Blythewood

by Carol Goodman

  I owed Tillie much more than a copied hat, but the longing in her voice reignited the longing I’d felt when I looked at those girls, not for their dresses or hats, but for the lives that I imagined went with them. Time to read a book, or sketch a picture, maybe even go to school. My mother had tried to educate me with her old books and trips to libraries and museums, but I knew it wasn’t the same as an education at a real school like the ones Mrs. Moore wrote about. And my mother had told me enough stories about her beloved Blythewood to conjure images of girls in white tea dresses and straw boaters having tea in a garden or studying in deliciously cool rooms lined with books. . . . But now that my mother was gone, whatever faint dream I’d ever had of going to Blythewood had faded to ashes.

  “A knock-off hat won’t make you look like those girls,” I said, the words escaping my mouth before I knew I was going to say them aloud.

  “Oh,” Tillie said, sounding like a wounded bird. “Of course not. . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

  And then she was gone. I looked up to see her retreating back, an uncharacteristic stoop in her slim shoulders, and felt a sharp pain in my own back, just below my ribcage. I started to go after her, but then remembered that if I didn’t make my quota today I wouldn’t have the money to pay this month’s rent. I’d make it up to her after work. I’d make her that hat out of Mother’s old trimmings.

  I bent back to my work, my head full of feathers and ribbons, and let the rhythm of the machine lull me into a stupor that shut out the bells and the idiot runner and Tillie’s hurt voice. The next time I looked up at the clock on the wall it was half past four. Only fifteen minutes to closing time. I had only two more sleeves to make.

  As I looked down from the clock I noticed a man standing beside the Greene Street door speaking with Mr. Bernstein. A tall man in an Inverness cape and Homburg hat. A man who looked just like the one whose appearance had heralded my mother’s decline into laudanum addiction and death.

  2

  NO, I TOLD myself, it can’t be. I must be falling into my mother’s habit of suspicions.

  The man turned away from Mr. Bernstein and caught me staring at him. Beneath the brim of the Homburg, I glimpsed glittering black eyes, as cold and hard as lumps of coal. I tried to look away but I was transfixed, unable to move. The deep bass bell began to ring in my head, a steady toll like a funeral dirge. As I stared, horrified by my immobility, he raised his hat to me and smiled. Then, without taking his eyes off me, he tilted his head toward Mr. Bernstein and said something to him. Mr. Bernstein looked toward me, a frown creasing his heavy, bland face.

  Good Lord, they’re talking about me. My heart began to race. Desperately, I tried to look away, to go back to sewing, but my eyes and hands were frozen. The man in the Inverness cape began to walk down the aisle between the sewing tables and the airshaft. At the very least I would lose my job, but I already knew something even worse was about to happen. The bells in my head told me so.

  My mother had been so frightened by this man that she’d had to drug herself into oblivion. He was coming to take me away to the workhouse, or prison . . . or an insane asylum. I sat frozen to my seat as the man in the Inverness cape turned down the aisle between my sewing table and the next, the deep bass bell ringing madly in my ears. He’d reach me in a few seconds. . . .

  The man juddered to a halt like a piece of cloth that’s gotten jammed in the pressing machine, but it was as though he were the machine. His limbs jerked and spasmed like those of an automaton that has run down or a puppet’s when the puppeteer’s hand slips. He wheeled around to see what had halted his progress.

  It was Tillie. She had caught a fold of his cape in her machine. I saw her assembling her features into a semblance of innocence, but when she looked up at the man all the blood drained from her face. I’d seen Tillie talk boldly to Mr. Blanck himself when she thought a new girl’s wages were unfair. I’d heard stories of her facing down the thugs hired to break the picket lines during the strike. I’d never seen her look afraid before. Now she looked not just afraid but horrified.

  I started to get up to draw the man’s attention away from Tillie, but someone yanked me back down. It was the dark-eyed runner, crouched below the sewing table. “You see,” he hissed, “I told you to go.”

