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Chapter 1

From her bed of bundled newspapers under the kitchen table, Rachel Rabinowitz watched her mother’s bare feet shuffle to the sink. She heard the water filling the kettle, saw her mother’s heels lift as she stretched up to drop a nickel in the gas meter. There was the sizzle of a struck match, the hiss of the burner, the whoosh of catching flame. As her mother passed the table, Rachel reached out to catch the hem of her nightdress.

“Awake already, little monkey?” Visha peered down, her dark hair hanging in loose curls. Rachel nodded, her open eyes eager. “You’ll stay put until the boarders leave for work, yes? You know it makes me nervous when there’s too many people crowding in the kitchen.”

Rachel stuck out her bottom lip. Visha tensed, still afraid of sparking one of her daughter’s tantrums, even though months had gone by since the last one. Then Rachel smiled. “Yes, Mama, I will.”

Visha let out her breath. “That’s a good girl.” She stood and knocked on the front room door, two sharp raps. After hearing the boarders’ muffled voices assure her they were awake, she crossed the kitchen and let herself out of the apartment. Going down the tenement’s hallway to use the toilet, she allowed herself to think their trouble with Rachel was really over.

It had started with the colic, but she couldn’t blame the baby for that, though Harry seemed to. For months, it wailed at all hours of the night. Only if she held it in her arms and paced the kitchen did the cries settle into sobs that at least the neighbors could sleep through. They hadn’t been able to keep boarders then—who would pay to sleep next to that racket?—and Harry started working late to make up the income. To avoid the baby, he took to spending more nights at his Society meetings. Sundays, too, he’d managed to escape, taking Sam up to the Central Park or down to the piers to watch the ships. Visha might have gone crazy, boxed up in those three rooms with an infant who seemed to hate her. It was only Mrs. Giovanni coming by every day, for a visit so Visha could talk like a person, or to take the baby for an hour so she could rest, that got her through those long months.

Back in the kitchen, Visha poured boiling water into the teapot and also into a basin in the bottom of the sink before filling the kettle again and setting it back on the flame. She tempered the water in the basin with a splash of cold and set out a hard square of soap and a threadbare towel. She put the teapot, two cups, a jar of jelly, a spoon, and the slices of yesterday’s bread on the table. In the front room, furniture scraped across the floor, then the door opened and the boarders, Joe and Abe, emerged. The young men were bare chested, suspenders drooping from the waists of rumpled trousers, their untied laces slithering as they walked. Visha settled two damp shirts on the backs of the kitchen chairs. She’d washed them out late the night before, and at least they were clean if anyone complained. Joe went down the hall while Abe leaned over the sink to wash up. Visha edged past him into the bedroom and shut the door.

She lifted off her nightdress and hung it from a nail in the wall, then buttoned up a white shirtwaist over her shift and stepped into a long skirt. Her husband yawned when Visha sat on the bed to pull up her stockings. Harry’s arm still stretched across her pillow from last night, when he’d stroked her shoulder and whispered in her ear: “Soon, my Visha, soon, when I’m a contractor with my own business, we’ll move out of this tenement and up to Harlem, maybe even the Bronx. The children will have their own bedroom, we won’t have to take in boarders, and you can sit all afternoon with your feet up like a queen, my queen.” As he spoke, Visha pictured herself in the quiet bedroom of a new apartment building, windows open to the cool outside air. She imagined filling a tub in a tiled bathroom with hot water just waiting for her to turn the tap.

Visha had turned to Harry then, inviting. He moved over her quietly, the way she liked, not like Mr. Giovanni next door whose grunts echoed in the stinking airshaft. She kept him inside her to the end, her heels pressed into the backs of his knees, the prospect of his success stirring her desire for another baby. Rachel was four years old already, the sleepless nights a long ago memory, the tantrums apparently over. After Harry rolled off of her, Visha dreamt of the feathery weight of a newborn in her arms.

Rachel was getting restless as the boarders sat in the kitchen, stirring jelly into their tea and soaking their bread to soften it. From under the table, she reached out and tangled Joe’s shoelaces.

“What is this now happening? Is there rats chewing on my boot strings?”

Rachel laughed. She nudged her brother beside her to wake up. “Tie them in knots, Sam, so he falls down,” she whispered. “I can’t tie knots yet.”

Joe heard her. “What for you want me to fall over, to break my neck maybe? Be careful I don’t pull you from under there and make trouble with your mother.”

Sam wrapped his arms around his sister. “Don’t start now, Rachel. Be good and quiet and I’ll teach you what number comes after one hundred.”

