Hungry Hearts. Anzia Yezierska

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one sick? Why do you got to pawn it?”

      She raised her tear-stained face and mutely looked at him. How could she explain and how could he possibly understand her sudden savage desire for clothes?

      Zaretsky, feeling that he had been clumsy and tactless, hastened to add, “Nu—I’ll give you—a—a—a—ten dollars,” he finished with a motion of his hand, as if driving from him the onrush of generosity that seized him.

      “Oi, mister!” cried Shenah Pessah, as the man handed her the bill. “You’re saving me my life! God will pay you for this goodness.” And crumpling the money in her hand, she hurried back home elated.

      The following evening, as soon as her work was over, Shenah Pessah scurried through the ghetto streets, seeking in the myriad-colored shop windows the one hat and the one dress that would voice the desire of her innermost self. At last she espied a shining straw with cherries so red, so luscious, that they cried out to her, “Bite me!” That was the hat she bought.

      The magic of those cherries on her hat brought back to her the green fields and orchards of her native Russia. Yes, a green dress was what she craved. And she picked out the greenest, crispest organdie.

      That night, as she put on her beloved colors, she vainly tried to see herself from head to foot, but the broken bit of a mirror that she owned could only show her glorious parts of her. Her clothes seemed to enfold her in flames of desire leaping upon desire. “Only to be beautiful! Only to be beautiful!” she murmured breathlessly. “Not for myself, but only for him.”

      Time stood still for Shenah Pessah as she counted the days, the hours, and the minutes for the arrival of John Barnes. At last, through her basement window, she saw him walk up the front steps. She longed to go over to him and fling herself at his feet and cry out to him with what hunger of heart she awaited his coming. But the very intensity of her longing left her faint and dumb.

      He passed to his room. Later, she saw him walk out without even stopping to look at her. The next day and the day after, she watched him from her hidden corner pass in and out of the house, but still he did not come to her.

      Oh, how sweet it was to suffer the very hurt of his oblivion of her! She gloried in his great height that made him so utterly unaware of her existence. It was enough for her worshiping eyes just to glimpse him from afar. What was she to him? Could she expect him to greet the stairs on which he stepped? Or take notice of the door that swung open for him? After all, she was nothing but part of the house. So why should he take notice of her? She was the steps on which he walked. She was the door that swung open for him. And he did not know it.

      For four evenings in succession, ever since John Barnes had come to live in the house, Shenah Pessah arrayed herself in her new things and waited. Was it not a miracle that he came the first time when she did not even dream that he was on earth? So why shouldn’t the miracle happen again? This evening, however, she was so spent with the hopelessness of her longing that she had no energy left to put on her adornments.

      All at once she was startled out of her apathy by a quick tap on her window-pane. “How about going to the library, to-morrow evening?” asked John Barnes.

      “Oi-i-i! Yes! Thanks—” she stammered in confusion.

      “Well, to-morrow night, then, at seven. Thank you.” He hurried out embarrassed by the grateful look that shone to him out of her eyes. The gaze haunted him and hurt him. It was the beseeching look of a homeless dog, begging to be noticed. “Poor little immigrant,” he thought, “how lonely she must be!”

      “So he didn’t forget,” rejoiced Shenah Pessah. “How only the sound from his voice opens the sky in my heart! How the deadness and emptiness in me flames up into life! Ach! The sun is again beginning to shine!”

      An hour before the appointed time, Shenah Pessah dressed herself in all her finery for John Barnes. She swung open the door and stood in readiness watching the little clock on the mantel-shelf. The ticking thing seemed to throb with the unutterable hopes compressed in her heart, all the mute years of her stifled life. Each little thud of time sang a wild song of released joy—the joy of his coming nearer.

      For the tenth time Shenah Pessah went over in her mind what she would say to him when he’d come.

      “It was so kind from you to take from your dear time—to—”

      “No—that sounds not good. I’ll begin like this—Mr. Barnes! I can’t give it out in words your kindness, to stop from your high thoughts to—to—”

      “No—no! Oi weh! God from the world! Why should it be so hard for me to say to him what I mean? Why shouldn’t I be able to say to him plain out—Mr. Barnes! You are an angel from the sky! You are saving me my life to let me only give a look on you! I’m happier than a bird in the air when I think only that such goodness like you—”

      The sudden ring of the bell shattered all her carefully rehearsed phrases and she met his greeting in a flutter of confusion.

      “My! Haven’t you blossomed out since last night!” exclaimed Mr. Barnes, startled by Shenah Pessah’s sudden display of color.

      “Yes,” she flushed, raising to him her radiant face. “I’m through for always with old women’s shawls. This is my first American dress-up.”

      “Splendid! So you want to be an American! The next step will be to take up some work that will bring you in touch with American people.”

      “Yes. You’ll help me? Yes?” Her eyes sought his with an appeal of unquestioning reliance.

      “Have you ever thought what kind of work you would like to take up?” he asked, when they got out into the street.

      “No—I want only to get away from the basement. I’m crazy for people.”

      “Would you like to learn a trade in a factory?”

      “Anything—anything! I’m burning to learn. Give me only an advice. What?”

      “What can you do best with your hands?”

      “With the hands the best? It’s all the same what I do with the hands. Think you not maybe now, I could begin already something with the head? Yes?”

      “We’ll soon talk this over together, after you have read a book that will tell you how to find out what you are best fitted for.”

      When they entered the library, Shenah Pessah halted in awe. “What a stillness full from thinking! So beautiful, it comes on me like music!”

      “Yes. This is quite a place,” he acquiesced, seeing again the public library in a new light through her eyes. “Some of the best minds have worked to give us just this.”

      “How the book-ladies look so quiet like the things.”

      “Yes,” he replied, with a tell-tale glance at her. “I too like to see a woman’s face above her clothes.”

      The approach of the librarian cut off further comment. As Mr. Barnes filled out the application card, Shenah Pessah noted the librarian’s simple attire. “What means he a woman’s face above her clothes?” she wondered. And the first shadow of a doubt crossed her mind as to whether her dearly bought apparel was pleasing

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