Bread and Roses, Too (7 page)

Mamma was on her feet. While the girls gathered bowls and spoons for all of them, Mamma went into the back room and took the still sleeping little Ricci out of bed and wrapped him in her shawl. "Come," she ordered. "Everybody to the Italian hall."

Rosa stood aside and let them all pass her. She hung back. At the front door, Mamma turned. "Come, Rosa. You, too."

Rosa hesitated. "It's like begging when you can't pay," she muttered.

"It's like feasting," Mamma said. "Come on, don' be a fool. You need to eat." She reached out her free hand and said gently, "Come on, my Rosina. Don' be sour face."

Rosa didn't take Mamma's hand, but she followed her down the stairs and out into the street. Everyone was in a carnival mood, heading for the various ethnic halls where there was food to be had. "Come on, Marta," Mamma said to Mrs. J. "You come to Chabis Hall. Be Italian just for one night. Too far to walk to Sons of Lithuania, okay?" Mrs. J. laughed and all the J.'s went with them to Chabis Hall, where tables and chairs were set up. They were among the first, and Mamma sent Granny and Rosa and little Ricci and the boys to save seats while the women and older girls stood in line.

The soup was thick with vegetables and bits of meat, the aroma alone almost enough to fill an empty stomach. There was fresh crusty bread, too, more for each person than any of them had had for months. "See, Rosa," Mamma said. "We don' starve if we strike. Our union friends help us."

Rosa didn't answer. Her mouth was full, but she couldn't help wondering what happened when you ate the food of atheists and anarchists. Was it like taking the host when you were in a state of sin? Did you go to hell?

Rosa lay in bed, unable to sleep, the taste of the thick soup still in her mouth. She should never have gone to the hall. When you're hungry, you can so easily be led astray, and they had been led astray. Even the people who had no desire to strike, who only stayed out of work because their fear of the neighbors was greater than their fear of the mill owners—they had gone to the halls and eaten the food sent from the union members in Boston and Lowell, and they had been warmed and filled and they had forgotten to be wary. She flung herself over in bed. Granny J. grunted. She mustn't wake the old woman up. Mamma would be furious with her. If Granny complained, then Mamma and Anna and Ricci would have to give their bed in the back room to the old lady, and the three of them come and share Rosa's already too small bed. But at least they wouldn't snore, not the way Granny did. Jonas and Kestutis, who shared the narrow cot next to the opposite wall, were sleeping peacefully. It hadn't worried them to eat the food of atheists. Only Rosa. Everyone else had just laughed at her fears.

Granny J. turned over, snatching most of the quilt as she did so. Rosa wanted to pull it back, but she knew she mustn't. What would happen when the J.'s stopped paying rent? They would, of course, when they had no earnings. If Mamma stopped paying the rent, would Mr. Wood throw them out into the snow? No. Mr. Wood had once been a mill worker. He knew how it was. He wouldn't be so cruel.... Or would he?

The questions inside her head were so noisy that she almost didn't hear the sound. Then she did. It was the sound of someone knocking ever so gently on the door. She climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the door and put her ear on the keyhole.

"Hey, shoe girl," a voice whispered. "You awake?"

Rosa nodded.

"I say, girl, you there?"

"Oh. Yes. Is it you?"

"Yeah. Can I come in?"

She turned the key and opened the door a crack. "What are you doing here?"

"Ah, come on," he said. "It's freezing out there. I'll sleep in the kitchen, like before, all right?"

"No, it's not all right," Rosa whispered, looking nervously toward the lump in the bed that was Granny J. "Go home and sleep. I bet your parents don't even know where you are."

"Who you think I'm running from?"

She hadn't thought of that—someone who had to run
away
from home and not toward it.

He was already pushing past her into the room. "I'll be gone before they're awake," he said as he went through to the kitchen. She closed and locked the front door, not knowing what else to do or how to get rid of him.

She wanted to tell him not to take any bread this time, but how could she? She'd had a big bowl of soup and a huge slice of bread all to herself just a few hours before, and besides, the bread left in the kitchen was hard and moldy. Rosa watched him lie down, curling close to the cold stove, with his back to her. She could hear Anna's coughing from the other room. It sent knives through her own chest. She waited a minute before leaving the kitchen. She quietly shut the kitchen door, and then she leaned against it, her heart beating too fast. Why had she let the boy in? She didn't even know his name—all she knew was that he was a thief who had stolen bread from them the last time she'd felt sorry for him and let him sleep in the kitchen. And he'd do it again. She was sure of that. Well, it was too late now. She crept back to bed.

