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 strudels
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 strudels 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.
"_Gevalt!_ 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 will 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 apron full 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!"
"Pshaw! Pshaw!" 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 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 out my house, and I don't want to dirty up my
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 bust 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!"
"Pshaw! 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
bake-shop 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; whereupon 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: "Mama, 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 push-cart, 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!_"
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 up-town here?"
"A good neighbor is not to be found every day," deplored Hanneh Breineh.
"Up-town 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 married
himself to a girl with a thousand dollars. That started him in business,
and now he has the biggest shirt-waist factory on West Twenty-ninth
Street."
"Yes, I heard your son had a factory." Mrs. Pelz hesitated and
stammered; "I'll tell you the truth. What I came to ask you--I thought
maybe you would beg your son Abe if he would give my husband a job."
"Why not?" said Hanneh Breineh. "He keeps more than five hundred hands.
I'll ask him he should take in Mr. Pelz."
"Long years on you, Hanneh Breineh! You'll save my life if you could
only help my husband get work."
"Of course my son will help him. All my children like to do good. My
daughter Fanny is a milliner on Fifth Avenue, and she takes in the
poorest girls in her shop and even pays them sometimes while they learn
the trade." Hanneh Breineh's face lit up, and her chest filled with
pride as she enumerated the successes of her children.
"And my son Benny he wrote a play on Broadway and he gave away more than
a hundred free tickets for the first night."
"Benny? The one who used to get lost from home all the time? You always
did love that child more than all the rest. And what is Sammy your baby
doing?"
"He ain't a baby no longer. He goes to college and quarterbacks the
football team. They can't get along without him.
"And my son Jake, I nearly forgot him. He began collecting rent in
Delancey Street, and now he is boss of renting the swellest
apartment-houses on Riverside Drive."
"What did I tell you? In America children are like money in the bank,"
purred Mrs. Pelz as she pinched and patted Hanneh Breineh's silk sleeve.
"_Oi weh!_ how it shines from you! You ought to kiss the air and dance
for joy and happiness. It is such a bitter frost outside; a pail of coal
is so dear, and you got it so warm with steam-heat. I had to pawn my
feather-bed to have enough for the rent, and you are rolling in money."
"Yes, I got it good in some ways, but money ain't everything," sighed
Hanneh Breineh.
"You ain't yet satisfied?"
"But here I got no friends," complained Hanneh Breineh.
"Friends?" queried Mrs. Pelz. "What greater friend is there on earth
than the dollar?"
"_Oi!_ Mrs. Pelz; if you could only look into my heart! I'm so choked
up! You know they say, a cow has a long tongue, but can't talk." Hanneh
Breineh shook her head wistfully, and her eyes filmed with inward
brooding. "My children give me everything from the best. When I was
sick, they got me a nurse by day and one by night. They bought me the
best wine. If I asked for dove's milk, they would buy it for me;
but--but--I can't talk myself out in their language. They want to make
me over for an American lady, and I'm different." Tears cut their way
under her eyelids with a pricking pain as she went on: "When I was poor,
I was free, and could holler and do what I like in my own house. Here I
got to lie still like a mouse under a broom. Between living up to my
Fifth Avenue daughter and keeping up with the servants I am like a
sinner in the next world that is thrown from one hell to another."
The door-bell rang, and Hanneh Breineh jumped up with a start.
"_Oi weh!_ it must be the servant back already!" she exclaimed as she
tore off her apron. "_Oi weh!_ let's quickly put the dishes together in
a dish-pan. If she sees I eat on the kitchen table, she will look on me
like the dirt under her feet."
Mrs. Pelz seized her shawl in haste.
"I better run home quick in my rags before your servant sees me."
"I'll speak to Abe about the job," said Hanneh Breineh as she pushed a
bill into the hand of Mrs. Pelz, who edged out as the servant entered.
* * *
"I'm having fried potato _lotkes_ special for you, Benny," said Hanneh
Breineh as the children gathered about the table for the family dinner
given in honor of Benny's success with his new play. "Do you remember
how you used to lick the fingers from them?"
"O Mother!" reproved Fanny. "Anyone hearing you would think we were
still in the push-cart district."
"Stop your nagging, Sis, and let ma alone," commanded Benny, patting his
mother's arm affectionately. "I'm home only once a month. Let her feed
me what she pleases. My stomach is bomb-proof."
