Hungry Hearts

by Anzia Yezierska

  We must always listen to the bells. Bell one was for getting up. Bell two, for getting babies’ bottles. Bell three, for coming to breakfast. Bell four, for bathing the babies. If we come later, after the ring from the bell, then we’ll not get what we need. If the bottle bell rings and we don’t come right away for the bottle, then the baby don’t get no bottle. If the breakfast bell rings, and we don’t come right away down to the breakfast, then there won’t be no breakfast for us.

  When she got through with reading the rules, I was wondering which side of the house I was to walk on. At every step was some rule what said don’t move here, and don’t go there, don’t stand there, and don’t sit there. If I tried to remember the endless rules, it would only make me dizzy in the head. I was thinking for why, with so many rules, didn’t they also have already another rule, about how much air in our lungs to breathe.

  On every few days there came to the house swell ladies in automobiles. It was for them that the front from the house had to be always perfect. For them was all the beautiful smelling flowers. For them the front porch, the front sitting-room, and the easy stairs with the carpet on it.

  Always when the rich ladies came the fat lady, what was the boss from the vacation house, showed off to them the front. Then she took them over to the back to look on us, where we was sitting together, on long wooden benches, like prisoners. I was always feeling cheap like dirt, and mad that I had to be there, when they smiled down on us.

  “How nice for these poor creatures to have a restful place like this,” I heard one lady say.

  The next day I already felt like going back. The children what had to stay by the nurse in the play-room didn’t like it neither.

  “Mamma,” says Mendel to me, “I wisht I was home and out in the street. They don’t let us do nothing here. It’s worser than school.”

  “Ain’t it a play-room?” asks I. “Don’t they let you play?”

  “Gee wiss! play-room, they call it! The nurse hollers on us all the time. She don’t let us do nothing.”

  The reason why I stayed out the whole two weeks is this: I think to myself, so much shame in the face I suffered to come here, let me at least make the best from it already. Let me at least save up for two weeks what I got to spend out for grocery and butcher for my back bills to pay out. And then also think I to myself, if I go back on Monday, I got to do the big washing; on Tuesday waits for me the ironing; on Wednesday, the scrubbing and cleaning, and so goes it on. How bad it is already in this place, it’s a change from the very same sameness of what I’m having day in and day out at home. And so I stayed out this vacation to the bitter end.

  But at last the day for going out from this prison came. On the way riding back, I kept thinking to myself: “This is such a beautiful vacation house. For why do they make it so hard for us? When a mother needs a vacation, why must they tear the insides out from her first, by making her come down to the charity office? Why drag us from the charity office through the streets? And when we live through the shame of the charities and when we come already to the vacation house, for why do they boss the life out of us with so many rules and bells? For why don’t they let us lay down our heads on the bed when we are tired? For why must we always stick in the back, like dogs what have got to be chained in one spot? If they would let us walk around free, would we bite off something from the front part of the house?

  “If the best part of the house what is comfortable is made up for a show for visitors, why ain’t they keeping the whole business for a show for visitors? For why do they have to fool in worn-out mothers, to make them think they’ll give them a rest? Do they need the worn-out mothers as part of the show? I guess that is it, already.”

  When I got back in my home, so happy and thankful I was I could cry from thankfulness. How good it was feeling for me to be able to move around my own house, like I pleased. I was always kicking that my rooms was small and narrow, but now my small rooms seemed to grow so big like the park. I looked out from my window on the fire-escapes, full with bedding and garbage-cans, and on the wash-lines full with the clothes. All these ugly things was grand in my eyes. Even the high brick walls all around made me feel like a bird what just jumped out from a cage. And I cried out, “Gott sei dank! Gott sei dank!”

  THE MIRACLE

  Like all people who have nothing, I lived on dreams. With nothing but my longing for love, I burned my way through stone walls till I got to America. And what happened to me when I became an American is more than I can picture before my eyes, even in a dream.

