The Immigrants Collection

By Amy K. Sorrells

Two of Amy Sorrells' most beloved novels--Miracle at the Sideshow, and The Longest Journey (formerly Then Sings My Soul) in one beautiful edition.

 

Two unforgettable stories about two Eastern European immigrants who overcome all odds to find hope, faith, and life after escaping the pogroms at the turn of the 20th Century. 

 

In Miracle at the Sideshow, young Sophie Rosenfeld dreams of a resplendent life in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, but losing all her family except for her fragile niece, Mercy, in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire has left her with little opportunity. Sophie has to save Mercy's life, but to do so she must follow a mysterious man to the only place in the world that saves premature babies: Dr. Martin Couney and his Coney Island side show. 

 

In The Longest Journey, 94-year-old Jakob and his daughter Nel are in a race against time to discover the truth of his past. Elements of mystery, history, faith and romance are woven masterfully together in a novel that spans time to reveal how God redeems the broken years...and our future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Dog Books USA
• Release date: Dec 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215370551

Amy K. Sorrells

A long-time believer in the power of story to change lives, Amy’s diverse writing career includes nearly three decades of a variety of publications. Her award-winning works are praised by reviewers for the way they both poetically and accurately portray real life hardship and hope. When she’s not writing, Amy is an RN and loves doting on her husband, three young adult sons, and her black lab Cash (who inspires Jayko in her cozy mysteries!) at their home in central Indiana. If there’s leftover time after that, she enjoys DIY projects and long hikes in the woods.

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Visit Amy K. Sorrells online at amyksorrells.com.

The Immigrants Collection

Copyright © 2022 by Amy K. Sorrells and Black Dog Publishing and Boutique, LLC. All rights reserved.

Then Sings My Soul/The Longest Journey

Copyright © 2022 by Amy K. Sorrells and Black Dog Publishing and Boutique, LLC. All rights reserved.

Previously published in 2015 by David C. Cook and by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., in 2019.

Miracle at the Sideshow: An Astounding Novel of the First Infant Incubators.

Copyright © 2022 by Amy K. Sorrells and Black Dog Publishing and Boutique, LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

Cover designs by Amy K. Sorrells.

Author photo copyright © 2021 by Charles L. Sorrells. All rights reserved.

The Immigrants Collection is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novels therein are drawn from the author’s imagination.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

A picture containing text, person, standing, sign Description automatically generated

MIRACLE

at the

SIDESHOW

CHAPTER 1

July 1975

Queens, New York

SOPHIE HELD THE RED sash between her fingers, edges frayed, a smattering of holes gnawed by moths in the dark trunk shut tight for decades. Across the room, she caught her reflection in a tarnished floor mirror and was startled yet again at the sight of her own gnarled and worn fingers against the smoothness of the silk. Where had her youth gone? How had her body become such a shell, when her mind—oh, her mind with its memories of where this sash came from!—still felt eighteen?

Emily, her granddaughter, needed the sash, journal, and letters wrapped within it. She should have given it all to her daughter, Ginny, and brought her to the attic like this, but it was too late. Time was cruel to a mother and a daughter, the urgency of daily survival leaving no time for reminiscing, for stories. But a granddaughter. Now here was Sophie’s second chance to tell someone how the things which worry us so much in our youth would be forgotten, and the things remembered, the life-changing things that became red sashes of beauty in her memory, are the chances she took, the courage she had, the strength to keep going when all the world was so terribly wrong. Like a spotlight streaming through the center of a pitch-black big top, Sophie would tell Emily her story, one of miracles in the unexpected, and one of goodness in a dark and hopeless time... a time when everyone was out for themselves, when people were outcasts and hated because they looked and thought different or were weak, when those born unique had to become performers to survive.

The circus may have died, but dreams, and especially miracles, have not, Sophie said out loud to no one, smiling knowingly as she held the sash up to her face, once taut and scattered with freckles, now soft and saggy, the fine hairs of age and face powder reminiscent of a baby’s. She thought she could smell the one who had worn the crimson band across his chest, along with the faintest scent of the seashore.

Once again, she was transported in her mind to a moonless sky lit like daylight by great white buildings and towers trimmed with lights. She was back on a carousel. The horses paused mid-gallop and glistening, their withers tensed mid-prance as they floated round and round. Across the park, the elephants with feet wide as wagon wheels shook the ground with thumping, lumbering steps, their eyes wild behind the violet and crimson sequined blinders that matched the silk draped over their enormous backs, and on headdresses between their great, flapping ears. And the scent of boiled peanuts, clouds of cotton candy, pulled taffy, and fresh, briny oysters filled the air.

