Beyond the Pale: A Novel by Elana Dykewomon

Author:Elana Dykewomon [Dykewomon, Elana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-06-18T04:00:00+00:00

Rose told me I could make more money if I sewed. But I didn’t want to sew. She kept trying to show me anyway, just like Esther used to.

“No, I will not sew,” I told her fifty times.

“Everyone sews. Look at Ephraim—he’s already making $10 a week, tailoring. You think sewing is beneath you?”

“It’s not that.”

“What, then? It’s so good being a gluer, you get drunk from the smell all day long and it addles your brains, what?” Rose was getting good at arching one eyebrow, just like her mama. I practiced with my reflection in window panes when no one was looking, but I couldn’t get the hang of it.

“I just don’t want to sew. I don’t know how to tell you why. I want to do something else.”

“Nu?”

“I want to be a bookbinder.”

“A bookbinder? How did you come to this idea?”

“It seems more—I don’t know. I would rather have my hands on books than dresses.” I looked down at the floor, worrying that Rose would take my comment as an insult.

She stared with her blue eyes, as if she wanted to say something but changed her mind. “So how are you going to go about getting bookbinding work?”

“I saw a bindery over on Canal Street. I asked and they said they could only hire union.”

“Union?”

“You know, like the Bund.”

“I knew that,” Rose said, exasperated. “What I heard was that they sign up girls from inside the shop to be in the union, and then the unionists work with the non-unionists, try to get them to go over—”

“It’s like that in the box factory, only if they find out you’re union, they fire you. Last week they fired a boy who had one of those strike papers the unionists are always handing out on the street. That’s how they keep the wages so low.”

“So go somewhere else if you can’t go by the bookbinders. In sewing, almost none of the girls are in the union and we still make almost twice as much as you do. You don’t want to kill yourself for nothing.”

“I should kill myself for something?”

“Stop, Chava, you know what I mean.”

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