'I can't, Herman,' she answered, also buttoning her coat. 'We're having cousins over for supper, and I promised my mother I wouldn't be late.'
Herman Bruck made a sour face. Maybe he suspected the cousins were fictitious, as in fact they were. That, though, wasn't the sort of thing it was politic to say. 'Another time, maybe,' he mumbled, and hurried out the door.
Angelina Tresca sent Flora an amused look. She returned one of resolute innocence. The less you admitted to anyone, the less you had to worry about getting to the wrong ears. Flora waited a few moments so she wasn't likely to run into Bruck on the street, then went downstairs and walked home to her flat.
Cooking odors filled the hallway as she came up to her door. When she opened it, more came out. Sweet- and-sour stuffed cabbage tonight, she thought. Along with that savory scent came smoke from her father's pipe. It was harsher than it had been. He'd smoked Mail Pouch for years, but the Virginia and Kentucky tobaccos that went into the blend weren't available any more. Now he fed the pipe with something called Corn Cake, which smelled, as far as Flora was concerned, like burning corn husks. She kept quiet about that, not wanting to hurt his feelings.
Esther was in the kitchen, helping their mother. David and Isaac bent over a chess board at the table from which they would soon be evicted so everyone could eat supper. Flora glanced at the game. Isaac was a couple of pawns up, which was unusual; his brother beat him more often than not. The two mental warriors said hello without looking up from their battlefield.
'And how are things with you today?' Benjamin Hamburger asked.
'All right,' Flora answered. 'I'm tired.' The moment the words were out of her mouth, she felt ashamed of them. Sophie was the one who had the right to complain about being tired: she worked longer hours at a harder job for less pay than her younger sister. Especially since the start of the useless, stupid war, Sophie had been dragging herself home exhausted every night.
As if thinking about her were enough to bring her home, Sophie came in just then, worn out as usual. She sank down onto the divan couch with a soft sigh and a posture so limp, it said she didn't want to have to get up again for anything in the world.
Esther stuck her head out of the kitchen and said, 'Oh, good, that was you. I thought I heard the door. Ready in a minute.' Sophie nodded wearily. She'd even been too tired to eat lately, which alarmed her mother. Esther's eyes flicked to her brothers. Pointedly, she repeated, 'Ready in a minute.' When that didn't shift them, she started setting the table. They had to move the chess set in a hurry to keep from having a plate land on top of it.
Supper almost made Flora wish she'd gone out with Herman Bruck. Her family didn't really want to hear about Socialist Party doings, not even her father. All any of them seemed to care about was ways to rise into the bourgeoisie, not how to aid and radicalize the vast masses of the proletariat. She sadly shook her head. Her own flesh and blood, class enemies. They didn't even try to understand the goals toward which she worked.
After supper, she and Esther washed and dried dishes. Esther wanted to talk about how the war was going. Flora didn't. That it was going at all was bitter as wormwood to her.
As soon as she'd put the last fork in its drawer, she got her coat and went out onto the fire escape. Her mother's voice pursued her: 'We're not good enough for you?' But that wasn't it, even if her family thought it was. It was just that she didn't fit in among them, and the harder they tried to drive her back into what had been her place, the less it suited her.
It was chilly out there, but not intolerable. The nip of January air on her cheeks made her feel as if she were in a sleigh gliding down some quiet country road, not in the middle of the most crowded part of the biggest city in the United States, though she had to ignore the racket from her building and all the others to make the illusion complete.
A couple of minutes later, Sophie stepped out to join her. 'Fresh air,' her older sister said gratefully. 'It's so stuffy in there.'
Flora sent her a sympathetic look. 'And you were cooped up in front of your sewing machine all day before that,' she said. 'No wonder you want to get all the air you can.' She wouldn't have called New York City 's air, full of smoke and soot and fumes, fresh, but if her sister wanted to, she wouldn't argue, either.