Rachel let go of the laces. “There’s more numbers after one hundred?”

“Do you promise to be still until Mama says we can come out?”

Rachel nodded vigorously. Sam whispered in her ear.

“Say it again.” He did. Rachel laughed like when she tasted something sweet.

“One hundred and one hundred and one hundred.” Sam put his head down on the newspapers and listened, satisfied, to his sister’s chanting.

Back in September when he started first grade, Rachel had gotten it into her head that she would be going to school with Sam. When he walked out the door without her, she had thrown a fit that was still going on when he came home for lunch. Rachel’s screaming had driven even Mrs. Giovanni away and Visha was beside herself. “See what you can do with her!” she said to Sam, then shut herself up in the bedroom.

Sam had managed to calm his sister by teaching her the first five letters of the alphabet. Before he went back to school for the afternoon, his stomach rolling with hunger, he’d struck their bargain. For quiet and goodness, Sam paid Rachel with letters and numbers. It was April now, and already she knew as much as he’d been taught. That first day, Visha made up for his missed lunch by preparing for Sam his favorite dinner, pasta with tomato gravy just like Mrs. Giovanni’s. “You saved my life today,” she’d told her son, kissing the top of his head.

Visha, dressed, came in from the bedroom to make the boarders their lunches, wrapping cold baked potatoes and fat pickles in newspaper. Chair legs scraped and cups rattled as Joe and Abe got up from the table. Hoisting suspenders over damp shirts and grabbing jackets, they tucked the food into their pockets and stomped out the door.

“Come out from there now, you little monkeys,” Visha said. The blanket flew back and Rachel scrambled up, followed by Sam. Visha gave them each a kiss on the head, then Sam grabbed his sister’s hand and pulled her out of the kitchen and down the hall. While they took their turns at the toilet, Visha made a second pot of tea, refilled the kettle, rinsed the teacups and put them back on the table.

When the children raced into the kitchen, Visha caught Rachel and lifted the girl onto her lap while Sam stood on his toes to reach the washbasin in the sink. He was tall already for a boy of six and seemed to Visha a small version of the man he’d one day become. His light brown hair was Harry’s for sure, as were the blue eyes that made Visha’s father doubt Harry was really a Jew. But where Harry was smooth and sweet-talking, Sam was sharp and quick, already getting in fights at school and tearing his pants playing stickball in the street.

Rachel put her hands on Visha’s cheeks to get her mother’s attention. Visha gazed at her reflection in her daughter’s dark eyes, so brown they were nearly black. When Sam was finished, Visha dragged her chair to the sink so Rachel could stand on it to wash herself. When both children were at the table sipping tea and soaking bread, Visha dropped a whole egg into the kettle to boil and went in to wake her husband.

His breath still thick from sleep, Harry murmured in Visha’s ear. “So, did we make a baby last night do you think?” Visha whispered back, “If we did, he’ll need a papa who’s a contractor, so get yourself out of bed already.” Visha came into the kitchen with a shy smile on her face, Harry following her.

“Papa!” Rachel and Sam chorused as their father dropped his hands onto their shoulders and pulled them close so he could kiss both of their cheeks at once.

“You give him a minute of peace,” Visha clucked. She lifted the lid of the kettle to check on the bobbing egg while Harry went down the hall. It was a luxury this, every morning a whole egg just for Harry, but he said he needed his strength. If Visha had to get a bone with less meat for their soup or buy their bread already a day old to afford the eggs, well, it would all be better once Harry made good.

When he got back, Harry lifted Rachel onto his knee and took her seat. Visha put a cup of tea in front of him and some more bread, then fished out the egg with a fork and set it on Harry’s plate to cool. She leaned against the sink, her hand absently resting on her belly, watching her husband with their children.

“So, Sammy, what did you learn from school yesterday?” Harry hadn’t seen the children since breakfast the day before. He’d worked late, then gone to his Society meeting, coming home after even the boarders were asleep to whisper in Visha’s ear. She used to resent these Societies of his, the dues so hard on their pockets, until Harry convinced her the Society would back him when he went into business for himself.

Sam squinted. “B-R-E-D,” he said. “T-E.”

“And what’s this?” Harry asked, looking at Visha with sparkling eyes.

“That spells ‘bread’ and ‘tea,’ Papa! We learned the whole alphabet already, and now every day we learn spelling for new words. C-A-T. That spells ‘cat’ Papa!”

“Already such a genius,” Harry said, rolling his egg on the plate to shed it of its shell. Sometimes he saved a bite for Rachel, pushing the rounded egg white between her lips with his finger, but this morning he popped it whole into his mouth.

