Hanneh Breineh

“ Take off your shawl,” urged Hanneh Breineh.
But Mrs. Pelz only drew her shawl more tightly around her, a keen sense of her poverty gripping her as she gazed, abashed by the luxurious wealth that shone from every corner.
“This shawl covers up my rags,” she said, trying to hide her shabby sweater.
“I’ll tell you what; come right into the kitchen,” suggested Hanneh Breineh. “The servant is away for this afternoon, and we can feel more comfortable there. I can breathe like a free person in my kitchen when the girl has her day out.” ”

“ A block off she recognized Hanneh Breineh, her hair disheveled, her clothes awry, running toward her with her yelling baby in her arms, the crowd following.
"Friend mine," cried Hanneh Breineh, falling on Mrs. Pelz's neck, "I lost my Benny, the best child of all my children." Tears streamed down her red, swollen eyes as she sobbed. "Benny! mine heart, mine life! Oi-i!" [Pg 334]
Mrs. Pelz took the frightened baby out of the mother's arms.
"Still yourself a little! See how you're frightening your child." ”

“ I'm starving, but I can't swallow down their American eating."
"Hanneh Breineh," said Mrs. Pelz, "you are sinning before God. Look on your fur coat; it alone would feed a whole family for a year. I never had yet a piece of fur trimming on a coat, and you are in fur from the neck to the feet. I never had yet a piece of feather on a hat, and your hat is all feathers."
"What are you envying me?" protested Hanneh Breineh. "What have I from all my fine furs and feathers when my children are strangers to me? All the fur coats in the world can't warm up the loneliness inside my heart. ”

“ Ain't this America? Ain't this a free country? Can't I take up in my own house what I buy with my own money?" cried Hanneh Breineh, reveling in the opportunity to shower forth the volley of invectives that had been suppressed in her for the weeks of deadly dignity of Riverside Drive.
In the midst of this uproar Fanny came in with Mrs. Van Suyden. Hanneh Breineh rushed over to her, crying:
"This bossy policeman won't let me take up my basket in the elevator." ”

“ And here you come with a basket on your arm as if you just landed from steerage! And this afternoon, of all times, when Benny is bringing his leading man to tea. When will you ever stop disgracing us?”
“When I’m dead,” said Hanneh Breineh, grimly. “When the earth will cover me up, then you’ll be free to go your American way. I’m not going to make myself over for a lady on Riverside Drive. I hate you and all your swell friends. I’ll not let myself be choked up here by you or by that hall-boss policeman that is higher in your eyes than your own mother.” ”

“ Pelz.
“Talk not to me!” cried Hanneh Breineh, wringing her hands. “You’re having all your children. I lost mine. Every good luck comes to other people. But I didn’t live yet to see a good day in my life. Mine only joy, mine Benny, is lost away from me.”
The crowd followed Hanneh Breineh as she wailed through the streets, leaning on Mrs. Pelz. By the time she returned to her house the children were back from school; but seeing that Benny was not there, she chased them out in the street, crying:
“Out of here, you robbers, gluttons! Go find Benny!” ”

“ The uniformed hall-man, erect, expressionless, frigid with dignity, stepped forward:
"Just a minute, Madam, I'll call a boy to take up your basket for you."
Hanneh Breineh, glaring at him, jerked the basket savagely from his hands.
"Mind your own business," she retorted. "I'll take it up myself. Do you think you're a Russian policeman to boss me in my own house?"
Angry lines appeared on the countenance of the representative of social decorum.
"It is against the rules, Madam," he said stiffly.
"You should sink into the earth with all your rules and brass buttons. ”

“ Jake turned to his mother with a covert grin.
"I guess you'd have no objection if Fanny got next to Benny's leading man. He makes at least fifteen hundred a week. That wouldn't be such a bad addition to the family, would it?"
Again the bantering tone stabbed Hanneh Breineh. Everything in her began to tremble and break loose.
"Why do you ask me?" she cried, throwing her napkin into her plate. "Do I count for a person in this house? If I'll say something, will you even listen to me? ”

