Hungry Hearts
tenement. "Ach!" she sighed. "How can his face still burn so in
me when he is so long gone? How the deadness in me flames up with life
at the thought of him!"
The dark hallway seemed flooded with white radiance. She closed her
eyes that she might see more vividly the beloved features. The glowing
smile that healed all ills of life and changed her from the weary
drudge into the vibrant creature of joy.
It was all a miracle--his coming, this young professor from one of
the big colleges. He had rented a room in the very house where she was
janitress so as to be near the people he was writing about. But more
wonderful than all was the way he stopped to talk to her, to question
her about herself as though she were his equal. What warm friendliness
had prompted him to take her out of her dark basement to the library
where there were books to read!
And then--that unforgettable night on the way home, when the air was
poignant with spring! Only a moment--a kiss--a pressure of hands! And
the world shone with light--the empty, unlived years filled with love!
She was lost in dreams of her one hour of romance when a woman elbowed
her way through the dim passage, leaving behind her the smell of
herring and onions.
Shenah Pessah gripped the scrubbing-brush with suppressed
fury. "Meshugeneh! Did you not swear to yourself that you would tear
his memory out from your heart? If he would have been only a man I
could have forgotten him. But he was not a man! He was God Himself! On
whatever I look shines his face!"
The white radiance again suffused her. The brush dropped from her
hand. "He--he is the beating in my heart! He is the life in me--the
hope in me--the breath of prayer in me! If not for him in me, then
what am I? Deadness--emptiness--nothingness! You are going out of your
head. You are living only on rainbows. He is no more real--
"What is real? These rags I wear? This pail? This black hole? Or
him and the dreams of him?" She flung her challenge to the murky
darkness.
"Shenah Pessah! A black year on you!" came the answer from the
cellar below. It was the voice of her uncle, Moisheh Rifkin.
"Oi weh!" she shrugged young shoulders, wearied by joyless
toil. "He's beginning with his hollering already." And she
hurried down.
"You piece of earth! Worms should eat you! How long does it take
you to wash up the stairs?" he stormed. "Yesterday, the eating was
burned to coal; and to-day you forget the salt."
"What a fuss over a little less salt!"
"In the Talmud it stands a man has a right to divorce his wife for
only forgetting him the salt in his soup."
"Maybe that's why Aunt Gittel went to the grave before her
time--worrying how to please your taste in the mouth."
The old man's yellow, shriveled face stared up at her out of the
gloom. "What has he from life? Only his pleasure in eating and going
to the synagogue. How long will he live yet?" And moved by a surge of
pity, "Why can't I be a little kind to him?"
"Did you chop me some herring and onions?" he interrupted harshly.
She flushed with conscious guilt. Again she wondered why ugly things
and ugly smells so sickened her.
"What don't you forget?" His voice hammered upon her ears. "No
care lays in your head. You're only dreaming in the air."
Her compassion was swept away in a wave of revolt that left her
trembling. "I can't no more stand it from you! Get yourself
somebody else!" She was surprised at her sudden spirit.
"You big mouth, you! That's your thanks for saving you from
hunger."
"Two years already I'm working the nails off my fingers and you
didn't give me a cent."
"Beggerin! Money yet, you want? The minute you get enough to eat
you turn up your head with freshness. Are you used to anything from
home? What were you out there in Savel? The dirt under people's
feet. You're already forgetting how you came off from the ship--a
bundle of rags full of holes. If you lived in Russia a hundred years
would you have lived to wear a pair of new shoes on your feet?"
"Other girls come naked and with nothing to America and they work
themselves up. Everybody gets wages in America--"
"Americanerin! Didn't I spend out enough money on your ship-ticket
to have a little use from you? A thunder should strike you!"
Shenah Pessah's eyes flamed. Her broken finger-nails pierced the
callous flesh of her hands. So this was the end--the awakening of her
dreams of America! Her memory went back to the time her ship-ticket
came. In her simple faith she had really believed that they wanted
her--her father's brother and his wife who had come to the new
world before ever she was born. She thought they wanted to give her a
chance for happiness, for life and love. And then she came--to find
the paralytic aunt--housework--janitor's drudgery. Even after her
aunt's death, she had gone on uncomplainingly, till her uncle's
nagging had worn down her last shred of self-control.
"It's the last time you'll holler on me!" she cried. "You'll
never see my face again if I got to go begging in the street."
Seizing her shawl, she rushed out. "Woe is me! Bitter is
me! For what is my life? Why didn't the ship go under and drown me
before I came to America?"
Through the streets, like a maddened thing, she raced, not knowing
where she was going, not caring. "For what should I keep on
suffering? Who needs me? Who wants me? I got nobody--nobody!"
And then the vision of the face she worshiped flashed before her. His
beautiful kindness that had once warmed her into new life breathed over
her again. "Why did he ever come but to lift me out of my darkness
into his light?"
Instinctively her eyes sought the rift of blue above the tenement roofs
and were caught by a boldly printed placard: "HANDS WANTED." It
was as though the sign swung open on its hinges like a door and arms
stretched out inviting her to enter. From the sign she looked to her
own hands--vigorous, young hands--made strong through toil.
