In the chap­ter titled “With­out a Song” from *The Heav­en & Earth Gro­cery Store*, Moshe con­fronts the painful task of clos­ing the gro­cery store he shared with his late wife, Chona. As he sorts through their belong­ings in the base­ment, he is over­whelmed by mem­o­ries, par­tic­u­lar­ly a small bar­rel that holds emo­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance. He recalls how Chona used to cre­ate joy from sim­ple things, fill­ing that bar­rel with gifts for local chil­dren. The pres­ence of his friends, Nate and Addie, pro­vides a bit­ter­sweet com­fort, as they qui­et­ly sup­port him in their own way, all while grap­pling with their own guilt and sor­row sur­round­ing Chona’s death.

Moshe reflects on the trou­bling events lead­ing to Chona’s pass­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­flict­ing nar­ra­tives that com­pli­cate the truth of that day. As he nav­i­gates these feel­ings, he grap­ples with the loss of his wife—her spir­it, courage, and vibrant view of life—a stark con­trast to his own feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy and sor­row. He views him­self as mere­ly a busi­ness own­er, while Chona was a force of nature, dri­ven by the desire to improve the world.

Their con­ver­sa­tion touch­es on sen­si­tive issues, includ­ing the fate of Dodo, the boy they had tak­en in, and the lin­ger­ing impli­ca­tions of their com­mu­ni­ty’s prej­u­dices. Despite his grief, Moshe insists on assist­ing Nate and Addie in their efforts to vis­it Dodo, rec­og­niz­ing their shared bond.

The nar­ra­tive shifts with the arrival of Moshe’s cousin, Isaac, and the friend Malachi, who brings unex­pect­ed joy. Their reunion leads to dis­cus­sions about com­mu­ni­ty sup­port and the impor­tance of stand­ing by one anoth­er in dif­fi­cult times.

As they con­verse, the heavy weight of social injus­tices sur­faces, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing the injus­tices faced by Nate and oth­er Black com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in their town. Isaac’s inten­tions to thank Nate and Addie for their sup­port bring ten­sion, as they refuse to accept mon­ey for their kind­ness. This resis­tance under­scores the moral com­plex­i­ties they face, grap­pling with soci­etal expec­ta­tions and per­son­al expe­ri­ences of love, loss, and broth­er­hood.

In this somber yet impact­ful chap­ter, Moshe’s emo­tion­al jour­ney encap­su­lates themes of grief, com­mu­ni­ty, and the inter­play of per­son­al and soci­etal strug­gles with­in the back­drop of a racial­ly charged envi­ron­ment.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

T
22
With­out a Song
he clos­ing of the Heav­en & Earth Gro­cery Store was not some­thing
that Moshe ever imag­ined doing. It was hard­er than going through
Chona’s things in their bed­room, for clos­ing the store involved work­ing in
the base­ment, and in the base­ment, he found a tiny wood­en bar­rel and
wood­en spoon that he rec­og­nized. She was spin­ning yel­low into but­ter in
that bar­rel when he first wan­dered into that base­ment twelve years before
with a head full of prob­lems and a world full of debt. She was the only one
in the world who would remem­ber that first moment. When he peeked
inside the bar­rel and found it full of tiny toys, mar­bles, and knick­knacks
that she had col­lect­ed to dole out as gifts to Dodo and the neigh­bor­hood
chil­dren, he sat on a near­by crate and burst into tears.
Nate and Addie were there help­ing him clean out mat­ters, work­ing the
far side of the room, for his plan was to rent the first floor of the build­ing
and con­tin­ue to live in the apart­ment above. The two worked silent­ly as he
sobbed but they said noth­ing, for they had their share of suf­fer­ing, too.
Nei­ther had men­tioned the mat­ter of Dodo in Pennhurst. Moshe sus­pect­ed
they felt guilt about Chona’s death because it was Nate’s idea that he and
Chona take Dodo in the first place. Moshe felt no anger toward them, for
the boy had brought his wife joy, and he would have told them that at that
moment had his heart had the strength to allow him to speak of such
mat­ters, but it did not. Still, he felt relief that they were with him at this
moment, for they were the only ones he want­ed near. The new faces at shul
were strangers. The world had shift­ed.
