Hungry Hearts
the cupboard and brought out the saucepan of gefuelte fish that she
had cooked for dinner and placed it on the table in front of Hanneh
Breineh. "Give a taste my fish," she said, taking one slice on a
spoon, and handing it to Hanneh Breineh with a piece of bread. "I
wouldn't give it to you on a plate because I just cleaned up my
house, and I don't want to dirty up more dishes."
"What, am I a stranger you should have to serve me on a plate yet!"
cried Hanneh Breineh, snatching the fish in her trembling fingers.
"Oi weh! How it melts through all the bones!" she exclaimed,
brightening as she ate. "May it be for good luck to us all!" she
exulted, waving aloft the last precious bite.
Mrs. Pelz was so flattered that she even ladled up a spoonful of gravy.
"There is a bit of onion and carrot in it," she said, as she handed
it to her neighbor.
Hanneh Breineh sipped the gravy drop by drop, like a connoisseur
sipping wine.
"Ah-h-h! A taste of that gravy lifts me up to heaven!" As she
disposed leisurely of the slice of onion and carrot she relaxed and
expanded and even grew jovial. "Let us wish all our troubles on the
Russian Czar! Let him burst with our worries for rent! Let him get
shriveled with our hunger for bread! Let his eyes dry out of his head
looking for work!
"Shah! I'm forgetting from everything," she exclaimed, jumping
up. "It must be eleven or soon twelve, and my children will be
right away out of school and fall on me like a pack of wild wolves. I
better quick run to the market and see what cheaper I can get for a
quarter."
Because of the lateness of her coming, the stale bread at the nearest
bakeshop was sold out, and Hanneh Breineh had to trudge from shop to
shop in search of the usual bargain, and spent nearly an hour to save
two cents.
In the meantime the children returned from school, and, finding the
door locked, climbed through the fire-escape, and entered the house
through the window. Seeing nothing on the table, they rushed to the
stove. Abe pulled a steaming potato out of the boiling pot, and so
scalded his fingers that the potato fell to the floor; where upon the
three others pounced on it.
"It was my potato," cried Abe, blowing his burned fingers, while
with the other hand and his foot he cuffed and kicked the three who
were struggling on the floor. A wild fight ensued, and the potato was
smashed under Abe's foot amid shouts and screams. Hanneh Breineh,
on the stairs, heard the noise of her famished brood, and topped their
cries with curses and invectives.
"They are here already, the savages! They are here already to shorten
my life! They heard you all over the hall, in all the houses around!"
The children, disregarding her words, pounced on her market-basket,
shouting ravenously: "Mamma, I'm hungry! What more do you got to
eat?"
They tore the bread and herring out of Hanneh Breineh's basket and
devoured it in starved savagery, clamoring for more.
"Murderers!" screamed Hanneh Breineh, goaded beyond endurance.
"What are you tearing from me my flesh? From where should
I steal to give you more? Here I had already a pot of potatoes and a
whole loaf of bread and two herrings, and you swallowed it down in the
wink of an eye. I have to have Rockefeller's millions to fill your
stomachs."
All at once Hanneh Breineh became aware that Benny was missing. "Oi
weh!" she burst out, wringing her hands in a new wave of woe,
"where is Benny? Didn't he come home yet from school?"
She ran out into the hall, opened the grime-coated window, and looked
up and down the street; but Benny was nowhere in sight.
"Abe, Jake, Fanny, quick, find Benny!" entreated Hanneh Breineh, as
she rushed back into the kitchen. But the children, anxious to snatch a
few minutes' play before the school-call, dodged past her and hurried
out.
With the baby on her arm, Hanneh Breineh hastened to the kindergarten.
"Why are you keeping Benny here so long?" she shouted at the
teacher as she flung open the door. "If you had my bitter heart,
you would send him home long ago and not wait till I got to come for
him."
The teacher turned calmly and consulted her record-cards.
"Benny Safron? He wasn't present this morning."
"Not here?" shrieked Hanneh Breineh. "I pushed him out myself
he should go. The children didn't want to take him, and I had no
time. Woe is me! Where is my child?" She began pulling her hair and
beating her breast as she ran into the street.
Mrs. Pelz was busy at a pushcart, picking over some spotted apples,
when she heard the clamor of an approaching crowd. A block off she
recognized Hanneh Breineh, her hair disheveled, her clothes awry,
running toward her with her yelling baby in her arms, the crowd
following.
"Friend mine," cried Hanneh Breineh, falling on Mrs. Pelz's
neck, "I lost my Benny, the best child of all my children." Tears
streamed down her red, swollen eyes as she sobbed. "Benny! mine
heart, mine life! Oi-i-i!"
Mrs. Pelz took the frightened baby out of the mother's arms.
"Still yourself a little! See how you're frightening your child."
"Woe to me! Where is my Benny? Maybe he's killed already by a
car. Maybe he fainted away from hunger. He didn't eat nothing all day
long. Gottuniu! Pity yourself on me!"
She lifted her hands full of tragic entreaty.
"People, my child! Get me my child! I'll go crazy out of my
head! Get me my child, or I'll take poison before your eyes!"
"Still yourself a little!" pleaded Mrs. Pelz.
"Talk not to me!" cried Hanneh Breineh, wringing her hands.
"You're having all your children. I lost mine. Every good
luck comes to other people. But I didn't live yet to see a good day
in my life. Mine only joy, mine Benny, is lost away from me."
