Bread and Roses, Too Page 4

  Jake sniffed. He was somebody. A striker. A real man.

  Sunday dawned gray and snowy. The whole household was up and stirring. Rosa rolled over to the middle of the bed. It was still warm in the trough left by Granny J.'s body. She didn't want to get out of bed. The flat would be cold—there was barely enough money to buy coal to cook with and certainly not enough to make the stove warm enough to heat the apartment. She pulled her clothes up from where she kept them at the bottom of the bed and put them on under the covers—all but her worn shoes. She remembered the strange boy in the trash heap and smiled in spite of herself. She had been very brave that night, hadn't she? A little crazy, but really quite brave. And she had done a good deed—not one she could ever brag about, but it was a good deed, bringing that poor boy in out of the cold.

  She made her morning trip to the toilet down the hall, holding her nose against the stench. The landlord—who was, in fact, Mr. Billy Wood, although, of course, he had an agent to oversee the tenements—was supposed to keep the toilets working well, but none of them did. At least the tap water was still running in the kitchen sink. The pipe hadn't frozen yet.

  "Well, good morning, Mees Sleepy One," Mrs. J. said when Rosa appeared at the kitchen door. The women were clustered around the kitchen table, Mrs. J. and Granny had the two chairs, and Mamma the stool. Ricci was clinging to a rung of the stool, as though he didn't trust his thin, little legs. Anna and Marija were leaning against the wall eating their bread and molasses. Rosa couldn't tell if anyone had bothered to go to early Mass. Was this what happened when people went on strike? They forgot everything else, God included?

  "Oh, Rosa," Anna said. "You should have been there! Joe Ettor is the handsomest man you've ever seen."

  Marija giggled.

  "He went to all the halls and talked to everyone about the strike! It was so exciting."

  "He talk good Italian," Mamma said. "Better than me." She gave a laugh that ended in a cough.

  "No good Liduanian," said Mrs. J. "But no matter—very good look." She winked at Anna, who smiled, and at Marija, who blushed as though someone had mentioned a sweetheart.

  "Then how he speak to you?" Mamma asked.

  "He speak English, Mr. Aidas do same word in Liduanian. Very good speak. Everyone yell big."

  Rosa could tell no one was thinking of going to Mass. "Here, Rosa—" Mamma got up from the stool, Ricci grabbing at her skirt. "Here, Rosa, eat your bread."

  "I can't eat yet," Rosa said. "I'm going to Mass, but I guess no one else is."

  She hadn't meant for the words to come out quite so prissily. It was almost Miss Finch's voice in her mouth, only Miss Finch, not being Catholic, wouldn't be talking about Mass. She thought that Catholicism was almost as bad as atheism.

  "Granny J. went to Mass," Marija said. "The priest just yelled about strikers, so Ma and I decided not to go."

  "We go with you, Rosa," Mamma said. "Father Milanese, he not like Father O'Reilly, he on our side. Come on, Anna, we take Communion with our Rosa." She picked up Ricci, who clutched her around the neck.

  "But you've already eaten breakfast—" Rosa was alarmed at Mamma's impiety. "You can't take Communion—"

  "I think God don' call bite of stale bread and smear of molasses real food, and what do priest know?"

  Why had she brought up the subject of Mass? The mood Mamma was in, she didn't seem to care if she damned her soul to everlasting fire.

  Father Milanese didn't condemn the strike. The owners were being unreasonable, he said, speeding up machines to make more profit while cutting wages. Mamma nodded her agreement all through the homily. But then Father Milanese went on to warn them against Joe Ettor, who was an outside agitator, an anarchist, and therefore someone whose motives must be questioned. When he said this, Mamma humphed, got up, and walked out, her shawl, which she'd wrapped around Ricci, trailing in the aisle. Anna ran to join her. There was nothing for Rosa to do but follow. She needn't have worried about Mamma receiving the host in a state of sin.

  Outside the church, crowds were gathering, already planning the next move. Mamma handed Ricci over to Rosa—"Go home, Rosa. Get yourself some bread. Anna and me got work to do."

