Not Just A Number

As the sun rises over the city, it passes through our window and onto my pale freckled face that hasn’t seen much daylight since we left Italy. My eyes quickly adjust until our bedroom clearly made for two, but my family of eight shares, comes into focus. Careful not to wake my little brothers sleeping beside me, I pull the covers off my bony knees, hop out of bed and meet Camilla over at the window.

“It’s as if the clotheslines draping over Mulberry Street, keep the culture of Little Italy in and the rest of New York City out,” she whispers looking out over our corner of the Lower East Side.

“I like it better back home where the ocean was just a short walk away.” I reply looking up at her and then out to the rows of concrete buildings, that impede me from ever catching a glimpse of the ocean. “But I know we will make it back there one day,” I insist as if trying to convince myself it’s true. In 1908, we moved to America with promise of a better future, turning our little corner of the city into a temporary home, hoping to one day flee with coins overflowing from our pockets. We live with our father, little brothers; Antonio, Carlo, and Riccardo, grandparents and 2 other families of eight. The living quarters are tight in a tenant apartment, but thats the life of an immigrant family, making do and being thankful for what you have.

I step over piles of clutter to sit down at the foggy mirror my father found abandoned in the street and begin to brush out my hair. Even though four years stands between my sister and I in age, we are closer than anything. Each day Camilla braids my dark hair that contrasts with my pale complexion and I braid hers, just like she taught me. I can’t remember a day where I haven’t learned something from her. Ever since Mamma died a few months after Riccardo was born, Camilla has looked out and has taught me everything from how to sew my first pair of socks, to teaching me to cook family recipes. Looking at her reflection, I watch as she carefully weaves my hair back and forth between her nimble fingers. Her hands are worn but steady, and despite her youth they’ve cracked and faded in just a few short years from overuse. Making up for a lack of education, we rely on them day in and day out to ignite life to our dreams here in America. Her fingers twist and wrap my hair weaving it just like she does when she sews buttons onto shirtwaists.

We quickly pull on our white shirts, tuck them into our grey trousers and in just a few minutes we are ready to leave for work. Camilla picks up the piles of dirty laundry from the floor and puts them in a waist basket in the hamper. “It’s 7:45 so we will have just enough time to buy breakfast from Roberto and make it to work on time for 8:00.” Camilla notes as she motions me towards the kitchen.

Carefully closing the weathered door to our apartment behind us, we leave our quiet apartment for the hustling city of car horns and traffic lights. Breathing in the first glimpse of spring, freshly baked bread tickles our noses, tempting our stomachs as they grumble beneath our coats. My eyes dance across rows of cannolis, biscotties and Vienna cookies in bakery windows. I reach into my pocket to find my change but let go of it knowing it’s not to be spent on expensive treats. Italian opera pours out into the streets from every shop, each song different, but as one song transitions smoothly into the next, our community is united.

“Buon giorno!” Roberto exclaims in his think accent, as he sees us walking towards his fruit cart.

“Buon giorno Roberto!” Camilla and I say it together as we each flip him a nickel. He throws us two apples and a piece of bread from his cart and we immediately start to devourer our apple, the sugary juice running down our throats to soothe our angry stomachs. Camilla tears the bread in half and we each tuck a piece into our pockets to eat later at lunch. We give Roberto a wave and carry on our way towards Green Street.

“My coat presses on my chest as if I am suffocating,” Camilla exclaims. We are used to our buttons stretched as far as they can since it costs too much to replace them every few months for growing girls like us. “I think I have gotten all I can out of this one,” she declares while gasping for air.

“I could help you pay for a new one,” I offer. She has been wearing the same coat since we moved here. “We just might have to cut back on a few other things.”

“Thank you Stella, but there’s no need, spring is almost here and I might as well wait till the fall,” she replies. “I can stick it out a few more weeks.”
_____

I grab onto Camilla’s hand just before we begin our daily obstacle of ducking under picket signs reading, “WORKER’S UNION, JOIN NOW,” and jumping between angry men and women shouting in our ears. Turning the corner onto Green Street, we approach the Asch Building and my eyes skim the sign I read everyday, Triangle Waist Company. The factory is housed on the eighth and ninth floor of the building with offices on the tenth. We make triangle shirtwaist blouses, the most popular fashion of the day for the working woman. This is where we have spent the past two months of our life, everyday but Sundays helping support our family. Our father works in a local ship yard building boats you can see from miles away. Together, we help the family survive and in a year when Antonio turns 10, he will start working with my father. Each day while we are all at work, our grandparents take care of our younger brothers and do the laundry for an upperclass family. The Stewart’s have a man drop off their soiled clothes each morning and pick them up freshly cleaned and folded before dusk each night. We hope that we can make enough to go back to Sicily one day, but as the days, weeks and years progress that seems less and less likely. Each day that I pass through the threshold of the factory, I can feel my fingers slipping one by one trying to hold on to any last memories of it.

