"Heaven help us, you're right. Well, get him out of here before Mamma wakes up and catches him, understand?" She sighed. "Now go back to sleep, but make sure—"
"I will. You, too."
"How can I go back to sleep? My heart is pounding like a beater on a loom. Such a fright!"
"I'm sorry, okay? I'll get him out early."
"Be sure you do."
But she slept so late, Mamma was pinching her toes and telling her she'd be tardy for school. She sat up quickly. Granny and the little boys were already up and out of the room. She must have slept terribly late. Oh, dear—the boy. She'd promised Anna she'd get him out before Mamma got up.
"Your little rat come again last night," Mamma said as if reading her mind.
"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.