Hungry Hearts

by Anzia Yezierska

  Murmuring and gesticulating the crowd dispersed.

  Each one knew every one else’s thought: How to get to America. What could they pawn? From where could they borrow for a ship-ticket?

  Silently we followed my father back into the hut from which the Cossack had driven us a while before.

  We children looked from mother to father and from father to mother.

  “Gottuniu! The Czar himself is pushing us to America by this last ukaz.” My mother’s face lighted up the hut like a lamp.

  “Meshugeneh Yidini!” admonished my father. “Always your head in the air. What—where—America? With what money? Can dead people lift themselves up to dance?”

  “Dance?” The samovar and the brass pots rang and reëchoed with my mother’s laughter. “I could dance myself over the waves of the ocean to America.”

  In amazed delight at my mother’s joy we children rippled and chuckled with her.

  My father paced the room—his face dark with dread for the morrow.

  “Empty hands—empty pockets—yet it dreams itself in you America.”

  “Who is poor who has hopes on America?” flaunted my mother.

  “Sell my red quilted petticoat that grandmother left for my dowry,” I urged in excitement.

  “Sell the feather beds, sell the samovar,” chorused the children.

  “Sure we can sell everything—the goat and all the winter things,” added my mother; “it must be always summer in America.”

  I flung my arms around my brother and he seized Bessie by the curls, and we danced about the room crazy with joy.

  “Beggars!” laughed my mother, “why are you so happy with yourselves? How will you go to America without a shirt on your back—without shoes on your feet?”

  But we ran out into the road, shouting and singing: “We’ll sell everything we got—we’ll go to America.”

  “White bread and meat we’ll eat every day—in America! In America!”

  That very evening we fetched Berel Zalman, the usurer, and showed him all our treasures, piled up in the middle of the hut.

  “Look, all these fine feather beds, Berel Zalman,” urged my mother; “this grand fur coat came from Nijny itself. My grandfather bought it at the fair.”

  I held up my red quilted petticoat, the supreme sacrifice of my ten-year-old life.

  Even my father shyly pushed forward the samovar. “It can hold enough tea for the whole village.”

  “Only a hundred rubles for them all,” pleaded my mother; “only enough to lift us to America. Only one hundred little rubles.”

  “A hundred rubles? Pfui!” sniffed the pawnbroker. “Forty is overpaid. Not even thirty is it worth.”

  But coaxing and cajoling my mother got a hundred rubles out of him.

  Steerage—dirty bundles—foul odors—seasick humanity—but I saw and heard nothing of the foulness and ugliness around me. I floated in showers of sunshine; visions upon visions of the new world opened before me.

  From lips to lips flowed the golden legend of the golden country:

  “In America you can say what you feel—you can voice your thoughts in the open streets without fear of a Cossack.”

  “In America is a home for everybody. The land is your land. Not like in Russia where you feel yourself a stranger in the village where you were born and raised—the village in which your father and grandfather lie buried.”

  “Everybody is with everybody alike, in America. Christians and Jews are brothers together.”

  “An end to the worry for bread. An end to the fear of the bosses over you. Everybody can do what he wants with his life in America.”

  “There are no high or low in America. Even the President holds hands with Gedalyeh Mindel.”

  “Plenty for all. Learning flows free like milk and honey.”

  “Learning flows free.”

  The words painted pictures in my mind. I saw before me free schools, free colleges, free libraries, where I could learn and learn and keep on learning.

  In our village was a school, but only for Christian children. In the schools of America I’d lift up my head and laugh and dance—a child with other children. Like a bird in the air, from sky to sky, from star to star, I’d soar and soar.

  “Land! Land!” came the joyous shout.

  “America! We’re in America!” cried my mother, almost smothering us in her rapture.

  All crowded and pushed on deck. They strained and stretched to get the first glimpse of the “golden country,” lifting their children on their shoulders that they might see beyond them.

