And No Birds Sing

Pauline Leader, Mara Mills, Rebecca Sanchez

• Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781563686696
• Print ISBN:
  9781563686689
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies

Originally published in 1931, this memoir offers an unflinching look at the life of a deaf woman struggling with poverty and isolation in the bohemian enclave of Greenwich Village. In harrowing yet lyrical prose, Pauline Leader recounts her experience growing up as the daughter of Jewish immigrants in a small New England mill town. Born in 1908, Leader was exposed to frequent verbal and physical abuse. She became deaf at the age of 12, following a long illness. As a teenager, she ran away to New York City, where she found work in factories and sweatshops, and spent time in a home for "wayward girls." As she sought community among the artists and eccentrics of the Village, Leader's strong will and fierce independence were often thwarted by hardship and self-doubt. But through it all, she found solace in her writing.

This edition is accompanied by a new introduction and afterword that provide a scholarly framework for understanding Leader and her times. She persevered and became a published poet and novelist, often drawing on the experiences offered up here. Compelling and evocative, And No Birds Sing deftly reveals a complex, intelligent spirit toiling in a brutal world.

From the book:

I insisted to myself that I could still hear. I heard in my mind the sounds of streams as I passed them. I knew the sound the river made, that river that I had known always, the river by the marble house. In my mind the river washed with a low intimate sound. I had no need to hear as the people heard. True intimacy needs no ears. I knew the sound of birds; I heard them as they hopped about. I knew the sound of words also. It was words that I most intensely heard. I had not always the river and the birds—they appeared far away at times. I did not always want river and birds, but I always wanted words, and I always had them. I would have been terribly lonely without them. With them always in my mind, I could not be truly lonely. I played with them; I set them to music; I achieved endless variations with them. They were never weary, as other things could sometimes be weary.

PART ONE

THE MARKET-PLACE

This is i, very small i, walking home from the market at night, walking through the dark, apparently limitless streets, leaving the stores behind, coming to the houses, leaving the houses behind if I walked far enough. Once I had done this, but the policeman and a posse had brought me back. They called me a bad girl.

To the market, home from the market, these were phrases I heard early. Home from the market—I saw my mother wheeling the baby carriage, myself walking on one side of the carriage, a sister on the other side. My father walked a little in back of us with my brother. In the carriage would be some other brother or sister.

I was very conscious of the streets and of the houses. There was one house in particular that we must pass on the way to the market, and pass again on the way home from the market. It was set far back from the street, in its own grounds. It was white—marble, I thought, for I liked the word marble—and it had pillars. I thought of it often.

The river ran by it. After a few years, when my chin could reach the bridge railing, I’d lean against it and watch the river. The stones in it made it like no other river, for no other river had such a strangely assorted bed of stones. Now and then I would turn my head and look at the marble house. If it was night, the river and the house looked silvery. But then, if it was real night, I hurried past, afraid of the silver and of something else.

Past the river, past the marble house, to the corner, around the corner, then a little way down, and home.

The railroad station was near home. I loved to watch the trains come and go, thinking up one-sentence stories about the people who got off, and wondering where those who got on were going. No nice little girl hangs around railroad stations, the people said. All the bums of the town congregated there, all the men who didn’t work or were out of work, and all the men who had only one eye or one arm or one leg. I watched them by the hour, every time I could steal away. These strange creatures fascinated me as much as the trains. They came down, day after day, to watch the trains and talk. Like me, they seemed to have nothing better to do. Respectable people do not stand about all day and watch the trains, the people said. I pitied the respectable people. It was too bad that they did not take a day off now and then and come down and watch the trains. It was such fun! The arrival of a train, still far off, unseen except for puff-puff-puff of smoke, was such fun that it turned me giddy. It was too much fun. Thinking of it, still far off, but coming nearer and nearer, was even better than the actual awful sight of it coming down the tracks. Another attraction at the railroad station was the sound of the telegraph key. I stood hours listening to it. It was not so impressive as the sight of a train, but when at last I went home—perhaps my mother had sent someone to look for me, or come herself—it was the sound of the telegraph key that I took home with me, and not the picture of the train. The picture of the train was too big to take home. I was content to come to the station for it.