“What are you cutting today, Harry?” Visha asked. Rachel echoed her mother. “Yes, Papa, what are you cutting?”

“Well,” he said, addressing himself to his daughter, “we got patterns for the new shirtwaists yesterday, and I had to figure how to lay them out. The contractor, he likes my cutting because I don’t leave much scrap, but the material for the new waists has a little stitching running through the weave, and I had to lay out the pattern so that little stitch matched up at all the seams. It took me some time, that’s why I missed supper last night.” He glanced at Visha. “But I got it all figured out, so today I do the cutting.”

“Can I be a cutter, too, when I grow up?” Rachel asked.

“What for you want to work in a factory? That’s why I work so hard, so you don’t have such a life. Besides, girls aren’t cutters. The knives are too big for their little hands.” Harry put Rachel’s fingers in his mouth and pretended to chew on them until she laughed.

Harry turned to Sam. “You’d better get going now, little genius, or you’ll be late for school.”

Sam jumped up from his chair and dashed into the front room to dress. When he returned, Visha handed him his jacket. “And don’t waste the whole lunch hour playing in the street, come straight home to eat!” she called as he banged out the door and clattered down the two flights of stairs.

Visha went into the front room to open the windows. The April morning was clear and fresh. Leaning out, she saw a policeman still wearing his influenza mask, but Visha felt they were safe now the winter was over. She knocked on wood as the grateful thought passed through her mind. Then she saw Sam burst from the front of the tenement, dodging vendors’ carts and motorcars and the milk truck’s old horse. It amazed her that such a small boy could charge so headlong into the world.

Turning away from the window, she sighed. The boarders had left the room a mess, blankets tossed over couches, dirty clothes on the floor, their trunk gaping in the corner. She spent a few minutes setting the room to rights before coming into the kitchen. Harry had gone in to dress. Rachel was at the table, dropping pieces of stale bread into her cooling cup of tea and lifting them out with a fork. She pressed the dripping chunks of bread against the roof of her mouth with her tongue, squeezing out the tea and savoring the bread’s softness.

Visha was wrapping Harry’s lunch when he called to her from the bedroom. “Come in here a minute, would you?”

“You stay there now, Rachel,” Visha said, leaving the wrapped potato and pickle on the drain board. “I’ll be right back.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Close the door, Visha,” Harry said. She did. He caught her before she could fully turn around, his hands sliding down her hips.

“Harry, no, I’m already dressed.” He grabbed a fistful of fabric in each hand and lifted her skirt to her waist. “You’ll make yourself late.” He steered her toward the bed, bending her over, pulling at her bloomers. “Rachel will hear!” Holding her down with one heavy hand, he guided himself into her with the other. It was Visha now who had to stifle a grunt. She turned her face into the mattress as Harry moved behind her. “You want another baby, don’t you?” The mattress swallowed her answer of yes, yes.

In the kitchen, Rachel finished her cup of tea, but there was still a piece of bread on the table. The teapot was empty. There was the kettle on the stove, the chair still pulled up to the sink. She looked at the bedroom door, knowing she should wait for her mother, but she wanted the tea now. She took the teapot from the table and, standing on the chair, set it on the drain board, lifted its lid, and put in a pinch of tea from the tin. Then, with two hands, she picked up the kettle like she’d seen her mother do a thousand times.

The kettle was heavier than she expected. When she tilted it, the spout hit the teapot and knocked it over. Her two hands still clutching the kettle, Rachel watched, helpless, as the teapot fell and shattered. Dropping the kettle back onto the burner, the water spit and sizzled in the flame. Startled, Rachel lost her balance. The chair teetered over, toppling her to the floor. For a second she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Then she gulped in some air and out came a scream like falling cats.

In the bedroom, Visha tensed at the sounds of breaking and falling. She pushed up against the bed to stand, but Harry, not finished, held her down. Their daughter’s high wail carried over the transom. “Harry, enough, she’s hurt!” With a shudder, he pushed into her even deeper. When he finally pulled back, Visha stumbled to her feet, tugging her clothes into place over her slippery thighs.

Visha found Rachel on the floor, the chair on top of her. “Harry, come in here!”    

Harry followed, buttoning his pants. He lifted up his screaming daughter and kicked aside the fallen chair. “What happened here? Is anything broken?”

