Everyone was dressed in dingy colors. Marie felt strange in her brightly colored dress. Instead of making her feel better about herself, it made her feel ashamed. She did not know why. All the workers stopped speaking when they saw her. She was just a little girl, but they were intimidated by her. Her father took her into the foreman’s office. The foreman was smoking a cigar while a woman with pencils sticking in all directions from her tight hair bun seemed to be doing all the work. The secretary looked up for a brief moment from her stack of papers and smiled at Marie, then dove back to work. The foreman explained what was needed of them that day.
The tops of the flour bags needed to be stitched together. It was generally young girls like the one Marie had seen who were given this task. When they finished, they used a mechanical blade to cut the cord as close to the bag as possible. Sometimes a girl would hold her cord up to the blade while it was already coming down. And off would come two or three of her fingers, or only one if they were lucky. The girl would be standing there with fingers one moment and the next they were gone, as though by magic. She would start looking around her for her fingers as though she had dropped something.
Sometimes others noticed the girls’ fingers were missing before they did themselves.
There was a young girl who had recently lost three fingers to a machine. The broadsides and newspapers were giving Louis a difficult time about accidents and mutilations in his factory. The readers of the Squalid Mile loved these types of stories. They loved that their daily, unspeakable horrors were making the news.
Whenever a young girl fell victim to a machine, it caused a much greater uproar in the newspapers. What fate lay in store for a mutilated girl? Would anyone marry her? There had been much ado about this latest young girl who had lost her fingers. The girl was beautiful, inasmuch as factory girls could be considered beautiful. Did the missing fingers condemn her to spinsterhood? How could you marry without a wedding finger?
Louis had arranged to meet her in the center of the factory floor. All the machines were closed down. All the workers gathered on the platforms and floors. They leaned over the railings to see Louis and the girl, as though they were spectators at a play, which, in a way, they were.
The girl was hardly recognizable to the other workers when she stepped out. She was wearing a dark-blue velvet coat and a pretty matching hat of the same material. These had obviously been purchased for the occasion. There was no way in the world any factory girl could afford these things.
The other little girls clenched their hands into fists when they saw her. They stuck them in their armpits or pockets. They did this after one of their own lost a finger. They felt their own fingers were somehow more precarious and would fall off. They might reach down to pick up an object and their fingers would stick to it like magnets.
Louis Antoine shook the girl’s mutilated hand and pinned a medal on her coat. He handed her an envelope filled with cash. When she took it in her hand, her heels rocked back and forth slightly. She was excited by having an envelope of money even without counting how much was in there, and knowing full well her parents would snatch it the split second they had the opportunity.
“This will make sure you have a much-needed rest. And all your family will have a most enjoyable Christmas. There’s enough in that envelope to heat your whole house and provide toys for all the children in your family. I bet there’s something special you’ve always wanted. And now it shall be yours. And we are very much looking forward to your return.”
Louis bent down and kissed her on the cheek. The girl was happy with her gift. Everyone at the factory was content with the scene. There was nothing in the world they could do about that girl’s fingers.
But then Louis raised up his arms. “We’ve got one more surprise,” he exclaimed. Suddenly it was his daughter, Marie, who walked to the center of the factory floor. She was leading an enormous turkey on a long black satin leash. The girl laughed and clapped her hands, as did everyone in the factory. How delightful it always was when an animal came onstage. There was general chatter of approval throughout the factory. The turkey had the effect of making everyone come alive and become more themselves and more animated.
The foreman, realizing the factory was getting out of control, and that everyone was behaving as though it were Saturday night, announced it was time to get back to work and pressed the buzzer that indicated machines would begin running in five minutes. Everyone went back to their stations, and the injured girl was left in the center of the floor, still minus three fingers but in possession of a turkey. For a moment she stood there, confused about where to go. Then she turned and walked off with the turkey following her.
* * *
Mary Robespierre was watching this whole scene from the factory floor. As soon as she saw Marie, she knew why Louis had had such trouble looking at her when he came to visit. She and Louis’s daughter looked shockingly alike. The woman standing next to her leaned over and said, “Elle te ressemble, non?”
“I don’t see it,” Mary answered.
Then the bell rang and they all had to go back to work, the turkey having disappeared like a dream. They were no longer able to even think about that turkey.
* * *
Mary Robespierre didn’t feel like herself when she worked at the factory. She felt dehumanized. She felt like an automaton. The machines were more effective and productive than she was. The machines never missed a beat. They were steady. They were strong. They were never tired. They never daydreamed.
Anyone who had worked as a child at a factory had the same sort of experience. They were trained to keep moving their whole lives. They had to be faster, faster, faster. They did not have a second that was not bought. Were they to stop for a second and contemplate what existed before the universe began, or whether the pigeon they always saw outside their window had a personal vendetta against them, or whether their cat actually loved them, the whole assembly line would fall apart, and the machines would punish them in the most brutal way.
The Industrial Revolution had turned people into cogs. Their function was to keep the machines up and running. She was conceived and she was a tiny cog in her mother’s belly. All the pregnant women in the city were manufacturing indispensable parts to the machine. The machines were living, breathing things. You could hear them coughing and sputtering through the day. They breathed heavily. As you passed by one of them you could feel their heart beating under your feet.
Mary had to take all the thoughts she had come to the factory with, remove them from her head, and put them in the small locker at the front where she put her coat and boots. As soon as she was done with work, she would run to her locker, wrap her scarf around her neck, and tuck her thoughts back in her head in order to think them.
* * *
Mary’s heart had dropped when she saw Marie. At that moment, she had the answers to a whole bevy of questions she had never asked before. What she would look like in expensive clothes: wonderful. How she would feel if she had been spoiled growing up: happy. How she would act were she given a platform from which to speak to the masses: confident. How people would look at her if she were in Marie’s position: with respect.
* * *