TESSA CLAIBORNE
A
Novel
by Smcallis
This is a work of fiction. No similarities between any person living or dead is intended, and any such similarity is purely coincidental. All characters © 2007 by Smcallis.
Chapter 4
A SHILLING FOR DOMINO
BREAKFAST AT THE LONDON Quadrangle Mercantile and Shirtwaist factory was served each morning and precisely five-thirty, and fulfilled every expectation that one might imagine of drudgery. Eaten in absolute silence, it consisted of a chunk of weevily brown bread no bigger than your fist, and a pint of gruel. By the time breakfast came around, I was so hungry I wolfed it down. As time wore on instead of being the object of revulsion, the weevils were actually considered a delicacy, a source of protein and we devoured them with relish. By the time the lunch whistle blew, I had been at work for six hours, since my job consisted primarily of worming my way under the machinery; I invariably was covered in grease and filth. My stomach was so hollow by that time nothing mattered; I think I could have eaten a boiled shoe if it had been offered up to me. No such luck, lunch was always the same, a pint and a half of thin vegetable stew. At lunch, there was never any bread. Supper amounted to more bread, a pint of soup and a chunk of cheese, sometimes if you got lucky there was a piece of salt-pork floating in the greasy gravy. Once a week our rations were fortified with an apple, this didn't amount to so much generosity on the part of WSPFS, as it was a necessity to ward off scurvy. I remember at Christmas time we were given an orange, which seemed like a luxury.
The Christmas orange turned out was a mistake, never to be repeated by the management of Wallace Squeers, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. It certainly caused more trouble than it was worth, as there were knockdown, drag-out-fights as the older girls scrambled to take the oranges of the younger girls. Nobody fucked with me, since by this time I had earned a reputation as a scraper (more on that later). I remember sitting in the corner, in perfect oblivious solitude, sucking on that orange. I sucked and chewed the pulp then ate it, rind and all; it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.
The sexes were strictly segregated on the factory floor. The Women and girls were relegated to the ninth, tenth and elevenths floors. The men, the roustabouts who fed the raw cotton up to the looms and the sewing rooms labored on the lower floors. We almost never saw a real man, other than Mr. Fenner or Mr. Smith who hardly counted . . . as real men. This led to such a mythology to the extent that any actual sighting of a man caused quite a commotion, and an endless source of squabbles and gossip. Fraternization between the sexes was strictly forbidden.
We slept in dormitories on the tenth floor. The only actual furniture apart from an occasional stool or a bench was a barrack style rack of beds stacked four high. A straw tick fulfilled the role of mattress and a coarse woolen blanket was provided. Pillows were considered an unnecessary luxury, I had none. Everyone shared a bed, and my bed partner was Sally Fullam. Even though Sally said she liked girls, and this turned out to be our first disagreement, we remained good friends. At the end of the workday, I will tell you, one of my few real comforts in life was to get into bed with Sally; it was warm, our flesh touched, but there was never anything between us, Sally and I, we slept back to back.
Our clothing consisted of a woman’s shapeless waistless dress, which reached to the ankles, and knee length drawers. The ill-fitting cardboard shoes offered to us had two left feet and were uncomfortable to say the least. I preferred to go barefoot even in the wintertime. As one of the shuttlecocks, I seldom wore anything at all except knickers and a slathering of axle-grease. It was better that way.
The incident that changed my life happened on a Saturday I should think, somewhere near the middle of the morning shift. The work had been hard that morning, hectic, the Foreman pushed us constantly to go faster; a switch waited the back of any girl who dawdled or shirked. I was working under the no. 64 Cartwright, a thunderous hulking machine that spewed out fully woven cotton broad cloth at a prodigious rate. These machines were steam driven, with power take-offs from a complicated set of belts and overhead drive shafts, ultimately driven by a great steam engine that churned relentlessly in the powerhouse. The steam engine never needed rest; it did not tire or slack. As long as coal filled the furnace, the looms turned, twenty-four hours a day, six days a week. Thus, the worker became just a human cog in the great machine that was the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century.
