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fast.
    "Hey, I'm talking to you." The boy skipped to catch up. "Where you going to picket today?"
    "I gotta go to the hall and get me orders," Jake growled.
    "Can I go, too?"
    "Strikes ain't child's play." He left Joe standing in the street staring after him with a look that could only mean respect on his wide face.
    Jake sniffed. He was somebody. A striker. A real man.

    Sunday dawned gray and snowy. The whole household was up and stirring. Rosa rolled over to the middle of the bed. It was still warm in the trough left by Granny J.'s body. She didn't want to get out of bed. The flat would be cold—there was barely enough money to buy coal to cook with and certainly not enough to make the stove warm enough to heat the apartment. She pulled her clothes up from where she kept them at the bottom of the bed and put them on under the covers—all but her worn shoes. She remembered the strange boy in the trash heap and smiled in spite of herself. She had been very brave that night, hadn't she? A little crazy, but really quite brave. And she had done a good deed—not one she could ever brag about, but it
was
a good deed, bringing that poor boy in out of the cold.
    She made her morning trip to the toilet down the hall, holding her nose against the stench. The landlord—who was, in fact, Mr. Billy Wood, although, of course, he had an agent to oversee the tenements—was supposed to keep the toilets working well, but none of them did. At least the tap water was still running in the kitchen sink. The pipe hadn't frozen yet.
    "Well, good morning, Mees Sleepy One," Mrs. J. said when Rosa appeared at the kitchen door. The women were clustered around the kitchen table, Mrs. J. and Granny had the two chairs, and Mamma the stool. Ricci was clinging to a rung of the stool, as though he didn't trust his thin, little legs. Anna and Marija were leaning against the wall eating their bread and molasses. Rosa couldn't tell if anyone had bothered to go to early Mass. Was this what happened when people went on strike? They forgot everything else, God included?
    "Oh, Rosa," Anna said. "You should have been there! Joe Ettor is the handsomest man you've ever seen."
    Marija giggled.
    "He went to all the halls and talked to everyone about the strike! It was so exciting."
    "He talk good Italian," Mamma said. "Better than me." She gave a laugh that ended in a cough.
    "No good Liduanian," said Mrs. J. "But no matter—very good look." She winked at Anna, who smiled, and at Marija, who blushed as though someone had mentioned a sweetheart.
    "Then how he speak to you?" Mamma asked.
    "He speak English, Mr. Aidas do same word in Liduanian. Very good speak. Everyone yell big."
    Rosa could tell no one was thinking of going to Mass. "Here, Rosa—" Mamma got up from the stool, Ricci grabbing at her skirt. "Here, Rosa, eat your bread."
    "I can't eat yet," Rosa said. "I'm going to Mass, but I guess no one else is."
    She hadn't meant for the words to come out quite so prissily. It was almost Miss Finch's voice in her mouth, only Miss Finch, not being Catholic, wouldn't be talking about Mass. She thought that Catholicism was almost as bad as atheism.
    "Granny J. went to Mass," Marija said. "The priest just yelled about strikers, so Ma and I decided not to go."
    "We go with you, Rosa," Mamma said. "Father Milanese, he not like Father O'Reilly, he on our side. Come on, Anna, we take Communion with our Rosa." She picked up Ricci, who clutched her around the neck.
    "But you've already eaten breakfast—" Rosa was alarmed at Mamma's impiety. "You can't take Communion—"
    "I think God don' call bite of stale bread and smear of molasses real food, and what do priest know?"
    Why had she brought up the subject of Mass? The mood Mamma was in, she didn't seem to care if she damned her soul to everlasting fire.
    Father Milanese didn't condemn the strike. The owners were being unreasonable, he said, speeding up machines to make more profit while cutting wages. Mamma nodded her