AUDACITY
Melanie Crowder
PHILOMEL BOOKS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crowder, Melanie.
Audacity / Melanie Crowder.
pages cm
Summary: “A historical fiction novel in verse detailing the life of Clara Lemlich and her struggle for women’s labor rights in the early 20th century in New York.”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Lemlich, Clara, 1886–1982—Juvenile fiction. 2. Women in the
labor movement—New York (State)—New York—Juvenile fiction.
[1. Novels in verse. 2. Lemlich, Clara, 1886–1982—Fiction. 3. Labor
movement—Fiction. 4. Immigrants—Fiction. 5. Russian Americans—
Fiction. 6. Jews—United States—Fiction. 7. New York (N.Y.)—
History—1898–1951—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.5.C78Au 2015
[Fic]—dc23 2014018466
ISBN 978-0-698-17257-9
Version_1
for my grandmothers, Doris and Jo
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Epigraph
tinder
clouds
ordinary
words
home
a broken wing
work
not one bit
yarid
secrets
shul
lies
preparation
dance
herbs
lost
faith
letters
service
Pesach
monsters
pogrom
hours
dusk
sunrise
quiet
a favor
unblinking
leaving
test
packing
goodbye
spark
mirrored
the German Empire
murmuration
look away
whirligig
stars
Hamburg
strangers
gone
thoughts
listen
ideas
December 3, 1904
Nicco
at sea
sons
breathe
morning
fighting
sinking
shiva
close enough
land
lines
medical inspection
powerless
blind
aliens
New York City
something we understand
night
stitches
gloom
possibility
sunlight
impossible
flame
sweatshop
celebration
obedient
lock
search
sleepless
forbidden
Sundays
truce
mornings
English class
break
one of us
drapers
look around you
books
surprise
summer
unchanged
revolution
give thanks
lull
say nothing
tense
bleary
make ready
make it right
rise and fall
at home
wrestle
not one word
night classes
school
Coney Island
tuition
exams
Rosh Hashanah
soon
inspector
whispers
Yom Kippur
union
tradition
old world
luck
traffic
dictate
blood
greenhorn
temporary
talk
fired (again)
tar beach
scratch
speak
waiting
twenty-five
somersaults
disorderly
the beginning
fire
New Year’s Eve
Weisen & Goldstein’s
poetry
the bottom line
trouble
influence
snow
alight
time
the shrike
speedups
mercury
vote
sting
locked up
brave
if
a different life
every day
seams
choose
ghost limb
smear
decline
Purim
planning (i)
you have a right
Joe
peddling
Mama
planning (ii)
trash
kestrel
menagerie
silence
meshuggeneh
blaze
divide
blacklist
waltz
uptown
honest
a lot to learn
overtime
a gift
lies
uninvited
soapbox
planning (iii)
vote
red light
dent
part of me
ask
planning (iv)
Triangle
slander
so easy
fresh
fists
Gorky
visitors
electric
suffrage
holiday
starve quick
together
gorillas
farbrente
judgment
too much
picnic
agitated
no bet
ter time
Cooper Union
November 23, 1909
give
Historical Note
Interview
Many Thanks To . . .
Glossary Of Terms
Selected Sources
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction loosely based on the early life of Clara Lemlich Shavelson. While most of the events in this story are true to history, in the instances where no record or conflicting records remain, the essence of Clara’s spirit and historical accounts of her contemporaries were used to fill in the gaps. Some details have been altered to fit the form, and scenes imagined where the historical record is silent.
It has been an honor to imagine my way into Clara’s small but mighty footsteps.
“Audacity—that was all I had.
Audacity!”
—Clara Lemlich
tinder
1903
clouds
Over the gray plain of the sea
winds are gathering the storm-clouds
Words
float like wayward clouds
in the air
in my mind.
Now his wing the wave
Wait—
or was it,
Now the wave his wing caresses
I dip a hand
into my apron pocket
unfold a square of paper
against my palm,
hunch my shoulder,
hide it from view.
Ah,
yes.
Now his wing the wave caresses,
now he rises like an arrow
cleaving clouds
and
The poem is ripped
from my hand
and the air,
where only wayward clouds
had been,
is full of shouting,
accusations
a hand raised in anger
ready to strike—
the world slows
in the second before
pain blooms
in my jaw;
a second
to hope
the poem is
safe
in my mind
where fists
and fury
cannot shake it free.
ordinary
Just because I am
small-boned
and short,
brown-haired
and brown-eyed,
just because I look
common
as a wren
meek
as a robin
that does not mean
what is inside me is also
common
as a wren
meek
as a robin.
