As Ilmari somehow knew, Aino was in Chicago. She’d found a job in a bakery in an Irish neighborhood under the name Ina Virtanen. The baker was kind as were most of the neighbors. All, however, were strongly Catholic, anticommunist, and anti-Wobbly. She sold bread, smiled a lot, and kept her IWW life quiet.
When she’d arrived in December, the IWW was staggering from the severe blows of the Palmer Raids. The nation, fearing a spreading Bolshevik revolution, was already primed for action against the IWW when on June 6, 1919, Galleanist anarchists exploded eight bombs, one of them in the home of the attorney general of the United States, Alexander Mitchell Palmer. Palmer seized the moment by blaming the bombing on the IWW. He then appointed a skillful, enthusiastic, and some would say fanatical man to head up FBI intelligence to help him destroy the union. The man’s name was J. Edgar Hoover.
By May, under Hoover’s onslaught, over three thousand Wobblies had been arrested and held without warrants, including over two hundred IWW leaders and organizers in Chicago alone.
Working all her evenings and Sundays, Aino joined the effort to free the two hundred imprisoned Chicago Wobblies. She soon found use for her recruiting skills, focusing on unskilled laborers, mostly immigrants who lived in grinding poverty and were ignored by the AF of L. Recognizing her ability, the Chicago leadership increased her funds to focus on recruiting women when Tennessee ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, women’s right to vote, on August 18, 1920.
Over the next two years, never knowing if the FBI was about to knock on her door, she helped recruit thousands of women working primarily in the clothing industry. All the while, she ached for Eleanor’s little warm body next to hers. Often she’d wondered if Jouka ever saw Eleanor. She knew she’d hurt Jouka badly but consoled herself by thinking she’d used him for a good cause. Deep down, however, she knew that she was engaging in sophistry. She often thought about the last time she’d seen Aksel walking away from her at the Castle Rock train station and wondered what he was doing.
Aino had been working at the bakery since four thirty on the morning of December 9, 1922, when her attention was drawn to a newsboy shouting something about Astoria. She walked to the front door. The newsboy walked by bawling in his high-pitched child’s voice, “Astoria, Oregon, is a fire ruin! Coast city wiped out! Read about it here. Thousands homeless!”
The paper said nothing about deaths. She was anxious all night, but the next day it seemed only one person had died. But what about Matti and Kyllikki’s house and Kyllikki’s parents’ house? She had no way of knowing.
Within days, Astoria was no longer in the news.
By the spring of 1923, the Cleveland Shirt and Dress Company had expanded from Cleveland to Chicago, St. Louis, and Denver on the backs of the women who did the sewing and cutting and the men who did the pressing. By the time a woman reached forty, her hands were arthritic and her sight was damaged. They worked ten-hour days six days a week and made roughly fifteen cents an hour—roughly because they were paid by the finished garment, not by the hour. When Aino walked to work she saw barefoot children going through garbage for food. Their mothers weren’t home. They were working, but their work couldn’t adequately feed, clothe, and shelter the children. Those who had working husbands could scrape by. Those who did not were desperate.
Fueled by the plight of these desperate people, Aino committed herself to organizing the Cleveland Shirt and Dress Company workers into an IWW local. Many of the company workers were immigrants who didn’t want to be perceived as disloyal to the United States. Many couldn’t speak English. All the workers feared retaliation. Their fear was not unfounded. The day after the local was formed, one of the men who handled the massive presses was severely beaten after work for having joined the union. The next day, another presser who’d joined was beaten. On the third day, a third. Each day more men joined—and more men went to work, each not knowing if this was the day he’d be beaten nearly to death. Yet on each day when more joined, they all went to work, and one of them took the beating. Aino visited the men’s homes, using her midwife skills to treat open wounds, concussions, and severely bruised bodies. She managed to engage the help of a sympathetic doctor to set a broken arm. She helped the men’s wives care for their husbands and children and brought food to compensate for the days each man lost in work and wages. The retaliation against the women who joined the union was less physical. Instead, large numbers of the garments made by the women who joined were rejected by management for trumped-up quality issues, effectively cutting their pay in half or worse.
