Crumbling

She was a spectator in a beauty shop window; pressing her dreams, face and belly against the coolness of frail glass amid the congestion of the city. She admired the marble counters covered with boxes of hair colors, curling irons and other cosmetology items that stood in accordion rows along the wall. The wallpaper was gold foil with embossed flowers that twinkled in the glow of antiquated fluorescent light fixtures.

Someone inside noticed her and she startled suddenly feeling naughty at being caught.

It was just over there on March 25, 1911 that one hundred and forty women either burnt or jumped to their deaths at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory building when it caught fire. They were like her, poor immigrant girls trying to make a living in a new land. No one had known until the fire, that the owners had blocked the exits to insure the workers wouldn’t wander off or that the fire escape had been badly installed.

She’d heard the stories about the fire from the grocery clerk when he’d bagged her apples, pears and green beans the other day.

“That’s the building there today. It’s used for classrooms for NYU, but you can go inside and see pictures of the piled up bodies of them girls who fell so hard that they broke holes in the pavement in the display case.”

She remembered hearing about the bone crusher and how it was used to finish the job the crematorium had started when she’d stood with her father waiting to collect her mother’s ashes.

“After they incinerate the body then they use the bone crusher to pulverize what’s left into a fine white ash.”

She hadn’t gone inside the former workplace of disowned and dying immigrant seamstresses and cutters imagining each of them to have her mother’s face. Her mother’s smile lingered as she stood on the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street. She felt its warmth even as she examined the Renaissance-style architecture of the building that had housed sewing machines on tinderbox floors where worn shoes scrambled to escape unimaginable inevitabilities.

The building was now used to teach classes in the sciences or so the grocer had said while giving her a free sample spoonful of strawberry yogurt.

“My son went there when he was your age. He learned things about the world that no one ever knew, but such is life. Such is life.”

He reminded her of the men back home and their stories. They’d sit at wobbly tables telling stories that weaved in and out of smoke rings and sorrow. Sometimes they’d laugh odd laughs that weren’t born in joy as they rebuilt battles fought and won by those who’d lived and died too soon. She sighed as she considered how her grandfather repeatedly cleaned his shotgun though he’d abandoned the sport of hunting for reminiscence until he descended into dust.

She wondered if the funerals of the dead girls were marked with the old country music of oboe, flute and drum as the city scream grieved the massacre of innocence.

They’d put their clothes on that morning just like any other day. Just like I did today and my mother did until she wasn’t able to any longer. They had gone to work busily creating garments that no one would ever wear without a sign that this was all the rest of their lives was ever going to be. If they had known it was coming, would they have taken the time to do all the things they’d dreamed of doing? Or had they abandoned their dreams like she had without the awareness of what or why?

“Worst tragedy the city had seen until September 11th,” said the amiable grocer, when she’d been distracted by an assortment of Beanie Babies.

She didn’t let any of it in.

It was too soon to be touched by anything outside of herself. It was too soon to consider the consecration of her mother’s ashes or any of the many things her father and her mind plagued her about. Instead she went into the beauty parlor with its chemical smells of perms and perfumes in hopes of finding something gazing at her from antediluvian glass.