Sarah and her daughter

Part I Elias I

From the back door of a front tenement in New York's East Side a little girl came skipping into the contracted square courtyard separating it from the rear tenement. A small mongrel was worrying the end of a rag in her hand, and, for a while, the two played tug-of-war in the offal-littered yard. Presently a boy, somewhat older than the girl, emerged from the rear tenement.

“Hello, Minn!”

“Hello, Abie!”

Abie, the helmet of his cap sitting rakishly over his left ear, his hands in his pockets, walked leisurely to the middle of the yard. Minnie gave Abie a measuring look, like a player in a game awaiting a decisive move from his opponent, then, somewhat self-consciously, went on pretending to tear the rag away from Foxy, who worried it with short, make-believe vicious snarls.

Abie watched the sport.

“Minn,” he said.

She held Foxy off. “Wha’ do you wan*?”

“You wanna play grocery?”

Minnie looked at Abie shyly.

“Pom wanna?”

“Yeh”

“Aw right.”

Minnie skipped to a corner of the yard where she busied herself with housekeeping details. Once or twice she ordered Foxy to get out of her way, muttering aloud to herself : “Childrens are such a bother in a house when you got a lot a work to do.”

From his many pockets Abie assembled marbles to be sold as potatoes, placed one piece of wood see-saw over another for scales, and scraping up some of the plenteous dirt put it aside to be sold as flour, sugar, or salt. When all was ready, he called to Minnie:

“Now you dass come.”

Minnie heaved a “mama’s” breath, a breath closely related to a sigh. “Here, Foxy!” she called, and locked an imaginary door. Next she hung an imaginary basket on her arm and proceeded on a shopping expedition as Mrs. Mira Cohen, a friend of her mother’s.

“Good morning,” said the groceryman.

“Good morning,” Mrs. Cohen replied tartly. Mrs. Mira Cohen was known to be a crank. “‘You got sugar ?”

“Yeh, fresh sugar. You wan’ a pound?” the groceryman inquired.

“No, a paper,” replied Mrs. Cohen. A “paper,” in the linguistic mysteries of the East Side, differentiates a bag of three and a half pounds from a bag of one pound.

The groceryman proceeded to weigh the sugar. As the pieces of wood were too narrow, the scales proved provokingly incompetent. After several efforts he felt justified in assuming he had weighed a “paper.” Not so the thrifty Mrs. Cohen.

“That ain’t no paper,” said she contemptuously.

“Uh! Tain’t!” repeated Mrs. Cohen, making a ges* ture as if to throw the sugar off the scales. The grocery man laid a hand of protection on his wares. A moment’s tension, and Mrs. Cohen said:

“Wha’ do you know?”

“My dear lady,” rejoined the groceryman, maintaining his dignity, “it’s a paper.” He looked over Mrs. Cohen’s shoulder at an imaginary customer. “Wha’ do you wan’?” he asked.

Mrs. Cohen had no intention of yielding; she placed her arms akimbo and said in a raised voice, stressing each word:

“That ain’t no paper.” Suddenly Mrs. Cohen turned into Minnie and added : “Yeh, my papa kept a grocery, not yourn. I know.”

The groceryman paid no attention to this personal turn.

“My dear lady,” he said, “wha’ do you wan’ I should lose money on you? That’s a paper.”

Minnie turned into cranky Mrs. Cohen again.

“You can paper me from to-day up till to-morrow, that ain’t no paper by me.”

The groceryman of the neighborhood having the reputation of being “independent,” Abie saw fit to tell Mrs. Cohen that if she did not like it, she could lump it. This roused Mrs. Cohen to a corresponding measure of defiance.

“I will!” she announced shrilly, stamping her foot. “And I’ll never buy for another penny here ’cause you’re a cheat!”

Minnie’s acting was so realistic that Abie applied the epithet to himself. Instantly he turned into the normal boy and made as if to spit in her face. Thinking better of it, however, he merely taunted:

IO

“Fights !”

Mrs. Mira Cohen vanished from the yard. In her stead stood an irresolute, impotent little girl with tears welling up in gray, dark-lashed eyes too large for her thin-featured face.

