The Withered Hand

“If you want to do something, do something,” Clara says, her accent still heavy after more than seventy years in the country. “I don’t see why you’re wasting time talking to me.”

The young woman explains again: She’s researching the history of women in the labor rights movement; it’s important to tell Clara’s story as a model to women in the workplace now; people need new heroes who align with the rise of feminism and the renewed interest in unions . . .

“And you? Do you belong to a union?” she asks the young woman, whose hands are slim and soft and free of rings, the nails carefully filed but unpainted.

“I’m a graduate student,” she says, and flushes behind her large, brass-rimmed glasses. “At a small institution. We aren’t organized.”

Clara takes a sip of her tea, sets her cup on the flimsy side table. She finds a tissue in the pocket of her sweater, dabs at the corner of her left eye, the filmier of the two, which leaks unaccountably. All the time now she wipes away tears, she who used to cry only during fits of rage or relief: when searching for her cousin among the remains of those who’d died in the Triangle fire, for example, or later, when she learned the girl had survived. She’d just turned twenty-four then, had already led twenty-thousand garment workers in a general strike. She’d been beaten by men hired by sweatshop owners, had six of her ribs broken, but kept from crying then for fear that her parents would try to talk her out of returning to the picket lines.

Now, in 1970, Clara Shavelson, born Lemlich, is eighty-four years old, and she can still feel the knot beneath her right breast where the bone stitched imperfectly. And yet, she is no less prone to anger. She feels it rising as she sits across from this young woman, plain-faced and lank-haired, wearing a shabby dress like a sack and sandals as if she’s at the beach. Despite her explanation, Clara still doesn’t quite understand what she’s doing here, in her apartment in the Jewish Home for the Aged, distracting her from the view out her small window. This is her favorite time to gaze across the jumbled houses of Boyle Heights, when the sun lights up the towers of downtown Los Angeles, and the impossible ocean beyond it, an ocean more mysterious to her than the one she first crossed at seventeen. The city itself she still finds inferior to New York, where she married two husbands and raised four children, two of whom she has followed to this land of sunshine and smog and movie stars—the last of which have a strong union while the people who clean their trailers and serve their food have none. She stares at those office towers and thinks of all the work still to be done, yet this woman scribbling in a notebook—whose name Clara has already forgotten—wants to talk only about the past.

“Had you planned all along to speak out at the meeting?” she asks. “Did you coordinate with anyone? Or was it really as spontaneous as it’s been reported?”

What does it matter? Clara wonders. What happened, happened, whether it was spontaneous or planned, though of course the truth is she can’t quite remember. She recalls only the rage building as she listened to the men of Local 25 giving tepid speeches in Cooper Union, all of them urging caution. Probably she’d expected this, and expected, too, that she would raise her voice and call for action. She does remember anticipating the crowd’s cheers of approval.

“Did you have the pledge in mind all along?” the young woman asks. “Or did that come to you on the spot?”

What she hadn’t planned was calling out in Yiddish. It was the anger that prevented her from finding words in English, words she’d learned mostly to talk back to managers, since no one at home spoke them, no one in her tenement on Allen Street, or in the shops below. She was good with languages, had taught herself Russian as a girl in Gorodok so she could read books she earned by sewing buttonholes on shirts and writing letters for illiterate mothers with children in America. She found Tolstoy that way, and Turgenev, and Gorky, and eventually, a neighbor passed her revolutionary tracts she’d memorized by the time the Kishinev pogrom frightened her parents into booking passage from Hamburg. She had to leave all her novels behind, and her wages from the shirtwaist shop weren’t enough to pay for new ones. So instead of reading, she organized the women she knew into the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. She was a sprightly girl with a beautiful singing voice, and she half-charmed, half-bullied her way onto the executive committee of Local 25, which was still run by men.

