Sewing Can Be Dangerous and Other Small Threads Read online

  In what seemed like a mere five minutes, the whistle blew, followed by numerous deep sighs and groans. Irma threw an arm around Sasha’s shoulder on the way back to their sewing machines, and handing her a delicate-looking locket from around her own neck, told her, “Here, taka dis to wear. It’s a good luck charm necklace. I got it in Italy. If you wear it, maybe you getta good luck from now on.” She leaned over and gave her friend a little kiss on the cheek.

  Touched by Irma’s gesture, Sasha instinctively pulled off a little pinkie ring of her own—a small, silver Jewish star pattern with a pink stone in the center. Uncle Samuel had bought it for her the week before at a local flea market, telling her, “Remember, Sashelah, you’re American now, but always, you are a Jewish girl. Never forget the Torah, my child.”

  Irma’s mouth curved into a huge grin as she placed the ring on her pinkie finger. Then the two girls gave each other a quick hug before returning to their stations.

  The afternoon dragged on. Sasha found that by concentrating only on the rhythm of the sewing machines, she could block out her misery, at least for a little while. Closing her eyes and listening intently, she could almost hear the tapping of a marching band: click, click, slam-slam-slam, whoosh-whoosh, rattle-rattle went the machines. Soon, the entire factory room pulsed.

  By 4:45 p.m., the whistle blew as if by magic, signaling the end of the workday and going home to face another round with Moshe. Turning off her machine, Sasha stood up, took a deep breath, and steeling herself, tried to remember the good people in her life, like Irma and Gladie, and of course, little Jacob.

  Three steps forward, she smelled smoke.

  Girls on the opposite end of the floor next to the windows were beginning to scream in a panicked chorus and someone, suddenly streaking past her, cried out, “Fire! Fire!” Still, she remained paralyzed, her arms and legs like lead, her mouth filled with a bitter, chalky taste. Then the adrenaline hit her and she broke into a dead run.

  Dark gray swirls of smoke were seeping in from under the doorway cracks while dozens of girls stampeded past the sewing room, heading towards the elevator shafts or stairwells and ending up crushed together against the in-going only doorways. Hysteria rendered each girl strong. No matter how hard she tried, Sasha couldn’t push her way through the group of flailing arms and legs, so she about-faced to explore other escape routes.

  Outside on the street, a man walking by pointed upward and shouted, “Look at the smoke coming out of the Triangle building!”

  “Yeah, it looks like it’s comin’ from the top floors! What’s that coming outa the windows? Looks like bolts of fabric! Old Man Blanck must really want to save his precious cloth!” a woman chimed in.

  “Yeah. Wait! Wait a minute!” the man continued. “That’s not bolts of fabric—they’re—they’re—oh, God in Heaven!”

  The cynical woman let out a blood-curdling shriek.

  As a large crowd gathered, all eyes were glued towards the 9th and 10th floors in time to see several blackened girls in smoldering dresses hurling themselves towards the ground to join the six bodies already strewn across the sidewalk, limp, broken.

  Engine Company 72 clanged around the corner and ground to a halt, but the mounting piles of corpses made it impossible for the hose wagon to get close enough to be effective. Desperate firemen started handing out bucket after filled water bucket to the foreman, some male tailors, and anyone else available, so they could run back into the building to douse out the flames. When all twenty-seven buckets were emptied, it became all too painfully obvious; the fire was completely out of control.

  A few soot-streaked firemen tried to stretch out a safety net to catch one girl’s fall, but before all four corners were taut enough, three more girls had jumped seconds behind her, the weight of all four ripping the net as they landed hard against the pavement. The stunned men grabbed a nearby horse blanket to try to cushion the fall of another girl, but she, too, flew down with such force, her charred body split the blanket in two, hitting the cement with a loud thud.

  Up on the tenth floor, more and more girls were desperately trying to scramble down the fire escapes. Gripping the iron ladders, terror made them ignore the steam hissing out between their fingers until suddenly, yelping in pain, they let go, gliding like flying squirrels towards the ground.