  Men fell on their knees to pray. Women hugged their babies and wept. Children danced. Strangers embraced and kissed like old friends. Old men and women had in their eyes a look of young people in love.

  Age-old visions sang themselves in me—songs of freedom of an oppressed people.

  America!—America!

  Part II

  Between buildings that loomed like mountains, we struggled with our bundles, spreading around us the smell of the steerage. Up Broadway, under the bridge, and through the swarming streets of the ghetto, we followed Gedalyeh Mindel.

  I looked about the narrow streets of squeezed-in stores and houses, ragged clothes, dirty bedding oozing out of the windows, ash-cans and garbage-cans cluttering the side-walks. A vague sadness pressed down my heart—the first doubt of America.

  “Where are the green fields and open spaces in America?” cried my heart. “Where is the golden country of my dreams?”

  A loneliness for the fragrant silence of the woods that lay beyond our mud hut welled up in my heart, a longing for the soft, responsive earth of our village streets. All about me was the hardness of brick and stone, the stinking smells of crowded poverty.

  “Here’s your house with separate rooms like in a palace.” Gedalyeh Mindel flung open the door of a dingy, airless flat.

  “Oi weh!” my mother cried in dismay. “Where’s the sunshine in America?”

  She went to the window and looked out at the blank wall of the next house. “Gottuniu! Like in a grave so dark …”

  “It ain’t so dark, it’s only a little shady.” Gedalyeh Mindel lighted the gas. “Look only”—he pointed with pride to the dim gaslight. “No candles, no kerosene lamps in America, you turn on a screw and put to it a match and you got it light like with sunshine.”

  Again the shadow fell over me, again the doubt of America!

  In America were rooms without sunlight, rooms to sleep in, to eat in, to cook in, but without sunshine. And Gedalyeh Mindel was happy. Could I be satisfied with just a place to sleep and eat in, and a door to shut people out—to take the place of sunlight? Or would I always need the sunlight to be happy?

  And where was there a place in America for me to play? I looked out into the alley below and saw pale-faced children scrambling in the gutter. “Where is America?” cried my heart.

  My eyes were shutting themselves with sleep. Blindly, I felt for the buttons on my dress, and buttoning I sank back in sleep again—the deadweight sleep of utter exhaustion.

  “Heart of mine!” my mother’s voice moaned above me. “Father is already gone an hour. You know how they’ll squeeze from you a nickel for every minute you’re late. Quick only!”

  I seized my bread and herring and tumbled down the stairs and out into the street. I ate running, blindly pressing through the hurrying throngs of workers—my haste and fear choking each mouthful.

  I felt a strangling in my throat as I neared the sweatshop prison; all my nerves screwed together into iron hardness to endure the day’s torture.

  For an instant I hesitated as I faced the grated window of the old dilapidated building—dirt and decay cried out from every crumbling brick.

  In the maw of the shop, raging around me the roar and the clatter, the clatter and the roar, the merciless grind of the pounding machines. Half maddened, half deadened, I struggled to think, to feel, to remember—what am I—who am I—why was I here?

  I strug
gled in vain—bewildered and lost in a whirlpool of noise.

  “America—America—where was America?” it cried in my heart.

  The factory whistle—the slowing-down of the machines—the shout of release hailing the noon hour.

  I woke as from a tense nightmare—a weary waking to pain.

  In the dark chaos of my brain reason began to dawn. In my stifled heart feelings began to pulse. The wound of my wasted life began to throb and ache. My childhood choked with drudgery—must my youth too die—unlived?

  The odor of herring and garlic—the ravenous munching of food—laughter and loud, vulgar jokes. Was it only I who was so wretched? I looked at those around me. Were they happy or only insensible to their slavery? How could they laugh and joke? Why were they not torn with rebellion against this galling grind—the crushing, deadening movements of the body, where only hands live and hearts and brains must die?

  A touch on my shoulder. I looked up. It was Yetta Solomon from the machine next to mine.

  “Here’s your tea.”

  I stared at her, half hearing.

