Bellagrand

“Can’t help her now,” he said, pulling Gina under the table.

“Angela!” Gina shouted, hoarse, out of breath. Angela didn’t hear.

Big Bill reappeared with great force. He pushed his way past the sticks of the police and confronted Harry. “Come with me,” he yelled, grabbing Harry’s arm. “We need your help.”

“I can’t, Bill,” Harry shouted back, pulling away. “My wife.”

Bill didn’t even glance at Gina. “She’ll be fine. She’s safer than the rest of us. Come quick. Vandalism in the grocery store—the coppers are about to arrest Arturo. I need your silver tongue. Come! Quick.”

Harry stared desperately at Gina. “Go, Harry,” she said. “Go with Bill. Go help Angie.”

“I’ll be right back,” he said—and was swallowed up by Big Bill and the mob.

Under the table she curled into a ball, covered her head and closed her eyes. She lay on the dead January grass in a fetal position, facing away from the mob, facing toward the church, praying it would help, that anything would. A gaggle of people caught in the clash barreled in under the table after her. The narrow table was knocked over, the legs broke apart, it fell on their heads, on Gina’s. There was only screaming.

Behind her there was the sound of assault, fists meeting faces, sticks meeting bodies, black panic, wild confusion. She imagined Milan, long ago, her revered brother Alessandro, hot-headed, impulsive, mule-stubborn, beautiful, dead, vile unrest, horses, policemen, stampede, a knife flying out, a life snuffed out, one life, then another. For who could live bearing the weight of your child’s last moment. Her father couldn’t.

Popping sounds. Shots? Everybody really screamed. She kept her head covered. More firecracker noise, perhaps return fire? Gina squeezed shut her eyes. Harry, Harry, come back to me, please. Legs, boots, feet, bottoms of coats whooshing by, people falling. She was shoved hard in the back by someone trying to get up, someone else stepped on her ankle trying to get away. Still in a fetal position, she put one hand on her head and the other on her stomach to protect the fragile life barely forming. Another boot landed on her head, on her knuckles. Man, woman? She couldn’t even stand up in her blind terror.

“Get your fucking head off the ground, lady! Or you’ll get your skull bashed in! Get off the ground!”

Harry, Harry?

It wasn’t Harry. She was yanked into a standing position by a man. People running everywhere. Tent stakes violently pulled from the ground. People tripping over them, heavy gray canvas falling on their heads. The man who helped her up looked down at the ground at her feet and said, “Lady, are you shot? You’re bleeding!” The last thing she thought before fainting was that Harry was going to be so upset she hadn’t stayed under the table.

Seven

WHEN SHE CAME TO, she was in her bed. No Harry, no Arturo, no Joe, no Angela. Only her mother sitting by her side, silently crying. Her mother and Salvo!

“Salvo?” Gina was so happy for a moment. She raised her hand to reach for him.

“Why doesn’t anybody ever listen to me?” Mimoo said, sobbing into her rosary beads. Her arthritis and tears prevented her from counting them properly. She kept rolling them around between her barely mobile fingers.

“How are you feeling, sorella?” Salvo said, the hat in his hands twitching.

“Where’s Harry?” Gina reached down to touch her stomach. “Is he all right? What’s happened?”

Salvo got up and left the bedroom before Mimoo could speak.

Mimoo shook her head. “He’s not all right,” she said. “Things are as bad as can be, child. Harry, Arturo, Joe have all been arrested. Along with dozens of others.” She sobbed in a prayer. “They’re about to be charged with murder.”

“Murder? What murder? Harry too?”

Mimoo cried louder. “Our precious angel, Angela. Your cousin. Like your sister. Gone. Struck down. Stray bullet. Right to the heart. Oh!”

Santa Maria, prega per noi peccattori.

Gina tried to stand up.

“Stop it, lie down,” Mimoo said. “You’re still bleeding, it’s not safe for you, you’re sick, lie down.”

She would not lie down. “Bleeding, why?”

Her mother wouldn’t answer her.

“Mimoo? Salvo!”

“Don’t call him. He can’t speak to you.”

“Salvo!”

“You lost your baby, Gia, my child. Nessuna sofferenza, ma la vita eterna.”

Now Gina didn’t want to speak to anyone. Clutching her stomach, she turned away. Where is Harry, she whispered, but no one heard. I need my husband.

Salvo was so upset, he couldn’t come back into the room to comfort her. Mumbling a few indecipherables from the door, he left, ran.

No one knew what had happened. In the commotion, shots ringing out, Angela was dragged inside a shop, everyone thought for safety. The police opened fire, fearing they had been fired upon. Perhaps she had already been shot before she was pulled inside the grocery store. No one could say for certain, but when the crowd had dispersed, Angela’s blood flowed in the streets and Arturo and Joe had been arrested. They had been nowhere near Essex Street, nowhere near Angela. But because they were Wobblies, they were charged with conspiracy to incite a riot—in other words with a felony that resulted in a woman’s death. That was murder. If convicted they faced execution.

No one saw Angela get hit or fall. No one heard the shot that pierced her heart. There were dozens of injured people on the ground, but only one of them lay dead, shot through the chest. Angela was twenty-eight years old, though all the papers later said Annie LoPizo was thirty, not knowing that Angela Tartaro had long ago lied about her age when she first came to America from Sicily so she could get the job that eventually claimed her life.

Angela’s life wasn’t the only one claimed. For days blood seeped out onto the starched white sheets of Gina’s bed.

Bill kept the strike going as long as he could, but a few weeks after Angela’s death, it ended. It took sixty-three days, fifty thousand women, one dead woman and one lost baby. American Woolen agreed to all the demands, and the women returned to work without a contract in mid-March.

Everybody but Angela.

Eight

JOE AND ARTURO WERE held without bail. Because Harry was not a member of the IWW, he was charged with a lesser crime of assault and destruction of private property. Bail was set against him, bail that no one could pay.

It took Gina a little while to get herself together to go see Harry in the Lawrence city jail. She couldn’t face him. She finally went because she dreaded the questions he might otherwise ask. What took you so long to get here? You’re my wife, why didn’t you come?

He said nothing. He couldn’t look at her. He didn’t reach for her across the table, he didn’t speak to her, offered no words of comfort or remonstration. He just sat, and she sat. She was too afraid she would cry so she held her tongue and kept her mouth shut. His inscrutable gray eyes were focused on anything but her.

“Are you all right?” he finally said. His voice was raspy.

Shrugging, she nodded, but didn’t trust her voice.

“Can I get out?”

“I don’t know how,” she said. “We don’t have the money for bail.”

“Can we collect some? It’s just a loan.”

“It’s five hundred dollars, Harry.”

“It’s temporary. Just get me out of here.”