Bread and Roses, Too by Katherine Paterson

they don't kill now?
Dio mio,
don't they have no heart?"
    Rosa, standing against the open bedroom door, was trembling so hard she put out one hand to steady herself on the frame. Mrs. Marino was right. Who wouldn't they shoot or stab? That day she'd followed Mamma to the march, she had seen the fear in the Harvard boys' eyes—like stray dogs cornered in an alley. They'd attack if they felt threatened. And they would blame the strikers. The lucky ones, like Joe O'Brien's snowballers, might go to jail for a year—the rest, like Joe Ettor, were likely to be hanged.
    How could Mamma believe for one minute that the strikers could win? Maybe, as Mamma claimed, they didn't plant the dynamite or attack the trolleys, but they would soon. They were cornered and desperate, too. Already black hands had appeared on the doors of scabbing workers. You didn't have to be Italian to know the meaning of a black hand painted on your door. Why, even here in their own home, there was talk of kitchen knives.
    Anxiously, she scanned the faces in the room. The women weren't all close neighbors. They weren't even all Italian. Suppose—the thought chilled her—just suppose there were a spy among them? Joe Ettor and Mr. Giovannitti were in jail for murder, but they hadn't even been near Garden and Union and the two of them were always pleading, "No violence." What of women who talked openly of kitchen knives as long as their arms? What of a woman in whose kitchen such words had been spoken?
Oh, Mamma, Mamma, don't be such a fool. There is no winning. Only death.
Her heart was pounding so hard against her ribs that she was in pain from it.
    "Anna, Marija," Mamma was saying. "Go to Chabis Hall. See if there is soup tonight. We need our strength, eh?"
    Had Mamma forgotten there were troops all over everywhere, with orders to shoot to kill? Was she out of her mind? Rosa couldn't help herself. "No!" The word came out in a squeak. "Mamma, no! Don't make them go to the hall. They'll get killed!"
    "Oh, Rosina," Mamma said. "They big girls. They know how to behave." And Anna and Marija were gone almost before she had finished the sentence.
    Mamma came over to where Rosa stood crying by the door. She put her arms around Rosa's shaking body, "Shh, shh." She began rubbing Rosa's back, murmuring to her so low that the women around the kitchen table couldn't hear her. "Shh, shh. Don' be so 'fraid,
bambina.
I don' send your sister out to die. I send her to find can we eat tonight. Soldier, or no soldier, we gotta eat, eh? Is there bread in this house? I don' see none. Do you? So what we do? Sit like scared rabbit in our kitchen and shake and starve? We can't do that, eh? Now, go wash your face and read your book or something. We be all right, you see."
    Rosa went to the toilet in the hall. It stank to high heaven, but it was the only private place in her world. She sat down on the seat without pulling up her dress and let out the sobs that had been building up ever since the first riot alarms had rung. It seemed like years. It was hardly three weeks. But it would go on forever. She would always be hungry and cold and afraid. She was sure of it.

    She was back in the front room lying on her bed when she heard the big girls rattling up the staircase outside. They burst through her door and ran into the kitchen without even stopping to close the door behind them. "They're coming, Mamma, they're coming!"
    "Who?"
    "What she say?"
    All the women in the kitchen were on their feet, crowding around the girls for the news.
    Rosa got up to close the door, one ear toward the other room. Despite everything, she had to hear what had happened.
    "Mrs. Gurley Flynn and Big Bill! They're coming back. The strike committee wants them to lead the strike while Joe Ettor's in jail."
    "
Santa Maria! Grazie, grazie.
"
    The strike would go on. The union was making sure that it would. And how many more would die?

An Unexpected Bath
    She was coming back! Mrs. Gurley Flynn and the one they