Authors: Carol Goodman
The man turned away from Mr. Bernstein and caught me
staring at him. Beneath the brim of the Homburg, I glimpsed
glittering black eyes, as cold and hard as lumps of coal. I tried
to look away but I was transfixed, unable to move. The deep
bass bell began to ring in my head, a steady toll like a funeral
dirge. As I stared, horrified by my immobility, he raised his
hat to me and smiled. Then, without taking his eyes off me,
he tilted his head toward Mr. Bernstein and said something
to him. Mr. Bernstein looked toward me, a frown creasing his
heavy, bland face.
Good Lord, they’re talking about me
. My heart began to race.
Desperately, I tried to look away, to go back to sewing, but my
eyes and hands were frozen. The man in the Inverness cape
began to walk down the aisle between the sewing tables and
the airshaft. At the very least I would lose my job, but I already
knew something even worse was about to happen. The bells in
my head told me so.
My mother had been so frightened by this man that she’d
had to drug herself into oblivion. He was coming to take me
away to the workhouse, or prison . . . or an insane asylum. I
sat frozen to my seat as the man in the Inverness cape turned
down the aisle between my sewing table and the next, the deep
bass bell ringing madly in my ears. He’d reach me in a few seconds. . . .
The man juddered to a halt like a piece of cloth that’s gotten jammed in the pressing machine, but it was as though
he
were the machine. His limbs jerked and spasmed like those of
an automaton that has run down or a puppet’s when the puppeteer’s hand slips. He wheeled around to see what had halted
his progress.
It was Tillie. She had caught a fold of his cape in her machine. I saw her assembling her features into a semblance of
innocence, but when she looked up at the man all the blood
drained from her face. I’d seen Tillie talk boldly to Mr. Blanck
himself when she thought a new girl’s wages were unfair. I’d
heard stories of her facing down the thugs hired to break the
picket lines during the strike. I’d never seen her look afraid before. Now she looked not just afraid but horrified.
I started to get up to draw the man’s attention away from
Tillie, but someone yanked me back down. It was the dark-eyed
runner, crouched below the sewing table.
“You see,”
he hissed,
“I told you to go.”
“How . . . ?” But there wasn’t time to ask how he had known
about the man in the Inverness cape—or
what
he knew about
him. “Where?” I asked instead.
He grabbed my arm and shoved me under the table, behind
a row of workbaskets. “Keep crawling to the dressing room. I’ll
take care of
him
.”
I couldn’t imagine how this boy was going to “take care”
of a man who had frightened Tillie Kupermann, but I did as he
said. I crawled on my hands and knees beneath the tables, sure
that at any moment I would be seized by the nape of my neck
like a mouse plucked up by a hawk.
As I crawled I heard the quitting bell ring, and then a stampede of feet as all the girls hurried to be first to leave. When I
reached the end of the tables I looked up and saw that they were
all crowding around the Greene Street door. The man in the Inverness cape was pushed toward the door by the crowd of girls.
He was scanning the room, those hard, coal eyes sweeping the
air like the wings of a carrion crow. Where was that boy who
said he’d take care of him . . . ? Then I saw him. He was right
behind the man in the cape. A terrible thought occurred to me:
perhaps the boy worked for the man in the Inverness cape and
his message had been a ploy to make me lose my job.
I watched as the boy whispered something into the man’s
ear. Whatever he said, it immediately drew the man’s attention.
His head whipped around, moving with the speed of a striking
snake, his neck twisting farther than it should have been able
to turn. Seeing that gave me a sick feeling inside, but I used his
momentary distraction to make a run for the dressing room. I
saw out of the corner of my eye a swirl of dark cloak as the man
fled the room, pursuing the dark-eyed boy. So maybe the boy
wasn’t working for the man. . . .
There were a dozen or so girls inside the dressing room,
putting on their hats and coats, gossiping about their plans for
the evening. Esther Hochfield was boasting that her fiancé was
going to meet her at the factory door and take her out to dinner. Yetta Lubitz was looking at her paycheck and sighing that
she didn’t have enough to buy the hat she wanted. Then Tillie
grabbed my arm and whispered into my ear.
“Who
is
that man?” she asked, her face pale and her hand
trembling.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But my mother and I saw him once
and she was frightened of him.”
“Of course she was frightened of him! There’s something . . .
wrong
about him. My papa used to tell me stories about an evil
spirit that could take over a man’s body. That’s what this man
feels like—like he’s been taken over by a dybbuk. But somehow
your friend managed to lead him out into the stairwell. We’ll
take the other stairs.”
I was about to protest that the dark-eyed boy wasn’t my
“friend” as Tillie steered me out of the dressing room toward
the Washington Place stairs, but as we came into the loft, I noticed a commotion. A flock of girls was running toward the
Greene Street door, their voices excited and . . .
scared
. The deep
bass bell was gonging inside my head so loudly I couldn’t tell
what they were saying, but when Tillie spoke I heard her clearly.
“
Fire!
”
As if the word had conjured the thing itself, the airshaft
windows shattered and a blaze of flames burst through them.
