Bread and Roses, Too (12 page)

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.
J
us
t 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."

"Yes," the teacher murmured. "I know." She stood up and put her gloves on. "I'll look for you then, Rosa, when this is all over." She smiled. "I'll miss my best student, though." She went to the door. "Thank you, Mrs. Serutti. I'll see myself out."

They sat there on the cot, listening to the sound of Miss Finch's fine leather shoes on the stairs. They sat there until they heard the heavy front door close. Rosa waited for Mamma to explain, but Mamma just stood up, patted Rosa's head, and started for the kitchen. "I miss my meeting," she said by way of explanation and headed into the next room, leaving the door ajar to let a little heat come into the bedroom.

"Hey, there, shoe girl."

The girl turned to see who had spoken to her in the crowded hall. There was only one person in the world who would call her "shoe girl," but Jake could tell that she didn't think he was the one. This boy had a scrubbed face and was decently dressed. His hair was a yellowish red, and his eyes were a bright blue. It tickled him to realize that there was nothing familiar about him except the name he had called her.

"Yeah, it's me, from the trash pile, remember?"

She nodded, still uncertain.

"Oh, don't worry.
I
didn't steal no clothes. O'Reilly caught me in his church and turned me into his good works for the day."

"Father
O'Reilly."

"Oh, yeah,
I
forget, you're one of them papists, too."

The girl drew herself up as tall as possible. "
I
belong to Holy Rosary parish."

"Sure. The Eye-talian one. That figures.... So, how are you?"

"Fine, thank you."

"No need to be a snip. I'm just here for soup and to warm my butt." He could tell that she was shocked by his language, but he let it pass.

"This is the Eye-talian hall, you know," she said, emphasizing the "I" just as he had.

"Didn't Joe Ettor say we was all one in this strike? What's it matter who feeds me—long as I eat?" He didn't explain that he was planning to follow Mrs. Gurley Flynn from hall to hall. Tonight she was scheduled to be at Chabis Hall. He hadn't seen her yet, just hundreds of Italians milling around, waiting for their soup.
Hell's bells,
they had a lot of kids, all of them looking half starved.

There was a stir around the doors.
She must be here.
"See ya," he said to the girl, and he pushed his way toward the entrance. No point in coming if he couldn't be up close. He wanted to be close enough to smell her. She smelled like ... how could he tell, having lived all his life in a shack and a mill? But that day at the train station when she brushed close, he imagined that it must be the way some pretty little flower smelled. It was more intoxicating than Angelo's wine.

But Mrs. Gurley Flynn was not looking at him tonight. There was another young woman with her, and they were busy talking to the people who seemed to be in charge of the hall.

Disappointed, he faded back to where the shoe girl still stood. She was watching Mrs. Gurley Flynn, too, but not happily.

"Where's your ma?" he asked, mostly to have something to say, but also because he was curious. The two times at her flat he'd only seen her and the sister awake. The old snoring woman wasn't her ma, he felt sure. Maybe because he didn't remember his own ma, he was curious to see other people's mas. Were they kind like Mrs. Gurley Flynn, or did they box your ears and scrub your face raw? His own face still stung from the yellow soap in the rectory bath.

The girl didn't answer. He thought she hadn't heard, but then he realized she had deliberately turned away from him.
Hell's bells!
She was wiping her face, brushing away tears.

"She ain't dead?"

"No—no, she's here. Over there." She pointed to a knot of women at the edge of the crowd surrounding Mrs. Gurley Flynn and her companion. They were all jabbering away.

"Which one is she?"

"In the middle, there—in the gray shawl."

All the shawls seemed gray or so faded they could pass for gray in the dim light of the hall, but he didn't want to ask again, so he nodded, pretending to know which of the women she meant. He turned back to catch her wiping her face again. The dirt on it was streaked.

"Hey, what's the matter, shoe girl?"

"Nothing." She sniffed and straightened her shoulders.

"Then why you bawling?"