Hungry Hearts

by Anzia Yezierska

  “What did I tell you? In America children are like money in the bank,” purred Mrs. Pelz, as she pinched and patted Hanneh Breineh’s silk sleeve. “Oi weh! How it shines from you! You ought to kiss the air and dance for joy and happiness. It is such a bitter frost outside; a pail of coal is so dear, and you got it so warm with steam heat. I had to pawn my feather bed to have enough for the rent, and you are rolling in money.”

  “Yes, I got it good in some ways, but money ain’t everything,” sighed Hanneh Breineh.

  “You ain’t yet satisfied?”

  “But here I got no friends,” complained Hanneh Breineh.

  “Friends?” queried Mrs. Pelz. “What greater friend is there on earth than the dollar?”

  “Oi! Mrs. Pelz; if you could only look into my heart! I’m so choked up! You know they say a cow has a long tongue, but can’t talk.” Hanneh Breineh shook her head wistfully, and her eyes filmed with inward brooding. “My children give me everything from the best. When I was sick, they got me a nurse by day and one by night. They bought me the best wine. If I asked for dove’s milk, they would buy it for me; but—but—I can’t talk myself out in their language. They want to make me over for an American lady, and I’m different.” Tears cut their way under her eyelids with a pricking pain as she went on: “When I was poor, I was free, and could holler and do what I like in my own house. Here I got to lie still like a mouse under a broom. Between living up to my Fifth-Avenue daughter and keeping up with the servants, I am like a sinner in the next world that is thrown from one hell to another.” The doorbell rang, and Hanneh Breineh jumped up with a start.

  “Oi weh! It must be the servant back already!” she exclaimed, as she tore off her apron. “Oi weh! Let’s quickly put the dishes together in a dish-pan. If she sees I eat on the kitchen table, she will look on me like the dirt under her feet.”

  Mrs. Pelz seized her shawl in haste.

  “I better run home quick in my rags before your servant sees me.”

  “I’ll speak to Abe about the job,” said Hanneh Breineh, as she pushed a bill into the hand of Mrs. Pelz, who edged out as the servant entered.

  “I’m having fried potato lotkes special for you, Benny,” said Hanneh Breineh, as the children gathered about the table for the family dinner given in honor of Benny’s success with his new play. “Do you remember how you used to lick the fingers from them?”

  “Oh, mother!” reproved Fanny. “Anyone hearing you would think we were still in the pushcart district.”

  “Stop your nagging, sis, and let ma alone,” commanded Benny, patting his mother’s arm affectionately. “I’m home only once a month. Let her feed me what she pleases. My stomach is bomb-proof.”

  “Do I hear that the President is coming to your play?” said Abe, as he stuffed a napkin over his diamond-studded shirt-front.

  “Why shouldn’t he come?” returned Benny. “The critics say it’s the greatest antidote for the race hatred created by the war. If you want to know, he is coming to-night; and what’s more, our box is next to the President’s.”

  “Nu, mammeh,” sallied Jake, “did you ever dream in Delancey Street that we should rub sleeves with the President?”

  “I always said that Benny had more head than the rest of you,” replied the mother.

  As the laughter died away, Jake went on:

  “Honor you are getting plenty; but how much mezummen does this play bring you? Can I invest any of it in real estate for you?”

  “I’m getting ten per cent royalties of the gross receipts,” replied the youthful playwright.

  “How much is that?” queried Hanneh Breineh.

  “Enough to buy up all your fish-markets in Delancey Street,” laughed Abe in good-natured raillery at his mother.

  Her son’s jest cut like a knife-thrust in her heart. She felt her heart ache with the pain that she was shut out from their successes. Each added triumph only widened the gulf. And when she tried to bridge this gulf by asking questions, they only thrust her back upon herself.

  “Your fame has even helped me get my hat trade solid with the Four Hundred,” put in Fanny. “You bet I let Mrs. Van Suyden know that our box is next to the President’s. She said she would drop in to meet you. Of course she let on to me that she hadn’t seen the play yet, though my designer said she saw her there on the opening night.”