The stairs creaked, startling Sophie from her daydream.

A dark-haired young lady stepped into the attic.

Grandma, she said, a smile spreading across her face.

Sophie studied the girl, suntanned limbs lithe with youth, eyes sparkling with fearlessness, gumption, and kindness. She pulled her aching spine up as straight as she could. Emily, my sweet girl. I’ve been waiting for you.

Emily, wearing a university t-shirt declaring where she would attend as a freshman that fall, plopped down on the floor next to the battered steamer trunk.

Sophie held the sash out to her. The afternoon sunshine streaming through the attic window gave the scarlet fabric a fire-like luster.

What’s this, Grandma?

It’s a story.

A story? Emily crinkled up her nose in the sort of way teenagers do, even as curiosity danced in her eyes.

A raven-haired girl not much older than you lived on Ludlow Street, down where the East River meets the Hudson, back when Coney Island was still magical, when darkness lurked behind the ballyhoo, when truth was an illusion and illusions were true...

CHAPTER 2

March 23, 1911

Lower East Side, New York City

DARKNESS FELL ON LUDLOW Street, filled with the clatter of hooves and groans of wooden wheels on cobblestone streets, the screech and grind of elevated railways, and the churn and wheeze of boats and ships on the East River. The gamy smell of duck fat boiling on wood stoves, overwhelmed privies, goose and chicken excrement, musty mattresses, and curdled milk filled the stairwells of shoebox-sized tenements stuffed with large families. The cacophony of voices in the hallways sounded like Babel, one family speaking Yiddish, another Irish, another Italian. Babies born too soon were tossed in trash bins next to slaughterhouses or into the river, along with scraps of stale bread and krupnik soup.

This was the sum of life on the Lower East Side, ending with eternity in a grave marked by a wind-worn name for most immigrants. But Sophie Rosenfeld was not about to let that be her fate. She wanted to change the world, after all. The moon shone like a spotlight where she stood, the sky like thick, navy velvet. She imagined the neighboring rooftops as stages. Clotheslines of drying sheets opened like curtains as she sang songs and twirled to ragtime spilling from the open doors of dance halls below. Here she could be a saleswoman or cashier, a typist or a secretary, or even her greatest dream, a nurse in a neighborhood with a home she did not have to share, with a spot of emerald grass of her very own. Any place was better than her cramped and vapid life with endless cooking and laundry with her mother and sisters, and the relentless roar of sewing machines droning on in her head and her sleep when she was away from the shirtwaist factory.

Sophie sat on one of the empty vegetable crates she used for a stool in her rooftop kingdom. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her shawl snugly around her. Gone for the moment were the sour smell of simmering cabbage and the pipe smoke of men who toyed with their belt buckles when she and her sisters passed them as they loitered in dark tenement stairwells.

Sophie?

Sophie jumped at her little sister Jennie’s sudden intrusion upon her imagination.

Mama said to come and get you. Jennie’s freckled cheeks pinked with anticipation. The third of five Rosenfeld girls, sixteen-year-old Jennie could not hide her excitement about the reason for summoning Sophie from her perch. She knew better than to bother Sophie when she was on the roof, but this was a momentous occasion. The breeze caught in the curly black tendrils of Jennie’s hair, identical among all five of the Rosenfeld girls and which plaits never quite tamed. Come on.

Sophie, the second oldest, dreaded what awaited her two stories below in their fifth floor tenement. She glanced once more at the cityscape and the gleam of the rising moonlight on the East River, then followed Jennie down the dark and shadowy stairs.

Oil lamps struggled to light the front room and kitchen of the three rooms occupied by four of the five Rosenfeld daughters and their mother, Yette. Space was tight, but there was more room to move about since their Papa, Semyon, left them three years prior. They had pored over all the newspapers with pages full of other missing husbands and fathers, to no avail. Seven-year-old Pearl gladly took his space beside Yette in the bed. Jennie and Becky shared a bed, inseparable as they were. And Sophie had an entire mattress to herself since their oldest sister, Molly, had married. She had not gone far—across the street with her husband Solomon Becher and his parents, who owned the local shoemaker shop. Molly visited often, especially on nights like tonight, sitting at the table with Besse Sachs, the neighborhood matchmaker.

