Bread and Roses, Too (3 page)

Not long after the children had reluctantly returned to their seats, the bell rang. They looked now to their teacher for the words of dismissal that would send them out to an hour of freedom, since dinner hour promised very little dinner in any of the tenements these days.

Miss Finch, still red-faced, acted almost as though she had not heard the bell. The children shifted restlessly in their seats. At last, she sighed, looking at them with such disappointment in her eyes that all except Joe O'Brien hung their heads again. "I am not sure it is safe to let you out on the streets." She shuddered. "There is no telling what an angry mob will do. Why, you might be trampled to death—the mood that mob is in!"

They sat there, staring at their desktops, some of them, no doubt, more willing to risk trampling by their loving parents in the streets than to remain imprisoned with their teacher indefinitely. They sat tense and silent, eyes on desks, ears straining in vain to hear the chanting of the strikers. Finally, Miss Finch shook her head. "Dismissed," she said, in the tone of one resigning another to certain ruin.

The children jumped to their feet and jostled each other to get out the door, all but the still sleeping brothers and Rosa. Rosa got her history book—the only one Mamma had been able to afford—out of her desk and started slowly for the door.

"Rosa."

She turned at the sound of her name. Miss Finch was sitting at her desk, straightening books and papers.

"Yes, Miss Finch."

"I have hopes for you, Rosa. You're not like the others. You're bright and ambitious. Don't let anyone lead you astray."

"No, ma'am."

"No matter what your father says. You must stay in school. You understand?"

"He's dead, ma'am," Rosa whispered.

"Sorry?"

"Papa's dead."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I should have known that." She fumbled a bit with some pencils. "But it doesn't change what I'm saying. You mustn't let your mother—"

"No, ma'am."

She guessed Miss Finch would like her to say that her mother stayed home like a proper American lady and took care of the family. Ever since she had been in the first grade, all her teachers had told the children that in proper homes, unlike the foreign tenements in the Plains, men went out to work and supported their families and women stayed home and cooked nutritious meals and took care of their children. This was the ideal they were to aim for—to leave behind the unnatural lives of their immigrant parents and become Americans. What Miss Finch didn't explain was why American women needed to go to school and study hard if they were just going to stay home and have babies, or why she, with an education, had no husband or babies. It was all very confusing. Still, the one thing that Rosa had learned in her nearly six years of schooling was that education was the key to escape from the mills. If that meant listening to her teachers rail against the ignorance and filth of home life in the Plains, then she must put up with it. Although she couldn't help the anger that welled up inside her whenever teachers acted as though her mamma were ignorant and uncaring, just because her English was broken and she couldn't afford to buy Rosa clothes, much less books. Rosa could hardly blame them. How could someone like Miss Finch, in her perfectly laundered and pressed clothes, with her soft white hands, and smooth unwrinkled face, know how wise and loving and truly beautiful her mamma was?

"And Rosa—"

"Yes, Miss Finch?"

"Wake up the Khoury boys before you go, please."

She was late already and, with the crowds of workers in the streets, liable to be even later getting home for her meager lunch, but she did as the teacher asked. She shook each of the brothers gently until they sleepily stumbled to their feet. She felt no further obligation, so she rushed out the door and ran down the stairs. She had long outgrown her only jacket, and the January wind off the river pierced her thin cotton dress and stabbed her bones. Maybe Granny J. would let her borrow her shawl tomorrow. She must ask secretly. Mamma would never permit it—taking the warmth from an old woman's shoulders. But it was so cold. And Granny could use one of the bed quilts for a shawl, couldn't she?

The street was crowded with people, all excited, all jabbering in as many languages as the city knew. It was hard to force her way through the mass, and she felt a little desperate. She didn't want to get caught up in a mob. Even if one part of her knew that the crowd was made up of neighbors and friends—people like her own family—another part had been chilled by Miss Finch's warnings. Although her head told her that Mamma would never risk starving her children, something in her stomach made her search the angry, excited faces as she pushed through the milling crowds on the street, half afraid that she would see her mother's face.

