Leah's Journey

by Gloria Goldreich

  Bonnie Eckstein raised her hand.

  “If they arrest you, you get locked up in a jail. You can’t get home?”

  “That’s what will happen,” Eli said gently. “But not for long, Bonnie, maybe a few hours or just overnight.”

  Leah’s heart sank. She remembered the strike at the Gay Paris Blouse Company only the year before. That picket line, too, had been an orderly one. The girls in their long dark skirts and neat white blouses had marched quietly around the building, some of them wearing their best hats as though they were on a festive outing, not fighting a weary battle for survival. Suddenly the police had arrived and made a mass arrest. The union lawyer had angrily demanded to know the grounds for the arrest and the police officers, clutching the arms of the young women and shoving them into wagons, had leered and answered, “Prostitution. Ain’t they walking the street?” There had been a burst of laughter from the crowd. Leah knew that some of those girls had spent the night in filthy cells which they shared with criminals and prostitutes. She would talk to Bonnie before Monday, she decided. She would talk to all her girls. They must be prepared.

  “Are there any other questions?” Eli asked.

  There were none and the meeting slowly broke up into small groups. There was quiet talk and laughter as they lingered on, unwilling to relinquish the sense of togetherness that had grown between them during the long weeks of preparation and equally unwilling to confront their individual doubts and unease about the week to come. Leah passed around bowls of fruits and nuts and glasses of cold lemonade. The small gathering took on the ambience of a party. They talked louder and laughed with nervous exhilaration. Someone put on the radio and a few couples danced to the slow mood music until the tenant downstairs banged irately on a water pipe and the baronic tones of the news announcer replaced the lazy melodies. President Hoover was predicting a full economic recovery. Elections had been held in Germany and the new National Socialist Party had won 107 seats in the Reichstag. The Duke of Windsor continued his alliance with Mrs. Simpson despite the Queen’s disapproval. The news bored them and they turned the dial and finally found more dance music, but the mood was broken. It was late and people began leaving, saying good-bye with unusual affection considering that they would all see each other at work the next morning.

  “How is your brother, Bonnie?” Leah asked as she walked the girl to the door.

  “He’s better but he’s still in the hospital. The doctors think that with a brace he’ll be able to walk. That’s what they think.” Bonnie’s eyes filled but she fought back the tears and hurried down the steps.

  Eli and Leah remained alone in the apartment. Like a married couple skilled at coordinating small domestic tasks, they straightened the room and in the kitchen she washed the soiled glasses and he dried them. They did not talk but moved in easy rhythm as though they had done this many times before.

  “All right. This is finished,” he said and placing the towel on the sink, he took her in his arms.

  “Not here,” she cried wildly, stiffening suddenly.

  “Why not here?” he asked in a harsh voice she did not recognize, and shrugged in defeat when she did not answer.

  “Let us go to my place then, Leah. But you know, we cannot keep on like this. Soon we must talk about everything. Make decisions. This must be settled.”

  “Yes,” she agreed helplessly and looked around the familiar room.

  A small crayon drawing of Rebecca’s hung on a kitchen cabinet. The child had done it as a first-grade exercise. “My Family” the printed block letters read and beneath there were stick figures of Leah and David, Aaron and Rebecca. The children’s hands touched but the faces of the father and mother, drawn in magenta wax, were turned from each other, as though the child had guessed an uneasy secret.

  “Let us go, Eli. Let us hurry,” she said, with sudden urgency.

  They did not go up to the roof that night, to look at the stars, but went at once to his room, where they clutched each other with a fierceness they could not control, scarring each other’s flesh with hands and teeth, and waking from the light sleep that finally came upon them to cling to each other again. Once, in that thick darkness, she thought she saw a tear glisten in his eye but when she touched his cheek with her lips she felt only the rough dryness of his skin and the vague smell of the menthol lotion that was his one small vanity.