Abie knew that his vengeance could not have been more complete had he actually used the last resort of the infuriated — had he spat in her face. He was glad.

The tears rolled down Minnie’s face. She dashed them from her cheeks with the back of her hand and sucked them from her upper lip.

Stooping, she picked up Foxy and left the yard.

“Fights!” It was a cruel wound to a child’s pride in her family. Something vaguely told Minnie that in spite of the sordidness of her home life, her mama and her papa were made of finer material than Abie’s mama and papa, or Mira Cohen and her husband. “Fights!” had not been a reference to any pugnacious quality in Minnie, but to the relations existing between her father and mother.

Beside Minnie, who was eight, the juvenile end of the Mendel family comprised Jacob aged ten, Ida nearly seven, and the baby, endearingly called Bubbele, aged three. The authors of their beings were two people whose alliance was never formed with heaven’s forethought ; if it was, there is something terribly wrong with heaven.

Abie’s mother was janitress of the twin tenements. When her home duties interfered with her janitor’s work, Abie helped her. Lighting the gas in the halls was his regular job. A few days before, while performing this duty, the thing had occurred which provoked the taunt of “Fights.”

ii

Abie, making his way up the dark, rickety stairs of the front tenement, stumbled over something on the lowest step of the fourth flight. He struck a match, kindled his lighter, and beheld Minnie Mendel. She was in tears and looked much older than her years.

“Say!” said Abie.

No answer.

“Wot’s a madder?”

From the floor above came a woman’s voice vulgarly shrill and loud:

“I can’t stand it any longer!” Abie and Minnie heard distinctly. “I can’t stand it any longer! The children go hungry and naked, and you hold on to your Sabbath! I cannot stand it any longer.”

Minnie lay across the step completely barring Abie’s way.

“I gotta light the lights,” he said, “get out o’ the way.”

Minnie moved to one side, and Abie proceeded to the top floor. In the front tenement he worked from up down ; in the rear tenement from down up, finishing on the top floor where he lived.

When Abie, on the way back, reached the step just above Minnie, a man’s voice sounded, calm but not defiant :

“I cannot work on the Sabbath. You can if you want to.”

“Oh-h-h!” shrieked the woman, infuriated impotence in her cry.

Abie was terribly interested. The gas lighter accentuating the darkness at his feet, he did not see that Minnie was again lying crosswise on the step below. He stumbled over her a second time, now with disastrous results. Bump went his head on the railing. The shock and the quick pain gave Abie the blind impulse to visit corporal punishment upon the cause, and he was about to kick Minnie lying at his feet, when he checked himself and burst out instead:

“Fights!”

Minnie cringed and said nothing.

That violent shriek seemed to have concluded the altercation. Abie waited a moment or two, then went on about his business.

Presently the door above opened. Minnie saw her father come slowly, awkwardly, down the stairs. His head was bowed, his eyes were fixed on his feet. Two or three times he muttered as he shook his head :

“She has no shame, she has no shame. The neighbors could have heard her.”

Minnie drew to the rear of the hall. Her father passed without seeing her.

On the floor below he was seized with a fit of coughing. Minnie ran to the balustrade. She saw him use his handkerchief, straighten his hat, and walk out.

II

When the Mendels arrived in America from a small village in the Baltic provinces, their nearest of kin met in consultation to decide what the father should do for a living. As the family had come safeguarded by nearly a thousand dollars, it was thought advisable that he go into business for himself, especially as it would also solve the difficulty of the Sabbath observance. Elias Mendel was a pious orthodox Jew. The relatives had, of course, learned to renounce much of their piety by this time ; but they had not forgotten their own spiritual struggle and were tolerant of Elias. “In time he will get ausgegreent” (lose the greenness of the newcomer), they said.

The next question was, what business to put Elias into. The decision was a soda-water stand, with a show-case for candies, chewing-gum, cigars and cigarettes. About a month later Elias, the pious Jew, with the thoughtful face of one who has spent long hours in the study of the Law, was standing in a booth in front of a drug store on Pike Street, mixing red syrups and yellow syrups with “sizzling” water to answer the outlandish calls for vanilla, strawberry, ginger, raspberry.

“A language!” Elias Mendel marvelled, and shrugged his shoulders.

