When the streetlights came on outside and the factory clerk turned up the indoor gaslamps, the factory’s few windows turned inside out. All Leah could see in those windows when she glanced up was the reflection of the inside of the factory, the dozen or so other machine girls stitching like a row of dolls in a puppet theater. There was no world outside, just more and more girls sitting in rows at their machines, stitching. When at last the clocks tolled the end of the final shift, the little rows of machine dolls got up in unison, filed past the factory clerk who recorded their hours worked, and left. But Leah didn’t move. Awakened from her trance by the silence of the sewing machines around her, she put her head down on her own sewing machine table—her head that was now covered with a kerchief, now that she was married, a head covering she would have to wear for the rest of her life, whether she stayed married or not—and started to sob.

Silent sobs, mainly. Years of sharing bedrooms and beds had trained her well at concealing and controlling crying. By the age of seventeen, she had reduced it to a series of shudders, an almost imperceptible quivering and a covered face. This time it mattered less, since she had the factory to herself. Leah cried and cried until she forgot what she was crying about, which was of course the purpose of crying in the first place. And then, out of nowhere, she heard a whisper hanging in the air in front of her.

“Leah?”

With a start, Leah pulled her head up. Sitting in front of her was Aaron, the factory clerk, his dirty white shirtsleeves rolled up over his thin, hairy arms. Out of instinct she looked toward the entrance to make sure the factory door was open. It was, which meant, technically, she wasn’t alone with a man in private, a privilege reserved for husbands and wives.

He was a young man, with dark brown eyes and thick dark hair that hung over his forehead like a mop. A few leftover pimples along the corner of his mouth testified to his youth. She had heard one of the foremen call him Aaron once, and she had remembered his name because Aaron was also her father’s name. It surprised her that he had remembered her name, at first. But when her brain at last settled down, calming its tumult slowly like water’s surface after something drops into it, she realized why he knew her name: he was in charge of counting off the workers’ hours every single day. He knew everyone by name; it was part of his job. She wiped her eyes, hoping he hadn’t noticed them.

“I saw that you covered your hair today,” he said. “Did you get married? I just wanted to say congratulations, if you did.” Just hearing him speaking Yiddish somehow made her feel better, but what he said shook the settled pool in her brain again.