Love of Finished Years Read online

  During the brief holiday, Elsa perceived that the weakness she’d seen in her mother stemmed from more than a heavy heart. Her breathing was labored and she began developing a cough. She slept far longer than usual. Yet the day after Christmas, she trudged back to the shipyards, determined to beat this latest affliction.

  Elsa was afraid, and she saw the fear in Sonja’s eyes as well. Elsa remembered the sound of this cough—it had killed their brother.

  After an especially frigid day less than a week after Christmas, Nina’s coughing hardly stopped all night. It reverberated through the tiny apartment. Elsa lay awake beside her sleepless sister. A heavy snow had begun to fall, quenching all noise from outside. By morning there were several inches on the ground.

  “Please stay home,” Elsa urged her mother in the morning.

  “We will be ruined if I do not work.”

  So they all marched out into the dark morning, the snow still swirling in their faces. Nina headed east toward the river, while Sonja and Elsa walked northwest.

  By the time Elsa reached the factory, her shoddy coat was soaked through with melted snow. The inside of the factory was muggy from all the evaporation off wet bodies. The closed windows were steamed over. Elsa took off her coat and laid it on the floor beside her workstation, hoping it would dry by the end of the day. Summer or winter, the work always made her hot and sweaty. The girls worked in only their blouses.

  At the end of the day, Elsa told Beth she wouldn’t be able to come for her reading lessons for a few days. Then she hurried past home in the direction of the shipyards. The snow had stopped but was slick and icy on the sidewalks. Wet pools crunched under her feet where the carriages had splashed mud up onto the snow. Her worn shoes were soon wet. None of them had been able to afford new boots or coats this winter. Soon she spotted her mother’s figure, slow and hunched as she struggled through the snow. She stopped and heaved with the weight of a cough.

  Elsa ran forward as best she could in the slick snow. Nina relaxed against her daughter’s shoulder. Elsa felt more and more of her mother’s weight against her as they neared home and ascended the tenement stairs. Sonja helped them over to the fire she had lit and replaced their wet coats with warm blankets. Elsa collapsed on the floor by the stove, exhausted as Nina collapsed into a chair.

  Though she sat by the fire well into the night, Nina’s face remained ashen. Sonja had made a warm stew, but Nina could barely eat it. None of them slept much that night.

  In the morning, Nina still couldn’t eat and could barely stand. Still, she tried to dress herself for work. Elsa, with Sonja’s help, forced her back into her bed.

  “How can you lift cargo when you cannot even stand?” Elsa said.

  “I must work. I will not leave you to starve like your father did.”

  “It will kill you.”

  Nina was too weak to resist for long. She collapsed back on her pillow as her coughing turned to tears.

  “Oh, God, what will become of us?”

  “I will go to talk to your boss,” Elsa said. “I will tell him how sick you are. You have been good at this job. He will hold it for you.”

  “That does not happen,” Nina said, even as her exhaustion overcame her will. She relaxed, staring blankly at the ceiling as her daughters prepared to leave. Sonja lit another fire to keep her warm.

  Elsa hurried toward the shipyard. She tried to run, but the streets were too slick. Meanwhile, since Elsa’s shirtwaist factory was on the way to Sonja’s cannery, the elder sister promised to tell Elsa’s boss why she would be late.

  Elsa’s haste had been unwarranted. She arrived at the docks before her mother’s boss, waiting anxiously until he arrived. The big man looked down at her with scorn, thinking she had come for a job. Elsa surprised him by addressing him in near perfect English. She identified her mother.

  “She is very sick. We would not let her come for fear it would kill her. Surely you heard her coughing.”

  “Yes. She sounded terrible.”

  “A few days of rest should be enough for her to get better. Will you hold her job for her? I know she is a good worker.”

  “We will see.”

  Looking into his eyes, Elsa had little confidence.

  She had a sudden vision of them becoming destitute. Her stomach clenched into a sickening knot. She tried to believe things would go back to normal after her mother recovered . . . if she recovered.

