Bread and Roses, Too Read online

"It's okay. Nobody's got money. Would you like a raisin bun, boy?"

  He nodded. She reached in and chose a large one. Then another. "Here. Take two. We'll be closing soon, especially if things get wild out there. They won't be fresh tomorrow."

  Jake went back out into the noisy street, chewing the sweet doughy bread, the second bun tucked under his shirt for later. It had begun to snow heavily and was likely to turn into a brute of a storm before morning. He waited until dark, then slipped into Holy Rosary, broke open the poor box, and, for his troubles, got two pennies. He knew better than to sleep in the church he'd just robbed and headed through the blowing snow for Saint Mary's. He'd just have to avoid the Irish sexton.

  Who Killed Annie Lopizzo?

  "I don' want you to go to school today, Rosa." Rosa nodded, relieved. She didn't want to go to school today, either. The colonel of the militia, blaming Annie Lopizzo's death on the strikers, said his men were to "shoot to kill." wasn't it in the paper? Anyhow, everyone knew he'd said it. "we are not looking for peace now!" Colonel Sweetser had added, just in case the strikers misunderstood. who would want to be on the street after hearing that? Rosa hardly wanted to get out of bed.

  But she knew Mamma meant that she was to stay home to help prepare for the funeral. Although Mamma and Anna hardly knew Annie Lopizzo, she had been one of them, one of their sister strikers, and the women of the neighborhood were determined that the mourners at her funeral outnumber even the crowd that had greeted Big Bill.

  It had all seemed so hopeful then. We want bread and roses, too. All week they had been glowing with pride and determination. But just as things seemed to be getting better, the bottom of their world had dropped out. Annie Lopizzo was dead and not yet in the grave before they learned that mild, little Mr. Caruso had been jailed for the killing, and that Joe Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti, who weren't anywhere near Union and Garden streets at the time, had been accused of inciting the violence and had therefore been arrested as accessories. So their two leaders were now in jail for murder as well. And that same terrible day, the Syrian boy who had been bayoneted two weeks earlier had died from his wounds.

  "And they dare call us violent!" Mamma cried to the women assembled in the kitchen.

  "Beautiful Signor Giovannitti! He will die in the prison! A poet is like a wild and lovely bird, yes? You cage him and he cannota sing, so he die!" Mrs. Marino put her apron over her head and began to weep.

  "But what we do widout Mr. Ettor and Mr. Giovannitti to lead us?" Mrs. Petrovsky asked the question in all their hearts. "what we do now?"

  "we do just what we do before. we march, we sing, we never, never, never give in," said Mamma.

  And she wouldn't, Rosa knew, and she saw Mamma lying in the street in a pool of her own red blood. Holy Mary, how could Rosa keep her home? A huge funeral with thousands of mourners would invite bloodshed. "Shoot to kill!" the colonel had said. From jail Joe Ettor sent word that all must stay calm, for the only peace the authorities wanted was the peace of the cemetery.

  "Come, Rosina, we go pay our respect."

  "I don't feel well," Rosa said.

  "Sick or well, we all go. Even Ricci. Annie Lopizzo is my sister."

  So ... they would all die. It was as simple as that. Mamma was determined. The dread was so heavy that Rosa felt the weight of it, as though she was carrying a sack of coal on her back. But the fear had numbed to resignation. How, after all, could she live if Mamma, Anna, and Ricci were dead? She might as well die with them.

  The body was laid out in the DeCesare funeral parlor on Common Street. It was the same place Papa had been taken after the fire at the mill. She thought she might throw up on the snow as they approached it. There had been a blizzard the night Annie had died. "God himself is fury," Mamma had said. So now they stood ankle deep in freezing slush outside the undertaker's. There was no singing, hardly any talking, as the long line of strikers waited patiently to be allowed in to the viewing. The only voices were the shouts of the militia as they surrounded the crowd and yelled down orders and threats from horseback. No one in the crowd seemed to be paying them any attention; they stood quietly, not so much out of fear of the threats as out of respect for the dead.

