The Tin Horse A Novel - By Janice Steinberg Page 0,64
she fought only about household issues; only rarely and timidly did she venture an opinion about politics. Not Mollie. And she wasn’t just throwing out inflammatory statements the way Zayde sometimes did, but calmly marshaling evidence, making her case. I felt as if our house—and beyond it, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, and the world—had become more spacious, as if the next time I walked out the door, the streets would be wider and the figs on our tree fatter and sweeter.
Mollie paused for a second after Mama’s interruption. Then, to my delight, she plunged back into the argument.
“Jerry Bachman is violating state law,” she said. “They all are.”
Papa bristled. “That is a very serious charge to make.”
“The bosses!” Zayde said.
“Listen to all of you.” Mama laughed uneasily. And then she got into the fray. “Who at this table has actually worked in a dress factory in Los Angeles? Why doesn’t somebody ask me what I think?”
“You’re right,” Mollie said. “You’re the authority, Charlotte. Did you feel you were paid fairly?”
“I … You know, an immigrant, you take any work you can get. You don’t complain.” Flustered, she glanced from Mollie to Papa. Her eyes settled on Papa. But she took Mollie’s side! “And they know it. They know they can cheat you and get away with it.… Now, is anyone going to eat my poppy-seed cake?”
The discussion of Mollie’s organizing continued, though Papa shifted to a less contentious tone. I dug into my cake with relish, thrilled by the power in Mollie that had sparked Mama to take a stand, that galvanized all of us and made us think about things beyond our narrow lives.
Mollie galvanized everyone she met. She began to appear in newspaper or radio reports as the forceful young woman shaking up the garment industry. And she did shake things up. Only a week after she’d arrived in Los Angeles, the cloakmakers walked off their jobs.
That was on Tuesday, September 25, 1933. The next morning, Mollie must have made some noise, or maybe it was the roar of her excitement that woke me.
“I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”
“Are you going to the strike?”
“It’s not a strike.” She moved quickly and efficiently, buttoning a blue-and-white striped blouse.
“But the radio said …”
“Elaine, you know that what you hear on the radio depends on who owns the radio station? And that most of the radio station owners are friends with the men who own the garment factories?” she said as she fastened her hose and stepped into a brown skirt. Never wear brown with blue, I could hear Mama admonishing, even as I was transfixed by Mollie’s words. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I lied. I had learned that the government and the rich—though never FDR—made the rules to benefit themselves. But the radio! My family clustered around the radio as if we were hearing the word of God.
“So, what did the owners of the radio station say happened yesterday?” Mollie asked.
“That the workers left their jobs and went into the street, and they almost started a riot.”
“Lying capitalist …” Mollie forced her brush through her unruly hair. “It was a peaceful march. We sang union songs. I’ll bet the radio didn’t say that. Or that so many people came to the theater where we held our meeting, they had to open another hall.”
Inspiration seized me. “Can I go with you?”
“You have school, dear.”
“Not until nine. I can catch a streetcar at eight-thirty.” I jumped out of bed and grabbed for my clothes.
“There’s nothing to come for. There’s no strike.”
“But didn’t they leave their jobs? Isn’t that going on strike?”
“I thought you were the shy one!” She laughed. “The way you won’t let go of a point, you could be a lawyer.”
That was how my future began. As Mollie explained the difference between a walkout and a full-blown strike, I savored the astonishing new self-image she’d offered me, the transformation from the first twelve years of my life as “the shy one” to a girl who was determined, bold, a girl who could be … well, I didn’t know of any women who were lawyers. But the qualities she had attributed to me felt like qualities that described Mollie herself.
“Can’t I help you?” I said when she finished, aware that bold Elaine wouldn’t take no for answer.
She took my hands. “Tell you what. Would you like to come with me this weekend when I visit workers in their homes?”