  Inside the building was pandemonium. Clouds of thick, bulbous smoke blinded Sasha, stinging her eyes and rendering her throat raw until she got down on her hands and knees and managed to crawl towards the elevator shaft, praying both Joe Zitto and Joe Gaspar might still be on duty. Sure enough, the elevator was working, but it kept stopping on the eighth floor below her. She could hear Joe Zitto frantically working the metal levers, shouting up to anyone within earshot, “I can only get to the eighth floor! The ninth and tenth floors are blocked off! Get to the eighth floor and I’ll take ya’s down.”

  She managed to get to the eighth floor using one of the few stairwell exit doors not engulfed in flames, but once there, found too many crazed girls jammed together, calling out for the elevator. Joe Gaspar came up next, but could only squeeze in twelve to fifteen girls at a time. Between the two men, they made fifteen to twenty trips each, but with each trip, the girls’ clutches and cries weakened as their coughing from all the smoke inhalation overwhelmed them.

  “Come on, Sasha, come wid me to da westa door. We can getta through dere!” She recognized Irma Delacina by voice only. The girl covered in head-to-toe soot and sizzling clothes standing next to her, looked nothing like the kind, smiling girl she had hugged just hours before. She attempted to reach out and grab her, but Irma was already halfway across the hallway, heading toward a door that Sasha knew to be locked. She called out after her friend, but Irma either wasn’t listening or couldn’t hear over the din of howls.

  Careening around the corner from Great Jones Street, Engine Company 33 shuddered to a full stop in front of the burning building, drawing hurrahs from a crowd that naturally assumed any back up would bring miracles. But their cheers soon turned to cries of horror when everyone realized the hoses could only reach the seventh floor, leaving the upper floors of the factory engulfed in flames.

  Back on the tenth floor, Sasha viewed her options. She could see three male cutters across the room running towards an open window, and decided to go with them. She didn’t get far. Oxidation from the fire had turned the tenth floor into a time bomb, and as bolts of fabric imploded into popping blazes, she was knocked off her feet and onto the floor.

  Dazed, she tried to get up, then fell back, unable to move.

  Two minutes later, a roar erupted from the huge crowd as they witnessed three male cutters forming a human chain from the roof of the factory to an adjacent building. Slowly, one at a time, several of the girls carefully inched across the backs of the men to safety, eliciting cheers and applause each time someone made it. But the strain on their hands and fingers were too much for the cutters; someone lost their grip, and all three men plummeted eighty feet to their death.

  The sudden stillness overwhelmed the crowd already in mourning. In the thousands, they remained in shock until a man finally found his voice. “Look at the roof!”

  All eyes pointed upward. There, over a hundred girls, in their cumbersome dresses and singed petticoats, were wriggling across a ladder held down by New York University law students who had hatched an escape route between the adjacent buildings.

  By nightfall the fire had subsided, leaving glowing embers and assuring the firemen of an end in sight. But along with their relief came the dreaded job of scouting for more girls inside the building, and as the searchlights crisscrossed up towards the hollowed floors, an even more gruesome sight was revealed: scores of burned bodies, cradled by ropes, were being slowly lowered by firemen, then gently lined up on the cobblestones to be carted away for family identification.

  Nearby, hysterical relatives had descended on the Mercer Street Police station, clamoring with questions in broken English and praying their loved one
s had managed to survive. Italian families wedged up tight against German families, who melded into Russian-Yiddish families, all waiting as a unit for any news.

  Soon, an official shuffled into the room, his face impassive, mouth straight-lined. With his legs in riot stance, he stared at the families for several seconds before indicating a map on the south wall. “Go to the Bellevue Morgue on 26th Street,” he informed them. “You can either identify your loved ones there, or obtain more information about any missing girl.” Then he about-faced and marched out, as detached as when he had come in.

  Moshe, Samuel, and Raisa wasted no time. Before anyone else could leave the room, they had already begun their race over to the designated morgue. Once there, the thought of waiting in another endless line was out of the question for Raisa. She stormed across the waiting room to the main registry, leaned over the green institutional counter and demanded, “Ver ist da girls?” The inexperienced secretary flinched backwards then pointed a shaky finger towards the pier, a few yards away.