  7

  THEY AWOKE TOO EARLY the next morning, but neither Eli nor Leah wanted to return to sleep. They dressed hurriedly in the half-light and Leah felt a curious relief at leaving the building before its women had assembled on the stoop. The excitement of the previous evening had left them at once exhausted and keyed up, and when they stopped for breakfast at the Garden Cafeteria on East Broadway, they ate in silence at a table near the huge windows that overlooked the busy street. Working men and women, their lunches wrapped in oil-stained brown paper or packets of newspaper wrapped in string, hurried past them. Peddlers with bolts of merchandise strapped to their backs lumbered down the street. Groups of rabbinical students, their black caftans sweeping after them, wafted down the street, their earlocks still damp from their morning prayers and ablutions.

  “Where are they all running to?” Eli mused, dipping his hard roll into the glass of coffee which was almost white with milk and sugar.

  “You should have an egg,” she said.

  “For lunch I’ll have an egg,” he answered, smiling as his thick dark eyebrows met.

  She blushed, remembering that as they dressed that morning she had urged him to put on a lighter shirt and opened the window so that the room would be properly aired. She was becoming too proprietary, too wifely, worrying over this strong man whose ringing voice had the power to move so many to action and whose strong body excited her so. She was aroused by Eli’s small secrets and weaknesses, the holes in his socks, the frayed cloth of his collars, the way he patted his cheeks with menthol lotion, slapping them sharply for color, and his habit of combing a streak of gray beneath a cluster of dark hair. His vanity amused her and made him even more desirable.

  They reached Rosenblatts before opening time, but went at once to their work stations. Eli had emphasized the fact that all work must either be on schedule or ahead of schedule when the committee went in to negotiate on Monday.

  “We must bargain from a position of strength and certainty,” he had said. “Rosenblatt knows the kind of work we’re capable of and he’s not going to risk losing us. So everyone must be absolutely on schedule.”

  Leah planned to leave early because she knew there would be long lines waiting for the buses to the mountains and she was anxious to see the children. She worked quickly to make up for the time she would lose in the afternoon. Her girls drifted in and took their places at their machines. They rolled up their sleeves and told each other that the day seemed a bit cooler than the day before. Perhaps the heat spell was breaking after all and Monday would finally be cool. They glanced at each other nervously as they mentioned Monday because all of them knew what would happen then, although no one mentioned the possibility of the strike. There was a flurry of talk about a folk dance that night at the Cooper Union and an altercation when one of the Orthodox girls asked how they could think of folk dancing on the eve of the Sabbath.

  “Come instead to our forum at the Young Israel,” she urged. “We have a speaker just returned from Palestine.”

  Leah thought of her brother Moshe and Henia, his wife. It had been months since she had heard from them. A telegram had arrived just after the Arab riots assuring them of the family’s safety, and then months of silence.

  “Arab violence,” David had said bitterly. “It was a pogrom called by a new name.”

  If they struck Rosenblatts and there was violence during the strike, would David label that too a pogrom? Leah wondered. A pogrom against the poor and defenseless. Jews would not be the only victims of the hate, ignorance, and avarice that would be unleashed against the workers. Reading Eli’s pamphlets had taught h
er that.

  The morning wore on and the girls talked less and concentrated on their work. The machines hummed rhythmically and from the pressing room they heard the repeated slamming of the hot irons. As each girl brought her finished pile of work up to Leah for inspection, Leah talked quietly to them about the implications of the strike.

  “Carry very little money,” she told them. “And bring a toothbrush in case there is an arrest. It may happen.”

  Bonnie Eckstein, in a new pink dress fashioned in a dressmaking class at the settlement house, smiled shyly when she came up with her work. She had thought of a stitch which would shorten the time required for embroidery finishing and she blushed when Leah complimented her.

  “You’re not worried about the strike?” Leah asked quietly.

  “Not now,” Bonnie replied. “I feel better knowing what might happen. But it’s very hot in here. Can I open a window?”

  “You can try,” Leah said wryly and the girl smiled.

