Sam was still lounging against the window ledge with a lazy grin on his face. “Like I said, anyone who don’t like it can hit the road, anytime.”
“Fine,” Gina said. “We take you up on your kind offer.” She looked around the room. “You said it wasn’t a good time to strike now. How much worse does it have to get? Look at our hands. We all got chillblains from the cold. Come on, girls. What are we waiting for? Let’s show them.” Several girls had risen to their feet. “You can tell Mr. Mostel he better treat us nice if he wants his new designs in the stores anytime soon,” Gina said loudly, “cos we’re walking out. Let’s go, everyone.”
Some girls jumped up, cheering, others lagged, looking at each other with scared faces, but in the end they were all on their feet, nobody wanting to be the last out of the door. I had no alternative but to rise to my feet with the rest of the girls. As they all surged forward to grab their bags and scarves from the hooks along the back wall, Sam pushed past and stood in the doorway.
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” he bellowed in a threatening voice.
“You can’t stop us, Sam,” someone shouted back.
“You wanna bet?” He leaped through the doorway and slammed the door shut. We heard the sound of bolts being shot. “You ain’t going nowhere till I get the boss,” he called through the door. “You’re going to sit there and stew.”
Then we heard the sound of his heavy boots running down stairs.
Girls began to whimper.
“Oh, Mein Gott, we’re in trouble now.”
“He’s gonna get the boss.”
“He’s gonna bring the police.”
“We’ll all be fired.”
“My papa will throw me out if I lose my job!”
The wail rose in different languages, most of which I couldn’t understand, but understood anyway.
“They can’t keep us in here against our will,” Sadie said, pushing through the crush of girls at the door. “It’s against the law. Let’s see if we can break down that door.”
“You heard the bolts. We can’t break through bolts,” someone said.
A great mass of girls pressed around the door.
“I want to get out. I hate being locked in,” one little girl screamed from the middle of the crowd. She forced her way to the door and pounded on it. “Let me out! Let me out!”
“They locked her in jail when she was a kid in Russia, then they shot her parents,” someone explained. “No wonder she’s scared.”
“Henny, calm down.” Gina grabbed at her, but Henny fought her off like a wild thing.
“Leave me be. I have to get out—”
There was a crash and the oil stove toppled to the floor. With a whoosh flame raced along the spilled oil, eating up the lint and scraps of fabric in its path. Panicked girls tried to get away, screaming as the flames reached them. A skirt blazed up and screams rose with it. Other girls batted out the flames with their shawls.
“Somebody get water,” someone was shouting and girls were already racing for the washroom. I was one of them, but there was nothing in there in which to carry water, except for an old tin mug.
Someone filled it and raced away in a futile attempt to put out the flames with four ounces of water.
“Soak some cloth,” I shouted. “We can lay that on the flames to beat them down.”
We grabbed at the nearest bolt and tried to tear it, then slopped water over the whole thing, staggering out with it between us, like a battering ram.
But it was too late. Fueled by the debris on the floor the flames had caught at the first tables and the machine oil made them leap higher and fiercer. The whole area around the door was now on fire. Black smoke billowed out and the acrid smell drove us back, coughing and retching. The girls were huddled together like a flock of sheep, herded together and moving this way and that as the flames drove them.
“Maybe it will burn down the door and someone can rush through the flames to get help,” a voice suggested, but I couldn’t imagine anyone volunteering to rush through those flames that now licked ceiling-high. Wooden rafters were blazing and crackling like a bonfire.
“They’ll come up from downstairs to rescue us,” I heard someone saying.
“Perhaps they won’t even know until it’s too late,” I said. “Fires don’t spread downward. Let’s see how we can get out of here.”
We ran across to the windows and tried to get them open, but the frames were buckled and they wouldn’t budge. Besides, they only led to a daunting five-story drop.
“Come on, up to Mostel’s office,” I shouted. The girls nearest me surged forward, fighting to be first up the stairs.
“Don’t panic. Don’t push!” I yelled over the screams and shouts. “We don’t want anyone getting trampled.”
Stinging, blinding smoke accompanied us up the stairs. With eyes streaming and smarting we burst into the office. There was one small window to one side. We opened it, but again it was useless—a sheer drop into the well between buildings.