"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.
Bread and Rosa
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.
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."
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"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.
The Beautiful Mrs. Gurley Flynn
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 nothi
ng 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.