  I was a poor Melamid’s daughter in Savel, Poland. In my village, a girl without a dowry was a dead one. The only kind of a man that would give a look on a girl without money was a widower with a dozen children, or some one with a hump or on crutches.

  There was the village water-carrier with red, teary eyes, and warts on his cracked lip. There was the janitor of the bath-house, with a squash nose, and long, black nails with all the dirt of the world under them. Maybe one of these uglinesses might yet take pity on me and do me the favor to marry me. I shivered and grew cold through all my bones at the thought of them.

  Like the hunger for bread was my hunger for love. My life was nothing to me. My heart was empty. Nothing I did was real without love. I used to spend nights crying on my pillow, praying to God: “I want love! I want love! I can’t live—I can’t breathe without love!”

  And all day long I’d ask myself: “Why was I born? What is the use of dragging on day after day, wasting myself eating, sleeping, dressing? What is the meaning of anything without love?” And my heart was so hungry I couldn’t help feeling and dreaming that somehow, somewhere, there must be a lover waiting for me. But how and where could I find my lover was the one longing that burned in my heart by day and by night.

  Then came the letter from Hanneh Hayyeh, Zlata’s daughter, that fired me up to go to America for my lover.

  “America is a lover’s land,” said Hanneh Hayyeh’s letter. “In America millionaires fall in love with poorest girls. Matchmakers are out of style, and a girl can get herself married to a man without the worries for a dowry.”

  “God from the world!” began knocking my heart. “How grand to live where the kind of a man you get don’t depend on how much money your father can put down! If I could only go to America! There—there waits my lover for me.”

  That letter made a holiday all over Savel. The butcher, the grocer, the shoemaker, everybody stopped his work and rushed to our house to hear my father read the news from the Golden Country.

  “Stand out your ears to hear my great happiness,” began Hanneh Hayyeh’s letter. “I, Hanneh Hayyeh, will marry myself to Solomon Cohen, the boss from the shirtwaist factory, where all day I was working sewing on buttons. If you could only see how the man is melting away his heart for me! He kisses me after each step I walk. The only wish from his heart is to make me for a lady. Think only, he is buying me a piano! I should learn piano lessons as if I were from millionaires.”

  Fire and lightning burst through the crowd. “Hanneh Hayyeh a lady!” They nudged and winked one to the other as they looked on the loose fatness of Zlata, her mother, and saw before their eyes Hanneh Hayyeh, with her thick, red lips, and her shape so fat like a puffed-out barrel of yeast.

  “In America is a law called ‘ladies first,’” the letter went on. “In the cars the men must get up to give their seats to the women. The men hold the babies on their hands and carry the bundles for the women, and even help with the dishes. There are not enough women to go around in America. And the men run after the women, and not like in Poland, the women running after the men.”

  Gewalt! What an excitement began to burn through the whole village when they heard of Hanneh Hayyeh’s luck!

  The ticket agents from the ship companies seeing how Hanneh Hayyeh’s letter was working like yeast in the air for America, posted up big signs by all the market fairs: “Go to America, the New World. Fifty rubles a ticket.”

  “Fifty rubl
es! Only fifty rubles! And there waits your lover!” cried my heart.

  Oi weh! How I was hungering to go to America after that! By day and by night I was tearing and turning over the earth, how to get to my lover on the other side of the world.

  “Nu, Zalmon?” said my mother, twisting my father around to what I wanted. “It’s not so far from sense what Sara Reisel is saying. In Savel, without a dowry, she had no chance to get a man, and if we got to wait much longer she will be too old to get one anywhere.”

  “But from where can we get together the fifty rubles?” asked my father. “Why don’t it will itself in you to give your daughter the moon?”

  I could no more think on how to get the money than they. But I was so dying to go, I felt I could draw the money out from the sky.

  One night I could not fall asleep. I lay in the darkness and stillness, my wild, beating heart on fire with dreams of my lover. I put out my hungry hands and prayed to my lover through the darkness: “Oh, love, love! How can I get the fifty rubles to come to you?”

