Jake shook his head. "It don't matter."
"You got fire at home?"
"Naw, it don't matter."
"You come to Angelo's and get warm. Can't have you sick. We got too much to do now."
The Best Student
Rosa was sitting quietly at her desk, her eyes on her history book, when the riot bells began to ring. All the children were suddenly roused out of sleep or stupor. The bells did not sound like any they had ever heard; it was as though madmen had been let loose in the city hall tower.
Rosa looked at her teacher, Miss Finch, who was sitting perfectly erect at her desk, her eyes wide like those of an animal who has been startled and is too frightened to flee. Rosa watched as the teacher slowly rose to her feet and walked over to the window. It was grimy and the sill sooty, so she was careful not to touch anything. Then she left the window and came back to the space behind her desk. The shrill blasts of factory whistles pierced through the clang of the city hall bells. Some of the children covered their ears against the racket, but Miss Finch gave a little shake of her head, as though to dismiss both the bells and the whistles.
"Yes. Where were we?" She glanced down at her book. "All right. Who knows who Thomas Jefferson was?"
Only Rosa raised her hand. She raised it up barely halfway, glancing around at her classmates as she did so. Most of their heads were still cocked, as they listened to the strange shrieking and clanging that went on and on. She was instantly ashamed for them—their faces gray with the grime that never seemed to scrub off. Marco Bartolini's nose was running, as usual. When he caught her looking, he dropped his eyes and rubbed his nose across his ragged sleeve. She looked away hastily.
"Hasn't anyone besides Rosa read the assignment?" Miss Finch sighed to indicate how her pupils constantly disappointed her. "All right, Rosa. Tell the others what you know about Thomas Jefferson."
How much should Rosa say? Besides the pages in the textbook, she had read a whole library book about the third president. In the silence, the insistent bells seemed to crash even more threateningly.
"We're waiting, Rosa."
"He—he was the third president of the United States."
"Yes. But before that. What did he author that was important to history?"
The children turned from staring at the window to look at Rosa. She hated to be the only one to answer Miss Finch's questions. But she had to hurry. The bells demanded it.
"The—the—the—"
"No need to stutter, Rosa." The teacher was actually tapping her foot in time with the bells.
"The—the—the Declaration of Independence."
"Very good, Rosa." The teacher turned to the rest of the class. "All the information you need to know about Thomas Jefferson is in the textbook that each of you should have read last night."
No! No! No! The bells accused them. Help! Help! Help! The whistles screamed.
"Marco, did you read your assignment?"
He hung his head. With the single exception of Joe O'Brien, everyone, including Rosa, did the same. They knew what was coming next.
"Do you even own a textbook, Marco? Brigid? Tony? Pierre? Luigi? Marta?" Each child in turn gave a shake of his or her head, never meeting the teacher's stern gaze.
"Is Rosa Serutti the only person in this class whose parents have realized the importance of buying a history textbook? How many times do I have to repeat myself? It is useless to come to school if your parents do not provide you with textbooks. You need to speak to them about the importance of education. How many of your parents are enrolled in the evening classes?"
No one raised a hand. How could their parents work long hours in the mill and then go to school at night? They were tired all the time as it was. The children—all but Joe o'Brien—sagged into their rigid seats, their heads so low that their chins nearly scraped the splintery desktops. It didn't matter that they'd heard this, or similar lectures, from Miss Finch since September. It still stung as bitterly as the January wind rattling the window of the schoolroom while the tower bell clanged, Dunce! Dunce! Dunce!
The Khoury brothers had fallen asleep as usual, despite the bells, which eventually stopped, only to be replaced by a shrillness in Miss Finch's usually quiet voice.
"You must go home today and urge your parents not to strike." The lace jabot at her throat bobbed up and down. Rosa watched her, fascinated.
"Do you understand, boys and girls?" The teacher's voice went up several more notes. "I know Mr. Wood personally. A kinder, more compassionate employer you couldn't hope to find. He wants what is best for his workers, believe me. Tell your parents that he was a mill operative himself long ago. Did you know that?"
All the children snapped to attention. The big boss of the American Woolen Company once worked in the mills?
"Yes, not everyone knows this. He started in the mills as a boy, but through hard work and education he rose to be the owner of many mills. Do you see what education means, children? Without an education, you'll lose any chance of a life better than the one your parents know."
"I thought, ma'am," said Joe O'Brien, who was both saucy and Irish, "I thought Billy Wood got to be the owner because he married his boss's daughter."
