“If Bessie gets married, you got to pay all the expenses for the wedding and buy her clothes. I need a new outfit myself. You see what’s on me is all I have. These things I wear are from Russia yet. Give a look on my shoes! Wouldn’t it be a shame for the world if Reb Smolinsky, the light of the block, the one man who holds up the flame of the Holy Torah before America, should come to his daughter’s wedding in such shoes? You yourself don’t want the bride’s father to come to your wedding feast dressed in rags, like a beggar. I got to begin with a new pair of shoes, and everything new from the head to the feet. And all I ask more, is enough money to start myself up some business so I could get along without Bessie’s wages.”
Berel Bernstein hit the table with his fist till the tea glasses jumped. “I should set you up in business yet!” he hollered at my father. “I’m marrying your daughter—not the whole family. Ain’t it enough that your daughter kept you in laziness all these years? You want yet her husband to support you for the rest of your days? In America they got no use for Torah learning. In America everybody got to earn his living first. You got two hands and two feet. Why don’t you go to work?”
“What? I work like a common thick-neck? My learning comes before my living. I’m a man of brains. In a necessity I could turn to business. I have a quick head for business. If I only had money, I could start myself selling wine and schnapps, or maybe, open myself an office for an insurance agent or matchmaker, and hold on to my learning at the same time.”
While Father was yet talking, Berel Bernstein began muttering to himself, “What I dreamed last night, and this night, and the night before should fall on his crazy head.” Then he began shouting. “So it ain’t yet enough for you that I take your daughter without a dowry? You don’t want it yet? Me? Me? Berel Bernstein! Instead of grabbing me with both hands and thank God for the good luck that fell on you, for taking your daughter away without a cent, you want me to weigh you yet in gold? You think I got Rockefeller’s millions to throw away? I got to sweat for every penny I earn. I’m no greenhorn. I’m no cow you can milk. If you don’t want it yet, then good-by and good luck.”
And he rushed to the door and slammed himself out without saying good-by to Bessie.
The next evening, Berel Bernstein brought Bessie home from work and stood talking to her on the stoop.
“Your crazy father got me so mad, I was too excited to say anything to you. I think more of you as your own father. Your father keeps you only for your wages. I would take you without a cent and make yet for you a living. And we would work together for a purpose, to save the dollar.”
Still Bessie couldn’t speak, but stood clenching and unclenching her fingers and staring down on the ground.
“This is America,” Berel Bernstein went on, “where everybody got to look out for themselves. Together, we’d have a future before us—our own shop—our own business. We could live yet in our own bought house. I already saw in the pawnshop the diamond ring I want to buy you. What will you have by living with your father? All your life you’ll have to give away your wages, and he’ll suck out from you your last drop of blood like a leech. . . .”
“I couldn’t leave my father. He needs me. . . .”
Berel Bernstein shook Bessie by the arm. “But you got to think of yourself. Even in the Torah it says, leave your father and mother, and follow the man. Better listen to me. Come, let’s get married in court.”
Bessie shook her head, and tears began coming down her cheeks. “I know I’m a fool. But I cannot help it. I haven’t the courage to live for myself. My own life is knocked out of me. No wonder Father called me the burden bearer.”
“That’s just what you are, a ‘burden bearer.’ Here you got a chance to lift your head and become a person, and you want to stay in your slavery.”
“But you see, Father never worked in his life. He don’t know how to work. How could I leave them to starve?”
“Starve? He won’t starve. He’ll have to go to work. It’s you who are to blame for his laziness and his rags. So long as he gets from you enough to eat, he’ll hang on your neck, and bluff away his days with his learning and his prayers.”
Bessie stopped crying and looked straight at Berel Bernstein. “I couldn’t marry a man that don’t respect my father.”
“You want me to respect a crazy schnorrer like your father?” He laughed hard into her face. “What I see plain is that you don’t love me. Did you think you could rope me in for a fool, to support your whole family? The time I wasted yet on you, when I could have had the forelady who is crazy for me.”
Bessie reached out to touch his hand. “Berel, I’ll . . .”
“Yes. I see what you’ll do. Lucky yet I got my sense back in time. I’ll yet get a wife for me, myself, and not one to hang a whole beggar family on my neck.” And he turned from her and rushed down the street, never once looking back.
Bessie stood very still. She looked after Berel Bernstein till she couldn’t see him anymore. Then, very still, she walked into the house. She didn’t say anything. But I could see her sink into herself as if all the life went out of her heart and she didn’t care about anything anymore.
I walked in after Bessie and hid myself behind the door of the bedroom and I cried and cried.
Six weeks later, we heard that Berel Bernstein was going to be engaged to the forelady who lived on the first floor of Muhmenkeh’s house. As they told Bessie the news, she got twenty years older in that one moment. She grew black and yellow, with all the worries of the world in her face, like Mother.
All my sadness for Bessie suddenly blazed up in me into wild anger. I could have choked Berel Bernstein with my bare hands.
In one breath, I ran the whole block and upstairs where the engagement was. In the hall I was stopped by the crowd of relations from both sides. I couldn’t see Berel or his bride, but through the crack of the door, I saw big plates of sponge cake and raisins and nuts and bottles of wine. I was just going to give myself a push in when Berel Bernstein’s mother grabbed me by the braids and shoved me out. “You little devil! Who asked you here?”
I walked down wilder than a mad cat. “I’m going to say my say to Berel Bernstein even if I got to set the house on fire.” And suddenly, it came to me. I rushed like lightning into Muhmenkeh’s house, then up the fire escape.
With his back to the window stood Berel Bernstein talking to his bride. And before anybody could stop me, I dashed open the window, rushed over to him and shook him, crying, “You—you—! For shaming my Bessie—you’ll yet eat dirt before you die!”
Chapter IV. The “Empty-Head”
Something happened in our house again!
Mashah, the “empty-head,” showed signs that there was something in her. She was no more just a doll in a show window. She was no more just something lost in the looking glass of her pretty face.
For the first time in her life, Mashah showed signs of interest in someone outside herself. No longer was the one reason for her living to make prettier her pretty face. Now it was a man that was the beginning and end of her existence.
The man put new light in her eyes, new life in her face, and such a wonder-working joy in her heart that
