Bread Givers

“A writer, a poet you want for a husband? Those who sell the papers at least earn something. But what earns a poet? Do you want starvation and beggary for the rest of your days? Who’ll pay your rent? Who’ll buy you your bread? Who’ll put shoes on the feet of your children, with a husband who wastes his time writing poems of poverty instead of working for a living?”

A quietness within me soothed my tortured nerves. I turned to my books on the table, and with fierce determination to sink myself into my head, I began my lessons again.

“Why don’t you read the way you used to when you were home?” I asked.

“I can’t look at a book. My head stopped with my troubles. Ach! How can you people know what it is to be miserable as I am.”

The proud grand lady crumpled before my eyes into nothing but an East Side yenteh, with a broken heart.

So this is what it was to be the wife of a cloaks-and-suits millionaire!

“You hard heart!” Fania threw up her hands at me. “Come, Bessie. Let’s leave her to her mad education. She’s worse than Father with his Holy Torah.”

I had an assurance that I never had before. I was thrilled. Flattered. Ripened for love.

Then why did I let him go?

Hours I sat there, my head in my hands, wondering why. Slowly, one piece of a broken thought began to weave itself together with another. If I’d let myself love him, I’d end by hating him. He only excited me. But that wasn’t enough. Even in the ecstasy of our kisses, I knew he was not my kind.

I looked at the books on my table that had stared at me like enemies a little while before. They were again the life of my life. Ach! Nothing was so beautiful as to learn, to know, to master by the sheer force of my will even the dead squares and triangles of geometry. I seized my books and hugged them to my breast as though they were living things.

“A writer, a poet you want for a husband? Those who sell the papers at least earn something. But what earns a poet? Do you want starvation and beggary for the rest of your days? Who’ll pay your rent? Who’ll buy you your bread? Who’ll put shoes on the feet of your children, with a husband who wastes his time writing poems of poverty instead of working for a living?”

A quietness within me soothed my tortured nerves. I turned to my books on the table, and with fierce determination to sink myself into my head, I began my lessons again.

“Why don’t you read the way you used to when you were home?” I asked.

“I can’t look at a book. My head stopped with my troubles. Ach! How can you people know what it is to be miserable as I am.”

The proud grand lady crumpled before my eyes into nothing but an East Side yenteh, with a broken heart.

So this is what it was to be the wife of a cloaks-and-suits millionaire!

“You hard heart!” Fania threw up her hands at me. “Come, Bessie. Let’s leave her to her mad education. She’s worse than Father with his Holy Torah.”

I had an assurance that I never had before. I was thrilled. Flattered. Ripened for love.

Then why did I let him go?

Hours I sat there, my head in my hands, wondering why. Slowly, one piece of a broken thought began to weave itself together with another. If I’d let myself love him, I’d end by hating him. He only excited me. But that wasn’t enough. Even in the ecstasy of our kisses, I knew he was not my kind.

I looked at the books on my table that had stared at me like enemies a little while before. They were again the life of my life. Ach! Nothing was so beautiful as to learn, to know, to master by the sheer force of my will even the dead squares and triangles of geometry. I seized my books and hugged them to my breast as though they were living things.