Threads and Flames (36 page)

“My dearest,” Mr. Kamensky ventured. “My precious wife, my sweet bride, you have been . . . asleep for longer than you know.” As gently as he could, he told her how she had spent the previous eight days.

“Ah.” Mrs. Kamensky blew out a short breath. “I see. And since then—any news?”

“If you mean bad news about Gavrel—” Mr. Kamensky began.

“Bite your tongue! Don't tempt the wrong thing!” Mrs. Kamensky's old vigor surged back as she leaped to protect those she loved from the evil eye. “I
know
there's no
bad
news come about my boy. If he were gone, God forbid, do you think I wouldn't see it in your faces? Especially
yours
?” She whirled on Raisa.

“Mrs. Kamensky, I—”

Her landlady silenced her with a curt wave of her hand. “Just because I chose to say nothing doesn't mean I couldn't see how it was between you two. You don't need to deny or defend what you've done, Raisa. I'm not accusing you of any crime.”

Raisa bowed her head. “But I am. Gavrel . . . He went to work that day because—because—”

“To earn more money,” Mrs. Kamensky said without emotion. “Just as any responsible young man would do who wanted to take a bride. Did you
tell
him to do it?” Raisa shook her head. “Could you have
stopped
him?”

“I didn't even know he was going until . . . after.” Tears dropped into Raisa's lap.

“Then enough. If you blame yourself for something that's not your fault, you'll eat yourself up alive. You can't afford to do that. You have no job and now, with Gavrel—
missing
—we need your rent money more than ever. Besides, do you believe Brina can live on air?”

“Tomorrow,” Raisa said. “I'll look for work tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow,” Mr. Kamensky said in a voice as hushed as if he stood beside a deathbed. “Nothing tomorrow.”

“And why not?” his wife wanted to know.

“Tomorrow is the day they give burial to the last ones,” he replied. “The ones nobody could identify or claim.”

Fruma fetched her purse and took out a leaflet printed in Yiddish, English, and Italian calling for all the workers of the city to join together to mourn the seven unknown souls from among the ranks of the 146 dead. “I won't be going to work tomorrow,” she declared. “I know we need my pay, but—forgive me, Mama—I'm going to march with them.”

Mrs. Kamensky embraced her daughter. “I would never forgive you if you made any other choice.”

“I'm going, too,” Raisa said. “That is, if you don't need me here.”

“Go with my blessing,” Mrs. Kamensky replied, sitting down again. “I'll take care of Brina.”

“But I want to go, too!” Brina exclaimed.

Fruma stroked the child's curls. “You can't, dearest. There'll be too many people. It won't be safe.”

“Wouldn't you rather stay home with me, my pretty one? You can help me bake something good to eat.” Mrs. Kamensky reached for the child, but Brina shrank away from her, huddling against Raisa.

“I'm sorry,” Raisa said softly, wanting the power to remove the look of pained surprise from Mrs. Kamensky's face. “She was—she was scared to see you so sick for so many days.”

“Ah.” Mrs. Kamensky nodded. “So she is still afraid of me. I understand. Take her with you, then, if you must.”

Raisa shook her head. “No, Fruma's right; it won't be safe. The crowds will be enormous.”

Mr. Kamensky rose to take Fruma's unoccupied seat and put his arm around his wife. “You were ill, so you couldn't know how it's been. The whole city's torn apart. Everywhere there is a great uproar, a shout for justice loud enough to reach the gates of heaven. The papers are filled with accounts of what happened that day, with accusations and denials. The fire chief, Mr. Croker, is saying that the disaster was inevitable, the way the building-code laws stand. God help us, sometimes the voices that are raised to reject the blame for this disaster are louder than the ones that weep for the dead.”

“Money.” Fruma spat out the word. “Mr. Croker himself said it. He was supposed to speak at one of the memorial meetings last Sunday, but when he couldn't be there, he sent his words. I will never forget them! ‘It all comes right down to dollars and cents against life.' Buildings without enough stairways because it costs too much to install them, without fire towers to hold water on the roof! Shops with locked doors because it's more important to save the owners from petty thievery than it is to save the workers from death!

“Mama, did you know, both of the owners were in the Asch Building when the fire broke out? Blanck and Harris, the ones the newspapers call the shirtwaist kings. Oh, wonderful kings! Blanck was there with his two little daughters. They all escaped by running up to the roof. Some of the students from NYU made a bridge from their classroom and saved them, but what do we hear from the owners now? Even a
whisper
of responsibility?”

“Why should there be?” Mrs. Kamensky said. “It wasn't their children who burned.” She looked at Raisa. “Take good care of our Brina tomorrow.”

“I can't bring her to the march,” Raisa said.

Brina lifted her head. “Can I go see Tante Dvorah?” she asked. “I like her.”

“Tante Dvorah?” Mrs. Kamensky echoed. “Your friend Zusa's mama?”

Raisa nodded. “A few days ago, Selig asked us to go see his cousin, to talk to her about Zusa. She was sitting by the window when we came in. She looked as fragile as a fallen leaf, and when she spoke, it was like hearing a ghost. But then, almost as soon as we stepped into their apartment, Brina ran right up to her, hugged her, kissed her, began to cry. Selig told me later that Mrs. Reshevsky hadn't shed a single tear from the time he came home from finding Zusa's body.”

