Bread and Roses, Too (8 page)

Rosa plunked down on the edge of her bed and took off her sodden shoes. Her feet were freezing. She rubbed her toes to try to get the circulation going. What she wouldn't give for a new pair of shoes!
I'd sell my soul,
she thought and was immediately seized with panic. No, no, she hadn't meant that!

"Rosa? Is that you?" At least Mamma noticed she was home. Sometimes during the past week, Rosa had wondered if Mamma even knew she was alive—or cared. "Rosa, come here. We need some good schoolgirl English." Reluctantly, Rosa stood up. The floor was cold under her bare, aching feet. "Come on, quick. We need you." Then to the others, "Rosa write good as schoolteacher, eh, Rosa?" Rosa blushed to hear Mamma bragging.

"Rosina,
bambina!
Coma here!" Mrs. Marino grabbed Rosa to her bosom and kissed her on both cheeks. "Growing up, you are. What grade you go to now?"

"Sixth," Rosa mumbled, embarrassed by the display.

"What she say?" Mrs. Marino asked. "I don'ta hear so good. Too much banging in the mill."

"Six," said Mamma loudly. "First in her class, too."

"That'sa fine girl," Mrs. Marino said, beaming at Rosa and kissing her again soundly. "Now, now, come, come, you sit." She turned to the women occupying the two chairs. "Up, up. Give our schoolgirl a chair." Both women stood. "No, no, not you, Mrs. Petrovsky. You got the bad legs." Mrs. Petrovsky sat down again. "Here, Rosa, right here." She put her hands on Rosa's shoulders and pushed her down on the chair nearer the table.

In front of where Rosa sat was a large white rectangle of pasteboard. Beside the pasteboard was a bottle of ink—her ink, Rosa noted, feeling a twinge of resentment that someone had dared raid her precious school supplies—and a brush about an inch wide.

"Okay," said Mrs. Marino. "You see, we got to make a
beeeeeeg
sign for tonight to take to da train station. It got to be good message in vera nice writing. We need you, smart girl, to do it for us, okay?"

Should she tell Mrs. Marino and the others that she hated the strike? That she wanted no part of making a
beeeeeeg
sign for it? She should, but she knew she wouldn't. She was such a coward, and Mamma had bragged, so all she said was, "What do you want the sign to say?"

"We thinking. We thinking. Something vera good." All eyes were on Mrs. Marino. Everyone else was quiet. It was a solemn moment. "Okay. Now, you see they give one piece only. So only one sign. So gotta be really, really good. The best sign in parade, eh?"

All the women murmured agreement.
Yes, yes, the best sign.

Mrs. Marino continued. "We want Mr. Big Bill Haywood see our sign soon he step off the train. We want alla newspaperman from big city New York, from Boston, see our sign." She leaned so close to Rosa that Rosa could smell the old sweat clinging to her dress. "Now, Rosa, you got to write vera big, vera nice letters, so Mr. Big Bill Haywood read them even from train window, right? So he know we is somebody even before he get off the train, okay?"

Rosa nodded. What else was she to do?

"Now, ladies, what we say on our sign?"

For a moment, they were startled. Wasn't it Mrs. Marino's job to come up with all the big ideas? "We say," said Mrs. Jarusalis, hesitantly, one eye on Mrs. Marino, "we say, 'We want bread.' Dat's number one, okay? We gotta have bread."

"
Si, si,
" said Mrs. Marino, plainly disappointed. "But is not good enough. Everyone write that. Is nobody don'ta want bread."

"'We want bread' is goot sign, is true sign," Mrs. Petrovsky protested shyly. The others murmured in agreement, but Mrs. Marino pinned Rosa's right wrist to the table, lest she think the matter was settled and begin to write too soon.

Then Rosa felt a familiar hand rest lightly on her hair and begin to stroke it. She looked up into Mamma's face. The room was silent, watching. Mamma played with a curl on Rosa's shoulder.

"I think," she began quietly, "I think we want ... not just bread for our bellies. We want more than only bread. We want food for our hearts, our souls. We want—how to say it? We want, you know—Puccini music.... We want for our beautiful children some beauty." She leaned over and kissed the curl on her finger. "We want roses...."

There was a murmur while Mamma's words were interpreted for the non-English speakers. Then a ripple of sighs as each understood. Now all the women, even Mrs. Marino, were looking at Mamma with something like awe in their eyes.

