Triangle

Marion Ettlinger

Katharine Weber is the author of the novels The Little Women, The Music Lesson, and Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. Her paternal grandmother finished buttonholes for the Triangle Waist Company in 1909.

Additional Praise for Triangle

“A haunting exercise in memory…Every narrator in Triangle is unreliable, yet we believe the lot of them.”

—New York

“At its sharpest, Triangle affirms the often tricky relationship between fact and fiction and the subjectivity of all human experience.”

—USA Today

“Katharine Weber excels at a kind of fully realized, three-dimensional fiction. Her characters live, breathe, and inhabit very convincing spaces…. Highly readable and even rather haunting.”

—The Christian Science Monitor

“Triangle is a marvel of ingenuity, bridging history and imagination, astonishing musical inventiveness and genuine social tragedy. It is a wide-awake novel as powerful as it is persuasive, probing and capturing human verities.”

—Cynthia Ozick, author of Heir to the Glimmering World

“Weber persuades us to go along with her by sheer storytelling ability.”

—Newsday

“History itself is the puzzler in Triangle, Katharine Weber’s ingenious take on the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire.”

—Vogue

“Katharine Weber has always been a brilliant and ingenious formalist; at last she has found a subject deep and durable enough to bear the jeweled precision of her gaze. Here one of our most irresistible writers meets one of the most immovable events of our history. Triangle is an incandescent novel.”

—Madison Smartt Bell, author of The Stone That the Builder Refused

“Weber’s fascinating, fictional account of the Triangle fire is an intriguing approach to the story of a tragic event that ingeniously supplements the many true reports and that enriches our understanding of what happened on that fateful day in 1911.”

—The National Jewish Post & Opinion

“Slippery as an unreliable witness, Triangle maps the gap between memory and history. Out of the most unlikely materials, Katharine Weber has fashioned a generational mystery that plays as both academic farce and real-life tragedy.”

—Stewart O’Nan, author of The Good Wife

“An enticing read.”

—The Washington Post Book World

“Fascinating…Triangle provides important reflection on the power of stories, the shaping of history.”

—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Beautiful and haunting.”

—The Hartford Courant

“Weber demonstrates her deep understanding of her characters in this beautiful novel.”

—Library Journal

“‘No ideas but in things,’ as William Carlos Williams said. In Triangle, the things, and the story they tell, are enough.”

—Forward

“Triangle is a finely written contemplation of love, memory, terror, music, and DNA. Precise and clear-eyed, the novel examines the power of recollection in surviving overwhelming tragedy with both pathos and humanity.”

—Barbara Chase-Riboud, author of Hottentot Venus

“Blending music and memory together in arresting arrangement, Triangle is a unique and poignant tale of the varieties of love and loss.”

—Rebecca Goldstein, author of Mazel and The Mind-Body Problem

In memory of my grandmothers:
Pauline Gottesfeld Kaufman (1887–1969), who finished
buttonholes at the Triangle Waist Company in 1909,
and Kay Swift (1897–1993), who made wonderful music

Shirt

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,

The nearly invisible stitches along the collar

Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break

Or talking money or politics while one fitted

This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my waist. The presser, the cutter,

The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,

The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.

One hundred and forty-six died in the flames

On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—

The witness in a building across the street

Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step

Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.

And then another. As if he were helping them up

To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms

Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held

Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared

And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,

Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—

Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”

Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly

Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme

Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,

Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian

To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed

By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers

To wear among the dusty clattering looms.

Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planer, the picker, the sorter

Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton

As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black

Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma

And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied

Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality

Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters

Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,

The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

—Robert Pinsky

Contents

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part Two

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Part Three

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part One

One

This is what happened. I was working at my machine, with only a few minutes left before the end of the day, I remember so clearly I can still see it, that I had only two right sleeves remaining in my pile—my sister Pauline, she did the left sleeves and I did the right sleeves and between us we could finish sometimes as many as twenty-four shirtwaists in an hour, three hundred shirtwaists on a good day, if the machines didn’t break down and if the thread didn’t break too often, and if nobody put a needle through her finger, which happened all the time and the biggest problem then was you didn’t want to bleed on the goods but you didn’t want to stop work so you took a piece of scrap and you wrapped your finger tight and you kept working—my sister was a little faster than I was and sometimes her finished pile would be high because she did her sleeve first and then I would take from her pile to do the right sleeve but I have to say my seams were the ones always perfectly straight.

And then when I was done, the waist would be finished except for sewing on the buttons and trimming the loose threads, and who did that was the little girls over in the nursery, that’s what we called that corner, the nursery, some of those girls were only ten or eleven years old already working and working, poor things, but what other life did they know? Those little girls would sew on the buttons and cut all the loose threads and then the waist would be ready for pressing.

It was payday that day, it was a Saturday, and the pay envelopes had just been handed out, and before that for a few minutes there was a break and my friend Ida Brodsky, she died, she was a wonderful friend to me, she made a cake for a surprise because of my engagement to Sam, because we had just said a few days before we would get married, we didn’t even get a ring yet, and people were happy for us, all the girls working together, it was so cheerful sometimes even with the hard work. I had my pay envelope and my sister’s also, to keep for her, we each got maybe six or eight dollars or sometimes less, except in a good week, and once we each made twelve dollars for a week’s work but that was an exception, but you could live on that money we made and send some home, too. We thought we were doing well, we were happy enough with what we had, even though the unions told us to get more and told us we shouldn’t be so happy, and they were right, but we were never hungry, we were so young and healthy and strong, and it felt like a chance to get ahead, so we didn’t mind the long days and the terrible loud noise of the machines and the smell of the oil everywhere.

