Bread and Roses, Too

He supposed he had to tell Rosa, but it included so much lying and hiding the truth that he put it off. She was too worried about her family. She didn't need to hear all his woes—but she would have to, sooner or later. He would wait, he decided, until the strike was truly over. She would be so happy at the thought of going home that she wouldn't waste her time being mad at him and all he'd put her through.

He was still puzzling over his talk with Mr. Gerbati Sunday night. The man had caught him, as they say, red-handed, trying to break into his safe. He hadn't called the police. He hadn't called any of his Italian pals. He had called Duncan. Because he thought I was Scotch. Even then I was sure he would send me back to Lawrence the next day. But, no, he takes me into his parlor and talks to me. He makes a bargain with me, just like I'm somebody. But the bargain was that he would stop lying, and if he hadn't told all that many lies to Rosa, he had certainly never told her the truth.

At work he was a demon of energy, racing to the blacksmith shop with points to be sharpened and racing back again, shoveling grout until his shoulders groaned, clearing fresh snow from the path to the door—indeed, doing every job Mr. Gerbati gave him with such speed and devotion that he hardly recognized himself. Now there were only two things left to do. The first was to tell Rosa everything. That should be easy, but he kept putting it off. Then there was the other matter. This, too, he put off, because it meant a kind of begging he'd never let himself stoop to before. Oh, sure, he had begged Mr. Gerbati not to call the police, but he did that out of sheer terror, without any thought. He had turned this new request over in his mind so many times, he had almost worn it out. How could he put it into words? He had tried a thousand times and no words seemed good enough.

The strike would soon be over. Everyone said so. And when the strike was over, the Lawrence children would be sent home. He had to speak to Mr. Gerbati right away. But how?

Barre's entire North End followed the developments in Lawrence as closely as though they'd been mill workers themselves. They still held benefits in the Labor Hall and the opera house, sending the money to the Wobblies in Lawrence. They read almost breathlessly the accounts in the newspapers of the testimony in Washington. The president's own wife, Mrs. William Howard Taft, had gone to hear children from Lawrence talk about their lives in the mills—how they had to sweep the mill floors after working hours for no pay, how money was taken from their meager wages for the water they drank, how little Camella Teoli's hair got caught in the machine and she was scalped.

On Tuesday, March the twelfth, the long-awaited telegram came from Lawrence. Mr. Billy Wood had surrendered. He would meet the strikers' demands—every single one of them. The rest of the mill owners fell like tiles in a game of dominoes. And on Thursday, the fourteenth of March, in the year of our Lord 1912, twenty-five thousand men, women, and children mill workers gathered on Lawrence common and voted to return to work.

The time had come for the Lawrence children to go home. The Barre newspaper on Saturday the sixteenth asked all the families who were hosting children to meet at the Labor Hall the next day, between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., to make arrangements for the visitors' return. When Mrs. Gerbati and Rosa got home from Mass, Mrs. Gerbati served, with many apologies, an abbreviated breakfast, and then she and Mr. Gerbati headed for the Labor Hall.

Jake and Rosa were left at the house. The committee thought it would be easier for the adults to sort out the details without the children present. "You study now, Salvatore," Mrs. Gerbati said. "Is good chance. Then you go home and show off to Mamma, yes?"

They sat side by side at the kitchen table. Jake hadn't made much progress. He knew his alphabet at least. But Rosa would sigh over the clumsy way he made his letters. He often made the Ss backward and there were two of them, large capital ones, in Salvatore Serutti. He threw down his pencil.

"It ain't my name, anyway," he said. "I don't need to write it proper."

Rosa cocked her head. "Then tell me your real name. I'll teach you to write that. No need to show it to the Gerbatis."

"Jake," he said. "Jake Beale."

"Hmmph," she said. "I wonder if it has a silent e. Beale, that is."

After that, it was easier to tell her the story he had told Mr. Gerbati three weeks earlier. He even told her about robbing the poor box and stealing food and sleeping in the churches, Rosa being as close to a priest as he was ever likely to confess to. He didn't bother to tell her about the trash piles. She knew about those.

"You were running because you thought the police were after you?"

"Yeah. He was dead. I thought they'd blame me." Then he remembered Mr. Gerbati's admonition. "Not just that. I reckon I was spooked. I'd slept all night with a corpse. It really spooked me."

She nodded. "It would scare me, too," she said and shuddered. It made him feel better, Rosa saying that.

As little as he wanted to, he made himself tell Rosa the events of that awful Sunday when he'd tried to break into Mr. Gerbati's safe. Her hand flew to her mouth, and her whole face went white.

"I know," he said. "I done a terrible wrong. I don't know why he didn't drag me to the police the minute he caught me. He didn't beat me or nothing. He just made me promise to stop lying. And I'm trying."

It took him a minute to realize that Rosa was crying.

"C'mon, Rosa. What's the matter? I told you I was trying."

"It's not that." She looked up at him, her face streaked with tears. "It's my prayers," she said. "They've all been answered. The strike is over. Mamma and Anna and Ricci are safe. I'm going home soon. And you confessed your sins. The Virgin answered my prayers and"—here she burst into fresh tears—"and I'm not even good."

"Sure, you're good. You're the best person I know."

"No, I'm not. And all my prayers were answered anyway—well, all except for one."

"What one was that?"

"I prayed you could be as happy as me."

When the Gerbatis came in sometime later, Mrs. Gerbati went straight to the kitchen. The noon meal would be very late and, by her standards, breakfast had been nothing. Food took precedence over delivering news, apparently. The meal was on the table—soup to cake—before Mr. Gerbati cleared his throat, took a noisy gulp of his grappa-laced coffee, and began.

"Okay," he said. "We talk and make plan today. Thirty-five children come, two go back right away, yes?" Everyone agreed. "Then week before this there was four children go home because someone in family very sick, yes?" They all remembered, especially Rosa, who had not really wished illness upon any member of her family, but still.... "Then yesterday, one more." Rosa hadn't heard about that one. "That leave," he signaled with his fingers, "twenty-eight children, yes?" They all nodded. "Tomorrow Mr. Broggi can take some children, but twenty-eight too many, so some have to wait."

Rosa clamped her hand over her mouth. Otherwise, she was sure to cry out. How could she wait any longer? Mrs. Gerbati reached over and gently took the hand away. "I tell them my Rosa need to go," she said. "I don't want to lose my childrens, but they need their own mamma, yes?"

"You've been so good to us, Mrs. Gerbati. We do thank you both, but..."