The workers stayed with the union, and with every man beaten and woman sent home with half pay anger grew. Aino used that anger to overcome their reluctance to retaliate with the only weapon they had: the strike. Still, they would not strike, hoping that management would relent.
Then, in April 1923, one man had four of his front teeth broken off at the roots by a man wielding brass knuckles. That night, after an impassioned speech by Aino, the workers voted to strike, asking for an eight-hour day at twenty-five cents an hour, nearly double what they’d been receiving.
Management retaliated by switching work to other factories.
Aino quit her job and, relying on fellow Wobblies to give her food and shelter, took the train to St. Louis, the site of one of the company factories to which management had diverted work. She had the St. Louis workers organized within a week. When she returned to Chicago, she spent hours at the Western Union office, coordinating the Denver Wobblies to get the Denver workers to strike the company’s remaining factory. She and her fellow Wobblies enlisted the help of teamsters and railroad workers in every city where Cleveland Shirt and Dress operated. Cleveland Shirt and Dress shipments languished in warehouses and on loading docks; boxcars with Cleveland Shirt and Dress shipments got lost or hooked onto trains going in the wrong direction.
Faced with being outmaneuvered by the IWW, and with pressure from sympathetic AF of L workers, Cleveland Shirt and Dress resorted to other more sophisticated forms of counterpressure: politics and public relations.
By late May the strike had gone on for several weeks. Aino spent a lot of her time making sure that the picket lines were manned. Picketers brandished signs calling for an end to slavery. Aino usually joined the picketers before and after work, carrying a One Big Union sign. She and all the other Wobblies took pains with their apparel. Even though temperatures were in the low eighties, she wore a tight-fitting jacket over her dress.
Tensions were mounting. May was when Cleveland Shirt and Dress had orders to fill for the summer line—and the buyers would be putting pressure on the company to deliver as promised. Every day was a day of lost revenue at a peak buying time and a day where the competition would steal market share. Management, who had previously weathered two strikes without meeting workers’ demands, began a public relations campaign. A firm was hired to write and place newspaper articles with appropriate stories. It seeded bystanders with people paid to reinforce management’s message, physically if need be.
Aino was unsurprised when the hired public relations firm planted stories and slanted the news. But she hadn’t expected it to undertake direct action of its own. One morning, she faced an unusually sullen and hostile crowd. The morning had started with the usual taunts: “Traitors, you all ought to be in jail” or “Commie bastards, if you don’t like it here, move to Russia.” This was standard anti-Wobbly fare, the old red menace fear combined with lingering anger over the perceived and much-advertised traitorous sabotaging of the war effort.
This crowd was different. Aino could see the police looking nervously at their supervisors. Something was up. Her anxiety started to grow into fear. She walked from picketer to picketer, steadying them, warning them.
The first hint of what was to come was a rock hitting Aino’s sign, hurled by a boy of about ten. Then she saw other boys, about the same age, running out from the crowd, throwing their rocks, then scampering back to where they couldn’t be seen. The rocks pelted down on the picketers, who tried to shelter behind their signs.
A boy with thick red hair came out of the crowd, hurled his stone, and started back in, but Aino ran for him and caught him just inside the line of the gathering crowd.
“Let me go! She’s kidnapping me! Let me go!” The boy shouted, obviously enjoying himself.
“I won’t until you show me the man who’s paying you.”
The boy struggled. Aino held on. Then a woman’s voice said, “You leave that child alone!”
The boy, sensing victory, started shouting, “Help! Help! She’s trying to kidnap me.”
“You let him go,” the woman said. She didn’t wait for Aino to release the boy. “Police! Police!”
