Street of Dreams (standard:drama, 2689 words)
Author: Wolfgang	Added: May 06 2012	Views/Reads: 3903/2120	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A short story of an immigrant's struggle to raise a family in the new world.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

Esposito! He held out even after they beat him up in the back of the 
store. Gangsters!” They were nothing but gangsters. He pronounced it 
‘Ging-stuss' in English but in Yiddish he called them 'farshtunkener'. 

Well, he would close up early tonight. Rosh Hashanah began at sundown
... maybe he would talk it over with Minnie to see what she thought. A 
husband is the boss, no question about that ... a seat by the Eastern 
wall ... but it doesn't hurt to talk things over with a wife sometimes. 
He was eager for the holiday, since he bought the store things were 
going well with Minnie and Jake. They had high hopes for their daughter 
Bella ... only yesterday he remembered her on the sidewalk skipping the 
rope with her friends "Jacob, Jacob, do you love me? Yes, no – yes, 
no?" Jacob's intentions were suddenly revealed when a girl missed a 
step. She was so good in the public school, spoke English like an 
uptown goyim. Suppose she married one? Would it matter much to him? To 
Minnie, yes––but not that much to him. Some of his best customers were 
Protestant and Catholic. “That's the reason for the protection. I 
should keep them out of the store?” he asked himself. 

He smiled warmly when he thought of Minnie, sitting at home by the
window, parting the curtains from time to time waiting to see him stop 
for a newspaper at the kiosk. “I will be soon Minnie, soon.” It would 
be twenty-five years this December. "Where did the moments go, Minnie? 
The millions and millions of moments we spent together?" She was so 
young in the beginning, her carriage so straight, her hair so black. 
What a pair they made. Well, she still walks like a queen, a little 
heavier, a trifle bent, and the hair not so black any more. Her face is 
changed too ... it's the lack of teeth he thought, the lips grow 
thinner. But still––the thought of her at the window of the flat and 
Bella doing her homework by gaslight from the chandelier over the 
dining room table melted his heart a little and made him utter a small 
prayer of thankfulness under his breath, although he was not a 
religious man––not by a long shot. 

No, Jake was not a religious man, moreover he was determined above all
to be an American. That's why he and Minnie were here in the first 
place. He thought back to Bialystock. it paid to be religious in 
Bialystock, but not here in America. He reached way back in the ice box 
where he had saved the best brisket. He wrapped it carefully, put on 
his overcoat and slipped the brisket in his side pocket. He felt in his 
other pocket for the sweepstakes ticket he bought this morning . “So 
what will I do with a million dollars? Such a gesheft, I should have my 
head looked into.” Then he turned out the lights. 

His route took him along Grand Street to Hester Street. Here the
tenements were cleaner, there were fewer stores on the ground floors, 
and push carts did not line the curbs. It was not as nice as his 
brother's apartment in Brooklyn, but then his brother had to take two 
subways to his place of business. That was the main difference between 
Jake and his brother in the first place, Jake owned a butcher shop, his 
brother worked in a 'place of business'. But still, he envied his 
brother's bath tub, Jake could not deny that. That was one thing Jake 
was determined to do for Minnie and Bella! To be able to bathe in one's 
own house whenever one wanted, instead of a five cent public bath on 
Grand Street once a week. “Oy, such a luxury!” 

But for now the problem was the protection. The Rossi family! Some
family! Strong arm bandits they were, just like in Poland. It was no 
different. They wore uniforms in Poland, here they wear long black 
broadcloth coats and smoke cigars. Like Mr. Abraham Lincoln said, “It's 
the same tyrannical principle.” 

He turned into Hester Street as the light was fading, he fished down in
his pocket and felt for a nickel. Moe sat in his little kiosk intent on 
lighting his oil lamp. 

“Paper for the holiday, Bernstein?” 

“A fresh one––not the one on top.” He folded the paper, stuffed it in
his pocket and looked up at the third floor parlor windows of 237 just 
in time to see the curtain close. In his mind's eye he could see Minnie 
get up from the chair by the window and walk to the kitchen. “Poppa's 
here,” she would say to Bella as she passed her at the dining room 
table. “Hurry with the homework, he'll be wanting his tea.” 

He met his neighbor Bloom laboriously climbing the stairs to the fourth
floor with two heavy cans of kerosene from the cellar. Bloom put the 
cans down and rested as Jake passed him. 

“Happy holidays, Bernstein.” 

“You should get your son to do that, Bloom.” 

“I should get a lot of things, Bernstein.” 

“Happy holidays, Bloom.” 

That meant that his son wasn't home and probably carousing for the rest
of the evening. He knew he would hear Mr. and Mrs. Bloom arguing about 
their son later––the crowd he ran around with, “You are too easy with 
him, Zayda. He's a nudnick––what's the good of having a son who cares 
nothing about his mother and father? We might just as well have had a 
daughter like the Bernsteins' downstairs.” Their voices would float 
down the air shaft long into the night, each of them carrying the fight 
in turn, neither wanting to admit their responsibility or the fact that 
their son David was a no-goodnick. 

