Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix

didn’t do anything wrong. They can’t keep us here.”
    â€œThey kept my father in prison in Russia,” another girl, Surka, said. “They didn’t even tell him what he was charged with until he’d been there three years.”
    â€œThat was Russia,” Yetta said. “This is America.”
    At the other end of the jail cell, a ragged old woman began to laugh crazily, the sound pouring out of her mouth like a taunt. Or torture.
    â€œShe’s been doing that since we got here,” Anna whispered.
    Yetta was noticing the other women in the cell now-scary women with gaunt, blank faces, sores where their mouths should be, ragged clothes that looked to be mostlyheld together with dirt. Or maybe they weren’t actually wearing any clothes, just the filth.
    And then she heard footsteps coming down the hallway outside the jail cell.
    â€œStrikers!” a man’s voice boomed out, echoing off the stone. “Your fines are paid!”
    His key scraped in the lock. Yetta found she could scramble up with the others, though the wound on the side of her head throbbed and her whole body ached.
    Rahel was waiting beside the jailer on the other side of the iron door.
    â€œOh, Yetta!” she cried, wrapping her arms around her sister. “I was so scared for you—”
    â€œTell your sister to stay off picket lines, then,” the jailer growled.
    Yetta wanted to fling back a retort: maybe “Tell the bosses to treat us fairly, and I will!”; maybe “Tell your policemen to arrest the right people next time!” But she could only bury her face in her sister’s shoulder, let her sister guide her away from those iron bars and the rats and the crazy laughing woman and the women dressed in filth.
    â€œHow did . . . how could you pay the fine?” Yetta murmured when they were back out on the street.
    â€œUnion money,” Rahel said. “And they gave me nickels for carfare, too, so we won’t have to walk home. The trolley stop’s right up there on the corner—can you make it that far?”
    Around her, the other girls nodded wearily. Yetta was working something out in her head.
    â€œThe union doesn’t have much money,” she said. “If we spend it on carfare, we won’t have any left for keeping the strike going. My legs aren’t bad, just my head. I’ll walk.”
    â€œBut—” Rahel started.
    â€œI’m walking too,” Anna said.
    â€œMe, too,” Rosaria said.
    â€œAnd me,” Surka said.
    In the end, they all did, one bedraggled, bloodied crew. Everyone on the sidewalk stared and whispered. Yetta wished they still had their picket signs.
    â€œWe’re Triangle workers,” she explained to some of the people who stared the most. “We’re on strike. This is what happened.”
    The strike meant something different now. It wasn’t just standing out in the sunshine carrying a sign, wearing a fine hat, looking pretty. It was more like . . .
    Like a war.
    Rahel kept her arm around Yetta’s waist, holding her up, holding her steady.
    â€œYou still want the strike?” she whispered. “Even now?”
    Yetta answered through split, bloodied lips.
    â€œMore than ever.”
    Rahel’s face seemed especially pale, out here in the sunlight. She grimaced, then glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one else was listening.
    â€œYetta, those women who beat you up—they were . . . ladies of the evening. Women who . . . sell their bodies. If Papa knew . . .”
    â€œPapa isn’t here, is he?” Yetta said angrily. “Papa doesn’t sit over a sewing machine ten, twelve hours a day. Papa doesn’t have a contractor breathing down his neck. He doesn’t have a man looking in his hair, patting down his clothes every day to make sure he hasn’t stolen any shirtwaists. Papa doesn’t have bosses who hire prostitutes to beat him