Then Anna said, "That's beautiful, Mamma, but it's much too long for our little sign."

Mamma shook her head, as though her mind was coming back from a countryside beyond Naples, where she remembered beauty.
"Si, si,
too long, but Rosa fix it, eh, Rosa?"

Mrs. Marino loosened her grip on Rosa's wrist, and Rosa picked up the brush and reached toward the ink pot. All the women leaned toward the table. She could hear their noisy breathing and smell their fetid clothing.

"No, no," Mrs. Marino shouted, spreading her arms wide. "Back, back! Give her room. Don'ta touch the table! No one!" They obeyed. Even Mamma stepped back.

Rosa dipped the brush and carefully wiped the excess ink on the rim of the pot. She took a deep breath, which was echoed through the kitchen and held, as she put the brush down on the white pasteboard and began to form the first words, the lettering so clean that even Miss Finch would have been forced to admire it.

WE WANT BREAD,
she wrote on the first line. Everyone who could read English nodded and murmured the words to the others. Yes, yes, of course they wanted bread.

AND ROSES TOO

Mamma gave a little gasp. But Rosa was not finished. One more dip and she put a perfectly curved comma between
ROSES
and
TOO
—in case, just in case, Miss Finch were to see the sign and marvel that these ignorant foreigners should know enough to insert a comma. Careful not to drip, she replaced the brush in the pot.

Meantime, Anna was reading the second line aloud and then the whole sign. Something like a little cheer went up, and everyone leaned in for a closer look at the masterpiece.

"No, no!" Mrs. Marino yelled, spreading her arms out once again. "It'sa still wet. Don'ta touch, nobody! It'sa
bellissimo!
Ooh, Rosa,
bambina mia!
It'sa the best sign nobody ever made!" She took Rosa's head in both her big red hands and kissed the part in her hair. She was weeping for joy.

There were tears in Mamma's eyes as well. "Don' I say she's top of class?"

After Mrs. Marino pronounced the lettering completely dry, Anna carefully nailed the pasteboard to a broken broomstick, and the ladies went home to cut the bread for their families' meager noon meal. When they gathered later to march to the station, Mrs. Marino asked Rosa if she wanted to carry her sign. It was then she remembered all over again that she wanted no part of this strike—this strike for which she had just that morning made the "best sign nobody ever made." "No," she said. "It's Mamma's sign. It was all her idea. She should carry it."

"You sure?" Mamma asked, the excitement of carrying the wonderful sign already sparkling in her dark eyes.

"I'm sure," Rosa said. "I'm not really part of the strike. I'm not a worker. I shouldn't be in the parade."

There was a murmur of disagreement from the women. Hadn't she just made the best sign, the
bellissimo
best sign? But they were eager to be off with their beautiful sign, which was sure to get the attention of Mr. Big Bill Haywood, who was coming all the way from the miners' strike far out west to support them, the foreign mill workers of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

At the door, Mamma saw that Rosa was hanging back. "Come along, Rosina, it's going to be great parade. Thousand, thousand marchers. Mr. Big Bill Haywood come all a way cross America just for us. You don' wanta miss it, eh?"

"I got homework," Rosa said. But it wasn't homework, it was the knot in her stomach, which never seemed to loosen, that kept her from witnessing what the local newspaper later called "the greatest demonstration ever accorded a visitor in Lawrence." There were more than 15,000 people at the station to greet Mr. Big Bill Haywood and the famous woman organizer, Mrs. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, but Rosa was not among them. She was on her bed at home, praying to the Virgin to keep her mamma and sister safe. The sign would be noticed, she was sure of that, but how could it be good to be noticed when you were up against the powerful Mr. Billy Wood and the mayor and the police and the militia and the governor—the whole state of Massachusetts, maybe even the whole United States of America? And if Mamma got put in jail—or hurt—or killed—whose fault would it be then? She had made the best sign. It would be on her head. She slid under the quilt and pulled it over her guilty head, although it was still daylight outside the tenement door.

Jake was wound up tighter than string on a top. So wound up after a week of stealing food and sleeping in garbage heaps that, without meaning to, he let himself get caught up in the excitement of Sunday's mob. There were thousands of them, all pressing toward the train station. Someone was coming to town. Someone, judging from the feverish pitch of the crowd, who they believed was going to settle things for them once and for all.

