Bread and Roses, Too

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."