As for what hap­pened at the store, Addie had giv­en him the details of
what she saw that after­noon. Doc’s con­trast­ing ver­sion of the event, that
Chona had been attacked by the Negro boy and col­lapsed, made the whole
mat­ter trou­ble­some, for Moshe was cer­tain the boy had done no such thing.
Yet to ques­tion Doc’s ver­sion of the events was to swim against the tide, as
that would call atten­tion to Chona’s protes­ta­tions about Doc’s involve­ment
with the Klan. Nei­ther the town fathers nor the police would want to dis­cuss
those things. Nei­ther were over­ly fond of Moshe and his busi­ness. To
protest was to bring too much unwant­ed atten­tion, and per­haps more police.
His only allies were the shul, which was small and pow­er­less, and the
col­oreds, who were ter­ri­fied of the police, espe­cial­ly Nate. He’d not­ed in
years past that when the police were occa­sion­al­ly called to quell the odd
dis­tur­bance at the the­ater, Nate seemed to dis­ap­pear. He sus­pect­ed Nate had
had some trou­ble in the past. It did not both­er him, for under­neath Nate’s
qui­et nature, Moshe sensed an iron-fired solid­i­ty not unlike that of his
cousin Isaac. That kind of bear­ing was a win­dow into a trou­bled heart, he
knew, one forged by past trou­bles and unjust treat­ment. It both­ered Moshe
that Nate, who was his best friend in town, like­ly had such trou­bles. He
thought he might be the cause of it, some­how, and that thought caused him
even more wor­ry.
Seat­ed on a crate, Moshe let his short burst of sob­bing work through,
then felt a sud­den pain in his chest, which caused him to lean over and
cough a moment, gasp­ing for breath; then it passed. He looked up to see
Addie stand­ing on the oth­er side of the base­ment look­ing at him, con­cerned.
Nate, tak­ing down shelv­ing in the far cor­ner, also stopped his work. Nei­ther
moved to con­sole him. It occurred to him in that moment that he had rarely
touched either one of them phys­i­cal­ly. His wife had done those things. His
wife had not been afraid to hug Addie or grab a reluc­tant Nate by the hand
to show him some­thing or hug Dodo or cuff a female cus­tomer play­ful­ly on
the face or arm or place an arm around a woman’s shoul­der or pick up a
Negro child who was wail­ing. Those things were almost for­bid­den in this
coun­try, he real­ized. Chona had nev­er been one to play by the rules of
Amer­i­can soci­ety. She did not expe­ri­ence the world as most peo­ple did. To
her, the world was not a chi­na clos­et where you admire this and don’t touch
that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of liv­ing was a chance for
tikkun olam, to improve the world. The tiny woman with the bad foot was
all soul. Big. Moshe was a foot taller, yet she was the big one. He was just a
man who put music shows togeth­er. A pro­mot­er. A man with­out a song of
his own. His chest hurt.
He heard Addie say, “You all right, Mr. Moshe?”
“Fit as a fid­dle,” he said, wip­ing his face. He put aside the bar­rel full of
toys and gifts, and con­tin­ued sort­ing out crates, box­es, dec­o­ra­tive items, and
old tins. After a few moments, he turned to Nate, who was emp­ty­ing some
old papers into a garbage bin, and said, “There’s noth­ing here we need to
keep. But maybe there are some items you’d like.”
Nate nod­ded, silent, dump­ing the papers and grab­bing a broom.
“Have you been to see Dodo?” Moshe asked.
Nate shook his head and began sweep­ing. Addie, work­ing near the far
wall, spoke. “We gonna see him in a week or so,” she said.
“Has it been arranged?”
She glanced at Nate. “We’re work­ing on it.”
“I’ll set it up for you.”
Nate, as if to answer, moved back to a far cor­ner of the base­ment with
his broom, leav­ing Moshe and Addie stand­ing alone.
“Leave it to him at his own time,” she said.