It was a train that nearly killed me. My mother and the baby carriage and I were on one side of the tracks waiting for the train to go by so that we might get to the other side. But the train kept making false starts. Calculating that the next one would be another false start, I ran across. I felt that I could not wait any longer. I must run across. But the next one was not a false start and the wheels barely failed to go over me. When my mother and the baby carriage finally joined me, my mother held threats over my head all the way home. The most terrifying of these threats was that I would be ‘sent away’ if I didn’t behave. ‘Sent away’ meant, darkly, the reformatory. There was a boy in town who had been to the reformatory. Everybody knew it and everybody had invisible accusing fingers pointed at him as though he were a leper.

Sent away. … Why didn’t I ‘behave’? I did not know why I did these things, why I was different from other girls who walked in safe, proper ways, and were never threatened with being ‘sent away.’ Sent away … it could set my soul quivering. They were always saying it, so that I lived in a constant state of fear. I hated my father and mother for making me feel like this, for plunging me into this abyss of fear and uncertainty whenever they said the words. What had I done that I could not have helped doing? The policeman—the policeman was always shaking a finger at me.

Across from home was a second-hand store, the windows of which I would often explore. There was a grocery store which had everything that grocery stores have, and other things which the more up-to-date grocery stores on Main Street did not have. It was a general country store, one of the last of its kind in a village rapidly becoming a town. But best of all, there was the ice-cream store on the corner. Whenever I found any money in my mother’s pocketbook, or in the jars, I took it and bought ice-cream. One time I found so much money that I gave a party. All the girls in the neighborhood were invited. There was some ice-cream left over and this I took to my father and mother.

“Where did you get the money?” they asked.

“I found it in the jar.”

“Thief!”

“I found it!”

“Thief!”

I saw that they did not understand. They were not perfectly natural themselves so they could not understand perfect naturalness in others. They called me a thief when I had only been natural in obeying my impulse to get money for ice-cream, the more money the more ice-cream.

What did the people mean by ‘thief’? What had I done that was wrong? The people were the strange ones, the crazy ones, with their cries of ‘thief! thief!’

“There was some ice-cream left over. Here.” Patiently I explained.

“Thief, you come with me,” my mother said. My mother was the one who was always ready for action, I’d noticed. My father was lazy. He never did anything until my mother stung him with her words.

It wasn’t being called ‘thief’ that hurt. Such a word meant nothing. It was their inability to understand. Their refusal or inability to understand meant that I was to be dragged through the streets to the ice-cream store and humiliated before the lady who sold the ice-cream. The lady would ever after have that knowledge of me in her eyes. I would have to go elsewhere for my ice-cream. I could not bear to face her, look into her eyes, after that.

In the store I hung my head in shame. I was ashamed, ashamed, for my mother’s sake as much as for my own, to be thus exposed before everybody’s eyes. My mother wanted the money back. I was a thief, she shouted to the lady; I had stolen the money to buy the ice-cream.

Thief! Thief! Thief!

What was the lady thinking? Laughing at my mother. Dirty foreigners! Wops! Kikes! Yids! Polaks! Don’t know how to act civilized. See the way she looks in that dress! And shouting! Did you ever hear such shouting? Don’t know enough to give her brats handkerchiefs when she sends them to school. The teacher has to give them pieces of paper. Stop picking your nose. You dirty Yid! You dirty Kike!

Ice-cream. I was sick of the whole thing. I wanted to vomit.

“Ma. …”

But my mother was oblivious. “I want my money back,” she shouted.

I ran out and left my mother to it alone. I felt dimly that she was enjoying herself. She was a fighter. But all she could see was the lady from whom she meant to get her money back, while I could see inside the lady’s head and inside the heads of the spectators, and I could not stand any more.

