“You’re worse than that push-cart, Kike,” leered the half-drunken Abe. “What a wife! What a wife! She’d steal the whites out from my eyes. She’d grab the gold out of my teeth.”
There followed an avalanche of abuse between her sister, her husband and the sodden Moe. Rebecca had never heard such language used.
“They’re only drunk. They don’t know what they’re saying,” she apologized for them herself.
Thank God, her mother, her father couldn’t see what cloaks and suits had made of Minnie. Her own sister a common card-player! Where was that gentle bud of a girl that Felix had loved? How was that fine spirit of hers lost in this wild lust for excitement? And these people whom she called friends, this very Moe whom she had picked out for her to marry—what were they? All-rightniks—the curse of their people, the shame of their race, Jews dehumanized, destroyed by their riches. Glutted stomachs—starved souls, escaped from the prison of poverty to smother themselves in the fleshpots of plenty.
It was towards noon the next day that Minnie with dull, puffy eyes and aching head stumbled into Rebecca’s room. The half-filled valise was on the bed, clothes were piled on chairs, and the trunk open as though ready for packing.
“What’s this? Are you eloping with Moe?” Minnie was too spent from the night of excitement to be surprised at anything, but a closer look at Rebecca’s tear-stained face aroused her from her apathy. “Yok! Can’t you speak?” she demanded irritably.
“My God! How can you stand it here—this life of the flesh? What have you here, in this land of plenty, but overeating, oversleeping——”
“Why shouldn’t I over-eat?” Minnie hurled back. “I was starved enough all my youth. Never knew the taste of meat or milk till I came here. I slaved long enough in the sweat-shop. The world owes me a little rest.” Her face grew hard with bitter memories. “I don’t know how I stood it there, in the dirt of Delancey Street, ten people in three rooms, like herrings in a barrel, without a bath-tub, without——”
“Marble bath-tubs—bathing yourself morning and night don’t yet keep your soul alive. How could you have sunk yourself into such drunken card-playing?”
“If not for cards I’d be dead from loneliness. Are there any people to talk to here?” She threw out bediamonded hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I hate Abe like poison when he’s home so much of the time. Cards and clothes help me run away from myself—help me forget my terrible emptiness.” Minnie reached out imploringly to her sister. “Here you see how I’m dying before your eyes, and yet you want to leave me.”