The stand did not yield the big revenue predicted. The promoters of the plan accounted for the failure by Elias Mendel^ overscrupulous honesty. Moreover, “a stand must be kept open on a Saturday. People who go to another stand on a Saturday, go to it on a Sunday too, and on a Monday, and on a Tuesday.” A true deduction.

But Elias Mendel held to his Sabbath.

The next venture was a grocery store on Forsyth Street. Elias gave full measure, and, of course, kept closed on Saturday. So how could it pay?

“He is crazy honest,” said the relatives* in denunciation. “And his Sabbath kills him.”

The Mendel capital dwindled to a shadow of its former self ; and finally even the shadow faded away. There followed a period of short-lived jobs. In quick succession Elias was a paper-box maker, a bastings

H puller, a ladies' shirtwaist sleeve maker. Because he was wholly untrained and was granted the privilege of Sabbath observance, each position yielded him a weekly wage that brought his family closer and closer to the verge of starvation.

Days set in when the children asked for bread and Sarah had none to give.

In the old country Elias, though he had owned a dry-goods store, which had maintained his family amply, had been able to give up a goodly portion of each day to prayer and Talmudic study in the synagogue, as he had had the aid not only of Sarah but also of Sarah’s parents, who had migrated with their daughter from Memel at the time of her marriage. Never had he dreamed of such a change. To work a whole day and that there should be talk even of violating the Sabbath! It was unheard of. America was a queer country.

Sarah had no such scruples with regard to the Sabbath observance, though she was not wholly irreligious. Early in life she had come under the influence of a “freethinker” lover, a young man who with the assurance of the immature, waived all faith aside with “ Narrishkeit , narrishkeit ” (foolishness) ! He had bent her point of view, though not to absolute skepticism, yet to uncertainty, to which, however, as long as she remained in her father’s home, she never gave voice. Women of Sarah’s generation and bringing up, in normal circumstances, do not pit their opinions against those of their men folk. When they disagree, they bow their heads and say nothing.

Sarah’s parents, declaring her marriage with Leopold Pollack would bring them to an early grave, forced her to marry, at seventeen, Elias, pious and uncouth and as

*5

unsuited to her romantic temperament as water to ft re.

By degrees she began to realize more and more fully that her life was always to be what it was; she was ever to be the keeper of Elias’s home, nothing else, and she began to nurture resentment and bitterness. The longer she drew comparisons the more convinced she became that Elias, for all his piety, was no whit better a man than the freethinker she had been made to give up.

Yet, while her parents, whom she loved and felt consideration for, were with her, she exercised self-control and maintained, on the whole, an agreeable manner. But a discerning person would have observed that she had periods of apparently unwarranted thoughtfulness and often avoided meeting her parents’ as well as Elias’s eyes when they spoke to her. Then, too, she was irritable with the children on insufficient provocation. But no one gave Sarah any special observation except to ask now and again what in God’s name she wanted of the children since they were only children. Sarah would turn away, say nothing, and soon resume her manner of quiet agreeableness.

Sarah’s parents died, one following the other quickly. Then came the emigration, which tore her from the surroundings in which she might have continued to live a comparatively serene life, and transferred her to the soil of poverty, in which self-control, like so many other virtues, is doomed to wither.

Ill

A few days after Minnie’s and Abie’s encounter in the yard, Mira Cohen came to visit Sarah. Always swift in her movements, she seemed now, as she entered the room, actually to be whipping the air. She was a tall, lean woman, with scanty red hair drawn away from her forehead and ears into a tight knot on the peak of her head.

Something was up. Sarah could read it in her eyes. Mira let herself down on the lounge emphatically and looked Sarah squarely in the eye.

“Nu, whs macht ihr?” (How are you?) she began with decision.

Sarah raised her eyebrows and looked away.

Though much alike, the two women were a curious study in contrast. Sarah, too, was tall and thin; there were reddish glints in her straight hair. One could tell at a glance that both women were harassed and embittered. But Sarah's pale, thin lips quivered, while Mira's tight-set jaw seemed to challenge God and man to dare to do worse by her. In Sarah's large gray eyes were timidity and diffidence. Mira’s small blue eyes darted hard determination and self-assurance.

