Audacity Read online

  AUDACITY

  Melanie Crowder

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA)

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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  Copyright © 2015 by Melanie Crowder.

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  diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Crowder, Melanie.

  Audacity / Melanie Crowder.

  pages cm

  Summary: “A historical fiction novel in verse detailing the life of Clara Lemlich and her struggle for women’s labor rights in the early 20th century in New York.”—Provided by publisher.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  1. Lemlich, Clara, 1886–1982—Juvenile fiction. 2. Women in the

  labor movement—New York (State)—New York—Juvenile fiction.

  [1. Novels in verse. 2. Lemlich, Clara, 1886–1982—Fiction. 3. Labor

  movement—Fiction. 4. Immigrants—Fiction. 5. Russian Americans—

  Fiction. 6. Jews—United States—Fiction. 7. New York (N.Y.)—

  History—1898–1951—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.5.C78Au 2015

  [Fic]—dc23 2014018466

  ISBN 978-0-698-17257-9

  Version_1

  for my grandmothers, Doris and Jo

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  tinder

  clouds

  ordinary

  words

  home

  a broken wing

  work

  not one bit

  yarid

  secrets

  shul

  lies

  preparation

  dance

  herbs

  lost

  faith

  letters

  service

  Pesach

  monsters

  pogrom

  hours

  dusk

  sunrise

  quiet

  a favor

  unblinking

  leaving

  test

  packing

  goodbye

  spark

  mirrored

  the German Empire

  murmuration

  look away

  whirligig

  stars

  Hamburg

  strangers

  gone

  thoughts

  listen

  ideas

  December 3, 1904

  Nicco

  at sea

  sons

  breathe

  morning

  fighting

  sinking

  shiva

  close enough

  land

  lines

  medical inspection

  powerless

  blind

  aliens

  New York City

  something we understand

  night

  stitches

  gloom

  possibility

  sunlight

  impossible

  flame

  sweatshop

  celebration

  obedient

  lock

  search

  sleepless

  forbidden

  Sundays

  truce

  mornings

  English class

  break

  one of us

  drapers

  look around you

  books

  surprise

  summer

  unchanged

  revolution

  give thanks

  lull

  say nothing

  tense

  bleary

  make ready

  make it right

  rise and fall

  at home

  wrestle

  not one word

  night classes

  school

  Coney Island

  tuition

  exams

  Rosh Hashanah

  soon

  inspector

  whispers

  Yom Kippur

  union

  tradition

  old world

  luck

  traffic

  dictate

  blood

  greenhorn

  temporary

  talk

  fired (again)

  tar beach

  scratch

  speak

  waiting

  twenty-five

  somersaults

  disorderly

  the beginning

  fire

  New Year’s Eve

  Weisen & Goldstein’s

  poetry

  the bottom line

  trouble

  influence

  snow

  alight

  time

  the shrike

  speedups

  mercury

  vote

  sting

  locked up

  brave

  if

  a different life

  every day

  seams

  choose

  ghost limb

  smear

  decline

  Purim

  planning (i)

  you have a right

  Joe

  peddling

  Mama

  planning (ii)

  trash

  kestrel

  menagerie

  silence

  meshuggeneh

  blaze

  divide

  blacklist

  waltz

  uptown

  honest

  a lot to learn

  overtime

  a gift

  lies

  uninvited

  soapbox

  planning (iii)

  vote

  red light

  dent

  part of me

  ask

  planning (iv)

  Triangle

  slander

  so easy

  fresh

  fists

  Gorky

  visitors

  electric

  suffrage

  holiday

  starve quick

  together

  gorillas

  farbrente

  judgment

  too much

  picnic

  agitated

  no bet
ter time

  Cooper Union

  November 23, 1909

  give

  Historical Note

  Interview

  Many Thanks To . . .

  Glossary Of Terms

  Selected Sources

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction loosely based on the early life of Clara Lemlich Shavelson. While most of the events in this story are true to history, in the instances where no record or conflicting records remain, the essence of Clara’s spirit and historical accounts of her contemporaries were used to fill in the gaps. Some details have been altered to fit the form, and scenes imagined where the historical record is silent.

  It has been an honor to imagine my way into Clara’s small but mighty footsteps.

  “Audacity—that was all I had.

  Audacity!”

  —Clara Lemlich

  tinder

  1903

  clouds

  Over the gray plain of the sea

  winds are gathering the storm-clouds

  Words

  float like wayward clouds

  in the air

  in my mind.

  Now his wing the wave

  Wait—

  or was it,

  Now the wave his wing caresses

  I dip a hand

  into my apron pocket

  unfold a square of paper

  against my palm,

  hunch my shoulder,

  hide it from view.

  Ah,

  yes.

  Now his wing the wave caresses,

  now he rises like an arrow

  cleaving clouds

  and

  The poem is ripped

  from my hand

  and the air,

  where only wayward clouds

  had been,

  is full of shouting,

  accusations

  a hand raised in anger

  ready to strike—

  the world slows

  in the second before

  pain blooms

  in my jaw;

  a second

  to hope

  the poem is

  safe

  in my mind

  where fists

  and fury

  cannot shake it free.

  ordinary

  Just because I am

  small-boned

  and short,

  brown-haired

  and brown-eyed,

  just because I look

  common

  as a wren

  meek

  as a robin

  that does not mean

  what is inside me is also

  common

  as a wren

  meek

  as a robin.