Sophie stepped down to the edge of the landing and looked over the iron rail. It was dark down there, with nothing worth mentioning to see. Not really to Flora- not really to anyone- Sophie said, 'I should throw myself off.'
Alarmed, Flora hurried over to her and put an arm around her shoulder, dragging her away from the rail. 'What's wrong?' she demanded. 'Is it something at work? I know they've been exploiting you without mercy, giving you much too much to try to do. The way you come home every night-'
Sophie shook her head. 'It's nothing to do with work,' she said, 'and they aren't working me any harder than they were before. 'Exploiting'!' She laughed softly, though not in a way that said she thought anything was truly funny. 'It's not anything- political.'
'Then what is it?' Flora asked. 'People don't talk about jumping off a building for nothing, you know.'
Her sister's shiver had nothing to do with cold, no more than her laugh had had anything to do with mirth. 'What is it, Flora? Do you really want to know?'
'Of course I do,' Flora answered, indignant now. 'I'm your sister. That counts for more than politics, even if we don't agree all the time.'
'Yes, but it was politics you thought of first.' Sophie sighed. 'I suppose I may as well tell you. I have to tell someone-and if I don't, it'll be plain enough before long, anyway.'
'What are you talking about?' Flora said. 'Just come out and say it, if you're going to.'
'All right, then.' But Sophie needed to gather herself before she brought the words out, all in one low-voiced rush: 'Flora, I'm going to have a baby.'
Her sister stared. She felt as if she'd walked in front of a train without seeing or hearing it coming. 'How did it happen?' she whispered.
Dimly lit by the lamps from the front room, Sophie's face twisted. 'How did it happen? There's only one way I know of. Yossel was going into the Army, and I didn't know when I'd see him again or if I'd see him again, and I wanted to give him something special before he left. And so I… and so we-' She didn't go on, and then, after a moment, she did: 'I gave him something special, didn't I?' All at once, without warning, she started to cry.
'Does mother know you're- expecting?' Flora asked. She put her arm around her sister, who clung to her like a survivor from a torpedoed liner.
Sophie shook her head violently against Flora's shoulder. 'I couldn't tell her,' she exclaimed. 'I told you because-' She gulped and stopped.
Flora didn't have any trouble figuring out what her sister hadn't said. Be cause you're the radical one, the one who believes in socialism and free love- something like that, anyhow. Flora had had men approach her on that basis, some of them men in the Socialist Party. But being free to love didn't mean you had to, and didn't mean loving was free from consequences, either.
Well, Sophie surely knew that now, even if she hadn't thought it through before. And Sophie wasn't some man trying to entice her into something sordid; she was her sister. 'You're going to have to tell her sooner or later,' Flora said gently, at which Sophie cried harder. Flora found another question: 'Does Yossel know?'
Sophie shook her head again. 'Every time I write him, I mean to tell him, but I just- can't.'
'He's going to be your husband,' Flora said. If he lives — she fought that thought down. 'That makes it a little better. If he weren't in the Army, I'm sure he'd marry you right now.' Sophie nodded. But if Yossel hadn't been going into the Army, Sophie probably wouldn't have given herself to him till they were married, in which case they wouldn't have had this problem.
'What am I going to do?' Sophie wailed- but softly, not wanting anyone inside to hear her.
The obvious answer was, You're going to have this baby. What sprang from that- Flora thought. At last, as if she'd just come up with a good campaign plank for a Congressional candidate, she clapped her hands together, also softly. 'We won't tell mother,' she said. 'Mother is too perfectly conventional for words. All she'll do is throw a fit, and we don't need that, not now.'
Sophie nodded again, looking at her with a mixture of hope and dread. 'We can't keep from telling her forever, though,' she warned. Of itself, one hand went to her belly. 'Pretty soon, she'll know regardless of what we say.'
'I wasn't finished,' Flora said. 'She has to know before she finds out that way. No, we won't tell her. We'll tell
