“So why are you here, if you had such a good life?” I asked.
Sadie and Sarah looked at each other as if I was rather stupid. “When there’s a pogrom, they don’t care which Jews are rich and which are poor. They destroyed and burned our house. They threw my piano out of the upstairs window.” She turned away, biting her lip. “And what they did to my big sister was unmentionable. My mother was thanking God that she died. I was hiding under the straw in the henhouse, but we could hear her cries for help.” She pressed her lips together and turned her face away from us.
“They killed my father,” Sarah added. “They ran a bayonet through him while we watched. My mama brought us to America with money she had sewn into the hem of her skirt.”
I had had no idea that such things went on in the world. I looked at tall, elegant Sadie and frail little Sarah and was amazed how calmly they were telling me this. No wonder these girls put up with such bad conditions in America. At least they didn’t have to fear for their lives every day.
I should do something to help, I thought. I speak English. I could make the bosses listen. Then I reminded myself that this was not my struggle. I was only here as a spy. In a few short weeks, I’d be gone again.
Six
By the time I had been at the garment factory a week, I had almost come to believe that I really did work there and that this terrible life of drudgery was all I had to look forward to. My feet ached from working the treadle. My fingers were raw from handling the cloth. I prayed to get the assignment over quickly, but my sewing still wasn’t good enough to guarantee that another firm would hire me. In addition to this, the designs for the new spring collection wouldn’t be ready until the middle of November, at least three weeks away. The plan I had hatched with Max Mostel was as follows: I should work for him until I was up to speed, which would give me time to observe his workers. I would then apply at Lowenstein’s and start work there at least a week before Max Mostel finished his designs and passed them to the sample hands, so that I was familiar enough with the routine at the new factory to be able to know who was who and what was what. That meant about two more weeks at this hellhole.
I think it was the lack of air that got to me most. That and the lack of light. As the autumn light faded and one gray day followed another it became harder to see what we were sewing. The row of girls closest to the window had a slight advantage, but not much because the windows were small and badly needed washing. Those of us three rows back had to rely on anemic gas lamps. No wonder the girls bent low over their work and several of them were wearing glasses.
And of course for me the hardest thing of all was holding my tongue and not getting myself fired. Those girls were so submissive and browbeaten that it riled my fighting spirit. Every time one of them was docked money for going to the washroom too often, or coming in one minute late from lunch I was itching to jump up and tell that leering monster Sam what I thought of him. On the last day of my assignment I’d let him have it all right! I spent those long hours at the machine thinking up choice phrases to hurl at him when I made my grand exit.
By the end of a week I had received a pay packet containing four dollars and ninety cents. The other dollar and five cents had been docked for various sins—twice back late from lunch, once whispering, once dropping a collar on the floor and once getting up to stretch out my back. On the way home I thought gloomily that I hadn’t foreseen how hard this assignment would be. I couldn’t imagine any of those downtrodden females having the nerve to slip upstairs to the boss’s office and steal his designs from under his very nose, even if they could ever get past the fearsome foreman.
A whole week had gone by and I hadn’t even started my investigation. At this rate the new designs would come and go and I’d still be trying to get up to speed on collars! I should be sounding out the other girls with cleverly phrased questions. If only Paddy had still been around, he would have known what to ask. Why did he have to die before I had had a chance to learn from him? There was so much I still didn’t know. In fact every time I set out on a case, I felt like a lone traveler, floundering through a blizzard.
My only chance to talk to the other girls was at lunch, when some of them went to the little café across the street and got a bowl of stew or at least a coffee to go with their sandwich.
“So what are we actually making here?” I asked, like the bright new learner that I was. “I only get to see collars.”
“Right now it’s ladies dresses—latest fashion for the big stores,” someone said.
“Latest fashion, eh? That sounds very exciting,” I said. “So I’ll get some tips on what to wear if I see what comes out of this shop?”