"Do I hear that the President is coming to your play?" said Abe as he
stuffed a napkin over his diamond-studded shirt-front.
"Why shouldn't he come?" returned Benny. "The critics say it's the
greatest antidote for the race hatred created by the war. If you want to
know, he is coming to-night; and what's more, our box is next to the
President's."
"_Nu_, Mammeh," sallied Jake, "did you ever dream in Delancey Street
that we should rub sleeves with the President?"
"I always said that Benny had more head than the rest of you," replied
the mother.
As the laughter died away, Jake went on:
"Honor you are getting plenty; but how much _mezummen_ does this play
bring you? Can I invest any of it in real estate for you?"
"I'm getting ten per cent. royalties of the gross receipts," replied the
youthful playwright.
"How much is that?" queried Hanneh Breineh.
"Enough to buy up all your fish markets in Delancey Street," laughed Abe
in good-natured raillery at his mother.
Her son's jest cut like a knife-thrust in her heart. She felt her heart
ache with the pain that she was shut out from their successes. Each
added triumph only widened the gulf. And when she tried to bridge this
gulf by asking questions, they only thrust her back upon herself.
"Your fame has even helped me get my hat trade solid with the Four
Hundred," put in Fanny. "You bet I let Mrs. Van Suyden know that our box
is next to the President's. She said she would drop in to meet you. Of
course she let on to me that she hadn't seen the play yet, though my
designer said she saw her there on the opening night."
"Oh, Gosh! the toadies!" sneered Benny. "Nothing so sickens you with
success as the way people who once shoved you off the sidewalk come
crawling to you on their stomachs begging you to dine with them."
"Say, that leading man of yours he's some class," cried Fanny. "That's
the man I'm looking for. Will you invite him to supper after the
theater?"
The playwright turned to his mother.
"Say, Ma," he said laughingly, "how would you like a real actor for a
son-in-law?"
"She should worry," mocked Sam. "She'll be discussing with him the
future of the Greek drama. Too bad it doesn't happen to be Warfield, or
mother could give him tips on the 'Auctioneer.'"
Jake turned to his mother with a covert grin.
"I guess you'd have no objection if Fanny got next to Benny's leading
man. He makes at least fifteen hundred a week. That wouldn't be such a
bad addition to the family, would it?"
Again the bantering tone stabbed Hanneh Breineh. Everything in her began
to tremble and break loose.
"Why do you ask me?" she cried, throwing her napkin into her plate. "Do
I count for a person in this house? If I'll say something, will you even
listen to me? What is to me the grandest man that my daughter could
pick out? Another enemy in my house! Another person to shame himself
from me!" She swept in her children in one glance of despairing anguish
as she rose from the table. "What worth is an old mother to American
children? The President is coming to-night to the theater, and none of
you asked me to go." Unable to check the rising tears, she fled toward
the kitchen and banged the door.
They all looked at one another guiltily.
"Say, Sis," Benny called out sharply, "what sort of frame-up is this?
Haven't you told mother that she was to go with us to-night?"
"Yes--I----" Fanny bit her lips as she fumbled evasively for words. "I
asked her if she wouldn't mind my taking her some other time."
"Now you have made a mess of it!" fumed Benny. "Mother'll be too hurt to
go now."
"Well, I don't care," snapped Fanny. "I can't appear with mother in a
box at the theater. Can I introduce her to Mrs. Van Suyden? And suppose
your leading man should ask to meet me?"
"Take your time, Sis. He hasn't asked yet," scoffed Benny.
"The more reason I shouldn't spoil my chances. You know mother. She'll
spill the beans that we come from Delancey Street the minute we
introduce her anywhere. Must I always have the black shadow of my past
trailing after me?"
"But have you no feelings for mother?" admonished Abe.
"I've tried harder than all of you to do my duty. I've _lived_ with
her." She turned angrily upon them. "I've borne the shame of mother
while you bought her off with a present and a treat here and there. God
knows how hard I tried to civilize her so as not to have to blush with
shame when I take her anywhere. I dressed her in the most stylish Paris
models, but Delancey Street sticks out from every inch of her. Whenever
she opens her mouth, I'm done for. You fellows had your chance to rise
in the world because a man is free to go up as high as he can reach up
to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man my equal because
a girl is always judged by her mother."
