Threads and Flames (19 page)

After that, Raisa worked in silence and as far from the other two girls as the narrow shop allowed. She focused all her thoughts on doing a good job, the way Glukel had taught her. Every day, Madame counted the garments Raisa finished and wrote the number down twice, once in her own notebook and once on a piece of pasteboard for Raisa to keep.

“Ah, that's good!” Mrs. Kamensky said when Raisa reported this at home. “It means she's going to keep an honest tally of your work so that there'll be no question of cheating you on payday. Frankly, I'm surprised.”

“Why, Mama?” Gavrel teased. “Because there's an honest employer out there who's not Jewish?”

“Don't be silly,” his mother said with an indignant sniff. “There are plenty of Jewish bosses out there who are worse thieves than any of the goyim!”

At the end of Raisa's first week of work, Madame called the girls up to her desk one by one, asked to see their tally cards, made a big show out of comparing the numbers on the cards with the numbers in her notebook, and handed over their pay. Raisa's turn came last, after the other two left the shop. It had not been an easy week. Aside from the hateful incident with the draper, she had been the object of Madame's almost daily screaming fits over mistakes she'd supposedly made. What made the attacks worse was that, try as she might, Raisa could not see what Madame was complaining about. The stitches that were “too loose, too sloppy!” were identical to other stitches that Madame very grudgingly conceded were “well done, much better.”

Madame took coins from a tin box and slid them across the table to Raisa. “Your pay. Tomorrow is Sunday, so the shop will be closed. Come in an hour early on Monday, sweep and mop the floors.” She closed the tin box, clipped a small padlock through the hasp, and rose to go.

Raisa counted her pay, then counted it a second time, perplexed. “Excuse me, Madame,” she said. “There's been a mistake. This isn't enough. See?” She pointed to the amount written on her tally card, then at the pile of coins.

Madame spread her hands. “No understand,” she said with a false smile.

“But you were supposed to give me
this
much,” Raisa insisted, tapping the card. “Look, you wrote these numbers yourself!”

“No understand,” Madame repeated. “Closing time. You go.” It was amazing how conveniently her command of Polish had deserted her.

Raisa stood her ground. Her eyes smarted from day after day of sewing tiny stitches in bad light. Her shoulders ached from working long hours in a cramped space. She wasn't going to go home with less than her fair pay.

“Madame, if you'll only look at the notebook and my card one more time, you'll see that you owe me—”

“Nothing!”
The woman's eyes flashed fire. Her fluent Polish came back as magically as it had slipped away before. A flood of vicious abuse rolled from her tongue. “I should have known better than to hire one of
you.
Always grubbing, grubbing, grubbing for the last penny! Stinking Jew, you wouldn't know the meaning of gratitude unless someone beat it into your bones! How dare you suggest that I don't pay my workers
exactly
what I owe them? I have lived in this country for twenty years, I have run this shop for ten, and
you
want to correct
me
? I paid you every cent you earned
after
I deducted everything you owed me.”

“What could I possibly owe you?” Raisa felt as if she had tumbled into a madman's dream.

“Are you sly or stupid? First there were all the needles you broke.” Madame started counting off Raisa's “expenses” on her fingers. “Then there was all the thread you used, including all the bits you snipped off and wasted. And what about the cost of having your scissors sharpened? And the sewing lessons—”

“What lessons?” Raisa cried. Her head spun.
All those times she screamed at me, criticizing my work for faults that weren't there—merciful God, is
that
what she means by “sewing lessons”?
“You hired me because I know how to sew!”

“I hired you because I am good-hearted,” the woman said stiffly. “But I am not a fool. If you don't like it here, there's the door. Go.”

Raisa closed her eyes.
I can't go,
she thought.
I can't, and she knows it.
Mrs. Kamensky's words made a melancholy echo in her mind:
Choices are for the rich.