Moshe nod­ded. Nate had not spo­ken much to him in the past few days,
even dur­ing shi­va. It occurred to him that the last thing Nate had spo­ken of
was his sug­ges­tion that Moshe invite a few of the fab­u­lous musi­cians who
had played at the All-Amer­i­can Dance Hall and The­ater to per­form at
Chona’s funer­al. Moshe’s grief at the time was too great to con­sid­er such a
sug­ges­tion. He thought he’d lat­er ask one of the great musi­cians who came
through his hall to write a song for Chona or per­haps he would give a
din­ner in her hon­or and invite a few of her Chick­en Hill cus­tomers, but that
was too much trou­ble, for it meant just about every black per­son on the
Hill. He could not han­dle even the shi­va. It was Feld­man who made the
hasty arrange­ments. The bur­ial and the sev­en days of shi­va were a blur. He
large­ly spent them sleep­ing in his liv­ing room chair as a few souls from the
shul came and chat­ted and ate with Isaac while Nate and Addie man­aged
things. It was over in no time and she was gone. Just like that. And the
absence of her meant a thou­sand tomor­rows emp­ty of what­ev­er promise
they had once held.
After a few more moments of shov­ing crates around and pack­ing box­es,
he sat down and said, “I’ve had enough.” He was wind­ed and felt a
tight­ness in his chest.
“We’ll fin­ish here,” Addie said.
He picked up Chona’s bar­rel and was about to head upstairs with it when
he heard the sound of a car out­side rum­bling up to the store. From the tiny
base­ment win­dow, Moshe saw the pol­ished steel of a black sedan and shiny
white­wall tires. He heard heavy shoes clump­ing into the store, mov­ing
toward the back room and the base­ment stairs. From the top of the stair­well,
he heard the famil­iar voice of his cousin Isaac call­ing out.
“Moshe?”
“What are you doing back here, Isaac?”
“Come look at this.”
Moshe peered up the stair­case. He was in no mood to see any­thing. He
could see Isaac’s famil­iar bowler hat block­ing out the light above. He spied
a face behind Isaac, but he could not make out the fea­tures.
“What is it?” he asked impa­tient­ly in Yid­dish.
He heard a chuck­le. Then from the top of the stairs, an item was flung
down, a tow­el or rag of some kind. It land­ed on his face. He yanked it off,
irri­tat­ed.
It was leather or some kind of mole­skin … a pair of pants. Tiny leather
mole­skin pants. Infant-sized. With a Star of David on the back­side. Then he
heard laugh­ing, and a voice from the top of the dark stairwell—a famil­iar,
gay voice—spoke out, in Yid­dish.
“I did not have time to wrap them,” Malachi said. “So I brought them
myself.”
—
AFTER THEIR FIRST exul­ta­tion and cries of delight, fol­lowed by a short burst
of tears on Moshe’s part, the three of them—Isaac, Moshe, and Malachi—
gath­ered in the back room of the store to sip hot tea in glass­es while Nate
and Addie worked in the base­ment. Moshe could bare­ly believe his old
friend was there, seat­ed before him.
“How did you get here so quick­ly?” he asked.
Malachi seemed non­plussed. “The SS Nor­mandie. Five days. Very fast
boat.”
“How did you hear about my wife?”
Malachi glanced at Isaac, who shrugged. Moshe wiped his eyes. “Dear
cousin,” he said, “that was not nec­es­sary. I do not have the mon­ey to pay
for such a gift.”
“He did not buy my tick­et,” Malachi said. “I bought it myself.”
Moshe sat up straight. “What trade have you that you can float back and
forth across the Atlantic so eas­i­ly? Are you a pick­pock­et?”
“All the pick­pock­ets are here in Amer­i­ca now. Not in Europe.”
“How will you get home?”
“I am home,” Malachi said.
“But you don’t like it here. You said that many times.”
Malachi was silent a moment, then replied: “I like to live. There is
trou­ble back home, friend. Do you not read the Jew­ish papers?”
Moshe felt his chest tight­en again as he said, “My moth­er …” And once
again felt a squeeze in his chest and so much sad­ness that he didn’t know if
the pain was com­ing from his heart or his sag­ging spir­it. He coughed and
swal­lowed, tak­ing a moment to catch his breath. He glanced at Isaac, whose
stern face, so light­ened by the joy­ous reunion he had wit­nessed moments
ago, once again dark­ened with sor­row, for Isaac had no moth­er. Moshe’s
moth­er had raised them both. “She won’t come. She feels the same way
about Amer­i­ca as you. She thinks this land is dirty.”