  They came back hours later, exultant. "Some of the men grabbed the hoses and turned them against the watchmen at the mill!" Anna said.

  "Now they know how it feels to be soaked," Mamma said.

  Marija and Mrs. J. came in minutes later even more excited. "You know what your frien' Miz Marino do?" Mrs. J. asked.

  "What did that crazy one do?" Mamma was smiling happily.

  "She and her friends, dey pull da clothes off a policeman on da bridge and say dey going to trow him in icy river—see how it feels, dey say."

  "No!" Mamma said.

  "No, some more police come save da poor fool yust in time."

  "Mr. Joe Ettor say 'No violence,' last night," Mamma said. "Mrs. Marino better behave, I think."

  "It was like a joke, Mamma," Anna said. "You're laughing yourself."

  Mamma was laughing. It shamed Rosa to see it. Mamma was turning into one of the ignorant immigrants Miss Finch railed against. Her sweet, loving mamma was going to turn into loud, crazy Mrs. Marino, and there was nothing Rosa could do to stop her.

  Granny J. didn't leave Rosa enough room to toss and turn in bed, but that night her mind churned. At the strike meeting that evening it was announced that the governor had called up the militia. He'd even given Harvard College boys guns and uniforms. Tomorrow a virtual army would be on the streets of Lawrence, ready to confront any who dared continue the strike. It only made the women more determined than ever. No one was going back to work until the strikers' demands were met, no matter what the governor said or did. Holy Mother, there was bound to be violence. How could Rosa save Mamma and Anna from this madness?

  That was when Rosa had her great idea. She wouldn't go to school. She'd have her own strike. She'd refuse to go to school as long as Mamma refused to go to work. Then Mamma would see that she had to work—that all she and Papa had done to make it possible for at least Rosa to get an education would be wasted. Mamma couldn't stand waste, so she'd realize that she had to go back to work for Papa's sake, if not Rosa's.

  Songs of Defiance

  Mamma was pinching Rosa's toes. "Wake, up, dormigliona. Time for school."

  "I'm not going to school," Rosa said, burrowing under the quilt. The bed felt luxurious when Granny J. wasn't in it with her. "I made up my mind, Mamma. If you and Anna go on strike, I go on strike."

  Mamma threw back her head and laughed. It struck Rosa that she had heard Mamma's laugh more in the last couple of days than she had since before papa died. "Okay, Signorina Asino. You win. No school today." She patted Rosa's toes. "See you later on. Me and Anna got to go now to join the march."

  Rosa could have screamed. She was not a donkey. What was the matter with Mamma? She was the stubborn one. She was supposed to give in, go to work, do anything to keep her child in school. Rosa sat up and threw off the quilt, but before she could open her mouth to argue further, Mamma, Anna, Mrs. J., and Marija had walked through her room and out the front door. She could hear them laughing as they clattered down the stairs. They were probably laughing at her. Miss Donkey, indeed! She musn't be late. She jumped up and put on her clothes, grabbed a bit of bread off the kitchen table, and left the flat.

  The street was full of women and girls, all heading toward Jackson Street. She slipped in and out among them until she got to Jackson Street herself. It was there she finally saw Mamma and Anna ... and yet, it was not Mamma she saw. The woman she saw was drawn up to a height much taller than her squat little mamma. Her face was red with cold and rage, and then she began to laugh—laugh—right in the face of one of the Harvard boys the governor had called into service. Even in his new wool militia uniform and with his shiny rifle he looked as frightened as a three-year-old caught in some mischief.

  Finally, he brought down his rifle so the tip of the barrel poked Mamma's shawl. Rosa's ha
nd flew to her mouth. He wouldn't kill her! How could some silly college boy kill her mamma? Still, he was so scared, who could tell what he might do? And then Mamma did a strange thing. She began to sing.

  The boy, his face full of confusion, backed up and let her pass, let all the women pass, so that they began to march like a ragged army down Jackson Street. They gathered in strength as they went, for women were pouring out of every doorway to join them. They took up Mamma's song. Where had the song come from? Where had Mamma learned to sing about workers uniting? The only songs Rosa had ever heard her sing were Italian lullabies and arias from Verdi and Puccini. Those songs had died with Papa. But every woman on the street seemed to know this song. It was not just the Italian women but the Lithuanians and Poles and Syrians and Turks and Jews—all the polyglot female residents of the Plains, singing in many languages but together in one thunderous voice.

