Hungry Hearts
like healing oil over the bruises of my soul. The mere touch of that
woman's hand in mine so overwhelmed me, that I burst out crying in
the street.
The next morning I came to Miss Van Ness at her office. In those ten
years she had risen to a professorship. But I was not in the least
intimidated by her high office. I felt as natural in her presence as
if she were my own sister. I heard myself telling her the whole story
of my life, but I felt that even if I had not said a word she would
have understood all I had to say as if I had spoken. It was all so
unutterable, to find one from the other side of the world who was so
simply and naturally that miraculous thing--a friend. Just as contact
with Miss Whiteside had tied and bound all my thinking processes, so
Miss Van Ness unbound and freed me and suffused me with light.
I felt the joy of one breathing on the mountain-tops for the first
time. I looked down at the world below. I was changed and the world was
changed. My past was the forgotten night. Sunrise was all around me.
I went out from Miss Van Ness's office, singing a song of new life:
"America! I found America."
"THE FAT OF THE LAND"
In an air-shaft so narrow that you could touch the next wall with your
bare hands, Hanneh Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor's
window.
"Can you loan me your wash-boiler for the clothes?" she called.
Mrs. Pelz threw up the sash.
"The boiler? What's the matter with yours again? Didn't you tell
me you had it fixed already last week?"
"A black year on him, the robber, the way he fixed it! If you have
no luck in this world, then it's better not to live. There I spent
out fifteen cents to stop up one hole, and it runs out another. How I
ate out my gall bargaining with him he should let it down to fifteen
cents! He wanted yet a quarter, the swindler. Gottuniu! My bitter heart
on him for every penny he took from me for nothing!"
"You got to watch all those swindlers, or they'll steal the whites
out of your eyes," admonished Mrs. Pelz. "You should have tried
out your boiler before you paid him. Wait a minute till I empty out my
dirty clothes in a pillow-case; then I'll hand it to you."
Mrs. Pelz returned with the boiler and tried to hand it across to
Hanneh Breineh, but the soap-box refrigerator on the window-sill was in
the way.
"You got to come in for the boiler yourself," said Mrs. Pelz.
"Wait only till I tie my Sammy on to the high-chair he shouldn't
fall on me again. He's so wild that ropes won't hold him."
Hanneh Breineh tied the child in the chair, stuck a pacifier in his
mouth, and went in to her neighbor. As she took the boiler Mrs. Pelz
said:
"Do you know Mrs. Melker ordered fifty pounds of chicken for her
daughter's wedding? And such grand chickens! Shining like gold! My
heart melted in me just looking at the flowing fatness of those
chickens."
Hanneh Breineh smacked her thin, dry lips, a hungry gleam in her sunken
eyes.
"Fifty pounds!" she gasped. "It ain't possible. How do you
know?"
"I heard her with my own ears. I saw them with my own eyes. And she
said she will chop up the chicken livers with onions and eggs for an
appetizer, and then she will buy twenty-five pounds of fish, and cook
it sweet and sour with raisins, and she said she will bake all her
shtrudels on pure chicken fat."
"Some people work themselves up in the world," sighed Hanneh
Breineh. "For them is America flowing with milk and honey. In Savel
Mrs. Melker used to get shriveled up from hunger. She and her children
used to live on potato-peelings and crusts of dry bread picked out
from the barrels; and in America she lives to eat chicken, and apple
shtrudels soaking in fat."
"The world is a wheel always turning," philosophized Mrs.
Pelz. "Those who were high go down low, and those who've been
low go up higher. Who will believe me here in America that in Poland
I was a cook in a banker's house? I handled ducks and geese every
day. I used to bake coffee-cake with cream so thick you could cut it
with a knife."
"And do you think I was a nobody in Poland?" broke in Hanneh
Breineh, tears welling in her eyes as the memories of her past
rushed over her. "But what's the use of talking? In America
money is everything. Who cares who my father or grandfather was in
Poland? Without money I'm a living dead one. My head dries out
worrying how to get for the children the eating a penny cheaper."
Mrs. Pelz wagged her head, a gnawing envy contracting her features.
"Mrs. Melker had it good from the day she came," she said,
begrudgingly. "Right away she sent all her children to the
factory, and she began to cook meat for dinner every day. She and her
children have eggs and buttered rolls for breakfast each morning like
millionaires."
A sudden fall and a baby's scream, and the boiler dropped from Hanneh
Breineh's hands as she rushed into her kitchen, Mrs. Pelz after
her. They found the high-chair turned on top of the baby.
"Gewalt! Save me! Run for a doctor!" cried Hanneh Breineh, as she
dragged the child from under the high-chair. "He's killed! He's
killed! My only child! My precious lamb!" she shrieked as she ran
back and forth with the screaming infant.
Mrs. Pelz snatched little Sammy from the mother's hands.
"Meshugneh! What are you running around like a crazy, frightening
the child? Let me see. Let me tend to him. He ain't killed yet."
She hastened to the sink to wash the child's face, and discovered a
swelling lump on his forehead. "Have you a quarter in your house?"
she asked.
"Yes, I got one," replied Hanneh Breineh, climbing on a chair. "I
got to keep it on a high shelf where the children can't get it."
Mrs. Pelz seized the quarter Hanneh Breineh handed down to her.
"Now pull your left eyelid three times while I'm pressing the
quarter, and you'll see the swelling go down."
Hanneh Breineh took the child again in her arms, shaking and cooing
over it and caressing it.
