And now there is this big noise, right behind me, like nothing I have ever heard, and we turn around, and there are flames! They are outside the window on the Greene Street side, right there behind us. Everyone starts to shout and scream, my sister also, and everyone is in a commotion and the flames are inside with us, coming along the wall and across the floor like water flowing. The next thing you know the flames are all around us, in just an instant, and we can feel this heat like a furnace and at first there is all the screaming but nobody moves, everyone is frozen like a statue for a second, but then all the girls are rushing around, trying to get across the room at once, but they can’t do that so simple because of all the machinery on these long tables with no gaps, they take up all the space and people got to squeeze by, which is how Jacobs can make excuses to squeeze by me all those times, so there is no way to pass except at the ends, and some girls try to crawl under but they can’t with all the machinery and the oil pans, and everyone is pushing and screaming at the top of their lungs, like animals, girls are climbing across the tables with their skirts getting caught in the machines, and the Italian girls are praying and screaming to each other while everyone is shouting out something different. I am not afraid, even though the other girls are right away afraid. I feel like nothing can hurt me more than I have already been hurt, so I feel curious but like I am just watching all the commotion.

Mr. Grannick, the garment cutter, he stands up on a chair to make us listen but nobody listens to him, his voice is soft, and there is so much black smoke, and people are screaming and coughing and choking and nobody can manage. I see a girl with her hair on fire, and then another one goes running by me with her clothes all burning up. That is when I push past the Italian sisters just standing there screaming and crying without trying to save themselves, like they think Jesus and Mary and the Holy Ghost himself will come get them, it’s like they’re waiting at a bus stop, I got to say, and their faces are red from screaming and from the smoke, and I push past them and I never see them again, I know they are going to die, they are the first ones I see and I know they will die.

Now I see too many girls at the door, this door that opens in instead of out to save some pennies and make a narrower stairwell, didn’t we all know that already, the narishkayt of this door, it’s the only way out, every day we pass by the mean little crippled guard with the pinching hands who inspects us to find a thief. The fire is hotter. It is everywhere, creeping on the machines and the tables and all our work is burning up, with black smoke and the terrible smell from the oil, and everyone is choking and gagging, also with the very horrible smell of burning hair, and that smell of burning flesh, you smell it and you just know what it is and you feel so ashamed to be smelling that, and all the girls, they are pushing and pushing together, because nobody could open that door even though they will squeeze each other to death just to keep trying.