And in the face of those infuriating men, with their middle-class wives in factory-sewn dresses standing beside them, who said that a bunch of young girls couldn’t sustain a successful strike, she lost her adopted language and demanded to address the audience in words most of those in attendance understood. “I have listened to all the speakers,” she said, “and I have no further patience for talk.” Impatience was what drove her to offer the silly pledge, and impatience continues to make her say things before she has thought them through.

“Do you eat lettuce?” she asks, turning back to the window, the light growing peach-colored over the ocean.

“Lettuce?” the young woman replies.

“The green stuff. In a salad.”

“I know what lettuce is.”

“I didn’t ask if you know. I asked if you eat.”

“Well, yes. I do. Sometimes. I like salads. And on sandwiches.”

“And you know where it comes from?”

“I’m not sure—”

“Fields,” Clara says. “Harvested by Mexican workers paid next to nothing. Owned by rich men whose fingers are as clean as yours. You know Chavez?”

“The grape strike. I’ve read—”

“They won because we boycotted. Everywhere. Cafeterias, restaurants, supermarkets. No grapes from scabs. Even here, the managers finally agreed. After I convinced them.”

“Just like when you organized housewives to protest meat prices in Brighton Beach. That was—”

“Now it’s lettuce,” Clara says. “Chavez, the Farm Workers, they need another boycott. Will you tell your college to stop serving it?”

“Well, I—”

“Better yet,” Clara says, “you can help me here. The managers run away the second they see me coming.”

“I don’t think—”

“If you want to learn about organizing, you organize,” Clara says, pushing herself up with both hands on the arm of her chair, and then steadying herself before taking a step toward the door. Her eye has begun leaking again, and again she dabs it with a tissue. If her vision were better, she might get rid of this girl as quickly as possible and spend the evening with a book. She has always loved reading more than anything else, and only now does she actually have time for it. But her cataracts have made it a struggle to get through more than a few pages in any single sitting.

So instead, she grabs her cane and hobbles across the room, as the young woman gathers her notebook and the shapeless cloth sack—a different shade of beige from her dress—that she seems to use as a purse. But before reaching the hallway, Clara hesitates, reconsiders. What is she forgetting? Then she remembers, brushes past the young woman on her way to the closet. A hat. She never goes into battle without one. Her choice today is black, broad-brimmed, with a bit of lace that hangs in front of her eyes. She stops at the bureau, pulls out a drawer, and paws around inside until she feels the shape she’s looking for, a cool cylinder as wide as her finger and just slightly shorter. Lipstick, a dark shade that goes well with the hat. She spreads some on then holds the tube out to the young woman, who backs a step away and raises a hand in front of her. “No, thank you,” she says. “I don’t need—”

“If you don’t look good, they think they can push you around,” Clara says. “The shabbiest girls are always the ones who get arrested.”

The young woman takes the tube, tentatively dabs on some color as if she’s never done so before. It makes her lips look even thinner, so Clara suggests they pin up her hair to create some contrast. If she had a dress that would fit, she would offer that, too, but the young woman tops her by nearly a foot, and though she’s slender, her shoulders are surprisingly broad. In any case, now that she has set her mind on a course of action, she is ready to get on with it, wants no further delay. She hustles the young woman out of the apartment and down the hall. On the way, she knocks on several doors, and into those that open, she calls out, “It’s time.”

“Grapes again?” one shaky voice responds.

“Lettuce.”

She isn’t the only old radical in the Home. Boyle Heights used to be filled with them. Outside of Brooklyn, it once boasted more Jewish socialists than any neighborhood in the country. Several of her fellow residents were also members of the ILGWU, veterans of the garment workers strike of 1933, and four of them now crowd with her and the young woman into the elevator. She introduces two but can’t bring up the names of the others. The young woman is too shy or stunned to introduce herself. “If you want history, you should talk to them,” Clara says. “They organized the Mexican dressmakers when no one else cared.”

