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Woe to the late-comer who imperilled the Banner. The black mark on the register was a snowflake compared with the black frown on all those childish foreheads. As for the absentee, the scowls that would meet her return not improbably operated to prolong her absence. Only once had Bloomah's class won the trophy, and that was largely through a yellow fog which hit the other classes worse.
Although Bloomah's knowledge of Yiddish was slight as became a scion of an old English family she could make out their elemental ejaculations. 'You murderers! 'Give me my Rachel! 'They are destroying our daughters as Pharaoh destroyed our sons. 'Give me back my children, and I'll go back to Russia. 'They are worse than the Russians, the poisoners!
Bloomah's heart was in her mouth when Mrs. Beckenstein clucked her tongue in reading it. She felt sure that the epidemic had invaded one of those numerous family hearths. Her mother handed her the card silently. 'DEAR MOTHER, 'I am rakked with neuraljia. Send Bloomah to fry the fish. Bloomah turned white; this was scarcely less tragic. 'Poor Becky! said her heedless parent.
It made her classmates only the angrier that, despite all her unpunctuality, she kept a high position in the class, even if she could never quite attain prize-rank. But there came a week when Bloomah's family remained astonishingly quiet and self-sufficient, and it looked as if the Banner might once again adorn the dry, scholastic room and throw a halo of romance round the blackboard.
Twenty to ten, and the duck's egg of the absent was sorrowfully inscribed by the Recording Angel, who in Bloomah's case was a pale pupil-teacher with eyeglasses. But it was the Banner which loomed largest on the school horizon, intensifying Bloomah's anxiety and her mother's grievance. 'I don't see nothing, Mrs. Beckenstein iterated; 'no prize, no medal nothing but a red mark and a banner.
'O God of Abraham, how shall I live without my Leah? On the other side of the bars the children released for the dinner-interval were clamouring equally, shouting, weeping, trying to get to their mothers. Some howled, with their sleeves rolled up, to exhibit the upper arm. 'See, the women cried, 'the red marks! Oh, the poisoners! A light began to break upon Bloomah's brain.
The care of her elder brother Daniel was also part of Bloomah's burden; and in the evenings she had to keep an eye on his street sports and comrades, for since he had shocked his parents by dumping down a new pair of boots on the table, he could not be trusted without supervision. Not that he had stolen the boots far worse!
This time the break-down was even crueller, for every pinafored pupil, not excluding Bloomah, was in her place, red-marked. Upon this saintly company burst suddenly Bloomah's mother, who, ignoring the teacher, and pointing her finger dramatically at her daughter, cried: 'Bloomah Beckenstein, go home! Bloomah's face became one large red mark, at which all the other girls' eyes were directed.
The Banner was indeed a novelty. It had not unfurled itself in Mrs. Beckenstein's young days, nor even in the young days of Bloomah's married brothers and sisters. Vaguely Mrs.
Yet these sins of omission were virtues of commission elsewhere; for if Bloomah's desk was vacant, it was only because Bloomah was slaving at something that her mother considered more important. 'The Beckenstein family first, the workshop second, and school nowhere, Bloomah might have retorted on her mother. At home she was the girl-of-all-work.
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