As Yetta walked out, my mother, with the shawl over her head, rushed in and fell on my bed kissing me.
“Oi weh! Oi weh! Half my life is out from me from fright. How did all happen?”
“Don’t worry yourself so. I’m nearly well already and will go back to work soon.”
“Talk not work. Get only a little flesh on your bones. They say they send from the hospital people to the country. Maybe they’ll send you.”
“But how will you live without my wages?”
“Davy is already peddling with papers and Bessie is selling lolly-pops after school in the park. Yesterday she brought home already twenty-eight cents.”
For all her efforts to be cheerful, I looked at her pinched face and wondered if she had eaten that day.
Released from the hospital, I started home. As I neared Allen Street, the terror of the dark rooms swept over me. “No—no—I can’t yet go back to the darkness and the stinking smells,” I said to myself. “So long they’re getting along without my wages, let them think I went to the country and let me try out that school for immigrants that Yetta told me about.”
So I went to the Immigrant School.
A tall, gracious woman received me, not an employee, but a benefactress.