Visha ran her hands over Rachel’s legs, bending knees and ankles, then lifted each of her arms, checking elbows and wrists. Rachel kept up a constant scream that never wavered in pitch as Visha examined her joints. “I don’t think so, Harry, she fell down is all.” Visha saw the shards strewn across the floor. “And look at my teapot! What did I tell you, to stay in your chair!”

Harry stroked his daughter’s hair but now that she was in one of her fits nothing seemed to calm her. He handed her to Visha. “I got no time for this, already I’m gonna be late,” he shouted over Rachel’s screams.

“As if it’s not your own fault!”

Harry scowled as he yanked his jacket from its nail and shoved his fedora on his head. Visha, sorry for the harsh words, lifted her cheek to be kissed, but he turned away and headed into the hall.

“When you coming home?” Visha called after him.

“You know I got to finish all the cutting.” He paused in the doorway. “You just take care of this here. I’ll be home when I’m home.”

*  *  *

Rachel was growing heavy in her mother’s arms, her screams unnerving. Visha carried her daughter into the bedroom and sat her in the middle of the bed. “You calm yourself now.” She looked around for something that might distract Rachel, thinking of how Sam managed to settle her. Visha reached for the money jar on the dresser.

“Rachel, can you count these out for Mama, please? Then you can come do the shopping with me. I’m not angry about the teapot, I promise. Please?”

Miraculously, Rachel seemed willing to calm down. Stifling her sobs, she took the jar and dumped it on the blanket. Rusted pennies, dull nickels, sleek dimes, even a few quarters. She began to make little piles, matching like to like.

Visha backed cautiously into the kitchen. She sat down and took a few minutes to settle her nerves. Mrs. Giovanni peeked her head in from the hallway, a flowered kerchief tied over her hair.

“Can I help you, Visha?” she offered.

“Thank you, no, she’s quiet again.” Visha looked mournfully at the broken teapot. “See what she’s done.”

“You need a teapot to borrow?”

Visha shook her head, gesturing to a high shelf over the sink. “I’ll use the good one from my Seder dishes.”

“I’ll come back to visit you later, yes?”

“See you later, Maria.” Visha swept up the broken pieces of crockery and put them in the scrap bucket.

“Look, Mama!” Rachel called from the bedroom. “Can we get a rye bread today?”

Visha went in and glanced over the sorted coins, totaling their value. “Not today. Tomorrow when Papa brings home his pay we’ll get a fresh rye and some fish. But today there’s still the insurance man coming for his dimes, and a nickel for gas to make the soup, and another saved for tomorrow morning.” Visha dropped coins in the jar as she recited the list of obligations, then looked at what was left on the bed. “There’s enough for a yesterday’s loaf, some carrots, a meat bone. I’ve got still an onion. And some nice pickles, isn’t that right, Rachel?” On the first floor of their tenement was a shop where the pickle man tended barrels of brine and took in deliveries of cucumbers from a Long Island farmer; all the hallways of the building smelled of dill and garlic and vinegar.

Visha pocketed the coins and lifted Rachel down from the bed. “Come, let’s get you dressed so we can do our shopping.”

Passing through the kitchen, Rachel stopped and pointed at the wrapped bundle on the drain board. “Papa’s lunch!”

“Ach, see what you made him forget with your crying! Now what’s he gonna eat?” Instantly, Visha regretted the sharp words. Rachel’s lip pouted and began to tremble. Soon the wailing would start up again. “I’m not angry, Rachel. Don’t cry, please. Listen, how about we take it to him at the factory?”

Rachel clapped her mouth shut. She had never been to the factory. “Can I see where the buttons come from?” Most nights, Harry brought home an assortment of buttons twisted into a scrap of fabric, and it was Rachel’s job during the day to sit on the floor of the front room and sort them into piles by color and size.

“Yes, and the sewing machines and everything. Now, can you dress yourself do you think?” Rachel skipped into the front room, yanked open a drawer in the dresser she and Sam shared, pulled stockings up her legs and a jumper over her head.

Visha smiled at her plan, then hesitated. Harry had told her he didn’t want her coming to the factory. “A cutter is above the operators, Visha, you know that,” he’d explained. “I got to keep my respect. I can’t stop work just to show off my pretty wife.” But after last night, and this morning in the bedroom, wouldn’t he be happy to see her?

“So, Rachel,” she said, buckling the girl’s shoes, “you’ll be good?”

“Yes, Mama, I promise.”