I miss home, the beautiful view of the Mediterranean from when I used to run down to the wharf each Friday afternoon, to greet my father from his weekly fishing trip. I would run into his arms, and we just stay there for a moment until he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a coin from another country to add to my collection. I find traveling to be fascinating and always admired my father’s ability to sail to beautiful places I always dreamed of visiting. But when he lost his job and so many people were buying one way tickets to America, my family decided to make the trip too. That’s how we ended up here. I’m lost in a reverie that puffs away in an instant when Camilla tugs my hand forward.

“Stellina we don’t want to be late, you know what will happen if we are!”

Making our way towards the wooden freight elevator, we are lost in the crowd and become just another number again. Just another factory worker, not significant enough to anyone in charge, especially Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the factory’s owners. To them we are replaceable and we know that. To work for Triangle Shirtwaist is a desired position among most sewers in Manhattan and we have the Stewart family to thank for getting us this job. With our more modern factory we stand out among the rest of our competitors with high ceilings and tall windows, we can see prosperity growing in the city. Camilla and I were lucky, after working in a crowded, dusty sweatshop for two and a half years, we know we are lucky, so we make sure to do as we were told and be on time to work everyday.

Still clenching onto Camilla’s hand as we ascend the building, she pulls out her golden locket, with an engraved C on its cover from beneath her coat. Our father got it for her on one of his fishing trips and she hasn’t taken it off since, except to put a picture of mother inside the day of her funeral. Rubbing her thumb across its cover with her eyes faded, I know she is thinking about her.

“I know Mamma would be proud of you for how strong you are for our family,” I whisper to her. “Just think, by this time next week we may finally be on the same floor.” The corners of her lips curl upwards for a moment as she tucks the locket back inside, close to her heart.

It’s difficult working on two separate floors, with Camilla on the ninth and myself on the eighth we aren’t able to see each other until the work day ends at 4:45. The owners promised they would put us together when a sewing machine opened up on one of our floors, so hopefully Camilla can move down from the ninth. There is talk of one of the workers on my floor, Greta Antolari, being fired due to her constant smoking despite orders not to. If she is let go, Camilla and I can finally be together, but that’s only if the owners stick to their word. The elevator opens to my floor and I let go of Camilla’s hand, not wanting to. Taking a deep breath before stepping forward to the eight hours of sewing that awaits me. I look back over my shoulder at Camilla while walking off the elevator and give her one last smile. Her eyebrow lift as she opens her mouth to say goodbye, but the doors slam closed before she can let out a syllable.

“Ciao,” I whisper under my breath.
______

I turn around to face the rows of sewing machines and look over to the clock on the back wall which reads 7:59. My eyes widen and my heart rate picks up speed with less than a minute to get to work at my machine. I rush through the door and into the stairwell on the other side of the room, to hang up my coat in the closet along with the other workers’ belongings. I look over the railing to see Charles, our floor’s overseer, marching his way up the stairs from the entrance at Washington Place. My head snaps back towards the work room as I begin to run back through the door and swoop into the chair, just in time for him to walk through the doorway.

“That was close,” Anya whispers dropping more scraps to the floor. She moved here when she was five from Russia, so her English is better than mine but her accent is thick.

“I swear the streets are more crowded than ever before,” I reply catching my breath.

The door to the stairs leading to Washington Place slams to a halt behind Charles, his keys clink as he searches for the one to our door. They know some of the workers are thieves and will steal any material possible, so the overseers lock the doors to keep us from going to our belongings during our shifts. Each morning he locks it until our ten minute lunch break where the workers line up to be checked for stolen material before we are dismissed to our belongings. When we return he re-locks it till the work day ends at 4:45.

“There are more workers striking in the streets than yesterday, do you think any of our girls will be down there anytime soon,” I question.

She keeps her head down but I can sense her glance shift towards me, “I think any day now we can expect some of our looms to be empty, even mine,” she says in a hushed voice.

“But you wouldn’t join—”

“A union?” She cuts me off before I can finish. “I’m exhausted by the end of the week and while our building is newer, but what, five years, our working conditions aren’t much safer. There is only one fire escape that is so rusty with one more rainstorm it will collapse. The ventilation is so poor my lungs burn in the heat of summer. We get paid two dollars a day to be ordered around like animals and whipped if we don’t keep up to their standard. They will continue to run this place like a prison if we don’t—”

Anya quickly stops as Charles turns the corner to our row, peering at each of us over his dainty glasses. The overseers are so sneaky, with their new rubber soled shoes that we can barely hear them walk up behind us while we work. If they catch us stop working for a second, even for a drink of water, we are scolded and have our pay cut. When he is about 20 paces away she begins again.

