“What did the inspector said? A thunder should strike the inspector! Ain’t I as good a mother as other mothers? Wouldn’t I better send my children to school? But who’ll give us to eat? And who’ll pay us the rent?”
Hanneh Breineh wiped her red-lidded eyes with the corner of her apron.
“The president from America should only come to my bitter heart. Let him go fighting himself with the pushcarts how to get the eating a penny cheaper. Let him try to feed his children on the money the charities give me and we’d see if he wouldn’t better send his littlest ones to the shop better than to let them starve before his eyes. Woe is me! What for did I come to America? What’s my life—nothing but one terrible, never-stopping fight with the grocer and the butcher and the landlord …”
Suddenly Sophie’s resentment for her lost morning was forgotten. The crying waste of Hanneh Breineh’s life lay open before her eyes like pictures in a book. She saw her own life in Hanneh Breineh’s life. Her efforts to write were like Hanneh Breineh’s efforts to feed her children. Behind her life and Hanneh Breineh’s life she saw the massed ghosts of thousands upon thousands beating—beating out their hearts against rock barriers.
“The inspector said …” Fannie timidly attempted again to explain.
“The inspector!” shrieked Hanneh Breineh, as she seized hold of Fannie in a rage. “Hellfire should burn the inspector! Tell me again about the inspector and I’ll choke the life out from you—”
Sophie sprang forward to protect the child from the mother. “She’s only trying to tell you something.”
“Why should she yet throw salt on my wounds? If there was enough bread in the house would I need an inspector to tell me to send her to school? If America is so interested in poor people’s children, then why don’t they give them to eat till they should go to work? What learning can come into a child’s head when the stomach is empty?”
A clutter of feet down the creaking cellar steps, a scuffle of broken shoes, and a chorus of shrill voices, as the younger children rushed in from school.
“Mamma—what’s to eat?”