Bread and Roses, Too Page 9

  "What are you doing in the sacristy, you little thief?"

  Jake's feelings were hurt. How could it be stealing to take a little water, a few crackers, and a small, very small, swig of wine? "Nothing," he said. "I ain't no thief."

  "Mercy, boy, you smell like a canal rat." The hand put Jake's feet to the floor but held tightly to his shirt.

  "Don't," Jake said. "You'll rip me shirt."

  The hand moved to take his arm. "Come with me, son." If there had been any choice, Jake would have hightailed it out of there, but wriggle as he did, he could not break the steel grip on his arm.

  He was dragged out a side door, across an alley, and into another building, where there was enough light for him to see that his captor was none other than Father James O'Reilly, who was head of Saint Mary's and, by rumor, the real boss of every other Catholic church in town.

  "Mrs. O'Sullivan!" his captor roared. A small woman came scurrying from somewhere, wiping her hands on a large apron as she ran.

  "Yes, Father?"

  "Take this little heathen and clean him up for me, will you?"

  "But I'm in the way of fixing your dinner, Father."

  "Dinner can wait. Put him in the tub and scrub him within an inch of his life."

  "But, Father," the woman was turning quite red, "he's not a baby. He's a growing boy. It don't seem proper—"

  "Oh, woman, get Father Donahue, then. He's got to be cleaned. Can't you smell him from there?"

  "But why, Father? Surely, he has a home and parents who—"

  "I very much doubt that they, if they exist, have ever bathed him, and I won't have anyone eating in my kitchen who smells worse than the rubbish outside the door."

  ***

  Jake's first impulse was to struggle, but the warm water in the tub was surprisingly soothing, so he just sat there and let the young priest scrub away. His back was still sore, and when the priest's hand reached toward it, he winced. The priest shook his head at the sight of the welts and was very gentle there. Even Jake's hair was doused with water and scrubbed with the strong yellow soap. The water in which he sat was almost as black as the water in the canal, and before he was done, the priest let it all out and drew clean water to rinse off the soap. He dried Jake with a large towel and then wrapped the towel around him.

  "Now," the young priest said, "don't you feel better?"

  Strange was more like it. He felt strange, as though he were no longer himself, that the yellow soap had scraped Jake Beale clean away and revealed someone else, someone he'd never met before.

  The priest left the room. Jake would have escaped at that point, but his clothes had disappeared and he didn't fancy going out into the winter evening with nothing but a towel wrapped around him. And besides, hadn't O'Reilly said something about supper? In a few minutes, the young priest returned, bringing with him a pair of trousers and a shirt.

  "They're not new, but better than what you had, I dare say." He turned his back to let Jake put on the clothes. The cuffs of the shirt were a bit frayed, but Jake had to roll them up anyway. He folded the pant legs a turn or two as well.

  "I'm sorry we've got no shoes for you or underwear. But, then, you don't seem accustomed..."

  Jake shook his head. "No matter."

  "But here—I brought you a pair of me socks. They may be large." He held out a pair of black socks. Jake hesitated. "It's all right," said the young priest. "I've another pair."

  Jake took them and put them on. They were several sizes too large, but why should he care? Already his toes were luxuriating in the unaccustomed warmth. They would make a layer of wool between his feet and the wet snow that seeped into his worn-out shoes. Every day that he had worked in the mill, he had helped make woolen goods for sale, but he'd never before owned anything made of wool. He nodded his thanks. He didn't know how to put it into words.

  He was taken to the rectory kitchen for his supper, and what a supper it was. It was almost enough to turn a boy not only into a Catholic but to thinking seriously about becoming a priest. Did they eat like this every night? Meat and potatoes, and great slabs of bread with gravy, and three kinds of vegetables, and soup, and coffee and some kind of sweet, heavenly pudding afterward.

  He didn't mind at all that he hadn't been invited to eat in the room with the big table where the priests sat but in the kitchen with Mrs. O'Sullivan. What a stroke of luck that was. She kept filling his plate and made no comment on how he ate or how much. His belly was near to bursting, but he couldn't make himself stop.

