Esther stared at her sister’s face. Rosa leaving a demonstration early? Impossible. She must be sick.
CHAPTER 2
Rosa
Rosa and Esther found seats in the last row of the bus. Their bare legs stuck to the vinyl and the air reeked of old socks. Rosa held the pack and flipped the frayed strap back and forth, echoing the drumbeat thumping through the open window. As the bus jerked away from the curb into traffic, cutting off a rusty VW bus with flower decals, Rosa searched the faces of the soldiers standing at attention along the edge of the park. One guy looked a little like Danny—the pointy chin. Could have been Danny, if things had gone differently. The uniforms whizzed by. Rosa closed her eyes. Woozy.
Esther rested her cheek on Rosa’s shoulder. “I hope Molly’s okay. I’ve never left her with the sitter for this long. I wish Jake and Allen had come with us today.”
Rosa frowned. As much as she loved him, she was glad Allen hadn’t come to the protest. He would have tried to stop her, and she felt good about their actions. They’d stopped the pigs from busting heads, at least for that moment. Allen was smart and savvy and active in the Black Panthers, but he preferred his battles in the courtroom rather than the streets.
And Jake was useless. Rosa turned to Esther. “Yeah. If someone had a diaper rash, Jake could help.”
“Don’t be mean.” Esther leaned back against the cracked vinyl seat and fanned herself with her T-shirt.
Rosa shrugged. Mean or not, it was the truth. Jake was hard to recognize these days. What happened to the guy who wanted to bring free healthcare to the poor? Why wasn’t he starting a free clinic, or at least volunteering with Maggie?
Fifteen minutes later, they were in Esther’s neighborhood. It felt a continent away from Kennedy Square, from everything that mattered. At the door to the apartment, the sour-faced babysitter thrust Molly into Esther’s arms.
“She refused the bottle,” the babysitter accused. “You should give her formula so she’s used to it. That’s what I did with my babies.”
Molly’s face was purple from screaming. She smelled yeasty, curdled. Rosa turned away, into the kitchen. She leaned over the sink and drank from the faucet, then splashed cold water over her face.
“Rosie,” Esther called from the living room. “Would you pay Mrs. B. for me? There’s cash on the dresser.”
Walking by the living room, Rosa watched Esther kiss Molly’s stinky neck, then lift her shirt and help the baby latch on.
“Poor Monkey,” Esther murmured. “You’re starving.”
Rosa found the money. Leaving the bedroom, she glanced into the little end room, once Esther’s studio. A dusty easel held an unfinished painting. Esther was letting her talent go to waste. Art could move people, change minds and goose them into action.
After Mrs. B left, Rosa stood in the doorway to the living room watching Esther stroke the wispy hair plastered to Molly’s scalp, rusty-red like Rosa’s.
“I’m famished,” Rosa said.
“There’s tuna. Make us sandwiches? And turn on the news.”
At the sound of her mother’s voice, Molly pulled away from the breast without letting go. Esther’s nipple glistened, pulled like taffy by Molly’s suck.
“Ouch, Molly. Stop it.”
Rosa turned away, toward the kitchen. No babies for her. She squeezed the tuna fish oil into a bowl for Mustard, Esther’s yellow kitten, then made sandwiches. They sat thigh to thigh in front of the television. Molly nursed. Esther ate. Mustard jumped onto Rosa’s lap and licked her sandwich, untouched on the arm of the sofa.
A young anchorman with outsized ears orchestrated the network coverage of the demonstration. Film clips of speeches alternated with live feed of confrontations between demonstrators and police at the end of the rally. Protesters thrust V-fingered peace signs out the half-open windows of the jail-bound buses.
“We shouldn’t have split early.” Rosa imagined herself leading chants from the front of the bus, talking to reporters, convincing ordinary citizens watching TV that the war was wrong. She missed the electric charge, the wonderful chaos.
“I’m glad we did,” Esther said. “What if we’d been busted?”
Rosa pointed to the screen. “Shush.”
Paramedics ran with a stretcher toward an ambulance. Lights flashed. An injured police officer, blanket tucked to his chin. A close-up of his helmet hooked on the IV pole, bumping up against the saline bottle. Someone led a horse away.
