Anzia Yezierska

But that morning, I had refused to do it any more. It made me feel like a beggar and thief when anybody saw me.

“I’d sooner go to work in a shop,” I cried.

“Who’ll give you work when you’re so thin and small, like a dried-out herring!”

“But I’m not going to let them look down on me like dirt, picking people’s ashes.” And I cried and cried so, that Mother couldn’t make me do it

And so, since men were the only people who counted with God, Father not only had the best room for himself, for his study and prayers, but also the best eating of the house. The fat from the soup and the top from the milk went always to him

When she begins to want a thing, there is no rest, no let-up till she gets it. It wills itself in you to play

“But I ask you only, by your conscience, what should I do without her wages? The other children don’t earn much. And they need more than they earn. They’d spend every cent on themselves if I’d only let them. But Bessie spends nothing on herself. She gives me every cent she earns. And if you marry her, you’re as good as taking away from me my living—tearing the bread from my mouth.”

What will you have by living with you father? All your life you’ll have to give away your wages, and he’ll suck out from you your last drop of blood like a leech

More and more I began to see that Father, in his innocent craziness to hold up the Light of the Law to his children, was as a tyrant more terrible than the Tsar from Russia. As he drove away Bessie’s man, so he drove away Mashah’s lover. And each time he killed the heart from one of his children, he grew louder with his preaching on us all.

I didn’t give you consumption. I didn’t send you to work at the age of six like some poor fathers do. You didn’t start work till you were over ten. Now, when I begin to have a little use from you, you want to run away and live for yourself?”

“I’ve got to live my own life. It’s enough that Mother and the others lived for you.”

“Chzufeh! You brazen one! The crime of crimes against God—daring y

“It’s because I’m young that my minutes are like diamonds to me. I have so much to learn before I can enter college. But won’t you be proud of me when I work myself up for a school teacher, in America?”

“I’d be happier to see you get married. What’s a school teacher? Old maids—all of them. It’s good enough for Goyim, but not for you.”

I no longer saw my father before me, but a tyrant from the Old World where only men were people. To him I was nothing but his last unmarried daughter to be bought and sold. Even in my revolt I could not keep back a smile.

“It’s no use talking to you. I see

Those two experiences made me clear to myself. Knowledge was what I wanted more than anything else in the world. I had made my choice. And now I had to pay the price. So this is what it cost, daring to follow the urge in me. No father. No lover. No family. No friend. I must go on and on. And I must go on—alone.