“All right, then, we’ll bring Papa his lunch, and we’ll do our shopping on the way home.” The factory was a good walk from their tenement—Harry took the streetcar in bad weather—but today was a fine morning that promised winter was over for good. Visha held tight to Rachel’s hand as they pushed their way through the people crowding up to the pushcarts. They turned the corner and waited for the streetcar to pass, its hook sparking and snapping along the wire above. Crossing Broad Street, Visha lifted Rachel over a pile of horse droppings, then pulled her close as a delivery truck rumbled by, its big rubber tires taller than her little girl. Eventually, Visha pointed to a brick building much bigger than their tenement. “There it is.” They hurried across the street as the policeman at the intersection whistled for traffic along Broadway to stop. In the building’s lobby, Visha led Rachel to a wide door and stood still in front of it. “We have to take the elevator.”

The door opened, sliding sideways, revealing a young man inside. Made to haul freight and workers by the dozen, the elevator car was bigger than Visha’s kitchen.

“What floor?” he asked as they stepped in.

“Goldman’s Shirtwaist.”

“Factory or offices?”

“Factory.”

“They’re on seven.” The young man pulled doors closed and the elevator began to tremble and shake. Rachel let out a little cry.

“First time in an elevator?” he asked. Rachel looked at Visha, who nodded for her. “Well, you did good!” The car gave a last shudder and the young man pulled open the doors. “Goldman’s.”

Visha led Rachel into the din of the factory. The open floor was punctuated by iron poles that reached up to the ceiling. Without walls to block the big windows, the space was bright, dust and threads floating through streaks of sunlight. Long tables stretched across the floor, one sewing machine yoked to the next, at each a woman hunched over her work. Runners were moving around the factory, delivering pieces of cloth to the operators and picking up the baskets of finished goods at their feet. In the corner, some little girls sat on the floor, the younger ones threading needles and the older ones, eleven or twelve, sewing buttons on to the gauzy blouses piled around them.

The machines clattered and buzzed so loudly, Visha had to shout in Rachel’s ear. “There’s Papa!” He was standing at the cutting table, his back to them. Above his head, pattern pieces edged in metal hung from the ceiling like peeled skin pressed flat. Rachel leaned forward, ready to dash at him, but Visha kept hold of her hand. “He’s cutting! The knives are sharp, we can’t surprise him.” Rachel shrank back; she’d already caused trouble once that morning. Together, they walked carefully past the sewing machines to the cutting table.

Harry looked up and saw them coming. His eyes darted over Visha’s shoulder to one of the operators, a young woman with a pretty face. She met his gaze, hands frozen at the machine, her cheeks gone white. Seeing he’d put the knife down, Visha let go of Rachel’s hand. She ran a few steps and jumped into her father’s arms. He picked her up absently, watching the young woman stand up from her machine. Moving as fast as she could down the crowded row, she ran across the factory floor and disappeared behind a door, the foreman chasing after her.

Visha was now standing in front of Harry, her mouth lifted for a kiss.

“What are you doing here?” he growled. She lowered her chin.

“We brought your lunch, Papa. You left it at home this morning.”

“She was so upset you left it, I thought she’d have another fit. I told her if she was good we’d bring it to you.” Visha offered the wrapped package.

“That’s fine, Visha.” Harry shoved the lunch into his pocket, grabbed his wife’s elbow and steered her toward the elevator, carrying Rachel. “But I told you I got a big order, I don’t have time for this.”

Rachel’s lip began to tremble. “Aren’t you happy to see us, Papa?”

“I’m always happy to see you, little monkey, don’t get yourself upset. I just got a lot of work to do today. I’ll see you at home later.”

He set Rachel on her feet and left them to go back to the cutting table. When the elevator opened, it was crowded with crates full of wispy bits of cloth. “Maybe you could walk down?” the operator asked. “Scrap man’s here.”

Visha and Rachel went over to the stairwell and pulled the door in. On the landing of the stairs, one of the operators was leaning against the wall, sobbing. She was young, Visha could see that, not yet twenty, and Italian from the look of her. Visha placed a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off with a shudder and ran back up the stairs. Visha shrugged and grabbed Rachel’s hand, guiding her down. It was dozens of steps with a turn between each floor; by the time they reached the lobby, Rachel’s head was spinning.

Rachel’s arm hung heavily from Visha’s hand as they did their shopping: the butcher on Broad Street for the meat bone, the bakery on the corner for a yesterday’s loaf. From a pushcart in front of their tenement, Visha haggled over a bunch of limp carrots and some potatoes with sprouting eyes. Only when they entered their building and stopped at Mr. Rosenblum’s pickle shop did Rachel perk up.

“Look who’s here for brightening my day.” Mr. Rosenblum’s smiling eyes crinkled his  face. He spoke Yiddish with most of his customers, but with the children he practiced his English.

