Cracked Reflections

By Joanna Michal Hoyt

The literary historical novel Cracked Reflections is set in an imaginary Massachusetts mill town during the real textile strikes of 1912, known as the Bread and Roses labor movement. This tale is particularly relevant in a time of conflicting news stories, high political passions, and concern about immigration—but such times have recurred over and over in our history.
Skillfully blending everyday struggles with the imaginary, Ms Hoyt tells the story of life in a small New England industrial town, from the point of view of twelve year old Kassandra. Her German immigrant family is one of hundreds with at least one family member who works in the mills, spinning yarn and weaving wool and cotton cloth for the fashionable American public. Few outsiders know how dangerous these workplaces are, how the life expectancy of millworkers plummets, partially due to many beginning work as mere children.
Only when their pay is reduced and several have been severely injured, do the workers decide they have had enough. The clashes between law enforcement, under the control of politicians and business men, and the largely female immigrant workers turn violent, attracting the attention of the public. Answers are demanded and a Congressional inquiry is formed.
Kass has friends on both sides of the issues. She works in a diner after school where many of the townfolk take their meals, getting to know several individuals well who are not like herself. She makes new friends with Italian and Polish children, once her schoolmates, who had to quit to work in the mills to support their families. Many have lost one or more parents to injury or mill sickness. Two newspaper reporters on opposite sides of the problems keep her emotions spinning, her head swirling and often confused. She likes and trusts Sergeant McCleary, but soon he is forced to act, and Kass, caught up in the middle, is seriously injured.
And Kass is afraid that the beast-man, with his voice of evil who whispers doubts and taunts in her head, is pulling the strings that encourage the bitterness, fear, and anger in all of them to explode. But small acts of kindness and understanding demonstrate that evil cannot when so long as love is in your heart: love for friends, family, and even those unlike oneself.
Geared toward teen/YA readers, Cracked Reflections has something of the nuanced historical rendering of Sally Gunning’s The Rebellion of Jane Clarke, something of the quiet exploration of mysticism and mental health of Elizabeth Goudge’s The Scent of Water, and in the way of E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, skillfully weaves history with the imaginary, and transports readers to a time when the line between the laboring and privileged classes was stark and wide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Propertius Press
• Release date: Sep 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005227852

Book preview

CRACKED REFLECTIONS

Joanna Michal Hoyt

Copyright 2021 by Joanna Michal Hoyt. All rights reserved.

Edited by Jenny O. Arras. Cover art by Yen Ha. Cover and Interior Design copyright by Propertius Press. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, except short passages that may be quoted within a review, without express written permission from the copyright holders.

ISBN: 978-1-00522-785-2

Propertius Press

Lynchburg, VA 24501

CRACKED REFLECTIONS is available both in paperback and as an ebook directly from the publisher and wherever books are sold.

To Rainey

who gave me life and language and what I know of courage

and who taught me always to listen for the other side of the story

Contents

Prologue: The light shineth in darkness…

Chapter One: Speaking In Tongues

Chapter Two: The Laborer is Worthy

Chapter Three: In This Thy Day

Chapter Four: And For Your Children

Chapter Five: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness

Chapter Six: Through A Glass, Darkly

Chapter Seven: When They Bring You Unto Magistrates And Powers…

Chapter Eight: When I Was A Child…

Chapter Nine: The Opening of the Prison

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Book Club Discussion Questions

Prologue: The light shineth in darkness…

February 1909, Guerdon, Massachusetts

Kass walks home from church beside her big sister Helena, soaking in all the sunlight she can before going inside to their dim apartment and Großmutter’s dark mutterings. The wind is so cold that it doesn’t smell bad even though it’s blowing uphill from the mills and the stinking river, and the noon sun has climbed past the tall buildings to pour light down onto Kass, who sings a bit of the Bach piece she sang with the Kinderchor an hour ago: "Die güldne Sonne, voll Freud und Wonne ..."

Hush! Helena snaps. Look where you’re going, and don’t sing in the street!

