Bread Givers. Anzia Yezierska

      Chapter IV. The “Empty-Head”

      Something happened in our house again!

      Mashah, the “empty-head,” showed signs that there was something in her. She was no more just a doll in a show window. She was no more just something lost in the looking glass of her pretty face.

      For the first time in her life, Mashah showed signs of interest in someone outside herself. No longer was the one reason for her living to make prettier her pretty face. Now it was a man that was the beginning and end of her existence.

      The man put new light in her eyes, new life in her face, and such a wonder-working joy in her heart that it changed the “empty-head” into a singing sunshine. The pretty doll became overnight a feeling person—a person with a heart.

      We still didn’t believe it—the miracle! Mashah in love!

      His name was Jacob Novak and he was a piano player. He lived in the first-floor front room of a private house on the corner. His rich father paid ten dollars a lesson a week to a professor up town who was teaching him and getting him ready for a concert, to play it all by himself for a hall full of people.

      One day, as Mashah passed the corner private house, she heard playing such as she never heard before. She stood looking up at the open window from where the playing came, even after the music stopped. Then a face came to the window. It was a young man’s face. Music was in his eyes and high feelings breathed from his face.

      “Play again,” Mashah begged.

      The man looked on Mashah, and then he went back and played more beautifully than before. This time when Mashah still looked up after the music stopped, the man himself came out.

      And that’s how Mashah’s love began.

      Mashah had always liked to hear free music in the park. Now she was all music herself. It sang itself from her, the music of love, from the time she got up in the morning till she went to bed at night.

      New life hummed in our house. Every day the house was swept from out of the corners and from under the beds. Before the rest were up, Mashah had scrubbed the house as for a holiday.

      Before, Mashah was interested only in hanging up her own clothes. But now she told us that “Chairs were made to sit on, not to throw things on.” And she saw to it that everybody’s clothes were hung up on hangers as good as her own.

      In these days, when Mashah got home from work it was no longer to play with her pretty golden hair, combing it in a dozen different styles. Jacob Novak was expected for supper. And now she saw to it that his place at the table was set as perfect as in a restaurant. The tablecloth and napkins glistened with the fresh-ironed whiteness, as if just out from the store laundry. The steel knife and the tin fork and spoon were polished and polished till they shone bright as silver.

      No longer were the cracked penny cups used for evening’s tea, but whole cups with handles were taken down from the Passover set and used for every day. When Bessie was excited about a man, we thought it was riches to have a white oilcloth for the table. When love came to Mashah, she covered up the oilcloth with a real tablecloth. And more yet—when Mashah’s lover came for dinner, he had to have a napkin because he always had it. And we each had to have a napkin also, so as not to make him feel funny with a napkin by himself alone.

      When roses and lilacs became cheap, Mashah went without her lunch to buy flowers for the table, in honor of Jacob. She managed to find out just what eating he liked and just the salt and pepper to please his taste. Mother always said that, with her bitter heart, what were such little things as too much or too little salt in the soup. But now, because of Jacob, we all had food cooked and salted as it was never cooked and salted before.

      Mashah found out that Jacob liked American cooking, like salad and spinach and other vegetables. And right away Mashah joined the cooking class in the settlement, one evening a week, to learn the American way of cooking vegetables and fixing salads. And soon we all had American salad and American-cooked vegetables instead of fried potato lotkes and the greasy lokshen kugel that Mother used to make.

      Jacob had a tailor to keep fixed his clothes. But Mashah’s eyes were so much on him that once she found a button loose before the tailor did. And after that, I believe yet, he worked the buttons loose on purpose, only to have the pleasure of Mashah’s happiness when she sewed them on.

      The bunch of other men that used to buzz around Mashah now dropped away when they saw how Mashah had fallen in love with Jacob Novak.

      His father owned a big department store on Grand Street and Jacob looked like from rich people. It didn’t shout from his clothes, the money they cost, as it did from Berel Bernstein. He did not wear a checked vest, nor on a red necktie a gold horseshoe pin. But it breathed from his quiet things, the solid richness from the rich who didn’t have to show it off any more. Maybe that was the reason Father didn’t question out Jacob as he did Bessie’s man, because there was about Jacob Novak the sure richness of the higher-up that shut out all questions of how he spent his money. Or maybe Father didn’t waste time asking the man, because Mashah always used out her wages on herself. Father said the sooner Mashah got married the better for us all. And there would only be more room in the house if she was gone.

      Anyhow, Father only objected that he played the piano on the Sabbath. But he said he’d better wait till Jacob was tight married to the family before he’d begin to hold up to him the light of the Holy Torah.

      One day, Mashah came home, all burning up with the great big news that Jacob’s father, who had been away all this time to Chicago on business, was coming home. He was coming special to meet Mashah and us all because Jacob had written to him about us, and also he had to finish the arrangements of the concert that was to come off in a few weeks.

      All day long, Jacob played on his piano, as long hours as other people work who have to go to work. And for years and years he had done this, to learn how to play so the whole world should listen to him. This concert was to show up all the long years of his learning that now he was ready for the ears of the world and no more to play only to the deaf walls of his room on Essex Street. This concert was to Jacob the great day of his life, the way the wedding day is to a girl in love.

      “What is dearer to you, your music or me?” Mashah asked her lover once.

      “I love my music more because of you, and I love you more, because of my music.”

      A vague, far-off sadness darkened Mashah’s face.

      “All these hours and hours that you practice your piano, you see nothing before your eyes but your notes. But no matter what I do, you are always before my eyes.”

      “You jealous dear.” He kissed her eyelids tenderly. “Even my business-like father would have to love you.”

      “Yes, I am jealous—jealous of your music.” Mashah’s eyes burned into his. “The more you have to practice for that concert, the less time you have for me.”

      “But, dearest! My whole life hangs on this concert. Think what it has cost my father. I must at least show him what’s in me.”

      At last it happened. Jacob came with his father.

      The minute his father stepped in, we saw it was the richest man that had ever been in our house. From him it hollered money, like a hundred cash registers ringing up the dollars. The riches from his grand clothes so much outshined all the little riches that we shined up for him that in a minute it shrank into blackness the white tablecloth and the white napkins. And like a sun in the desert, the glitter of his diamonds withered and faded the poor little flowers on the table.

      One look he gave on all of us. Then for a minute his eyes burned over Mashah. Even though his lips answered politely the introduction, we saw Mashah shrink and fade under his eyes as the flowers faded under the glitter of his diamonds. From Mashah, he gave the house another look over. And all Mashah’s beauty couldn’t stop the cash-register