  It was Father O'Reilly who brought the meal to an end. He came into the kitchen just as Jake was downing the third serving of pudding. "Still at it, are we, me boy?"

  His mouth was so full, he could only nod.

  "Well, that's fine. You need some meat on those bones of yours."

  Jake slid his chair back from the table and stood up. He was eyeing the door, plotting a route of escape around the priest and out into the dark of the winter evening.

  "No need to be afraid, lad. I don't intend to call the police."

  Jake looked up, startled.

  "God will hold you accountable, you know. For profaning the sacred elements and stealing from the poor." How the devil did the man know? Jake made a lunge for the door, but the priest caught him and spun him around. "I'm not through yet, me lad. You will hear me out, like it or not."

  Jake didn't like it, but what choice did he have? The man's grip wasn't about to let him go. He watched half fascinated, half terrified while, with his free hand, the priest reached down into a deep pocket in his black robe. "Here," he said.

  Jake's eyes nearly popped out of his head. The man was holding out a silver half dollar.

  "Yes, take it. Buy some supper for the rest of your family, and then tell everyone to go back to work. This strike is the work of the devil. Tell them that. They have no business turning their children into beggars and thieves whilst they follow these godless radicals. Will you tell them that?"

  Jake nodded. Though just exactly whom was he supposed to tell? His father, who hadn't worked a day in the last two years and was likely furious that Jake was not scabbing in the mill?

  "And don't let me catch you in the church again unless you're praying in the pew, do you hear?"

  Jake nodded furiously.

  "On second thought, why don't you take your prayers to Holy Rosary? Let Father Milanese deal with you for a change. I think we've about had our fill of you here at Saint Mary's." He smiled, as though he were joking, but Jake couldn't be sure.

  The priest let go his grip and gave the boy a swat on his bottom, which Jake was happy to take as a signal that he was truly dismissed with new clothes on his back and fifty cents in his fist.

  Later he asked himself why a hundred times. Why, with a half dollar in his possession, did he use most of it to buy whiskey to take to his father? He must have been crazy to do such a fool thing. Yet that is exactly what he did, and almost proudly. He'd show the old man how well he was doing in the middle of this cursed strike—while others were freezing and starving, he had new clothes and money to spend on a present for his pa.

  There was no one at the shack when he got there. For once he was half disappointed that his father was gone. He set the bottle right in the middle of the cot where his pa couldn't miss it and left to find a place to spend the night that wasn't a trash heap. He didn't want to ruin his new clothes quite yet.

  A Proper Caller

  Rosa wasn't going to school anymore. She was terrified by the idea of navigating the streets, crowded with workers and with the militia and police always present. But whenever there was soup to be had, Mamma dragged her to Chabis Hall for the meal and the meeting that followed.

  Big Bill and Mrs. Gurley Flynn, along with the local strike committee members, were going around to the various halls, cheering the workers on, telling them that the union was on their side. It seemed to be true: union workers throughout the country were sending money so that the strikers could have soup for their belli
es and coal for their fires. The union had a name—the Industrial Workers of the World—but no one ever called it that. If a person was feeling formal, it was the "IWW," but usually it was simply the "Wobblies." The Wobblies' motto was "Solidarity." That meant they weren't like the big unions, who represented only one kind of worker. The Wobblies believed in standing united across various skills and national origins.

  The only woman on the local strike committee was Mrs. Annie Welzenbach, who was a skilled fabric mender and a Polish Jew, to boot. The rumor was that she made more than twenty dollars a week, but that didn't stop her from siding with the lowest paid workers in the mills, Italian and Catholic though they might be. And Mrs. Welzenbach stood so tall, the police were terrified of her. "Get out on the picket line," she'd say, and thousands cheered and obeyed, turning a deaf ear to the representatives from the big-name unions who claimed that the Wobblies were lawless radicals and who warned the workers how dangerous the strike was and how futile.