Two policemen from the line that separated the crowd and the strikers started toward Aino. She panicked and ran for the picket line, the two officers in hot pursuit. Several of the male garment pressers from the factory moved into their path, letting Aino inside the line. The police started hitting the men with their billy clubs.
At first, the rest of the policemen didn’t know what to do, but someone in the crowd shouted, “They’re attacking the police! Get the Bolshevik bastards!”
The crowd surged.
Aino was put in an ugly little cell in the Cook County jail, along with two other women picketers. Once again, her back was a mass of welts and bruises, blood showing at the roots of her hair by her right ear. The only light in the cell came from a single window, high above them, so covered with grime they could not see the sky. Her cell mates were huddled on the floor against the wall, both clearly frightened, one occasionally bursting into tears. They were garment workers, not organizers.
Aino stood away from them, pushing her back against the cold stone wall, struggling to contain her panic, consciously trying to keep herself in the present. Being in jail was no longer new. Still, every time, it raised the ghost of Helsinki.
She sat down next to the woman who’d been crying. “Everything going to be OK. They just scaring you,” she whispered.
“They’re doing a great job,” the woman whispered back.
They always do, Aino thought, cradling the woman’s head against her shoulder.
They were left in the cell for hours, having to share one bucket to relieve themselves. Around midnight, they heard keys jangling and the lock turning. Two guards, followed by a supervisor, came into the cell.
“It stinks in here, ladies,” the supervisor said. The two guards chuckled. The supervisor stopped in front of each woman, exaggeratedly wrinkling his nose. He turned to the guards. “Take the other two, leave that one.” He pointed at Aino. She felt her heart lurch. She struggled not to show it. They had singled her out.
The two guards roughly grabbed her cell mates. The one who’d not been crying protested. “Where are you taking us? What’s our crime? You can’t hold us without—” She was cut short by a backhand slap from the supervisor. “Are you going to be a troublemaker?” he asked her. She lowered her head and the supervisor grunted approval.
Aino pushed herself up against the wall with one forearm held up against her breasts and the other held down in a fist protecting her vulva. Her hands were shaking. She knew she must act, say something to show she wouldn’t be intimidated. By sheer will she lowered her arms and straightened her back. “What crime have we done? What is going to happen to us?”
The two guards looked at the supervisor to see if he would answer. He nodded for them to get on with their business, which they did, taking the two women away. He turned to Aino. “Not us, princess, you. We’ve found no record of an Ina Virtanen. Those two women are United States citizens. Unless you have proof you are, and even that may not save you, you’ll be sent back to Finland under the Espionage Act.”
“We not fighting in the war now.”
The man laughed. “The war’s over, yes, but the Espionage Act is here to stay.” He leaned in so their faces were only inches apart, making Aino press back against the wall even harder. “You and your communist traitor friends are not.”
He walked to the door, then turned to look at her. She could see his body and head silhouetted by the naked lightbulbs strung down the corridor. Then he shut the door and she was in darkness, all alone, again.
Panic grabbed her. She fought it back, trying to take regular deep breaths. She failed. She rammed her fist into her mouth and bit down, hard. The pain brought her to the present.
She squatted against the dank wall and wrapped her skirt tightly around her ankles to keep out rats. She could hear her own breathing and occasional clangs, clanks, and the voices of guards. Then she heard sharp claws skittering across the stone floor. She rose to her feet, her heart pounding. Maíjaliisa would say now was the time for sisu. Ilmari would say now was the time to pray. Matti would say now was the time to kill rats. It was too dark, however, to see the rats, and she did not want to have to feel for them. What she said to herself was that now was the time to endure.
She pulled her skirt tightly around her legs against the rats, fighting what she knew was a pull into insanity. She was in Chicago, not Helsinki. Americans don’t torture people. She realized she was moaning.