  Approaching the area, the smell of burned flesh overtook them, and as Raisa started to faint, Moshe quickly stepped up to hold her.

  “Be brave, be brave for our little girl,” he muttered repeatedly.

  All the years of repressed anger in Raisa suddenly exploded. “You—you—you did dis to her!” she screamed. “She had nottink to say—you made her verk there! I never forgive you, never! Kein mol nit!”

  Jerking herself free, she charged through the warehouse to the identification room, ignoring all officials, ready for any confrontation. But in the main room, she did a double-take. On the floor were dozens of bodies, burned beyond recognition. Walking up and down the rows, she scrutinized each cadaver, but it was no use; she couldn’t make out anything. Then suddenly from out of nowhere, she let out an agonized sob and collapsed. Samuel rushed over to support her, cradling her as if she were Sasha herself. After a minute of rocking back and forth, he focused on something himself and cried out sharply.

  “Vat, vat is it?” Moshe implored.

  Samuel pointed to a charred body, unidentifiable like all the others except for one slight detail. On the right hand was a little pinkie ring, a Jewish star ring with a tiny pink stone in its center.

  “It’s the ring I bought for her,” Samuel moaned, his choked voice almost unintelligible.

  Later that night, after Moshe and Samuel had put a catatonic Raisa to bed, Moshe turned to his relative. “Samuel, come sit vit me—ve need to talk.”

  As soon as they were in the front room, he began. “There was something dat bother me about Sasha’s body tonight. Sasha always haf frizzy hair, but dis girl haf wavy hair. Wha’ kut dat mean?”

  “I don’t know, Moshe. But the ring, I know that ring. I’m sure it’s her. It’s our little girl…” He finally broke down, releasing all the pent-up emotions from an exceptionally long day.

  **

  “It turned out to be one of the worst disasters in the history of modern industrialization, and because of it, a commission was set up to study more effective labor practices. Dozens of witnesses and family members testified, and when details of what happened came out, it was far more horrific than anyone could have imagined. A turbulent trial ensued, with the owners never receiving convictions. However, we do end this program on a hopeful note. Conditions today in the work environment are far better than they’ve ever been, partly due to the tragedy that happened at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on March 25, 1911. This is Peter Manning, signing off for ‘Investigations On the Air.’”

  Susan stared at the TV a few seconds before switching it off. Suddenly, the unlit screen brought reflections on her own job, the recent memos she had seen, and the disturbing trends she could no longer ignore. Her mother had warned her not to make waves. After all, landing a buyer’s position in a celebrity’s clothing firm was not to be taken for granted. Count your blessings.

  But that night, Susan slept fitfully. Fire and smoke-filled dreams starring a faceless girl desperately trying to slap out flames on her long skirt startled her awake every few hours. By morning, although it took three cups of coffee to get there, she came to a major decision. She was going to read the testimonies and try and get inside her cousin’s world at the factory that day.

  Letting Uncle Jacob in on her plan one night after dinner, she was surprised to see him disappear into the bedroom and return with Sasha’s diary. “I don’t know if this will be helpful, but I have always kept this. She meant so much to me.” Biting his lip, he sighed, and handed over the thin, worn, leather-bound volume.

  Sasha was certainly no Anne Frank, Susan mused as she skimmed through the book, but it was touching, nonetheless. Ambivalent about her own boss, she was drawn to this girl, obviously so trapped by her father and her situation. Throughout it all, Uncle Jacob appeared to be the girl’s one shining star, and that made Susan feel even closer to him. The other two names that kept cropping up were Irma Delacina and Gladie Moskovitz. Obviously she had considered them to be friends, or at the very least, comrades in misery, but other than that, there was nothing too eye-opening about the factory conditions, only that she ached all the time.

  The next step was the New York Public Library. Microfiching through a mountain of testimonials, she skimmed through most of the commission’s report until something caught her eye. She clicked ‘pause’ and started reading.