Sophie smelled the hunched old woman before she saw her, rose oil and lavender filling the room—she carried the scent of romance wherever she went. Crowned with a head full of thick white hair, Besse was hardly bigger than seven-year-old Pearl, and yet her presence commanded the attention of everyone from market to synagogue wherever she went. All were anxious to hear about her latest match, which ones were taking, which ones were not, and which newly married couples were expecting a childlike Molly.

Besse reminded Sophie of the chickens and ducks in the alleyways, the way the woman flapped her arms and hands whenever she spoke, and the endless clucking of her gossip. Her rheumy eyes widened with excitement when she saw Sophie enter the room. Come here, Sophie, come sit. I have good news.

Sophie resisted the urge to push Jennie in front of her—she was certainly old enough to have a match, too—but there would be no point. She felt Mama’s gaze on her, one she knew without a word was warning her to be gracious, one reminding her of all the times she had said to Sophie, Why can’t you be more like Molly?

Molly was hard for many a girl to live up to, and especially for impudent, starry-eyed Sophie. Quiet, compliant, and married by nineteen, Molly was three months away from having her first baby. Furthermore, the match between Molly and her husband Solomon needed no assistance in generating a flame. From the same Belorussian shtetl, the two had played together, ridden next to each other in prams, and even napped together at the youngest of ages before both families escaped to America on the same steamship in 1903. The Bechers and the Rosenfelds had agreed to the arrangement without a matchmaker, so logical were the family connections, not to mention the couple’s blushing affection for each other.

But Sophie was not so lucky.

Don’t be such a prude, Sophie, Yette scoffed each time Sophie refused one of Besse’s matches—five so far. You will end up an old maid. You cannot burden your sisters and me by not marrying.

Yette’s anxiety and disapproval were like the relentless buzz of summer mosquitoes in Sophie’s ear, increasing in pitch the more Sophie avoided discussions about arranged marriages. Or rather the high-pitched screech of a boiling teapot, she thought as the one on the stove whistled.

Yette wrapped her hand in a threadbare dish towel, picked up the teapot, then poured the boiling water over tea bags in the cups hand painted with bucolic scenes from Belorussia. The four teacups with saucers were one of the few things that had survived the journey to America in one piece, and Yette brought them out only for guests. 

Jennie, Becky, and Pearl tried to contain their giddy anticipation by pressing themselves against the kitchen wall. Since sweets of any kind were a rarity in their home, they stared stupefied as Yette set the last two sweet biscuits on a plate and presented them, along with a steaming cup of tea, before Besse as if she were a queen. She might as well have been. Few if any matchmakers would have spent the time Besse did with the Rosenfelds. They had nothing to offer her besides Yette’s gratitude. But she pitied them, being that there was no son in the family.

Yette stood back, cheeks flushed, and rubbed her hands up and down her crossed arms.

Sophie pulled a chair from under the table and took her dutiful place beside Besse. She tried not to stare at the age spots and crooked bones of Besse’s hands as they reached out to grasp hers.

I have just the match for you, the perfect pot to your lid, said Besse futilely searching Sophie’s face for signs of the shy expectation common in other girls.

The younger sisters giggled.

Sophie tried to recall the faces of eligible young men in the neighborhood she had not yet declined, and not one came to mind who interested her.

Who is it? blurted little Pearl.

Besse held a finger to her lips and hushed in her direction, then took a deep breath, delaying the revelation until none of them could stand it any longer. She clasped her hands together, the wrinkles of her face gathering into one broad smile, and whispered,

Henryk Ettinger.

CHAPTER 3

H enryk Ettinger? exclaimed Becky.

Henryk Ettinger! squealed Pearl.

Henryk Ettinger, gasped Mama.

Henryk Ettinger, Jennie said dreamily.

Henryk Ettinger, Besse confirmed with a wry grin of satisfaction.

Sophie was the only one in the room not taken by the revelation. And with good reason, she thought, trying in vain to appear glad.

Henryk Ettinger was brawn, handsome, and wealthy to boot—a most desired match. But he was also boorish, always focused on banking, and a braggart about his family’s money. His father owned the largest bank in the ten block area. Having come to New York in the 1880s, the Ettingers had time to nurture a business of their own and owned a home facing the East River. Mrs. Ettinger did not work but spent her time socializing and volunteering for various ladies’ auxiliaries. The match would be a chance not only for Sophie but for their whole family to rise above the monotonous, endless shirtwaist work.

