Hungry Hearts. Anzia Yezierska

worshiping eyes just to glimpse him from afar. What was she to him? Could she expect him to greet the stairs on which he stepped? Or take notice of the door that swung open for him? After all, she was nothing but part of the house. So why should he take notice of her? She was the steps on which he walked. She was the door that swung open for him. And he did not know it.

      For four evenings in succession, ever since John Barnes had come to live in the house, Shenah Pessah arrayed herself in her new things and waited. Was it not a miracle that he came the first time when she did not even dream that he was on earth? So why shouldn’t the miracle happen again? This evening, however, she was so spent with the hopelessness of her longing that she had no energy left to put on her adornments.

      All at once she was startled out of her apathy by a quick tap on her window-pane. “How about going to the library, to-morrow evening?” asked John Barnes.

      “Oi-i-i! Yes! Thanks—” she stammered in confusion.

      “Well, to-morrow night, then, at seven. Thank you.” He hurried out embarrassed by the grateful look that shone to him out of her eyes. The gaze haunted him and hurt him. It was the beseeching look of a homeless dog, begging to be noticed. “Poor little immigrant,” he thought, “how lonely she must be!”

      “So he didn’t forget,” rejoiced Shenah Pessah. “How only the sound from his voice opens the sky in my heart! How the deadness and emptiness in me flames up into life! Ach! The sun is again beginning to shine!”

      An hour before the appointed time, Shenah Pessah dressed herself in all her finery for John Barnes. She swung open the door and stood in readiness watching the little clock on the mantel-shelf. The ticking thing seemed to throb with the unutterable hopes compressed in her heart, all the mute years of her stifled life. Each little thud of time sang a wild song of released joy—the joy of his coming nearer.

      For the tenth time Shenah Pessah went over in her mind what she would say to him when he’d come.

      “It was so kind from you to take from your dear time—to—”

      “No—that sounds not good. I’ll begin like this—Mr. Barnes! I can’t give it out in words your kindness, to stop from your high thoughts to—to—”

      “No—no! Oi weh! God from the world! Why should it be so hard for me to say to him what I mean? Why shouldn’t I be able to say to him plain out—Mr. Barnes! You are an angel from the sky! You are saving me my life to let me only give a look on you! I’m happier than a bird in the air when I think only that such goodness like you—”

      The sudden ring of the bell shattered all her carefully rehearsed phrases and she met his greeting in a flutter of confusion.

      “My! Haven’t you blossomed out since last night!” exclaimed Mr. Barnes, startled by Shenah Pessah’s sudden display of color.

      “Yes,” she flushed, raising to him her radiant face. “I’m through for always with old women’s shawls. This is my first American dress-up.”

      “Splendid! So you want to be an American! The next step will be to take up some work that will bring you in touch with American people.”

      “Yes. You’ll help me? Yes?” Her eyes sought his with an appeal of unquestioning reliance.

      “Have you ever thought what kind of work you would like to take up?” he asked, when they got out into the street.

      “No—I want only to get away from the basement. I’m crazy for people.”

      “Would you like to learn a trade in a factory?”

      “Anything—anything! I’m burning to learn. Give me only an advice. What?”

      “What can you do best with your hands?”

      “With the hands the best? It’s all the same what I do with the hands. Think you not maybe now, I could begin already something with the head? Yes?”

      “We’ll soon talk this over together, after you have read a book that will tell you how to find out what you are best fitted for.”

      When they entered the library, Shenah Pessah halted in awe. “What a stillness full from thinking! So beautiful, it comes on me like music!”

      “Yes. This is quite a place,” he acquiesced, seeing again the public library in a new light through her eyes. “Some of the best minds have worked to give us just this.”

      “How the book-ladies look so quiet like the things.”

      “Yes,” he replied, with a tell-tale glance at her. “I too like to see a woman’s face above her clothes.”

      The approach of the librarian cut off further comment. As Mr. Barnes filled out the application card, Shenah Pessah noted the librarian’s simple attire. “What means he a woman’s face above her clothes?” she wondered. And the first shadow of a doubt crossed her mind as to whether her dearly bought apparel was pleasing to his eyes. In the few brief words that passed between Mr. Barnes and the librarian, Shenah Pessah sensed that these two were of the same world and that she was different. Her first contact with him in a well-lighted room made her aware that “there were other things to the person besides the dress-up.” She had noticed their well-kept hands on the desk and she became aware that her own were calloused and rough. That is why she felt her dirty finger-nails curl in awkwardly to hide themselves as she held the pen to sign her name.

      When they were out in the street again, he turned to her and said, “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to walk back. The night is so fine and I’ve been in the stuffy office all day.”

      “I don’t mind”—the words echoed within her. If he only knew how above all else she wanted this walk.

      “It was grand in there, but the electric lights are like so many eyes looking you over. In the street it is easier for me. The dark covers you up so good.”

      He laughed, refreshed by her unconscious self-revelation.

      “As long as you feel in your element let’s walk on to the pier.”

      “Like for a holiday, it feels itself in me,” she bubbled, as he took her arm in crossing the street. “Now see I America for the first time!”

      It was all so wonderful to Barnes that in the dirt and noise of the overcrowded ghetto, this erstwhile drudge could be transfigured into such a vibrant creature of joy. Even her clothes that had seemed so bold and garish awhile ago, were now inexplicably in keeping with the carnival spirit that he felt steal over him.

      As they neared the pier, he reflected strangely upon the fact that out of the thousands of needy, immigrant girls whom he might have befriended, this eager young being at his side was ordained by some peculiar providence to come under his personal protection.

      “How long did you say you have been in this country, Shenah Pessah?”

      “How long?” She echoed his words as though waking from a dream. “It’s two years already. But that didn’t count life. From now on I live.”

      “And you mean to tell me that in all this time, no one has taken you by the hand and shown you the ways of our country? The pity of it!”

      “I never had nothing, nor nobody. But now—it dances under me the whole earth! It feels in me grander than dreams!”

      He drank in the pure joy out of her eyes. For the moment, the girl beside him was the living flame of incarnate Spring.

      “He feels for me,” she rejoiced, as they walked on in silence. The tenderness of his sympathy enfolded her like some blessed warmth.

      When they reached the end of the pier, they paused and watched the moonlight playing on the water. In the shelter of a truck they felt benignly screened from any stray glances of the loiterers near by.

      How big seemed his strength as he stood silhouetted against the blue night! For the first