“I would not dis­agree,” Malachi said.
Isaac was now frown­ing, as the con­ver­sa­tion had tak­en a dark turn. The
three were speak­ing in Yid­dish, but Isaac spoke now in Eng­lish. “I need to
speak to your help,” he said.
“About what?”
“About what hap­pened here.”
“Isaac, let’s not sweep out the cor­ners. It’s done.”
“Of course. I’d like to speak to them any­way.”
“There’ll be trou­ble for me after you leave.”
“There’ll be no trou­ble, cousin. I just want to chat with them. To thank
them. Are they about?”
“They’ll be around lat­er,” Moshe lied, but Isaac knew him too well, for
he sim­ply stood up and made for the base­ment stairs.
Moshe spoke to his back. “There’s noth­ing to be done, Isaac. We are not
in Europe any­more. We are free here.”
But Isaac’s bowler was already head­ing down­stairs.
Nate saw the bril­liant shiny shoes first, then the creased suit pants,
mov­ing with the spright­li­ness and pow­er of a man who was sure of him­self.
He leaned the broom against the wall as the rest of the man, clad in a fine
gray suit, appeared.
Isaac stopped at the bot­tom of the stairs, his shiny shoes on the dirt floor,
one hand on the rail­ing, and he peered at Nate, who came to the stair­case to
meet him. Addie nev­er stopped work. She con­tin­ued to move crates and
box up items as the two men, the pow­er­ful the­ater own­er in the crisp suit
and the tall Negro in the Irish cap, his shirt blanched with sweat, faced each
oth­er.
“I nev­er got a chance to speak to you at the hos­pi­tal,” Isaac said. “You
avoid­ed me at shi­va.”
Nate shrugged.
“Were you here at the store when it hap­pened?”
Nate looked at Addie, then back at Isaac. “No.”
Isaac looked over Nate’s shoul­der at Addie.
“I won­der if who­ev­er was there might speak on what they saw,” Isaac
said. He looked at Nate as he spoke, though they both knew it was Addie he
was address­ing.
“There’s trou­ble in that,” Nate said.
“I’ll look out for who­ev­er might speak on it,” Isaac said.
“If it’s all the same to you, we’ll stay out­ta that ter­ri­to­ry. We doin’ fine
on our own.”
Isaac reached in his pock­et, with­drew a thick roll of mon­ey, and held it
out. He real­ized his mis­take instant­ly, for Nate smiled bit­ter­ly.
“I reck­on it’s hard to live in a world where a man’s word ain’t worth a
pinch of snuff when there’s mon­ey about,” Nate said. “You can keep your
chips, mis­ter. We ain’t telling what we seen. You got my word.”
“This is to thank you,” Isaac said. “For look­ing out for my fam­i­ly.”
“We been thanked.”
“Every­body needs mon­ey.”
“The last time I took mon­ey from a stranger it cost me eleven years. So
if it’s all the same to you, you can keep that.”
“But I am not a stranger.”
“I didn’t say you was. You’re a boss man.”
“No bossier than you.”
Nate smiled grim­ly. “You and I are strangers in this land, mis­ter. Mr.
Moshe told me a lit­tle about your rais­ing, the two of y’all com­ing up as you
did, all the trou­bles you had get­ting to this coun­try. I reck­on that struggle’s
made you strong in some ways and weak in oth­ers. And I fig­ure it’s made
Mr. Moshe strong in ways that you ain’t, and weak in ways that you is not.
It all evens out. Me, I’m just a poor col­ored man who knows the ways of his
own self. But if I could choose it, if God allowed it, I’d choose Mr. Moshe’s
ways over yours and mine, for his ways is the right ways. There ain’t many
peo­ple about these parts like him, or his wife, God bless her soul. They
been good to our Dodo. So you can put your mon­ey up.”
“Not all of it,” Addie said, star­ing at the mon­ey from across the room.
Nate turned to her and wagged his first fin­ger slow­ly back and forth at
her, then turned again to Isaac. “Like I said, we’re all right.”
“I’ll leave it here on the ban­is­ter.”
“That’s where you’ll find it in the morn­ing. And the morn­ing after. Till
you come fetch it,” Nate said.
