Bread and Roses, Too (16 page)

It was obvious that Mr. Gerbati didn't own an automobile or even have access to a livery. Why couldn't they have gone home with their parade driver? Not this glum old man. The walk to the Gerbati house took only a few minutes, but Jake truly thought he might be frozen to the stone street before they got there. His shoes had never been much protection, but they were of no use at all here, and the wind went straight through the shirt and trousers the priest had given him.

Mr. Gerbati reached the house before the others, and he stood, waiting on the porch, stiff as a telegraph pole. The house was hard to make out in the dark, but it loomed large. They went inside, and Mr. Gerbati closed the door, took off his fedora, and hung it on a huge piece of furniture in the front hall. They followed him into a room off the hall to the right, where there were chairs, a couch, and a squat iron stove.

Mrs. Gerbati murmured something to her husband. He nodded curtly, thrust a heaping shovelful of coal into the stove, and stirred the fire, making the flame blaze up. The children looked at each other, their eyes wide in amazement. An entire shovelful of coal! And nearly bedtime, at that.

"Come, come close." Mrs. Gerbati motioned Jake toward the stove. She turned and said something in Italian to Rosa, which must have meant,
Doesn't your brother speak Italian?
because Rosa was smiling apologetically. "He wants to be only American," she said in English. "So he's forgotten all his Italian."

"Forgot?" Mrs. Gerbati shook her head sadly. "Must not forget, Salvatore, must not." It didn't seem the time to tell Mrs. Gerbati that he wanted to be called "Sal."

The old man hadn't said a word yet. He sat down in a large chair, lit a pipe, and watched as though he were at a performance of some sort as his wife bustled about. Rosa and Jake stood awkwardly, not speaking, not daring to look at the old man as their hostess disappeared into the kitchen. A few minutes later she reappeared with a tray of steaming cups. "Just a little
vino,
warm against the cold,
si?"

"
Grazie,
" Rosa said.

"
Grazie,
" Jake echoed, making the old woman beam with pleasure. He took the cup and held it, trying to steal some of its heat for his frozen fingers.

When Mrs. Gerbati took Rosa upstairs to go to bed, Jake had another moment of panic. They hadn't been expecting a boy, just a girl. Where would they put him? But he needn't have worried. There was a tiny room with a narrow bed off the kitchen. Mrs. Gerbati gave him a flannel shirt that must belong to her husband and told him to put it on. She left while he changed, and then came in and made up the bed with gleaming white sheets, quilts, even a pillow. He started to get under the covers. "No,
no, aspetta.
Wait!" She hurried into the kitchen and brought back some kind of long-handled contraption, which she rubbed up and down between the sheets. "Now," she said. "Is nice for you."

He sank into the comfort of the warm bed. Auto or no auto, the Gerbatis must be rich. This big house, a mattress beneath him, and soft, fat quilts on top of him. Soon, even his frozen feet began to tingle, and before he could worry about what might happen the next day or the next, he was fast asleep.

"Sal ... Sal, wake up."

His eyelids felt glued together. It took him a moment to remember where he was—floating, as he seemed to be, upon a heated cloud. He grunted and turned his back on the intrusion, but Rosa, curse her, persisted.

"It's Sunday."

"Go away."

"Mrs. Gerbati wants to take us to Mass. She says she owes it to Mamma to see we go."

"I ain't Catholic."

"You are as far as they know."

"Tell her I'm tired and I got to rest today."

"Yes, maybe that's better. I don't want you to pretend to be Catholic. You got too much sin on your soul to add that."

He sat up now. How would
she
know about Pa? "What do you mean?"

"Oh, Sal, you know perfectly well. You lie, you cheat, you steal. I don't know how many mortal sins—"

She was just guessing. She didn't know anything about that body in the shack. He shivered and slid back under the covers.

"You really don't look well. If you need anything, Mr. Gerbati has just gone to fetch his newspaper. He'll be right back."

Hell's bells.
He was hoping to have the house to himself. The rich old buzzard probably had a load of cash stashed under some mattress. That's what everyone said foreign-borns did, believing as they did that banks would steal their money. "I won't bother him none."

"We'll have breakfast when we get back—if you're up to eating."

He'd be up to eating, all right, just not up to trying to talk to the old man.