“I'm sorry, Madame,” she said, bowing her head in surrender. “I—I was wrong. I'm just a stupid greenhorn. I don't know any better. You're very—very kind to be so patient with me.” When she raised her eyes, she saw the cruelly gloating grin on the Ukrainian woman's face. Madame was relishing her triumph.

“Perhaps you are not so stupid as all that, girl,” she said. “Be here
two
hours early on Monday. I think that next week, I will start to give you lessons about how to run the sewing machine.”

 

 

Four weeks after her arrival in America, Raisa trudged home through the steaming summer streets, her eyelids like lead. Every bone in her body cried out for rest. Her work in Madame's shop was eating her up alive. At night she ate her dinner in a trance and went to bed even before Brina did.

At least I know Brina's happy,
Raisa thought as she threaded her way between the people sitting on the stone steps outside the tenement. The hot summer weather sent everyone outdoors, famished for a breath of fresh air.
Fruma and Mrs. Kamensky take such good care of her, and they love doing it!
She sighed.
Brina is fine, but what's happened to the rest of my life? I can't learn like I promised Glukel, and what about searching for my sister? Where's the time for that?
A pang of guilt struck hard. She could almost hear Henda calling out to her,
Raisa! Raisa, where are you?

She dragged her feet up the four flights of stairs to the Kamenskys' apartment. Everyone was already sitting down to dinner. Brina gave a happy shout when she saw Raisa and ran to hug her. “Guess what?” she demanded, pulling Raisa to the table. “Today I read a
whole letter
from the newspaper! I did it all by myself and I only made one mistake, didn't I, Tante Lipke?” She looked to Mrs. Kamensky for confirmation.

“Brina, you speak with respect to Mrs. Kamensky,” Raisa corrected the child automatically.

“Please, she speaks with enough respect,” Mrs. Kamensky said. “I told her she should call me her
tante.
I have no sisters or brothers, so how else can I be an auntie?”

Brina chattered on about her accomplishment. Raisa only half heard her. The heat inside the tenement was oppressive, even with the two windows wide open. Mrs. Kamensky had served her family a cold dinner of pot cheese, bread and butter, chilled borscht, and pickled cucumber salad to cheat the humidity, but there was nothing she could do to thwart the smells of rotting garbage and horse manure wafting up from the street. Fruma took five pages of an old copy of the
Forward,
pleated them tightly, and made fans for the grown-ups. Raisa was too drained to do more than flutter hers limply six or seven times before letting it drop into her lap.

“Allow me, miss.” With a gallant bow, Gavrel used his own fan to send a faint breeze in Raisa's direction.

“You don't have to do that.” Her protest sounded as weak as she felt, but his kindness made her feel human again.

“Doesn't it make you feel better? I don't mind, you know.” He waved the fan harder. “And tonight, Papa and I are going to move a couple of mattresses out onto the fire escape so that we can enjoy the evening breezes.”

“We can't sleep out there!” Raisa cried. “Brina could fall.”

“How? Through the bars?” Gavrel winked at the little girl. “Are you
that
skinny, Brina? Let me see.” He turned the paper fan on her and waved it even more vigorously. “Aha! Just as I suspected: she
is
too skinny. She's blowing away!”

“I am not!” Brina snatched the pleated newspaper from Gavrel and flapped it at him. “You're the skinny one! You're the one who's blowing away!”

Mr. Kamensky turned to his wife. “Lipke, do you know how we'll be able to tell when the Messiah's about to come? When I get to sit down and eat one dinner in peace and quiet at this table,
that's
how we'll know.” He picked up that day's edition of the
Forward
and retreated to his paper fortress.

“When I get to sit down and eat one dinner without you whining about nothing,” his wife replied. “Come, Brina, darling. Help me clear the table for dessert.”

Brina was delighted to carry the dinner dishes to the sink. Fruma, too, pitched in, but when Raisa tried to rise and help, Gavrel said, “Not tonight, Raisa. Not unless you want to break every dish you touch, and you know how much Mama would like
that.
”

“What are you talking about? I won't break anything.”

“Not on purpose. The plates will simply slip through your fingers.”