  The first two windows Bonnie tried remained stubbornly closed, but she was able to force the third one open and the girls sighed with relief as a small breeze stirred the stagnant air. Leah got up then and tried the other windows, but they would not open and she turned back to her drawing board where she had begun a sketch for a shirtwaist that could be worn with slacks. If Eleanor Greenstein was appearing in public in pants, soon other women would and there would be a demand for tops that could be worn with slacks.

  She worked steadily and looked up with annoyance at a sudden outburst of chatter. But that vague annoyance froze into a fear that sucked her breath away when she saw what was happening. Her pencil still poised in air, Leah watched a small stream of flame glide across the floor. The line of fire sliced the room into two halves and continued to roll on, consuming the small hills of scrap fabric that littered the floor and hungrily pressing forward. Blue sparks danced explosively upward as the fire reached a pool of machine oil and the stream of flame soared into a great fiery wave that threatened to engulf them. A girl screamed, shredding the air with her terror. Others joined her, one very young girl wailing softly like a small child who fears being heard.

  The sudden crackling burst of fire jolted Leah. She jumped from her seat, dashed across the room, and flung the door open.

  Smoke mushroomed in at them from the blocked hallway and they heard the pounding of feet and strangled shrieks of fear. Somewhere in the building a bell was ringing with harsh insistence; sounds of smashing glass and splintering wood could be heard. Men and women rushed down the stairwell but when they reached the next landing they began to scream.

  “The door is locked. Lieber Gott, the door is locked!”

  Above them a mountain of fire loomed and they rushed back, pouring into Leah’s workroom where the flames were already breaking their bounds, raging strips of fire sucking at the hems of the girls’ dresses, licking at the wood of the doors, subsiding mildly against the thrusts from the huge bolts of fabric with which the desperate girls were beating at them and rising again with renewed rage and fury.

  “The windows,” Leah shouted and headed to the one opened by Bonnie only minutes before. She stood on a chair and wrested it further up as the girls clustered about her, screaming and crying. It was three stories down to the courtyard where the ailanthus tree stood, its glossy leaves impervious to the blazing fires above it. Crowds were gathering in the courtyard and the bystanders gestured wildly to the trapped girls.

  “Jump, goddamn it!” a man shouted and Leah saw that workers from the neighboring factories were dashing over with bolts of cloth, mattresses, layers of goods, anything that could be spread on the hard ground.

  Lina Goldstein, the little orthodox girl, the smallest and lightest of them, was the first to leap from the window with Leah lifting her to the edge and urging her forward. Then others scrambled forward, fighting now for the chance of escape. From the floors above the screams of fear had turned into wails of agony.

  “People are burning up,” a girl screamed. “Human beings are on fire here.”

  The girl’s own skirt was trimmed with a ruffle of flame and sparks glittered in her hair. Leah grabbed a bolt of cloth and wrapped it around her, beating out the scraps of fire with her hands. The girl had fainted and Bonnie Eckstein moved forward to help Leah. The two of them shoved the mummied form from the window and watched it land in the courtyard below.

  The girls moved quickly now. One after the other they scrambled up to the ledge and hurtled to the ground, one girl landing on another as the ambulances wailed and the crowd below moaned in anguish and disbelief, shouting names up to the prisoners of the flames.

  “Sadie Greenberg—is my Sadie there?” a man called.

  “Papa! I’m all right, Papa.” Tears streamed down the girl’s cheeks and her elbow was streaked with blood. Bonnie helped support her and Leah bent to heave her up to the ledge and down to the courtyard. The girl’s blood streaked the bodice of Bonnie’s pink dress and her skirt was blackened. Crazily, Leah leaned forward and wiped the girl’s cheek, wet with sweat and tears.

  “Let me through, let me through!” Eli burst into the room, rocketing his way through the ranks of screaming girls. He picked up a chair and shattered a window, hacking at the strips of wood that blocked its access. Behind him, his face and hands black as coal, Salvatore Visconti worked with desperate speed. He picked up one girl and wrapped her, as Leah had done, in a bolt of cloth that shielded her from the flames. He passed the girl to Eli who tossed her swiftly down to the courtyard where firemen had at last spread a net so that the falling bodies were caught before they hit the ground.