She was panting when she got to the third-floor apartment and pushed open the door. The Jarusalis boys were squabbling in the bedroom. In the kitchen, little Ricci was crying, as he too often was, and Granny J. was sitting in a chair, rocking back and forth and saying mysterious cooing words in her own strange language, trying to comfort him. He was so tiny. Who could believe he was more than a year old?

"Noise!" Granny J. said, looking up from the squalling child on her lap. "Noise! Too big."

Rosa nodded. "Is Mamma here? Anna?"

Granny J. shook her head. The gray and white hairs didn't cover her old pinkish scalp. "Nobody. I make soup good. Nobody come."

The words were hardly out before the door burst open: Mrs. J. and her daughter, Marija, with Mamma and Anna close behind. Of course, it was their mealtime, too. They'd only just gotten here—what with all the crowds—

"We walked out!" Anna's eyes were shining. "We simply walked out. Everyone! We're out on strike!"

How could Rosa go back to school? Everything was in chaos in the streets. When Mamma and Anna had joined the strikers at the mill gate, they had been doused with water from the fire hoses. Now Mamma was lying in bed shivering, even though Rosa had put every quilt in the flat on top of her. And as hard as Rosa pleaded for her to stay home, Anna was determined to go out somewhere to consult with all the other lawbreakers, acting as though a strike was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened in her life. Mrs. Jarusalis and Marija had already left. Apparently, the Lithuanians were meeting in one place, and the Italians in another.

"Tell Anna not to go, Mamma. Please."

But Mamma refused to stop her. "She goes with Mrs. Marino."

"But Mrs. Marino has a hot temper. You know that, Mamma."

Mamma gave a laugh that turned into a cough. "I go, too—soon as I stop the shaking and the barking," she said.

"Please, Mamma, you and Anna mustn't strike. You might get hurt. The mobs will get violent." She couldn't say what she was really thinking.
What will we eat? How will we pay the rent?

"Rosa, you understand? They short the pay two hours every week. That is five loaf of bread we don' have no more. I work ... my children starve. I go out to strike ... my children starve. Whatever I do, we starve. Is better to fight and starve than work and starve, yes?"

Rosa struggled to make a better argument—anything to keep her mamma and sister safe—but Ricci was crying and she couldn't think straight.

"Now, go help Granny with Ricci. Be some use, smart schoolgirl. I got to be there tomorrow to meet Mr. Joe Ettor. He's going to help us win."

Who was Joe Ettor? To hear Mamma tell, he was a coming savior, but Rosa could only suppose that he was one of the rabble-rousers whom Miss Finch warned about. Someone who might provoke the strikers to violence.
Hail Mary, full of grace, don't let this union thug come and destroy us.

Angelo lived in a fourth-floor apartment in one of the tenements on Elm Street in the Plains with four other Italian men—all mill workers, it seemed. Angelo handed Jake a large shirt and told him to take off his wet clothes. The talk in the apartment as the men changed their clothes was as lively as the talk in the tavern before the soaking. One of the men had lit a fire in their small coal stove. The fumes soon filled the kitchen, making Jake's eyes water and his head ache. He began to cough, nearly falling off the chair on which he was sitting.

Angelo yelled something, and one of the men in the back room opened a door out onto the balcony, which helped clear the air and made breathing a bit easier. Jake tucked his bare legs and feet up under Angelo's heavy shirt. Angelo handed him an oversized cup of very hot, very black coffee. Jake warmed his hands on the thick porcelain and occasionally took a sip, slurping air to keep the scalding liquid from burning his throat.

The longer he sat, the sleepier he became—the warm room, the dry shirt, the boisterous clamor of the men gradually fading to a rippling murmur—Angelo must have added a slug of spirits to the coffee. That must be it. His head began to nod. With a leap, Angelo took the cup from his hands, put it on the table, and then carried him to a bed that felt like a cloud beneath his exhausted body

When Angelo woke him, the room was already dark, though it must have been only late afternoon. He could smell food cooking on the coal stove. "Wake up, sleepy. We gotta eat and get to our meeting. You wanna come?" Angelo grinned. "Nobody but wops."

"Is my shirt and britches dry?" Jake hated the thought of leaving this warm bed and taking off Angelo's wonderful shirt that covered him nearly to his ankles.