“ Some one will find it even in Tin Pan Alley—among Maizie’s life-loving crowd; but I, in this life, must be the poet of the factories—of my own East Side!”
§ 7
“It’s me—Hanneh Breineh!”
A loud thumping at the door and a shrill chatter of voices broke in upon Berel’s meditations.
“Me—Moisheh!”
“Come in!” he cried, welcoming this human inbreak after his long vigil.
“Here we got him!” Berel was smothered in Hanneh Breineh’s gushing embrace. “Where did you run away that time, you crazy? Don’t you yet know my bitter heart? I never mean nothing when I curse.” ”

“ Hanneh Breineh refused to be comforted.
“Till they are old enough to go to the shop and earn money they’ll eat the head off my bones,” she wailed. “If you only knew the fights I got by each meal. Maybe I gave Abe a bigger piece of bread than Fanny. Maybe Fanny got a little more soup in her plate than Jake. Eating is dearer than diamonds. Potatoes went up a cent on a pound, and milk is only for millionaires. And once a week, when I buy a little meat for the Sabbath, the butcher weighs it for me like gold, with all the bones in it. ”

“ Hanneh Breineh's face lit up, and her chest filled with pride as she enumerated the successes of her children.
"And my son Benny he wrote a play on Broadway and he gave away more than a hundred free tickets for the first night."
"Benny? The one who used to get lost from home all the time? You always did love that child more than all the rest. ”

“ Putting the child down on the floor, she seated herself on the unmade kitchen-bed and began to peel the potatoes in her apron.
"Woe to me!" sobbed Hanneh Breineh. "To my bitter luck there ain't no end. With all my other troubles, the stove got broke'. I lighted the fire to boil the clothes, and it's to get choked with smoke. I paid rent only a week ago, and the agent don't want to fix it. A thunder should strike him! He only comes for the rent, and if anything has to be fixed, then he don't want to hear nothing." ”

“ Ain’t I got enough worries on my head than to go around looking for you? I didn’t have yet a minute’s peace from that child since he was born!”
“See a crazy mother!” remonstrated Mrs. Pelz, rescuing Benny from another beating. “Such a mouth! With one breath she blesses him when he is lost, and with the other breath she curses him when he is found.”
Hanneh Breineh took from the window-sill a piece of herring covered with swarming flies, and putting it on a slice of dry bread, she filled a cup of tea that had been stewing all day, and dragged Benny over to the table to eat. ”

“ I came into you for a minute to run away from my troubles. It’s only when I sit myself down to peel potatoes or nurse the baby that I take time to draw a breath, and beg only for death.”
Mrs. Pelz, accustomed to Hanneh Breineh’s bitter outbursts, continued her scrubbing.
“Ut!” exclaimed Hanneh Breineh, irritated at her neighbor’s silence, “what are you tearing up the world with your cleaning? What’s the use to clean up when everything only gets dirty again?” ”

“ Why can't we move into a hotel that will do away with the need of servants altogether?"
"I got it better," said Jake, consulting a note-book from his pocket. "I have on my list an apartment on Riverside Drive where there's only a small kitchenette; but we can do away with the cooking, for there is a dining service in the building."
The new Riverside apartment to which Hanneh Breineh was removed by her socially ambitious children was for the habitually active mother an empty desert of enforced idleness. Deprived of her kitchen, Hanneh Breineh felt robbed of the last reason for her existence. ”

“ Pelz. “The whole world rings with you and your children. Everybody is envying you. Tell me how began your luck?”
“You heard how my husband died with consumption,” replied Hanneh Breineh. “The five hundred dollars lodge money gave me the first lift in life, and I opened a little grocery store. Then my son Abe married himself to a girl with a thousand dollars. That started him in business, and now he has the biggest shirt-waist factory on West Twenty-Ninth Street.” ”

“ They were silenced by her vehemence, and unconsciously turned to Benny.
"I guess we all tried to do our best for mother," said Benny, thoughtfully. "But wherever there is growth, there is pain and heartbreak. The trouble with us is that the Ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof, and——"
A sound of crashing dishes came from the kitchen, and the voice of Hanneh Breineh resounded through the dining-room as she wreaked her pent-up fury on the helpless servant. ”

