Bread Givers

by Anzia Yezierska

But Bessie brings me in every cent she earns. When a girl like mine leaves the house the father gets poorer, not richer. It’s not enough to take my Bessie without a dowry. You must pay me yet.”

And then I thought, what kind of a man could I get if I smell from selling herring? A son from Zalmon the fish-peddler?

“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?”

“How long will love last with a husband who feeds you with hunger? Even Job said, of all his sufferings, nothing was so terrible as poverty. A poor man is a living dead one. Even dead you got to have money.

“But didn’t you say that the poorest beggars are happier and freer than the rich?” I dared question Father. “You said that a poor man never has to be afraid of thieves or robbers. He can walk alone in the middle of the night and fear nobody. Poor people don’t need locks on their houses. They can leave their doors wide open, because nobody will come to steal poverty...”

“With me for their father they get their dowries in their brains and in their good looks.”

“Woe to a man who has females for his offspring,” he went on.

“Lunatic!” shrieked Mother. “You, without a shekel to your name!

Blood-and-iron! How dare you question your father his business? What’s the world coming to in this wild America? No respect for fathers. No fear of God.”

Six years of poverty had pinched Mashah the beautiful into a ragged yenteh.