Since she turned twelve, Helena has snapped a lot. She has also put her hair up, insisted on being called Helena instead of Lenchen, and started waiting tables at Grandonkel Siegfried’s restaurant after school. Sometimes Kass thinks Helena snaps to show she’s a grown-up, while Kass is just a nine-year-old child. Sometimes Kass thinks Helena is just tired.

I sang that in church, and Pastor Baum says we’re supposed to be the same people on church and in the street.

That isn’t what he meant!

How do you know? In church we sing, and we pray and we ...

And you know who else prays out loud on the street? Helena demands. "Großmutter! Do you want to be like her?"

Of course Kass doesn’t want that. That’s what she’s afraid of, the dark thing in the corner of her mind that makes her want to sing about the sun.

No! That’s why I was singing!

I don’t know what to do with you, Kass, Helena says wearily.

Kass thinks she remembers her mother saying the same thing in the same voice, but she can’t be sure. Kass was only four when Mutti died, and Helena always says young children can't really remember anything, so maybe it’s always been Helena saying that. Thinking about that makes Kass stop wanting to sing and start wanting to cry. Helena notices, squeezes her hand, and looks more tired than ever as they climb the stairs to their apartment.

The door is still locked, which means Papa and five-year-old Minnie are still out bringing Großmutter from die Heilanstalt on the other side of Germantown, where she lives with other old and crazy people. Helena unlocks the door and checks the roasted chicken in the oven. Set the table, she calls to Kass. Wash your hands first.

I always do, Kass says, bending over the kitchen sink to wash her face, too. It’s best not to look upset when Großmutter comes. Two Sundays ago, Minnie choked on a big bite of bratwurst and started to cry. Then Großmutter started crying, too, and said Minnie was going to die young like her mother. Afterward Helena reminded Kass that it didn’t mean anything, that Großmutter didn’t know what was going to happen, that she was just geisteskrank, soul-sick, crazy. Are crazy people always wrong? Kass asked. Helena didn’t answer.

***

By the time Papa and Minnie and Großmutter arrive, the table is set, the soot is scrubbed off the windows to let in the light, the kitchen is full of good smells, and Kass and Helena are clean and smiling. Kass kisses Großmutter on her cheek, right next to the mole, makes Minnie wash her hands, cuts Minnie’s food into tiny pieces, and tickles Minnie’s leg when Minnie starts to protest. Minnie starts to say something to Kass, who whispers to her about not talking with her mouth full.

So I don’t die like Mama, Minnie says aloud. Helena narrows her eyes at Kass.

No, just so you’re not rude, Kass says.

You can’t escape the judgment, Großmutter says, her pale eyes shifting, following something the rest of them can’t see. Kass makes herself not look where Großmutter is looking. Sometimes Kass also sees the shadows in the corners of the room shiver and swell, but Helena and Papa never see them, and they get upset if Kass talks about them. Maybe being able to see shadows makes people geisteskrank. Großmutter’s face twists as she looks around. Ye know neither the day nor the hour, she says.

I know it’s Sunday, Minnie says. And the little hand is on the one and the big hand’s on the twelve, so it’s the one hour.

You’re a clever girl, Großmutter says.

Yes, I am, Minnie affirms.

Großmutter’s eyes narrow. Pride goeth before destruction, she says. Children have to be modest. She turns on Papa. Haven’t you taught your girls that? Do you want them to grow up to be hussies and Socialists?

Papa can’t answer because his mouth is full of chicken. There are sharp down-pointing lines in Helena’s forehead, and her mouth is tightly shut.

Kass isn’t sure what hussies are, but she can answer the other part. Papa teaches us everything, she says. And we will grow up to be very good people like Pastor Baum. And Herr Beiler says Pastor Baum is a Socialist, so if we grow up to be Socialists we will still be very good people.

Papa opens his mouth. Großmutter is already talking.

What did you say about Pastor Baum?

I said what Herr Beiler said to Herr Geist when...

Kass, you’re not supposed to eavesdrop! Helena scolds.

Little kettles have big ears, Papa says mildly. Never mind, Frau Kassell, she’ll grow out of it.