The blaze looked like a swarm of fiery rats pouring over the sill
and across the factory floor. I stared at it transfixed until
Tillie’s voice in my ear broke my trance. “We have to get out!”
she cried. “The Greene Street door is blocked—we have to try
this one!”
She pulled me across the room toward the Washington
Place door, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the fire, which was
spreading across the examining tables below the airshaft windows, snatching at the piles of shirtwaists. The ignited scraps
floated into the air and drifted across the room like firebirds
spreading their destruction. They landed on the workbaskets
beneath the sewing tables and set each one ablaze. The smoke
that rose from the smoldering baskets looked like flocks of
black crows.
I blinked, trying to clear away the illusion, but when I
opened my eyes the room was thick with smoke. Frightened
girls ran from door to door to window to window, wheeling
around the room like birds beating their wings against a cage.
The fire roared like a rabid beast, hungry for our flesh. A small
figure flitted by, which I recognized as the little girl whom Tillie
had been helping before. She was running with a group of girls
toward the dressing room.
“Etta!” Tillie cried, yanking her hand out of mine and running after the girl. I followed them both into the dressing room.
Tillie crouched down in front of a low cubby. “I can’t leave her!”
Tillie cried. “I promised I’d look after her today.”
It was the same promise she’d made to me on my first
day. I’d believed it then, little knowing how far she’d take that
promise.
I knelt down beside Tillie and looked into the cubby, straight
into the girl’s terrified eyes. As I willed calmness into my voice,
I heard the clanging bass bell in my head slow to a steady toll
that reverberated through my body and vibrated on the surface
of my skin.
I’d never felt this before. Since the bells had started they
had always sounded wildly when I was frightened or when
something bad was about to happen. I’d never tried to control
them. But I did now, for Tillie and Etta’s sake. I reached into the
cubby and put my hand on the girl’s arm.
“It’s all right,” I said, measuring my voice to the now steady,
slow beat of the bell inside my head. “Tillie won’t let anything
happen to you. Come on out and we’ll all go home together.”
Etta’s eyes widened—I wasn’t even sure she spoke English—but under my hand I could feel her muscles relax and her
small hand slip into mine. I closed my hand around hers and
pulled her out of the cubby. She came out like a cork popping
out of a bottle and immediately latched onto Tillie, wrapping
her arms around her neck and her legs around her waist. Tillie
stood up and looked at me over Etta’s shoulder, then down at
the other girls huddled on the floor.
“Are you going to wait here like lambs to the slaughter?”
she cried in a clear strong voice. “Or are we going to save ourselves? I’m getting out of here. Who’s with me?”
Not waiting for a response, Tillie strode out of the dressing room straight through the smoke to the Washington Place
door. A few of the women in the cloakroom roused themselves
to follow her, but when we reached the door we found it locked.
I turned to look across the room. The flames already
blocked the airshaft by the fire escape and the Greene Street
door. The fire was pushing us toward the tall windows that
overlooked Washington Place. They stood open, beckoning us
with the sight of blue sky unstained by smoke. One of the women climbed up on the window ledge and cried “Fire!” as if that
could be news to anyone. I looked out the window and saw that
the street was full of horse-drawn fire engines and crowds of
spectators all looking up at us. Their mouths were open, shouting something, but I couldn’t make out what.
I turned around and saw that in the few seconds I’d turned
my back on the fire it had stolen closer. I could feel the heat of it
on my skin now, doubly hot after the coolness of the outside air.
Another woman climbed up onto the ledge. “They’re holding
out nets!” she cried.
“That won’t help!” Tillie shouted. “We’re too high up—”
But the woman was gone, vanished from the window as if
she’d been plucked from the sky. I looked out the window and
saw her plummeting to the ground, her skirts billowing in the
air, her arms pinwheeling as if to keep her balance. She hit
the net and went straight through to the pavement with a horrible, sickening thud. The crowd let out a groan and then began
shouting again.
“No!” they were shouting “No! Don’t jump!”
But what other choice was there? The fire was steadily advancing across the floor, pinning us between the flames and
the deadly drop like butterflies pressed between panes of glass.
Another girl climbed up on a window ledge. She turned and
handed me her purse—as if she were at a dance and wanted her
hands free—and daintily stepped off the ledge.
I didn’t watch this time. I shut my eyes.
You always have a choice,
my mother had once said to me.
But what kind of choice was this—burning to death or
smashing on the pavement? It felt like my whole life had been
driven by impossible choices—rent or food? Factory or sweatshop? Living as Mother had us live, never trusting anyone,
or taking a chance and caring about a stranger, like Tillie? I
opened my eyes and looked for her, but saw instead another figure at a window on the Greene Street side. I thought it was another girl jumping. She spread out her arms and for a moment I
thought I saw wings. Then the figure jumped
into
the room and
flew toward me, resolving into a black winged creature cleaving the smoke and flames. Just before the wings swept around
me, I blinked and saw they were a blanket, and the figure who
held it over my mouth was the dark-eyed boy.