  “Ain’t you going to eat nothing?”

  “Oi weh! Yetta! I can’t stand it!” The cry broke from me. “I didn’t come to America to turn into a machine. I came to America to make from myself a person. Does America want only my hands—only the strength of my body—not my heart—not my feelings—my thoughts?”

  “Our heads ain’t smart enough,” said Yetta, practically. “We ain’t been to school like the American-born.”

  “What for did I come to America but to go to school—to learn—to think—to make something beautiful from my life …”

  “Sh-sh! Sh-sh! The boss—the boss!” came the warning whisper.

  A sudden hush fell over the shop as the boss entered. He raised his hand.

  Breathless silence.

  The hard, red face with pig’s eyes held us under its sickening spell. Again I saw the Cossack and heard him thunder the ukaz.

  Prepared for disaster, the girls paled as they cast at each other sidelong, frightened glances.

  “Hands,” he addressed us, fingering the gold watch-chain that spread across his fat belly, “it’s slack in the other trades and I can get plenty girls begging themselves to work for half what you’re getting—only I ain’t a skinner. I always give my hands a show to earn their bread. From now on, I’ll give you fifty cents a dozen shirts instead of seventy-five, but I’ll give you night-work, so you needn’t lose nothing.” And he was gone.

  The stillness of death filled the shop. Each one felt the heart of the other bleed with her own helplessness.

  A sudden sound broke the silence. A woman sobbed chokingly. It was Balah Rifkin, a widow with three children.

  “Oi weh!” She tore at her scrawny neck. “The blood-sucker—the thief! How will I give them to eat—my babies—my babies—my hungry little lambs!”

  “Why do we let him choke us?”

  “Twenty-five cents less on a dozen—how will we be able to live?”

  “He tears the last skin from our bones!”

  “Why didn’t nobody speak up to him?”

  “Tell him he couldn’t crush us down to worse than we had in Russia?”

  “Can we help ourselves? Our life lies in his hands.”

  Something in me forced me forward. Rage at the bitter greed tore me. Our desperate helplessness drove me to strength.

  “I’ll go to the boss!” I cried, my nerves quivering with fierce excitement. “I’ll tell him Balah Rifkin has three hungry mouths to feed.”

  Pale, hungry faces thrust themselves toward me, thin, knotted hands reached out, starved bodies pressed close about me.

  “Long years on you!” cried Balah Rifkin, drying her eyes with a corner of her shawl.

  “Tell him about my old father and me, his only bread-giver,” came from Bessie Sopolsky, a gaunt-faced girl with a hacking cough.

  “And I got no father or mother and four of them younger than me hanging on my neck.” Jennie Feist’s beautiful young face was already scarred with the gray worries of age.

  America, as the oppressed of all lands have dreamed America to be, and America as it is, flashed before me—a banner of fire! Behind me I felt masses pressing—thousands of immigrants—thousands upon thousands crushed by injustice, lifted me as on wings.

  I entered the boss’s office without a shadow of fear. I was not I—the wrongs of my people burned through me till I felt the very flesh of my body a living flame of rebellion.

  I faced the boss.

  “We can’t stand it!” I cried. “Even as it is we’re hungry. Fifty cents a dozen would starve us. Can you, a Jew, tear the bread from another Jew’s mouth?”

  “You, fresh mouth, you! Who are you to learn me my business?”

  “Weren’t you yourself once a machine slave—your life in the hands of your boss?”

  “You—loaferin—money for nothing you want! The minute they begin to talk English they get flies in their nose…. A black year on you—trouble-maker! I’ll have no smart heads in my shop! Such freshness! Out you get … out from my shop!”

  Stunned and hopeless, the wings of my courage broken, I groped my way back to them—back to the eager, waiting faces—back to the crushed hearts aching with mine.

  As I opened the door they read our defeat in my face.

  “Girls!” I held out my hands. “He’s fired me.”

  My voice died in the silence. Not a girl stirred. Their heads only bent closer over their machines.