If she’s bearing false witness, she won’t grow out of it, Großmutter says. Or... She stops, staring at something Papa plainly can’t see, something Kass refuses to look at. If our minister is really a Socialist... If the devil is disguising himself as an angel of light... And I took the Lord’s Supper from his hands ... She rocks back and forth, faster and faster, in her chair that isn’t a rocking chair. He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled, she says very fast. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself...

Ah, Frau Kassell, that’s not Sunday talk, Papa says. Of course our pastor isn’t a Socialist. Kass was confused. You know how children are… He talks the way Kass once heard a policeman talking to a horse that had bolted down the street: slowly and calmly, the voice mattering more than the words.

Großmutter looks at Kass and says, She’ll be crazy like her mother.

No, Papa says, and then he starts coughing.

Lots of the people who work in the woolen mills like Papa have that cough, from breathing damp stagnant air ten hours a day, six days a week. Papa always says that he’s healthy, that it’s just a little cough, that everything will be all right. He’s also told Kass that she and Helena and Minnie will never have to work in the mill, will never get that cough. Kass still worries when he coughs. And now she’s made him worry, and that has made him cough.

I’m sorry, Kass says, crying. I don’t want to make people sick.

Don’t worry, Kass, Helena says wearily. Go to our room. Kass goes, sits on the foot of the bed she shares with Minnie, and presses her face against the window, trying to get away from the shadows that ooze under the door and swell in the corners of the room. She sings "Die güldne Sonne" very quietly to herself.

***

On Friday morning the sun shines again, but not on Kass. The tenements near the mills are six stories high, shadowing the street and the children who are hurrying to school.

Kass’s fingers are cold in her gloves. Her toes are very cold because they’re crowded against the front of her boots, especially now that she is wearing fat wool socks for the long walk to school instead of thin lady stockings for the short walk to church. She didn’t whine about needing bigger boots, but Helena noticed and told their father, who said he would get Kass new boots in two weeks. He could have gotten them last Saturday if the bonus pay for his section had come through, but Signora Esposito missed two days of work with her fever in the fourth and last week of the bonus period. It isn’t Signora Esposito’s fault. Kass knows this, but it is hard to remember that when her boots pinch.

Signora Esposito’s daughter Abelie stumps past Kass, hunched like a turtle in her too-small coat. She’s still wearing the same battered straw hat she wore in summer. Her long black hair is wound around her neck like a scarf, but it’s probably not very warm.

The words Pastor Baum read from the Bibel last Sunday whirl around in the back of Kass’s mind. He that hath two coats, let him impart to him who hath none… Kass has only one coat, but she has both a woolly beret that comes down over her ears and a long wool scarf with only a couple of little holes which don’t show if she wraps it the way Helena showed her.

Kass stares at Abelie’s back and swallows tightly, then makes herself smile as she runs to catch up with her. I don’t need this now, she says, thrusting her hat at Abelie and re-wrapping her scarf so it covers her head.

Abelie, startled, looks almost angrily at Kass. Kass hopes Abelie will refuse, and Kass can stay warm, and it will not be her fault. Then Abelie nods, mutters "Grazie," pulls the hat down over her lovely hair, hurries ahead. Kass falls back to walk with her friend Mirjam Geist, the choirmistress’s daughter, who lives in the apartment downstairs from Kass.

We can take turns with my hat if your ears get cold, Mirjam says.

Kass shakes her head. Mirjam doesn’t have a scarf.

Do you think she’ll give yours back when we get to school? Mirjam asks.

Of course! Kass says, wondering if that’s true.

As they climb the hill from the mill district to the school, the buildings grow shorter again: five stories, four, three. Maples and elms stretch bare knobby arms above the children. The traffic thins out. A few horses, stepping carefully on the slush and ice, pull blanket-wrapped passengers or bales of goods. James Price’s father’s car grumbles up the hill. James, the top student in Kass’s class, has new big-enough winter clothes, and he still gets to ride to school in a car under a blanket. Kass does not blame herself very much for coveting what is her neighbor’s.

Just before they turn into the schoolyard, Abelie drops back, pushing Kass’s beret back into Kass’s hands.

"Grazie," she says again.