  “How . . . ?” But there wasn’t time to ask how he had known about the man in the Inverness cape—or what he knew about him. “Where?” I asked instead.

  He grabbed my arm and shoved me under the table, behind a row of workbaskets. “Keep crawling to the dressing room. I’ll take care of him.”

  I couldn’t imagine how this boy was going to “take care” of a man who had frightened Tillie Kupermann, but I did as he said. I crawled on my hands and knees beneath the tables, sure that at any moment I would be seized by the nape of my neck like a mouse plucked up by a hawk.

  As I crawled I heard the quitting bell ring, and then a stampede of feet as all the girls hurried to be first to leave. When I reached the end of the tables I looked up and saw that they were all crowding around the Greene Street door. The man in the Inverness cape was pushed toward the door by the crowd of girls. He was scanning the room, those hard, coal eyes sweeping the air like the wings of a carrion crow. Where was that boy who said he’d take care of him . . . ? Then I saw him. He was right behind the man in the cape. A terrible thought occurred to me: perhaps the boy worked for the man in the Inverness cape and his message had been a ploy to make me lose my job.

  I watched as the boy whispered something into the man’s ear. Whatever he said, it immediately drew the man’s attention. His head whipped around, moving with the speed of a striking snake, his neck twisting farther than it should have been able to turn. Seeing that gave me a sick feeling inside, but I used his momentary distraction to make a run for the dressing room. I saw out of the corner of my eye a swirl of dark cloak as the man fled the room, pursuing the dark-eyed boy. So maybe the boy wasn’t working for the man. . . .

  There were a dozen or so girls inside the dressing room, putting on their hats and coats, gossiping about their plans for the evening. Esther Hochfield was boasting that her fiancé was going to meet her at the factory door and take her out to dinner. Yetta Lubitz was looking at her paycheck and sighing that she didn’t have enough to buy the hat she wanted. Then Tillie grabbed my arm and whispered into my ear.

  “Who is that man?” she asked, her face pale and her hand trembling.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But my mother and I saw him once and she was frightened of him.”

  “Of course she was frightened of him! There’s something . . . wrong about him. My papa used to tell me stories about an evil spirit that could take over a man’s body. That’s what this man feels like—like he’s been taken over by a dybbuk. But somehow your friend managed to lead him out into the stairwell. We’ll take the other stairs.”

  I was about to protest that the dark-eyed boy wasn’t my “friend” as Tillie steered me out of the dressing room toward the Washington Place stairs, but as we came into the loft, I noticed a commotion. A flock of girls was running toward the Greene Street door, their voices excited and . . . scared. The deep bass bell was gonging inside my head so loudly I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but when Tillie spoke I heard her clearly.

  “Fire!”

  As if the word had conjured the thing itself, the airshaft windows shattered and a blaze of flames burst through them. The blaze looked like a swarm of fiery rats pouring over the sill and across the factory floor. I stared at it transfixed until Tillie’s voice in my ear broke my trance. “We have to get out!” she cried. “The Greene Street door is blocked—we have to try this one!”

  She pulled me across the room toward the Washington Place door, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the fire, which was spreading across the examining tables below the airshaft windows, snatching at the piles of shirtwaists. The ignited scraps floated into the air and
drifted across the room like firebirds spreading their destruction. They landed on the workbaskets beneath the sewing tables and set each one ablaze. The smoke that rose from the smoldering baskets looked like flocks of black crows.

  I blinked, trying to clear away the illusion, but when I opened my eyes the room was thick with smoke. Frightened girls ran from door to door to window to window, wheeling around the room like birds beating their wings against a cage. The fire roared like a rabid beast, hungry for our flesh. A small figure flitted by, which I recognized as the new girl whom Tillie had been helping before. She was running with a group of girls toward the dressing room.

  “Etta!” Tillie cried, yanking her hand out of mine and running after the girl. I followed them both into the dressing room. Tillie crouched down in front of a low cubby. “I can’t leave her!” Tillie cried. “I promised I’d look after her today.”

