The Promised Land

by Mary Antin

Although I did not often think of my people at home, struggling desperately to live while I revelled in abundance and pleasure and excitement, I did do my little to help the family by giving lessons in lacemaking. As this was the only time in my life that I earned money by the work of my hands, I take care not to forget it and I like to give an account of it.

I was always, as I have elsewhere admitted, very clumsy with my hands, counting five thumbs to the hand. Knitting and embroidery, at which my sister was so clever, I could never do with any degree of skill. The blue peacock with the red tail that I achieved in cross-stitch was not a performance of any grace. Neither was I very much downcast at my failures in this field; I was not an ambitious needlewoman. But when the fad for "Russian lace" was introduced into Polotzk by a family of sisters who had been expelled from St. Petersburg, and all feminine Polotzk, on both sides of the Dvina, dropped knitting and crochet needles and embroidery frames to take up pillow and bobbins, I, too, was carried away by the novelty, and applied myself heartily to learn the intricate art, with the result that I did master it. The Russian sisters charged enormous fees for lessons, and made a fortune out of the sale of patterns while they held the monopoly. Their pupils passed on the art at reduced fees, and their pupils' pupils charged still less; until even the humblest cottage rang with the pretty click of the bobbins, and my Cousin Rachel sold steel pins by the ounce, instead of by the dozen, and the women exchanged cardboard patterns from one end of town to the other.

My teacher, who taught me without fee, being a friend of our prosperous days, lived "on the other side." It was winter, and many a time I crossed the frozen river, carrying a lace pillow as big as myself, till my hands were numb with cold. But I persisted, afraid as I was of cold; and when I came to Vitebsk I was glad of my one accomplishment. For Vitebsk had not yet seen "Russian lace," and I was an acceptable teacher of the new art, though I was such a mite, because there was no other. I taught my Cousin Dinke, of course, and I had a number of paying pupils. I gave lessons at my pupils' homes, and was very proud, going thus about town and being received as a person of importance. If my feet did not reach the floor when I sat in a chair, my hands knew their business for once; and I was such a conscientious and enthusiastic teacher that I had the satisfaction of seeing all my pupils execute difficult pieces before I left Vitebsk.

I never have seen money that was half so bright to look at, half so pretty to clink, as the money I earned by these lessons. And it was easy to decide what to do with my wealth. I bought presents for everybody I knew. I remember to this day the pattern of the shawl I bought for my mother. When I came home and unpacked my treasures, I was the proudest girl in Polotzk.

The proudest, but not the happiest. I found my family in such a pitiful state that all my joy was stifled by care, if only for a while.

Unwilling to spoil my holiday, my mother had not written me how things had gone from bad to worse during my absence, and I was not prepared. Fetchke met me at the station, and conducted me to a more wretched hole than I had ever called home before.

I went into the room alone, having been greeted outside by my mother and brother. It was evening, and the shabbiness of the apartment was all the gloomier for the light of a small kerosene lamp standing on the bare deal table. At one end of the table—is this Deborah? My little sister, dressed in an ugly gray jacket, sat motionless in the lamplight, her fair head drooping, her little hands folded on the edge of the table. At sight of her I grew suddenly old. It was merely that she was a shy little girl, unbecomingly dressed, and perhaps a little pale from underfeeding. But to me, at that moment, she was the personification of dejection, the living symbol of the fallen family state.

Of course my sober mood did not last long. Even "fallen family state" could be interpreted in terms of money—absent money—and that, as once established, was a trifling matter. Hadn't I earned money myself? Heaps of it! Only look at this, and this, and this that I brought from Vitebsk, bought with my own money! No, I did not remain old. For many years more I was a very childish child.

Perhaps I had spent my time in Vitebsk to better advantage than at the milliner's, from any point of view. When I returned to my native town I saw things. I saw the narrowness, the stifling narrowness, of life in Polotzk. My books, my walks, my visits, as teacher, to many homes, had been so many doors opening on a wider world; so many horizons, one beyond the other. The boundaries of life had stretched, and I had filled my lungs with the thrilling air from a great Beyond. Child though I was, Polotzk, when I came back, was too small for me.

And even Vitebsk, for all its peepholes into a Beyond, presently began to shrink in my imagination, as America loomed near. My father's letters warned us to prepare for the summons, and we lived in a quiver of expectation.