“Come on,” he said. “The stairs going down are full of
smoke. We have to get to the roof.”
He began pulling me toward the Greene Street door, but I
twisted out of his grip and turned to find Tillie. She was at the
Washington Place door, still holding Etta, and banging on the
locked door. “Not without Tillie!” I cried.
Still keeping hold of my arm with one hand, he put his other arm around Tillie’s shoulders. “Come on, then, both of you.
We’re making a run for the Greene Street door.”
Before we could object he threw the blanket over both
our heads and shoved us straight toward the fire. I heard Etta
whimper and Tillie screaming, but the boy barked at us, “Just
close your eyes! It will be all right.”
The certainty in his voice compelled me. Besides, what
other choice did we have? I closed my eyes and let him push us
into the fire. He must have found something else to throw over
our heads because I heard a rustling noise from above and, although I felt the heat of the fire all around us, the flames seemed
not to touch us. It was as though we were moving through the
fire inside a protective bubble.
Then we were through the Greene Street door and in the
smoke-filled stairwell and struggling up the stairs, past the
tenth-floor showroom and out onto the roof. The fresh air felt
like heaven, but when I looked up I saw a dark cloud hovering
over us. I could see shapes in the smoke, a roiling mass of crows
circling the burning building.
“
Don’t look at them,
” the boy hissed in my ear.
“You can see them?” I asked, not sure if I should be relieved
I hadn’t lost my mind or terrified that the crows were real.
He said something that sounded like it might have been
Italian—
tenebrae
—and then he was pulling me to the west
side of the roof where two ladders had been set up between the
skylight and the taller building to the west. A group of young
men in shirtsleeves were helping terrified girls up the ladders. I
recognized the law students from the park earlier—had it only
been this morning? Just one building over, I had thought, but
worlds away. But here they were bridging that gap. I felt a swelling in my chest at the thought, an unfamiliar pang that I dimly
recognized as an emotion I hadn’t felt in a while: hope
.
The dark-eyed boy squeezed my hand and I looked into his
face. The peachy down was streaked with soot and his eyes
were wide and shining.
“No matter how dark the shadows,” he said hoarsely,
“there’s always good.” A flush of red swept his face and he
looked away. He shouted toward the law students, “I’ve got
three more for you, lads!”
“That’ll make a round dozen you’ve brought us, boy-o, but
we’ll take ’em all!” one of the young men shouted with a graceful bow. I recognized the dandy who had flirted with Tillie this
morning. His pomaded hair stuck up in spikes and his oncewhite shirt was torn and streaked with soot. When he saw Tillie he grinned and bowed. “I told you I’d defend your honor one
day!” he said.
Tillie made a gasping noise in her throat but didn’t move.
“
Now
is not the time to be shy,” I said, pushing her forward.
“I can’t climb that ladder with Etta!” she cried. “And I won’t
go without her.”
“We’re all going,” the dark-eyed boy said, gently prying
Etta from Tillie’s arms. “Come on, doveling,” he cooed to Etta
in a gentle voice. “It’ll be just like climbing a tree. Have you ever
climbed a tree?”
Etta shook her head, staring wide-eyed at the boy. “No?” he
said. “Well, there’s a first time for everything. One hand on this
rung, then . . .” He kept up a soothing patter as he coaxed Etta
onto the ladder and kept his hands on her until the law student
had her in his arms. Then he turned back to Tillie and me.
“Who’s next?”
“Tillie.”
“Ava.”
We said each other’s names at the same time.
“Right then, Ava it is.” He put his hands on my hips, his
fingers so long they nearly circled my waist. I felt the blood rush
to my face as he lifted me bodily up onto the bottom rung of
the ladder. I looked over my shoulder for one more glimpse of
those dark eyes for courage—but he was looking up, into the
maelstrom of crows . . .
Which were diving down toward the ladder. They fell on us
in a clawing mass, their weight bowing the thin wooden slats.
One flew at the law student holding the top end and savagely
clawed at his eyes. He let go of the ladder and I felt it sway under
my feet.
“Ava!”
I heard Tillie’s voice and looked back to see her on the edge
of the roof reaching for me . . . and someone emerging from the
smoke behind her. It was the man in the Inverness cape. He was
looking up at me, but he had his hand on Tillie’s back. His lips
parted and a wisp of smoke curled out of his mouth. He smiled
wider, revealing a gullet full of smoke and flames, and then he
pushed Tillie off the roof.
I screamed and reached for Tillie. The ladder cracked beneath my feet. I was falling. I felt the air billowing around me,
tugging at my clothes, my shoulder blades tingling as if they
wanted to break through my skin, as if I’d already hit the pavement and all my bones had shattered. The sky stretched out
above me.
And then I felt those strong hands around my waist again,
and instead of sky I was looking into dark eyes flecked with
gold and, beyond those eyes, black wings spreading over us like
a mantle. Like the blessed oblivion of sleep. I closed my eyes
to fall into that darkness and was instead lifted into a blinding
light.