"Ah-ah-ah, Sammy! Ah-ah-ah-ah, little lamb! Ah-ah-ah, little
bird! Ah-ah-ah-ah, precious heart! Oh, you saved my life; I thought he
was killed," gasped Hanneh Breineh, turning to Mrs. Pelz. "Oi-i!"
she sighed, "a mother's heart! Always in fear over her children.
The minute anything happens to them all life goes out of
me. I lose my head and I don't know where I am any more."
"No wonder the child fell," admonished Mrs. Pelz. "You should
have a red ribbon or red beads on his neck to keep away the evil
eye. Wait. I got something in my machine-drawer."
Mrs. Pelz returned, bringing the boiler and a red string, which she
tied about the child's neck while the mother proceeded to fill the
boiler.
A little later Hanneh Breineh again came into Mrs. Pelz's
kitchen, holding Sammy in one arm and in the other an apronful of
potatoes. Putting the child down on the floor, she seated herself on
the unmade kitchen-bed and began to peel the potatoes in her apron.
"Woe to me!" sobbed Hanneh Breineh. "To my bitter luck there
ain't no end. With all my other troubles, the stove got broke. I
lighted the fire to boil the clothes, and it's to get choked with
smoke. I paid rent only a week ago, and the agent don't want to fix
it. A thunder should strike him! He only comes for the rent, and if
anything has to be fixed, then he don't want to hear nothing.
"Why comes it to me so hard?" went on Hanneh Breineh, the tears
streaming down her cheeks. "I can't stand it no more. I came into
you for a minute to run away from my troubles. It's only when I sit
myself down to peel potatoes or nurse the baby that I take time to draw
a breath, and beg only for death."
Mrs. Pelz, accustomed to Hanneh Breineh's bitter outbursts, continued
her scrubbing.
"Ut!" exclaimed Hanneh Breineh, irritated at her neighbor's
silence, "what are you tearing up the world with your cleaning?
What's the use to clean up when everything only gets dirty
again?"
"I got to shine up my house for the holidays."
"You've got it so good nothing lays on your mind but to clean
your house. Look on this little blood-sucker," said Hanneh Breineh,
pointing to the wizened child, made prematurely solemn from starvation
and neglect. "Could anybody keep that brat clean? I wash him
one minute, and he is dirty the minute after." Little Sammy grew
frightened and began to cry. "Shut up!" ordered the mother, picking
up the child to nurse it again. "Can't you see me take a rest for
a minute?"
The hungry child began to cry at the top of its weakened lungs.
"Na, na, you glutton." Hanneh Breineh took out a dirty pacifier
from her pocket and stuffed it into the baby's mouth. The grave,
pasty-faced infant shrank into a panic of fear, and chewed the nipple
nervously, clinging to it with both his thin little hands.
"For what did I need yet the sixth one?" groaned Hanneh Breineh,
turning to Mrs. Pelz. "Wasn't it enough five mouths to feed? If
I didn't have this child on my neck, I could turn myself around
and earn a few cents." She wrung her hands in a passion of
despair. "Gottuniu! The earth should only take it before it grows
up!"
"Shah! Shah!" reproved Mrs. Pelz. "Pity yourself on the
child. Let it grow up already so long as it is here. See how frightened
it looks on you." Mrs. Pelz took the child in her arms and petted
it. "The poor little lamb! What did it done you should hate it so?"
Hanneh Breineh pushed Mrs. Pelz away from her.
"To whom can I open the wounds of my heart?" she moaned. "Nobody
has pity on me. You don't believe me, nobody believes me until
I'll fall down like a horse in the middle of the street. Oi weh! Mine
life is so black for my eyes! Some mothers got luck. A child gets run
over by a car, some fall from a window, some burn themselves up with
a match, some get choked with diphtheria; but no death takes mine
away."
"God from the world, stop cursing!" admonished Mrs. Pelz. "What
do you want from the poor children? Is it their fault that their father
makes small wages? Why do you let it all out on them?" Mrs. Pelz sat
down beside Hanneh Breineh. "Wait only till your children get old
enough to go to the shop and earn money," she consoled. "Push only
through those few years while they are yet small; your sun will begin
to shine; you will live on the fat of the land, when they begin to
bring you in the wages each week."
Hanneh Breineh refused to be comforted.
"Till they are old enough to go to the shop and earn money they'll
eat the head off my bones," she wailed. "If you only knew the
fights I got by each meal. Maybe I gave Abe a bigger piece of bread
than Fanny. Maybe Fanny got a little more soup in her plate than
Jake. Eating is dearer than diamonds. Potatoes went up a cent on a
pound, and milk is only for millionaires. And once a week, when I buy
a little meat for the Sabbath, the butcher weighs it for me like gold,
with all the bones in it. When I come to lay the meat out on a plate
and divide it up, there ain't nothing to it but bones. Before, he
used to throw me in a piece of fat extra or a piece of lung, but now
you got to pay for everything, even for a bone to the soup."
"Never mind; you'll yet come out from all your troubles. Just as
soon as your children get old enough to get their working papers the
more children you got, the more money you'll have."
"Why should I fool myself with the false shine of hope? Don't I
know it's already my black luck not to have it good in this world? Do
you think American children will right away give everything they earn
to their mother?"
"I know what is with you the matter," said Mrs. Pelz. "You
didn't eat yet to-day. When it is empty in the stomach, the whole
world looks black. Come, only let me give you something good to
taste in the mouth; that will freshen you up." Mrs. Pelz went to