The Invited(70)

“What about cigarettes?” Maggie Bianco asked.

“You’ll wait till noon. If any one of you is foolish enough to try to sneak a smoke in here, you’ll be fired instantly.”

The women wouldn’t dare. They all knew how flammable the very air was, full of cotton dust that could ignite, send the whole mill up in a great ball of flames.

“Well, what if we’ve got to use the john?” Mildred Cox wanted to know.

“Then you’ll hold it.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Then you’ll piss down your leg, I imagine,” Tom said.

The bell rang and the women went to work, annoyed, sure—but there was no point in grumbling. They quickly settled at their stations, running the looms. The sound was deafening but comforting to Jane. The whole room vibrated, smelled of hot grease and warm cotton. Their fingers moved quickly, deftly, over the machines. About ten o’clock, Tom came by Jane’s loom, stood behind her, said he needed to speak with her a moment. In the office. He took her into his office, a tiny box of a room with shelves and a desk covered with piles of paper. Tom shut the door and Jane’s heart grew cold.

    “I’ve been watching you,” he said.

“Oh?”

“The other girls look up to you,” he said.

She nodded. It was true. She was older than most of them, had been here longer. That counted for something. She’d learned to get by. To keep walking when Tom gave her bottom a pinch or when he stood so close behind her that she could feel his privates pressed against her. She recalled her first day on the job over ten years ago now, how Tom had seemed so kind, had said he knew her husband’s family and was happy to hire her despite the terrible state of the economy. “We’re in a depression, you know,” he reminded her. She told him she understood and would work hard, that he wouldn’t be sorry he’d hired her. And she had kept up her end. She didn’t smoke or gossip. She did good work and showed the new girls how to do good work, too. She didn’t reckon she’d been late to work one day in ten years.

“I’m going to be making cuts,” he said this morning, “letting some of the girls go.”

Jane stiffened.

“Do you want to keep your job, Mrs. Whitcomb?”

“Yes, of course.”

She needed the job. Silas was not bringing in much pay. He’d lost his job at the bank and was logging now—work that didn’t suit him and didn’t pay nearly as much. Everyone in town knew this, Tom included.

Tom came toward Jane, put his big, dirty hand on her hip, pulled her to him.

Jane pushed away.

“I thought you wanted to keep your job?” he asked, coming closer. He smelled like sausages and tobacco. His teeth were brown.

He put one hand at her waist and began tugging at her dress with the other, and just like that, she was back down on the ground of the schoolyard in Hartsboro, a circle of children around her, taunting, tugging at her clothes, exposing her, looking for the devil’s mark.

    What they didn’t know, what she herself didn’t fully understand until that day, was that mark was not out on her skin but somewhere deep inside her.

She felt it surface once more as she gathered all her strength, planted her hands on Tom’s chest, and shoved. He stumbled a step backward, his rump hitting his desk. Jane lunged for the door but stopped when he spoke.

“You’ll finish up your day today,” he snarled, eyes furious. “And then you’re fired.”

“You can’t do that!” she said.

He smiled a sickening smile. “Are you sure about that, Mrs. Whitcomb?”

“I’ll tell my husband,” she said.

He laughed. “Tell him that you made improper advances toward me in a pathetic attempt to keep your job after I told you cuts would have to be made? Do you really want to go stirring up that kind of trouble, letting the whole town hear about the sort of woman you really are?”

Tears blurred her vision. She hurried back to her looms, blood pounding in her ears. She began to work, walking around the looms, checking the warps, watching the thread unspool, feeling the quality of the cloth as she always did. But a rage boiled inside. She pictured Tom Chancy’s face, his filthy hands, and imagined terrible things. She imagined him suffering. Screaming.

Jane remembered her daughter’s words: Something bad is going to happen. You’re going to make something bad happen.

And she felt for the matches in her pocket. They were always there, waiting, making her feel safe, powerful. A talisman.

Punish him, the voice inside told her. Make him pay.

She went over to the corner, to one of the bins of cotton just outside the door of Tom’s office. She glanced around—none of the other workers were watching, all focused on their looms, perhaps hoping to avoid getting involved in whatever trouble Jane Whitcomb might be in. They certainly wouldn’t hear the quiet scritch of the match striking over the din. She lit the match, held it to the cotton, watched it catch. Just like that, she was a little girl again, hearing her mother’s voice: The spirits will protect us.

    She saw a little curl of smoke drift up from the bin and walked calmly back to her loom, doing her best not to smile.

“Fire!” someone yelled not three minutes later. And in an instant, the place was alive with panic, all the women scrambling, surging toward the doors. Jane wasn’t worried. The foreman’s office was on the far end of the cavernous space—they all had plenty of time to make it to the doors and out before the whole wretched place went up in flames. Still, she shrieked and ran as the others did, grabbed Maggie Bianco’s hand as she passed when she saw Maggie standing frozen, looking around in confusion, and urged her on—“Let’s go, Mags! You’ll be all right, but we’ve got to go!”