Jake was shorter than the men crowded about him, and he could see nothing except the dirty coat of the man whose body he was shoved against. But Jake was thin as an empty spool and quite used to weaseling his way through crowded streets, so by the time he heard the whistle and then the powerful chugging of the great locomotive, he was in the front row of spectators.

The train stopped with a squeal of brakes and a great whoosh of steam. The crowd roared, and people began to jostle one another for a better view. Flags and signs were raised high above the heads of those carrying them. If Jake had been able to read, he might have known whose name was painted on them, who was of such almighty importance that this enormous crowd had braved the cold and the threats of the authorities to meet his train at the station. Then, as though to answer his question, the crowd began a chant, "Big Bill! Big Bill!"

The brakes had hardly stopped squealing when a huge man in a cowboy hat leaped off the train, not even waiting for the porter to set the steps beside the car. His eyes swept the crowd. One of his eyes was milky white, which made him look like a fierce half-blind giant. It gave Jake a shiver, but no one else seemed daunted. They screamed their welcome. The man waved his big hat and smiled. Coming down the steps behind him was a small group of men and, of all things, a young woman. The other men couldn't hold a candle to the one who must be the "Big Bill" the crowd had shouted for, but the woman ... the woman simply took Jake's breath away. She wore a large soft hat that almost hid what seemed to be a mound of black hair. Her skin was creamy white, her waist narrower than Big Bill's neck, her eyes clear and blue as a summer sky. Jake put his hand on his chest to keep his heart from jumping right out of his shirt. He couldn't stop staring at her. She was enough to make anyone want to join their blasted union.

Her eyes flashed with excitement as one of the three bands struck up a tune. The Syrian band wasn't here to greet the newcomers. Jake knew from the talk on the street that their leader was in jail for hiding dynamite. Ha! Did those fool bosses think
anyone
was going to believe that some little Syrian shopkeeper was going to risk his life to dynamite a mill? Jake spit his contempt toward the dirty snow but hit the shoes of the marcher beside him instead. Fortunately, the man was cheering so vigorously he hadn't noticed.

The three bands took turns playing tunes, and at the end of each song a different part of the crowd roared approval—some tune from their old country, Jake guessed. Then all three bands together began to play tunes that made the police and militia tighten their grips on their guns and glare nervously at the marchers.

"Hey, Jake boy! Where you been?" It was Angelo and his housemates, including Giuliano, who was probably still mad about his ruined shirt. Well, Jake couldn't help ruining the man's shirt, could he? He hadn't asked his pa to beat him bloody, now, had he? Just then, the crowd turned to escort Big Bill and his party to the common, and Jake was able to avoid his one-time companions. But it was stupid of him, wasn't it? Angelo had seemed glad to see him. Jake could probably sleep in their place and eat regularly if he caught up with them. After all, he hadn't stolen anything from
their
apartment—just bloodied grumpy little Giuliano's shirt.

The party from the train and the leaders of the strike from Lawrence, now including Ettor and Giovannitti, both of whom the workers had embraced as their own, began to make their way through the crowd toward the common. They passed so close to Jake that he could have reached out and touched the beautiful woman, but he didn't quite dare. He let the crowd turn him around so as to follow the leaders. The crowd joined the bands, singing raucously along, seemingly oblivious of the police and militia lining the route. It took a long time for the thousands to walk the five blocks from the station to the common—time to sing plenty of songs before everyone was assembled in front of the makeshift platform on which
she
stood, shining like a star among the dark-coated men.

The speeches finally began. Jake wasn't much for speeches, but he waited, hoping she would speak. One good thing about crowds like this—everyone was packed so tightly together that the only thing that could get cold was his feet. There was no way to keep them out of the icy slush. Even though he was impatient for the men to shut up and let the lady speak, he had to admit that Big Bill was impressive—his voice was so powerful, he probably could have been heard all the way to Canal Street.

"I have read in the newspapers," the big man said, "that Lawrence was afraid of me. It is not the people of Lawrence who are fearful; it is the superintendents, agents, and owners of the mills." The crowd roared. Then he gazed over their heads at the militia lining the streets around the common. "I have been in strikes where soldiers were at hand," he told the crowd, "but I never saw a strike defeated by soldiers."