Kass mutters "Prego." That’s nearly all the Italian Kass knows.

Abelie smiles and says "Danke schön," before hurrying into the school.

Kass pauses in the doorway, hat and scarf in her hands, feeling the blood rush back into her ears and wondering why thank you sounds so different in different languages. In the beginning was the Word, Pastor Baum read out on the Sunday after Christmas, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. What kind of words did God use back then?

Don’t block the door, Mary Breen says, pushing past Kass. Kass glares. What right does Mary have to be cross? Mary’s mother is a nurse at the hospital. Mary’s toque is new and matches her muff, and she has corned beef sandwiches and apples and cookies at lunch, not just bread and molasses like Kass and the other millworkers’ children.

Is all right, I excuse you, Kass says in a tone that means the opposite.

Hoity-toity! Mary says. If you want to be late for class that’s fine, but I—

Kass hangs her hat on the peg next to Mary’s.

Get that away from mine! Mary snaps.

What’s it to you? Kass asks in her nastiest tone and her best imitation of what the youngsters who speak English at home say when they’re starting a fight.

It’s lousy! Mary shrieks.

Is not! We’re clean! Kass retorts.

Look at it! Mary answers, and Kass does.

A louse, white, fat, foul, unmistakable, clings to the matted purple wool.

Clean, are you? Mary asks furiously. "My mam says the hospital’s full of sick dirty foreigners, and there’s more of you all through the city giving everyone else your germs and your bugs. You’re not clean, you’re lousy!" The last word comes out loud and shrill.

Some of the other girls in the hall take up the cry: Lousy! They’re coming in toward Kass, crowding her like the shadows...

It wasn’t mine! Kass yells, feeling the tears spurting out. It’s—I gave my hat to Abelie because hers wasn’t warm! I’m not lousy, it’s her!

Mary turns. The girls all turn and stare at Abelie and chant Lousy! at her instead. Abelie gives Kass one burning look. Then her face slams shut, and she stalks into her classroom, one grade above Kass’s.

Shame and anger twist in Kass’s stomach. Abelie shouldn’t have taken Kass’s hat if she had lice. Abelie shouldn’t have let herself have lice. But Kass knows the tenement the Espositos come from, knows how it smells in summer and how many youngsters pour out of it, can guess how crowded it must be. It would be harder to keep clean there. That is not Kass’s problem. But it is Kass’s problem that she has pushed her shame off onto Abelie.

Kass looks down at the hat, at the louse, and starts to shake. She opens the outside door and flings the hat as far out into the street as she can. Then she stalks into her classroom. The shadows crawl like lice or maggots in and out of her ears and her eyes and her soul, leaving her squirming and dirty all the way to her bones. They whisper: Touch not the unclean thing, and Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment and Lousy and Cruel and Crazy like your mother. She presses her mouth shut so she will not say out loud the things they are saying, so she will not be them. But it is too late; she has already said the wrong thing, the thing she will have to explain on Judgment Day...

***

Helena, of course, notices the missing hat on the way home. Kass explains. Helena is angry about the lost hat, and angrier because Kass has wrapped her scarf so the holes show. She’s also worried about lice. Kass explains in a whisper that she never put the hat on her head after Abelie gave it back. She doesn’t look at Abelie.

Helena still insists on washing Kass’s hair in the sink, and then combing it with kerosene, and then washing it again. This means that Kass’s hair is still very wet when Papa gets home from the mill, even though it’s not hair-washing day. This means Helena gets to explain how stupid Kass has been.

Lenchen, be easy on her, Papa says. She meant well. But Kass, don’t do that again, we can’t… Don’t do that again.

Kass understands that they cannot afford to buy another hat for her to throw away next time she has a stupid idea.

***

As they walk to church the next Sunday, Helena insists on wrapping Kass’s scarf herself so it looks neat, and she isn’t sympathetic when Kass complains that it’s too tight around her ears. Kass and Helena pointedly ignore each other on the way to church. Papa coughs. Minnie hums and bounces.