“Listen Stella, all I’m saying is that if Uncle Sam is too afraid to risk the prosperity of the factory at the cost of our safety, we have to take a stand.” Anya lets out a sigh as if she had been waiting a long time to say that.

Word is that the owners are always on edge in fear the business will go under due to new fashions from our competitors. There is talk of long pastel dresses becoming the new desired fashion, so we must work faster and faster, producing more triangle waists than the day before. Each of the 260 girls on the floor is assigned a part of the garment she must recreate day in and day out, to produce 12,000 shirtwaists in a six day work week. My job is to create button holes, I must have appeared the suitable for this because my hands are smaller than anyone else’s.

As time ticks closer to lunch, my mind drifts in and out of my work to distract myself from my fingers becoming more cramped, tired and weak. One moment I’m singing with Camilla while making dinner, she begins the first verse and I meet up to harmonize with her at the chorus before taking on the second verse. The way we understand each other is like a secret language no one else can understand, where each of us knows our place to make up for the other’s weaknesses. The next second I’m four years old again and my mother is reading to me, her deep brown eyes illuminating at just the right places of the story to keep me intrigued. Trying to distract myself from the pain these images flood my mind all day long, each of them bringing a brief moment of peace. But just as quickly as these moments bring me relief, I’m quickly brought back to reality when my finger to slips underneath the needle putting my body into shock.

“Quick, don’t let him see what you did or he’ll claim you just did it to go home early,” Anya says quickly turning off my machine and passing me a piece of scrap.

I swiftly wrap it around my finger and Anya ties a piece of thread around it to keep it in place. This isn’t the first time this has happened, my fingers are scared, torn and blistered but we all continue to work through the pain. I close my eyes for a second and think of the waves crashing against the shore to calm my body before getting back to work.

______

Everyone works without a rest, until the bell rings signaling it’s time for lunch. Anya gives me a nod of reassurance to turn off my machine and together we walk towards the door and get in line to wait for Charles to check our pockets. Girl by girl he has us empty them, each of us waiting for his subtle grunt of satisfaction and approval. As he approaches Laura Rosatti standing next to me, a quizzical look flushes upon his face. Her shoulder length brown hair sticks to her with sweat, and as he leans in closer I can hear her catch her breath.

“Empty your pockets,” he snarks at her. She does as he orders and to his disbelief she has nothing hiding inside of them. Looking at her from head to toe and he steps back as if something has caught his eye. “Your shoes too,” he barks not moving his eyes from her feet. She reaches down and takes off her right shoe; nothing. But when she slips off her left shoe all of the workers let out an echoed gasp. Charles bends down to retrieve the folded piece of fabric and slowly straightens to meet Laura at eye level. With her chin tucked, she fails to meet his gaze.

“I only wanted to patch up a few holes in my mother’s dress at home, those pieces were just scraps and would have been thrown away anyway.” She barley chokes out the last part anticipating how he will punish her. Without a word Charles grabs her by the arm and hoists her out of the doorway to Washington Place, locking it behind him. Their footsteps pounding up the stairs towards the owner’s offices on the tenth floor echo into the workroom, but are soon drowned out with chatter.

I turn to face Anya who stands next to me shaking her head. “Do you think she will be back?” I question wanting to say something to ease the shock.

“It’s hard to tell but if this is her first offense she may be let go with a warning. There aren’t many girls who can sew as fast as she can, and the owners know that,” Anya replies.

Charles returns a few minutes later and orders all of us to take off our shoes. “You can thank your Laura for your lunch break being shortened. This is a new procedure we will be adding to make sure no one leaves with anything that doesn’t belong to them.”

When we are all checked for stolen material he dismisses us to our belongings. I retrieve my coat and search for the soft bread with my fingers in the pocket, anticipating having more than just a crumb for lunch. After a few seconds I give up my blind search because I know I’ll never find it, I’m sure the greedy foremen made their usual rounds of going through our bags while we are working to steal anything the want.

I look at Anya in half disbelief and half anger, “I’m ready to stand by you in the streets and I’m sure Camilla will too.”

Anya returns a nod and tears her bread in two, handing one half to me.