“So she cried, too, with the child?” Mrs. Kamensky asked. Raisa nodded once more. “To be able to cry when there is so much pain—that can be a blessing.”

“Brina's been asking to go back for another visit. She really does like Mrs. Reshevsky. I was hoping to let her do it so that I could finally start searching the hospitals for—” She caught herself and looked at Mrs. Kamensky cautiously, afraid her words might rekindle the older woman's illness.

“For Gavrel.” Mrs. Kamensky's voice didn't waver. She was her old, strong self once more. “God bless you, Raisaleh; you've done more than enough for this family. It was a lucky day when my son found you. God willing, we'll live to see an even luckier one,
all
of us!” She reached out and clasped Raisa's hand. “I will go to the hospitals. He will be found.”

“And Brina?” Raisa asked softly. “I'd like to take her to the Reshevskys' tomorrow. I hope—I hope that's all right with you.”

“What, is Brina
my
child? Let her go where she wants to, where she's happy, where she brings that poor woman's soul a little peace.” Mrs. Kamensky flicked a drop of moisture from the corner of her eye. “Where she's not afraid.”

 

 

There were three funeral processions on the afternoon of the fifth of April, all of them for the nameless dead. One began near Seward Park, another farther uptown, around Twenty-second Street and Fourth Avenue, both converging at Washington Square Park, in full view of the Asch Building. Rain fell from an iron sky and fog haunted the upper floors of the lofts and skyscrapers along the route. The streets filled with water and mud.

Raisa and Fruma were with the Seward Park group when all three met at the ferry to Brooklyn. It was their first sight of the third procession, the one that actually carried the remains of the seven bodies that had been left unclaimed by any living friend or relative. The city officials had removed them from Misery Lane to the morgue, and it was from the morgue that eight horse-drawn hearses had made their slow progress, two by two, through the dismal streets while mourners and sorrowing spectators lined the way. The two girls were part of the crowd that now saw the black horses, the black wagons with their white draperies, the black boxes under their wreaths of roses and orchids.

As Raisa stood in the drizzling rain, she heard a girl beside her ask her companion, “Why are there eight coffins? I thought there were only seven bodies.”

“When the police and firemen searched the Triangle shop floors after the fire, sometimes all they found were . . . pieces. Burned scraps.”

The first girl gasped, appalled. “My God, are you talking about our people as if they were leftover bits of
cloth
?”

“If they had been cloth, maybe the owners would have thought they were worth saving.”

It was dark by the time Raisa and Fruma came home. They had watched the hearses cross the East River on the Twenty-third Street ferry, but there was no room for them on board. By elevated train and streetcar and on foot they made their way to Brooklyn, part of a wave of mourners all headed for the Evergreens Cemetery. They arrived after the final coffin was lowered into the long pit dug to receive the last victims of the fire, and they stood hatless in the rain while four men sang “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Then they returned to Manhattan.

Fruma rushed back to her parents, so that they might comfort one another on this dreadful day, but Raisa had to stop at the Reshevskys' apartment to pick up Brina before she could go home. Selig answered her knock at the door, and his face went white when he saw her. “Raisa, you're soaked! Are you trying to catch pneumonia? Come in, let me give you something to throw off the chill.”

“I'll be fine. Where's Brina?”

He made a motion for Raisa to be silent, then led her to the front room. Mrs. Reshevsky sat in a well-padded armchair at the window overlooking the street, with Brina asleep in her lap. At Raisa's approach, the woman looked up from the child cradled in her arms and smiled, her eyes shining with tranquility. When Raisa bent down and took the sleeping child from her, Zusa's mother kissed them both on the cheek and murmured, “God bless you, dear ones. God bless you.”

Raisa found work before the week was out; or rather, Fruma found work for her. “They're hiring in my shop,” she announced at the Shabbos dinner table almost as soon as her father finished saying the blessings over the bread and wine. “I told the foreman I knew a good worker. They just got a big order for uniforms, and they need girls who can run heavy material through the machines without breaking too many needles.”

“What kind of uniforms?” Mr. Kamensky asked.

“Soldiers, sailors, doormen, Sousa's whole marching band—what's the difference?” his wife cut in. “What matters is that they'll be happy to have our Raisa.”

“Well, do you want the job?” Fruma asked.

“Anything,” Raisa replied.
Anything but shirtwaists,
she thought.
Oh, thank God it's not shirtwaists!

By the time the following week brought the feast of Passover, Raisa was once again part of a daily routine. The difference was that now it didn't feel like a prison so much as a shell she'd closed around herself to keep out the pain. She and Fruma left the house together. Brina had gotten over her timidity toward Mrs. Kamensky and usually was happily helping Tante Lipke make breakfast for the two working girls. Some mornings, though, she would clamor to visit “Tante Dvorah.” On those days, Raisa and Fruma would take her with them and drop her off at the Reshevskys' apartment. Sometimes Mrs. Kamensky came to get her, and to spend some time with Zusa's mother, but the little girl was more than capable of finding her own way home whenever she liked.

From there, they went to work. The world outside their factory ached and flared with the pain of loss, echoed loudly with protests and demands for justice. At her new job, no one knew that Raisa had survived the Triangle fire. She had begged Fruma to keep it a secret, and she prayed that none of the other survivors would find their next job under the same roof as she.