That oil, they had to use it, to keep the machines going, but they could have opened those dirty windows for even a breath of fresh air, it wouldn’t have made us work slower and who knows it might have made us work better, but all the windows were always kept closed tight—and I remember I just took a moment from my machine to tuck the pay packets for both of us into my stocking to be safe like always, I took them both from our boss, Mr. Jacobs, so my sister could keep working for every minute left—and the next day would have been our one day off in the week, so we were looking forward to that—and then there was a big noise behind me, while I was still bending down, like nothing I had ever heard, and I thought, What could that be?

So loud, like an explosion and something breaking all at once! So I turned around, and my sister next to me, she turned around too, and what did we see? Flames! They were just outside the window on the Greene Street side, they were right there behind me. The flames were coming up from the eighth floor but we didn’t know everybody on the eighth floor was already in a commotion and escaping because that’s where the fire started, and a lot of those girls got out before that big noise which was the windows breaking from the fire, mostly they got out from the eighth floor, but we were on the ninth floor, that’s where I worked already for a year with my sister, we learned English so fast and we had these good jobs and our life in America was a big adventure for us. We thought it was fortunate to work on the ninth floor where the bosses gave a little more pay and the really skilled girls, the fastest workers, they had their machines. Maybe that was never true and it was the same on the eighth floor but this is what we thought. Nobody on our floor knew what was happening right underneath us until those windows blew out. More people could have got out if we knew, but nobody told us. They knew on the tenth floor and they all got out, but one. A lot of people below us and everyone above us got out. Only on the ninth floor it was unlucky to be, because nobody told us.

And so first we had this big explosion and we saw these flames and the girls all around me started to shout and scream, my sister also, and everyone was in a commotion and the flames got bigger at the window and then the flames, they were inside with us, coming along the wall and across the floor like water flowing, I’ve never seen anything like that and I am thinking this is very bad—and the next thing you know the flames were around us, and right next to us, and we can feel this heat like a furnace and at first there was the screaming but nobody was moving, everybody was frozen for a moment, but then there was a rush of all the girls trying to get across the room at once, but they were blocked by the machinery because the big rows of sewing machines were on these long tables with no gaps, they took up so much space and there was no way to pass except at the ends of the rows of tables, and some girls tried to crawl under but there was no room with the pedals and the machinery and they were pushing and there were girls climbing across the tables with their long skirts bunched and getting caught in the machines and they were falling and shoving and everyone was shouting and pushing and grabbing and calling out, and the Italian girls were praying and screaming to each other.

Mr. Grannick, one of the garment cutters, a very nice little man, he stood up on a chair and tried to make the girls listen but a lot of the girls couldn’t see him because now there was so much smoke, and people were screaming and coughing and choking and nobody could hear what he was saying with the noise—he was one of the ones who got out—and I saw a girl with her hair on fire, and then another one running with her clothes all burning up and so I pushed my way past these two Italian sisters, I think one was called Rosalie, she was the young one, they were just standing there screaming and crying without moving, their faces were all red and their eyes were all red and they were in my way and I never saw them again, I’m sorry, God help me and God help them, but I pushed past them and I saw there were too many girls at the door and nobody could go out that way, it was a terrible thing, but nobody’s fault, because the door, it opened in, didn’t we all know that already, it was a narrow door we all used it to go out, because it was the only way out, it had to be, so we could pass by the guard who inspected us to make sure we weren’t stealing any of the goods—some of the girls took scraps home to make things, and some of them even stole finished waists, one girl, she was new, she tried to hide a waist tucked into her hair in a big rat—that was a style and that was what we called it, a rat—but she was caught, it was just the week before, her name was Ella something Italian like Piacentini, something like that, and she was crying and she promised never to do it again but we didn’t see her any more after that day and we were sorry for her—who would know how lucky she was to be sent away in disgrace from the Triangle that week?

The fire was getting hotter and it was everywhere, on the machines and the tables and all our work was burning up and the smoke was so thick and the smell was just terrible, black from the oil and the burning goods and the smell was so strong, and everyone was coughing and gagging and choking, and there was also the very horrible smell of burning hair, and all those girls were pushing and pushing together, it was just so terrible I can’t really describe it, they were all pushing at once and the girls in the front maybe even got squeezed to death from the pushing but nobody could open that door.

I had an idea about another door—sometimes the bosses went in and out this other door, we were never allowed to go that way on the weekend when the freight elevators weren’t running—it was by the back side of the building instead of the Washington Place side, they would go on these other stairs by the freight elevators to walk up to the tenth floor where the offices were, so I had this idea—I don’t know why nobody else thought of this but everyone was in a big panic and maybe everyone assumed the other door would be locked like always but you have to try, and I’m sorry to say this about all those poor girls who didn’t make it but nobody else thought to try—and I pulled my sister by the hand to go with me over there, across the room, but it was like running towards the flames and it probably didn’t seem right to go towards the fire and all the black smoke to get away, but that’s how a lot of people got out from this building in one way or another, running into the fire to get through, and my sister, why did she pull back, I don’t know.