“ By ANZIA YEZIERSKA
From The Century
In an air-shaft so narrow that you could touch the next wall with your bare hands, Hanneh Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor's window.
"Can you loan me your wash-boiler for the clothes?" she called.
Mrs. Pelz threw up the sash.
"The boiler? What's the matter with yours again? Didn't you tell me you had it fixed already last week?"
"A black year on him, the robber, the way he fixed it! If you have no luck in this world, then it's better not to live. There I spent out fifteen cents to stop up one hole, and it runs out another. ”

“ As the chill of the gathering dusk intensified, Sophie seemed to see herself carried out on a stretcher to the hospital, numb, frozen.
“God from the world! better a quick death [Pg 111] than this slow freezing!” With the perpetual gnawing of hunger sapping her strength, Sophie had not the courage to face another night of torment. Drawing her shabby shawl more tightly around her, she hurried out. “Where now?” she asked as a wave of stinging snow blinded her. Hanneh Breineh’s words came back to her: “the hospital!” Why not? ”

“ Berenice suddenly ceased to struggle, and became perfectly quiet. Hannah was resolved not to be deceived, and held her firmly as ever.
"Hannah," said the countess, "I begin to see how it is that you think me mad. You, a Christian maid, and I, a Jewish matron, do not understand each other. We think, and look, and speak from different points of view. You think I mean to say that the child upon the bed is the son of my own bosom!" ”

“ Berenice rose from her chair with a sudden, tempestuous movement and stood before him.
“Listen!” she exclaimed. “Supposing I were to tell you that I knew or could guess who that man was—why he came! Oh, if I were to tell you that I were a fraud, that——”
Matravers stopped her.
“I beg,” he said, “that you will tell me nothing!”
There was a short silence. Berenice seemed on the point of breaking down. She was nervously lacing and interlacing her fingers. Her breath was coming spasmodically.
“Berenice,” he said softly, “you are over-wrought; you are not quite yourself to-night. ”

“ Edward Henry could not tolerate Mr. Bryany's look. It was a look which he had never been able to tolerate on the features of anybody whatsoever. He reminded himself that his secret object in accompanying Mr. Bryany to the Turk's Head was to repay Mr. Bryany—in what coin he knew not yet—for the aspersions which at the music-hall he had cast upon England in general and upon the Five Towns in particular, and also to get revenge for having been tricked into believing, even for a moment, that there was really a case of hydrophobia at Bleakridge. ”

“ Farewell to you, Berenice, whom I have loved, and whom I dearly love. You are the only woman who has ever wandered into my little life to teach me the great depths of human passion—and you came too late. But that was not your fault.
“For what I am doing, do you, at least, not blame me. If there were a single person in the world dependent upon me, or [Pg 253] to whom my death would be a real loss, I would remain. But there is no one. And, whereas alive I can do you no good, dead I may! Berenice, your husband lives—in suffering and in poverty ”

“ The evening sped on agreeably, and with animation in the family circle. The blessed angels of heaven were not more beautiful or more joyous than Henrik. He joked with his mother and sisters, nay, even with Stjernhök, in the gayest manner, and was one of the liveliest who partook of the citron-soufflé which Louise served up for supper, and which she herself had helped to prepare, and of which she was not a little proud. Yes, indeed, she was almost ready to believe that it was this which had given new life to Henrik, and the power of which she considered to be wonderfully operative. ”

“ The surgeon hesitated no longer: the next moment Daniel opened the other two letters from Henrietta. One, very long, was only a repetition of the first he had read. The other consisted only of a few lines:—
“M. de Brevan has just left me. When the man told me mockingly that I need not count upon your return, and cast an atrocious look at me, I understood. Daniel, that man wants your life; and he has hired assassins. For my sake, if not for your own, I beseech you be careful. Take care, be watchful; think that you are the only friend, the sole hope here below, of your Henrietta.” ”

“ But as he turned the corner, she was already stepping into her carriage. He paused, and simultaneously with her disappearance he realized that he was not the only one who had found his way to the narrow street to see the last of Berenice. A man was standing upon the opposite pavement a little way from the carriage, yet at such an angle that a faint, yellow light shone upon what was visible of his pale face. He had watched her come out, and was gazing now fixedly at the window of her brougham. Matravers knew in a moment that this was the man whom he had seen sitting alone in the amphitheatre ”