Bread Givers

The butcher, baker, and fish-peddler pay for Father’s bail and raise money to hire an excellent American lawyer for his trial, which results in Father’s charges being dropped. Rather than act grateful, he insists they are obligated to help him since he’s “their light.” For weeks after, it’s all anyone can talk about. They all decide the collector lady had it coming and that Father’s hitting her was “like David killing Goliath, the giant.” Shprintzeh Gittel’s “Americanized daughter" insists it’s wrong for a man to hit a woman, but the others immediately shoot her down, insisting that the greedy landlord and his collector lady are the ones in the wrong.

Word of Father’s assault on the collector lady spreads. Soon, everyone knows who Reb Smolinsky and his family are, and it becomes easy to rent out the front room. Things improve for the Smolinskys in other ways too: Bessie, Fania, and Mashah find jobs, and Sara continues to peddle herring on the street. Mother fixes the house up nice, and the family is able to buy new pots, pans, and plates. Sometimes they can even afford butter for their bread. But the more things they can buy, the more they want.

Mother becomes a new person, laughing more than she yells. She starts to reflect wistfully on her youth in Russia, recalling how she used to have long hair and looked just like Mashah—a revelation that shocks Sara as she gazes on Mother’s “faded eyes” and plump figure. Mother recalls how rich men’s sons all wanted to marry her. But her father “wanted to buy himself honor in the family” and preferred Mother to marry a learned man, not a rich one. When Father came by the first time, Mother recalls, she ran from the house in shame.

Mother and Father eventually married, and Mother’s dowry was more opulent than anyone else’s in the village, containing feather beds, a dozen pillows, and beautifully embroidered towels. She was especially proud of her hand-crocheted tablecloth. She claims it was more beautiful than any of the machine-made goods one finds in America. Sara asks why Mother and Father came to America if things were so great back in Russia. Mother, suddenly angry, blames “the Tsar of Russia,” who wanted “free soldiers to make pogroms.” The Tsar, she insists, wanted to take Father away from his learning to serve as a soldier, so they had to sell everything to buy Father out of the army. But as much as they sold, it was never enough. And when there was nothing left to sell, that’s when they traveled to America.