“No, I guess you’re right, Reba. I ... I’m just sucking the blood out of you, all of you....”
“Don’t be a fool. My work is all right. You’ll be a doctor soon.”
Ah, he’ll be a doctor soon! That’s why they were willing to work. He was a bank of flesh, into which they put their greasy pennies.... To be returned with interest! What if he told them that he didn’t intend to become a doctor? What if he told them to go to hell? How? How to say it to them? After all this?
He ate his fish. There was no talk in the room. His father drank the soup with gurgling noises. It was borscht soup. It trickled down over his beard, red soup, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. His mother sighed every time she had to rise to bring something to the table. His family!
Suddenly Emmanuel rose. The room was choking him. The walls were coming nearer. The clatter of the dishes was low thunder now.
“I’m through.”
He knew where he was going. Upstairs, to the third floor, to Etta. Etta! Etta! She was real. She had black hair, and when you touched it you could shut your eyes and think you were touching nice warm water. It seemed to lick your fingers with a warm tongue, her hair. Her eyes, too, like the feel of a child-wind in summer....
“Manny!”
She had come to meet him at the door. Their hands touched. He was the first to draw his away. Again he felt warm all over, as he had in the street. When she brushed past him in the dim-lit hall to lead the way to the living room and her body was close to his, Emmanuel was conscious of a feeling of shame, his throat became dry. For no reason at all, as far as he could tell.
Their living room was like any other East Side living room. No—better. Here there was a cheap golden-oak piano, too, and an incongruous gilded music stand with stencilled flowers and angels and birds. Otherwise the usual crayon pictures of bearded ancestors of scheiteled ancestors, the seven-branched candlestick on the mantel, the rocking chair, a vase with artificial roses....