Have your way. Take in your boarders, only to have peace in the house.”
The next day, Mother and I moved Father’s table and his chair with a back, and a cushion to sit on, into the kitchen.
We scrubbed the front room as for a holiday. Even the windows were washed. We pasted down the floppy wall paper, and on the worst part of the wall, where the plaster was cracked and full of holes, we hung up calendars and pictures from the Sunday newspapers.
Mother sent me to Muhmenkeh, the herring woman on the corner, for the loan of a feather bed. She came along to help me carry it.
“Long years on you!” cried Mother, as she took the feather bed from Muhmenkeh’s arm.
“Long years and good luck on us all!” Muhmenkeh answered.
Muhmenkeh worked as hard for the pennies as anybody on the block. But her heart was big with giving all the time from the little she had. She didn’t have the scared, worried look that pinched and squeezed the blood out of the faces of the poor. It breathed from her the feeling of plenty, as if she had Rockefeller’s millions to give away.
“You could charge your boarders twice as much for the sleeping, if you give them a bed with springs, instead of putting the feather bed on the floor,” said Muhmenkeh.
“Don’t I know that a bed with a spring is a good thing? But you have to have money for it.”
“I got an old spring in the basement. I’ll give it to you.”
“But the spring needs a bed with feet.”
“Do as I done. Put the spring over four empty herring pails and you’ll have a bed fit for the president. Now put a board over the potato barrel, and a clean newspaper over that, and you’ll have a table. All you need yet is a soapbox for a chair, and you’ll have a furnished room complete.”
Muhmenkeh’s bent old body tottered around on her lame foot, as she helped us. Even Mother forgot for a while her worries, so like a healing medicine was Muhmenkeh’s sunshine.
“Ach!” sighed Mother, looking about the furnished room complete, “God should only send a man for Bessie, to marry herself in good luck.”
“Here’s your chance to get a man for her without the worry for a dowry. If God is good, he might yet send you a rich boarder——”
From the kitchen came Father’s voice chanting:
“When the poor seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I, the Lord, will hear them. I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.”
Mother put her hand over Muhmenkeh’s mouth to stop her talking Silent, breathless, we peeked in through the open crack in the door. The black satin skullcap tipped on the side of his head set off his red hair and his long red beard. And his ragged satin coat from Europe made him look as if he just stepped out of the Bible. His eyes were raised to God. His two white hands on either side of the book, his whole body swaying with his song:
“And I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known; I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them and not forsake them.”
Mother’s face lost all earthly worries. Forgotten were beds, mattresses, boarders, and dowries. Father’s holiness filled her eyes with light.
“Is there any music on earth like this?” Mother whispered to Muhmenkeh.
“Who would ever dream that in America, where everything is only business and business, in such a lost corner as Hester Street lives such a fine, such a pure, silken soul as Reb Smolinsky?”
“If he was only so fit for this world, like he is fit for Heaven, then I wouldn’t have to dry out the marrow from my head worrying for the rent.”
His voice flowed into us deeper and deeper. We couldn’t help ourselves. We were singing with him:
“Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains; for the Lord hath comforted his peoples.”
Suddenly, it grew dark before our eyes. The collector lady from the landlord! We did not hear her till she banged open the door. Her hard eyes glared at Father.
“My rent!” she cried, waving her thick diamond fingers before Father’s face. But he didn’t see her or hear her. He went on chanting:
“Awake! Awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord: Awake, as in ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab and wounded the dragon?”
“Schnorrer!” shrieked the landlady, her fat face red with rage. “My rent!”
Father blinked his eyes and stared at the woman with a far-off look. “What is it? What do you want?”
“Don’t you know me? Haven’t I come often enough? My rent! My rent! My rent I want!”
“Oh-oh, your rent?” Father met her angry glare with an innocent smile of surprise. “Your rent? As soon as the girls get work, we’ll pay you out, little by little.”
“Pay me out, little by little! The cheek of those dirty immigrants! A fool I was, giving them a chance another month.”
“But we haven’t the money.” His voice was kind and gentle, as hers was rough and loud.
“Why haven’t you the money for rent?” she shouted.
“The girls have been out of work.” Father’s innocent look was not of this earth.
“Hear him only! The dirty do-nothing! Go to work yourself! Stop singing prayers. Then you’ll have money for rent!” She took one step towards him and shut his book with such anger that it fell at her feet.
Little red threads burned out of Father’s eyes. He rose slowly, but quicker than lightning flashed his hand.
A scream broke through the air. Before we had breath enough to stop him, Father slapped the landlady on one cheek, then on the other, till the blood rushed from her nose.
“You painted piece of flesh!” cried Father. “I’ll teach you respect for the Holy Torah!”
Screaming, the landlady rushed out, her face dripping blood as she ran. Before we knew what or where, she came back with two policemen. In front of our dumb eyes we saw Father handcuffed, like a thief, and taken away to the station house.
Bessie and Fania came home still without work. When they heard that Father was arrested it was as though their heads were knocked off.
Into this thick sadness, Mashah came, beautiful and smiling, like a doll from a show window. She hung up her hat with its pink roses on her nail on the wall, and before she had time to give a look at her things in the box, to see that nobody had touched them, she rushed over to the mirror, and with her smile of pleasure in herself, she said:
“A man in the place where I was looking for work asked to take me home. And when I wouldn’t let him, still