She finally exhausted herself and went unconscious. When she awoke, looking up at the window she guessed it was still early morning. She tried to remember everything about Eleanor: how she smelled after breastfeeding, how she looked sleeping, how soft the skin on her face felt, her perfect fingers with their tiny perfect fingernails, the sound of her laughter. She imagined Eleanor with Alma and Ilmari. She imagined walking with her brothers and Eleanor on the banks of Deep River. She remembered that day walking back to the mill when she’d turned her back on Deep River. For the co-op? For the One Big Union? For her own feelings of worth and, yes, power? Fighting for a worthy cause? Oh, the cause was worthy—but was it worth it?
She remembered her argument with Kyllikki. Had she put Eleanor first, she wouldn’t be here now, terrified. It occurred to her to pray. Oh, how easy it would be to take it all to the friend we have in Jesus. Bring it to the Lord in prayer. She laughed at herself. Then she started thinking: What’s wrong with comfort in hard times—even comfort based on a fairy tale? Why did she have to be the one who put aside her life and the people she loved for the betterment of society? If people like her didn’t do it, the world would surely be run by the bullies and tyrants, whether political or economic. When was it time to pass on the torch? She was suddenly tired of being tough-minded. She wished Aksel and the Bachelor Boys would come storming through the door. She smiled at the scene she’d just constructed with herself, Aino, the damsel in distress. Then she wondered: What’s wrong with that? It’s what she was.
She didn’t exactly pray, but she did make a promise—to who or what she did not know, but to something more than just herself. She promised that if she ever got out of this alive, she would put Eleanor and her family first. She would be the best mother Eleanor could have, a mother with a capital M—and she would go back to Deep River.
The keys in the door set her heart thumping again. The single pane high above her showed a dirty gray-brown light. She braced herself.
The man who stepped inside carried a briefcase and wore a neat business suit. She heard the guard say, “Twenty minutes.”
She backed up against the wall. There was no escape.
“Well, Ina,” the man said. “I’m Albert Angell.” He smiled. “I’m not, however, an angel. I’m a lawyer.”
She said nothing. This might be a ruse.
After several minutes of calm talk, he eventually gained her trust. He was from a prominent Chicago firm but did pro bono work for the IWW, lately trying to get its leadership out of prison.
Aino wanted to hug the man but knew it was undignified.
She told him everything: her real name, her involvement with radical socialism in Finland, her family, her marriage to Jouka, her divorce. He questioned her in some detail about what happened in Centralia when she told him she’d been there during the massacre. Then he switched to another line of questions.
“You say you’re divorced.”
She nodded. “My husband is not living with me,” She hung her head, unable to look at him.
“What jurisdiction?”
She looked at him, puzzled.
“What court? Where did you file the papers?”
“I didn’t file them.”
“So, you’re not divorced?”
“Jouka doesn’t live with me anymore.”
“That’s called a separation.” He paused and took a small breath.
“Is Jouka a U.S. citizen?”
“Yes. He was born in Washington State.”
Angell smiled as if he’d just won a poker hand. “Fact is,” he said, “as far as the law is concerned, you’re still married.” He paused for effect. “To a U.S. citizen.” She looked at him questioningly. “They were thinking of deporting you. I think now they’ll have a hard time. You’re a U.S. citizen, too. All but the paperwork.”
“I ran from the law in Centralia. My name is in newspapers as an accomplice.”
“Accomplice?” He looked at her, thinking. “As far as the state of Washington is concerned, they’ve imprisoned everyone who’s guilty.” His jaw tightened. “Unjustly. With shockingly unfair sentences.” He brought himself back to the cell. “I’ll check to be sure, but my guess is that no one’s looking for you.”
She wrote to Matti, Kyllikki, Alma, and Ilmari to tell them she was coming home as soon as she earned the fare—and she was coming home to stay. She hesitated but plunged in, telling them about the strike and being thrown into jail. That night she slept, troubled by dreams of frantically searching for Eleanor. She woke several times, wondering if Eleanor remembered her. She’d left her a toddler. She’d be five by the time she returned. Could she ever make it right?