“Mr. Rosenblum, we went to the waist factory!”

“You did? Did you like the factory? You going someday to work there with your Papa?”

“No, I don’t want to work there. It’s too noisy, it makes the operators cry.”

“Ach, pickles never make for crying. Pick a pickle, Ruchelah.” Mr. Rosenblum lifted the wooden lid from a barrel of brine, and Rachel chose a big, fat pickle.

“Taste it,” he said. She took a bite, puckering her lips. “The more sour the pickle, the more better it’s good for you.”

“So good, Mr. Rosenblum, thank you.”

“And for you, Mrs. Rabinowitz?” Visha asked for half a dozen pickles. Mr. Rosenblum gave her seven. “One for the boy,” he said, winking at Rachel. “So he shouldn't be jealous of his sister.”

In their apartment, Visha gave Rachel a slice of the newly purchased bread. “Look here, the middle’s still soft. Take it in front and work on your buttons. I’m going to make the soup now.”

In the quiet room, Rachel dragged the jar of buttons over by the window, where warm light stretched across the patterned linoleum. She reached into the jar and brought up a fistful of the little disks. She spread them out on the floor, then began sorting them into groups. First was color: black buttons from brown from white. Then what they were made of: mother-of-pearl from ivory from bone, tortoise shell from jet from horn. Last would be size, though Harry mostly brought shirtwaist buttons so they were nearly all tiny. Sometimes Rachel would find a burly coat button mixed in, so big she could spin it like a top. While she worked, she recited the letters of the alphabet that Sam had taught her, all the way from A to Z.

Visha smiled at the sound of her daughter’s chanting while she cut up the vegetables. Leaving the knife on the board, she dropped a nickel in the gas meter, struck a match, set the pot on the burner. In a smear of fat skimmed from the top of her last soup, she fried chopped onions, adding the sliced carrots and minced greens and a little salt. She put in the bone and let it heat through until she could almost smell meat, then wrapped her hands in towels to hold the pot under the tap until it filled with water. Setting it heavily back on the burner, she added the cut up potatoes and put on the lid for the soup to simmer.

Not much of a meal, but it was almost payday. Tomorrow, after paying his Society dues, Harry would fill up the coin jar again. Once he’d saved up enough to buy the fabrics and the patterns and hire a few piece workers, he’d get a contract for himself, deliver the finished goods for more than he’d spent on supplies and labor, reinvest the profits. He’d be a contactor of waists, and she’d be his wife, a new baby warm in her arms, its greedy mouth circling her nipple.

Sam came clattering up the stairs and into the kitchen, startling Visha from her daydreaming. “Home already,” she said, getting his lunch. Rachel left the buttons in their little piles and climbed up on a chair beside her brother. While he ate his cold potato and pickle, Rachel told him all about going to the factory. When their mother stepped out to go down the hall, Sam said, “One of the boys, he got a real baseball. We’re gonna get in a game before afternoon school and I’m the catcher.” Sam was already on his feet when Visha came back. “Gotta go early, Mama, so I can practice my spelling.” He winked at his sister then dashed out the door.

Rachel went back to her buttons. Soon after Sam left, it was the insurance man who came, a loose coat hanging down to his ankles despite the warm afternoon. Visha went into the bedroom and came back with the two dimes. He took a little book from his coat pocket and noted her payment.

“Still no insurance on the little ones?” he asked, peeking in at Rachel.

“God forbid anything should happen,” Visha said, rapping her knuckles on the wooden table. “For now all we got money for is their Papa and me.”

“God forbid,” he agreed, shutting the little book and dropping the dimes into another pocket. They clinked against the coins he’d already collected on his trips up and down the stairs of tenements. Visha saw him out, then went back to her soup, thoughts of family stirring in her mind.

Rachel counted out ten mother-of-pearl buttons—one for each little fingertip. They were all the same size, round and flat with two tiny holes bored through the lavender-swirled shell. Whenever she had ten the same, she wrapped them together in a bit of cloth to give to Papa. On Saturdays when he got his pay, he’d give her a penny for sorting the buttons, and Sam a penny for going every day to school, and Sam would take his sister to the sweet seller’s to spend their fortune. Rachel sorted buttons until she felt sleepy, then curled up on the couch for a nap. Visha came into the front room and sat in the light by the window to mend clothes. The afternoon would be quiet for a while now, the hush in the room made more special by the noise seeping in from the street below.