Granny was sprawled all over the bed, so Rosa lay stiffly in the narrow space left to her and recited multiplication tables in her head to keep from thinking about all the things that were bombarding her mind.

Why was Mamma shaking her shoulder? It couldn't be morning yet.

"What is it, Mamma?" She spoke without opening her eyes.

"Shh. Hush. It's Anna, and I don't want to wake anyone up." Anna leaned over and whispered in her ear. "Who is that guy in the kitchen?"

Rosa was wide awake now. "What guy?"

"What do you mean, 'What guy?' I got up to get a drink of water and nearly tripped over him. Scared the life out of me. Come on, Rosa. You know who I mean—the boy that smells like a canal, who's lying right now on our kitchen floor."

"Oh, him."

"Yes,
him.
You let him in?"

She nodded, not daring to look Anna in the face, even in the dark.

"Did you? Then you must know who he is."

"He's—" Oh, dear, she still didn't know his name. "It's uh ... Fred—from school."

"Well get Fred or whatever his name is out of here fast."

"I can't. He's got no place to go. He'd freeze to death outside."

"Heaven help us, you're right. Well, get him out of here before Mamma wakes up and catches him, understand?" She sighed. "Now go back to sleep, but make sure—"

"I will. You, too."

"How can I go back to sleep? My heart is pounding like a beater on a loom. Such a fright!"

"I'm sorry, okay? I'll get him out early."

"Be sure you do."

But she slept so late, Mamma was pinching her toes and telling her she'd be tardy for school. She sat up quickly. Granny and the little boys were already up and out of the room. She must have slept terribly late. Oh, dear—the boy. She'd promised Anna she'd get him out before Mamma got up.

"Your little rat come again last night," Mamma said as if reading her mind.

"My—what?" Had Mamma seen him, then?

"In and out in the dead of night, taking the last of the bread along."

She couldn't speak. Why was Mamma calling him
her
rat?

"Only this time," Mamma smiled broadly, "he leave a penny behind. Some rat, huh?"

Rosa just lay there blinking in the still-dark room.

"Up, up, Rosina, get yourself up now and run down to the baker and get us some new bread before you go off to school, okay?"

Rosa dressed quickly. Mamma pressed three pennies into her hand. "Tell Mr. Cavacco we good for the rest soon as we win this strike, okay?"

Rosa did as she was told, even though her face felt flushed and she couldn't look directly at Mr. Cavacco when she gave him the three pennies and asked for the other two cents to be put on account. She knew Mamma was trying to stretch out her last pay envelope as long as possible. Mr. Cavacco didn't argue. He took a little notebook from his drawer, pushed his glasses up on his forehead, licked his tiny stub of a pencil, and wrote down carefully on the page headed
MRS
.
SERUTTI
: "January 17, 2 cents due."

When she brought the new loaf home, it was greeted with squeals of delight. Mamma got the big knife and cut nine thin, perfectly straight slices, coated each one with a smear of molasses, and passed seven of them to the waiting household. She took the two soft slices from the middle of the loaf and cut one of them up into tiny squares for Ricci. He stuffed a handful into his mouth and chewed the bread with a look of serious determination. Mamma smiled at him, leaving her own slice untouched in case the baby needed it as well.
He needs milk.
Rosa's heart hurt for her brother. When she was small, she'd had milk almost every day. Back when Papa was alive.

There was another parade that day, and there was, as Miss Finch had predicted, some violence. The strikers threw ice at the militia, and the militia retaliated by beating the strikers with the backs of their swords. "Nobody was hurt, little Rosa," Mamma said. "Stop your worry. Your mamma and Anna are fine. You should see that girl. When anybody raise their gun, she wrap that big flag all around her. They don' dare shoot the flag, those Harvard boys!" Mamma laughed.

There was an even better parade on Thursday. Mr. Marad, who had a dye shop on Oak Street, led it with his big Syrian band. "Oh, it was very grand," Mamma said. "Best band yet."