  To Rosa's amazement, their turn finally came. They entered the parlor, where the casket sat on a bier. Someone must have paid. It was so much nicer than Papa's casket, and even though it was January, there were flowers, including a huge display with a ribbon: from the polish workers to the victim of capitalism. They passed by the body. Mamma leaned over and kissed the corpse, just as though Annie Lopizzo had really been her blood kin. It took only a few minutes, and then they were out in the cold air again and walking home. As they climbed the stairs to the apartment, the dread rolled off Rosa's back. She remembered the story in a strange Protestant book she'd sneaked a look at in the library. It told of a man carrying a huge burden marked "Sin," which at the foot of the cross simply slid off his back and rolled away. But her relief didn't last much past the front door. Mamma was already talking about going to the funeral the next day

  "Listen to this, Mamma," Anna was saying. "They were passing this around at the funeral parlor. It's another message from Joe Ettor."

  "What does our Mr. Joe Ettor say?"

  "He says: 'Tomorrow will be the funeral of our sister who was dreaming the same dreams and aspiring to the same hopes to which you aspire—'"

  Mamma interrupted. "What mean 'aspire'?" They both looked at Rosa.

  "I don't know ... maybe, the hopes you want to happen. Something like that."

  Anna went on. "...'aspiring to the same hopes to which you aspire, but she is one of the victims of the struggle.... We will gather and escort our fellow worker to her last resting place. We meet to pay our last sad tribute to our comrade who has parted with her life blood in the struggle."

  "He can't meet anybody," Rosa protested. "He's in jail."

  "He has big spirit," Mamma said. "His spirit meet alla time with us."

  The Jarusalises came in noisily and put a welcome end to the conversation. Mamma made Anna read the message again, interrupting only to say, "Aspire mean want for to happen, eh, Rosa?"

  "Goot message," Mrs. Jarusalis pronounced and turned to interpret it for Granny. Then the women and girls fell to exchanging plans for gathering the next day. There must be a huge crowd to follow the hearse.

  "Bigger than crowd that meet Mr. Big Bill Haywood," Mamma said again, and they all agreed.

  Rosa slipped out of the kitchen to take refuge in the bedroom. Jonas and Kestutis were already asleep on their cot, and Granny was putting Ricci to bed in the back room. Rosa put on Papa's old shirt that she used for a winter nightgown and got under the quilt. No one had spoken of supper, so she must conclude that there was none to be had tonight. Before long, Mamma and Mrs. J. and the girls were going through the room—on their way to their halls to get orders for the next day, she was sure. She pretended to be asleep. She was so tired, her bones ached.

  She was still tossing sleeplessly when the four of them returned. "But Colonel Sweetser promised Joe Ettor we could march to the cemetery!" Anna was saying as they came through the door, oblivious of the fact that Granny and the boys were asleep and Rosa was pretending to be.

  "Promises! Promises!" Mamma said. "Promises don' mean nothing to such. He say we be violent. I say, 'Who be violent?' You stab dead Syrian boy. You shoot dead our sister! Who be the violent ones, eh?"

  Next morning the kitchen meeting began before dawn. The pronouncement had come down: Only one car would be allowed to follow the horse-drawn hearse. No marchers. Only the single car, carrying Annie Lopizzo's one living relative and a friend or two—that was it. The mood of the women gathered in the Serutti kitchen was bleaker than the winter sky outside. Their leaders were in jail, and Colonel Sweetser's men had made it deadly clear that they meant to follow his orders. They would shoot to kill, and any resulting deaths would be blamed on the strikers, who would, no doubt, hang for the crime.

  "I got m
e a good kitchen knife—long asa my arm," Mrs. Marino muttered.

  "No, no." Mamma laid her hand down on her friend's arm, as though afraid the knife were there already. "No violence. Mr. Joe Ettor say, 'No violence.'"

  "Then they shoot us, every one."

  "No, no, we keep together. Solidarity. Remember, Mrs. Marino. Solidarity, and no matter what, we win."

  "No matter if we dead, who gonna win." Mrs. Marino was shaking her head. "They—" She stabbed the table with her fist. "They poke their bayonet into boy, never have a beard. They shoot young girl, never have chance to marry, have children. Who they don't kill now? Dio mio, don't they have no heart?"

  Rosa, standing against the open bedroom door, was trembling so hard she put out one hand to steady herself on the frame. Mrs. Marino was right. Who wouldn't they shoot or stab? That day she'd followed Mamma to the march, she had seen the fear in the Harvard boys' eyes—like stray dogs cornered in an alley. They'd attack if they felt threatened. And they would blame the strikers. The lucky ones, like Joe O'Brien's snowballers, might go to jail for a year—the rest, like Joe Ettor, were likely to be hanged.