* * *

A hard knock on the kitchen door startled Visha and woke Rachel. Voices from the hallway penetrated the apartment even before she answered. A woman, fleshy and sweating, swept into the room, pushing Visha back against the table.

“Where is he, that bastard, that liar?”

“What are you talking about? Who are you?” Visha thought it must have something to do with the neighbors—the woman talked like Mrs. Giovanni, but louder, meaner. Visha wasn’t upset. Not yet. Then she noticed, hanging back in the hallway, the operator from the factory, the young woman she’d passed in the stairwell. A sick feeling flowered in her belly.

“Hah-ree Rah-been-o-wits, that’s what I’m talking about. You come out here, you lying bastard!” The woman took a look around the room, crossed the kitchen to the bedroom door, pulled it open, peered in, slammed it shut. “Where is he hiding?”

“He’s at work, at the factory,” Visha said.

“We already gone to the factory, what do you think? He got outta there quick, didn’t he, Francesca?” The woman threw her question over her shoulder at the girl lurking in the hall. “So she comes running home to her mamma, telling me Harry’s wife, his wife, she came to the factory, and with a child already. It’s true? He has a wife?”

“I am his wife. My daughter’s here, and our son is at school.” Visha gathered her nerves, funneled them into a shout. “We have nothing to do with you, get out of my house!”

“Your house, your daughter, but what about my girl, hey?” All the noise brought Mrs. Giovanni into the hallway. She began talking in Italian with the girl, who started crying, her face red and splotchy. Their words, a foreign catechism, circled in Visha’s ears. Her cheeks lost their color. She asked the question to which she already knew the answer.

“What does she have to do with my Harry?”

“He promised to marry her, that’s what he has to do with her! Twice a week he comes calling for her after work, takes her out to the dance hall. Such blue eyes he has, I think he’s some kind of American, not a dirty Yid coming to ruin my Francesca. Then he gets a baby in her, stupid girl, and says he’ll marry her.”

Mrs. Giovanni had been inching closer with every word, pulling the girl with her. Now all the women were in the kitchen, Francesca so shaken that Mrs. Giovanni pulled out a chair and sat her down. She asked Francesca’s mother a question in Italian, and the whole story was told again in the language of opera.

Visha backed into the doorway to the front room. Rachel crept closer, peeking from under her mother’s skirt at the women gesturing and talking in the kitchen. Visha absently stroked Rachel’s head. It seemed to give her strength.

“Stop it, all of you!” she shouted. Mrs. Giovanni came to take one of her hands. Francesca’s mother sat beside her sobbing daughter. “Harry married me, seven years ago. I have two children with him. It’s a mistake, what you say.” Visha drew in her breath, gathering the words to tell this woman Harry couldn’t have taken her daughter dancing, he was busy with his Societies, saving money to be a contractor.

Then the truth clicked into place, like the tumblers of a lock. There were no Societies. There was no savings. He’d been out with this girl, spending his money on her, and Visha left at home to make soup out of bones. Her knees folded. Mrs. Giovanni caught her around the waist and guided her to a chair.

Visha buried her face in her hands. “Before he married me, he took me dancing, too.”

“You know what happens to her if no one marries her?” Francesca’s mother said. “She’s damaged goods now. Ruined.”

“I’m ruined.” Visha said it so soft and sad, Rachel ran over and threw herself in her mother’s lap.

Francesca’s mother leaned across the table, pointing at Visha. “You tell Harry, that bastard, we need money to send Francesca upstate. There’s a convent takes girls like this. She goes away for six months, to visit a cousin is what I say. Her bastard goes to the Catholic orphanage. When she comes home, maybe people talk, but it’s just talk, si?”

Mrs. Giovanna nodded her head. “She’s so young and pretty, some man will still have her.”

“It’s her only chance. If Harry doesn’t pay, you tell him next time it’s not me who is coming here for him.” The woman looked at Mrs. Giovanni. “You tell him what happens when Francesca’s brothers start to see what Harry done to her. She has to get away before it shows. You tell him.”

The woman got up, pulled her daughter into the hallway and down the stairs. Mrs. Giovanni tried to comfort her neighbor, but Visha brushed her away. “Leave me alone now, Maria, please.” After extracting from Visha the promise to send for her if she was needed, Mrs. Giovanni left. The room seemed too quiet now. The soup bubbled on the stove. Rachel shifted on her mother’s lap. “Go back to your buttons,” Visha said, pushing the child off her. “Go on with you.” Reluctantly, Rachel went into the front room. “And close that door.”