Sarah looked to the floor as though seeking inspiration for the right answer to Mira’s quite conventional question. “How should one be ?” she finally brought out. “If one lives and one walks and one talks, then one is all right! No?” Tears gathered in her eyes, her heart was heavy with its burdens.

It crossed Mira's mind that the woman was a fool. There were plenty of remedies in America to resort to when one had a conscienceless husband. Indeed, that devotion of Elias's to the Sabbath was a fine affectation. The truth was, he was lazy. Accustomed to his “if-I-don't-come-to-day, I'll-come-to-morrow” way in the old country, he seized upon any pretext to live in the same way here. Would she stand for such conduct?

Indeed not. Her mind travelled with self -approbation to a scene between herself and her husband.

Though Sarah and Mira were friends, Mira had no patience with Sarah's out-of-place refinement, and Sarah innately withdrew from Mira’s ever-ready advice and incessant activity. Mira was always discovering a cheaper fish store, a place where one could get coal for next to nothing, a pushcart of “remlets” (remnants), or a dispensary; and she was forever giving advice to all sorts of people about all sorts of things, from how to set dough to when to call in the police.

Mira straightened herself, so that she looked like a red-knobbed stick on Sarah’s lounge.

“Nu, God be thanked, I fixed him!” The announcement was what her determined manner had been setting the stage for.

“Fixed him?” asked Sarah shyly, who sensed that Mira was referring to her drinking husband. Though her friend’s confidential tone invited questioning, she shrank from being intrusive.

“Yes, I fixed him. Long enough I stood it. But no more. I made up my mind there would have to be an end before death. If I waited for God to wake up from His dreams, it would take to my death, so I made my own finish.” Women of the Ghetto so invariably accept their lot in life as final “until death ” that Mira felt she was the founder of a new creed.

Through Sarah’s heart darted envy. Here was a woman who always found the proper remedy. Why could she not do the same?

“He promised me on his knees he would abstain, and yet after that he came home drunk — that dear husband of mine. I said to myself: ‘That settles it; now there i8 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER

must be an end. Rabbi Sunder’s daughter it does not suit to be the wife of a drunkard/ ” At the recollection of her aristocratic paternal ancestry, tears of resentment came to Mira’s eyes. “Why of all women it should be just my luck to have a drunkard for a husband, I don’t know.” She wiped her eyes and shrugged her bony shoulders. “God forgive me — but He really does not know His business,” she averred. A shade of a smile flitted over their faces. After a brief silence’ Mira went on rehashing her grievances.

“It drowns his worries. Worries ! Porries ! What worries has he? Nebich, he cannot work in the shop. The air chokes him. He wants to live in a house with a grassy yard like at home. No other way suits him.” Mira’s breath came in excited puffs; beads of perspiration appeared on her long forehead.

Sarah, all impatience to know what remedy this woman, who, like herself, was encumbered with an unmanageable husband, had found, was passionately wishing she would end the prelude and tell the story. Mira, detecting the inquisitive look in her eyes, moved to the edge of the lounge.

“Across the street from the house I live in,” she began, leaning over closer to Sarah, “is Essick Market

Court ” She waited to see whether Sarah remerm

bered the building; on the way to Mira’s home one must pass it. “That’s a place for just such women as me — and you, too.” Seeing that Sarah dropped her eyes, Mira repeated: “Yes, you, too. Why should we fool ourselves? It’s between friends. What’s the difference if a husband doesn’t support because he drinks or because he is in love with the Sabbath? If a husband doesn’t support, he doesn’t support.”

Sarah quivered inwardly. It was a rude touch, which she both resented and welcomed.

"I made him go to the Essick Market Court. I told him if he would not go willingly, I would call in a

policeman. He took and he went and he stood ” she

punctuated with her forefinger in midair, “like a coward before the judge ; and when he heard that he would be arrested if he got drunk once more, he trembled like a frightened little boy.” Mira seemed now to have reached the end of the drama in her heart and relaxing as in relief added: “It's now a week and — only no evil eye should befall him — he hasn't been drunk once.”

Both women silently regarded each other like seller and buyer when the salesman has exhausted his talking points and waits for the other to make up his mind.