  In the morning I got up like one choking for air. We were sitting down to eat breakfast, but I couldn’t taste nothing. I felt my head drop into my hands from weakness.

  “Why don’t you try to eat something?” begged my mother, going over to me.

  “Eat?” I cried, jumping up like one mad. “How can I eat? How can I sleep? How can I breathe in this deadness? I want to go to America. I must go, and I will go!”

  My mother began wringing her hands. “Oi weh! Mine heart! The knife is on our neck. The landlord is hollering for the unpaid rent, and it wills itself in you America?”

  “Are you out of your head?” cried my father.

  “What are you dreaming of golden hills on the sky? How can we get together the fifty rubles for a ticket?”

  I stole a look at Yosef, my younger brother. Nothing that was sensible ever laid in his head to do; but if there was anything wild, up in the air that willed itself in him, he could break through stone walls to get it. Yosef gave a look around the house. Everything was old and poor, and not a thing to get money on—nothing except father’s Saifer Torah—the Holy Scrolls—and mother’s silver candlesticks, her wedding present from our grandmother.

  “Why not sell the Saifer Torah and the candlesticks?” said Yosef.

  Nobody but my brother would have dared to breathe such a thing.

  “What? A Jew sell the Saifer Torah or the Sabbath candlesticks?” My father fixed on us his burning eyes like flaming wells. His hands tightened over his heart. He couldn’t speak. He just looked on the Saifer Torah, and then on us with a look that burned like live coals on our naked bodies. “What?” he gasped. “Should I sell my life, my soul from generation and generation? Sell my Saifer Torah? Not if the world goes under!”

  There was a stillness of thunder about to break. Everybody heard everybody’s heart beating.

  “Did I live to see this black day?” moaned my father, choking from quick breathing. “Mine own son, mine Kadish—mine Kadish tells me to sell the Holy Book that our forefathers shed rivers of blood to hand down to us.”

  “What are you taking it so terrible?” said my brother. “Doesn’t it stand in the Talmud that to help marry his daughter a man may sell the holiest thing—even the Holy Book?”

  “Are there miracles in America? Can she yet get there a man at her age and without a dowry?”

  “If Hanneh Hayyeh, who is older than Sara Reisel and not half as good-looking,” said my brother, “could get a boss from a factory, then whom cannot Sara Reisel pick out? And with her luck all of us will be lifted over to America.”

  My father did not answer. I waited, but still he did not answer.

  At last I burst out with all the tears choking in me for years: “Is your old Saifer Torah that hangs on the wall dearer to you than that I should marry? The Talmud tells you to sell the holiest thing to help marry your daughter, but you—you love yourself more than your own child!”

  Then I turned to my mother. I hit my hands on the table and cried in a voice that made her tremble and grow frightened: “Maybe you love your silver candlesticks more than your daughter’s happiness? To whom can I marry myself here, I ask you, only—to the bath janitor, to the water-carrier? I tell you I’ll kill myself if you don’t help me get away! I can’t stand no more this deadness here. I must get away. And you must give up everything to help me get away. All I need is a chance. I can do a million times better than Hanneh Hayyeh. I got a head. I got brains. I feel I can marry myself to the greatest man in America.”

  My mother stopped crying, took up the candlesticks from the mantelpiece and passed her hands over them. “It’s like a piece from my flesh,” she said. “We grew up with this, you children and I, and my mother and my mother’s mother. This and the Saifer Torah are the only things that shine up the house for the Sabbath.”

  She couldn’t go on, her words choked in her so. I am seeing yet how she looked, holding the candlesticks in her hands, and her eyes that she turned on us. But then I didn’t see anything but to go to America.

  She walked over to my father, who sat with his head in his hands, stoned with sadness. “Zalmon!” she sobbed. “The blood from under my nails I’ll give away, only my child should have a chance to marry herself well. I’ll give away my candlesticks—”

  Even my brother Yosef’s eyes filled with tears, so he quick jumped up and began to whistle and move around. “You don’t have to sell them,” he cried, trying to make it light in the air. “You can pawn them by Moisheh Itzek, the usurer, and as soon as Sara Reisel will get herself married, she’ll send us the money to get them out again, and we’ll yet live to take them over with us to America.”

