VII
THE GANG AT WORK
A.
The gang is at work. But before I tell you what kind of work they’re doing, I have to describe to you how a bookbinder manages to live in America.
First of all, the apartment. Back home Fat Pessi would have been afraid to climb up so high. You have to go up and up, maybe a hundred stairs, until you reach a magnificent apartment with countless big and small rooms. In each room there are beds and blankets, with curtains on the windows. One room is called a kitchen. It doesn’t have a brick oven, only an iron range with holes on which to cook. The water comes out of the wall, hot and cold water — as much as you want! You just turn the faucet, and out it pours.
B.
Later on, when my brother Elyahu and his wife Bruche come by to see how we are faring, our friend Pinni takes him by the hand and leads him into the kitchen. He shows him the two faucets for the water and begins his usual speech. “What do you have to say, Elyahu, about Columbus? What Russian is worth his little fingernail! Except for guzzling vodka and making pogroms, he doesn’t know his left hand from his right.”
My brother Elyahu is not going to let him get away with it. “So now you’re all for Columbus. What were you saying a while back on Ellis Island?”
Pinni says that Ellis Island doesn’t belong to America. Ellis Island lies on the border between America and the rest of the world.
My brother says Pinni doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and they start quarreling. Bruche makes peace between them. She says they’re both ignoramuses and their quarreling isn’t worth a worn-out groschen.
But I started to tell you about Moishe the bookbinder’s apartment and went off in another direction. Don’t worry. I’ll get back to our Fat Pessi and her gang of children.
C.
Surely never in their lives did our Moishe and our Fat Pessi dream of living in such luxury, in such an apartment with so many rooms. They have a room for everything. For sleeping there is a bedroom. For eating there is a separate room called a dining room. Why a dining room? My brother Elyahu and Pinni cannot figure it out. All right, a bedroom, because beds are there. But a dining room? What does dining mean? Why not eating room?
Moishe interrupts: “Why do you need to rack your brains for nothing? So long as I’m head of this family in New York, thanks be to God, and my children are all working, with God’s help, and we are making a living here in America—”
I look at this Moishe the bookbinder and think, God Almighty! How a person can change! At home we never heard him say a word. Everywhere and always it was Pessi. He only knew how to make pulp and to bind books. And here he’s grown a foot taller. It’s no wonder. The man has no worries! All the children are working and bringing home money. I’ll tell you all their names, what their work is, and how much each one is earning. My mother is jealous of our neighbor Pessi because God blessed her with so many children.
D.
The oldest boy, the one we called Barrel at home, is called Sam here. Why Sam? I don’t know. I only know he’s already making money. He is working at a paper box factory. Don’t think it’s such a hard job. He doesn’t make the boxes himself. He delivers them. He takes a bundle of ten dozen boxes in each hand and runs through the narrow streets between the cars and the trolleys. He has to be careful the boxes don’t get crushed. For this he makes two and a half dollars a week and hopes to get a raise. Maybe in time he’ll make three dollars a week. That’s for now. Later on, his boss tells him, he’ll teach him the business of making boxes. He says to him, “Just be a good boy, and you’ll be all right.”
E.
The second boy, who was once called Velvl the Tomcat, is now called Willy. He is also a delivery boy and works for a grocery store, which is a much harder job. He has to get up very early, when God Himself is still asleep. First he has to sort out and fill all the orders, and then he delivers the bundles to the customers. The bundles consist of rolls, butter, cheese, eggs, sugar, milk, and sour cream. He has to climb with them up more than two hundred stairs to the top floor, and quickly, so he can get back to the store in time to sweep the floor, clean up, and do other work until noon. Then he’s free. He doesn’t make much money, only fifteen cents a day, except Friday, when he makes a whole quarter plus a challah for Shabbes.
F.
What I just told you about applies only to the older boys. They don’t let the younger ones work here mornings, because in America the young children must go to school, or they’re in trouble. And school is free, even the books. When our friend Pinni hears this, he’s astounded. At home they didn’t even allow Jewish children into the schools, but here in America they drag you in by force, or else you’ll be punished and fined. “For that reason alone,” says Pinni, “the czar should bury himself alive out of shame!”
But since they go to school only half a day, children can do something else in the afternoon to earn a few dollars. And that’s what Pessi’s younger children do. The one we used to call Stork works at a pharmacy, which they call a drugstore. He washes bottles and goes to the post office for stamps that are sold at the pharmacy. For half a day he makes a dollar and a quarter a week. “That comes in handy too,” says Moishe, and takes the money.
G.
Feitl Stutterer, now called Philip, also goes to school half a day. The other half he peddles gazettes, here called papers. He runs up and down East Broadway, crying, “Papers! Papers!” then the name of each paper. From that he makes forty or fifty cents a day and sometimes more. Of course that also goes into his father’s pot. They all earn money, and the father takes care of them all.
H.
Even my friend Hershl earns money, the one with the birthmark on his forehead who we called Vashti. Here he isn’t called Hershl or Vashti but Harry, and he’s going to school. The other half of each day after school he spends at a pushcart on Rivington Street. It belongs to a woman from our hometown who sells rice, barley, beans, chickpeas, nuts, raisins, lentils, almonds, figs, olives, carob, and sour pickles. There isn’t much work for Vashti, or Harry, to do. He just has to keep an eye on people to see they don’t filch anything, because a woman who comes up to ask the price of something might pop a raisin or an almond or an olive into her mouth. But he himself will often sample the sweets. Vashti has no secrets from me. He admitted that he once snacked on so many raisins, he had a bellyache for three days afterward. He doesn’t get paid for his work aside from tips, a cent or two, sometimes a nickel, for helping customers carry their packages. That can add up to a dollar a week. At home Vashti never laid eyes on a kopek even in his dreams, except for distributing shalach-mones, Purim sweets. But Purim comes only once a year. Here Purim comes every day, and every day he earns money.
“Columbus! You are worth your weight in gold!” exclaims our friend Pinni when he walks down Rivington Street and sees Vashti at his pushcart. He buys three cents’ worth of carobs and gives one cent to Vashti as a tip.
I.
As for Moishe, he is not sitting idle. He isn’t binding books as he did at home because here in America, he says, you need to have connections and a lot of money to rent a store and buy machinery. And in his older years, he can’t work again as an assistant to someone else. Somebody gave him advice — among Jews you’ll find plenty: put up a book stand on Essex Street and make a living that way. This has such appeal to our friend Pinni that he says he would love a business like that. He says it appeals to him because you’re influenced by what you work with. Pinni loves books as a fish loves water. When he gets hold of a book and sticks the tip of his nose into it, you can’t tear him away.