The reporter stood to the side. “On Grand River Avenue, a few blocks from the rally at Kennedy Square, demonstrators attacked mounted police officers. Officer Martin Steele lost control of his mount and was thrown. The officer is in serious condition at City Hospital with a spinal cord injury.”
“Demonstrators attacked the cops?” Rosa yelled at the television set. “What about cops cracking heads?” She picked up her sandwich and looked at it, then put it back down. Her stomach still didn’t feel right.
The anchorman introduced a wire service photographer who been eating at a restaurant on Grand River. “We bring you an exclusive interview to shed some light on the tragic consequences of today’s street fight.”
“Street fight?” Rosa grabbed two fistfuls of her hair in fury. “They were beating up unarmed citizens!”
“Did you see anyone taking photos?” Esther asked, switching Molly to the other breast.
“Shush.”
“I was at lunch when a skirmish developed between mounted police and demonstrators,” the photographer said. “I stood under the restaurant awning and took photos of the fighting. That’s when I noticed two curly-haired young women. A redhead and a brunette, acting furtive. When they threw the rocks, my camera was ready.”
“Furtive?” Esther asked.
“They weren’t rocks,” Rosa muttered.
His photograph filled Jake and Esther’s fifteen-inch television screen. Two young women with pale oval faces and electric hair. One with eyes squeezed closed. Each with one arm extended, fingers splayed, frozen in the act of letting go.
Neither sister spoke. Local coverage transitioned to international news. Soviet tanks swarmed the streets of Prague. Rosa felt dizzy.
Esther turned to her sister and touched her arm. “It’s worse than I thought,” she whispered. “What have we done?”
“Don’t think about it.” Rosa wiped a tear from Esther’s cheek with her thumb. She wanted to cry too, which was totally unlike her. But she wouldn’t cry. There was too much work to do.
“Don’t think about it? That cop is hurt. And it’s our fault. We hurt him.”
“They started the fighting. Besides, we can’t help him now. We’ve got to figure out how to proceed, how to make a plan. Like Pop taught us.”
“What about Mama and Pop?” Esther said. “They never miss the six o’clock news. They’ll be so freaked out. Should we call or go over?”
“You go,” Rosa said. “I need to talk to Allen. Strategize.”
“Why wasn’t Mr. Black Lefty Lawyer at the demonstration, anyway?”
“He’s in the middle of a trial. The Sanders case—that Haitian guy the cops beat up walking home from the store with a bag of baby formula? Allen says a court victory would make more difference than any march.” Rosa wasn’t sure she agreed with him about that—they had argued about it the night before. But Allen would know what to do about this.
“But our parents,” Esther pleaded. “Please come with me.”
Rosa shook her head. “Priorities. We have to move fast, before they bust us.”
“How will they know who we are?”
Rosa rolled her eyes. Sometimes Esther was so innocent. “Come on. We’re well known in this city. They’ll have an ID in an hour, if they don’t already. Take Molly and get out of here.” Rosa started toward the door, hesitated. She turned back, leaned over the couch, and put her arms around Esther and Molly. “It’ll be okay.”
“I’m scared,” Esther whispered. “What if that cop is hurt bad?”
“Wha
t about all the injured and slaughtered Vietnamese? Think about this as an opportunity to make people understand about the war.”
“You think about all that.” Esther turned her face away. “You go right ahead and plan strategy and write a press release. I have a diaper to change. Then, I have to face Mama and Pop alone.”
Rosa let herself out of the apartment and walked down the block to the bus stop. Maybe the cooler evening air would steady her stomach. She probably should have gone with Esther, but she couldn’t face their parents. Especially Pop.