Best of all, Henryk was not a peddler, something Yette prayed none of them married. Papa had been a peddler before everything had become too much for him. He had peddled trinkets and other necessary and unnecessary things—whatever his wholesaler demanded—from their tenement block to the notorious Bowery and back. By the end of the day talking to people exhausted him, and he would sit in the now empty chair by the window and smoke his pipe. It seemed as if he was trying to inhale back all the life he exhaled trying to sell things without success.

Not long after Papa left them, the sorrow in Yette’s eyes turned to desperation. She contacted Besse and begged her for help matching her remaining unbetrothed daughters, beginning with Sophie.

Henryk was an unexpected match indeed, for Sophie’s younger sisters were not the only ones enamored with Henryk. Sophie found the lack of discretion embarrassing in the neighborhood girls who ogled over him wherever he went. An entire giggling gaggle of them, led by the pert and prim Cora Witherton, stretched their necks at every opportunity to glimpse his chest and biceps, something he made easy for them since even on cold days he wore his shirt half unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up. He had a ridiculous way of cocking his head every so often, causing a too-long shock of hair to cascade over his big brown eyes, and which he swept to the side with exaggeration. Sophie never felt like she fit in with that group of girls. Now what would they think of her paired with their most desirable match?

I have planned a meeting two weeks from Tuesday, gushed Besse, raising her chin with a knowing look toward Yette. That is if Yette agrees.

Of course, Yette exclaimed.

Aside from a sympathetic glance from Molly, Sophie felt like she might as well have not been in the room. The choice in this matter was not hers, confirmed by the way Besse continued to clutch hold of her hands and the way Yette’s expectant dark eyes pierced her. Sophie did not know what to say that would be kind, so she tried to hold her tongue and tolerate Yette, who was already fussing over details—what to bake, what she should wear, what Sophie should wear, and what to do with Sophie’s unruly hair.

As so often occurred when in an unwanted predicament, Sophie’s imagination carried her away from the ruckus in the room and she imagined herself and Henryk living in a tenement above the bank, or worse, in the house with his parents, along with a half a dozen children at her feet clamoring for attention and crying for food and one always at her breast. The stove would be lit with pots boiling over and cabbages to chop and the sink forever full of dirty dishes, and the windows—her only access to the outside world—would be choked with endless lines of laundry to be pulled in and more baskets waiting to be washed.

All of this, and not a book in sight.

Let my sisters marry, she thought.

Sophie pushed her chair away from the table and stood abruptly. I can’t.

The room fell silent, like birdsong when someone slams a door.

I can’t, she said again, louder and with a conscious attempt to pull her shoulders back and raise her chin. 

Yette stood across the table, wringing her hands all over again as if to release herself from her impertinent daughter. Why, of course you can, she said. It isn’t hard. You go and you are polite. You let him talk, and you listen. As you learn about each other, love can come, Sophie.

Yes, Sophie, you must, her younger sisters echoed in unison.

Only Molly looked bemused.

I will be his match, exclaimed Jennie, stepping forward.

Besse placed a hand on Sophie’s arm. I was afraid of this. But Sophie, my girl, you are not getting any younger. And this is the fifth match—

Sixth, Yette corrected.

That’s right, there was Benjamin the baker. Besse paused and pointed a finger in the air. Then Irving the tailor—

I liked him the best, blurted Becky, who then blushed crimson.

—followed by Jacob and Chayim, Besse continued, both studying to become rabbis. Then there was Lemuel, the grocer. All respectable men. This sixth match I have made for you is the most exceptional of all, you must admit. Think of your family.

Any calm or reservation of manners left Sophie, and she now fumed. I do think of my family. They’re all I think about. But I am not like Molly or other girls. If I marry, I will only marry for love.

Love, Besse sneered, dismissing Sophie’s edict with a wave of her scraggy hand.

Love is everything when it’s convenient for her, Sophie thought as she tried not to roll her eyes.

It is those books you always have your nose in, Yette fretted. I have tried to forbid you from reading so many. Book only fill your head with thoughts, with ideas—

Yes, Mama, thoughts and ideas, and places and people and ways of life beyond these walls, Sophie gestured to the three small rooms around them. She thought of Anne of Green Gables and wished she could be an adoptee to the Cuthberts in Avonlea. Even better, she wished for a tornado to sweep her from this place so she could be Dorothy in one of her favorite books, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Are imagining and hoping so wrong?