The no. 64 was a troublesome machine, prone to jamming and always throwing a belt or clogging a gear. It was our job to get under the machine, worm our way into the most impossible places and reset the thrown belt or clear the jam. All this while the loom continued to thunder overhead. Cotton fiber rained down upon us, choked our lungs, stuck to our bodies. I was working with another girl, Lilly, she was older than I was, and stronger. She held a spanner, I shinned the torch. We were trying to reset a belt that had jumped the pulley. The machine was in the stop position when someone, we will never know who, engaged the mechanism. In one catastrophic awful second, Lilly was literally sucked into the whirling clockworks, I was spattered with bone and blood.
“STOP THE LOOM!” I screamed, it was too late.
I stayed under the machine, held her head, and tried to comfort her. Lilly could only moan. I felt her pulse ebb and flow. Lilly’s eyes were wide open the whole time, her face was so pale, finally there was a sort of gurgle from deep down in her chest, and then there was nothing. It’s a terrible thing to watch a person die. I didn’t know it then, but there was more dying in my future. To feel a man’s blood pulse hot over your hands, to pull cold steel from his belly, to know you are the cause, they are dead; this is war, up close and personal. Of all this, I had know idea
It took them three hours to get her out.
A SHILLING FOR DOMINO
BREAKFAST AT THE LONDON Quadrangle Mercantile and Shirtwaist factory was served each morning and precisely five-thirty, and fulfilled every expectation that one might imagine of drudgery. Eaten in absolute silence, it consisted of a chunk of weevily brown bread no bigger than your fist, and a pint of gruel. By the time breakfast came around, I was so hungry I wolfed it down. As time wore on instead of being the object of revulsion, the weevils were actually considered a delicacy, a source of protein and we devoured them with relish. By the time the lunch whistle blew, I had been at work for six hours, since my job consisted primarily of worming my way under the machinery; I invariably was covered in grease and filth. My stomach was so hollow by that time nothing mattered; I think I could have eaten a boiled shoe if it had been offered up to me. No such luck, lunch was always the same, a pint and a half of thin vegetable stew. At lunch, there was never any bread. Supper amounted to more bread, a pint of soup and a chunk of cheese, sometimes if you got lucky there was a piece of salt-pork floating in the greasy gravy. Once a week our rations were fortified with an apple, this didn't amount to so much generosity on the part of WSPFS, as it was a necessity to ward off scurvy. I remember at Christmas time we were given an orange, which seemed like a luxury.The Christmas orange turned out was a mistake, never to be repeated by the management of Wallace Squeers, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. It certainly caused more trouble than it was worth, as there were knockdown, drag-out-fights as the older girls scrambled to take the oranges of the younger girls. Nobody fucked with me, since by this time I had earned a reputation as a scraper (more on that later). I remember sitting in the corner, in perfect oblivious solitude, sucking on that orange. I sucked and chewed the pulp then ate it, rind and all; it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.
The sexes were strictly segregated on the factory floor. The Women and girls were relegated to the ninth, tenth and elevenths floors. The men, the roustabouts who fed the raw cotton up to the looms and the sewing rooms labored on the lower floors. We almost never saw a real man, other than Mr. Fenner or Mr. Smith who hardly counted . . . as real men. This led to such a mythology to the extent that any actual sighting of a man caused quite a commotion, and an endless source of squabbles and gossip. Fraternization between the sexes was strictly forbidden.
We slept in dormitories on the tenth floor. The only actual furniture apart from an occasional stool or a bench was a barrack style rack of beds stacked four high. A straw tick fulfilled the role of mattress and a coarse woolen blanket was provided. Pillows were considered an unnecessary luxury, I had none. Everyone shared a bed, and my bed partner was Sally Fullam. Even though Sally said she liked girls, and this turned out to be our first disagreement, we remained good friends. At the end of the workday, I will tell you, one of my few real comforts in life was to get into bed with Sally; it was warm, our flesh touched, but there was never anything between us, Sally and I, we slept back to back.
