Read Online Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix - Free Book Online Page A

where it was all Jews. They passed a Yiddish theater, and Yetta heard a burst of laughter when someone opened the door. The streets were crowded with people going to the theater or dances or movies or lectures or night school. In fact, there were more people out walking in this one block than had lived in Yetta’s entire shtetl back home. She remembered how shocked she’d been when she’d first got to America, by the noise and lights, the beardless men, the giggling girls who didn’t seem to know any of the rules about how females were supposed to behave. Now it all delighted her. In spite of her empty stomach, her aching feet, her threadbare clothes, her lousy job—in spite of everything, Yetta could still feel a burst of love for America, for New York, for the Lower East Side.
    Back in the shtetl, she’d faced such a narrow future. Her parents and the matchmaker would have married her off to someone just for the status he could bring her family. If her father had had his way, it would have been a scholar, someone who’d spend his days with his head bent over the Torah while Yetta milked the cows and baked the bread, birthed the babies, and squeezed a living out of every little coin. No— that wouldn’t have been a living. This wasn’t quite living either—spending her life hunched over a machine, a supervisor always yelling at her, the work always piling up. In the factory, she was little more than a machine herself. But so much more was possible here. She was taking night-school English lessons and going to lectures and classes, and shecould feel her mind opening up, her dreams opening up, her future opening up.
    Maybe she and Rahel would be union leaders together.
    â€œThat Italian girl,” Rahel said, staring off into the distance, past the throngs on the sidewalk. “I suppose she will get married. She’ll get married and have babies and quit the factory. Maybe the union men have a point. How can we ask her to fight and struggle and suffer when she’s just going to quit? When she won’t benefit from anything we’re fighting for?”
    â€œBecause maybe she’ll have daughters,” Yetta said fiercely. “And maybe her daughters will work in the factory. She wouldn’t want her daughters being tricked and cheated. She wouldn’t want her daughters to work a full week and have nothing to show for it. She wouldn’t want her daughters to starve.”
    â€œOh, Yetta, you have all the answers, don’t you?” Rahel said. But she didn’t sound proud or impressed. She sounded wistful, the same way she sounded sometimes when they whispered together in the night. Remember how Mama used to tuck us into bed when we were little?
Remember how she polished the Sabbath candlesticks until they gleamed? Remember how Papa would lift us up on his shoulders and cry out, “The richest man in town can only wish to have so fine a family as ours!”
    Yetta didn’t have an answer for that. It didn’t matter, though, because Rahel had turned away from her.
    â€œOh!” she cried out, her cheeks suddenly coloring up. “Mr. Cohen!”
    A tall, well-dressed young man was coming toward them. On a sidewalk full of couples and clusters of friends, he was walking alone.
    â€œMiss Rahel!” he said, then said something in English that Yetta didn’t quite understand. What did “It’s such atreasure to see you” mean? No, wait. “Pleasure”? He thought it was a pleasure to see Rahel?
    â€œYour English is perfect,” Rahel said, with a trilling kind of laugh that Yetta had never heard Rahel use before.
    â€œThank you so much. Thank you,” Mr. Cohen said with a little bow, then he walked on.
    Rahel stood still, watching him. Yetta watched Rahel.
    â€œWho was that?” Yetta demanded.
    â€œMr. Cohen,” Rahel said. “He’s in my English class.”
    Rahel was in a different