Besse stood, although her height did not increase much from when she was sitting. "I have done all I can to find a proper, indeed generous match for you, Sophie, but your stubbornness is a challenge. No quality young man wants a girl so dreamy and independent. They want Eshet Chayil, a Proverbs 31 woman."

Sophie knew the reference well, and it made her heart flutter and race like a fly trapped in a jar. She felt too warm. Her collar strained against an invisible noose around her neck.

Yette’s frown deepened.

And what good is it to be a so-called woman of valor? Sophie protested. It has brought Mama nothing—no rubies in sight. Nothing but mouths to feed and socks to darn and bone hard work every single day. Well, I refuse to spend my life in a factory stuffed full of shirtwaists, or of such devotion to a man that I lose myself. Hundreds of pages of scripture surround this one chapter in Proverbs. With all due respect, Mrs. Sachs, whether I choose to live as a woman of faith, I do not wish my life to be restricted to this one passage.

With that, Sophie ran from the tenement back up the stairs until she could breathe in the cool wind on the rooftop.

Molly followed soon after and sat beside her, wrapping her shawl around them both. I’m sorry, sister. You know how things are for our dear mother, how this match would give her hope.

Sophie set her head against Molly’s shoulder. Then let him marry Jennie. She is of age. And she would be thrilled.

Their tentative laughter trailed into sighs.

Sophie did feel sadness for Mama. She might have had the same dreams as Sophie did as a girl her age. Now she was trapped with no husband and daughters whose lives depended upon her giving up everything for them.

We have much to look forward to, sister. Much besides a match. Molly took Sophie’s hand and placed it on her rounded belly, and together they felt the tiny baby within pressing against the sides of her womb. They leaned closer to each other and watched as the lamps in windows across the neighborhood turned down and stars brightened in the deepening indigo sky.

Sophie needn’t have fretted over the match.

A much worse fate awaited her.

CHAPTER 4

March 25, 1911

THE SCENT OF FRESHLY baked bread filled the air as the six Rosenfeld women walked eight blocks to the Ache building. They pressed through the throngs of people, men in derbies, women in hats covered in silk flowers and feathers. Newsboys and orphans darted in and out of bakeries and blacksmiths, hat shops and apothecaries, glaziers and tailors. Others taunted and dodged peddlers selling everything from early spring lettuces, meats, sausages, and cheeses, to pots and pans and other household wares. The family of girls was quite a sight with their silky black curls, fine features, and the gentle curves of their maturing frames. Even after six children, Yette still turned heads. Not that she cared. Exhaustion, heartbreak, and constant work left no room for the pleasures of the flesh.

If we cannot honor the Sabbath properly, we will honor it the best we can, she said as she filled their time walking with traditional songs and prayers. The pogroms in Belorussia had stripped them of their homeland, their relatives, and much of their spirit, but Yette would not allow their harrowing journey to take their faith.

How they all missed their homeland. Along with the Becher family down the lane, they had lived on a farm nestled in an emerald, rolling valley in the heart of the Pale of Settlement. Their homestead had orchards of pears and apples, a barnyard full of chickens and cows, goats and ducks, and rich soil that produced an overflowing cellar of food. They spent summer afternoons fishing on mossy riverbanks. During the white winters, they skated on frozen ponds under sapphire skies. They lived in peace, bloodshed and pillaging distant rumors until the Bechers woke them the night they had all fled. Sophie and her three sisters huddled against Yette as Semyon opened the door to David Becher’s hysterical pounding.

Grab what you can—they are coming, David beseeched them with ragged breath. His eyes had been crazed with fear, his head wrapped with a blood-soaked cloth. He squeezed his eyes shut and winced.

They nearly cut off his ear, Esther Becher had explained, her eyes, too, shuddering with terror.

Twelve-year-old Solomon Becher had come alongside Molly even then, their fingers clandestinely intertwined behind the folds of her skirt. During the next several days Solomon had been the one to raise all their spirits, comforting his mother when she wept, telling Becky and Jennie jokes or performing tricks to make them laugh, and never straying far from Molly’s side. He kept watch at night with Semyon and David as the family slept, an only child already assuming a man’s role in the family.

Why do they hate us so? Sophie had asked Yette once about the men who raped, not only the women but also the countryside, with their pogroms.

Yette shook her head. There are people in this world who live to hate people. They hate us because they say we are different.