“That's ridiculous!” Raisa reached for the bowl holding the leftover pot cheese.

“I agree.” Fruma snatched the bowl away before Raisa could touch it. “Gavrel
is
being ridiculous. You wouldn't drop a thing, but Mama's already got enough helping hands here. Listen, maybe you could do
me
a favor? Brina might be all right spending the night on the fire escape, but I've never liked it. I'd rather sleep on the roof. The only problem is, a lot of other people in this building get the same idea and then it's so crowded up there, you might as well try sleeping in the middle of Orchard Street. So before I put anyone to the trouble of moving my mattress up two flights of stairs, would you mind going up there and seeing if there's room for it?”

“I'd be happy to,” Raisa said. “And if it's nice, Brina and I will join you.” She started for the front door.

“Not so fast!” Gavrel spoke up. “I'm the one who'll be hauling the mattresses. I'm coming with you.”

It actually took climbing three flights to reach the tenement roof from the Kamenskys' apartment. A narrow set of iron steps behind a door on the sixth floor brought Raisa and Gavrel out under the stars. The rooftop was covered with long planks of wood haunted by the smoky smell of tar. A few families had laid out bedding on the boards already, but there was still plenty of space. A refreshing breeze wafted over Raisa's cheeks, carrying a hint of the sea. She sighed happily.

“I'm going to like sleeping up here. I hope you'll let me help you and your father move the mattresses. The one Brina and I use weighs next to nothing. I think I could carry it myself. Shall we go back downstairs and tell . . . ?”

The words faded from her lips. She became aware that Gavrel was looking at her intently. The full moon above the New York rooftops provided more than enough light for her to see the expression on his face. For the first time since they'd met, she couldn't see a single glimmer of mirth in his eyes. The Gavrel she knew was always joking, always trying to make others laugh. It was unnerving to see him looking so serious.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

“You're tired, Raisa, that's what's the matter.”

“Of course I'm tired,” she said. “I just finished a week's work.”

“Your boss crams two weeks' work into one, dumps it into your lap, and pays you for half. We have to get you out of that sweatshop.”

“Out of there and into where? Gavrel, I have to have a job, and they're not exactly dropping out of the trees. If I don't get paid, Brina and I can't stay, and she's so happy here! If I lose this job, I might never get another, and then—”

“Raisa,
look
at me.” He grabbed her shoulders. Someone from one of the family groups already camped out on the rooftop snickered. Raisa felt her face redden with the embarrassment of being a public spectacle, but if Gavrel heard, too, he ignored it or didn't care. “You can't let this job—any job—smother you. The longer you let it grind you into dust, the harder it's going to be to stand up and say, ‘No! Enough! I don't deserve to be treated this way. I'm worth
more.
'”

A bitter smile twisted Raisa's mouth. “I don't think Madame is going to give me a raise so fast.”

Gavrel's face turned grim. “What you're worth has nothing to do with what you're paid by that slave driver
Madame
or anyone else. Why are you the only one who can't see that?”

“Because it doesn't
matter.
” Raisa slapped Gavrel's hands away. “What counts is being able to pay the rent and scrape together enough money to provide for Brina. I'm all she has! If I lose my job at the dress shop, how will what I'm
worth
help support her? Will it give her a bed to sleep in and a roof over her head? Will it put food in her mouth and shoes on her feet?”

“Will it find your sister?” Gavrel asked the question in a barely audible murmur, but it exploded in Raisa's ears with the force of a thunderclap. She stared at him, stunned and heartsick. His stern expression melted into a look of compassion. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause you pain. Papa's right; I'm only smart with books, not people. I only wanted to say that—well, that this job of yours is draining you so dry that you've got no strength left for anything else in your life. Didn't you tell Fruma that you wanted to learn English, to help you ask more people about where Henda might be? I know you told
me
you wanted to keep going back to the Protective and Benevolent Association, just in case someone there has news for you. And what about your plan to find some of the girls from her old job at American Pride and ask them if—”