In the kitchen, Visha fought to breathe, her chest tight around her swollen heart. She wanted to smash everything in sight, splinter the chair legs, shatter the good teapot, too, like the one that broke already that morning. Remembering the morning, she stood suddenly, grabbing a teacup. Turning on her heel, she hurled it into the sink, china shattering against cast iron. Then she leaned over the sink and vomited, sickened at the memory of Harry inside her, purging herself of the stupid excuses she’d made for her husband.

Rachel was trying to count buttons, but the sound of breaking startled her. Her lip pouted and trembled, but something kept her from letting out the upsetness inside her. Pillowing her head on her arm, she curled up on the floor and tucked her thumb in her mouth, piles of buttons surrounding her like cairns.

Visha collapsed onto a kitchen chair and stared at the wall, black eyes blank. She felt frozen now, her limbs numb. If Rachel had thrown a fit, if Mrs. Giovanni had come calling, Visha might have broken down like a crazy woman. Instead, she sat still as a ghost, sounds from the hallway and stairwell and out in the street muffled by the surf in her ears.

Visha had no sense of how much time had passed before the apartment door creaked open and Harry slunk into the kitchen. Placing his warm palm on her cheek, he murmured, “Visha, my Visha, what’s wrong?”

From the place where his hand touched her, a trembling started and spread over Visha’s skin and through her muscles until her hands were quaking. As if released from a spell, Visha jumped out of the chair, backing away from her husband.

“What’s wrong? You have the nerve to ask me what’s wrong? I know everything! She was here, in my own kitchen, that Italian whore! All your promises, they were lies. All lies!” Behind her she felt the cold rim of the sink. She reached back and down, her hand closing on the knife, the blade slimed with vomit. Clutching the handle in her fist, she stepped closer to Harry. Her hand jutted forward. The knife caught his arm, splitting skin. A streak of red blossomed under his sleeve.

Harry grabbed her wrist, raising her arm and the knife away from him. “You crazy bitch!”

“You bastard, you liar!”

Rachel, hearing her parents scream and struggle, came running into the room. In her haste, she kicked a pile of buttons. The tiny disks skittered across the kitchen floor. She saw the blood on her father’s arm, the knife in her mother’s raised hand. Her lip trembled and a wail erupted from her throat. Now Mrs. Giovanni, drawn by the yelling, appeared in the doorway. She couldn’t see the knife, knew only that Harry and Visha were fighting—and no wonder, after what that man had done. She came into the kitchen to grab Rachel’s hand and pull her toward the hallway, thinking at least the little girl shouldn’t see her parents like this. Suddenly, Sam burst into the crowded room, panting from playing in the street. He froze for a second, confused by the commotion. Harry twisted around to see what was happening. Sam saw the flash of a knife, his mother’s distorted face. He lunged forward, hanging on his father’s arm. Rachel twisted away from Mrs. Giovanni and ran to her mother, grabbing at her skirt. Visha lost her balance, pitched forward. Harry yanked his arm away from Sam.

The arm, relieved of Sam’s weight, shot upward. The knife, clutched by both husband and wife, swung through the space between them. The blade nicked the side of Visha’s neck under her ear. It seemed a scratch, nothing more. Then a fountain of blood pulsed against the kitchen wall. Harry, stunned, stepped back. The knife clattered to the floor. Visha sank to her knees, swallowing Rachel in her skirt. Sam beat his fists against his father’s chest until Harry swatted him away, his grown man’s strength landing the boy hard against a wall.

“Murder! Police!” Mrs. Giovanni screamed. She ran from the room, her words echoing down the stairwell.

Harry looked around wildly. He dashed into the bedroom, grabbed a box from under the bed and began shoving things into it. Sam crawled across the kitchen. Snatching the dishtowel, he pressed it to his mother’s neck. It was soaked and dripping moments later when his father came back, the box under his arm.

“Papa!” Sam called. “Help us!”

Harry sized up his wife, his children, the pattern of blood on the wall. He wasted no scrap on sentiment. “Take care of your sister, Sam. You’re the man here now.”

Harry turned and flew down the stairs, running into the street and ducking into an alley before the policeman came from around the corner, whistle blowing.

Visha tilted over onto the kitchen floor, head turned to the side. The spreading pool of blood lifted the scattered buttons. They bobbed like tiny white boats.

Rachel swallowed her screams with gasping breaths. She put her hands on her mother’s white cheeks. Their eyes met. Visha spoke, but the words were a burble. Rachel tried to read the shape of her mother’s mouth. Then the mouth stopped moving and her face went still, the eyes black buttons on the far shore of a terrible sea.

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