Then the very next day, the police got a tip. There was dynamite stored in Mr. Marad's shop. They raided it and, sure enough, found the dynamite. Mr. Marad protested that he had no idea how it got there. Joe Ettor swore that the mill owners had paid someone to plant it and then blame it on the strikers. The city was in an uproar, with each side blaming the other. More dynamite was found, some in the cemetery and some in a shoe shop right next door to the radical printing shop where Joe Ettor went every day to collect his mail. The authorities were both outraged and triumphant. Didn't the dynamite prove what they had contended from the beginning—that nothing but violence and disorder would result from this illegal strike?

Rosa was desperate. "Mamma, please. If they are storing dynamite..."

"Who is storing dynamite! Nobody, I say. It'sa Mr. Billy Wood'sa monkey tricks!" The madder Mamma got, the less American she sounded.

"You don't know that, Mamma, not for sure."

Mamma looked at Rosa, her nostrils flaring. "Don' believe everything that teacher say, Rosa. She don' know the heart of Mr. Billy Wood like I do."

"She
does
know Mr. Wood. She said so. He used to be a worker himself. He really cares about workers."

"Rosa! Look at this apartment! He give us this—we only pay little rent, yes? He so kind heart to us he give me six dollar twenty-five cent a week for work and take back six dollar for rent. Oh, yes, he got big heart for me. Him with his six house and so many cars he don' count how many. Oh, yes, sir, he care so much about his people in the mills." She stopped only long enough to catch her breath. "You know why dynamite found in Mr. Marad's shop—huh, you know?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Because Mr. Marad lead best parade yet with his big Syrian band is why. Now he in jail. No more good band for parade. That's all Mr. Billy Wood think. He don' care innocent man in jail."

Rosa shrank back. Sometimes she was as frightened by Mamma's rage as she was by the events happening in the streets.

School became a kind of refuge. Even though Miss Finch never failed to condemn the strike, Rosa could almost close her ears to that and focus her anxieties on performing well in arithmetic and history and, above all, in English. She
would
be an American, an educated, civilized, respected American, not a despised child of an immigrant race. When she grew up, she'd change her name and marry a real American and have real American children. She wouldn't go out to work in a mill and leave them in the care of someone's old granny who couldn't even speak English. She'd stay home herself and cook American food and read them American books and ... But even as she thought these determined thoughts, somewhere in the back of her mind she could smell rigatoni smothered in tomato sauce with bits of sausage in it and could hear her mamma's beautiful voice singing
Un Bel Di.

To Rosa's relief, the boy didn't come knocking again. When Mamma asked about him, Rosa said something vague—"He wasn't in school today"—something even Father Milanese couldn't classify as a lie. She didn't want to lay one more sin upon her soul on his account. She went to confession on Saturday and got the first lie off her conscience, the one about knowing him from school, so that she could take Communion. She went to Mass alone. Mamma and Anna were too busy meeting and parading. She came home feeling as though an icicle had pierced straight through to her belly. She was cold and hungry, but it wasn't just that. She was angry. Why should she have to carry the burden of piety for the whole household? It was as though the strike had become their religion, with Joe Ettor their priest.

As soon as she stepped into the apartment, Rosa could hear the excited babble of women's voices coming from the kitchen. Even when there was momentary quiet for one voice to speak, the words were immediately interpreted in a noisy tangle of languages, louder than the roar of water over the river dam. The door between the front room and the kitchen was open, and over the racket she could hear Mrs. Marino's shrill voice speaking in such rapid Italian that she had to strain to understand. She assumed at first that Mrs. Marino's excitement was over Arturo Giovannitti, who had arrived to help Joe Ettor. Mr. Giovannitti was Mrs. Marino's new enthusiasm. She liked him even better than everyone else's hero, Mr. Ettor, because Mr. Giovannitti was a poet, and unlike the American-born Mr. Ettor, he had come straight from the old country, where, Mrs. Marino knew for a fact, he'd been one step ahead of the police, who were going to jail him for being an anarchist. "
Come e romantico!
" she had exclaimed, pressing her hands to her large bosom.

But it wasn't Mr. Giovannitti she was enthusing about now. Someone new was coming that night on the train. Someone more important than either Ettor or Giovannitti. Someone, it seemed, more important than the Holy Father, the pope. From the sound of it, more important that our Lord himself.