He nodded. She reached in and chose a large one. Then another. "Here. Take two. We'll be closing soon, especially if things get wild out there. They won't be fresh tomorrow."
Jake went back out into the noisy street, chewing the sweet doughy bread, the second bun tucked under his shirt for later. It had begun to snow heavily and was likely to turn into a brute of a storm before morning. He waited until dark, then slipped into Holy Rosary, broke open the poor box, and, for his troubles, got two pennies. He knew better than to sleep in the church he'd just robbed and headed through the blowing snow for Saint Mary's. He'd just have to avoid the Irish sexton.
Who Killed Annie Lopizzo?
"I don' want you to go to school today, Rosa." Rosa nodded, relieved. She didn't want to go to school today, either. The colonel of the militia, blaming Annie Lopizzo's death on the strikers, said his men were to "shoot to kill." wasn't it in the paper? Anyhow, everyone knew he'd said it. "we are not looking for peace now!" Colonel Sweetser had added, just in case the strikers misunderstood. who would want to be on the street after hearing that? Rosa hardly wanted to get out of bed.
But she knew Mamma meant that she was to stay home to help prepare for the funeral. Although Mamma and Anna hardly knew Annie Lopizzo, she had been one of them, one of their sister strikers, and the women of the neighborhood were determined that the mourners at her funeral outnumber even the crowd that had greeted Big Bill.
It had all seemed so hopeful then. We want bread and roses, too. All week they had been glowing with pride and determination. But just as things seemed to be getting better, the bottom of their world had dropped out. Annie Lopizzo was dead and not yet in the grave before they learned that mild, little Mr. Caruso had been jailed for the killing, and that Joe Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti, who weren't anywhere near Union and Garden streets at the time, had been accused of inciting the violence and had therefore been arrested as accessories. So their two leaders were now in jail for murder as well. And that same terrible day, the Syrian boy who had been bayoneted two weeks earlier had died from his wounds.
"And they dare call us violent!" Mamma cried to the women assembled in the kitchen.
"Beautiful Signor Giovannitti! He will die in the prison! A poet is like a wild and lovely bird, yes? You cage him and he cannota sing, so he die!" Mrs. Marino put her apron over her head and began to weep.
"But what we do widout Mr. Ettor and Mr. Giovannitti to lead us?" Mrs. Petrovsky asked the question in all their hearts. "what we do now?"
"we do just what we do before. we march, we sing, we never, never, never give in," said Mamma.
And she wouldn't, Rosa knew, and she saw Mamma lying in the street in a pool of her own red blood. Holy Mary, how could Rosa keep her home? A huge funeral with thousands of mourners would invite bloodshed. "Shoot to kill!" the colonel had said. From jail Joe Ettor sent word that all must stay calm, for the only peace the authorities wanted was the peace of the cemetery.
"Come, Rosina, we go pay our respect."
"I don't feel well," Rosa said.
"Sick or well, we all go. Even Ricci. Annie Lopizzo is my sister."
So ... they would all die. It was as simple as that. Mamma was determined. The dread was so heavy that Rosa felt the weight of it, as though she was carrying a sack of coal on her back. But the fear had numbed to resignation. How, after all, could she live if Mamma, Anna, and Ricci were dead? She might as well die with them.
The body was laid out in the DeCesare funeral parlor on Common Street. It was the same place Papa had been taken after the fire at the mill. She thought she might throw up on the snow as they approached it. There had been a blizzard the night Annie had died. "God himself is fury," Mamma had said. So now they stood ankle deep in freezing slush outside the undertaker's. There was no singing, hardly any talking, as the long line of strikers waited patiently to be allowed in to the viewing. The only voices were the shouts of the militia as they surrounded the crowd and yelled down orders and threats from horseback. No one in the crowd seemed to be paying them any attention; they stood quietly, not so much out of fear of the threats as out of respect for the dead.
To Rosa's amazement, their turn finally came. They entered the parlor, where the casket sat on a bier. Someone must have paid. It was so much nicer than Papa's casket, and even though it was January, there were flowers, including a huge display with a ribbon: from the polish workers to the victim of capitalism. They passed by the body. Mamma leaned over and kissed the corpse, just as though Annie Lopizzo had really been her blood kin. It took only a few minutes, and then they were out in the cold air again and walking home. As they climbed the stairs to the apartment, the dread rolled off Rosa's back. She remembered the story in a strange Protestant book she'd sneaked a look at in the library. It told of a man carrying a huge burden marked "Sin," which at the foot of the cross simply slid off his back and rolled away. But her relief didn't last much past the front door. Mamma was already talking about going to the funeral the next day
"Listen to this, Mamma," Anna was saying. "They were passing this around at the funeral parlor. It's another message from Joe Ettor."
"What does our Mr. Joe Ettor say?"
"He says: 'Tomorrow will be the funeral of our sister who was dreaming the same dreams and aspiring to the same hopes to which you aspire—'"
Mamma interrupted. "What mean 'aspire'?" They both looked at Rosa.
"I don't know ... maybe, the hopes you want to happen. Something like that."
Anna went on. "...'aspiring to the same hopes to which you aspire, but she is one of the victims of the struggle.... We will gather and escort our fellow worker to her last resting place. We meet to pay our last sad tribute to our comrade who has parted with her life blood in the struggle."
"He can't meet anybody," Rosa protested. "He's in jail."
"He has big spirit," Mamma said. "His spirit meet alla time with us."
The Jarusalises came in noisily and put a welcome end to the conversation. Mamma made Anna read the message again, interrupting only to say, "Aspire mean want for to happen, eh, Rosa?"
"Goot message," Mrs. Jarusalis pronounced and turned to interpret it for Granny. Then the women and girls fell to exchanging plans for gathering the next day. There must be a huge crowd to follow the hearse.
"Bigger than crowd that meet Mr. Big Bill Haywood," Mamma said again, and they all agreed.
Rosa slipped out of the kitchen to take refuge in the bedroom. Jonas and Kestutis were already asleep on their cot, and Granny was putting Ricci to bed in the back room. Rosa put on Papa's old shirt that she used for a winter nightgown and got under the quilt. No one had spoken of supper, so she must conclude that there was none to be had tonight. Before long, Mamma and Mrs. J. and the girls were going through the room—on their way to their halls to get orders for the next day, she was sure. She pretended to be asleep. She was so tired, her bones ached.
She was still tossing sleeplessly when the four of them returned. "But Colonel Sweetser promised Joe Ettor we could march to the cemetery!" Anna was saying as they came through the door, oblivious of the fact that Granny and the boys were asleep and Rosa was pretending to be.