Hungry Hearts
enough to lift us to America. Only one hundred little rubles."
"A hundred rubles? Pfui!" sniffed the pawnbroker. "Forty is
overpaid. Not even thirty is it worth."
But coaxing and cajoling my mother got a hundred rubles out of him.
* * * * *
Steerage--dirty bundles--foul odors--seasick humanity--but I saw and
heard nothing of the foulness and ugliness around me. I floated in
showers of sunshine; visions upon visions of the new world opened
before me.
From lips to lips flowed the golden legend of the golden country:
"In America you can say what you feel--you can voice your thoughts in
the open streets without fear of a Cossack."
"In America is a home for everybody. The land is your land. Not like
in Russia where you feel yourself a stranger in the village where you
were born and raised--the village in which your father and grandfather
lie buried."
"Everybody is with everybody alike, in America. Christians and Jews
are brothers together."
"An end to the worry for bread. An end to the fear of the bosses over
you. Everybody can do what he wants with his life in America."
"There are no high or low in America. Even the President holds hands
with Gedalyeh Mindel."
"Plenty for all. Learning flows free like milk and honey."
* * * * *
"Learning flows free."
The words painted pictures in my mind. I saw before me free schools,
free colleges, free libraries, where I could learn and learn and keep
on learning.
In our village was a school, but only for Christian children. In the
schools of America I'd lift up my head and laugh and dance--a child
with other children. Like a bird in the air, from sky to sky, from star
to star, I'd soar and soar.
"Land! Land!" came the joyous shout.
"America! We're in America!" cried my mother, almost smothering
us in her rapture.
All crowded and pushed on deck. They strained and stretched to get the
first glimpse of the "golden country," lifting their children on
their shoulders that they might see beyond them.
Men fell on their knees to pray. Women hugged their babies and
wept. Children danced. Strangers embraced and kissed like old
friends. Old men and women had in their eyes a look of young people
in love.
Age-old visions sang themselves in me--songs of freedom of an oppressed
people.
America!--America!
Part II
Between buildings that loomed like mountains, we struggled with our
bundles, spreading around us the smell of the steerage. Up Broadway,
under the bridge, and through the swarming streets of the ghetto, we
followed Gedalyeh Mindel.
I looked about the narrow streets of squeezed-in stores and houses,
ragged clothes, dirty bedding oozing out of the windows, ash-cans and
garbage-cans cluttering the side-walks. A vague sadness pressed down my
heart--the first doubt of America.
"Where are the green fields and open spaces in America?" cried my
heart. "Where is the golden country of my dreams?"
A loneliness for the fragrant silence of the woods that lay beyond our
mud hut welled up in my heart, a longing for the soft, responsive earth
of our village streets. All about me was the hardness of brick and
stone, the stinking smells of crowded poverty.
"Here's your house with separate rooms like in a palace."
Gedalyeh Mindel flung open the door of a dingy, airless flat.
"Oi weh!" my mother cried in dismay. "Where's the sunshine in
America?"
She went to the window and looked out at the blank wall of the next
house. "Gottuniu! Like in a grave so dark ..."
"It ain't so dark, it's only a little shady." Gedalyeh Mindel
lighted the gas. "Look only"--he pointed with pride to the dim
gaslight. "No candles, no kerosene lamps in America, you turn on a
screw and put to it a match and you got it light like with sunshine."
Again the shadow fell over me, again the doubt of America!
In America were rooms without sunlight, rooms to sleep in, to eat in,
to cook in, but without sunshine. And Gedalyeh Mindel was happy. Could
I be satisfied with just a place to sleep and eat in, and a door to
shut people out--to take the place of sunlight? Or would I always need
the sunlight to be happy?
And where was there a place in America for me to play? I looked out
into the alley below and saw pale-faced children scrambling in the
gutter. "Where is America?" cried my heart.
* * * * *
My eyes were shutting themselves with sleep. Blindly, I felt for the
buttons on my dress, and buttoning I sank back in sleep again--the
deadweight sleep of utter exhaustion.
"Heart of mine!" my mother's voice moaned above me. "Father is
already gone an hour. You know how they'll squeeze from you a nickel
for every minute you're late. Quick only!"
I seized my bread and herring and tumbled down the stairs and out
into the street. I ate running, blindly pressing through the hurrying
throngs of workers--my haste and fear choking each mouthful.
I felt a strangling in my throat as I neared the sweatshop prison;
all my nerves screwed together into iron hardness to endure the day's
torture.
For an instant I hesitated as I faced the grated window of the old
dilapidated building--dirt and decay cried out from every crumbling
brick.
In the maw of the shop, raging around me the roar and the clatter,
the clatter and the roar, the merciless grind of the pounding
machines. Half maddened, half deadened, I struggled to think, to feel,
to remember--what am I--who am I--why was I here?
I struggled in vain--bewildered and lost in a whirlpool of noise.
"America--America--where was America?" it cried in my heart.
The factory whistle--the slowing-down of the machines--the shout of
release hailing the noon hour.
I woke as from a tense nightmare--a weary waking to pain.
In the dark chaos of my brain reason began to dawn. In my stifled
heart feelings began to pulse. The wound of my wasted life began to
throb and ache. My childhood choked with drudgery--must my youth too
die--unlived?
