BUTTONS
The Lavinskis' flat on the second floor had always possessed a mysterious
fascination for Nance. In and out of the other flats she passed at will,
but she had never seen beyond the half-open door of the Lavinskis'. All
day and far into the night, the sewing-machines ran at high pressure, and
Mr. Lavinski shuffled in and out carrying huge piles of pants on his
head. The other tenants stopped on the stairs to exchange civilities or
incivilities with equal warmth; they hung out of windows or dawdled
sociably in doorways. But summer and winter alike the Lavinskis herded
behind closed doors and ran their everlasting sewing-machines.
Mrs. Snawdor gave her ready consent to Nance trying her hand as a "home
finisher."
"We got to git money from somewheres," she said, "an' I always did want
to know how them Polocks live. But don't you let on to your Uncle Jed
what you're doing."
"I ain't goin' to let on to nobody," said Nance, thrilled with the
secrecy of the affair.
The stifling room into which Ikey introduced her that night was supposed
to be the Lavinskis' kitchen, but it was evident that the poor room had
long ago abandoned all notions of domesticity. The tea-kettle had been
crowded off the stove by the pressing irons; a wash-tub full of neglected
clothes, squeezed itself into a distant corner, and the cooking utensils
had had to go climbing up the walls on hooks and nails to make way on the
shelves for sewing materials.
On one corner of the table, between two towering piles of pants, were the
remains of the last meal, black bread, potatoes, and pickled herring.
Under two swinging kerosene lamps, six women with sleeves rolled up and
necks bared, bent over whirring machines, while Mr. Lavinski knelt on the
floor tying the finished garments into huge bundles.
"Here's Nance Molloy, Pa" said Ikey, raising his voice above the noise of
the machines and tugging at his father's sleeve.
Mr. Lavinski pushed his derby hat further back on his perspiring brow,
and looked up. He had a dark, sharp face, and alert black eyes, exactly
like Ikey's, and a black beard with two locks of black hair trained
down in front of his ears to meet it. Without pausing in his work he
sized Nance up.
"I von't take childern anny more. I tried it many times already. De
inspector git me into troubles. It don't pay."
"But I'll dodge the inspectors," urged Nance.
"You know how to sew, eh?"
"No; but you kin learn me. Please, Mr. Lavinski, Ikey said you would."
Mr. Lavinski bestowed a doting glance on his son.
"My Ikey said so, did he? He thinks he own me, that boy. I send him to
high school. I send him to Hebrew class at the synagogue at night. He
vill be big rich some day, that boy; he's got a brain on him."
"Cut it out, Pa," said Ikey, "Nance is a smart kid; you won't lose
anything on her."
The result was that Nance was accorded the privilege of occupying a stool
in the corner behind the hot stove and sewing buttons on knee pantaloons,
from eight until ten P.M. At first the novelty of working against time,
with a room full of grown people, and of seeing the great stacks of
unfinished garments change into great stacks of finished ones, was
stimulation in itself. She was proud of her cushion full of strong
needles and her spool of coarse thread. She was pleased with the nods of
approval gentle Mrs. Lavinski gave her work in passing, and of the slight
interest with which she was regarded by the other workers.
But as the hours wore on, and the air became hotter and closer, and no
enlivening conversation came to relieve the strain, her interest began to
wane. By nine o'clock her hands were sore and stained, and her back
ached. By a quarter past, the buttons were slipping through her fingers,
and she could not see to thread her needle.
"You vill do better to-morrow night," said Mrs. Lavinski kindly, in her
wheezing voice. "I tell Ikey you do verra good."
Mrs. Lavinski looked shriveled and old. She wore a glossy black wig and
long ear-rings, and when she was not coughing, she smiled pleasantly over
her work. Once Mr. Lavinski stopped pressing long enough to put a cushion
at her back.
"My Leah is a saint," he said. "If effra'boddy was so good as her, the
Messiah would come."
Nance dreamed of buttons that night, and by the next evening her ambition
to become a wage-earner had died completely.
But a family conclave at the supper table revealed such a crisis in the
family finances that she decided to keep on at the Lavinskis' for another
week. Uncle Jed was laid up with the rheumatism, and Mr. Snawdor's entire
stock in trade had been put in a wheelbarrow and dumped into the street,
and a strange sign already replaced his old one of "Bungs and Fawcetts."
Things seemed in such a bad way that Nance had about decided to lay the
matter before Mrs. Purdy, when Dan brought the disconcerting news that
Mrs. Purdy had taken her brother south for the rest of the winter, and
that there would be no more visits to the little house in Butternut Lane.
So Nance, not knowing anything better to do, continued to sit night
after night on her stool behind the hot stove, sewing on buttons.
Thirty-six buttons meant four cents, four cents meant a loaf of bread--a
stale loaf, that is.
"Your little fingers vill git ofer bein' sore," Mrs. Lavinski assured
her. "I gif you alum water to put on 'em. Dat makes 'em hard."
They not only became hard; they became quick and accurate, and Nance got
used to the heat and the smell, and she almost got used to the backache.
It was sitting still and being silent that hurt her more than anything
else. Mr. Lavinski did not encourage conversation,--it distracted the
workers,--and Nance's exuberance, which at first found vent in all sorts
of jokes and capers, soon died for lack of encouragement. She learned,
instead, to use all her energy on buttons and, being denied verbal
expression, she revolved many things in her small mind. The result of her
thinking was summed up in her speech to her stepmother at the end of the
first week.