  Even Rosa admired Mrs. Welzenbach. Anna had told her that one time, after a march broke up, she'd seen Mrs. Welzenbach start down Common Street, probably headed home, and suddenly a couple thousand workers were marching right behind her. The militia arrested her once. They went to her house in the middle of the night and dragged her out of bed, so it was said. She was free on bail by the next afternoon and went straight to another rally. That was the day Mrs. Marino went up to her, almost throwing herself at Mrs. Welzenbach's feet, to declare: "If any hurt you, I die for you." There was something in Rosa that made her envy a woman like Mrs. Welzenbach—young as she was and almost rich—who could inspire such loyalty.

  Everyone knew she was helping lead the strike because she truly cared that people were cold and their children starving. She had told Mr. Billy Wood so right to his face, and he had turned around the next day and claimed that the strikers were being led astray by outside agitators who did not know the good relations he had always had with his workers. Mrs. Welzenbach was not an outside agitator—she was like most of them, following her parents into the mills when she was fourteen years old. But she was different from Mr. Billy Wood. She hadn't forgotten what it was like to be a poor, unskilled worker in the mills. If Rosa had been going to school, she would have told Miss Finch about Mrs. Welzenbach. Or she imagined that she would have. She might have been too timid.

  She kept reading her history book over and over. If only she had the courage to go out into the street by herself, she would have gone to the library and gotten more books. She didn't want to fall too far behind in school. It was hopeless to think she could teach herself arithmetic, but she could read history and geography and books that would improve her vocabulary and strengthen her hold on English grammar, which was being buffeted daily by the various assaults on it around the kitchen table.

  ***

  The knock on the door came in the middle of one of Mamma's countless meetings. Rosa was lying on the bed, straining in the dim light to read the small print in the history book. At the sound, she sat up, heart pounding. The knocking stopped. None of the women in the kitchen seemed to have heard it, immersed as they were in a gabble of languages, all excited about new marches, daily meetings in the halls with the name of the brave, young Mrs. Gurley Flynn exploding into their various languages like popping corn in an iron skillet.

  There was another knock, this time louder. Rosa froze. Would the police come and drag Mamma out, as they had Mrs. Welzenbach? Then a voice, muffled by the wooden door but still recognizable. "Rosa?"

  Rosa, half fearful, half marveling, slid off the bed and went to open the door. There stood Miss Finch, dressed impeccably, as always, but with a flushed face and breathing hard from the exertion of climbing three flights of stairs.

  "Ah, Rosa," she said, looking down into Rosa's face. "Forgive me for intruding, but you haven't been at school since ... I don't know, too long. I was worried."

  Rosa simply stared. How could she say that she'd been too frightened to go through the streets when the teacher herself had walked along those very striker-crowded and police-lined streets all the way into the Plains, a place where people weren't feeling so friendly toward clean, well-dressed, well-fed native-born teachers?

  "May I come in? Or...?" The teacher was listening to the indecipherable babble from the next room.

  "I'll—I'll get Mamma," Rosa said quickly, and she stepped aside to let Miss Finch into the bedroom, aware all at once of the smell of the little boys' urine-stained sheets and the sweat of an old, not too clean woman. She closed the door in a vain attempt to keep the freezing hallway from sucking out the tiny bit of heat they had. "Would you like to sit down?"

  Miss Finch, without looking (it seemed to Rosa that she was making a point of not looking about her), perched herself on the edge of the big bed and smiled at Rosa.

  Rosa had left the door to the kitchen partly open for what little warmth there was, so she slipped through the crack, ashamed for Miss Finch to see the group of loud shawl-clad women who were now her mother's closest friends and fellow conspirators. Mamma was leaning against the windowsill, listening to Mrs. Petrovsky's daughter interpret a lengthy harangue from her mother, whose Polish had spewed out long after her English had faltered.

  Rosa slipped up beside Mamma, who almost absent-mindedly put her arm around Rosa's shoulders and drew her close, her eyes still on Mrs. Petrovsky's daughter. "Mamma." Rosa nudged her mother's arm. "Mamma, Miss Finch is here to see you."

  "Who, you say?"

  "Miss Finch," Rosa whispered. "My teacher."