Pop hadn’t always been so rigid, so negative. He used to be passionate about politics. His union’s Labor Day parade was Rosa’s earliest childhood memory. She must have been four or five, standing on the curb, marching in place and waving a small union flag. Pop was on the end of the front line, next to the fellow holding one pole of the large red banner: Shoemakers and Repairers Amalgamated. He swerved from formation and scooped Rosa up, leaving Esther bouncing on Mama’s lap on the lawn chair with unraveling green and gold plastic webbing. Rosa finished the parade on Pop’s shoulders, her cotton candy grin memorialized in a black and white photo with scalloped edges in the family photo album. Every year they went to the parade, and then the union picnic. When they got home, Pop would have a serious grown-up talk with his daughters about how the union was picnics and good wages now, but it wasn’t always so easy. About strikes and scabs. About his best friend, Bernie, interrogated and beaten by the union-busting cops until his heart gave out and he died in his jail cell.
At home, Allen was pacing back and forth in the living room, still in his courtroom clothes. The local news played in the background. He opened his arms and Rosa walked into his bear hug. Her throat swelled, ached with relief.
“Did you see us?”
He nodded, his beard rubbing against her hair. “You were hard to miss.”
“It was crazy. The pigs were cracking heads. We stopped them.” She pictured the woman in the Vietcong flag shirt, blood soaking the bright fabric.
He didn’t respond and Rosa leaned back to study his face. Sometimes Allen could be a bit of a fuddy-duddy. But he knew the law.
“Are we screwed?” she asked.
“I’m surprised they’re not here yet. You’ll probably be arrested tonight, both of you.” Allen kissed her forehead, then squeezed her harder. “I’ve been busted before. No big deal.”
Allen shook his head. “Assaulting a cop is different than spray painting slogans on university buildings.”
Fire flared in Rosa’s chest, warring with the wooziness and the doubts. “I feel bad that he got hurt, Allen, but we did it for the Vietnamese. If the DA charges us, if there’s a trial, we’ll talk about the war, how wrong it is. You’ll get someone really good from your firm to defend us. This could be an opportunity to educate people about what our government is doing over there.” Another wave of nausea stopped her words and she closed her eyes.
“Maybe.” Allen rested his face on the top of her head, so his words half-disappeared into her hair. “I hope so.”
CHAPTER 3
Esther
With Molly wrapped snug against her chest, Esther let herself into her parents’ overstuffed apartment. She sidestepped around the tall ceramic cylinder packed tight with umbrellas, Pop’s walking stick, and a fishing pole with the frayed line in knots. Mama always apologized about the crowding, sorry that they couldn’t afford a house, even after Pop opened his own shop. Whatever savings they managed were spent sending the girls east to camp every summer.
Esther lingered in the long hallway Pop called the gallery. Every inch of wall space was covered with images: childish drawings in plastic frames, art museum prints curling at the edges, Mexican bark paintings, and the intricate woodcuts of coal miners or farm workers that Bernie’s widow sent every Chanukah.
She stopped in front of her favorite painting, a framed print by an Italian artist she’d never heard of. Rows of grim-faced workers walked straight toward the viewer, like they meant business. In the front row, a barefoot woman in a long skirt carried an infant. Growing up, Esther liked to sit on the floor against the opposite wall, hugging her knees, and look up into the woman’s unwavering eyes.
Rosa used to tease that the woman was her fairy godmother. “If you love her so much, what’s her name?” Rosa asked when Esther was eight or nine. “Hannah,” Esther had answered, having no idea where the name came from. But it sounded strong, like a pioneer. Rosa laughed and made the cuckoo sign, pointer finger circling her ear. “Hannah’s not an Italian name,” Rosa said, but she didn’t rag Esther about her again.
Now, Esther touched Hannah’s determined chin. Did she worry that her baby would be hurt if their protest got violent? Did Hannah have someone—a mother or a husband or a sister—to watch the kid if she were arrested?
Who would take care of Molly, if she were arrested?
Forcing herself away from the painting, Esther paused at the kitchen. In March of third grade, when their grandmother Leah moved in, Pop pushed the sofa into the kitchen so Leah could use the living room as a bedroom. Leah took over the bathroom too, filling the bathtub with live carp to make fresh gefilte fish for Passover. When Rosa complained about having to wash up at the sink, Pop’s eyebrows bristled and he made them sit at the kitchen table and listen up. Grandma Leah was born in Russia, he said. When she was sixteen, her father was forced into the Czar’s army and there was no food. He starved to death and Leah joined a secret cell to overthrow the Czar. Her twin sister Tovah was frightened that she’d get the rest of the family killed, but Leah argued that the peasants should own their land. Tovah adored her sister and joined the group, standing guard while Leah and her friends printed anti-government leaflets.