  By the time Elsa arrived at the clothing factory, it was an hour past her assigned start time. She took off her coat and laid it on the floor, immediately falling into work alongside her partner. Taking long, slow breaths, she endeavored to regain her cool. Beth said nothing; pretending work progressed as usual, even though working the loom alone for an hour had yielded poor results.

  The foreman wasn’t fooled.

  Elsa shuddered as she felt his breath behind her neck. She tried to keep her hands busy on the loom so he wouldn’t be disappointed by her work. Surely even he would have sympathy for her family’s plight. But he wasn’t looking over her shoulder to check her work. He was looking down her blouse and noticing how rapidly she was growing up.

  Elsa was confused by this. Though she felt her breasts developing—often painfully—she couldn’t comprehend men’s desires and stimulations. She’d felt that last year’s blouse was growing too tight but they couldn’t afford a new one now. While she knew her mother planned to buy her a brassiere in addition to a new blouse, Elsa’s chest developed at a faster rate than their meager savings.

  “Come into the office, girl,” said the foreman.

  Elsa sighed and stopped her work. Beth had a look of fear on her face, but Elsa wasn’t afraid. She had been whipped once before at this factory. She had been whipped frequently by her mother. Pain was a trial, but she didn’t fear it.

  Alone in the office with the foreman, Elsa steeled herself for a beating.

  “You were very late today,” he said.

  “Did my sister not come to explain?”

  “Oh, she did.” He picked up his switch. “But tardiness cannot be excused for any reason.”

  Elsa began to fear that she would get fired as well as beaten. She stood waiting as he came toward her, tapping the switch against his hand. She turned away from him, expecting the whip against her back.

  Instead of the switch, she felt his bushy whiskers against her neck, then his hands cupping both her breasts. Horrified, she tried to twist away from him.

  The foreman held her firm, pushing his waist against her and breathing heavily against her neck. He slipped one hand inside her blouse, while with the other tried to turn her face toward him for a kiss. She resisted, but that only seemed to make him more determined. His lips and tongue touched her ear, as his hand squeezed her breast inside her blouse. Elsa gagged.

  The office door opened.

  “Ernest, what the hell are you doing?” shouted the factory boss. The foreman released Elsa and turned toward his manager. He stood silently for a moment, without a trace of guilt, and then walked away. Elsa cowered against the wall, her arms clutched protectively across her chest.

  “Get back to work, you hussy.”

  Elsa focused her mind and all her hours away from the factory on her mother. The excitement of learning English and the allure of the Bible stories had been temporarily forgotten. She even pushed aside thoughts of the horror at the factory, though the incident lingered, an undercurrent to everything else. She could not escape a confused feeling of shame.

  Rest and protection from the winter elements were enough for Nina to improve. Pastor Reus had given them some medicine that slowed her cough, allowing her body to begin to heal itself.

  After four days in bed, she returned to the shipyards, but she found no welcome at the warehouse. When Elsa and Sonja returned that night, she told them how her boss gruffly gave her four dollars and pushed her out the door. He had gone to Hopkins & Co. for her replacement the very morning of Elsa’s visit. Nina assured them she would find
work again quickly, but Elsa doubted it would be easy. Still, Elsa reminded herself that her mother might have died. That fear was gone now. Somehow, they would survive together. January was a slow time for hiring, and the cold and hungry of the city were especially desperate. Nina stood in the lines at Hopkins & Co. with a hundred others, all competing for a handful of jobs. Not even the German tailor where she had worked earlier that year needed her help now.

  Nina’s last four dollars had already been spent on coal and food; they would be relying on the girls’ wages until Nina found work. They each earned sixty cents per day. After paying the rent to Andretti, and for their portion of gas and water, they would have a little more than three dollars left each week.

  Three dollars to feed three people, provide coal for each day’s fire, and replace their tattered clothing as winter grew worse. They decided to save their coal for the coldest nights, leaving their stove bare and eating their meals cold when they could endure it.

