“May you live to see your son married from this kitchen, and may we all be invited to the wedding!”
“May you live to eat here cake and wine on the feasts of your grandchildren!”
“May you have the luck to get rich and move from here into your own bought house!”
“Amen!” breathed Hanneh Hayyeh. “May we all forget from our worries for rent!”
Mrs. Preston followed with keen delight Hanneh Hayyeh’s every movement as she lifted the wash from the basket and spread it on the bed. Hanneh Hayyeh’s rough, toil-worn hands lingered lovingly, caressingly over each garment. It was as though the fabrics held something subtly animate in their texture that penetrated to her very finger-tips.
“Hanneh Hayyeh! You’re an artist!” There was reverence in Mrs. Preston’s low voice that pierced the other woman’s inmost being. “You do my laces and batistes as no one else ever has. It’s as if you breathed part of your soul into it.”
The hungry-eyed, ghetto woman drank in thirstily the beauty and goodness that radiated from Mrs. Preston’s person. None of the cultured elegance of her adored friend escaped Hanneh Hayyeh. Her glance traveled from the exquisite shoes to the flawless hair of the well-poised head.
“Your things got so much fineness. I’m crazy for the feel from them. I do them up so light in my hands like it was thin air I was handling.”
Hanneh Hayyeh pantomimed as she spoke and Mrs. Preston, roused from her habitual reserve, put her fine, white hand affectionately over Hanneh Hayyeh’s gnarled, roughened ones.