  “Eli, take Bonnie. Save her!” Leah shouted.

  Bonnie, who had been working steadily beside her, had suddenly slumped to the floor and Leah felt her own lungs struggle for air as they were blocked by the invasion of smoke that had seeped in, rushing past the cloth she had pressed over her mouth.

  Salvatore seized the barely conscious girl and passed her, unprotesting, to Eli. With relief, Leah saw her land in the net. New cries rose from the courtyard below. Crowds of children searching for their parents added their small shrill voices to the din.

  “Mama. Mama. Please come out of the fire. Please don’t burn up,” a small boy in knickers shouted, but there was no answering call and the girl’s voice added a plea. “Come home, Mama. Please come home. We’ll be good.”

  Behind them the room swirled with flames that were leaping steadily toward the window. There was very little time left and the remaining girls screamed and clawed at each other in their efforts to escape. A seamstress dashed over to the remaining window which remained sealed closed, climbed up, and hurled herself through the glass. The jagged shards ripped her body and the outline of her form in the glass was etched with her blood. Another followed after her, muttering a “Hail Mary” as she hoisted herself up, leaving ribbons of skin dangling from the glass. A third girl tried to follow but her arm caught on the shattered fragments of pane. She broke loose, thrusting herself forward, and left a bloody hunk of flesh clinging to the window frame.

  The girl behind her sank into a faint and fell backward into the flames. Leah ran to pull her out and felt the fire licking at her hands; Salvatore Visconti threw himself across the girl’s burning body and beat out the flames, his body furiously rising and falling, his great shoulders heaving with sobs. Only when he lifted the slight black-haired girl in his arms did Leah realize it was his own daughter, tiny Philomena Visconti, who worked as a trimmer on the floor above. Eli took the girl from him and hurled her into the waiting net.

  “She’s all right, Salvatore,” he shouted.

  Salvatore nodded wordlessly, his face black with soot except for the neat lines etched by the tears of fear.

  There was a sudden crash behind them and Leah wheeled around and saw the room’s central beam collapse, charred to a length of cinders that crumbled and was consumed by the leaping flames.

  “Leah! Now! You must get out now!” Eli shouted.


  “But what about you and Salvatore?”

  “Right after you. I promise. We’ll come right after you.”

  The flames were rushing toward them now, lashing tongues of scarlet and gold, licking their way furiously forward. They were sandwiched into a narrow strip of floor. From the courtyard below the frenzied crowd shouted questions and directions up at them.

  “How many are you?”

  “Is my mother, Channa Schiff, there? Channa Schiff!”

  “Jump, damn it! The building will go any second. Jump now!”

  Eli leapt to the windowsill and Salvatore lifted Leah up beside him. Poised on the parapet, they clung to each other for the briefest of moments, veiled in a cloud of gray-black smoke. Eli’s hair was dusted gray with clots of ash and his face was black with soot, matted over with sweat. But his green eyes were clear and bright and even against the acrid odor of the burning building and the scorching flesh, she smelled the fragrance of the menthol on his skin. He couched her face in his large hands and kissed her on the lips. Her fingers gripped his shoulders, but firmly he pried them loose and gently he thrust her forward.

  A rush of air engulfed her, seemed to support her falling body. As she fell into the waiting net, all consciousness deserted her. Weightless and uncaring, she rested on the ground below, shaded by the lacy leaves of the ailanthus tree.

  Within seconds the last supporting beam gave way, falling across the window and blocking it. The screaming voices of two women, trapped behind the curtain of dancing flames, were heard for a few minutes more and when the debris of the holocaust was cleared the bodies of Salvatore Visconti and Eli Feinstein were found, faces down, groping backward to the trapped women. Eli’s fingers almost grasped the outstretched hand of a tiny blonde needleworker, who was buried two days later in a child’s grave.