Our clothing consisted of a woman’s shapeless waistless dress, which reached to the ankles, and knee length drawers. The ill-fitting cardboard shoes offered to us had two left feet and were uncomfortable to say the least. I preferred to go barefoot even in the wintertime. As one of the shuttlecocks, I seldom wore anything at all except knickers and a slathering of axle-grease. It was better that way.
The incident that changed my life happened on a Saturday I should think, somewhere near the middle of the morning shift. The work had been hard that morning, hectic, the Foreman pushed us constantly to go faster; a switch waited the back of any girl who dawdled or shirked. I was working under the no. 64 Cartwright, a thunderous hulking machine that spewed out fully woven cotton broad cloth at a prodigious rate. These machines were steam driven, with power take-offs from a complicated set of belts and overhead drive shafts, ultimately driven by a great steam engine that churned relentlessly in the powerhouse. The steam engine never needed rest; it did not tire or slack. As long as coal filled the furnace, the looms turned, twenty-four hours a day, six days a week. Thus, the worker became just a human cog in the great machine that was the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century.
The no. 64 was a troublesome machine, prone to jamming and always throwing a belt or clogging a gear. It was our job to get under the machine, worm our way into the most impossible places and reset the thrown belt or clear the jam. All this while the loom continued to thunder overhead. Cotton fiber rained down upon us, choked our lungs, stuck to our bodies. I was working with another girl, Lilly, she was older than I was, and stronger. She held a spanner, I shinned the torch. We were trying to reset a belt that had jumped the pulley. The machine was in the stop position when someone, we will never know who, engaged the mechanism. In one catastrophic awful second, Lilly was literally sucked into the whirling clockworks, I was spattered with bone and blood.
“STOP THE LOOM!” I screamed, it was too late.
I stayed under the machine, held her head, and tried to comfort her. Lilly could only moan. I felt her pulse ebb and flow. Lilly’s eyes were wide open the whole time, her face was so pale, finally there was a sort of gurgle from deep down in her chest, and then there was nothing. It’s a terrible thing to watch a person die. I didn’t know it then, but there was more dying in my future. To feel a man’s blood pulse hot over your hands, to pull cold steel from his belly, to know you are the cause, they are dead; this is war, up close and personal. Of all this, I had know idea
It took them three hours to get her out.
Mr. Smith came on the factory floor to oversee the extraction. He came straight from his Greene street office, paced the floor, checked his pocket watch every five minutes, and studied the production roster.
I mostly just stood there; I think I was in shock. The floor supervisors, the plant manager, the workman summoned all acted as if I was invisible. Hate welled up inside me and choked my throat, they looked right past me and spoke about me in the third person as if I had no feelings at all, at least none they needed to trouble themselves, it was if I didn't even exist.
"I don't suppose the child needs to go to the infirmary?"
"Well, look at her."
"At least in all that's decent, let the child go to the latrines to wash-up . . . and get her to put some clothes on!"
One of the floor supervisors got down in my face and shouted like I was deaf and stupid, "Are you hurt child?"
Mr. Smith he said nothing, he peered down at me across his long nose. I must have struck a pathetic figure standing there, bear chested, clad only in knickers, smeared in grease and Lilly Barnes' blood. I kept thinking that he might say something, a humanizing word of condolence, tell me to go wash-up or send me to the infirmary for a lie down. Mr. Smith he took no notice of me, no notice at all. I was an insect, a nuisance. It became painfully evident he was far more preoccupied with the loss of production of loom 64 than he was as to any concern over the death of a worker.
I know what you’re thinking, that when I said this was the incident that changed my life that I must be referring to poor Lilly’s death. That is not entirely true. While holding Lilly in my arms, feeling her life’s force slip away affected me deeply, this was not what changed my life. No, it was something far more mundane, it was the casual checking of the pocket watch. Mr. Smith’s cold calculated preoccupation with time his constant retrieval of his pocket watch that changed my life. You see every time he checked his watch he pulled it from his waist coat pocket. During one of those numerous ritual removals, he inadvertently dropped a shilling.