Rosa hadn't gone to confession, so she sat in the pew when Mrs. Gerbati went forward to receive the host. She should have been saying her Our Fathers, but instead she was trying to figure out what she could do about the boy ... Sal. The name didn't fit him in the least. He looked no more like a Salvatore than a pigeon. He didn't look Italian at all. He looked like an orphaned mill boy, probably not Irish, since he had no respect for Father O'Reilly, but native-born, with no religion at all, judging by his language. And why had he suddenly turned all funny? Yesterday on the train he'd acted as though he thought somebody was after him. The police? Had he done something so bad that the law was after him? If so, he wasn't the only one in trouble. Hadn't she helped him get away? That was as bad as doing the crime yourself, wasn't it? To help a criminal escape arrest? Her heart was thumping madly now. And Mamma had sent her up here so she would be safe.
Oh, Mamma, if you only knew.

How was she going to make him behave? He'd said he'd disappear as soon as they got off the train. He'd practically promised that she wouldn't have to put up with him any longer than the ride itself. And yet here they were, brother and sister in the Gerbatis' house. Mrs. Gerbati was so kind, but Mr. Gerbati ... It was obvious that he wanted little to do with her and even less to do with the boy.

Maybe she should have disowned him last night, refused to help when the man was checking the list. That's what, she now realized, she should have done. Then it would be someone else's problem—what to do with him. She wouldn't be caught in a web of lies and pretense and who knew what else.

What should she do? She was so mixed up. And here came sweet old Mrs. Gerbati down the aisle, smiling at her so kindly, so lovingly, so trustingly.

On the walk back to the house, Mrs. Gerbati explained apologetically that her husband didn't attend Mass. "
Socialisto,
" she said. "In Carrara the priest say he cannot be Catholic and socialist, too. So he choose. No more church. But good man, you see. Even is artist."

Rosa had thought all the men in Barre were granite workers. How could you be an artist, digging stone out of the ground? Maybe she'd misunderstood. She felt shy about asking. She didn't want Mrs. Gerbati to think she was doubting the woman's word about her husband.

After breakfast, which Sal, miraculously cured, was able to put away at an almost alarming rate, Mr. Gerbati went to the sitting room to read his morning paper. Once her husband was settled in his chair, Mrs. Gerbati took Jake by the arm. "Come, come," she said. "You, too, Rosa."

Through the open door, Mr. Gerbati looked up briefly from his paper but didn't speak, though Rosa thought for a minute he might.

"
Scusami, per favore,
" Rosa murmured. She followed Mrs. Gerbati out of the kitchen into the hall and up the wide flight of stairs and another narrower flight into what must be the attic. She'd read about attics in books, but she'd never actually been in one. It was amazing to see the size of this house in which only two elderly people lived.

The space was under the eaves of the house, lit poorly by a small window at one end. It was empty, except for a couple of trunks and a few wooden crates. Mrs. Gerbati went to one of the trunks and opened it. A strong woody smell filled the musty air. Kneeling beside the trunk, the woman felt about in the depths. She pulled out several garments, studying each, glancing at Sal, and then putting some back, some into a pile on the open trunk lid. Finally, she gathered up the pile in one arm and turned, still kneeling, toward the children. Rosa stared. There were tears on the old woman's face. Mrs. Gerbati wiped her face hastily with the tail of her apron. Then she gave a laugh and reached out her free hand toward Sal. "
Aiutami, per favore,
" she said.

"She needs your help to get up," Rosa whispered to the boy. "Give her your hand."

Sal pulled the old lady to her feet.

"Now," Mrs. Gerbati said, heading for the attic steps. "We see."

What Mrs. Gerbati wanted to see, it seemed, was whether the clothes she had taken out of the trunk would fit Sal. She bypassed the sitting room and led them directly into the kitchen. Then she sent Jake to his room with the armload and ordered him to try everything on. After he'd disappeared into his room, she went to the sink and began to fill a basin with a mixture of water from a kettle on the stove and water from the tap above the sink. Rosa hurried to the table to carry over the breakfast dishes—twice as many dishes for the four of them as the nine members of the Serutti-Jarusalis household would ever own, let alone use in one meal. It hurt her to think of her hungry family. If only she could send them a bit of the Gerbatis' food and a few shovelfuls of coal.