  “Oh, Gosh, the toadies!” sneered Benny. “Nothing so sickens you with success as the way people who once shoved you off the sidewalk come crawling to you on their stomachs begging you to dine with them.”

  “Say, that leading man of yours he’s some class!” cried Fanny. “That’s the man I’m looking for. Will you invite him to supper after the theater?”

  The playwright turned to his mother.

  “Say, ma,” he said, laughingly, “how would you like a real actor for a son-in-law?”

  “She should worry,” mocked Sam. “She’ll be discussing with him the future of the Greek drama. Too bad it doesn’t happen to be Warfield, or mother could give him tips on the ‘Auctioneer.’”

  Jake turned to his mother with a covert grin.

  “I guess you’d have no objection if Fanny got next to Benny’s leading man. He makes at least fifteen hundred a week. That wouldn’t be such a bad addition to the family, would it?”

  Again the bantering tone stabbed Hanneh Breineh. Everything in her began to tremble and break loose.

  “Why do you ask me?” she cried, throwing her napkin into her plate. “Do I count for a person in this house? If I’ll say something, will you even listen to me? What is to me the grandest man that my daughter could pick out? Another enemy in my house! Another person to shame himself from me!” She swept in her children in one glance of despairing anguish as she rose from the table. “What worth is an old mother to American children? The President is coming to-night to the theater, and none of you asked me to go.” Unable to check the rising tears, she fled toward the kitchen and banged the door.

  They all looked at one another guiltily.

  “Say, sis,” Benny called out sharply, “what sort of frame-up is this? Haven’t you told mother that she was to go with us to-night?”

  “Yes—I—” Fanny bit her lips as she fumbled evasively for words. “I asked her if she wouldn’t mind my taking her some other time.”

  “Now you have made a mess of it!” fumed Benny. “Mother’ll be too hurt to go now.”

  “Well, I don’t care,” snapped Fanny. “I can’t appear with mother in a box at the theater. Can I introduce her to Mrs. Van Suyden? And suppose your leading man should ask to meet me?”

  “Take your time, sis. He hasn’t asked yet,” scoffed Benny.

  “The more reason I shouldn’t spoil my chances. You know mother. She’ll spill the beans that we come from Delancey Street the minute we introduce her anywhere. Must I always have the black shadow of my past trailing after me?”

  “But have you no feelings for mother?” admonished Abe.

  “I’ve tried harder than all of you to do my duty. I’ve lived with her.” She turned angrily upon them. “I’ve borne the shame of mother while you bought her off with a present and a treat here and there. God knows how hard I tried to civilize her so as not to have to blush with shame when I take her anywhere. I dressed her in the most stylish Paris models, but Delancey Street sticks out from every inch of her. Whenever she opens her mouth, I’m done for. You fellows had your chance to rise in the world because a man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can’t get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.”

  They were silenced by her vehemence, and unconsciously turned to Benny.

  “I guess we all tried to do our best for mother,” said Benny, thoughtfully. “But wherever there is growth, there is pain and heartbreak. The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof, and—”

  A sound of crashing dishes came from th
e kitchen, and the voice of Hanneh Breineh resounded through the dining-room as she wreaked her pent-up fury on the helpless servant.

  “Oh, my nerves! I can’t stand it any more! There will be no girl again for another week!” cried Fanny.

  “Oh, let up on the old lady,” protested Abe. “Since she can’t take it out on us any more, what harm is it if she cusses the servants?”

  “If you fellows had to chase around employment agencies, you wouldn’t see anything funny about it. Why can’t we move into a hotel that will do away with the need of servants altogether?”

  “I got it better,” said Jake, consulting a notebook from his pocket. “I have on my list an apartment on Riverside Drive where there’s only a small kitchenette; but we can do away with the cooking, for there is a dining service in the building.”

