They rang in the New Year of 1912 with champagne and roast pig. Arturo told Angela that maybe this summer, if all went well, they could be married.
Mimoo snorted all the way up the stairs, loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“Mimoo, you’re embarrassing him,” said Angela after the men had left. “You know he can hear you, right?”
“I hope the dead can hear me. Madre di Dio. Do you hear me? Did he give you a ring?”
“He doesn’t have the money right now.”
“He has money to spend on his cigarettes and train rides all across the country, doesn’t he? And every time I see him he’s wearing a new suit.”
“Rings are expensive,” Angela said, calling downstairs to her cousin. “Gina, how much was your ring?”
In the kitchen cleaning up the wine glasses, Gina inquisitively tapped at Harry, reading the paper. “How should I know?” he said with a shrug. “I walked into the jewelers and picked out the largest stone. My father got the bill.”
Gina stared at the fourth finger on her left hand. The two-karat princess-cut diamond sparkled. She cleaned it every morning, even before she cleaned her teeth. It was like something out of someone else’s life.
“He says it wasn’t that expensive, Mimoo,” Gina yelled up to the bedroom.
“Is he going to lure you into a pretend marriage,” Mimoo asked Angela, “like that Harry with my daughter?”
“Mimoo, we are not in a pretend marriage!” Gina called from downstairs. “And also, Harry can hear you.”
“No, Mimoo,” said Angela, sitting on the corner of the bed and smiling. “Unlike Harry with Gina, Arturo is going to marry me properly, in a church. Because as you know, the Italian atheist rhetoric is all for show. There is no such thing as an Italian atheist.”
Downstairs, Harry glanced up from his newspaper to catch Gina’s eye for a reply to the truth of that. She crossed herself and bowed in assent before kissing him with champagne on her lips.
“There is also no ring,” an implacable Mimoo pointed out upstairs.
Gina waved her ring hand at Harry, wondering how much her rock was worth and if she pawned it, would she ever be able to get together the money to buy it back.
Two
RIGHT AFTER THE HOLIDAYS, in the first week in January, the Lawrence women returned to work. Five days later, when they received their paychecks, they discovered there had been a small error. They got paid half a dollar less than the previous week.
Arturo asked Angela to perform some simple math. And lo! It turned out that, yes indeed, they were working two hours less a week, just as they had requested. But now they were getting two hours less pay.
That Friday night Arturo paced around the Summer Street parlor like a self-satisfied peacock, saying, “I told you. I told you. I knew they were up to no good, and I was right.”
Two hundred women, Angela at the forefront, dragging with her a desperately reluctant Gina, showed up the next Monday in front of the red doors of Wood Mill at the T-junction of Union and Essex, loudly demanding that the accounting error be corrected immediately since they were not returning to work until it was.
The manager of American Woolen, Lester Evans, a small polite man, came outside to talk to Angela and Gina.
“Why are you ladies upset?” he asked calmly, dressed in his tailored finery. “Stop shouting. What is the problem? Do you think you should be getting paid the same for less work?”
“YES!” came the defiant cries. Gina stayed quiet.
“But you all received a generous raise when you negotiated your last contract barely four months ago. Are you saying it’s not enough?”
“SHORT PAY!”
“Why would we pay you more for working less? That hardly seems fair.”
“NO CUT IN PAY! NO CUT IN PAY!”
“What’s not fair is the cut in pay,” Angela shouted into Lester’s face, strengthened by the yelling women at her back, like a sail in the tail winds.
“But you didn’t receive a cut in pay,” Lester said amiably.
“Yes, a cut in pay!”
“You’re playing with the big boys now, Annie LoPizo,” Lester told her. “In the real world you get paid for the hours you work. You don’t work, you don’t get paid.”
The women had no strategy but to continue shouting. Lester had had enough. Before he left he pointed a finger at Gina. “You have a good job,” he said to her. “You get paid well for the work you do. Don’t ruin your life by involving yourself in this malarkey. Stay away. I’ve seen this before. It’s nothing but trouble.”
All the nerve endings in Gina’s body agreed.
That evening when he heard what had happened, Arturo ordered Angela and Gina to march right back to the mill doors the following morning and make clear to this Mr. Evans that not a single worker was returning to the looms until the “accounting error” was rectified. “Not a single one.”
Shaking his head, Harry got up from the table. “Angie, you do what you want,” he said. “Listen to Arturo, don’t listen to him, it’s no difference to me. You’re a grown woman. But don’t involve my wife in this.”
“She is also a grown woman! She also got paid two hours less.”
“Yes, Harry, what are you talking about?” Arturo said, frowning. “You’re involved in this.”
“I didn’t say me. I said her.”
“What could you be thinking?”
“You know what I’m thinking,” Harry said, pulling Gina by her wrist from the table, nudging her up the stairs, away, away. “Because I just told you. I’ll do what I have to, but keep her out of it.”
Angela followed Gina upstairs behind a shut bedroom door. “Are you really not going to come with me?” she asked disbelievingly.
“I can’t, Ange. We’re having a baby. We need the money.”
“What money? There is no money. Gina, if there is a strike, no one will get paid.”
Gina turned jelly-legged. She sat on the bed. “Maybe it’ll all be over by tomorrow.”
“How in the world …”
“Maybe cooler heads will prevail.”
“Are you saying I’m not in my right mind?”
“I’m saying we need the money. Don’t you?”
“I need justice more.”
“Harry doesn’t want me involved. What am I going to do? Go against his wishes?”
“I’m family!” yelled Angela. “You’re not going to stand by your own family?”
“Angie, don’t go! He’s my family, too. And we’re having a baby. Why can’t you understand?”
“Oh, I understand. I understand being pushed away.”
“Ask Pam to go.”
“Lester hates Pam after she nearly lost her hand at the double loom and made such a stink about it. But he likes you. He’s apt to give in to you.”
“Did he give