  But every night was cold that year. A harsh wind battered the East Coast through the winter. The snows were frequent. Old people tried to remember the last winter of its kind.

  They pulled the bed that had been Tobias’s and Nina’s from the second room up close to the stove and slept in it together for warmth. The stove only gave slight warmth when the coal was rationed. They took turns lying on the side of the bed closest to the fire. Outside the wind whistled in the darkness like a rabid beast, beating at the windows and sliding its fingers through every crack in the walls. Elsa dreamed of the cold as a living monster intent on devouring them.

  Elsa’s boots had sprung holes on the sides as the soles began to peel away from the leather. She could see her wet sock poking through. She stole a handful of thread off her loom and wrapped it tightly around the front sections of her boots. This protected her feet for a few days until the thread wore through. She made this same cheap repair twice more before finding some wire on the street. More durable than the thread, the wire lasted her the rest of the winter but hurt her feet until her calluses molded to the new surface.

  Compared to the blistering cold outside, the warmth of her sweatshop labor offered a strange relief. Yet the factory had also come to disgust Elsa. Every time the foreman passed by she ignored him, hoping he would forget and not try something again. Yet the very sight of him or the sound of his voice made her want to vomit.

  They went on because there was nothing else to do. Elsa and Sonja worked their long hours for the pittance on which they survived. Nina stood in the lines at Hopkins & Co. as more people arrived each day, while few were chosen.

  As she grew accustomed to the new and meager reality of survival, Elsa’s anxiety turned to anger. She blamed her father for everything, even the sickening experience with the factory foreman. If he’d supported them like he should have and let her go to school, that never would have happened.

  Anger was easier to carry than fear or shame. Anger was easier to feel, an antidote to fear, and a mask for the shame she otherwise would have been unable to hide from her friends and family.

  After her mother’s illness, Elsa no longer went to study with Beth and Josephine. Hard as the late-night walk was in good weather, she couldn’t think of doing it in the snow. Even when the weather improved for a day or two, she felt guilty about doing an enjoyable activity while her mother and sister suffered. That winter she only made the walk to Sheridan Square once a week, on Sundays after church at St. Mark’s.

  It took some time after her father left for Elsa to tell Beth and Josephine. Similarly, after her mother lost her job, she hadn’t intended to tell them about her family’s plight. They were just as poor, and she didn’t want them to try to offer her charity. Worse still, she didn’t want to feel pressured to accept when they offered to let her share their meals. How could she, when her mother and sister sat hungry at home? But Beth worked beside her every day, and Elsa wasn’t good at concealing her emotions. Finally, one Sunday in early February, she told them that her mother had lost her job.

  “You must not let yourself become bitter,” said Josephine.

  Elsa wasn’t surprised that Josephine heard the anger in her tone. It was her anger that allowed her to talk about things without divulging everything. But the words themselves surprised her. She thought it was perfectly within her rights to be angry.

  “Your father has given you many reasons to feel angry,” Josephine continued. “It goes deeper than his abandonment. He should have let you go to school. He should have shown you love. His abandonment began long before he actually left. Now he has left you practically to support yourself. It is okay to feel angry for a while. But in time anger becomes bitterness, and bitterness can destroy a person. If you let it take hold of you, especially at your age, you may never be able to get rid of it. You must forgive him and focus on caring for your mother and sister. They need you so much now.”

  Elsa didn’t want to forgive her father. She didn’t want to forgive the foreman, either. She was still in too much pain.

  Josephine must have sensed her thoughts. “When you refuse to forgive someone, you hang onto the things they did to you. Failing to forgive means wanting to hold onto the pain. Why would you want that? Anger can lead to positive action. But bitterness internalizes the sin that someone else did until it becomes your sin, too.”

  Elsa didn’t really understand. But she didn’t want the pain to last. Maybe she would try to let it go.

