Updates every weekend, with occasional bonus posts on Wednesdays.
Willow Locke, a teenage immigrant living in turn-of-the century Manhattan, must find the strength within her to protect her family from an insidious corporate plot to destroy the un...
Ayala's shift had ended and she was fairly sprinting back to the Bowery, despite the ache in her body after 13 full hours of work. She had traded with Zilpah for a pair of leather boots, an item she could never afford to buy. Having a beautiful pair of boots gave her some measure of confidence even when she knew the rest of her appearance was that of just another tenement rat. She was glad of the boots now for she knew the rain would start at any moment. As if responding to her thoughts, the anvil cloud burst with a deafening clap of thunder.
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Ayala was instantly drenched. She ran for the shelter of a red and white striped awning, the entrance to a small cafe. She watched a finely dressed young couple dive for the shelter of a tobacco shop across the street. A series of posters pasted to a plywood construction barrier showed a man in a tuxedo with upraised arms silhouetted in a spotlight. The repetitive image transformed the barrier into an outsize filmstrip. In broad ribbons of red calligraphy, the posters advertised a dance show at a Bowery theatre: "Master Rocka, The Downtown Phenom." The text seemed to be a continuous red waveform threading through the long strip of repeated images. She recalled a distant childhood memory: sitting next to her mother in the window seat, hand-sewing an ornate pattern into the hem of her white Shabbat dress in red embroidery thread. Little red deer playing in a red meadow. Every stitch a secret communication from her soul, a prayer. Sewing had been an artform for her once. What was it now? She stood for a moment under the cafe awning, tracing the red script beyond the gray velocity of rain.
She was only a few blocks from the tenement but decided to wait out the downpour in the cafe. She brushed herself off beneath the awning and went inside. With all the overtime at the blouse factory, she could at least afford a coffee on a rainy day, if not much else.
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She sat in the booth and stretched her hands. Her hands and arms never hurt while she worked at her sewing machine, but now the pain was crippling. She flexed her fingers back and forth while white-hot needles shot through her wrists and tendons. Her back hurt too. She rotated her shoulders and massaged her neck. Ayala knew that most of the girls suffered from back pain, but she thought that she was worse off because her height meant she had to hunch over the low sewing machine table even more than the others. Ayala was only 18 years old, but she felt as though she was already a grandmother.
