[100 Challenge] Ocean_08

The Black Dress, Part 2

A valise, a steamship, and she is gone.

The ship bows under the weight of its living cargo; she squeezes into a tiny loft stuffed with straw. People speak languages that sound like they come from the tongues of animals. She has never felt the sea before. She and hundreds of others retch into pails, the meal is full of weevils, the fresh water is rationed. The journey takes weeks. A woman who also speaks Yiddish tells her that when she arrives on the shore of that place her name will never do—she’ll have to change it.

Away the song seeps.

When she arrives on that far continent, the ship disgorging less passengers than it set out with, she exits on wobbling legs to go stand in line with the others. At the front of the line sits a woman with a pencil. Eventually my great-grandmother stands before this woman with the pencil and says, “Anna. My name is Anna.”

Anna lives with her uncle and goes to work at a factory where she places filaments inside light bulbs. Another of the thousands of immigrants who bring light to the country, who bring rail and spark. A conveyor belt job. Tedious, eye-blowing work. Is it better than the fields? It is different. The song now grown very distant, only an echo of an echo.