England. Another frigidly cold wind blows through the city. Birmingham. Everything is on edge, every crack and pore of the bleak city landscape groans in anticipation of a warm breeze. December. The ground is stained brown, caked with dirt and sewage and the occasional human remain. Early Morning. The buildings are colored black as coal, black as the souls of the men who trap us here. 1801. The sky this morning is also colored black, a dreary billowing mass of clouds forming an envelope around the city, trapping it’s miserable inhabitants inside. Factories belch pillows of grey smoke into the inky sky. A single vulture watches over the city from its perch atop a chimney. The occasional splinter of sunlight shoots through the clouds and scatters itself in fragments onto the street below. The arctic winter seems to drag on forever, days become years, years becoming lifetimes. The city plays its own cacophony. The tolling of church bells keeps a steady cadence, although faith has already failed most in the city. The bells are joined by the clanging of a factory machine. The scurry of a rat nearby is followed quickly by a scream and a baby crying. A cough, a shriek, and another baby crying. Hundreds of feet, marching their daily march to the factories.

The buildings all around me seem to close in on me as I walk between them. I push my way through the crowd of people lining the sidewalks. Men in long leather jackets, carrying smooth black leather briefcases. Men off to work at offices, doing important things. Men whose shoes click against the pavement with each step, a sound that validates their importance. At the first tolling of the bell, I begin to jog, murmuring apologies as I push through the crowd. At the third tolling, I break into a run. Men mutter obscenities at me as I shove through them, not even stopping to breathe.

The factory is a long, narrow building. Its chimney is the tallest, the largest, the proudest. It towers above the city displaying its redbrick grandeur for all to see. It stakes claim to the sprawling building that lays beneath it. Inside the factory, there are thousands of machines and thousands of people. The pernicious stink of the gases mixed with the cold swirls around to create a toxic, frigid air that sucks every bit of life out of each and every one of us. Dust and cotton flyings swirl around in the air, lodging themselves in my lungs with every fractured breath. My lungs crackle as I breathe in the ghastly scent of the factory. A wet, hacking cough erupts uncontrollably from my mouth and I immediately press my hands over my mouth to suppress the sound.

As I sit at the machine, my scarred and callused fingers perform the same actions over and over. They dance their wearisome dance over the machines. As always, my mind begins to wander to pass the time. I live inside my head, imagining life as it could have been. I think in another life I would have liked to be a poet or a great writer. I dream up the most exquisite tales in my head, ideas and words swirling around like the cotton flyings around my head.

Today, I do not dream up a heroic rescue or passionate romance, instead, I think of our little house in the countryside and my mother. I think of how happy she used to be. She used to have long, golden hair that fell down to her waist, which she tied up in a braid every day. She would spin beautiful fabrics in the morning and spend each afternoon in the fields. My brother and I would chase each other around the blueberry fields, giggling and screaming, our chubby hands stained blue and stuffed with berries. Mother loved nightingales. She used to sing us songs about nightingales, she would run after them in the orchards and feed them seeds. In the country, Mother had a light in her eyes. Then, after we moved to the city, her eyes turned yellow, and a week later, we were orphans.

A scream. A terrible, inhumane scream brings me back. The girl who works two machines to the left has gotten her long hair stuck in the spinning wheel. She wails in pain as her hair and flesh are wrenched off her head into the merciless machine. She cries for help and pulls away from the machine, clutching her head. She falls and crumples to the floor, her body wracked with sobs. Nobody dares move from where they are, much less even look at the girl lying on the floor. I think of my mother, my mother who sang songs to nightingales, and know she would have helped the girl on the floor. Heavy boots approach behind us and stop where the whimpering girl lays. We hear the sounds of a scuffle, and the girl screams again. A few minutes later, there is a new worker in her place.

When I get up for lunch, the floor is stained with blood.

I work for hours, even when my arms shake and my knees threaten to fall out from under me, and even then there was a sharp retribution and a crack on the knuckles. Time passes slowly. William Harris, the foreman, an awful man, a bourgeoisie man, stands over my shoulder and watches me work. He breathes his rank breath into my ear and stands too close. I concentrate on making no mistakes. He stands much too close. I know I will break soon, so I focus on mother’s nightingales. I imagine the pale brown bird singing, and my mother laughing as she chases it around the orchard. William, pleased with what he sees, runs his fingernails down my spine and stalks away. I let out a sigh of relief and briefly make eye contact with the girl next to me. Her eyes are wide with terror. I continue working.

