Free Folly by Maureen Brady Page B

staring at Sabrina, so she went back to thinking about her own mother.

8.
    Folly walked the picket line beside Effie, wearing a placard across her front that said: WOMEN OF VICTORY MILLS UNITE. A young woman across from her going the opposite way wore one saying: WE DEMAND HUMAN WORKING CONDITIONS. It was the middle of May and hot, and Folly passed the word back to slow the pace. “I hope we don’t have to be here all summer,” Effie said.
    â€œDamn tooting,” Folly said.
    â€œI don’t see how we could.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œStay out that long.”
    â€œDepends on what we get,” Folly said.
    â€œYou think we’ll get something?” Effie’s tone was wistful.
    â€œWe better.”
    â€œWhy should they give us anything? I mean here we are messing up their schedule, aggravating them and all. I bet they’re damn mad.”
    Folly looked slowly around at Effie, stared as if she were in a trance. For a moment Effie’s words sat on her brain, and she held the idea that they were crazy to be doing this—just plain stupid, foolish, dumb, crazy. Then she broke the spell and spoke sharply to Effie. “Hey, look at what we do in there. You know how many garments we turn out every shift? They need us. Us. You and me. They got to give us something to get us back.”
    â€œLooks like they practically got the whole place filled up with them scabs so it ain’t no skin off their backs,” Effie said.
    â€œHow many of them you think is meeting production at eighty-five?” Folly had found her anger again and stayed with it. “I bet they got half them machines all balled up with threads. They probably gota triple crew working on repairs. They’re gonna have more seconds than firsts coming out of that place. Not everyone you pick up off the street can sew, you know.”
    â€œI reckon,” Effie said.
    They walked for a while in silence, pacing in a long oval so that there was no beginning or end to the line. Folly liked watching how the line grew in front of her just after she had rounded the turn, then feeling the sense of the line extending longer and longer behind her, while woman after woman passed through her frame going the other way. As a child, she had taken a train trip with her mother once and watched the backs of the houses passing her by. She had felt privileged then for this glimpse of life away from home. Now she felt privileged to be part of this march of proud women. She looked at each face for the brief second it passed her and each seemed so definite, strong and clear. She knew that others were afraid, as she was, as Effie was, but their fury had triumphed and was shining on their faces. The mill stood in the background with its closed front, windows from the original construction bricked over. They were in the foreground, where they should be, the basis of operation of the mill, walking in the sunshine, beaming to each other, experiencing the power of their unity.
    Folly glanced up to the manager’s office windows, but with the glare of the sun, she couldn’t tell if anyone was watching them from there. She could feel the eyes of Fartblossom and Big Sam, though, from wherever they were perched, glaring, and she imagined them puffing and fuming, if they had gotten over their disbelief. She couldn’t see anyone at the other set of windows which were in the lunch room, either. From the perspective of walking the picket line, the building looked more like a prison than she had ever realized before. She tried to picture it inside, what was going on, which scab was at her machine. She wondered would she get it back when the strike was over? Although they all looked alike, everyone knew that her own machine was slightly different from every other one, and once a woman was used to hers, she could work better on it than if she had to keep switching around. Folly felt very protective of her machine, that and the fact that her