looked on Mother’s faded eyes, her shape like a squashed barrel of yeast, and her face black and yellow with all the worries from the world.
“You looked like Mashah?” I asked.
“Where do you suppose Mashah got her looks? From the air? Mashah never had such colour in her cheeks, such fire in her eyes. And my shape was something to look on—not the straight up and down like the beauties make themselves in America.”
The kitchen walls melted away to the far-off times in Russia, as Mother went on and on with her fairy tales till late hours of the night.
“I was known in all the villages around not only for my beauty: I was the first dancer on every wedding. You don’t see in America such dancing like mine. The minute I’d give a step in they’d begin clapping their hands and stamping their feet, the fiddlers began to play, and sing the song they played. And the whole crowd, old and young, would form a ring around me and watch with open mouth how I lifted myself in the air, dancing the kozatzkeh.”
Once Mother got started she couldn’t stop herself, telling more and more. She was like drunk with the memories of old times.
“When I got fourteen years old, the matchmakers from all the villages, far and near, began knocking on our doors, telling my father the rich men’s sons that were crazy to marry themselves to me. But Father said, he got plenty of money himself. He wanted to buy himself honor in the family. He wanted only learning in a son-in-law. Not only could he give his daughter a big dowry, but he could promise his son-in-law twelve years’ free board and he wouldn’t have to do anything but sit in the synagogue and learn.
“When the matchmaker brought your father to the house the first time, so my father could look him over and hear him out his learning, they called me in to give a look on him, but I was so ashamed I ran out of the house. But my father and the matchmaker stayed all day and all night. And one after another your father chanted by heart Isaiah, Jeremiah, the songs of David, and the Book of Job.
“In the morning Father sent messengers to all the neighbors to come and eat with him cake and wine for his daughter’s engagement that was to be the next day. I didn’t give a look on your father till the day of the engagement, and then I was too bashful to really look on him. I only stole a glance now and then, but I could see how it shined from his face the high learning, like from an inside sun.
“Nobody in all the villages around had dowry like mine. Six feather beds and twelve pillows. I used to sit up nights with all the servants to pluck the down from the goose feathers. So full of down were my pillows that you could blow them away with a breath.
“I went special to Warsaw to pick out the ticking for my bedding. All my sheets had my name embroidered with a beautiful wreath of flowers over it. All my towels were half covered with red and blue embroidery and on each was some beautiful words embroidered such as, ‘Happy sunshine,’ ‘Good-morning!’ or ‘Good-night!’
“My curtains alone took me a whole year to knit, on sticks two yards long. But the most beautiful thing of my whole dowry was my hand-crocheted tablecloth. It was made up of little knitted rings of all colors: red, blue, yellow, green, and purple. All the colors of the rainbow were in that tablecloth. It was like dancing sunshine lighting up the room when it was spread on the table for the Sabbath. Ach! There ain’t in America such beautiful things like we had home.”
“Nonsense, Mamma!” broke in Mashah. “If you only had the money to go on Fifth Avenue you’d see the grand things you could buy.”
“Yes, buy!” repeated Mother. “In America, rich people can only buy, and buy things made by machines. Even Rockefeller’s daughter got only store-bought, ready-made things for her dowry. There was a feeling in my tablecloth——”
“But why did you leave that rainbow tablecloth and come to America?” I asked.
“Because the Tsar of Russia! Worms should eat him! He wanted for himself free soldiers to make pogroms. He wanted to tear your father away from his learning and make him a common soldier—to drink vodka with the drunken mouzhiks, eat pig, and shoot the people. . . .
“There was only one thing to do, go to the brass-buttoned butchers and buy him out of the army. The pogromshchiks, the minute they smelled money, they were like wild wolves on the smell of blood. The more we gave them, the more they wanted. We had to sell out everything, and give them all we had, to the last cent, to shut them up.
“Then, suddenly, my father died. He left us all his money. And your father tried to keep up his business, selling wheat and wine, while he was singing himself the Songs of Solomon. Maybe Solomon got himself rich first and then sang his Songs, but your father wanted to sing first and then attend to business. He was a smart salesman, only to sell things for less than they cost. . . . And when everything was gone from us, then our only hope was to come to America, where Father thought things cost nothing at all.”
Chapter III. The Burden Bearer
But Mother did not dream always about how good she had it as a young girl. If she had less to worry for the rent, so she had more time to worry for a man for Bessie, who was already nine years older than Mother was when she got married. And there was no sign of a man yet. And no dowry to help get one.
What Muhmenkeh said about the boarders didn’t turn out that way, because all the boarders, the minute they gave a look on Mashah, fainted away for her. And they didn’t see at all Bessie, who carried the whole house on her back. Their eyes turned only on Mashah and their ears didn’t hear anything but what Mashah said.
The men didn’t know that if Mashah was always shining like a doll, it was because Mashah took first her wages to make herself more beautiful and left the rest of us to worry for the bread and rent. They didn’t know that Mashah, on her way home from work, always looked on the shop windows for what was the prettiest and latest style. They didn’t know that all her time home, instead of helping with the housework, Mashah was always before the mirror trying on her things, this way and that way, so as to make them more and more becoming to her, while Bessie would rush home the quicker to help Mother with the washing or ironing, or bring home another bundle of night work, and stay up till all hours to earn another dollar for the house.
The men didn’t know that Bessie gave every cent she earned to Father and had nothing left to buy herself something new. All they saw was that Mashah was a pleasure to look on, while Bessie was so buried, with her nose in the earth helping the family, that they had no more eyes on her than on Mother.
Even Fania, the third sister, got herself a young man before Bessie did. In the air-shaft, facing our kitchen, he lived. He was a boarder with Zalmon, the fish-peddler. Once, when Fania put her head out of the window to dry her hair, the young man began to talk to her. Then he told her about the night school where he was going and he showed her the books he took from the free library.
And soon, every evening, Fania began to go to the same night school where the young man went. And he began writing her every day love poems, such grand, beautiful thoughts that read like from a book. And sometimes, Fania would read the poems the young man sent her to the girls on the stoop. And nobody would believe that such burning high thoughts came from that pale-faced, quiet-looking man that lived in that dark air-shaft hole with Zalmon the fish-peddler, and who was only a sweeper and cleaner in the corner drugstore.
And so the neighbors saw Mashah always with a bunch of men, buzzing around her like flies around a pot of honey. They saw Fania go to the night school and to the library with the writing young man. But Bessie had nobody. And you could see it in her face,