  The new Riverside apartment to which Hanneh Breineh was removed by her socially ambitious children was for the habitually active mother an empty desert of enforced idleness. Deprived of her kitchen, Hanneh Breineh felt robbed of the last reason for her existence. Cooking and marketing and puttering busily with pots and pans gave her an excuse for living and struggling and bearing up with her children. The lonely idleness of Riverside Drive stunned all her senses and arrested all her thoughts. It gave her that choked sense of being cut off from air, from life, from everything warm and human. The cold indifference, the each-for-himself look in the eyes of the people about her were like stinging slaps in the face. Even the children had nothing real or human in them. They were starched and stiff miniatures of their elders.

  But the most unendurable part of the stifling life on Riverside Drive was being forced to eat in the public dining-room. No matter how hard she tried to learn polite table manners, she always found people staring at her, and her daughter rebuking her for eating with the wrong fork or guzzling the soup or staining the cloth.

  In a fit of rebellion Hanneh Breineh resolved never to go down to the public dining-room again, but to make use of the gas-stove in the kitchenette to cook her own meals. That very day she rode down to Delancey Street and purchased a new market-basket. For some time she walked among the haggling pushcart venders, relaxing and swimming in the warm waves of her old familiar past.

  A fish-peddler held up a large carp in his black, hairy hand and waved it dramatically:

  “Women! Women! Fourteen cents a pound!”

  He ceased his raucous shouting as he saw Hanneh Breineh in her rich attire approach his cart.

  “How much?” she asked, pointing to the fattest carp.

  “Fifteen cents, lady,” said the peddler, smirking as he raised his price.

  “Swindler! Didn’t I hear you call fourteen cents?” shrieked Hanneh Breineh, exultingly, the spirit of the penny chase surging in her blood. Diplomatically, Hanneh Breineh turned as if to go, and the fisherman seized her basket in frantic fear.

  “I should live; I’m losing money on the fish, lady,” whined the peddler. “I’ll let it down to thirteen cents for you only.”

  “Two pounds for a quarter, and not a penny more,” said Hanneh Breineh, thrilling again with the rare sport of bargaining, which had been her chief joy in the good old days of poverty.

  “Nu, I want to make the first sale for good luck.” The peddler threw the fish on the scale.

  As he wrapped up the fish, Hanneh Breineh saw the driven look of worry in his haggard eyes, and when he counted out the change from her dollar, she waved it aside. “Keep it for your luck,” she said, and hurried off to strike a new bargain at a pushcart of onions.

  Hanneh Breineh returned triumphantly with her purchases. The basket under her arm gave forth the old, homelike odors of herring and garlic, while the scaly tail of a four-pound carp protruded from its newspaper wrapping. A gilded placard on the door of the apartment-house proclaimed that all merchandise must be delivered through the trade entrance in the rear; but Hanneh Breineh with her basket strode proudly through the marble-paneled hall and rang nonchalantly for the elevator.

  The uniformed hall-man, erect, expressionless, frigid with dignity, stepped forward:

  “Just a minute, madam. I’ll call a boy to take up your basket for you.”

  Hanneh Breineh, glaring at him, jerked the basket savagely from his hands. “Mind your own business!” she retorted. “I’ll take it up myself. Do you think you’re a Russian policeman to boss me in my own house?”

  Angry lines appeared on the countenance of the representative of social decorum.

  “It is against the rules, madam,” he said, stiffly.

  “You should sink into the earth with all your rules and brass buttons. Ain’t this America? Ain’t this a free country? Can’t I take up in my own house what I buy with my own money?” cried Hanneh Breineh, reveling in the opportunity to shower forth the volley of invectives that had been suppressed in her for the weeks of deadly dignity of Riverside Drive.

  In the midst of this uproar Fanny came in with Mrs. Van Suyden. Hanneh Breineh rushed over to her, crying:

  “This bossy policeman won’t let me take up my basket in the elevator.”

  The daughter, unnerved with shame and confusion, took the basket in her white-gloved hand and ordered the hall-boy to take it around to the regular delivery entrance.

  Hanneh Breineh was so hurt by her daughter’s apparent defense of the hall-man’s rules that she utterly ignored Mrs. Van Suyden’s greeting and walked up the seven flights of stairs out of sheer spite.

  “You see the tragedy of my life?” broke out Fanny, turning to Mrs. Van Suyden.