  Everything

  I wish for

  is strange

  aberrant

  even wrong in this place

  but I know

  I cannot be the only one

  blanketing her bright feathers

  hooding her sharp eyes

  hiding

  in plain sight.

  My life

  so far

  has been ordinary

  simple

  small

  but I cannot shake the feeling

  that inside this little body

  something stronger

  is nesting

  waiting

  for a chance

  to flex her talons

  snap her wings

  taut

  and glide

  far away

  from here.

  words

  Mama says,

  Sweep the floor, Clara,

  like a good girl.

  But a packed-dirt floor

  is impossible

  to clean.

  Scratch, scratch

  like a chicken picking grain from grit

  I chase the dirt outside

  where a thick-boned horse

  pulls a rattling cart down the wide road,

  his tail switching

  side to side

  flicking the flies

  from his backside as he passes

  the goose yard

  the stonemason’s shed

  the tailor’s shop.

  (where if I can steal

  an hour

  I can earn a kopeck

  or two

  sewing buttonholes)

  In the market,

  where the Russian peasants

  sell their goods,

  a kopeck buys me

  a scrap of paper

  inscribed with stout

  Cyrillic script:

  a verb

  translated

  conjugated.

  I set aside the broom,

  run a dusting cloth

  over the shelves

  closest to the window.

  The smell of spring

  wanders in

  on a wayward gust

  of wind.

  Across the street from Mama’s store

  the school is full of children,

  blond heads bent

  over lines of prose

  primers held open

  like siddurs,

  like prayer books.

  A handful of Russian words

  float across the street,

  mingle in the dust

  my broom throws

  into the air.

  I pause,

  do not even breathe,

  my whole body

  s t r a i n i n g

  to catch the sounds.

  I turn the new words

  over and over

  in my head

  on my tongue

  until they are mine,

  over and over

  as I wipe the windows down

  restock the shelves

  fetch a bucket of coal

  from the shed.

  By the time Mama retires to the kitchen

  to prepare dinner,

  the school is shuttered

  and empty,

  the Russian girls

  in their pleated brown dresses

  and stiff little hats

  have slung their satchels

  over their shoulders

  and skipped home.

  In the handful of minutes

  before Mama calls for me

  I duck behind the house

  follow the paths

  the red deer stamped

  into the ground,

  into the woods.

  I walk slowly,

  clouds pinking

  as the light

  sinks

  through the trees.

  Every few steps I stoop

  to pick up a feather

  a coarse-veined leaf

  a small

  burnished stone.

  Thrushes trill and tattle from the brush;

  today

  I have words of my own

  to trade

  for their song.

  home

  We live at the frayed edge

  of our shtetl

  between rows of straw-thatched homes

  and the forest

  where low-lying ferns

  tickle the ankles of

  slender trees.

  I was born here

  in a home split

  between two families

  our half split in half again


  to make room for Mama’s grocery store.

  (which means we are not so poor

  as some,

  that we can give a little

  to others)

  We take care

  of our own

  here, in the Pale of Settlement

  in the Russian Empire

  hemmed in on all sides

  by restrictions

  regulations

  by people who only wish

  to be rid of us.

  a broken wing

  Mama has released me from the store

  from my chores

  and the afternoon

  is mine.

  The ice in the streams is breaking up,

  pale green spears

  crocus buds

  peek out of lifeless swaths

  of meadow grasses.

  I leave the path

  dip a cloth in the stream

  duck under the low-flying branches

  of a pine tree

  where a wooden box

  rests against marbled bark.

  I lift the roof

  peer inside;

  a winter wren

  opens her beak

  in a halfhearted hiss.

  A few more weeks,

  I whisper,

  and the splint can come off.

  The hiss gives way

  to feeble cheeping.

  I drop a beetle

  a pair of dead moths

  beside her,

  settle a layer of brown grass

  over her feathers

  for warmth.

  Hers is not the first wing

  I have mended

  but still I worry

  what if,

  when she is finally offered

  a solid perch

  a view of the sky,

  what if she lifts her wings

  only to find the air

  still

  cannot hold her?

  work

  Like all the other boys in our shtetl,

  my brothers Marcus, Nathan

  and little Benjamin

  study Torah.

  Like Papa,

  it will be their life’s work

  not farming or teaching

  building or banking

  but praying;

  studying the holy ways.

  Like all the other girls in our shtetl,

  I am being trained in

  obedience

  hard work

  a biddable spirit;

  all the virtues

  a good wife needs.

  How can I tell Mama

  who toils

  sunup

  to sundown

  to be a good mother

  a good wife

  that this life

  (her life)

  is not enough for me,

  that I dream instead

  of words

  ideas

  a life that stretches far beyond

  the bounds of this shtetl?

  According to Papa,