  It was not only Mamma's college boy who was scared. The newly arrived militia and weary local police stationed along the route fell back as the crowd of women swelled. There were girl workers like Anna, too, of course, but there were also children smaller than Rosa and babies in their mothers' arms. One of the babies, looking back over its mother's shoulder, stared at Rosa with big brown eyes, as if to say: "Why has my mamma gone mad? Where is she taking me?"

  They were heading toward the common. Rosa, careful not to make herself part of the actual parade, clung to the buildings, somehow compelled to shadow the line of marchers until they reached the common, where they merged with hundreds of people already milling about on the snowy ground.

  Rosa had just found a spot on the edge of the crowd when a band struck up and the mass of people began to sing—not Mamma's song but a different one, this one in English. A thrill went through Rosa's body. How did everyone know the words? How did they know the English? The tune was easy. It was one they sang at school, to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," but these words were not "Glory! Glory! Hallelujah" but something about solidarity and the union.

  There was an improvised platform at the end of the common closest to Jackson Street. There in the center of a group of men, whom she knew by their worn clothes to be workers, was a stranger with a bright red bow tie sticking out of his overcoat. The crowd roared at the sight of him. "Ettor! Ettor!" they cried. So this was the dangerous Joe Ettor. He seemed hardly threatening to Rosa. He was not so tall as Papa had been, but he did have the same mass of curly dark hair, and he smiled at the marchers as he raised his hands for silence. Immediately, the crowd was still, and Rosa could hear his voice ringing in the cold air.

  "We will march down to the mills," he said. "And they will meet us in force. The governor is so afraid of us that he has called out the militia, including these beardless Harvard boys. But they cannot weave cloth with bayonets!" The crowd roared its approval. He held up his hands again for silence. "My fellow workers, by all means make this strike as peaceful as possible. In the last analysis, all the blood spilled will be your blood. And above all, remember they can defeat us only if they can separate us into nationalities or skills. If we hold together no matter what they do or threaten to do, no one can defeat us. Not even the governor of Massachusetts and his thousands of militia men and Harvard boys."

  He spoke more, in languages Rosa could not understand, but others could, for there were more roars of approval. "Division is the surest means to lose this strike. Never forget! Among workers there is only one nationality, one race, one creed. Remember always that you are workers with interests against those of the mill owners. There are but two races: the race of useful members of society and the race of useless ones. Never forget that in our cause solidarity is necessary."

  "Solidarity!" a voice cried out, and the word ricocheted about the great common. "Solidarity forever!" Another word besides "Short pay! All out!" and the words to the songs that everyone in the crowd knew either in English or in their native tongues.

  "Now let's join our brothers and sisters already at the picket lines!" Joe Ettor cried, and the crowd, roaring and singing another new song, began to move out from the common, heading down Jackson toward Canal Street.

  "We shall not be, we shall not be moved.

  We shall not be, we shall not be moved."

  Mamma and Anna were in the first line of marchers, but they didn't notice Rosa standing at the edge of the common. Someone had given Anna a huge American flag, which she was holding high above her head. Rosa found herself melting into the crowd. There was something burning inside her that wanted to march, that wanted to sing. She wished she had a flag like Anna's to wave high above her head as she walked.

  What would Miss Finch think of her now? Her star pupil caught up in the excitement of the mob, seduced by the outside agitator, the anarchist Ettor? She would be alarmed and deeply disappointed, Rosa knew. But at that moment, the snow falling heavily and covering her hair—she'd forgotten her thin worsted cap—she felt no longer alone but a part of something huge and powerful and right. Yes, at that moment, no one could have persuaded her that what she and the thousands about her were doing was wicked. No. Like Mamma said, it was better to fight and starve than to work and starve.