  “Here, you! Get yourself out of here!” The boss thundered at me. “Bessie Sopolsky and you, Balah Rifkin, take out her machine into the hall…. I want no big-mouthed Americanerins in my shop.”

  Bessie Sopolsky and Balah Rifkin, their eyes black with tragedy, carried out my machine.

  Not a hand was held out to me, not a face met mine. I felt them shrink from me as I passed them on my way out.

  In the street I found I was crying. The new hope that had flowed in me so strong bled out of my veins. A moment before, our togetherness had made me believe us so strong—and now I saw each alone—crushed—broken. What were they all but crawling worms, servile grubbers for bread?

  I wept not so much because the girls had deserted me, but because I saw for the first time how mean, how vile, were the creatures with whom I had to work. How the fear for bread had dehumanized their last shred of humanity! I felt I had not been working among human beings, but in a jungle of savages who had to eat one another alive in order to survive.

  And then, in the very bitterness of my resentment, the hardness broke in me. I saw the girls through their own eyes as if I were inside of them. What else could they have done? Was not an immediate crust of bread for Balah Rifkin’s children more urgent than truth—more vital than honor?

  Could it be that they ever had dreamed of America as I had dreamed? Had their faith in America wholly died in them? Could my faith be killed as theirs had been?

  Gasping from running, Yetta Solomon flung her arms around me.

  “You golden heart! I sneaked myself out from the shop—only to tell you I’ll come to see you to-night. I’d give the blood from under my nails for you—only I got to run back—I got to hold my job—my mother—”

  I hardly saw or heard her—my senses stunned with my defeat. I walked on in a blind daze—feeling that any moment I would drop in the middle of the street from sheer exhaustion.

  Every hope I had clung to—every human stay—every reality was torn from under me. I sank in bottomless blackness. I had only one wish left—to die.

  Was it then only a dream—a mirage of the hungry-hearted people in the desert lands of oppression—this age-old faith in America—the beloved, the prayed-for “golden country”?

  Had the starved villagers of Sukovoly lifted above their sorrows a mere rainbow vision that led them—where—where? To the stifling submission of the sweatshop or the desperation of the streets!

  “O God! What is there beyond this hell?�
� my soul cried in me. “Why can’t I make a quick end to myself?”

  A thousand voices within me and about me answered:

  “My faith is dead, but in my blood their faith still clamors and aches for fulfillment—dead generations whose faith though beaten back still presses on—a resistless, deathless force!

  “In this America that crushes and kills me, their spirit drives me on—to struggle—to suffer—but never to submit.”

  In my desperate darkness their lost lives loomed—a living flame of light. Again I saw the mob of dusty villagers crowding around my father as he read the letter from America—their eager faces thrust out—their eyes blazing with the same hope, the same age-old faith that drove me on—

  A sudden crash against my back. Dizzy with pain I fell—then all was darkness and quiet.

  I opened my eyes. A white-clad figure bent over me. Had I died? Was I in the heaven of the new world—in America?

  My eyes closed again. A misty happiness filled my being.

  “Learning flows free like milk and honey,” it dreamed itself in me.

  I was in my heaven—in the schools of America—in open, sunny fields—a child with other children. Our lesson-books were singing birds and whispering trees—chanting brooks and beckoning skies. We breathed in learning and wisdom as naturally as flowers breathe in sunlight.

  After our lessons were over, we all joined hands skipping about like a picture of dancing fairies I had once seen in a shop-window.

  I was so full of the joy of togetherness—the great wonder of the new world; it pressed on my heart like sorrow. Slowly, I stole away from the other children into silent solitude, wrestling and praying to give out what surged in me into some form of beauty. And out of my struggle to shape my thoughts beautifully, a great song filled the world.

  “Soon she’s all right to come back to the shop—yes, nurse?” The voice of Yetta Solomon broke into my dreaming.

  Wearily I opened my eyes. I saw I was still on earth.