_____

When the bell rings signaling lunch is over, we are all back at our machines, already working to reach our daily quota. Looking over at Greta, I can see she is up to her usual business of smoking and exhaling the evidence into her shirt. When Charles caught her last time he warned her that she would be fired if he ever found her smoking again. As he walks by Greta, she quickly diffuses the flame, throws the butt onto the floor and digs her heel into it.

Although it shames me to admit it, I hope she is caught soon so Camilla can take her place and move down to my floor. It’s difficult being apart from Camilla because we are so close. I love telling stories and reminiscing after work on Saturday nights, as we look up at the stars in the sky. We talk about what we miss most about home, share secrets and remind each other to stay focused on our work.

Out of nowhere, I hear a scream and instantly everyone’s heads snap towards the noise. I recognize it as Lillian Miller, a girl about a year older than me who operates a loom, threading the shuttle back and forth all day long. It’s common for the shuttle to slip off and strike nearby worker at high speeds. Charles immediately rushes over to her and I can tell by the look on his face she is hurt bad. A woman calls up to the tenth floor and within a minute I can hear feet tapping down the stairs and see two men walk through the door with a canvas, carrying stretcher. As they try to lift her onto the sheet she cries out in pain. Hoping she hasn’t broken a bone I close my eyes and say a quick prayer for her. In just a few minutes they carry her into the freight elevator and down towards Green Street.

“Do you think she will be back,” I ask Anya trying to settle my nerves.

“I hope so, but I’m sure they will be a new girl at her loom tomorrow,” Anya replies. “To them, everyone is replaceable.”

_____

My eyes shift towards the clock as if it has moved since I looked at just two minutes ago; twenty more minutes I tell myself. I look over at Anya who is almost done with her task of fixing imperfect hemlines and glance back at my machine, it’s black paint chipping from years of use. I can’t wait to go home and cook dinner with Camilla for our family, that’s my favorite part of the day. Closing my eyes I take in a deep breath and I can almost smell the coals burning in our stove all the way from the factory, but as I take in another I simultaneously hear someone yell out.

“Fire!”

Anya and I instinctively look at each other as if to question if what we heard was true, but our eye contact confirms it. Rising halfway out of my seat, I see Charles run over to the inflamed waist basket and pour water out onto it but it continues to burn. A nearby worker grabs the firehose and begins twisting it as she runs towards the fire. 

“It’s not working,” she cries out. “There’s no water.”

In a matter of seconds the fire jumps onto nearby tables and climbs the walls, leaving girls screaming and running in all directions. My heart pounds as I question which is the safest route out of this place. The fire escape quickly flashes into my brain, but just as fast as that idea comes to me it leaves me when I remember how weathered and rusted it is, it’s not worth the risk. I start running towards the door leading to Washington Place but quickly stop in my tracks when Anya grabs my arm.

“It’s locked Stella, Charles is too far away to open it,” Anya yells out.

“What about the other floors?” I cry out to her through the screams. My mind instantly pictures Camilla peacefully at her machine finishing up her work and quietly humming to herself. I start towards the telephone but Anya motions me in the opposite direction.

“Run to the elevator, I’ll call the tenth floor,” she shoos me forward again but I resist at first. “Don’t worry they will make it down.” Anya runs towards the telephone on the back wall to call the switchboard operator on the tenth floor to warn them of the fire and to be connected to the ninth floor. My heart races in my chest as I go into survival mode and start running towards the elevator, pushing over barrels of scraps. Just like Camilla taught me to weave around strikers in the streets, I run under older girls and in between sewing machines with my eyes on my escape. I look back to Anya and see her running towards the telephone. The flames intensify, igniting the piles of our work from today. I finally reach the elevator just in time for it to arrive and squeeze my way onto it. As the elevator’s doors begin to close, I see the telephone hanging, Anya nowhere to be found and the eighth floor is up in flames.

_____

I finally make it down to the street and begin my search for Camilla, my heart pounding as I looked hopelessly into the powdered faces of soot. Girls are uncontrollably coughing when they aren’t crying, but despite the clamor around me, my mind blocks out the noise as I panic to find my sister. Looking into the eyes of each girl I search for Camilla’s, but those deep brown eyes that match those of our mother’s, are nowhere to be found. Just when I was about to give up hope, I hear my name and those butterflies you get a few times in your life flood my stomach.

“Stella,” a voice chokes out.

A slight burst of happiness flushes upon my face as I turn, anticipating to see my sister. But my heart drops when I see Anya emerging through a crowd of hysterical girls.

“Most of the girls made it down from the eighth floor, the back door to Washington Place was still locked but I was able to run down the front stairs to Green Street,” she panted over the cries. “The switchboard operator got my call on the tenth floor.” My eyes open in content but her pause leads me to worry yet again. “Stella, I’m not sure why but the line went dead before I was connected to the ninth.” She says it more quietly as if to make the news more bearable.