Miss Finch's pale face colored slightly. "Yes, Joseph, that's true. But if Mr. Wood hadn't bettered himself through hard work and education, that never could have happened."
Everyone knew that Mr. Billy Wood had a huge estate in Andover and more cars than he himself could count. Rosa thought a small, clean house with room for a garden would be enough. She didn't want a car. She was afraid of cars. They were fast and reckless and made of cold, unfeeling metal. Mrs. Marino's husband had been killed by one. Mrs. Marino was Mamma's friend and lived just across the alley, and she told the story of her husband's death over and over again, adding more terrifying details each time. A horse and buggy would be nice. But Miss Finch was right. She must get her education or she'd end up in the mills like her big sister, Anna.
Anna didn't care about education the way Rosa did. Rosa was sure of that. When Papa died after the mill fire, the first thing Anna had said to Mamma was: "I'll quit school and go to work." Mamma had tried to protest, saying that Anna wouldn't be fourteen for almost two more years, but what could she do? Without Papa's eight dollars and seventy-five cents a week, there was no way they could live on Mamma's six dollars and twenty-five cents—especially with the new baby coming. So Mamma had paid the man who fixed papers to change Anna's age, and Anna had gone to work. But they still couldn't live on what she and Mamma made together, so Mamma had taken in the Lithuanian family. That wouldn't have been so bad if Granny Jarusalis hadn't snored. Rosa liked Granny, but she hated sleeping with an old Lithuanian woman who snored.
"Some of you children are not listening," Miss Finch was saying. "Don't you understand that the bell you heard earlier was the city riot bell? I'm sure your parents don't want a city under mob rule, but if they listen to the rabble-rousers and go out on strike, that may well happen. And I'm terribly afraid that you children will be the ones who suffer."
Rosa forced herself to keep her head up and listen to the teacher. It was hard to pay attention, especially since breakfast had been only dry bread with a smear of molasses. Granny Jarusalis might give her cabbage soup for dinner, if the old woman could borrow a cabbage leaf or two from one of her friends. Oh, how Rosa longed for Mamma's rigatoni with tomato sauce seasoned with a bit of meat or even the cheese ravioli that Mrs. Marino used to swap on Sundays for some of the rigatoni. Their balconies were so close that Mamma would just lean over and hand her dish to Mrs. Marino, and Mrs. Marino would hand hers back. Sometimes people walking in the alley three floors down would smell the food and look up. "Don'ta worry!" Mrs. Marino would yell. "We don'ta drop on your stupid head. Too precious!"
But there hadn't been any precious rigatoni or ravioli to share for many Sundays now. They'd hardly been able to afford even plain, boiled macaroni since Papa died. If Mamma and Anna went out on strike, there wouldn't b
e money for bread and molasses. Rosa felt better when she realized that. Mamma wouldn't be so foolish. She loved Anna and Rosa and little Ricci too much to go out on strike.
Rosa came to with a start. She had been daydreaming, blocking out the teacher's words. "I'm sure that you boys and girls, who have studied arithmetic, realize that no one could afford to pay the same wages for less work. You'd lose money—"
"Hear that?" yelled Joe O'Brien right in the middle of Miss Finch's lecture. He ran to the window. Most of the class followed him over, leaving only the Khoury brothers and Rosa at their desks.
"Sit down!" Miss Finch commanded, but no one except Rosa was listening. Joe threw up the window, and a cold blast of wind carried the sounds of shouts and chanting into the schoolroom. At first it was a blur, but then Rosa could make out the words: "Short pay! All out! Short pay! All out!!" over and over again. She now got up and made her way across the room, leaving only the still sleeping Khoury boys at their desks.
She pushed her way to the window and looked down. The crowd marching below seemed immense. She could almost feel the heat of their anger as they shouted in unison. "Short pay! All out!"
Behind the children, Miss Finch fluttered and begged and commanded, but none of them left the window. The bell had warned, but now they knew that in that crowd their world was turning upside-down. "There's my mamma!" Celina Cosa cried. She leaned over the sill and waved. "Mamma! Mamma! Guarda qui! Up here!" as though someone from below could have heard a child's voice over the chants of thousands, as the stream of marchers coming up from the mills on the river seemed unending.
"Sit down!" Miss Finch's face was red and blotched, her eyes wide, like a frightened horse.
No one sat down for the length of time it took the line of marchers to pass under the window and around the corner of the street, leaving behind the sound of their defiance. "Short pay! All out!"
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!"
For the Needy
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 w
onderful 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.