Now the neighborhood is no longer Jewish, and there are plans to move the Home to Reseda, a bland, charmless place, she guesses, full of complacent capitalists. She’d prefer to stay here, even if the kosher delis have been replaced with bodegas and taco stands. It’s still more familiar than the suburbs, an immigrant community like the Brighton Beach where she raised her children, or the Lower East Side where she lived when she was the age of this young woman whose neck is surprisingly elegant now that her limp hair doesn’t cover it. Clara has taught herself a bit of Spanish, so she can chat with shop owners, as well as with orderlies and cafeteria staff at the Home, who were paid almost nothing when she arrived in 1967. Now, with her help, they have joined the service employees’ union, and their wages have increased by nearly 50 percent.

A pair of those orderlies greet her as they emerge from the elevator. They dote on her, call her their hero, but she wants to tell them, too, that they should focus not on what she’s done but on what they should do next. Their fellow workers across the city are still laboring under terrible conditions. Why stop now?

But mostly she doesn’t want to engage with them at the moment because she can’t remember if this one, handsome, with sad eyes and pocked cheeks, is named Jorge or José. It’s embarrassing to have things slip away from her, so instead she keeps moving forward. If something hasn’t happened yet, she can’t forget it. On their way across the lobby, they pick up a couple of additional supporters, so that by the time they reach the main office, they are a crowd of eight, a tight fit for the anteroom, where the receptionist can’t stop herself from snickering as she presses the buzzer and speaks into the intercom: “Mr. Freimauer, some residents are here to speak with you.”

“It’s Shavelson, isn’t it,” replies a crackling voice. Before the receptionist can answer, it tells her to send them in.

The inner office is even more cramped, an oversized desk taking up much of the space. Behind it sits Myron Freimauer, the Home’s managing director. He is a squat, jowly man in his mid-fifties, with receding gray curls and a tired smile that reminds her of Joe, her first husband, who always said, “Do what you gotta do,” whenever she told him she’d be out in the streets, that he shouldn’t expect to see her when he came home from work. But she always made sure dinner waited for him and the children, something her daughter-in-law never seems to understand. “I’m too busy to cook, I’ve got important things to do,” she says, and Clara’s son and grandchildren are left to eat crackers and cheese and whatever else they can scrounge from mostly empty cupboards.

“Mrs. Shavelson,” Freimauer says, and nods at the others, as if they are only here to watch the show. “Ladies. How can I help you today?”

“Lettuce,” one of them begins, but before she can say more, Clara clears her throat, pulls the young woman forward, and speaks in the voice that has gone throaty with age but still comes out with a musical lilt.

“Mr. Freimauer. I’d like to introduce you,” she says, and on the spot comes up with a name, as well as a plan for what she’ll say. “This is Julia,” she says, using the Spanish pronunciation. “Julia Morales, with the United Farm Workers.”

The young woman stares at her, blinks, and Clara tilts her head to encourage her. She turns to Freimauer, spreads her thin red lips. “Hola,” she whispers.

“No habla,” Freimauer replies, squinting as if in pain.

Clara nudges her. “She speaks perfect English.”

“I’m here because . . .” the young woman—Julia, Clara reminds herself, call her Julia—begins and then pauses. “You’ve heard of Cesar Chavez?”

“Shavelson—Mrs. Shavelson told me. We didn’t have grapes for a year.”

“We’re grateful for your support,” Julia says, shyly, and Clara tells herself to be patient, not to react, let the girl find her footing.

“You know how many of our residents complained? They live on grapes. Even the ones who supported the boycott, they’d forget from one day to the next and ask where their grapes were.”

“And because of your sacrifice,” Julia says, with more confidence now, “our vineyard workers have a good contract, for the first time ever. But our brothers and sisters in the lettuce fields—”

“And next after that? Tomatoes? Broccoli? Chicken? Am I going to feed my residents nothing but porridge?”

“It’s about making the right choices,” Julia goes on, her plain pale face gaining some color now, so that the lipstick no longer makes her look sickly. She seems almost spirited as she leans forward over Freimauer’s desk, the front of her sack dress blooming toward the managing director, who edges his chair back a few inches. “Speak to your distributor. Make sure they buy only from companies with UFW contracts. That’s all we’re asking.”