The crowd followed Hanneh Breineh as she wailed through the streets,
leaning on Mrs. Pelz. By the time she returned to her house the
children were back from school; but seeing that Benny was not there,
she chased them out in the street, crying:
"Out of here, you robbers, gluttons! Go find Benny!" Hanneh
Breineh crumpled into a chair in utter prostration. "Oi weh! he's
lost! Mine life; my little bird; mine only joy! How many nights I
spent nursing him when he had the measles! And all that I suffered for
weeks and months when he had the whooping-cough! How the eyes went out
of my head till I learned him how to walk, till I learned him how to
talk! And such a smart child! If I lost all the others, it wouldn't
tear me so by the heart."
She worked herself up into such a hysteria, crying, and tearing her
hair, and hitting her head with her knuckles, that at last she fell
into a faint. It took some time before Mrs. Pelz, with the aid of
neighbors, revived her.
"Benny, mine angel!" she moaned as she opened her eyes.
Just then a policeman came in with the lost Benny.
"Na, na, here you got him already!" said Mrs. Pelz. "Why did you
carry on so for nothing? Why did you tear up the world like a crazy?"
The child's face was streaked with tears as he cowered, frightened
and forlorn. Hanneh Breineh sprang toward him, slapping his cheeks,
boxing his ears, before the neighbors could rescue him from her.
"Woe on your head!" cried the mother. "Where did you lost
yourself? Ain't I got enough worries on my head than to go around
looking for you? I didn't have yet a minute's peace from that child
since he was born!"
"See a crazy mother!" remonstrated Mrs. Pelz, rescuing Benny from
another beating. "Such a mouth! With one breath she blesses him
when he is lost, and with the other breath she curses him when he is
found."
Hanneh Breineh took from the window-sill a piece of herring covered
with swarming flies, and putting it on a slice of dry bread, she filled
a cup of tea that had been stewing all day, and dragged Benny over to
the table to eat.
But the child, choking with tears, was unable to touch the food.
"Go eat!" commanded Hanneh Breineh. "Eat and choke yourself
eating!"
* * * * *
"Maybe she won't remember me no more. Maybe the servant won't
let me in," thought Mrs. Pelz, as she walked by the brownstone
house on Eighty-Fourth Street where she had been told Hanneh Breineh
now lived. At last she summoned up enough courage to climb the
steps. She was all out of breath as she rang the bell with trembling
fingers. "Oi weh! even the outside smells riches and plenty! Such
curtains! And shades on all windows like by millionaires! Twenty years
ago she used to eat from the pot to the hand, and now she lives in such
a palace."
A whiff of steam-heated warmth swept over Mrs. Pelz as the door opened,
and she saw her old friend of the tenements dressed in silk and
diamonds like a being from another world.
"Mrs. Pelz, is it you!" cried Hanneh Breineh, overjoyed at the
sight of her former neighbor. "Come right in. Since when are you back
in New York?"
"We came last week," mumbled Mrs. Pelz, as she was led into a
richly carpeted reception-room.
"Make yourself comfortable. Take off your shawl," urged Hanneh
Breineh.
But Mrs. Pelz only drew her shawl more tightly around her, a keen sense
of her poverty gripping her as she gazed, abashed by the luxurious
wealth that shone from every corner.
"This shawl covers up my rags," she said, trying to hide her shabby
sweater.
"I'll tell you what; come right into the kitchen," suggested
Hanneh Breineh. "The servant is away for this afternoon, and we can
feel more comfortable there. I can breathe like a free person in my
kitchen when the girl has her day out."
Mrs. Pelz glanced about her in an excited daze. Never in her life
had she seen anything so wonderful as a white-tiled kitchen, with its
glistening porcelain sink and the aluminum pots and pans that shone
like silver.
"Where are you staying now?" asked Hanneh Breineh, as she pinned an
apron over her silk dress.
"I moved back to Delancey Street, where we used to live," replied
Mrs. Pelz, as she seated herself cautiously in a white enameled chair.
"Oi weh! What grand times we had in that old house when we were
neighbors!" sighed Hanneh Breineh, looking at her old friend with
misty eyes.
"You still think on Delancey Street? Haven't you more high-class
neighbors uptown here?"
"A good neighbor is not to be found every day," deplored
Hanneh Breineh. "Uptown here, where each lives in his own house,
nobody cares if the person next door is dying or going crazy from
loneliness. It ain't anything like we used to have it in Delancey
Street, when we could walk into one another's rooms without knocking,
and borrow a pinch of salt or a pot to cook in."
Hanneh Breineh went over to the pantry-shelf.
"We are going to have a bite right here on the kitchen-table like on
Delancey Street. So long there's no servant to watch us we can eat
what we please."
"Oi! How it waters my mouth with appetite, the smell of the herring
and onion!" chuckled Mrs. Pelz, sniffing the welcome odors with
greedy pleasure.
Hanneh Breineh pulled a dish-towel from the rack and threw one end of
it to Mrs. Pelz.
"So long there's no servant around, we can use it together for
a napkin. It's dirty, anyhow. How it freshens up my heart to see
you!" she rejoiced as she poured out her tea into a saucer. "If you
would only know how I used to beg my daughter to write for me a letter
to you; but these American children, what is to them a mother's
feelings?"
"What are you talking!" cried Mrs. Pelz. "The whole world rings
with you and your children. Everybody is envying you. Tell me how began
your luck?"
"You heard how my husband died with consumption," replied Hanneh
Breineh. "The five hundred dollars lodge money gave me the first
lift in life, and I opened a little grocery store. Then my son Abe