Keyes was at me again, complaining about the silver. I told her I’d never cleaned silver in my life. Ellen, she’s the one who does it. But Mrs. Keyes made me try three times over. ‘To learn it proper,’ she said.”
I shook my dress and apron off. Dust from my uniform filled the square of light. Slumped on the bed, I stretched my fingers, rough and red-crusted. I bunched them into fists and stretched them again until my knuckles
went quiet.
“She’s terrible,” Myrle went on. “She never lets me stop, not for a minute.”
“Not even a minute?” I asked. Myrle had a look on her face, the kind I’d seen every night for weeks, that worry of hers back for good. There was meat to her now. Keyes must have given her more than the rest of us because she cleaned the house, every scrap.
“It’s not fair,” she said. “I never get out of this place. You’re off every day, working. Out with the other girls.”
“You’ve got Ellen.”
“Sometimes I don’t even know if it’s hot or cold outside.”
“Cold.” I pulled the magazine from her fingers. The pages had curled, but the smiles on those women were just as tight. What kind of Chicago they lived in, I couldn’t guess.
“Esther.” Myrle rested her head on my shoulder. Her smell in the room was larger than it’d ever been, that yeasty smell of bread. “I want to work the garments. I can run a sewer just fine.”
“You never learned.”
“I watched Mother dozens of times.”
“You wouldn’t make an hour.” I stretched my fingers again. Sometimes unbuttoning was too much trouble, and if Myrle was asleep, I lay in bed uniform and all.
Myrle dropped back against her pillow.
“We got a raise,” I said. “Twenty-five cents. So you don’t need to work in a place like that. We’ll have plenty.”
“It’s Mrs. Keyes.”
“Stay put. Every girl here wants your job. And garments, you’re too young unless you lied. Even if you tried it a week, Keyes would find another girl. Then how stuck would you be when you didn’t like it. The both of us?”
“But Esther . . .”
“Just today, one of the girls went to the infirmary. Swung her hand and there was a needle. Sarah was her name. I don’t know if she’ll come back.”
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