  And then she saw them at the bottom of the hill: not a single frightened Harvard boy or even the familiar Lawrence policemen but a veritable army of militia, dressed in their heavy blue woolen uniforms and leather boots. No danger that they would feel the snow and the cold. Their guns, with the swordlike bayonets attached, were pointed directly at the line of marchers.

  There was a jostling in the crowd, and the singing trailed off, as if the cold steel of the bayonets pointed at their bodies had brought them back from the joy of the parade to the deadly seriousness of the threat they were facing.

  Cries and jeers rose up behind Rosa, and she saw that members of the crowd were breaking away, some heading east toward the Prospect and Everett mills and others west toward the Atlantic and Pacific mills. She could feel the stir about her, rather like the classroom when Miss Finch left the room, and it frightened her. She wanted to get out of the middle of these thousands of restless bodies and go home, but she couldn't move; she was trapped by marchers pressing this way and that about her. She couldn't see over the heads of the people around her, though she could see the top of the flag and knew it meant that Mamma and Anna must be standing right in front of the armed militia. If the crowd pushed too hard...? She wanted to cry out a warning to Mamma, to Anna, to everyone. What are you doing here? They will kill you. You're nothing to them! Nothing! But the screams were strangled in her tight throat.

  The singing had stopped entirely. The marchers in front of the Washington Mill were so quiet that Rosa could hear the shouts and screams from far down Canal Street. What was happening there? Then a whisper swept through the crowd. They've stabbed a boy! They've stabbed a boy! She thought for a moment that she might faint and realized, if she were to, she'd never fall to the street. There was no room. She was suffocating. She had to get out of this trap of bodies. She had to go home.

  Then someone began to sing:

  "Like a tree planted by the water,

  We shall not be moved."

  Another voice shouted, rather than sang, "Let him call out his militia!"

  "We shall not be moved," the marchers responded.

  "Let them shoot and stab us," another voice said.

  "We shall not be moved."

  And everyone around her was singing now:

  "We shall not be, we shall not be moved.

  We shall not be, we shall not be moved.

  Like a tree planted by the water,

  We shall not be moved."

  The singing went on and on. Above it, she could hear the bull horn-amplified demands that the crowd disperse. There were occasional scuffles when someone tried to work his or her way through the marchers toward the mills. "Scab! Scab! Go home!"

  Eventually, Rosa could feel that the crowd had loosened its grip on her. She began to ease her way sideways until she was
able to slip out of the crowd and into a side street, where she found herself suddenly looking up at the dark brick exterior of Newbury Street School.

  She was panting, not from running—she hadn't run at all—but from the exertion of working her way through the mob. Her heart was pounding, and despite the snow, which swirled about her and almost obscured the school building, she was sweating as though it were summer.

  Later, she wondered why she had done it, but at the moment the school represented safety, and unlike the marchers whose courage had nearly suffocated her, she wanted to be safe from those soldiers with their fixed bayonets that stabbed and, who knew? might shoot children.

  "You're tardy, Rosa," Miss Finch said as Rosa crept into the classroom.

  Rosa ducked her head in apology and slid into her seat. There were only a handful of students present. The native-born and the Irish were there, except for Joe O'Brien, but not many of the children of the unskilled workers, the ones who would be on strike. The class was in the middle of their arithmetic lesson. Fortunately, arithmetic came easily to Rosa, and although she had no textbook, she had been able to keep up by listening carefully to Miss Finch's explanations.

  When it was nearly time for the dinner bell, Miss Finch said, "There is, as you no doubt know, a large, unruly mob on Canal Street. I suggest that when you go home for dinner you avoid going in that direction no matter how curious you might feel about the activities taking place today. The crowd is dangerous. Some are undoubtedly armed. If you are wise, you'll remain in the safety of the school building this dinner hour, as I will myself. But since some of your parents may be expecting you home, I won't prevent your going. Just stay away from the mill area and try to stay out of trouble."

  Rosa hadn't thought about what she should do at dinnertime. Would anyone be expecting her home? Granny J. was probably there with baby Ricci and Mrs. J.'s little boys. But she'd have to go back on the street to get home. She got up and started for the door only to be stopped by the teacher's voice calling her name.