  “You poor child! You go right up to your dear, old lady mother, and I’ll come some other time.”

  Instantly Fanny regretted her words. Mrs. Van Suyden’s pity only roused her wrath the more against her mother.

  Breathless from climbing the stairs, Hanneh Breineh entered the apartment just as Fanny tore the faultless millinery creation from her head and threw it on the floor in a rage.

  “Mother, you are the ruination of my life! You have driven away Mrs. Van Suyden, as you have driven away all my best friends. What do you think we got this apartment for but to get rid of your fish smells and your brawls with the servants? And here you come with a basket on your arm as if you just landed from steerage! And this afternoon, of all times, when Benny is bringing his leading man to tea. When will you ever stop disgracing us?”

  “When I’m dead,” said Hanneh Breineh, grimly. “When the earth will cover me up, then you’ll be free to go your American way. I’m not going to make myself over for a lady on Riverside Drive. I hate you and all your swell friends. I’ll not let myself be choked up here by you or by that hall-boss policeman that is higher in your eyes than your own mother.”

  “So that’s your thanks for all we’ve done for you?” cried the daughter.

  “All you’ve done for me!” shouted Hanneh Breineh. “What have you done for me? You hold me like a dog on a chain! It stands in the Talmud; some children give their mothers dry bread and water and go to heaven for it, and some give their mother roast duck and go to Gehenna because it’s not given with love.”

  “You want me to love you yet?” raged the daughter. “You knocked every bit of love out of me when I was yet a kid. All the memories of childhood I have is your everlasting cursing and yelling that we were gluttons.”

  The bell rang sharply, and Hanneh Breineh flung open the door.

  “Your groceries, ma’am,” said the boy.

  Hanneh Breineh seized the basket from him, and with a vicious fling sent it rolling across the room, strewing its contents over the Persian rugs and inlaid floor. Then seizing her hat and coat, she stormed out of the apartment and down the stairs.

  Mr. and Mrs. Pelz sat crouched and shivering over their meager supper when the door opened, and Hanneh Breineh in fur coat and plumed hat charged into the room.

  “I come to cry out to you my bitter heart,” she sobbed. “Woe is me! It is so black for my eyes!”

  “What is the matter with you, Hanneh Bre
ineh?” cried Mrs. Pelz in bewildered alarm.

  “I am turned out of my own house by the brass-buttoned policeman that bosses the elevator. Oi-i-i-i! Weh-h-h-h! What have I from my life? The whole world rings with my son’s play. Even the President came to see it, and I, his mother, have not seen it yet. My heart is dying in me like in a prison,” she went on wailing. “I am starved out for a piece of real eating. In that swell restaurant is nothing but napkins and forks and lettuce-leaves. There are a dozen plates to every bite of food. And it looks so fancy on the plate, but it’s nothing but straw in the mouth. I’m starving, but I can’t swallow down their American eating.”

  “Hanneh Breineh,” said Mrs. Pelz, “you are sinning before God. Look on your fur coat; it alone would feed a whole family for a year. I never had yet a piece of fur trimming on a coat, and you are in fur from the neck to the feet. I never had yet a piece of feather on a hat, and your hat is all feathers.”

  “What are you envying me?” protested Hanneh Breineh. “What have I from all my fine furs and feathers when my children are strangers to me? All the fur coats in the world can’t warm up the loneliness inside my heart. All the grandest feathers can’t hide the bitter shame in my face that my children shame themselves from me.”

  Hanneh Breineh suddenly loomed over them like some ancient, heroic figure of the Bible condemning unrighteousness.

  “Why should my children shame themselves from me? From where did they get the stuff to work themselves up in the world? Did they get it from the air? How did they get all their smartness to rise over the people around them? Why don’t the children of born American mothers write my Benny’s plays? It is I, who never had a chance to be a person, who gave him the fire in his head. If I would have had a chance to go to school and learn the language, what couldn’t I have been? It is I and my mother and my mother’s mother and my father and father’s father who had such a black life in Poland; it is our choked thoughts and feelings that are flaming up in my children and making them great in America. And yet they shame themselves from me!”