The odor of herring and garlic--the ravenous munching of food--laughter
and loud, vulgar jokes. Was it only I who was so wretched? I looked
at those around me. Were they happy or only insensible to their
slavery? How could they laugh and joke? Why were they not torn with
rebellion against this galling grind--the crushing, deadening movements
of the body, where only hands live and hearts and brains must die?
A touch on my shoulder. I looked up. It was Yetta Solomon from the
machine next to mine.
"Here's your tea."
I stared at her, half hearing.
"Ain't you going to eat nothing?"
"Oi weh! Yetta! I can't stand it!" The cry broke from me. "I
didn't come to America to turn into a machine. I came to America to
make from myself a person. Does America want only my hands--only the
strength of my body--not my heart--not my feelings--my thoughts?"
"Our heads ain't smart enough," said Yetta, practically. "We
ain't been to school like the American-born."
"What for did I come to America but to go to school--to learn--to
think--to make something beautiful from my life ..."
"Sh-sh! Sh-sh! The boss--the boss!" came the warning whisper.
A sudden hush fell over the shop as the boss entered. He raised his
hand.
Breathless silence.
The hard, red face with pig's eyes held us under its sickening
spell. Again I saw the Cossack and heard him thunder the ukaz.
Prepared for disaster, the girls paled as they cast at each other
sidelong, frightened glances.
"Hands," he addressed us, fingering the gold watch-chain that
spread across his fat belly, "it's slack in the other trades and I
can get plenty girls begging themselves to work for half what you're
getting--only I ain't a skinner. I always give my hands a show to
earn their bread. From now on, I'll give you fifty cents a dozen
shirts instead of seventy-five, but I'll give you night-work, so you
needn't lose nothing." And he was gone.
The stillness of death filled the shop. Each one felt the heart of the
other bleed with her own helplessness.
A sudden sound broke the silence. A woman sobbed chokingly. It was
Balah Rifkin, a widow with three children.
"Oi weh!" She tore at her scrawny neck. "The blood-sucker--the
thief! How will I give them to eat--my babies--my babies--my hungry
little lambs!"
"Why do we let him choke us?"
"Twenty-five cents less on a dozen--how will we be able to live?"
"He tears the last skin from our bones!"
"Why didn't nobody speak up to him?"
"Tell him he couldn't crush us down to worse than we had in
Russia?"
"Can we help ourselves? Our life lies in his hands."
Something in me forced me forward. Rage at the bitter greed tore
me. Our desperate helplessness drove me to strength.
"I'll go to the boss!" I cried, my nerves quivering with fierce
excitement. "I'll tell him Balah Rifkin has three hungry mouths
to feed."
Pale, hungry faces thrust themselves toward me, thin, knotted hands
reached out, starved bodies pressed close about me.
"Long years on you!" cried Balah Rifkin, drying her eyes with a
corner of her shawl.
"Tell him about my old father and me, his only bread-giver," came
from Bessie Sopolsky, a gaunt-faced girl with a hacking cough.
"And I got no father or mother and four of them younger than me
hanging on my neck." Jennie Feist's beautiful young face was
already scarred with the gray worries of age.
America, as the oppressed of all lands have dreamed America to be, and
America _as it is_, flashed before me--a banner of fire! Behind me I
felt masses pressing--thousands of immigrants--thousands upon thousands
crushed by injustice, lifted me as on wings.
I entered the boss's office without a shadow of fear. I was not
I--the wrongs of my people burned through me till I felt the very flesh
of my body a living flame of rebellion.
I faced the boss.
"We can't stand it!" I cried. "Even as it is we're hungry.
Fifty cents a dozen would starve us. Can you, a Jew, tear the
bread from another Jew's mouth?"
"You, fresh mouth, you! Who are you to learn me my business?"
"Weren't you yourself once a machine slave--your life in the hands
of your boss?"
"You--loaferin--money for nothing you want! The minute they begin
to talk English they get flies in their nose.... A black year on
you--trouble-maker! I'll have no smart heads in my shop! Such
freshness! Out you get ... out from my shop!"
Stunned and hopeless, the wings of my courage broken, I groped my way
back to them--back to the eager, waiting faces--back to the crushed
hearts aching with mine.
As I opened the door they read our defeat in my face.
"Girls!" I held out my hands. "He's fired me."
My voice died in the silence. Not a girl stirred. Their heads only bent
closer over their machines.
"Here, you! Get yourself out of here!" The boss thundered at
me. "Bessie Sopolsky and you, Balah Rifkin, take out her machine into
the hall.... I want no big-mouthed Americanerins in my shop."
Bessie Sopolsky and Balah Rifkin, their eyes black with tragedy,
carried out my machine.
Not a hand was held out to me, not a face met mine. I felt them shrink
from me as I passed them on my way out.
In the street I found I was crying. The new hope that had flowed
in me so strong bled out of my veins. A moment before, our
togetherness had made me believe us so strong--and now I saw each
alone--crushed--broken. What were they all but crawling worms, servile
grubbers for bread?
I wept not so much because the girls had deserted me, but because I saw
for the first time how mean, how vile, were the creatures with whom I
had to work. How the fear for bread had dehumanized their last shred
of humanity! I felt I had not been working among human beings, but in a