The door opened and Elias entered. Seeing Mira he gave a perfunctory greeting. Mira rose hastily. God in heaven ! she had stayed longer than she intended. Elias was at home ! It must be late ! Hastily she gathered up her belongings. Sarah handed her a parcel which she seemed to have forgotten, but Mira, giving Elias a sharp glance, said to Sarah:

“No, it's for you.”

In his shabby dark gray suit, his hair tousled, his beard untrimmed, Elias, dusty and worn, looked an object that has been trampled upon and abused. His manner and figure exuded such fatigue that its heaviness spread like a contagion through the room. Mira correctly concluded that he had been out job-hunting the whole day without success because of the Sabbath* She soliloquized : “A man should be so crazy religious ! A woman should allow herself to be so ill-treated !” She had no patience with either of them. If the woman were only energetic and did something, took him to the court, for instance, had him frightened once and for all, then they would get somewhere. He would make up his mind that God does not pay wages for piety, that children do not grow like branches of a tree, but must be fed, that a wife is more a man’s responsibility than God Himself, that in short, a man must go and do and make.

As Sarah led her irate visitor to the door and out into the hall for the inevitable appendage to a woman’s visit — a little more talk — Mira expressed her thoughts.

Sarah listened, becoming more and more impressed with the enormity of the abuse she and her children were suffering at Elias’s pious hands. Any expression of regret from him, she felt, even if couched in such mean terms as “dog. devil, I am sorry my piety makes it hard for us,” would have satisfied her. But he never so much as said “my poor children;” he thought only of himself and his piety, of his heaven not to be missed later. Sarah’s indignation waxed hotter and hotter.

Returning to the room she at once opened Mira’s parcel. Bread and meat! Mira’s leavings! God’s reward for piety!

“Look,” she said to Elias, obviously controlling her anger. “If Mira had not brought this, the children would have nothing to eat.” Elias made no reply. There was no need to ask whether he had got work. His dejection allowed of no optimism. Sarah stood for a moment irresolute, then drew closer to him. “Tell me,” she began as if propounding a mathmetical problem, “do you think this can go on very much longer? As your wife, do you think I deserve no consideration? And the children — don’t you ever intend to realize that they must be fed, that children do not grow like branches on a tree ?”

Elias rose from his chair. “Don’t begin all over again,” he pleaded gently, his eyes moist with beseeching.

For one instant Sarah was held by pity ; then carried away by anger, she hurled at him:

"I'll fix you, I’ll fix you! Let all the neighbors listen to my loud voice, let all the relatives consider us a disgrace. If you will not work to support your children, you are no better than Mira’s drunken husband, and I’ll drag you to court as she dragged him. I don’t care for anything, I’ll fix you, I’ll fix you!”

Elias was dazed by the volley of words. He had no idea what Sarah was talking about — “drunken” — “court” — “fix.” He begged her to control herself. She grew only the more furious. Elias picked up his hat and went out.

IV

For days Mira’s words went round and round in Sarah’s mind. Each day her soul drew a little nearer to sanctioning the course of conduct Mira had advised. “He deserves it, he deserves it! He deserves anything ! A man who will let his children starve deserves the worst that can happen to him,” she said over and over again to herself.

There were moments, however, when the very fact that she had this weapon to fall back upon lulled her anger to rest. She admitted to herself that Elias, after all, was concerned about his children; that he simply had a mistaken sense of loyalty to his God. She would sigh and her naturally shy spirit: would draw away from the profane measure of revenge that she was contemplating. . . . But what was she to do? Where was it leading to? They could not live on Mira’s leavings of bread and meat ! A man who did not support his family for love of his Sabbath was as bad as a drunkard:

Day after day Elias returned the same dusty gray figure, his dragging step in the hall forever announcing failure. At each futile attempt, Sarah’s resentment blazed up and dying down left as a residue a more crystallized determination to seek redress. At last, tried to the utmost, she broke away from her timidity and tolerance, and, raising her head high, jumped into the fray of the more sophisticated.

Y

One Friday morning, after many rehearsals, Minnie said to her father:

“Papa, mama said you should meet Mira’s husband by his house, and he will take you to w r ork by buttonholes in his shop.”