  One of the testimonies given was by a Marco Delacina. He stated that he was quite distraught because they had never truly been able to identify their daughter, Irma; she was presumed to be one of the group of girls who had actually melted against a locked door, yet the family had remained skeptical. Where was her good luck locket that she always wore? It must have melted the Delacinas had been advised. It was not enough to lose one’s daughter, he further testified, but to have to endure being glossed over by public officials was an outrage. Besides the personal loss, the loss of income was devastating to their family. What were they to do now?

  Susan’s dreams turned violent that night. Eerie, ash-coated shapes lumbered after her as she tried to escape through the blocked passageway. Clawing at the door, her fingers and nails, sticky with blood, she kept stroking a little locket around her neck.

  At 4:23 a.m., she bolted upright in a sweat. Oh, my God—maybe the girls had switched jewelry!

  She kept remembering Moshe’s testimony during the hearings, how everyone assumed it was his Sasha, but then why was the hair different? And what about the Delacinas never truly believing they had found their girl. Maybe Sasha had never been found, not Irma!

  Back to the library. She poured through dozens of articles, searching for anything that had to do with young teenage girls in New York. Nothing on Sasha, but there was an interesting article about the Delacina family doing very well financially several years after the tragedy. According to a certain interview, they kept receiving an anonymous donation each month, undoubtedly through the Sons of Italy, and it had changed their lives. Because of that, they had been able to move to Queens and were living the American middle-class dream.

  Watching her night after night, the librarian couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer and finally approached. After hearing the story, she suggested, “Why does it have to be New York? After all, if the girl didn’t want to return to her family, why would she want to stay in New York all these years?”

  Susan smiled. Of course. So she plunged in again, expanding her geographical area of interest, and focusing on a 1922 article written from the Pennsylvania News Terminal, about a homeless, Russian Jewish girl making good, setting up her own bridal sewing shop, and people raving about her work, her moxy, etc., etc. Her name: Sarah Mijss. What an odd name. A faded, vintage photo of the seamstress displayed a rather plain girl with frizzy hair.

  After the name was jotted down, Susan took some notes on the article, and hugged the librarian before going home for the night. Frazzled, all she wanted to do was to pour herself a large glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and tube out. She channel-
surfed for a minute or two before deciding on Rosemary’s Baby, playing on one of the movie networks. She had seen it numerous times before, but for some reason that night, was in the mood for the bizarre. Snuggling up against her overstuffed Saks Fifth Avenue pillows, she settled down. Two-thirds of the way into the movie, she started glancing at her pad of paper on the coffee table, unable to stop her ruminations. Casually picking up the pad, she studied the notes, including the odd name. Mijss. Weird…

  Just then, one of the most crucial scenes in the movie appeared, when the leading character, Rosemary, was told by the companion of a recently deceased friend, that the answer to the problem lay in an anagram. Getting out her scrabble letters, the heroine moved the pieces around and came up with the name of the satanic leader of a cult who happened to be living next door to her. With the music swelling ominously, it was one of the high points of the film.

  Susan stared down at her pad again. Mijss. Mijss. M-I-J-S-S. Oh my God!

  J stands for Jacob, I is for? S is for Sasha, M is for Moshe, and S is for Samuel! I—I—I is for Irma? Yes, it would work! It definitely could be her! Maybe she’s still alive and living in Pennsylvania!

  The next Saturday, she purchased a railroad ticket to the little town in Pennsylvania and after booking herself into a hotel for the weekend, spent the rest of the afternoon asking around about Sarah Mijss. It seemed everyone knew of her. “Sure, Sarah, she’s the town character, ninety-five and still going strong.” Susan fell asleep easily that night, looking forward to the next day.

  On Sunday, Susan paused just outside Sasha’s door. Oh, dear, I hope this isn’t too much for her, she thought all of a sudden. I mean, what if it is her and she has a heart attack and dies? She took a deep breath before pushing down the tarnished brass knocker twice. Nothing. She tried again. Soon, she could hear shuffling on the other side of the door and a “Coming, coming,” echoed by an old, yet surprisingly firm voice.