On Sunday I was an outcast. I did not belong with them, the American little girls, all dressed up in their hats and gloves.

“You have to wear a hat in church.” I had heard this told importantly by a school friend. I never forgot it. Hats came to symbolize the difference between myself and the American little girls. I never wore them, and they did. And never more so than on Sundays did they wear their hats. So that on Sunday, more than on any other day, I sensed the difference between myself and the people. It was more than a racial difference, although it was that too. Sunday was—Sunday, the Lord’s Day, as the little girl who had explained to me—the heathen—about the hats importantly continued. Sunday was a day of rest for them, a day of going to church, a day of wearing hats and gloves. Is there anything more beautiful than a small town on Sunday morning in the spring or summer time, everybody dressed up, everybody going to church? I could feel the beauty of it, and I wanted to be part of the picture. But Sunday for me was like any other day, except that the market was closed. There was no rest, no going to church. My mother on her one day off from the market spent the day cleaning the house.

I was an inferior being. At school I might have the highest marks, the teachers might praise me, but how much did that count after all? All the time I was an inferior being. The little girl who had told me about the hats and the Lord’s Day had a subnormal intelligence, but nevertheless she was superior to me.

I ached to dress up too. I wanted to mingle with the people. I did not want to stand out. I wanted a clean dress, perhaps silk with ruffles, a hat and thin gloves, and I wanted my mother to have a silk dress, a hat and thin gloves, so that I might go out and walk with her. I would not fear comparison.

Instead, my dress was dirty. I would get a clean dress for tomorrow’s school, but today was Sunday when my dress was dirtiest of all. I was ashamed to go out on the street in it.

“Ma, can I have a clean dress?”

“What for?”

I could not reply to this, because I didn’t quite know myself. Or if I knew, I could not explain it to her. She would not understand. I knew the hopelessness of trying to make her understand. I felt defeated even before I began.

I went back and sat on the stoop and watched the people go by. Everybody looked different. It was as if, miraculously, out of the week-day people, a new people had been created. Tomorrow, the sullen lines, the impatience, would come back, but today, miraculously, there was only beautiful peace in their faces. Sunday peace.

It was Sunday and there was peace everywhere except in my mind. I hated Sunday because Sunday was beyond my attainment. I wanted the people, the child-people in this case, to nod to me as though I were an equal. They might pretend that I was an equal on weekdays, but today they went past me without seeing me. Even the Wops were above me today, although on weekdays we were united in a common cause. But even for the Wops, Sunday was the day. They went to the Catholic Church. They wore hats and gloves. The Wop mother might be unable to speak English well, less well than my mother, but what did that matter today? I could see the steeple of the synagogue and I hated it. What did it mean? It meant nothing. Did the Jews close their stores on Saturday as the Americans closed theirs on Sunday? Yet Saturday was the holy day of the Jews, but Saturday was also too important a day for making money to close the store. And not content with that, they kept their stores surreptitiously open on Sundays, many of them. This offended me. I hated Jews.

I wanted something. I wanted a symbol, too. I wanted a clean, sweet Sunday dress, a hat and thin gloves and white stockings and shoes. But it was more than that. I did not want to be an alien in all this Sunday beauty. I was terribly lonesome on Sunday. I was not a Jew—I knew I was not a Jew—and yet I was not a goy either. They would not accept me as one of them. I hated and envied the little American girls. To go about with such a right to Sunday, their day. I had no right to even show my face on this day.

I wanted to be like them. I did not want to be different. At night, when everyone was asleep, I clasped my hands together and said the Lord’s Prayer. I had come upon it in the Wop’s catechism book, and learned it, liking the rhythm of it, without bothering very much about the meaning of the words. I said the words in emulation of some hundred other little girls because I did not want to be different. Besides, there might be some magic in it. What did it mean? What did it awaken? After saying the prayer, I always waited a little to see if anything would happen. At the very least, I should be struck dead, but not even that happened although my father always said that something terrible would happen to me if I ever had anything to do with the ‘goyim’ and ‘their ways.’ My father, I knew, considered himself one of ‘the chosen people’, and this knowledge of his superiority helped him in his retaliations. But I was a realist. We might be the ‘chosen people’ way off somewhere ‘in Jerusalem’, but this was America, the place where I lived, and where I suffered savagely whenever I was called dirty Jew.