  “We will pray for you, Elsa. And you should pray, too. Pray for your father, and for anyone else who has wronged you. That is the most effective way to forgive.”

  Josephine opened the Bible that lay on their table. “Let’s look at the place where Jesus taught his disciples how to pray. You probably say The Lord’s Prayer in German every Sunday. I will teach you to read and write it in English, and then maybe you can teach Beth and me to say it in German.”

  She smiled warmly at Elsa, lifting the mood from their serious dialogue. Elsa slid closer to her, eager to learn. Her studies had become her favorite activity in her life—the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak and horrific winter.

  Hunger had become their constant companion. They could only afford to eat what kept them alive—no more. For Elsa, the constancy of cold was only broken by the steamy discomfort of the sweatshop. Nina had it worse than her daughters, as she walked each morning in search of work, then sat alone each afternoon in the cold, lonely apartment. For Nina and Sonja, they had no time to relax, no opportunity to forget their struggles. For Elsa, her only respite was her weekly visit with Josephine and Beth.

  A new fear haunted Elsa that winter. Although the foreman didn’t touch her again, she always felt his eyes on her, as if he were waiting for his next opportunity to corner her alone. Several times when she saw him near the factory entrance at quitting time, she made Beth wait until Sonja arrived to walk home with her. It was still too cold and wet to walk to Beth’s house on workdays.

  In February, word circulated that anyone who had been sexually abused by the foreman Ernest should talk to Rachel at Aisle 16. Rachel was one of the few adult women working on their floor.

  Elsa had never heard that phrase before. She didn’t know enough about sexuality to know whether what he’d done to her constituted a violation to her virtue. She became very quiet at her loom after hearing the cryptic message.

  Beth seemed to notice right away. When they were given a short break to eat lunch, she confronted Elsa. “What happened that morning the foreman took you into the office?”

  Elsa burst into tears. All her feelings of shame rose to the surface.

  “I thought so.” Beth embraced her. “Will you talk to Rachel?”

  “Should I?”

  “Have you told anybody about it?”

  “No.”

  “Not even your mother or sister?”

  “I can’t tell them.” Elsa was mortified that Beth knew. How could she tell her mother and sister?

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” said Beth, st
roking Elsa’s back. “You did nothing wrong.”

  Beth was right. Why did she still feel so ashamed?

  “You should tell Rachel what happened,” Beth said.

  “I will get fired.”

  “Maybe he will, instead. It is worth the risk to keep him from hurting other girls like he hurt you.”

  Elsa lifted her head off Beth’s shoulder and wiped her eyes. Did Beth realize that if she lost her job, she really would starve, along with her mother and her sister?

  The lunch break was over. They walked back to the loom.

  “We’ve been there, too, my mother and I,” said Beth as her hands resumed work. “People like us are always a small step away from destitution. There are no laws to protect us, no well-meaning citizens looking out for our welfare. At least there’s someone in the factory looking out for us girls now. I’ve been here four years, and I know you’re not the first girl who’s been molested.”

  Elsa didn’t answer. She wished the whole thing could just be forgotten. Why did Beth have to stir it up?

  “Tell your mother what happened. Ask her what you should do. Then you will know you didn’t make the decision alone.”

  Beth could tell her mother everything, but Elsa had a different relationship with her mother and was from a different culture. She didn’t think she could possibly tell her mother. Yet after a few days of pondering, Elsa decided she should. Even if her mother were angry with her, punished her, and blamed her for the incident, it would be better than keeping it inside. All winter, it had been festering inside her. It was close to turning into bitterness, like Josephine had told her it might.

  Elsa had underestimated her mother.

  The trials of the last six months had changed them both. Nina had grown to see her daughters more as women than children. Elsa was growing up faster than her mother could manage.

  Elsa saw through her tears that her mother had swallowed her own.

  “This was my worst fear for you and Sonja,” her mother said. “I don’t know how to protect you anymore from the evil of this world. But one thing you must not feel is shame. All the shame is on this man.”