“Listen,” Freimauer says, waving hands. “I’m no industrialist. Do you think I got into this business to make money? I’m here because I want to help people. Give them a nice comfortable place to live in their golden years. Why should I also have to save every lettuce picker from Baja?”

“Because, you foolish man,” Clara starts, the surge of rage making her dizzy. But this time it’s Julia who holds up a hand and cuts her off.

“Your staff,” she says. “I understand they are members of the service employees’ union?”

Freimauer, holding his head in both hands, answers, “Thanks to my friends here.”

“And if they hear that you’re unwilling to support their brothers and sisters in the fields, do you think they might reconsider their contract?”

“And maybe my family will reconsider its donation,” says the smallest of the old women, whose son, Clara now recalls, works as a lawyer for movie people.

“Lettuce,” Freimauer says. “Tomatoes, potatoes, corn. What do I care? I’ll talk to the chef. He’s the one who does all the ordering.”

“If you want us to talk to him,” Clara says. Her rage has dissipated, but the lightheadedness remains. She leans one leg against the desk and uses the cane to prop herself upright, hoping no one will see.

“I’ll just let him know you’ll come see him if he doesn’t go along with it,” Freimauer says. “When he hears that, he’ll fall in line.”

“You might also talk to your local supermarket,” Julia says.

“My wife does the shopping,” Freimauer says.

“Then talk to her.”

“She’s the only person who scares me more than Shavelson.”

The dizziness is now accompanied by a flash of heat, and Clara knows she has to sit down. She backs up a step, and thinking there’s a chair behind her, drops heavily to the floor. Then there’s a flurry of activity above her, the old women making clucking noises, Julia waving a hand in front of her face, Freimauer calling into the intercom for the receptionist to send a nurse.

“I just need a little air,” she says, but her voice comes out scratchy, and what she really wants is some water, some space to breathe, some time to read and maybe to sleep. She closes her eyes and lies back, and then feels herself lifted by the feet and shoulders, laid on a soft surface, and wheeled out of the office. It’s humiliating, having people do these things for her, she who has taken care of herself, two husbands, and four children, not to mention all of the garment workers and housewives she organized. When they reach the lobby, she feels the blast of air conditioning on her scalp and remembers her hat, left behind on Freimauer’s floor. And though she’s still dizzy, she opens her eyes to ask someone to retrieve it. Above her, the young woman, her Julia, strides along beside her, hair falling out of its pins. “I didn’t help with your research,” Clara says.

“Not quite how I expected.”

She can’t see the nurse at the end of the gurney, wheeling her toward the infirmary. Instead she focuses on Julia’s dark, pursed lips and worried eyes. “You did well,” she says. “No more lettuce.”

“If I turn traitor to the cause,” Julia says, with an eager smile, “may this hand wither from the arm I now raise.”

Clara closes her eyes again. She doesn’t see the arm Julia raises, doesn’t want to see. But it’s too late not to hear her repeat the ridiculous pledge Clara made so impulsively all those years ago and which she has wished to take back more times than she can count. Because the truth is, as soon as she released the words, she believed, with superstitious fervor, that to speak such a thing out loud made it binding forever. If she stopped, what punishment would descend on her? What harm to her family? It’s fear as much as anything that has kept her going for so long, pushing constantly, never allowing herself to pause. Because if she slows for a moment, she has always been certain, her life will fall apart. And now she has encouraged Julia to suffer the same fate.

“Remember to pace yourself,” she says, her throat dry, voice cracked.

“Rest now,” Julia says, and Clara feels a smooth hand take hers, now wrinkled and arthritic, unable to lift a needle or make a single stitch.

SCOTT NADELSON

Scott Nadelson is the author of a novel, a memoir, and five story collections, most recently One of Us, winner of the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. He teaches at Willamette University and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.