  I never saw my father look so sad. He looked like a man from whom the life is bleeding away. “I’ll not stand myself against your happiness,” he said, in a still voice. “I only hope this will be to your luck and that you’ll get married quick, so we could take out the Saifer Torah from the pawn.”

  In less than a week the Saifer Torah and the candlesticks were pawned and the ticket bought. The whole village was ringing with the news that I am going to America. When I walked in the street people pointed on me with their fingers as if I were no more the same Sara Reisel.

  Everybody asked me different questions.

  “Tell me how it feels to go to America? Can you yet sleep nights like other people?”

  “When you’ll marry yourself in America, will you yet remember us?”

  God from the world! That last Friday night before I went to America! Maybe it is the last time we are together was in everybody’s eyes. Everything that happened seemed so different from all other times. I felt I was getting ready to tear my life out from my body.

  Without the Saifer Torah the house was dark and empty. The sun, the sky, the whole heaven shined from that Holy Book on the wall, and when it was taken out it left an aching emptiness on the heart, as if something beautiful passed out of our lives.

  I yet see before me my father in the Rabbi’s cap, with eyes that look far away into things; the way he sang the prayer over the wine when he passed around the glass for every one to give a sip. The tears rolled out from my little sister’s eyes down her cheeks and fell into the wine. On that my mother, who was all the time wiping her tears, burst out crying. “Shah! Shah!” commanded my father, rising up from his chair and beginning to walk around the room. “It’s Sabbath night, when every Jew should be happy. Is this the way you give honor to God on His one day that He set aside for you?”

  On the next day, that was Sabbath, father as if held us up in his hands, and everybody behaved himself. A stranger coming in couldn’t see anything that was going on, except that we walked so still and each one by himself, as if somebody dying was in the air over us.

  On the going-away morning, everybody was around our house waiting to take me to the station. Everybody wanted to give a help with the bundles. The moving along to the station was like a funeral. Nobody could hold in their feelin
gs any longer. Everybody fell on my neck to kiss me, as if it was my last day on earth.

  “Remember you come from Jews. Remember to pray every day,” said my father, putting his hands over my head, like in blessing on the day of Atonement.

  “Only try that we should be together soon again,” were the last words from my mother as she wiped her eyes with the corner of her shawl.

  “Only don’t forget that I want to study, and send for me as quick as you marry yourself,” said Yosef, smiling good-bye with tears in his eyes.

  As I saw the train coming, what wouldn’t I have given to stay back with the people in Savel forever! I wanted to cry out: “Take only away my ticket! I don’t want any more America! I don’t want any more my lover!”

  But as soon as I got into the train, although my eyes were still looking back to the left-behind faces, and my ears were yet hearing the good-byes and the partings, the thoughts of America began stealing into my heart. I was thinking how soon I’d have my lover and be rich like Hanneh Hayyeh. And with my luck, everybody was going to be happy in Savel. The dead people will stop dying and all the sorrows and troubles of the world will be wiped away with my happiness.

  I didn’t see the day. I didn’t see the night. I didn’t see the ocean. I didn’t see the sky. I only saw my lover in America, coming nearer and nearer to me, till I could feel his eyes bending on me so near that I got frightened and began to tremble. My heart ached so with the joy of his nearness that I quick drew back and turned away, and began to talk to the people that were pushing and crowding themselves on the deck.

  Nu, I got to America.

  Ten hours I pushed a machine in a shirt-waist factory, when I was yet lucky to get work. And always my head was drying up with saving and pinching and worrying to send home a little from the little I earned. All that my face saw all day long was girls and machines—and nothing else. And even when I came already home from work, I could only talk to the girls in the working-girls’ boarding-house, or shut myself up in my dark, lonesome bedroom. No family, no friends, nobody to get me acquainted with nobody! The only men I saw were what passed me by in the street and in cars.