They were silenced by her vehemence, and unconsciously turned to Benny.
"I guess we all tried to do our best for mother," said Benny,
thoughtfully. "But wherever there is growth, there is pain and
heartbreak. The trouble with us is that the Ghetto of the Middle Ages
and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof,
and----"
A sound of crashing dishes came from the kitchen, and the voice of
Hanneh Breineh resounded through the dining-room as she wreaked her
pent-up fury on the helpless servant.
"Oh, my nerves! I can't stand it any more! There will be no girl again
for another week," cried Fanny.
"Oh, let up on the old lady," protested Abe. "Since she can't take it
out on us any more, what harm is it if she cusses the servants?"
"If you fellows had to chase around employment agencies, you wouldn't
see anything funny about it. Why can't we move into a hotel that will do
away with the need of servants altogether?"
"I got it better," said Jake, consulting a note-book from his pocket. "I
have on my list an apartment on Riverside Drive where there's only a
small kitchenette; but we can do away with the cooking, for there is a
dining service in the building."
The new Riverside apartment to which Hanneh Breineh was removed by her
socially ambitious children was for the habitually active mother an
empty desert of enforced idleness. Deprived of her kitchen, Hanneh
Breineh felt robbed of the last reason for her existence. Cooking and
marketing and puttering busily with pots and pans gave her an excuse for
living and struggling and bearing up with her children. The lonely
idleness of Riverside Drive stunned all her senses and arrested all her
thoughts. It gave her that choked sense of being cut off from air, from
life, from everything warm and human. The cold indifference, the
each-for-himself look in the eyes of the people about her were like
stinging slaps in the face. Even the children had nothing real or human
in them. They were starched and stiff miniatures of their elders.
But the most unendurable part of the stifling life on Riverside Drive
was being forced to eat in the public dining-room. No matter how hard
she tried to learn polite table manners, she always found people staring
at her, and her daughter rebuking her for eating with the wrong fork or
guzzling the soup or staining the cloth.
In a fit of rebellion Hanneh Breineh resolved never to go down to the
public dining-room again, but to make use of the gas-stove in the
kitchenette to cook her own meals. That very day she rode down to
Delancey Street and purchased a new market-basket. For some time she
walked among the haggling push-cart venders, relaxing and swimming in
the warm waves of her old familiar past.
A fish-peddler held up a large carp in his black, hairy hand and waved
it dramatically:
"Women! Women! Fourteen cents a pound!"
He ceased his raucous shouting as he saw Hanneh Breineh in her rich
attire approach his cart.
"How much?" she asked pointing to the fattest carp.
"Fifteen cents, lady," said the peddler, smirking as he raised his
price.
"Swindler! Didn't I hear you call fourteen cents?" shrieked Hanneh
Breineh, exultingly, the spirit of the penny chase surging in her blood.
Diplomatically, Hanneh Breineh turned as if to go, and the fishman
seized her basket in frantic fear.
"I should live; I'm losing money on the fish, lady," whined the peddler.
"I'll let it down to thirteen cents for you only."
"Two pounds for a quarter, and not a penny more," said Hanneh Breineh,
thrilling again with the rare sport of bargaining, which had been her
chief joy in the good old days of poverty.
"_Nu_, I want to make the first sale for good luck." The peddler threw
the fish on the scale.
As he wrapped up the fish, Hanneh Breineh saw the driven look of worry
in his haggard eyes, and when he counted out for her the change from her
dollar, she waved it aside.
"Keep it for your luck," she said, and hurried off to strike a new
bargain at a push-cart of onions.
Hanneh Breineh returned triumphantly with her purchases. The basket
under her arm gave forth the old, homelike odors of herring and garlic,
while the scaly tail of a four-pound carp protruded from its newspaper
wrapping. A gilded placard on the door of the apartment-house proclaimed
that all merchandise must be delivered through the trade entrance in the
rear; but Hanneh Breineh with her basket strode proudly through the
marble-paneled hall and rang nonchalantly for the elevator.
The uniformed hall-man, erect, expressionless, frigid with dignity,
stepped forward:
"Just a minute, Madam, I'll call a boy to take up your basket for you."
Hanneh Breineh, glaring at him, jerked the basket savagely from his
hands.
