Elye and Pinye have stopped going to the shahp. The apartment is a different place now that they’re home again. It’s like a week full of Sundays. I’ve told you that working in a shahp means getting up at the crack of dawn and falling into bed at night. That’s because of awvehteim. Awvehteim is staying to work in the shahp when everyone else goes home. Pinye and Elye don’t work awvehteim because they have to, they do it for the extra pay. A lot of good it does when pehdeh comes around and they see all they’ve been docked for! “They’re bandits,” Elye says.
“You’re an imbecile,” says Brokheh.
If she ever worked in a shahp, Brokheh says, no one would spit in her kasha. She’d have the bawssehz and the fawminz eating dirt. You better believe it. If anyone can do it, it’s Brokheh.
That’s why Brokheh was pleased as punch when all the shahp hands called a streik. Every last garment worker in New York laid down his scissors and iron and walked out. You should have seen the excitement! I’m talking homes, strits, hawlz. A hawl is a big room where all the garment workers get together for a mitink. They talk and they talk and they talk.
You hear words you’ve never heard before. Dzhenril streik …yunyin …awknahzayshn …hiyeh vedzhehz …beddeh voikink kahndishinz …skebz …streikbrehkehz …pikits and a lot more like that. I can’t make head or tails of any of it. My friend Mendl says he understands it all. Just don’t try asking him to explain. “When you’re older, you’ll get it too,” he says. Maybe I will.
Meanwhile, I sit watching the action with itchy fingers. What wouldn’t I give to get it down on paper — how everyone looks, and what everyone does, and the things everyone says!
Take Elye, for instance. He doesn’t say a thing. He just goes from group to group, listening and biting his nails. I get a kick out of watching him nod. He agrees with everyone.
Do you see that garment worker over there, the one with the wen on the side of his head? He’s just grabbed Elye by the lapel and is shaking him while saying it’s all a big waste of time. The streik won’t get us workers anywhere. The sosayshn uv menefektshehz is too strong. Elye nods. I’ll bet he knows what a sosayshn uv menefektshehz is as much as I do.
Now someone new goes over to him, a man with a face like a duck’s who sputters when he talks. He takes hold of Elye’s jacket button and sputters away, stopping every few sentences to say: “No, sir! We’ll fight to the end!” Elye nods again. It’s too bad Brokheh isn’t here. She’d give him a piece of her mind, don’t think she wouldn’t.
Pinye is a different story. If you’ve never heard Pinye speak at a mitink, you’ve missed something grand. He puts his heart and soul into it and lets loose with the most terrific words and names.
You have to see it with your own eyes. When it comes to boring an audience of thousands, Pinye is in a class by himself. He begins with Columbus, runs through the entire history of the United States, and would go on all night if anyone let him.
“Who’s the spikkeh?” someone asks.
“A grinhawn!”
“What’s he want?”
“What are his demands?”
“What’s he sounding off about?”
“Sharrap!” a man shouts at Pinye. Pretty soon a whole chorus is shouting:
“Sharrap!” Sharrap is not a nice word. In Jewish you would say, “Go peddle your wares around the corner!” But words don’t scare Pinye. He runs on like an unplugged barrel. You can stop it with your finger, stuff a rag in it — nothing helps. You either wait for the last drop to trickle out or roll the barrel away. That’s what two young pressehs did to Pinye. They took him gently by the arms and led him off the steydzsh.
Not that that stopped him. He talked all the way home. And when we got there he started in again on my mother, Brokheh, and Taybl. He actually had some good points, Pinye did. But try talking to a woman. When he’s finished, Brokheh comes up with one of her gems:
“What does it matter to the turkey if it’s slaughtered for the Purim dinner or the Passover seder?”
Maybe you can tell me what that means.
The days go by. The streik continues. The workers are tough as steel. Every day there’s another mitink in a different place. The menefektshehz, they say, are tough too. They’re not giving in. But they will. Everyone’s sure of it. There’s nothing the workers can’t accomplish. This is America.
There’s always the last resort. It’s called a mahtsh. Thousands of streikehz get together and parade through the streets with their flags. Let’s hope it works. We’ll be in bad shape if it doesn’t.
Mendl and I think it’s a swell idea. We’ll mahtsh in the front row. But go tell that to an old woman like Brokheh! She says we’re just playing soldiers. “You’ll ruin your shoes,” she tells us. You should hear what Pinye has to say about that.
There’s no turning back now. Mendl and I have put on our good suits. It’s as exciting as the Fawt uv Dzhulei. That’s an American holiday. They shoot fiyehkrekehz in the strit and people get killed. What’s a few dead on the Fawt uv Dzhulei? It’s the day America beat its enemies.
Suddenly the grand mood is spoiled. A man has been killed on Kenell Strit. Pinye brings us the news. He was there and saw it happen. The man had it coming, he says. He was a gengsteh.
“What’s a gengsteh?” my mother asks. “A thief?”
“Worse!” Pinye says.
“A murderer?”
“Worse!”
“What’s worse than a murderer?”
“A gengsteh is worse than a murderer,” Pinye says, “because a murderer murders for murder and a gengsteh murders for pay. They get money to beat up the streikehz. One of them attacked a girl. There was a fight. People jumped on him and hit him.”
That’s all we can get out of Pinye. He runs around the apartment on his long legs, pulling his hair and breathing fire and shouting:
“O Columbus! O Vashinktn! O Linkn!”
Then he turns around and runs out.
Naturally, the next victims are Mendl and me. My mother won’t let us into the strit for all the money in the world. Not us, not Elye, not Brokheh, not Taybl! If people are getting killed there, she says, it’s no place to be. She’s gotten us so worried that Taybl is crying like a baby. It’s anyone’s guess where Pinye is.
My mother turns to Taybl. There’s a great God above, she says. He’ll see to it Pinye is all right. With God’s help he’ll come home safe and sound. He’ll be a good father to his children, God willing.
Taybl is childless. She’s taking medicine and hoping for the best.
“Lots of children,” my mother says. “Amen to that!” I say and get a whack from Elye. That means I should mind my own business.
Thank God, Pinye is back! He has good news. The gengsteh who was killed is alive. He’ll be a cripple for life. He lost an eye and broke an arm. “It serves him right,” Pinye says. “It will teach him not to be a gengsteh.”
My mother feels sorry for the gengsteh. “W hat difference does it make what he is? There’s a God in heaven, it’s his job to settle accounts. Why should anyone lose an eye and break an arm? Why should a gengsteh’s wife and children have a cripple for a father?”
The streik drags on. There isn’t a stitch of work. Elye is frantic. My mother tries comforting him. The God who brought us to America, she says, won’t let us down now.
Yoyneh the bagel maker and Pesye and Moyshe and all our other good friends come by every day to cheer us up. They say it’s not the end of the world. Where is it written in the Bible that in America you have to be a garment worker? And to show you how right they are, listen to this.