  It was the same promise she’d made to me on my first day. I’d believed it then, little knowing how far she’d take that promise.

  I knelt down beside Tillie and looked into the cubby, straight into the girl’s terrified eyes. As I willed calmness into my voice, I heard the clanging bass bell in my head slow to a steady toll that reverberated through my body and vibrated on the surface of my skin.

  I’d never felt this before. Since the bells had started they had always sounded wildly when I was frightened or when something bad was about to happen. I’d never tried to control them. But I did now, for Tillie and Etta’s sake. I reached into the cubby and put my hand on the girl’s arm.

  “It’s all right,” I said, measuring my voice to the now steady, slow beat of the bell inside my head. “Tillie won’t let anything happen to you. Come on out and we’ll all go home together.”

  Etta’s eyes widened—I wasn’t even sure she spoke English—but under my hand I could feel her muscles relax and her small hand slip into mine. I closed my hand around hers and pulled her out of the cubby. She came out like a cork popping out of a bottle and immediately latched onto Tillie, wrapping her arms around her neck and her legs around her waist. Tillie stood up and looked at me over Etta’s shoulder, then down at the other girls huddled on the floor.

  “Are we going to wait here like lambs to the slaughter?” she cried in a clear strong voice. “Or are we going to save ourselves? I’m getting out of here. Who’s with me?”

  Not waiting for a response, Tillie strode out of the dressing room straight through the smoke to the Washington Place door. A few of the women in the cloakroom roused themselves to follow her, but when we reached the door we found it locked.

  I turned to look across the room. The flames already blocked the airshaft by the fire escape and the Greene Street door. The fire was pushing us toward the tall windows that overlooked Washington Place. They stood open, beckoning us with the sight of blue sky unstained by smoke. One of the women climbed up on the window ledge and cried “Fire!” as if that could be news to anyone. I looked out the window and saw that the street was full of horse-drawn fire engines and crowds of spectators all looking up at us. Their mouths were open, shouting something, but I couldn’t make out what.

  I turned around and saw that in the few seconds I’d turned my back on the fire it had stolen closer. I could feel the heat of it on my skin now, doubly hot after the coolness of the outside air. Another woman climbed up onto the ledge. “They’re holding out nets!” she cried.

  “That won’t help!” Tillie shouted. “We’re too high up—”

  But the woman was gone, vanished from the window as if she’d been plucked from the sky. I looked out the window and saw her plummeting to the ground, her skirts billowing in the air, her arms pinwheeling as if to keep her balance. She hit the net and went straight through to the pavement with a horrible, sickening thud. The crowd let out a groan and then began shouting again.

  “No!” they were shouting “No! Don’t jump!”

  But what other choice was there? The fire was steadily advancing across the floor, pinning us between the flames and the deadly drop like butterflies pressed between panes of glass. Another girl climbed up on a window ledge. She turned and handed me her purse—as if she were at a dance and wanted her hands free—and daintily stepped off the ledge.

  I didn’t watch this time. I shut my eyes.

  You always have a choice, my mother had once said to me.

  But what kind of choice was this—burning to death or smashing on the pavement? It felt like my whole life had been driven by impossible choices—rent or food? Factory or sweatshop? Living as Mother had us live, never trusting anyone, or taking a chance and caring about a stranger, like Tillie? I opened my eyes and looked for her, but saw instead another figure at a window on the Greene Street side. I thought it was another girl jumping. She spread out her arms and for a moment I thought I saw wings. Then the figure jumped into the room and flew toward me, resolving into a black winged creature cleaving the smoke and flames. Just before the wings swept around me, I blinked and saw they were a blanket, and the figure who held it over my mouth was the dark-eyed boy.

  “Come on,” he said. “The stairs going down are full of smoke. We have to get to the roof.”

  He began pulling me toward the Greene Street door, but I twisted out of his grip and turned to find Tillie. She was at the Washington Place door, still holding Etta, and banging on the locked door. “Not without Tillie!” I cried.