"Mind your own business," she retorted. "I'll take it up myself. Do you
think you're a Russian policeman to boss me in my own house?"
Angry lines appeared on the countenance of the representative of social
decorum.
"It is against the rules, Madam," he said stiffly.
"You should sink into the earth with all your rules and brass buttons.
Ain't this America? Ain't this a free country? Can't I take up in my own
house what I buy with my own money?" cried Hanneh Breineh, reveling in
the opportunity to shower forth the volley of invectives that had been
suppressed in her for the weeks of deadly dignity of Riverside Drive.
In the midst of this uproar Fanny came in with Mrs. Van Suyden. Hanneh
Breineh rushed over to her, crying:
"This bossy policeman won't let me take up my basket in the elevator."
The daughter, unnerved with shame and confusion, took the basket in her
white-gloved hand and ordered the hall-boy to take it around to the
regular delivery entrance.
Hanneh Breineh was so hurt by her daughter's apparent defense of the
hallman's rules that she utterly ignored Mrs. Van Suyden's greeting and
walked up the seven flights of stairs out of sheer spite.
"You see the tragedy of my life?" broke out Fanny, turning to Mrs. Van
Suyden.
"You poor child! You go right up to your dear, old lady mother, and I'll
come some other time."
Instantly Fanny regretted her words. Mrs. Van Suyden's pity only roused
her wrath the more against her mother.
Breathless from climbing the stairs, Hanneh Breineh entered the
apartment just as Fanny tore the faultless millinery creation from her
head and threw it on the floor in a rage.
"Mother, you are the ruination of my life! You have driven away Mrs. Van
Suyden, as you have driven away all my best friends. What do you think
we got this apartment for but to get rid of your fish smells and your
brawls with the servants? And here you come with a basket on your arm as
if you just landed from steerage! And this afternoon, of all times, when
Benny is bringing his leading man to tea. When will you ever stop
disgracing us?"
"When I'm dead," said Hanneh Breineh, grimly. "When the earth will cover
me up, then you'll be free to go your American way. I'm not going to
make myself over for a lady on Riverside Drive. I hate you and all your
swell friends. I'll not let myself be choked up here by you or by that
hall-boss-policeman that is higher in your eyes than your own mother."
"So that's your thanks for all we've done for you?" cried the daughter.
"All you've done for me?" shouted Hanneh Breineh. "What have you done
for me? You hold me like a dog on a chain. It stands in the Talmud; some
children give their mothers dry bread and water and go to heaven for it,
and some give their mother roast duck and go to Gehenna because it's not
given with love."
"You want me to love you yet?" raged the daughter. "You knocked every
bit of love out of me when I was yet a kid. All the memories of
childhood I have is your everlasting cursing and yelling that we were
gluttons."
The bell rang sharply, and Hanneh Breineh flung open the door.
"Your groceries, ma'am," said the boy.
Hanneh Breineh seized the basket from him, and with a vicious fling sent
it rolling across the room, strewing its contents over the Persian rugs
and inlaid floor. Then seizing her hat and coat, she stormed out of the
apartment and down the stairs.
Mr. and Mrs. Pelz sat crouched and shivering over their meager supper
when the door opened, and Hanneh Breineh in fur coat and plumed hat
charged into the room.
"I come to cry out to you my bitter heart," she sobbed. "Woe is me! It
is so black for my eyes!"
"What is the matter with you, Hanneh Breineh?" cried Mrs. Pelz in
bewildered alarm.
"I am turned out of my own house by the brass-buttoned policeman that
bosses the elevator. _Oi-i-i-i! Weh-h-h-h!_ what have I from my life?
The whole world rings with my son's play. Even the President came to see
it, and I, his mother, have not seen it yet. My heart is dying in me
like in a prison," she went on wailing. "I am starved out for a piece of
real eating. In that swell restaurant is nothing but napkins and forks
and lettuce-leaves. There are a dozen plates to every bite of food. And
it looks so fancy on the plate, but it's nothing but straw in the mouth.
I'm starving, but I can't swallow down their American eating."
"Hanneh Breineh," said Mrs. Pelz, "you are sinning before God. Look on
your fur coat; it alone would feed a whole family for a year. I never
had yet a piece of fur trimming on a coat, and you are in fur from the
neck to the feet. I never had yet a piece of feather on a hat, and your
hat is all feathers."