The church is warm and full of sunlight and organ music, and for a little while the shadows recede. Kass joins the Kinderchor, lets Bach’s music wash through her and cleanse her. She is almost at ease by the time Pastor Baum reads out how Eva listened to the snake’s lies and ate the apple that she thought would help her to be like the Lord God and know good and evil, how Adam ate too, how they realized that they were naked and started to be ashamed, how they hid from the Lord God, how Adam blamed Eva and Eva blamed the snake…

Kass isn’t sure why the story sits heavily in her stomach. Not until Pastor Baum gives the sermon. He talks about how we turn on each other in our shame and blame each other, when it is that blaming which should shame us most. He points out that the Lord God did not threaten or punish Adam or Eva until they tried to pass on the blame.

Kass does not hear the rest of the sermon. She hears the girls chanting Lousy! and sees Abelie’s face.

Kass tries not to cry as she walks home with Helena. She does not feel ready for Großmutter. She makes herself smile until Großmutter asks about what she learned in church. Then she cries. It’s my fault, is all she manages to say. Helena glares, and Papa looks worried.

Großmutter gets up, puts her hands on Kass’s shoulders. Don’t fret so, she says. God forgives. She holds Kass until Kass stops crying. Then she asks what’s happened. She doesn’t recoil and shudder and rock when Kass talks about the lice, or what the girls said to her, or what she said about Abelie, or what Pastor Baum said.

I was trying to do what the Word said, and I did it all wrong, Kass snuffles at the end. Großmutter squeezes her shoulders.

Großmutter leaves with her scarf wrapped around her head, without her warm green toque. She says she has another warm hat in her apartment, and money to buy more. Grandonkel Siegfried, Großmutter’s brother, makes sure of that, and Großmutter is old and a woman, so she can take his money. Papa is a man and not old, so he can’t take money from his wife’s uncle, though Grandonkel Siegfried can help by giving the Leonhart girls work at his restaurant when they’re old enough so they don’t have to go into the mills. And when their mother was sick, Grandonkel Siegfried did give them money, only he had to call it a loan, and someday when they are all making money they will pay it back, though Grandonkel Siegfried says not to worry about it. Helena has made Kass promise always to remember that they are grateful to Grandonkel Siegfried.

Kass is grateful to him, and now to Großmutter too. She likes the soft green hat. She wonders if the ugly voices that sometimes speak inside Großmutter’s head are lodged in that hat like lice. But, she tells herself, if that is so, maybe there is some of her grandmother’s kindness in there too.

Chapter One: Speaking In Tongues

1.

October 13, 1911

It’s suppertime, but Kass is too excited to eat. She feels simultaneously very grown-up and very young. Young because she’s having supper early with Minnie instead of waiting for Papa to come home. Grown-up for many reasons. First, she’s dressed like a grown-up now. The oak-leaf-brown skirt she’s wearing, which was Mutti’s and then Helena’s, comes right down to her ankles; she’s practiced not catching her toes in it as she walks. She has a new dark-green shirtwaist to wear with it, since the white blouses she wears to school would look wrong under the white apron she’ll have to wear at the restaurant. Her hair is pulled back in a tight bun, pinned in place by Helena, who has told her at least ten times this evening not to stick her fingers in her hair and pull it loose. Helena’s thick wavy hair stays in pins nicely, and Kass’s fine straight hair does not, even when Kass remembers where not to put her fingers. When she was a child Kass could wear her hair in braids, but she has to look and act like a grown-up lady now that she is going out to work.

Yesterday, Kass turned twelve. Tonight, she’s going for the first time to bus tables for the evening shift at Grandonkel Siegfried’s—no, at Herr Schramm’s restaurant. Helena has impressed on her that she has to call him Herr Schramm at work. She’ll take the streetcar to the restaurant by herself, and when she gets there she’ll carry away dirty plates and wipe down tables and earn money. She’ll work six to nine-thirty in the evening on weekdays, and six to nine-thirty in the morning on Saturdays, and earn two dollars every week. Twenty cents every week will be her very own to spend on anything she wants. She has thought of many, many wants. Also she has caught up again with Mirjam, who has been washing dishes at die Heilanstalt four evenings a week, since she also turned twelve. Kass has minded still being a child while Mirjam is already a worker, but now they are even again. Not that Mirjam will see it that way; she didn’t seem to feel ahead of Kass at all, just hurried and tired.