As my fingers dance across the machine, I daydream that I am killing William Harris.

Hours later, I stumble down an alley towards home. A dark form clad in rags sat in an alley to my left, his thin and emaciated form concealed by the afternoon shadow. I notice him as I pass. He sits, shivering, propped against a wall, a small pail next to him. His lips, pressed tightly together, are blue, and his skin is as pale as fresh snow. I pass the beggar without giving him anything, as I have nothing to give.

I know that my mother would have given him the clothes off her back if she was here. I continue on towards home, my shadow growing longer with each step. A red hue begins to creep into the corners of the sky, slowly taking over. The night is falling quickly, and it brings with it a bone-chilling wind. I clutch at my coat, pulling it tightly around my shoulders and quickening my step. Coughing and gasping from a nearby house echoes in the narrow roadway. A baby somewhere shrieks and cries, it's screaming echoing in my head like the girl from the factories. I stop for a moment. What a beautiful thing, a baby, in a terrible, terrible world. I blow my warm breath over my frozen hands and look up at the blood red sky. I wish I could be anywhere else. Just as in the factory this morning, I erupt in a fit of violent coughing, spots appearing in my vision. The world begins to spin and drift in and out of my vision. I slide down against the wall of the building and sit on the street. Just as I think I am about to die right here on the street and this is the end, I see a bird flying across the ebony city sky. It is a nightingale. And I do not know if it is real or a figment of my imagination. I do not know there is really a nightingale or if I am dying and it is here to take me to heaven. And just as quickly as it started, the coughing stops. I stand up and break into a run.

All around me, there is a sea of bodies, dead or alive - I can never be sure - laying on the dirty cellar floor which we call our home. A few red-eyed rats scurry around, but there is not so much as a crumb on the floor for them. In the center of the room, the floor dips downward and there is a stream of rotting sewage. The stench is unbearable, but this is the only place I know. Some children, most orphans, are still awake, having just stumbled home from the factories. They sit in a clump together, bleary-eyed and feverish in the corner. My brother is sitting against the far wall with the children, holding a small crust of bread. His head is resting against the wall. His eyes are tired and he cannot hold his body up. His back is curved and he is covered in soot and dust after another day in the mines. A young boy of six or seven has his head leaned against my brother’s shoulder.

I sink down against the wall and survey the scene around me. I think what a cruel world this is that I’m living in. Children cramped together with no food, no clothes, no hope. Most have no parents, dead of fever or killed in the mines, like my father. I try to say a prayer, but I don’t know if I believe in religion anymore, or if I have any faith left in me. But through it all, I do not cry. I have become too strong, too resilient to cry. This is a cruel, cold world, but it has made me a fighter. I will keep fighting, and when I am done, my mother will be waiting for me on the other side.

"Mary, please tell me a story"

A small girl whimpers and wraps her thin arms around my neck. I look down and recognize the small girl. She works in the same factory, packaging clothing to be shipped to Bourgeois homes. Two round, fat tears make tracks down her grimy face. She is exhausted. I comfort the girl, running my fingers through her matted golden hair. If she had a mother to brush out her hair, or strawberry-milk to wash it with, she would have the most beautiful golden curls. I lift my thumb up to her cheeks and wipe away a stray tear. Her tiny body curls up next to mine, burning hot and shaking.

And as the last rays of another coal-powered sun fall below the horizon, I begin to talk. The children around me grow silent, their eyes on me as I speak. Hours slip by into the balmy darkness as I talk. I talk until my voice grows painful. I tell of life in the country, life without machines, a life where they could be healthy and happy. I tell of flowers and trees and apples growing on the trees. I tell of my mother’s beautiful nightingales and their songs. I tell of another life where we could be happy, far away from the mechanical monotony of our reality. Even after the children have long fallen asleep, smiles across their faces, I continue talking.

I talk until my voice grows hoarse and then raspy and then begins to fade away. I glance at the golden-haired child breathing slowly and peacefully next to me. I think of the blood on the floor and the nightingale I saw. Wherever my mother is now, she is watching over me. I think that if we become something after we die, then my mother has become a nightingale. I lie down against the cold stone floor. The ever-present industrial churning of the day is gone and the night is frozen and silent.

I close my eyes and dream of nightingales.