East Side Stories:Tales of Jewish Life in the Lower East Side of New York in the 1930's Read Online Free Page B

that icebox there.” She pointed to the aged wooden appliance in the room, painted green and peeling in scabrous blotches,” and she said, “in the summer David has to schlepp up the ice on his back every two days and the basin underneath it is always running over with melted water. You like that? Or would you like to live like the rich people? He’s a good man, he’s rich, he makes,” she accented the words, and said, “a hundred and fifty dollars a week, ma-ma-nyu, a millionaire.”
    “What kind of a life is this?” her father asked.
    Claire said nothing. Breaking the silence David said, “Why don’t you leave her alone? You’re killing her with all your words. Leave her alone.”
    “Ah!” his father said furiously. “Now this one, here. With the big mouth. Fourteen years old and he knows everything. What do you know, you pisher, you baby?” His wife was tugging at his arm to stop his shouted flow of words but he was saying, “Do you know how to make a living? Do you know what it is to have no work and a family to support?” His words were racing now. “Do you know what it is to have the electric company shut your lights? Do you know what it is when the grocery store says they can’t keep you on the books no more because you can’t pay what you owe them? Do you know what it is,” his father jumped up from his chair and glared fiercely at David as he said, “not to be able to pay the rent and they throw you out in the street, like the Goldsteins, hah?”
    “Morris, Morris,” his wife said as she jumped up from her chair and went to her husband. “Don’t get excited. Sit down. Please.” And to her son as she pulled on her husband’s arm, “Don’t be a fool, David. Keep quiet. Show respect for your father. You have no right, you hear me? No right! He slaves for you.” Turning to Claire she said, “And for you too.”
    Claire was still sitting at the table, she looked up and said angrily, “I’m twenty-two. I work too. I bring in money.”
    “When you work,” her father said, sitting down once more at the table. “Remember that. How many weeks did you work this year? Tell me. And tell me how many men you liked that the shadchen, the matchmaker, brought to you, hah? And you say, this one’s too short, this one’s too bald, this one’s too old, that one limps.” He was breathing heavily now and he roared out, “What do you want?” Glancing at all of them shouted, “What do you want from me?”
    “Don’t yell,” David said. “The whole building will hear you.”
    “You shut up!” His father said. “Who asked you? Keep your mouth shut!”
    “Is that the way to talk to your father?” his mother said angrily to David. “Go to the other room! Now!” David hesitated and his mother said, “Now, I said!”
    David glanced at Claire, gave a great sigh. He turned and went into Claire’s bedroom, a room off the kitchen. Inside, he pulled the chain of the electric fixture, the room became darkly visible in the anemic light. He sat down on the bed, its springs creaking. He was tired but he would have to wait until the family discussion, if it could be classified as such, was done.
    His bed, the folding cot in the kitchen, could not be opened until the entire family had left the kitchen and gone to the two bedrooms. Now, from the other room, the kitchen, he heard the voices of his father and mother and Claire, and in the small silences between their hurled sentences, there was distant hum and sound from the other apartments in the tenement building, the creak of a floor when someone walked across it, the squeal of the small wheels of a folding cot being brought to the center of a kitchen, the flush of a toilet with its strangled liquid sound.
    He lay back on the bed careful that his shoes did not touch the blanket beneath him. He stared into the dark ceiling, Claire’s voice was saying, No, no, no, I don’t want him! pleading now, her voice begging, almost crying.
    “Goddammit!” he