Bread Givers. Anzia Yezierska

      BREAD GIVERS

      By ANZIA YEZIERSKA

      Bread Givers

      By Anzia Yezierska

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7232-0

      eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7233-7

      This edition copyright © 2021. Digireads.com Publishing.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      Cover Image: a detail of “Lower East Side, New York, 1890s” / Lebrecht History / Bridgeman Images.

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      CONTENTS

       Book I. Hester Street

       Chapter I. Hester Street

       Chapter II. The Speaking Mouth of the Block

       Chapter III. The Burden Bearer

       Chapter IV. The “Empty-Head”

       Chapter V. Morris Lipkin Writes Poetry

       Chapter VI. The Burden Bearer Changes Her Burden

       Chapter VII. Father Becomes a Business Man in America

       Chapter VIII. The Hard Heart

       Chapter IX. Bread Givers

       Book II. Between Two Worlds

       Chapter X. I Shut the Door

       Chapter XI. A Piece of Meat

       Chapter XII. My Sisters and I

       Chapter XIII. Outcast

       Chapter XIV. A Man Wanted Me

       Chapter XV. On and On—Alone

       Chapter XVI. College

       Book III. The New World

       Chapter XVII. My Honeymoon with Myself

       Chapter XVIII. Death in Hester Street

       Chapter XIX. Lodge Money

       Chapter XX. Hugo Seelig

       Chapter XXI. Man Born of Woman

      TO

      CLIFFORD SMITH

      TO WHOSE UNDERSTANDING CRITICISM

      AND INSPIRATION I OWE MORE

      THAN I CAN EVER EXPRESS

      BOOK I. HESTER STREET

      Chapter I. Hester Street

      I had just begun to peel the potatoes for dinner when my oldest sister Bessie came in, her eyes far away and very tired. She dropped on the bench by the sink and turned her head to the wall.

      One look at her, and I knew she had not yet found work. I went on peeling the potatoes, but I no more knew what my hands were doing. I felt only the dark hurt of her weary eyes.

      I was about ten years old then. But from always it was heavy on my heart the worries for the house as if I was mother. I knew that the landlord came that morning hollering for the rent. And the whole family were hanging on Bessie’s neck for her wages. Unless she got work soon, we’d be thrown in the street to shame and to laughter for the whole world.

      I already saw all our things kicked out on the sidewalk like a pile of junk. A plate of pennies like a beggar’s hand reaching out of our bunch of rags. Each sigh of pity from the passersby, each penny thrown into the plate was another stab into our burning shame.

      Laughter and light footsteps broke in upon my dark thoughts. I heard the door open.

      “Give a look only on these roses for my hat,” cried Mashah, running over to the looking glass over the sink. With excited fingers she pinned pink paper roses under the brim. Then, putting on her hat again, she stood herself before the cracked, fly-stained mirror and turned her head first on this side and then on the other side, laughing to herself with the pleasure of how grand her hat was. “Like a lady from Fifth Avenue I look, and for only ten cents, from a pushcart on Hester Street.”

      Again the door opened, and with dragging feet my third sister Fania came in. Bessie roused herself from the bench and asked, “Nu? Any luck with you?”

      “Half the shops are closed,” replied Fania. “They say the work can’t start till they got a new president. And in one place, in a shirt factory, where they had a sign, ‘Girls Wanted,’ there was such a crowd of us tearing the clothes from our bodies and scratching out each other’s eyes in the mad pushings to get in first, that they had to call two fat policemen with thick clubs to make them stand still on a line for their turn. And after we waited for hours and hours, only two girls were taken.

      Mashah looked up from the mirror.

      “Didn’t I tell you not to be such a yok and kill yourself pushing on a line a mile long, when the shop itself couldn’t hold those that were already on the doorstep? All the time that you were wasting yourself waiting to get in, I walked myself through the stores, to look for a trimming for my hat.”

      “You heartless thing!” cried Bessie. “No wonder Father named you ‘Empty-head.’ Here you go to look for work, and you come back with pink roses for your doll face.”

      Undisturbed by the bitter words, Mashah finished the last stitch and then hung up her hat carefully over the door.

      “I’m going to hear the free music in the park tonight,” she laughed to herself, with the pleasure before her, “and these pink roses on my hat to match out my pink calico will make me look just like the picture on the magazine cover.”