"What are you envying me?" protested Hanneh Breineh. "What have I from
all my fine furs and feathers when my children are strangers to me? All
the fur coats in the world can't warm up the loneliness inside my heart.
All the grandest feathers can't hide the bitter shame in my face that my
children shame themselves from me."
Hanneh Breineh suddenly loomed over them like some ancient, heroic
figure of the Bible condemning unrighteousness.
"Why should my children shame themselves from me? From where did they
get the stuff to work themselves up in the world? Did they get it from
the air? How did they get all their smartness to rise over the people
around them? Why don't the children of born American mothers write my
Benny's plays? It is I, who never had a chance to be a person, who gave
him the fire in his head. If I would have had a chance to go to school
and learn the language, what couldn't I have been? It is I and my mother
and my mother's mother and my father and father's father who had such a
black life in Poland; it is our choked thoughts and feelings that are
flaming up in my children and making them great in America. And yet they
shame themselves from me!"
For a moment Mr. and Mrs. Pelz were hypnotized by the sweep of her
words. Then Hanneh Breineh sank into a chair in utter exhaustion. She
began to weep bitterly, her body shaking with sobs.
"Woe is me! For what did I suffer and hope on my children? A bitter old
age--my end. I'm so lonely!"
All the dramatic fire seemed to have left her. The spell was broken.
They saw the Hanneh Breineh of old, ever discontented, ever complaining
even in the midst of riches and plenty.
"Hanneh Breineh," said Mrs. Pelz, "the only trouble with you is that you
got it too good. People will tear the eyes out of your head because
you're complaining yet. If I only had your fur coat! If I only had your
diamonds! I have nothing. You have everything. You are living on the fat
of the land. You go right back home and thank God that you don't have my
bitter lot."
"You got to let me stay here with you," insisted Hanneh Breineh. "I'll
not go back to my children except when they bury me. When they will see
my dead face, they will understand how they killed me."
Mrs. Pelz glanced nervously at her husband. They barely had enough
covering for their one bed; how could they possibly lodge a visitor?
"I don't want to take up your bed," said Hanneh Breineh. "I don't care
if I have to sleep on the floor or on the chairs, but I'll stay here for
the night."
Seeing that she was bent on staying, Mr. Pelz prepared to sleep by
putting a few chairs next to the trunk, and Hanneh Breineh was invited
to share the rickety bed with Mrs. Pelz.
The mattress was full of lumps and hollows. Hanneh Breineh lay cramped
and miserable, unable to stretch out her limbs. For years she had been
accustomed to hair mattresses and ample woolen blankets, so that though
she covered herself with her fur coat, she was too cold to sleep. But
worse than the cold were the creeping things on the wall. And as the
lights were turned low, the mice came through the broken plaster and
raced across the floor. The foul odors of the kitchen-sink added to the
night of horrors.
"Are you going back home?" asked Mrs. Pelz as Hanneh Breineh put on her
hat and coat the next morning.
"I don't know where I'm going," she replied as she put a bill into Mrs.
Pelz's hand.
For hours Hanneh Breineh walked through the crowded Ghetto streets. She
realized that she no longer could endure the sordid ugliness of her
past, and yet she could not go home to her children. She only felt that
she must go on and on.
In the afternoon a cold, drizzling rain set in. She was worn out from
the sleepless night and hours of tramping. With a piercing pain in her
heart she at last turned back and boarded the subway for Riverside
Drive. She had fled from the marble sepulcher of the Riverside apartment
to her old home in the Ghetto; but now she knew that she could not live
there again. She had outgrown her past by the habits of years of
physical comforts, and these material comforts that she could no longer
do without choked and crushed the life within her.
A cold shudder went through Hanneh Breineh as she approached the
apartment-house. Peering through the plate glass of the door she saw the
face of the uniformed hall-man. For a hesitating moment she remained
standing in the drizzling rain, unable to enter and yet knowing full
well that she would have to enter.
Then suddenly Hanneh Breineh began to laugh. She realized that it was
the first time she had laughed since her children had become rich. But
it was the hard laugh of bitter sorrow. Tears streamed down her furrowed
cheeks as she walked slowly up the granite steps.
"The fat of the land!" muttered Hanneh Breineh, with a choking sob as
the hall-man with immobile face deferentially swung open the door--"the
fat of the land!"