Soon Sal appeared at the door separating his room from the kitchen. He had on a wool cap and an oversized heavy wool overcoat. His face was hardly visible behind the coat's thick collar.

"Now, take off, let's see," Mrs. Gerbati ordered.

Sal took off the cap and unbuttoned the overcoat and put them down on a kitchen chair.

Rosa gasped. The boy was dressed finer than a mill owner's son in a wool suit with a white shirt underneath. The pants and sleeves of the suit were too long for him, but Mrs. Gerbati had already hurried over to kneel beside him and start to turn up the cuffs on the trousers. "I fix, I fix," she said. "Then perfect, yes?"

"
Che stai facendo?
" The cry from the opposite doorway made the children jump in fright. They hadn't even seen the little man until he shouted, a shout that sounded to Rosa less like an angry person than an animal in pain.

His wife turned and began to make soothing noises in Italian that even Rosa couldn't understand. Sal just stood there in his magnificent clothes, his eyes wide. Mrs. Gerbati stuck out her hand, so Rosa ran over to pull her to her feet. The old woman nodded her thanks and then went to the door and gently pushed her husband back into the front room, shutting the door behind her. Rosa and Sal were left staring at each other, unable to figure out what was being said on the other side of the wall except to know that it was one between a wounded man and a woman trying desperately to soothe him.

"What have we done?" Rosa said. "What have we done?"

"We ain't done nothing," Sal said. "It was her done it. I didn't ask for nothing. It was her fault."

"She did it
for
us, don't you see?"

After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened and Mrs. Gerbati returned. "Better to take off," she indicated the clothes. "Not so good. We buy new clothes for you tomorrow, yes?" Without another word, she returned to the sink and finished washing the last of the dishes, handing each dish to Rosa, who polished and repolished every piece.

It had been a glum morning. After his outburst, Mr. Gerbati returned to his chair in the sitting room and buried himself in his paper. But even worse in Rosa's mind was the change in Mrs. Gerbati. All the warmth had slipped away. She put away the clean dishes without talking or smiling—just a nod and a murmured
grazie
for Rosa's help. Then she went to sit in the front room herself, taking up some kind of sewing job. Through the open door, Rosa could see her glance up from time to time, sending a worried look in her husband's direction.

Sal reappeared, looking thin and drab in his own clothes, and plunked himself down at the kitchen table. Rosa sat across from him, fiddling with the fringe of the tablecloth that hung onto her lap. What had happened? She wanted to talk to Sal, but with the door to the sitting room wide open, she was afraid to speak aloud. She cleared her throat. He ignored her, seeming to study his chapped hands and grimy, broken fingernails.

"I think I'll go up to my room," she said finally. There was no answer, so she pushed back her chair and stood up. He didn't raise his head. "So," she said. "I guess I'll just go."

"Fine," he said. "Go."

"Okay. I'm going."

"
Hell's bells,
" he said in a voice too low to be heard in the next room. "Just get out of here, will you?"

Rosa bit her lip. She slipped from the kitchen into the hall to avoid passing through the sitting room, where the Gerbatis sat in grim silence.

She climbed the stairs and went into the room Mrs. Gerbati had fixed for her and shut the door. There was a lot of furniture for one person: a wide bed, a bureau with drawers, a washstand with a large white basin and tall pitcher, and a little rocker decorated with an embroidered cushion. There was a lace-curtained window that looked out onto the quiet street with its snow-covered yards and bushes and bare branches. It was a room all to herself, with no bedwetting little boys, and a bed that did not have to be shared with anyone. It should have been wonderful, but she had never felt so lonely in her life.
Oh, Mamma, why did you send me away?
She lay face down on the quilt and cried until the pillow was soaked.

"Rosa?" Mrs. Gerbati was tapping on the door.

Rosa sat up. "Yes?"

"Please to come in?"

Rosa wiped her face on the back of her hand. "Yes, yes, of course."

Mrs. Gerbati entered the room by degrees. First just her head, then her shoulders, and then finally she pushed the door open enough to get her whole body into the room.

"You cry,
povera bambina.
Please, no cry, no cry." She came over to the bed and stroked Rosa's hair and then her cheek, as though to wipe away her tears, ignoring the ones streaking her own face.