Angelo checked the clothesline over the stove. "Wet as a
bambino's
bottom," he reported. "But Giuliano is short like a girl. We borrow his shirt and britches for tonight, yes?" The one named Giuliano seemed to protest, but it was in Italian, so Jake didn't know if it was because of being compared to a girl or having his clothes appropriated.

They ate their supper of beans and bread, grumbling that it wasn't spaghetti. Jake finished his so quickly that Angelo gave him a second helping. He mopped up the last of the juice with the bread—the crusty bread was wonderful—and longed for a third helping, but the pot was empty and the men were getting up, signaling, alas, that the meal was done.

He couldn't go home, not in Giuliano's clothes, so he went with them to Chabis Hall. He'd seen the plain frame building from the outside many times, but no one who wasn't Italian ever went in there. The hall was dimly lit and crowded. Many were smoking cheap cigars and cigarettes, which fouled the air more than Angelo's coal stove, but somehow the electricity in the room made up for everything. It wasn't the excitement Jake felt when he stole food from the grocer's and got chased down the street. That was thrilling, of course, since he always managed to outrun his pursuer. This was the excitement of being a thief in the middle of hundreds of thieves, all set to steal away the world of Mr. Billy Wood, with his mansion in Andover and more automobiles than even the blooming millionaire himself could count.

That the talk was all in Italian was frustrating, but when the crowd quieted and began to listen to individual speakers, Angelo whispered a few words in English to Jake, so he could get an idea of what was being said.

"Mr. Billy Wood don't understand when we speak soft, speak reason, tell him we are cold and hungry while he is fat and rich. So now we speak strike. That is language he will understand when he have no more profit."

"Shh." A man, sitting in the row ahead, had turned around. He whispered something fierce in Italian, which made Angelo put his arm protectively around Jake's shoulders.

"Joe Ettor say we are all Americans," he said. The man shrugged.

"Who's Joe Ettor?" Jake couldn't help asking.

"Come tomorrow night," Angelo said. "Then you see."

Jake was beginning to believe that the meeting would go on forever when the men around him stood up and cheered and then began to talk noisily among themselves. Still jabbering, the crowd streamed out into the dark street. "Come on, Jake," Angelo said. "Time to celebrate our big strike."

Soon, however, Angelo was so wrapped up in strike talk that he seemed to forget that Jake couldn't understand the blinking Italian gabble. He followed them to a tavern. Although there wasn't a single light burning, one of the Italians grabbed the door handle and yanked. It was locked. The second tavern was dark as well, but there was a crudely lettered sign on the door. "What it say, Angelo?" someone yelled.

The crowd parted to let Angelo get to the door. He bent close to the sign. "It say—" he said, reading the English words—"it say, 'closed by order of the police.'"

The men began to curse in language even Jake could understand. "The blasted police close down the taverns because we strike," Angelo said. "Come on, we go to Marco's. He always got home-made."

But something held Jake back. He knew it was harder for Angelo and his friends to have him hanging on. He'd have to face his father sooner or later. So somewhere along the dark street, he slipped away from his noisy companions and headed down the hill.

He was still wearing Giuliano's clothes, the waist tied with a string to keep the pants from falling down, as he made his way through the cold darkness of the night back to the shack. pa was waiting for him, pacing the dirt floor, spitting out curses against the world in general and Jake in particular. Too late Jake remembered that he'd meant to buy a bottle for pa. He tried to run as soon as he saw how furious the man was, but it was cold and he was tired and pa was too quick for him.

He snatched Jake by the arm and held on like the devil himself, his long nails biting into Jake's flesh. "Where you been, you thieving bastard?"

Jake knew better than to answer such a question.

His pa pulled him close, his stinking breath in Jake's face. In the smoky light of the oil lamp, the man squinted at Jake's clothes. "Wop clothes!" he declared. "You been with those damn strikers, ain't you? Take 'em off!"

Jake hesitated just long enough for the man to smack him across the face. Then he untied the string and dropped his pants.

"Shirt, too."

Jake obeyed.

With a practiced motion, his father undid his belt and began to lash Jake's legs and then his back. The boy bit his lip to keep from screaming out. Finally, pa's arm tired, and he dropped the belt to the dirt floor.