Everything
I wish for
is strange
aberrant
even wrong in this place
but I know
I cannot be the only one
blanketing her bright feathers
hooding her sharp eyes
hiding
in plain sight.
My life
so far
has been ordinary
simple
small
but I cannot shake the feeling
that inside this little body
something stronger
is nesting
waiting
for a chance
to flex her talons
snap her wings
taut
and glide
far away
from here.
words
Mama says,
Sweep the floor, Clara,
like a good girl.
But a packed-dirt floor
is impossible
to clean.
Scratch, scratch
like a chicken picking grain from grit
I chase the dirt outside
where a thick-boned horse
pulls a rattling cart down the wide road,
his tail switching
side to side
flicking the flies
from his backside as he passes
the goose yard
the stonemason’s shed
the tailor’s shop.
(where if I can steal
an hour
I can earn a kopeck
or two
sewing buttonholes)
In the market,
where the Russian peasants
sell their goods,
a kopeck buys me
a scrap of paper
inscribed with stout
Cyrillic script:
a verb
translated
conjugated.
I set aside the broom,
run a dusting cloth
over the shelves
closest to the window.
The smell of spring
wanders in
on a wayward gust
of wind.
Across the street from Mama’s store
the school is full of children,
blond heads bent
over lines of prose
primers held open
like siddurs,
like prayer books.
A handful of Russian words
float across the street,
mingle in the dust
my broom throws
into the air.
I pause,
do not even breathe,
my whole body
s t r a i n i n g
to catch the sounds.
I turn the new words
over and over
in my head
on my tongue
until they are mine,
over and over
as I wipe the windows down
restock the shelves
fetch a bucket of coal
from the shed.
By the time Mama retires to the kitchen
to prepare dinner,
the school is shuttered
and empty,
the Russian girls
in their pleated brown dresses
and stiff little hats
have slung their satchels
over their shoulders
and skipped home.
In the handful of minutes
before Mama calls for me
I duck behind the house
follow the paths
the red deer stamped
into the ground,
into the woods.
I walk slowly,
clouds pinking
as the light
sinks
through the trees.
Every few steps I stoop
to pick up a feather
a coarse-veined leaf
a small
burnished stone.
Thrushes trill and tattle from the brush;
today
I have words of my own
to trade
for their song.
home
We live at the frayed edge
of our shtetl
between rows of straw-thatched homes
and the forest
where low-lying ferns
tickle the ankles of
slender trees.
I was born here
in a home split
between two families
our half split in half again
to make room for Mama’s grocery store.
(which means we are not so poor
as some,
that we can give a little
to others)
We take care
of our own
here, in the Pale of Settlement
in the Russian Empire
hemmed in on all sides
by restrictions
regulations
by people who only wish
to be rid of us.
a broken wing
Mama has released me from the store
from my chores
and the afternoon
is mine.
The ice in the streams is breaking up,
pale green spears
crocus buds
peek out of lifeless swaths
of meadow grasses.
I leave the path
dip a cloth in the stream
duck under the low-flying branches
of a pine tree
where a wooden box
rests against marbled bark.
I lift the roof
peer inside;
a winter wren
opens her beak
in a halfhearted hiss.
A few more weeks,
I whisper,
and the splint can come off.
The hiss gives way
to feeble cheeping.
I drop a beetle
a pair of dead moths
beside her,
settle a layer of brown grass
over her feathers
for warmth.
Hers is not the first wing
I have mended
but still I worry
what if,
when she is finally offered
a solid perch
a view of the sky,
what if she lifts her wings
only to find the air
still
cannot hold her?
work
Like all the other boys in our shtetl,
my brothers Marcus, Nathan
and little Benjamin
study Torah.
Like Papa,
it will be their life’s work
not farming or teaching
building or banking
but praying;
studying the holy ways.
Like all the other girls in our shtetl,
I am being trained in
obedience
hard work
a biddable spirit;
all the virtues
a good wife needs.
How can I tell Mama
who toils
sunup
to sundown
to be a good mother
a good wife
that this life
(her life)
is not enough for me,
that I dream instead
of words
ideas
a life that stretches far beyond
the bounds of this shtetl?
According to Papa,
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