Before I have the chance to react, an ear splitting sound comes bellowing from the lobby, of the Asch Building leaving the crowd outside silent. An erie feeling looms over the crowd for a moment, with no one knowing what to say or do until one girl comes out shrieking, to break the silence.

“The cables of a freight elevator snapped beneath it,” a girl yells, the blood drained from her face. “They’re dead.”

Just as she finishes, the sound of the second elevator plummeting to the ground echoes out the building. Already too numb from the news, no one even flinches. My chest heaves in and out and sweat begins to pour over me, as Anya and I hold each other realizing the severity of the fire. My eyes stay focused on the building but my ears pick up a conversation next to me.

“No, listen,” a girl snaps at another. “They are stuck, the door’s are locked and the elevator—”

“But how do you know?”

“Because I work on the ninth floor. Just before the fire started, our overseer got a phone call and left us, locking the door to Washington Place behind him. I was able to escape with a few others down the Green Street stairway but by the time I got to the lobby, the flames and smoke were so severe that no one else made it down after me.”

My clasped hands tremble as I pray they will be able save Camilla, if she is still inside. The crowd starts yelling and pointing to look up. Some workers have made it up to the roof and are leaping onto the dormitory buildings of NYU to escape. Fire engines come speeding onto Green Street, the back ends slipping as if on black ice, and come to a halt. Men quickly jump out and begin rising their ladders up against the building, but they only reach as high as the sixth floor. Police officers begin pushing us towards the other side of the street as heavy debris falls to the ground all around us, while white ash settles on top of our hair like snow.

I’m pushed in different directions, trying to make my way across the street, but look back over my shoulder when a sound catches my attention. My eyes settle on a pile of flaming clothes resting on the sidewalk and realize the girls must be throwing out burning bails of shirtwaists. I turn back away from the flames and keep pushing my way to the other side of the street. But when another noise, this time much louder, strikes the sidewalk behind me I turn back again. Raising my gaze from what appears to be another bail of flaming shirtwaists to the fire engulfing the factory, I let a slight cry under my breath. Tears flood my heart into my stomach when I look up to see girls standing in the windows, their bodies evaporating into flaming silhouettes and jumping into the air; from the ninth floor. Their burning bodies plummet towards the ground, landing with a thump.

_____

Epilogue

Resting my hands on their shoulders, I gently shake each of my brothers awake. Their faces instantly lighting up as they jump out of bed, knowing this is the day we have been waiting for. I braid my hair in the mirror, while the boys dress in the clothes I laid out for them the night before. With everything all packed away and ready to leave, my feet cross the once cluttered bedroom floor and into the kitchen.

“Is that everything?” I say to my father while taking one last look around.

“I think so Stella, are you ready?”

I reach into my pocket to make sure it is still there, and rub my fingers across it’s engraved cover. “I think so,” I reply with a smile.

I close the door to our apartment for the last time behind us and follow behind my brothers as the run ahead of me. Walking past the bakeries I wave goodbye to each of the owners looking through the windows, just before my eyes dance across the beautiful cookies of course.

“Stella!” Roberto calls out to me from his fruit stand tossing me an apple and a piece of bread. I flip him three nickels. “I know Camilla would be proud of you for how strong you are for your family.” I can feel tears build up in my eyes, but I force them to subside. “Bon voyage!”

“Thank you Roberto,” I reply.

Holding my head high I’m proud of my family and our will to make our dream come true. Over the eight years that have passed since we first arrived, we each have changed becoming older, wiser and stronger. Coming over as eight, we leave as seven but a day doesn’t pass that I don’t think about her. As we approach the boat, my father hands each of us our one way tickets and it sinks in that we are going back home. Taking my seat by the window inside, I reach inside my pocket and retrieve Camilla’s locket. It’s cover dulled from the heat and in some places still covered in soot. I think back to when I found it resting on the sidewalk next to a pile of clothes that’d fallen from the ninth floor. When she didn’t come home, I made a promise to myself that I would be a role model to my little brothers like Camilla was for me.

Closing my eyes, I think of the waves crashing over the shore to calm my anxious nerves. Visions of my mother and Camilla flash before my eyes, and I smile to myself knowing they are happy together and watching down over us. A bell chimes out signaling our departure and I open my eyes to look out into the ocean knowing it won’t be long until it will be just a short walk from our door. The boat begins to glide forward and my stomach fills with butterflies, this time the happy kind.

“Ciao America,” I whisper under my breath.