But Mama, everyone is different.

Yette’s expression sagged, and she gave Sophie a half-hearted hug.

Later, Sophie learned about accusations against them—that their faith made them an inferior race. She did not understand how people who supposedly served the same father of Abraham could hate each other so much.

Coming to America had been a relief and deliverance from the fear and genocide, but New York came with challenges of its own, starting at Ellis Island. The immigration staff measured their head circumferences, scrutinized their facial features, and asked questions about the family they had left behind. They had droned on in English, a language that neither the Bechers nor the Rosenfelds understood, took fingerprints, then gave them each a small card that read, Welcome to America. The entire process had felt like the ultimate humiliation—a physical inventory marking them once again as different.

Squalor and inability to find work, coupled with Papa’s desertion just two years after they’d arrived, had brought disheartening difficulties. Continuing traditions became impossible. They were forced to choose between worship and working enough to feed the family. Every cent was spent before it could be pocketed. So, Yette made up for it as best she could, declaring that surely God would look upon them with lovingkindness and show His faithfulness to them if they recited the scriptures and maintained Friday night prayers in the dwindling daylight after long days at the factory.

With three blocks to go to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Jennie and Becky skipped ahead to join friends their age. Pearl, seven years old, stayed close to Yette. And Sophie paused to wait for Molly, whose six months of pregnancy slowed her pace.

Sophie tucked her latest library loan into the special deep skirt pocket she had made for sneaking books into the factory.

You are asking for trouble, said Molly, lacing her arm through Sophie’s, but I would bring a book too if I were not running out of room on my lap,

Speaking of which, I have decided she shall be named Beryl if a girl, Sophie proclaimed.

Beryl? Molly’s brow raised in amusement.

"Yes, Beryl. The heroine of The Hound of the Baskervilles."

Is that what you are reading now? That title—it sounds horrid.

Oh, but it is not. It is thrilling, Sophie said. Beryl is the most beautiful, dark-haired woman you could ever imagine. Very brave. And mysterious, Sophie grinned, raising her arm like a showman. I can see it now: Beryl Becher, brown-eyed beauty of Brooklyn.

They giggled at her theatrics.

Solomon might have something to say about that, and his mother Esther, who has made it quite clear she would prefer the progeny named after her.

Phooey. What does Solomon know about babies and names? Let him stick to his tailoring. And as for Esther, there are too many Esthers in the neighborhood already.

Indeed.

What about Rusty? said Pearl, joining them now. She swiped a stray lock of coal black curls from her forehead where baby hairs still lingered.

Rusty? Isn’t that the dog that sleeps under our stoop? asked Sophie.

Yes! It is! Delight filled Pearl’s face. 

With Jennie and Becky being so close to each other in age, they often ostracized little Pearl. She discovered independent ways of entertaining herself, most often with a bug she had captured or an injured bird or kitten. But her favorite friend of all was Rusty, a mangy looking neighborhood dog named for the color of the heart shaped spot on its back.

If it is a boy, I will suggest ‘Rusty’ to Solomon, said Molly.

Pearl’s delight turned to satisfaction. She held Molly’s opposite hand for the rest of the walk. The sole Rosenfeld born in America, Pearl knew no other life than this one, and she did not seem to mind spending her days sitting in the corner of a factory snipping stray threads with other children under eight. Maybe Pearl was the lucky one, Sophie considered. She did not have to be tormented by memories of open pastures and the scent of fresh cut hay and long walks chasing frogs and bunnies and picking wildflowers. And she certainly did not have to think about Besse and her proposed match with Henryk.

Sophie did not oppose marriage, and despite what Yette and Besse thought, she wanted a husband... someday. A few boys had caught her eye, and weddings were wonderful occasions. She recalled Molly and Solomon’s celebration, the white gloves they had all saved extra pennies to buy, the food, the drink, and the joy on Molly’s angelic, blushing face. Sophie simply could not imagine a life with Henryk. The thought caused an immediate knot in her stomach, followed by her conscience lecturing her about how she must consider him for the sake of Yette and her sisters. Sophie knew her incorrigibleness could make it harder for them to get a match, and they did not deserve an unjust reputation because of her.

Will I ever find the happiness you have found, sister? Sophie sighed.

Oh, yes, I am sure of it. But not with Henryk Ettinger, Molly smirked and nudged her playfully with her elbow. Follow your heart, Sophie. I was lucky and did not have to look far. I know you will find your own Solomon someday.