"Gee! I'm sick of doin' the same thing! I ain't learnin' nothin'. If
anybody was smart, they could make a machine to put on two times as many
buttons as me in half the time. I want to begin something at the
beginning and make it clean through. I'm sick an' tired of buttons. I'm
goin' to quit!"
But Mrs. Snawdor had come to a belated realization of the depleted state
of the family treasury and she urged Nance to keep on for the present.
"We better cut all the corners we kin," she said, "till Snawdor gits over
this fit of the dumps. Ain't a reason in the world he don't go into the
junk business. I ain't astin' him to drive aroun' an' yell 'Old iron!' I
know that's tryin' on a bashful man. All I ast him is to set still an'
let it come to him. Thank the Lord, I _have_ known husbands that wasn't
chicken-hearted!"
So Nance kept on reluctantly, even after Mr. Snawdor got a small job
collecting. Sometimes she went to sleep over her task and had to be
shaken awake, but that was before she began to drink black coffee with
the other workers at nine o'clock.
One thing puzzled her. When Ikey came from night school, he was never
asked to help in the work, no matter how much his help was needed. He was
always given the seat by the table nearest the lamp, and his father
himself cleared a place for his books.
"Ikey gits the education," Mr. Lavinski would say, with a proud smile.
"The Rabbi says he is the smartest boy in the class. He takes prizes over
big boys. Ve vork fer him now, an' some day he make big money an' take
care of us!"
Education as seen through Mr. Lavinski's eyes took on a new aspect for
Nance. It seemed that you did not get rich by going to work at fourteen,
but by staying at school and in some miraculous way skipping the factory
altogether. "I vork with my hands," said Mr. Lavinski; "my Ikey, he vorks
with his head."
Nance fell into the way of bringing her school books downstairs at night
and getting Ike to help her with her lessons. She would prop the book in
front of her and, without lessening the speed of her flying fingers, ply
him with the questions that had puzzled her during the day.
"I wisht I was smart as you!" she said one night.
"I reckon you do!" said Ike. "I work for it."
"You couldn't work no more 'n whut I do!" Nance said indignantly.
"There's a difference between working and being worked," said Ike,
wisely. "If I were you, I'd look out for number one."
"But who would do the cookin' an' lookin' after the kids, an' all?"
"They are nothing to you," said Ike; "none of the bunch is kin to you.
Catch me workin' for them like you do!"
Nance was puzzled, but not convinced. Wiser heads than hers have
struggled with a similar problem in vain. She kept steadily on, and it
was only when the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle came up from below that
her fingers fumbled and the buttons went rolling on the floor. Six
nights in the week, when Mr. Demry was in condition, he played at the
theater, and on Sunday nights he stayed at home and received his young
friends. On these occasions Nance became so restless that she could
scarcely keep her prancing feet on the floor. She would hook them
resolutely around the legs of the stool and even sit on them one at a
time, but despite all her efforts, they would respond to the rhythmic
notes below.
"Them tunes just make me dance settin' down," she declared, trying to
suit the action to the words.
Sometimes on a rainy afternoon when nobody was being born, or getting
married, or dying, Mrs. Snawdor stayed at home. At such times Nance
seized the opportunity to shift her domestic burden.
There was a cheap theater, called "The Star," around the corner, where a
noisy crowd of boys and girls could always be found in the gallery. It
was a place where you ate peanuts and dropped the shells on the heads of
people below, where you scrapped for your seat and joined in the chorus
and shrieked over the antics of an Irishman, a darkey, or a Jew. But it
was a luxury seldom indulged in, for it cost the frightful sum of ten
cents, not including the peanuts.
For the most part Nance's leisure half-hours were spent with Mr. Demry,
discussing a most exciting project. He was contemplating the unheard-of
festivity of a Christmas party, and the whole alley was buzzing with it.
Even the big boys in Dan's gang were going to take part. There were to
be pirates and fairies and ogres, and Nance was to be the princess and
do a fancy dance in a petticoat trimmed with silver paper, and wear a
tinsel crown.
Scrubbing the floor, figuring on the blackboard, washing dishes, or
sewing on buttons, she was aware of that tinsel crown. For one magic
night it was going to transform her into a veritable princess, and who
knew but that a prince in doublet and hose and sweeping plume might
arrive to claim her? But when Nance's imagination was called upon to
visualize the prince, a hateful image came to her of a tall, slender boy,
clad in white, with a contemptuous look in his handsome brown eyes.
"I don't know what ails Nance these days," Mrs. Snawdor complained to
Uncle Jed. "She sasses back if you look at her, an' fergits everything,
an' Snawdor says she mutters an' jabbers something awful in her sleep."
"Seems to me she works too hard," said Uncle Jed, still ignorant of her
extra two hours in the sweat-shop. "A growin' girl oughtn't to be doin'
heavy washin' an' carryin' water an' coal up two flights."
"Why, Nance is strong as a ox," Mrs. Snawdor insisted, "an' as fer
eatin'! Why it looks like she never can git filled up."
"Well, what ails her then?" persisted Uncle Jed.
"I bet I know!" said Mrs. Snawdor darkly. "It's that there vaccination.
Las' time I hid the other childern from the inspector she had to come out
an' argue with him fer herself. She got paid up proper fer givin' in to
him. Her arm was a plumb sight."
"Do you suppose it's the poison still workin' on her?" Uncle Jed asked,
watching Nance in the next room as she lifted a boiler filled with the
washing water from the stove.
"Why, of course, it is! Talk to me about yer State rules an'
regerlations! It does look like us poor people has got troubles enough
already, without rich folks layin' awake nights studyin' up what they can
do to us next."