Kass, eat up! Helena fusses. It’s not Helena’s fault that she’s fussy. She left home just after five in the morning to work the early shift at the restaurant—a real shift, eight hours, now that she’s fourteen and old enough to leave school and really work. Then she got home just before Minnie and kept an eye on her, and made two suppers, one for Kass so she can get to work early, another for Papa when he gets home from work at six-thirty.

I’m trying, Kass says. Helena sighs, picks a Brussels sprout off Kass’s plate and nibbles it. I didn’t burn it, she says.

No, I know, it’s just…

Are you sick?

No! Kass takes all her excitement about working and all the little wiggly things that aren’t excitement, the things she doesn’t want to see, and crams them into the secrets box in her mind. She’s learned how to keep most things squished down in there for an hour or so at a time. After that it gets harder, but after that she will be out of Helena’s sight. Kass fills her mind with nothing but Brussels sprouts. (And potatoes. And chops. And how much better the food has been since Helena has been working, too. And how much better it will be now that Kass…)

Helena laughs. Kass looks across at Minnie, who is eating with her eyes nearly shut and her mouth stretched in a wide goofy grin.

What are you doing, Minnow?

Being like you, Minnie says, still grinning but opening her eyes all the way.

Kass looks over at Helena, who is still laughing, a happier laugh than Kass has heard from her for a long time, as she clears Kass’s plate away.

I can do that— Kass starts.

Go on! Wash your face and hands. You have the nickel for the streetcar?

Yes, says Kass, reflecting that she is too old now to complain about being treated like a child.

And you remember what I told you about the head cook, Frau Himmler?

She’ll be harder on me because I’m Herr Schramm’s great-niece, and she thinks he’ll be soft on me.

She was rotten to me for the first week, then she got better when she saw I was efficient and not taking advantage.

I’m going to be efficient! Kass says. Then she looks at the clock. I have to go. If I get there late she’ll be really upset.

She gets upset about something most nights anyway, Helena says. But yes, you’d better go. I should come with you, and tell the conductor to keep an eye on you—

I’ll behave, Kass says.

For once it’s not you I’m worried about, Helena says.

"I know what to do! I’ll sit near the driver if I can, and if I can’t, I’ll sit near some nice German family. I won’t sit next to men I don’t know if they don’t have nice families with them. I know."

All right, Helena says, kissing Kass on the top of the head as if Kass were as young as Minnie.

***

Helena shouldn't have worried. Mr. O’Rourke is the conductor on duty. He smiles at Kass as he passes her seat three rows behind the driver. Well, young lady, you’re out on the town, I see, he says. "On your way to give a concert, maybe?’

Kass feels her face heating up. She hasn’t sung out loud on the streetcar for nearly a month now. She didn’t sing very long last time, since Helena stood on her foot. But Mr. O’Rourke joined her, and he had a very nice voice.

She could sing on the streetcar now, and Helena wouldn’t know…

But she would, because Mr. O’Rourke would say something. Kass keeps herself quiet, watches the buildings stretch upward and thicken as they leave the German and good Irish neighborhoods and come into the tenements where the Russians and Italians and the newer, poorer Irish live. The Germans lived down there when Grandonkel Siegfried was a boy, and his restaurant is still there. At least it’s on the right side of Bridge Street, next to the mill offices, where the alleys are cleaner and the people are not crowded quite so tightly together.

Kass gets up before the Liberty Street stop, not wobbling very much as the streetcar shakes to a halt. She jumps down, noticing approvingly how her long skirt flutters round her ankles, and then hurries down Liberty Street to the back door of Schramm’s Restaurant.

***

An hour later, she is done being excited; she feels overwhelmed instead. She’s trying to be efficient. She hasn’t dropped any of the piles of dirty dishes or slopped water on the floor, and there’s only one little stain on her white apron, and Frau Himmler hasn’t scolded her about it yet. But she’s having trouble with the