I hope so. But I do not know where. I will be here forever, it seems, and mother and Besse seem to think I am running out of possibilities.

You never know where life will lead you, Sophie.

Sophie recalled the sweetness of Molly and Solomon’s courtship, how they sent love notes to each other across the laundry lines joining their tenements, and Molly sharing them with Sophie, the two of them squealing and huddled under quilts to read them together. It was easy to adore their love story. It was quite another to discover one of her own. Henryk’s money, if nothing else, made him the sort of man who would keep her fed and safe and give her many children—as the other five matches would have—but she wondered if she would ever want those things. Mama, Molly, and the neighbors and friends who were wives all, on the surface, appeared happy enough. But they were tired. Always tired. Their shoulders drooped and they muttered to themselves as day after day they fed their families, cleaned their three-room tenements, worked at the factory, washed the laundry, and pressed the linens. Sunup to sundown, repeat. If she married, she wanted someone who would whisk her beyond the tenements to places she could only now see through words in books.

The Rosenfelds reunited as they took the last turn onto Washington Street and arrived at the white limestone Ache building looming ten stories in front of them. The usual appeals and solicitations from crowded picket lines protesting unsafe working conditions were subdued and sparse this Saturday morning.  On the other side, a crowd of nearly five hundred other workers absorbed the Rosenfelds, among them machinists, managers, pressers, examiners, bookkeepers, supervisors, and more. They made their way to the lines waiting to be taken to their floors by platform elevators in the back reserved for employees. Only those in management used the front elevators. Most of the seats at the 180 machines on the eighth floor and the 278 machines on the ninth would be filled, most of them immigrants like the Rosenfelds who needed every extra penny.

Pearl grabbed both Sophie and Molly’s hands as the elevator creaked and shuddered, raising the packed elevator to the ninth floor.

You are safe, sister, Sophie said, squeezing Pearl’s small, warm hand.

Pearl flashed her a smile and leaned into her side.

Most of the fellow riders were women, rosy-cheeked and high-spirited from their walks to work. They spilled out of the doors and into the workroom, each one taking their assigned seats at sewing machines lined up like troops for morning drills. Sophie and her family sat back to back, and shoulder to shoulder.

A breeze waltzed through the tall leaded windows open that morning. The hanging tissue paper patterns danced from racks above the cutting tables. Sophie shivered at the slight chill in the edges of the room where the sunlight did not yet reach. All the fresh air could not eliminate the stale scent of machine oil, which provided lubrication for the machines and soaked the tables spanning the length of the room. Hundreds of pounds of scraps filled the bins beneath the tables. Lately, they had been sewing with sheer fabric, which required extra concentration to keep stitches straight and not overly taut.

The Rosenfelds were lucky to have their jobs at the Triangle and the extra pennies they earned here. Before Papa left them, they had operated a sweatshop from their tenement. Their three room apartment was dark and cramped enough without the commotion of customers traipsing in and out, and the cramped conditions of stacked bolts of material, the sewing machine on the kitchen table, and dress forms crowding the living room.

The Triangle was degrading in different ways. Managers were scrupulous and severe. (Sophie glared at them every time they turned their backs.) The architects purposely built the exit so narrow only one person could fit through at a time to allow for bag and coat checks, ensuring no one stole a single scrap of fabric. Body searches at the end of each day were reminiscent of Ellis Island. Sophie was eleven when they had arrived, and red hot shame rushed through her when she recalled the way the intake staff had searched and stared at her naked, pre-pubescent body.

All of it served as a reminder they had escaped one Egypt only to arrive in another. 

CHAPTER 5

Sophie pushed and guided fabric under the presser foot. She imagined the thrumming sewing machines were a train carrying her to Chicago and the World’s Fair, or maybe St. Louis or Atlantic City, or even Paris or London. But her flight of fancy was interrupted by the furtive chatter of a group of girls she had envied for some time, middle class and established Americans by the looks of their dress and English. She wondered if they knew what it was like to be trapped in a tenement building or to fret over having enough money for bread.

Last summer, my sister went to Coney Island, one girl said. We have to go.

My cousin went, too, squealed another. She bathed all day in the ocean.

That sounds heavenly, a third said longingly.

I heard the roller coasters take your breath away, said another, clutching the arm of the girl next to her. And there are giant elephants, men flying through the air on the trapeze, girls in glittering costumes who stand atop horses...