  Still keeping hold of my arm with one hand, he put his other arm around Tillie’s shoulders. “Come on, then, both of you. We’re making a run for the Greene Street door.”

  Before we could object he threw the blanket over both our heads and shoved us straight toward the fire. I heard Etta whimper and Tillie scream, but the boy barked at us, “Just close your eyes! It will be all right.”

  The certainty in his voice compelled me. Besides, what other choice did we have? I closed my eyes and let him push us into the fire. He must have found something else to throw over our heads because I heard a rustling noise from above and, although I felt the heat of the fire all around us, the flames seemed not to touch us. It was as though we were moving through the fire inside a protective bubble.

  Then we were through the Greene Street door and in the smoke-filled stairwell and struggling up the stairs, past the tenth-floor showroom and out onto the roof. The fresh air felt like heaven, but when I looked up I saw a dark cloud hovering over us. I could see shapes in the smoke, a roiling mass of crows circling the burning building.

  “Don’t look at them,” the boy hissed in my ear.

  “You can see them?” I asked, not sure if I should be relieved I hadn’t lost my mind or terrified that the crows were real.

  He said something that sounded like it might have been Latin—tenebrae—and then he was pulling me to the west side of the roof where two ladders had been set up between the skylight and the taller building to the west. A group of young men in shirtsleeves were helping terrified girls up the ladders. I recognized the law students from the park earlier—had it only been this morning? Just one building over, I had thought, but worlds away. But here they were bridging that gap. I felt a swelling in my chest at the thought, an unfamiliar pang that I dimly recognized as an emotion I hadn’t felt in a while: hope.

  The dark-eyed boy squeezed my hand and I looked into his face. The peachy down was streaked with soot and his eyes were wide and shining.

  “No matter how dark the shadows,” he said hoarsely, “there’s always good.” A flush of red swept his face and he looked away. He shouted toward the law students, “I’ve got three more for you, lads!”

  “That’ll make a round dozen you’ve brought us, boy-o, but we’ll take ’em all!” one of the young men shouted with a graceful bow. I recognized the dandy who had flirted with Tillie this morning. His pomaded hair stuck up in spikes and his once-white shirt was torn and streaked with soot. When he saw Tillie he grinned and bowed. “I told you I
’d defend your honor one day!” he said.

  Tillie made a gasping noise in her throat but didn’t move. “Now is not the time to be shy,” I said, pushing her forward.

  “I can’t climb that ladder with Etta!” she cried. “And I won’t go without her.”

  “We’re all going,” the dark-eyed boy said, gently prying Etta from Tillie’s arms. “Come on, doveling,” he cooed to Etta in a gentle voice. “It’ll be just like climbing a tree. Have you ever climbed a tree?”

  Etta shook her head, staring wide-eyed at the boy. “No?” he said. “Well, there’s a first time for everything. One hand on this rung, then . . .” He kept up a soothing patter as he coaxed Etta onto the ladder and kept his hands on her until the law student had her in his arms. Then he turned back to Tillie and me.

  “Who’s next?”

  “Tillie.”

  “Ava.”

  We said each other’s names at the same time.

  “Right then, Ava it is.” He put his hands on my hips, his fingers so long they nearly circled my waist. I felt the blood rush to my face as he lifted me bodily up onto the bottom rung of the ladder. I looked over my shoulder for one more glimpse of those dark eyes for courage—but he was looking up, into the maelstrom of crows . . .

  Which were diving down toward the ladder. They fell on us in a clawing mass, their weight bowing the thin wooden slats. One flew at the law student holding the top end and savagely clawed at his eyes. He let go of the ladder and I felt it sway under my feet.

  “Ava!”

  I heard Tillie’s voice and looked back to see her on the edge of the roof reaching for me . . . and someone emerging from the smoke behind her. It was the man in the Inverness cape. He was looking up at me, but he had his hand on Tillie’s back. His lips parted and a wisp of smoke curled out of his mouth. He smiled wider, revealing a gullet full of smoke and flames, and then he pushed Tillie off the roof.