Hope leaped within her. "Maybe I got yet luck to have it good in this
world. Ach! God from the sky! I'm so burning to live--to work myself
up for a somebody! And why not?" With clenched fist she smote her
bosom. "Ain't everything possible in the new world? Why is America
but to give me the chance to lift up my head with everybody alike?"
Her feet scarcely touched the steps as she ran up. But when she reached
the huge, iron door of Cohen Brothers, a terror seized her. "Oi
weh! They'll give a look on my greenhorn rags, and down I go--For
what are you afraid, you fool?" she commanded herself. "You come
not to beg. They need hands. Don't the sign say so? And you got good,
strong hands that can turn over the earth with their strength. America
is before you. You'll begin to earn money. You'll dress yourself
up like a person and men will fall on their knees to make love to
you--even him--himself!"
All fear had left her. She flung open the door and beheld the wonder
of a factory--people--people--seas of bent heads and busy hands of
people--the whirr of machinery--flying belts--the clicking clatter of
whirling wheels--all seemed to blend and fuse into one surging song of
hope--of new life--a new world--America!
A man, his arms heaped with a bundle of shirts, paused at sight of the
radiant face. Her ruddy cheeks, the film of innocence shining out of
eyes that knew no guile, carried him back to the green fields and open
plains of his native Russia.
"Her mother's milk is still fresh on her lips," he murmured, as
his gaze enveloped her.
The bundle slipped and fell to her feet. Their eyes met in spontaneous
recognition of common race. With an embarrassed laugh they stooped to
gather up the shirts.
"I seen downstairs hands wanted," came in a faltering voice.
"Then you're looking for work?" he questioned with keen
interest. She was so different from the others he had known in his five
years in this country. He was seized with curiosity to know more.
"You ain't been long in America?" His tone was an unconscious
caress.
"Two years already," she confessed. "But I ain't so green like
I look," she added quickly, overcome by the old anxiety.
"Trust yourself on me," Sam Arkin assured her. "I'm a feller
that knows himself on a person first off. I'll take you to the office
myself. Wait only till I put away these things."
Grinning with eagerness, he returned and together they sought the
foreman.
"Good luck to you! I hope you'll be pushed up soon to my floor,"
Sam Arkin encouraged, as he hurried back to his machine.
Because of the rush of work and the scarcity of help, Shenah Pessah was
hired without delay. Atremble with excitement, she tiptoed after the
foreman as he led the way into the workroom.
"Here, Sadie Kranz, is another learner for you." He addressed a
big-bosomed girl, the most skillful worker in the place.
"Another greenhorn with a wooden head!" she whispered to her
neighbor as Shenah Pessah removed her shawl. "Gevalt! All these
greenhorn hands tear the bread from our mouths by begging to work so
cheap."
But the dumb appeal of the immigrant stirred vague memories in Sadie
Kranz. As she watched her run her first seam, she marveled at her
speed. "I got to give it to you, you have a quick head." There was
conscious condescension in her praise.
Shenah Pessah lifted a beaming face. "How kind it was from you to
learn me! You good heart!"
No one had ever before called Sadie Kranz "good heart." The words
lingered pleasantly.
"Ut! I like to help anybody, so long it don't cost me nothing. I
get paid by the week anyhow," she half apologized.
Shenah Pessah was so thrilled with the novelty of the work, the
excitement of mastering the intricacies of her machine, that she
did not realize that the day was passed until the bell rang, the
machines came to a halt, and the "hands" made a wild rush for the
cloak-room.
"Oi weh! Is it a fire?" Shenah Pessah blanched with dread.
Loud laughter quelled her fears. "Greenie! It's six o'clock. Time
to go home," chorused the voices.
"Home?" The cry broke from her. "Where will I go? I got
no home." She stood bewildered, in the fast-dwindling crowd of
workers. Each jostling by her had a place to go. Of them all, she alone
was friendless, shelterless!
"Help me find a place to sleep!" she implored, seizing Sadie Kranz
by the sleeve of her velvet coat. "I got no people. I ran away."
Sadie Kranz narrowed her eyes at the girl. A feeling of pity crept over
her at sight of the outstretched, hungry hands.
"I'll fix you by me for the while." And taking the shawl off the
shelf, she tossed it to the forlorn bundle of rags. "Come along. You
must be starved for some eating."
As Shenah Pessah entered the dingy hall-room which Sadie Kranz called
home, its chill and squalor carried her back to the janitor's
basement she had left that morning. In silence she watched her
companion prepare the hot dogs and potatoes on the oil-stove atop the
trunk. Such pressing sadness weighed upon her that she turned from even
the smell of food.
"My heart pulls me so to go back to my uncle." She swallowed
hard her crust of black bread. "He's so used to have me help
him. What'll he do--alone?"
"You got to look out for yourself in this world." Sadie Kranz
gesticulated with a hot potato. "With your quickness, you got a
chance to make money and buy clothes. You can go to shows--dances. And
who knows--maybe meet a man to get married."
"Married? You know how it burns in every girl to get herself
married--that's how it burns in me to work myself up for a person."
"Ut! For what need you to work yourself up. Better marry yourself up
to a rich feller and you're fixed for life."
"But him I want--he ain't just a man. He is--" She paused
seeking for words and a mist of longing softened the heavy peasant