...and boys. Lots of boys. And no chaperones, the first girl said mischievously. One ride even has a tunnel pitch black inside so you can kiss your man like crazy and no one will ever know.

They dissolved into laughter and began whispering and talking over one another so Sophie could no longer hear. She tried to focus on her work as if she was not interested in their conversation. What was so heavenly about bathing in the ocean anyway, full of sea creatures nibbling at their toes? Still, she wanted to see and feel it too, the American boys and Coney Island, rumored to be full of as much revelry and debauchery as The Bowery. The most fun Sophie and her sisters had was attending a social at the neighborhood settlement house. She longed to take one of the regular classes offered: literature or music, dancing or theater, even a trade like nursing. But there was no time, let alone money, for that sort of frivolity.

Kissing a boy terrified and intrigued Sophie. Even in Persuasion, the most romantic book she had read, Jane Austen left kissing up to the imagination. A first kiss might truly be best in a dark tunnel where the boy could not see the fear in her eyes or the nervous color in her cheeks. Her sweaty hands would give away her fluster, but perhaps she would wear gloves if she ever found herself in such a situation. She imagined lips on hers, warm and tender.

Suddenly Henryk Ettinger’s face came to her mind, dousing the romance of her reverie. Handsome as he was, the thought appalled her. She could not imagine kissing a boy she did not love. Jab-jab-jab went the needle and thread into the shirtwaist seam, a welcome diversion from the concern of having to kiss Henryk and the lives of girls with whom she would never have anything in common.

She braced herself as Johnny, the most onerous of all the overseers, walked by her. She had seen him beat one of the women strikers across the back with a bully stick. He had a habit of pausing at Sophie’s machine until she looked up and met his eyes. But his smile was not warm. The way it turned up on one side under his thick mustache made her shiver.

He paused, drumming his long, pale fingers on the corner of the worktable as he glanced from Sophie to the girls and back.

Her shoulders tensed and she felt her mouth turn dry.

Sophie, dear, to be a good worker you must pay attention. You must be careful not to damage or ruin the goods as you stitch. And send them to the pressing room as quick as you can. He paused, giving her a chance to absorb his words.

The way he spoke reminded Sophie of how she imagined the serpent in the Garden of Eden, at once sleek and libertine. He winked and patted her hand before walking away. The place where he touched her felt filthy.

Molly leaned over and whispered, He is a lecherous man, Sophie. Do not let yourself get caught alone with him, or any man who looks at you in such a way.

Molly didn’t need to tell her that. She had learned the hard way that men who smiled like Johnny had only bad intentions. She gulped back the memory of a few weeks prior when he had followed her into the cloakroom when no one was around. Before she knew what was happening, he had shoved her face first into the bunches of winter coats. He pressed himself behind her. She had felt a hardness against the small of her back as he ran his open mouth and tongue along her neck, his hot breath thick with the stench of tobacco smoke.

There is more than one way to make an extra dollar here, he had hissed.

She had managed to pull her arms up and get her hands on the wall. She pushed back as hard as she could, shoving him backward. He stumbled, then grabbed her again, this time covering her mouth with his, sloppy and moist. Only when the footsteps of coworkers approached did he let her go.

Sophie? Are you okay? Molly asked. Your face is ashen.

Sophie shook the memory away and tried to keep her voice light. Fine. I’m...fine.

When he passed by the next time, Sophie stared at the needle of her machine, not daring to let her eyes veer from it. He paused, and she heard his breathing grow heavier until at last he moved on, but not before taking a long draw from his cigarette and exhaling a large plume of smoke over her.

He is not even supposed to have that in here, Becky hissed, grabbing another shirtwaist sleeve from the stack across from them. He will burn us all to ashes.

Sophie glanced at the few red buckets hanging along the wall. The water they contained would douse a small scrap bin fire but would be no match for anything beyond that. She tried not to think of such a horror. Two more hours and they would be on their way home to Sabbath dinner. If she could get through an extra stack of sleeves by then, she would get a five cent bonus. She cleared the scraps and straightened her workstation for the last push to the end of the day.

Not much longer now, she said.

Thank goodness. Molly leaned back and stretched, rubbing the sides of her growing middle.

Thank goodness for the breeze today, Yette commented as she worked alongside Jennie, the two of them at the table behind Sophie, Molly, and Becky.

Sophie pulled the book from her skirt pocket and flattened its pages open between the table and her lap and began her covert reading. The two hours passed quickly. With