My eyes were shutting themselves with sleep. Blindly I felt for the buttons on my dress; and buttoning, I sank back in sleep again—the dead-weight sleep of utter exhaustion.
“Heart of mine,” my mother's voice moaned above me, “father is already gone an hour. You know how they'll squeeze from you a nickel for every minute you're late. Quick only!”
I seized my bread and herring and tumbled down the stairs and out into the street. I ate running, blindly pressing through the hurrying throngs of workers, my haste and fear choking every mouthful. I felt a strangling in my throat as I neared the sweat-shop prison; all my nerves screwed together into iron hardness to endure the day's torture.
For an instant I hesitated as I faced the grated windows of the old building. Dirt and decay cried out from every crumbling brick. In the maw of the shop raged around me the roar and the clatter, the merciless grind, of the pounding machines. Half-maddened, half-deadened, I struggled to think, to feel, to remember. What am I? Who am I? Why am I here? I struggled in vain, bewildered and lost in a whirlpool of noise. “America—America, where was America?” it cried in my heart.
Then came the factory whistle, the slowing down of the machines, the shout of release hailing the noon hour. I woke as from a tense nightmare, a weary waking to pain. In the dark chaos of my brain reason began to dawn. In my stifled heart feelings began to pulse. The wound of my wasted life began to throb and ache. With my childhood choked with drudgery, must my youth, too, die unlived?
Here were the odor of herring and garlic, the ravenous munching of food, laughter and loud, vulgar jokes. Was it only I who was so wretched? I looked at those around me. Were they happy or only insensible to their slavery? How could they laugh and joke? Why were they not torn with rebellion against this galling grind, the crushing, deadening movements of the body, where only hands live, and hearts and brains must die?
I felt a touch on my shoulder and looked up. It was Yetta Solomon, from the machine next to mine.
“Here's your tea.”
I stared at her, half-hearing.
“Ain't you going to eat nothing?”