  How could Mamma believe for one minute that the strikers could win? Maybe, as Mamma claimed, they didn't plant the dynamite or attack the trolleys, but they would soon. They were cornered and desperate, too. Already black hands had appeared on the doors of scabbing workers. You didn't have to be Italian to know the meaning of a black hand painted on your door. Why, even here in their own home, there was talk of kitchen knives.

  Anxiously, she scanned the faces in the room. The women weren't all close neighbors. They weren't even all Italian. Suppose—the thought chilled her—just suppose there were a spy among them? Joe Ettor and Mr. Giovannitti were in jail for murder, but they hadn't even been near Garden and Union and the two of them were always pleading, "No violence." What of women who talked openly of kitchen knives as long as their arms? What of a woman in whose kitchen such words had been spoken? Oh, Mamma, Mamma, don't be such a fool. There is no winning. Only death. Her heart was pounding so hard against her ribs that she was in pain from it.

  "Anna, Marija," Mamma was saying. "Go to Chabis Hall. See if there is soup tonight. We need our strength, eh?"

  Had Mamma forgotten there were troops all over everywhere, with orders to shoot to kill? Was she out of her mind? Rosa couldn't help herself. "No!" The word came out in a squeak. "Mamma, no! Don't make them go to the hall. They'll get killed!"

  "Oh, Rosina," Mamma said. "They big girls. They know how to behave." And Anna and Marija were gone almost before she had finished the sentence.

  Mamma came over to where Rosa stood crying by the door. She put her arms around Rosa's shaking body, "Shh, shh." She began rubbing Rosa's back, murmuring to her so low that the women around the kitchen table couldn't hear her. "Shh, shh. Don' be so 'fraid, bambina. I don' send your sister out to die. I send her to find can we eat tonight. Soldier, or no soldier, we gotta eat, eh? Is there bread in this house? I don' see none. Do you? So what we do? Sit like scared rabbit in our kitchen and shake and starve? We can't do that, eh? Now, go wash your face and read your book or something. We be all right, you see."

  Rosa went to the toilet in the hall. It stank to high heaven, but it was the only private place in her world. She sat down on the seat without pulling up her dress and let out the sobs that had been building up ever since the first riot alarms had rung. It seemed like years. It was hardly three weeks. But it would go on forever. She would always be hungry and cold and afraid. She was sure of it.

  She was back in the front room lying on her bed when she heard the big girls rattling up the staircase outside. They burst through her door and ran into the kitchen without even stopping to close the door behind them. "They're coming, Mamma, they're coming!"

  "Who?"

  "What she say?"

  All the women in the kitchen were on their feet, crowding around the girls for the news.

  Rosa got up to close the door, one ear toward the other room. Despite everything, she had to hear what had happened.

  "Mrs. Gurley Flynn and Big Bill! They're coming back. The strike committee wants them to lead the strike while Joe Ettor's in jail."

  "Santa Maria! Grazie, grazie."

  The strike would go on. The union was making sure that it would. And how many more would die?

  An Unexpected Bath

  She was coming back! Mrs. Gurley Flynn and the one they called Big Bill were coming back to Lawrence to lead the strike. The most beautiful woman in the world was coming back to help them ... to help him. Wasn't he on strike against Mr. Billy Wood as much as anybody? Well, he hadn't scabbed, had he? No matter how cold and hungry he was, he, Jake Beale, had never once crossed that cursed bridge and gone through those iron gates.

  Jake brushed aside the times he had been on the verge of crossing the bridge and heading back into the mill. He hadn't, though, had he? Something or someone had always stopped him. God or fate or furious little Giuliano. He wouldn't have to feel ashamed when he saw her again. He could hold his head high. He was one of the oppressed workers she was coming to save.

  There was soup in the halls these days after Annie Lopizzo's death. It had got them a lot of sympathy. In the halls where he sneaked in to eat, in the shops, on the streets, people talked about how, in the rest of the entire U.S. of A., everyone knew how the law in Lawrence was twisted to suit the mill owners. That fool Breen laying that dynamite—and who had paid him? Not the strikers, that was for sure. The girl in the Polish bakery told Jake that the stupid man had no more sense than to wrap the sticks in copies of his undertakers' journal, with his own name on the address label—not likely that a striker would have copies of that lying around.

