Back to Blogging!

Hello again! I'm so happy that summer is finally here! Now I actually have time to catch up on blog posts! Here is a "memoir" (ok, it's not really my experience) that I did for school earlier this year. Hope you like it!

Out of Tragedy

     It was just like any other day. As usual, mother had breakfast made before I got up. As usual, my little sister Rebecca had to drag me out of bed, still half-asleep. As usual, I kissed father, told him to get better soon, and headed out the door to work. It was just a normal day in the life of a normal girl in 1911. At the beginning, at least.

     I met my friends at the end of the street. We always walked to work together, just as we had walked to school together barely a year before. Those had been good days. But now, none of our families could afford to let us go to school any longer.

     Annette leaned close to me as we walked, whispering in my ear, “They say that Katherine Spencer got out of jail last night.”

     “Really?” Kathy had been one of the younger girls on my floor of the factory, just thirteen. The owners had had her arrested for stealing fabric. That had been a hot topic on lunch break for the last few days. Some of the girls said that no matter what, stealing was wrong. Others thought that since the company was giving us such low wages and long work hours, they owed it to us. I couldn't decide. All I was sure of was that the incident had not been good for me. In order to stop further thefts, my supervisors had begun locking all exits except the front doors; even those were barred so only one person at a time could go through, after being searched by a guard. It now took me thirty minutes to get home, instead of five.

     “Will Kathy get her job back?” I asked as we neared the factory.

     “Are you kidding?” Annette shrieked, “If the factory had its way, she would be kicked out of town completely! But I hear she wouldn't go back even if they begged her to,” she slowed her pace and leaned nearer to me, “I hear she's trying to start labor protests.”

     “We could use it.” I said. Annette shrugged and winked as we went into the factory.

     For the next several hours, the clamor of machines filled my ears. Click, clang, crash, bang. Click, clang, crash, bang.

     The steady rhythm almost lulled me to sleep. I kept my arms moving in their mechanical, efficient fashion. Finally, the lunch bell rang, and hoards of us girls streamed past the guard's posts and into the bright New York City sunshine. Or, rather, what sunshine was able to filter through the smog.            Some of the girls were talking about things they had read in the newspaper that day, but I ignored them and read the penny novel Annette had loaned to me. The day Congress would finally start talking about labor laws would be the day I read the newspapers. I didn't expect that to be anytime soon.

     The whistle blew. Reluctantly, I slipped into the line filing back into the factory. Past the guards. Up the elevators. Then, I hoped that, someday, my life would break out of this monotony. But looking back at what happened later, I wish I had been more content.

The newspapers said the cause of the fire was unknown. They supposed it must have been a spark from the machines. Everyone on my floor believed them, because they hadn't seen. But...I saw.

      Click, clang, crash, bang. Click, clang, crash, bang.

      Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The fabric moved through my hands as usual. The other girls were silent in concentration, as usual. A girl came in to empty the wastebaskets...as usual? The custodians never started until five o'clock; it was only four-thirty. I glanced away from the whirring needles just long enough to see her face.

      Katherine Spencer.

      Her eyes locked with mine. My machine got clogged and stopped, but I didn't care. My gaze traveled down from her angry eyes to the match in her hand. She wouldn't...would she? I searched Kathy's face once more for what seemed like hours, though it was only seconds.

     I stopped breathing when the match fell into the wastebasket.

     I had thought there would be some kind of explosion. In those first few seconds, I fully expected to suddenly die. But at first...nothing happened.

     The machines kept whirring.

     The fabric in my hands kept jerking.

     Time failed to stop.

     But the smoke began to rise out of the can. Katherine had disappeared into the elevator. Quickly, I scanned the room for a cup or bucket of water...but of course, there was none. I raised my hand to signal our supervisor.

     “What's the matter?” he grumbled.

     “The wastebasket...” I pointed, but as I did, the flames leapt from the can and clung to the wall.

     It was then that time froze.

     A wave of people swept up behind me and carried me into the elevator. I was pushed against the back wall; my ribs must have cracked, but I hardly noticed. Everything was a blur, except that constant, loyal sound.

     Click, clang, crash, bang. Click, clang, crash, bang.

     My stomach flew into my throat as the elevator soared downward. The wave of girls surged out as soon as we hit the bottom. I followed them in a daze. The sun still wormed its way through the clouds. Pedestrians strolled nonchalantly past. It seemed as if the past minute had been a dream.

I looked up. The flames were licking their way out the eighth floor windows and on to the factory's sign. Someone yelled across the street for a merchant to call the fire department.

     “Tell them the Triangle Shirt-Waist factory is on fire! Tell them to bring the ladders!”

     Some people on the top floor had climbed onto the roof and were jumping to the roof of the next door building. Wave after wave of panicked girls pushed their way out of the elevator. Colors and smoke swirled around me until I could no longer distinguish them. I dropped to my knees, my lungs burning.

     Sometime later, I woke up in my own bed, safe at last.

     It only took thirty minutes for the New York Fire Department to extinguish the fire that day. But nothing could extinguish the memory from my mind, or the minds of the families of the one-hundred forty-six girls who died. I never told anyone about what I saw, mostly because, for some reason, one of those deceased girls was Katherine Spencer.

     They say that good grows out of tragedy. I suppose it did in this case. At least, I finally ended up sitting down to read a newspaper, and the labor laws that Congress passed changed the world for immigrant families like mine. But I can't help but feel that, even in the struggle for our rights as workers, the cost of making a point may have been to high.

  Note to the Reader: While the Triangle Shirt-Waist Factory fire is a real historical event, all characters in this story, including Katherine Spencer, are fictitious. As far as historians can tell, the fire was accidental, though no one can know for sure. I changed it to be an arson merely for interest. (And wasn't it great?!?)  =)