Jake heard the kettle whistle as he opened the front door. It was a
whistle he made himself from an ox-tail as a present for Bella when she 
was little. His father had taught him many years ago in Poland how to 
carve the bone and fit it to the spout on a kettle, it was one of the 
few things he learned from his father. He walked through the dining 
room, kissed Bella on the head and handed the brisket to Minnie as she 
came out of the kitchen. Even after all these years he hesitated 
momentarily before kissing her––he kissed her quickly and said, “It's a 
nice brisket. The best of the bunch, how does it go with you?” 

“The place has been cold all day.” 

“So ... you got oil stoves, no?” 

“Two blocks up Hester, my sister has central heating.” 

“Don't tell me. She pays $37.50 more than we do.” 

“She has hot water too.” 

“It was your misfortune to marry a poor man, Minnie.” 

Bella gathered her homework and schoolbooks and stood up. “Are we going
to fight now?” she asked. 

“It's Poppa's way of making me feel sorry for him. No, there will not be
a fight, not with the holiday ... besides where is the profit in 
fighting for something you can't have?” 

Jake sat at the kitchen table quietly and waited for his glass of tea.
He stared at the teapot abstractedly, wondering if he should tell 
Minnie about the protection before the holiday. Maybe if he raised 
prices a little they could get a better apartment, one with hot water 
and heat and electric light from a switch on the wall. Minnie poured 
him a cup of tea and he inhaled the hot savory steam. “Think of it, 
Jake,” she said. “Hot water––heis wasser––in a bath tub of your own?” 

“I got problems, Minnie, and I ain't sure I can even tell you what they
are.” 

Minnie sat up straighter in her chair. “You can't tell me, your wife?
Who can you tell then?” There was an edge to her voice that sounded 
like trouble to Bella, who gathered up her homework and disappeared 
into her bedroom. Jake watched her go and slowly sipped his tea. 

“What will it be with Bella, Minnie? In a few years she's done with the
high school, no? Will she want to go on? I think so––High School is not 
enough these days. High School was an impossible dream for us, Minnie, 
but it's not enough these days, not in America.” He stood up and looked 
out the kitchen window. It was dark now and the wrought iron 
latticework of the fire escape interrupted the disc of the rising moon. 
“She will want to go on––she has a head on her, that girl.” 

He came back and sat down again. “Everything costs more than I can
afford, Minnie, and in this American world one must have everything or 
nothing––not just this and that, but everything. I don't know how to 
tell you, Minnie, but one thing I know. Bella will go to college, I 
promise––there is no other way.” He put his glass of tea down and took 
both Minnie's hands in his. “And Minnie, you will live in a house with 
steam heat and hot water, a place where you can have a bath whenever it 
pleases you.” 

“Don't make promises, Jake, you know what happens when you make
promises.” Minnie wearily got to her feet and walked to the stove. 
“Supper will be on the table––go read your paper, see what the world 
is.” She called to Bella, “Come Bella lend a hand to your mominyoo.” 
Then she turned to Jake. “The kitchen is my gesheft, get out––go sit in 
the dining room. Read the news.” 

Jake picked up his glass of tea and carried it to the dining room table
then went to the hall closet to get the newspaper in his coat pocket. 
When he pulled it out, the sweepstakes ticket fell out out and 
fluttered to the floor. He picked it up and remembered having bought it 
from Moe along with yesterday's paper. “A dollar for a ticket! Oy, 
what's the matter with me?” 

The news was all bad. More businesses failing. Hard times in the Lower
East Side. Stores for rent––even push carts going out of business. 
“Mine Gott,” he mumbled, “how can you go out of business with a push 
cart?” At the lower right hand corner of the first page was the 
sweepstakes number for December 16th ... 46476. He began mumbling 
again, “So, now I prove to myself how stupid I am.” He looked at the 
number on the side of his ticket. “46477, there Jake––let that be a 
lesson to you!” 

Then it hit him like a physical blow to the side of his head. 

“Mine Gott, Minnie––come here! Bella, Bella, look at this!” 

Minnie and Bella trotted obediently into the dining room and saw Jake
with the newspaper in one hand and the ticket in the other. He waved 
both the ticket and the paper furiously at them, and with a wild light 
in his eyes he shouted, “Read the paper! Read the ticket! Bella, you 
don't need glasses to read––look at the number on this ticket and the 
number here in the paper. What do you see? Tell me, what do you see?” 

Bella picked up the ticket and read, “46477.” 

“Now. Now!” said Jake breathlessly. “Now the paper.” 

Bella read “46476.” 

“It was so close,” Jake breathed deeply. “Minnie, see how close we
came!” 

Minnie and Bella looked at him as though he'd lost his mind. “It's the
wrong number, Poppa, you lost,” Bella reminded him. 

“Ach, Bella. Such a good head on you and yet you cannot see! One number!
only one number away! No one can come that close without winning. 
Minnie, Minnie, it is the sign of mazeltov, good times are just around 
the corner!” 

Minnie wiped her hands on her apron, “Come, set the table Bella––the
dumplings can't sit in the pot forever.” 


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