  Mamma turned then, a puzzled expression raising her dark eyebrows. "What is teacher doing in my house?"

  Rosa, still whispering, pulled on her mother's arm. "She wants to talk to you." Now several women had stopped listening to the translation of Mrs. Petrovsky's speech and had looked to see what the interruption was about.

  Mamma smiled apologetically. "Scusami, please. A visitor only." Alarm was apparent on many faces. "No, no. No police." She took Rosa's hand, nodded at Mrs. Petrovsky's daughter, as though signaling her to carry on, and let Rosa guide her around the edge of the room into the front bedroom. Heat or no heat, Rosa closed the door behind them. The noise from the kitchen had dropped to a low murmur.

  "Mrs. Serutti?" Miss Finch stood up.

  "Sit, sit," Mamma said, plunking herself down on the cot opposite. "Si, I'm Rosa's mamma." She took Rosa's hand once more and pulled the girl down to sit beside her on the boys' bed. "Good girl, my Rosa. Smart girl, eh?"

  "Yes, yes, she is, Mrs. Serutti, which is why I've come. Do you realize how long it's been since Rosa came to school?"

  "A few days—a week or so, maybe?"

  "The last day I have her marked present was January 29."

  "That'sa day our Annie Lopizzo is shot, you know?"

  Mamma had leaned forward. Rosa stiffened. Native-born weren't accustomed to having people talk right in their faces. Mamma didn't know this. She probably wasn't even aware that Miss Finch had moved slightly away; she simply leaned closer. The cot was lower than the bed, so Mamma had her head back and her chin up. Even to Rosa she looked angry. "She die, we gotta go pay respects. They don' let us go to funeral, you know."

  "It was a terrible accident." Miss Finch was trying to be sympathetic. Would Mamma understand that?

  "No accident." Mamma shook her head. "No accident. Militia boy shoot her down. Pow. Just like that. She do nothing but march, ask for bread. Then they blame us, us—" Mamma was pounding her chest. "They say we kill our own Annie." She made a noise with her mouth that sounded something like pluh. At least she didn't spit. "They say we violent"—she made the noise again. "We not killed nobody. They kill one, two—so young—" She leaned even closer toward the teacher. "That don' count all who die in mill or from sickness. We only want bread to feed our hungry children and heat to warm our freezing house and maybe some warm clothes." She stopped and studied Miss Finch's wool coat with its fur collar and her wool felt hat and the pair of leather gloves resting on
her lap. "We not greedy, Teacher. We cold and starve. We gotta march or die and our children die with us."

  "But is this the right way, Mrs. Serutti? Wouldn't it be better to reason with the owners?"

  Mamma took her face out of the teacher's and leaned back. She closed her eyes and shook her head. "There no language they understand. Only quiet."

  Miss Finch looked puzzled. "Quiet?"

  "No sound. No profit. They understand that, maybe. Machine don' run itself. Wool don' weave itself. They know when the mill not making noise, is no gold clinking in the pocket. They understand that, eh?"

  Miss Finch was studying Mamma as though she were a problem in arithmetic. Finally, she said, "But Rosa shouldn't march, Mrs. Serutti. It's too dangerous."

  "Rosa don' march. She don' like to go out on the street. I gotta drag her to the hall to get soup so she don' starve. No, Rosa stay home. She stay home and study all day long. She got only one book, but she study one book all day long."

  Rosa lowered her head. She was suddenly ashamed—too cowardly to march and too cowardly to go to school. What must the teacher think of her?

  "Rosa?" The teacher's voice was kinder than Rosa had ever heard it. "How can I help you? I don't want you to fall so far behind. Olga Kronsky is still coming every day She lives near here. Could you walk to school together?"

  That was when Mamma dropped her own dynamite. "No," she said. "Rosa no coming to school no more. She go away."

  Away? What could Mamma mean?

  "We send the children someplace safe." She saw Rosa's look of alarm and patted her arm reassuringly. "The union fix it. So many is sick and hungry. We can't help them here, so we send them away till we win—till we have money for food and coal and new shoes. Our children is very cold, Missa Finch. Very cold."