Isaac bris­tled. “Don’t be a fool.”
“What­ev­er names you call me can’t hurt me. And all your mon­ey can’t
get our boy out from where he is now.”
“It could. Over time. I can make a few calls. I know some peo­ple. I can
get you a lawyer.”
“If it’s all the same to you, we got one or two ideas ’bout how to fetch
him out.”
“Don’t be ridicu­lous. A lawyer will get it done. This is a land of laws.”
“White folks’ laws,” Nate said soft­ly, “The minute you leave the room,
the next white fel­la comes along and the law is how he says it is. And the
next one comes along and the law is how he says it is. So what­ev­er mon­ey
you burns up to get Dodo, come time Doc Roberts and his kind gets ahold
of what­ev­er rulin’s your man fixed up, they’ll put oth­er rulin’s togeth­er and
make sure Dodo goes back in that place again and nev­er gets out. Or worse,
send him to the pen­i­ten­tiary. Then we got to come to you again with our
hand out, and round and round we go. The law in this land is what the white
man says it is, mis­ter. Plain and sim­ple. So you’d be wast­ing your dol­lars on
us. We already in debt to Mr. Moshe. We got to pay him back for what he
and his mis­sus already gived us.”
“And what is that?”
“If you can name anoth­er man in this town who would do what him and
his mis­sus done for us, I’ll find a roll big as the one you hold­ing and give it
to you out­right. You know some­body?”
Isaac frowned. He was unac­cus­tomed to talk­ing to any­one so arro­gant,
espe­cial­ly a Negro. On the oth­er hand, Moshe trust­ed this man more than
any oth­er. He had seen with his own eyes the tall, lanky Negro stand­ing at
the hos­pi­tal win­dow as Moshe and the oth­ers gath­ered, sob­bing around
Chona’s hos­pi­tal bed. He’d watched Nate as he stood with his back to them,
wip­ing the tears from his face. He’s like me, Isaac thought bit­ter­ly. He
suf­fers his sor­rows in pri­vate.
He glanced upstairs, where Moshe and Malachi could be heard chat­ting,
and spoke soft­ly so that his words wouldn’t car­ry up through the wood-
pan­eled floor, for if he could hear their words, they could hear his.
“I’m a patri­ot,” he said. “I love this coun­try. It’s been good to me.”
“Good for you then.”
“Moshe’s an hon­est man. Chona, she was a … she had opin­ions. Writ­ing
let­ters to the papers about things she had no busi­ness talk­ing about. She was
a good per­son. A kind woman. She shouldn’t be dead.”
“We agrees there, too,” Nate said.
“I won­der, then, about Doc Roberts.”
Nate glanced at Addie, who turned away and began sweep­ing.
“What about him?”
“What he might do now.”
“Bet­ter part of noth­ing is my guess. So long as he don’t come round
here, he ain’t a both­er to us. Ain’t but one per­son oth­er than Dodo seen
what he done. And that per­son ain’t told a soul oth­er than Mr. Moshe what
they saw. I don’t know that Doc even knowed he was being seen. There was
oth­ers round who come to the store quick right after the mess was over. I
got there pret­ty quick myself—someone come and fetched me. The cops
was chas­ing Dodo off the roof when I come. Every­body cleared out pret­ty
fast then. Folks pawned it off as the usu­al trou­ble and for­got about it
already. They ain’t got no more Heav­en and Earth Gro­cery Store to shop in
is all. And they lost a friend. But they’ll pray for Miss Chona as they
should. And that’s it.”
“Was she alive when you got there?”
“Yes, she was. She had passed out but was yet liv­ing. She smiled a lit­tle
bit before they took her off. She asked after her hus­band. And Dodo.” Nate
stared at the floor. And though he was sev­er­al feet off, Isaac sensed
some­thing he hadn’t sensed before from the tall, rangy man. Some­thing he
had felt in his own heart. Silent, burn­ing, utter rage.
“Can I ask you, then, about Ber­nice?”
Nate was silent a moment. “What about her?”
“Is she still next door?”
“She been there all her life. Her and them chil­dren.”
“She and Chona were close?”
“Very close. Went to school togeth­er as chil­dren.”
“Will she talk to me?”