Ashes Of Roses

The fire divides the room into the window side and the elevator side. Rose realizes that she will die if she doesn’t run through the flames. Finding a bucket with water in it, she douses herself and pulls her wet skirts up over her head, then runs through the flames. A crowd of girls is by the elevator, which has just gone down. A girl next to Rose falls into the elevator shaft and lands on her head on top the elevator. Rose realizes that with the fire on the floor below, this will be the elevator’s last trip. She jumps into the elevator shaft and grabs the cable to slide herself down to the top of the elevator. As she rides down, other girls who have caught fire fall into the shaft, landing on top of the elevator. Rose realizes that she doesn’t know where Maureen is.

Rose must hold onto a dead girl to keep from falling when her skirt gets caught in an elevator door. When the elevator stops, firemen in the lobby help her out and prevent her from running up the stairs to find Maureen. At the entrance of the building, a fireman halts Rose for a moment because girls are stilling dropping to the pavement from the floors above. When she runs out, she sees that the top three floors of the building are on fire. The horses that pull the fire wagons are spooked by all the blood running in the streets. Rose sees piles of bodies as she runs through the crowded streets and Washington Square, trying to find Maureen. Rose returns home, hoping that Maureen will there, but their lodgings are empty. She feels guilty about Maureen’s presence in the factory and then realizes that she has no idea whether Gussie made it out safely. She goes back to the scene of the fire and is joined by the friends and family members of other Triangle workers who are also searching for their loved ones. The police hold everyone back. Rose forces herself to look at the pile of bodies. She thinks she sees Klein’s new suit, but it is another girl. As a police officer guides her away, telling her there will be a morgue set up for people to identify the victims, Rose steps on a hat. She clutches it and sobs, realizing that it is Bellini’s.

Rose watches as fireman load corpses onto a canvas tarp. Wagons bring in dozens of caskets, and searchlights are brought in to help firemen locate all the victims, whom they lower to the ground via hooks on cables. A police officer gathers the personal items that fall from the victims. At eight o’clock, an ambulance leaves with a man who was found alive under an elevator in the basement. The Edison Company strings up lights on the street and on every floor of the building. Rose hears a burglar alarm sound in the building, but no one turns it off. She follows people to the Mercer Street Police Station, but an officer there says that the bodies have been taken to a morgue on a pier. An officer allows Rose to look through the personal articles of the victims to see if she can identify anything. She sees a scrap of her own dress, which was torn in the elevator door. Bertha and Esther, two women she met on her first day, come into the station, and she asks if they know where Maureen went. Esther tells her that the fire started in front of them on the eighth floor. Esther believes that all the girls escaped, but the men on the floor stayed to fight the fire. Rose’s guilt increases when she learns that if Maureen had left the building like she had wanted to instead of going up to meet Rose on the ninth floor, she would have been safe. Rose returns to the fire scene, yelling Maureen’s name. She hears someone call her name but then sees that it is a complete stranger. They both cry in disappointment. Climbing on a bench, she sees a young girl leading an old man and realizes that it is Maureen and Mr. Garoff. Maureen explains that she escaped by going to the roof. University students from the neighboring building put a ladder across to the roof of Triangle. Though Rose tries to console Mr. Garoff, he believes that Gussie is dead.

Not wanting to leave Mr. Garoff, Rose and Maureen accompany him to the morgue where officers are holding back the crowds. People wail and scream all around them as wagons bring in more bodies. The officers will allow people to enter the morgue at midnight. As they wait, officers call out names or other identifiers of victims to see if their family is there. Rose has a moment of fear when an officer asks about a woman with a ring that has the initials G. G. on it, but Mr. Garoff says that Gussie did not have jewelry. Inside the morgue, the bodies are in open pine coffins with their heads tilted up. Soon, Rose recognizes two girls from her floor, one of whom had recently gotten engaged. Then they see the bodies of Bellini and Klein. She gives their names to the officer but forgets the streets on which they live. Rose nearly faints, but the officer catches her, and Mr. Garoff supports her. The bodies further back in the morgue are in worse condition. Maureen spies a body with shoes that she recognizes as Gussie’s. Her face is burned beyond recognition, but the steel plate on her shoe identifies her. Two men rush over to assist Mr. Garoff, speaking in Yiddish. With Mr. Garoff taken care of, Rose grabs Maureen’s hand and rushes out of the building to the edge of the pier, where she vomits. Maureen asks what they are going to do. She points out that Ma and Da will never return because Ma hated being in America. They know that Uncle Patrick will help them, whether they decide to stay or go back to Ireland. As they walk home, Maureen states that she thinks they should stay in America because they have just survived what is likely to be the worst day of their lives, so things cannot get much worse.

At the apartment, Mr. Garoff is with the two men from the morgue and an older woman. The woman, Leah, gives the girls tea and bread. Mr. Garoff takes hold of Rose’s hand. Leah explains that they are making plans for Gussie’s funeral. Rose is initially afraid of going to sleep because she fears the nightmares she might have, but Leah sings a Yiddish song and stays until they drop off to sleep. Leah is still there the next morning. She explains that she and the two men are members of the same synagogue as Mr. Garoff. When she learns that Rose has burns on her hands and the backs of her legs, she hurries to put salve and bandages on them. Mr. Garoff plans to return to Russia, with the Women’s Trade Union League paying for his passage and Gussie’s funeral.

When Rose and Maureen walk through the neighborhood, they see a few funeral processions, as well as flowers on the doors of victims’ houses. They walk back to the Triangle factory and see Jacob in a crowd. He hugs them and says that 146 people died in the fire. He also tells her that he had asked Gussie to marry him, but she kept telling him to wait. Just then, three buses of laughing young people arrive to view the scene of the tragedy for entertainment. A vendor is selling what he claims are personal items from the fire victims. Rose knocks the tray of items out of his hand, and Jacob roughs the vendor up when he threatens to strike Rose. One of the woman spectators starts laughing at Jacob. Rose yells that her shirtwaist was made by a dead girl. She then asks Jacob where Gussie’s union headquarters is, and he takes her to the Waistmakers Local 25, which is entirely draped in black. As Rose watches the families of the fire victims come and go from the union hall, she thinks about her next steps. With Mr. Garoff returning to Russia, they need to find a new place to live. They need to contact Uncle Patrick for help and write a letter to their parents, as news of the fire will probably reach them soon. Rose vows that when she gets a job, she will join the union and work in the union shop. For the memories of Gussie, Klein, and Bellini, Rose resolves to tell the story of what happened at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.