“A printing press was as subversive as explosives,” Mama told them. “One night, the Czar’s guard caught Leah with pamphlets stuffed under her coat. It was February, freezing cold, just a few weeks before the Czar’s soldiers gunned down hundreds of protestors at the Winter Palace.”
“Wow,” Rosa had said.
“What happened to Grandma?” Esther asked.
Their grandmother was convicted of treason and exiled to Siberia. The girls loved the part of the story about how Tovah smuggled her sister out of the labor camp, in the bottom of a cart filled with firewood, pulled by their uncle’s nasty-tempered mule. Esther studied the world map on her classroom wall; there was no way they could have traveled that far by mule cart. But Mama insisted. “That’s how Leah came to America.”
“Your grandmother was a freedom fighter,” Pop said. “You should be proud.”
“Where’s Tovah now?” Esther asked in a small voice.
“There was typhus on the boat,” was all Mama said.
“We gave you Tovah as a middle name, in honor of her,” Pop added.
If only Grandma Leah were still alive. Maybe she could’ve helped explain to Mama and Pop what happened today. Esther rubbed Molly’s back through the wrap cloth and entered the living room where her parents sat in deep silence on the sofa. The blank television was still pinging as the tube cooled. Mama’s cheeks were shiny with tears.
“What were you thinking?” Pop asked without looking up. His hands lay in his lap, palms up, his arthritic fingers stiff and stained with shoe polish.
Esther stood facing her parents. “The cops were beating people. It was horrible and we had to do something.”
“The cops are often brutal,” Pop said. He looked up for a moment, then back down at his hands. “But I taught you girls to plan, to think, not to act crazy on some cockamamie impulse.”
Esther wanted to explain that she hadn’t wanted to do it either, that it was all Rosa’s fault. But the sisters always stood together. “Rosa thinks it’s an opportunity to educate people about Vietnam.”
“Rosa thinks? What do you think?” her mother interrupted, jabbing her finger toward Esther’s chest. “You have a baby. What about Molly?”
Esther hesitated. How would Rosa answer? “I
sn’t this what you guys always taught us?” she asked Pop. “When we see something wrong, don’t we have to fight to change it, to make things better? Like you did when you fought for your union?”
How could Pop not understand?
He shook his head, hard. “We taught you girls to anticipate the effect of your actions. Not to act like hoodlums, assaulting an officer.”
Molly squirmed and whimpered. Esther patted her back and jiggled side to side to comfort her.
“We didn’t mean to hurt anyone. We had to stop the cops from beating innocent people.” She wasn’t good at this. Rosa was the one who argued with Pop.
When she and Rosa were younger, their family was all on the same side. Mama and Pop sent them to Loon Lake Camp every year to enjoy New England summers with other kids from left-wing families, kids like Allen and Jake. But when Rosa started college, she began quarreling with Pop about everything, from the revolutionary potential of students versus workers, to black power and guerrilla theater tactics. Mama and Esther tried to make peace between them, but they failed and the arguments raged. These days, when they were all together, Esther tried to redirect dinner table conversation to Molly, to what she and Rosa had been like as babies. It rarely worked; instead Pop and Rosa continued to fill the room with their loud voices until Esther and Jake made excuses about Molly’s bedtime and escaped.
“Feh,” Mama said. “All you’ve done is hurt that policeman. And yourselves. And Molly.” She paused before adding, “Tell Jake I can watch the baby while he’s at the hospital.”
“We will do what we can to help,” Pop said. “But you’re in big trouble this time.” His fingers clenched and unclenched. “Unless Rosa’s lawyer boyfriend is pals with the judge.”
Pop’s right eye fluttered. Was that a wink, when he mentioned the judge? Esther searched her father’s face. Maybe secretly he was on their side, but couldn’t let Mama know because she was just too scared?
“We’ll call your cousin Joel,” Mama said. “He’s a lawyer downtown.”
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