One shilling, one shinning silver shilling, a twentieth of a sovereign, lay on the factory floor. Even in the midst of my grief, I spied it at once, in all its gleaming, potential glory. I looked to Mr. Smith, his face revealed nothing, the Foreman saw nothing, neither did any of the mechanics summoned to disassemble no. 64 so that the orderlies could carry away poor Lilly’s mangled corpse. No one seemed to notice, no one at all.
I surreptitiously kicked a clump of cotton fiber over it to conceal it. I did not dare retrieve it now. Such was considered theft, and punished by a night in the chokey. We were sent straight back to work; there was no pause, no loss of production could be tolerated. All day long, I worked, and all day long, I thought of nothing but Lilly's white face, Mr. Smith's mean face, and where that shilling lay. I resolved before last whistle to retrieve it.
All this happened in the long hot summer of 1878, two months after my twelfth birthday, and the mangling death of poor Lilly, the pocket watch, the day I found the shilling, the summer I met Domino.
* * *
FOR A LONG TIME I SAT alone in the darkness on the cold hard red brick floor of the women’s latrine. I sat and listened to the water drip, then trickle and ultimately gurgle down the drain. I huddled and cried, not aloud, so anyone could hear, I was a big girl, thirteen-years-old, and it was shameful to cry. I smothered my face in my knees and let out little dry pathetic heaves. The dinner gong rang over an hour ago I had missed supper. I didn’t care. On this crucial point, my heart and my stomach were in disagreement; my stomach growled my heart ached. I cried for myself, I cried for poor mangled Lilly. I cried for Mr. Smith, his cold wicked heart, I didn’t think up to this point it was possible to hate anyone more than I hated Mr. Squeers, but now there was Mr. Smith. My face burned hot when I thought of him, the arrogant way he flicked his pocket watch shut, the way he had Lilly Barnes carted off the factory floor like yesterday garbage. No, Mr. Smith made my list, he was going to burn in hell, I was sure of it. Now I was going to burn in hell, because now I was a thief. I thought of the shinny shilling and where I had secreted it. I knew in my heart it was his, I knew it was stealing and this made me feel wicked. The worst part of it was, I didn’t care.
“Tessa?”
I heard the lavatory door creek and bang shut.
“Tessa?”
I heard the lavatory door creek and bang shut.
“Tessa . . . You didn’t come down for supper.” It was Sally Fullam, she entered the woman's latrine and knelt down beside me and put her arms around me.
“Oh―Tessa. I brought you some tea.” I looked up at Sally, silent tears streamed down my cheeks; Sally's face was full of compassion. I took the warm enamel cup and drank, gratefully, for the first time all during that long awful day, I felt good inside.
“Sally . . . I, Why?”
“Oh―Tessa. I brought you some tea.” I looked up at Sally, silent tears streamed down my cheeks; Sally's face was full of compassion. I took the warm enamel cup and drank, gratefully, for the first time all during that long awful day, I felt good inside.
“Sally . . . I, Why?”
“Shhh, Tessa, it wasn’t your fault . . . You did everything you could. You're a mess, Love, com'on let’s get you cleaned up." I nodded my heart still numb with pain. Sally took my hand and led me to the showers, my knickers melted away, before I knew it, Sally stood beside me, she was naked as well. Her fingers dug into the pannikin of soft brown soap, she gently soaped me all over, she scrubbed my back. The water from the bucket overhead was ice cold, so cold it raised goose bumps, but it felt good to wash away the blood, filth and sorrow of the second worst day of my life.
Sally helped me wash my hair. “You have such lovely hair.”
“Sally, why are you being so good to me? You know I can never be your friend, not like what you want.”
Sally continued to brush my hair, she brushed my hair ‘till it show with a luster. She helped me dress; one of the other girls lent her a clean nightshirt.
“You already are my friend, Tessa.” Sally smoothed my forehead. “Besides, I’m older than you; somebody has to look after you. Let’s go to bed, tomorrow is Sunday, we’ll talk about it in the morning.”
No comments:
Post a Comment