“For what did we come to America?”
The four walls of her broken home stared back their answer.
Only the bundles of bedding remained, which Rachel guarded with fierce defiance as though she would save it from the wreckage.
Pushing the child roughly aside, the man slung it over his shoulder. Mrs. Ravinsky, with Rachel holding on to her skirts, felt her way after him down the dark stairway.
“My life! My blood! My feather bed!” she cried, as he tossed the family heirloom into the gutter. “Gevalt!” prostrate, she fell on it. “How many winters it took my mother to pick together the feathers! My mother’s wedding present....”
From the stoops, the alleys and the doorways the neighbours gathered. Hanneh Breineh, followed by her clinging brood, pushed through the throng, her red-lidded eyes big with compassion. “Come the while in by me.”
She helped the grief-stricken woman to her feet. “We’re packed like herrings in a barrel, but there’s always room for a push-in of a few more.”
Lifting the feather bed under her arm she led the way to her house.
“In a few more years your Rachel will be old enough to get her working papers and all your worries for bread will be over,” she encouraged, as she opened the door of her stuffy little rooms.
The commotion on the street corner broke in upon the babble of gossiping women in the butcher shop. Mr. Sopkin paused in cutting the meat.