  "But now undertaker Breen is out on bail while the men who threw snowballs are in jail until next year. And what, what will become of Mr. Ettor and Mr. Giovannitti, who had nothing to do with Annie Lopizzo's death? They'll probably hang."

  Jake listened, trying hard to look properly sorrowful, but all he could think about was that Mrs. Gurley Flynn was coming back. She would know the truth behind all the government lies. She'd make them own up to all their plots and wickedness. He had to see her. Since Ettor and Giovannitti's arrest, meetings on the common had been outlawed. The only places left to meet were the national halls. She mostly went where the women and children gathered, but, by golly, he'd be a kid—or even a woman—Italian, Polish, Turk, whatever it took to weasel his way into every meeting where she was to speak. He might even get himself a bit of grub while he was at it.

  Maybe she would notice him again. Not merely smile this time but pick him out special-like, tell him how brave he was—just a boy, too—to stand up to the owners, to suffer hunger and cold and homelessness, so that he could go on being a part of this great strike.

  He snuffled. His nose was always running these days. As he wiped it on the back of his sleeve, he saw to his horror how dirty his shirt was. If his clothes were that filthy, what of his face? He'd never bothered about bathing before—didn't really believe in it. But she was so clean, so white and lovely, her cheeks like roses on fresh snow. What would she think of a boy like him?

  For the first time in his life, he needed to know what his face looked like. The only mirror he knew of was in the sacristy of Saint Mary's. There was also running water in there, in case he decided to wash up a bit. He wasn't about to wash in the canal. Not only was it frozen and smelly, everyone knew it would make you sick to death if you got a drop or two in your mouth. There was nothing for it. He'd have to go into Saint Mary's and hide out somewhere inside until after dark.

  He went to noon Mass. Well, it was warm in there, and nobody paid attention to him. He slid under the pew afterward so the sexton wouldn't see him as he came down the aisle, checking for trash. Without meaning to, he fell fast asleep. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep since he could remember, and the church, though drafty, seemed almost toasty compared with a trash heap. When he woke up, it was pitch dark except f
or the little light on the altar and the tiny candles—not so many lit now that people had no money. He felt his way down the aisle and up on the platform. It was like being a blind man, and he wouldn't have minded, but he had the urge and he wanted to get into that priests' secret little toilet as fast as he could. He found the door, fumbled at the knob, and opened it. There was an electric bulb hanging from the ceiling and he managed to find the chain and pull it, which gave him ample light to find the privy.

  The basin had a mirror over it, so after he had relieved himself, he went to study his face in the shadowy light. His eyes were the thing that struck him. He leaned close to the mirror. They were blue, surrounded by whites that were blood streaked. His face was dark as a Spaniard's—but that was probably the dirt. He ran water into the basin. There was a towel hanging nearby, so he wet it and began methodically to wipe his face. Eventually, it came a lighter shade, but still, in the shadowy light, it seemed to him that he looked as gray and tired as an old man. Why would someone so beautiful lower herself to talk to the likes of him? He didn't want her pity—though with a face like that he might get her pity—he wanted her to like him, to think he was somebody good and brave, somebody on the way to becoming a hero like Joe Ettor or Big Bill. With this face, she was likely to see him as just some bum kid, somebody who slept in trash piles and pilfered poor boxes. Of course, he knew that that was what he was, but he had to be, didn't he? Had the world given him any choice? Well, it was going to be different from now on. He'd stick with the strikers, eat at the halls when there was food, and find someplace decent to sleep—maybe at Angelo's or at the shoe girl's.

  He grabbed some of the paper crackers from the cabinet, took a swig, just a small one, from the priests' supply of wine, turned off the light, and went back into the dark sanctuary. As he felt his way across the altar toward where he thought the stairs must be, his foot hit something, something soft. He gave a little squeak of surprise. At the same time, the lump he'd tripped against rose up from its knees and grabbed his shirt. He was pulled right off his feet until his face was next to a much larger face, so close that when the man spoke, the spit from his mouth hit Jake's carefully wiped cheek.