Pretending she could market more economically for the Sabbath at an early hour, Sarah had left at eight o’clock. Jacob had gone out at the same time ostensibly for school. A little later Minnie also departed. The last to go was Elias.

At the corner of the street near the courthouse Sarah and Jacob waited for Minnie ; then the three waited for Elias. Sarah thought with bitter sarcasm : “He hurries !”

She was as agitated as though she were the victim, not the aggressor. Her heart hammered at her ribs, her temples throbbed, her mouth and lips were dry, her tongue was pasty. She glanced nervously from one corner of the street to the other, one moment indignant at Elias’s delay, the next moment hoping he would not come. Her reason for seeking refuge in the Essex Market Court was forgotten. She was conscious only of something strange to be accomplished, of a pounding heart, and a brain throbbing and muddled.

Minnie, the first to spy Elias approaching at a slow, even gait, his eyes lowered, whispered:

“Uh, ma, there’s pa!”

Sarah gathered her shawl nervously about her and looked around.

Self-control is characteristic of Talmud-trained Jews. Though Elias was astonished to see his wife and his two children, he betrayed no emotion. He drew toward them at the same even, slow pace. He suspected there was something wrong but he asked quite calmly:

“What is the matter?”

Without preliminaries, to all appearance aggressive, in reality almost collapsing from agitation, Sarah told her husband “it would have to end.” Once for all it would have to be settled who was right, he or she, whether the children ought or ought not to starve. She would “make a scene to bring all the people together” if he did not go to court with her and learn that a man who did not support his family because of piety was no better than a drunkard.

Elias listened dumfounded. He recalled the words, “court,” “drunken,” “fix,” to which he had attached no actual significance. Could he be hearing aright? Was the woman in front of him his wife? Were the two children his children? He found nothing to say in reply. Finally he gathered his wits together.

“You must be crazy. It cannot be otherwise.” He shrugged his shoulders as if to say that even if Sarah were insane, such conduct was incomprehensible. Suddenly the face of a yellow cat, which had been the family pet in Russia, danced irritatingly before his eyes. He dropped his lids to blot out the image. Then came a fleeting vision of Minnie as a baby. He glanced at the child. She, glimpsing his look, moved closer to her mother, raising her thumb to her mouth. An exquisite pain pierced Elias’s father-heart.

In just a moment, Elias’s beard became two beards to Sarah, then three beards, and one again, and his person very clear. Sarah’s resolution gained strength* in that moment. “Once for all !” she said emphatically. Her loud voice intimidated them all. Simultaneously and without definite purpose they proceeded slowly forward.

“Can it be that this is Sarah?” Elias thought. In some unaccountable way a tender feeling for his wife entered his heart. He stepped nearer and took her by the elbow. “Come, my wife, this is for people’s laughter” ( far leitische Gelechter). He spoke gently and tried to lead her away. This only irritated Sarah more. “You dare!” she shouted. Elias looked timidly about to see if anyone had heard. A scene on the street was above all to be avoided. They continued slowly to approach the courthouse.

When they reached the door, each waited for the other to lead the way. Presently an officer appeared and gruffly ordered them to “move on.” Frightened, they proceeded as one person to enter.

Returning from her marketing, Abie’s mother, who was not Christianly disposed toward Sarah, just then passed the courthouse. She saw the Mendels disappearing through the doorway. She stopped short in astonishment. “That they fight” she thought, “who does not know thatl But to go to court!” She shrugged her shoulders and walked on. “A coarse woman, that Mrs. Mendel !” she murmured to herself. “But as long as she speaks German! every sin of hers is nullified. Yiddish past ihr nit” (Yiddish is not good enough for her).

A long wait on shabby benches in a musty room — a period of unreality to them all — then Sarah and the two children were hustled to one side of a platform; Elias was placed on the other side, an interpreter between.

Sarah looked nervously about. For an instant she permitted her eyes to rest on Elias; he looked ghastly. A sharp pain smote her heart. “Woe is me !” she cried inaudibly. Such is that type of rebel, they can continue to prosecute by tongue or deed apparently without mercy, while they are tortured by the voice of conscience.