The Ledger. The cover was greasy and so were the pages. The hand that held the pencil and turned the pages had not long before grasped a lard paddle, a forequarter of beef, a leg of pork. My mother, resting her side on the counter as her pencil made entries in the Ledger.

The Ledger—the word was capitalized on the cover, and it was always capitalized in my mind—contained the names of three-quarters of the town’s inhabitants. Bleak American names, New England names frosty as a winter morning, written out in Yiddish, becoming strange, un-New Englandish things, smacking somehow of witches’ numerals. Or in place of names, there were nick-names, peculiarly apt, coined by my mother. In the market they would be henceforth known by their nicknames. My mother would use that nickname in speaking of the person to my father.

When I was eight, we moved from the house by the railroad station to two rooms over the market. There was a room back of the market where we lived and played. The two rooms upstairs were used only for sleeping.

Living so close to the market, in and out of it twenty times a day, I could not help but hear many strange things.

There was Anna, a heavy phlegmatic Polish girl with a red, coarse pored face. When my mother and father prospered and bought the first of what was to be known later as ‘the houses’, Anna took a room in the house.

Everybody considered Anna a good girl. (Who would look at that heavy body, that coarse bloated face?) It was a surprise, then, when one night she almost had a baby in the bathroom, but was taken to the hospital in time.

It was market talk for days.

“I always thought she was a good girl, didn’t you, Mis’ Lasher?” my mother said. “And I never even guessed! Did you?” My mother fairly smacked her lips.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You go way,” my mother said to me. “This talk isn’t for little girls.” But I hid behind the refrigerator and continued to listen.

When Anna left the hospital and came to the market, my mother said to her, leaning back against the cash register, her arms folded:

“Anna, I can’t keep you up at the house now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Anna.

“Who did it, Anna?” My mother was without mercy.

“Oh, nobody you know. He’s a soldier.”

“Well, Anna. …” My mother, cheated, was getting angry. “You see how it is … you’ll have to go.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m sorry, but you know how it is, Anna. The house would get a bad name. …”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma, I wrote a story.”

“What kind of a story?”

“A love story.”

“And you only nine!”

“Can I read it to you, Ma? I passed it around in school and the girls liked it.”

“All right, but hurry up before a customer comes in.”

My mother leaned back against the cash register, her arms folded on her misshapen belly—belly that had borne six children—and listened while I read the love story I had written. When I could not think of anything else to do with my hero and heroine, I would rush them into hectic embraces. My mother, leaning back against the cash register, arms folded on her misshapen belly, belly shaking with laughter as I read my love story, one eye on the story, one eye anxiously on my mother, watching her reactions, and still another eye got from somewhere watching the door for any possible customers, praying that none would come until I finished my story.

Miss Bottome ran a boarding house and traded at our store. One summer school vacation when I was ten, I worked at the boarding house waiting on table. I met Julie who worked in the kitchen. Nobody knew Julie’s age. Miss Bottome paid her six dollars a week, five of which Julie paid out for the support of her daughter. The daughter was raped as soon as she grew old enough, and everybody said what a shame after Julie had spent so much money on her. How many years had Julie been in Miss Bottome’s kitchen? How many years, Julie? Oh, I’ve lost count. How many years of getting up before dawn and going to bed after midnight? How many years of putting on the oatmeal the night before? How many years in that little back room with no windows that Miss Bottome allowed you? Oh, I lost count.

Miss Bottome tripping into the market of an evening. (“Damned Jews, I know they make a pretty penny out of me.”)

“How would you like to work for me this summer? You’re a big strong girl.”

“Can I, Ma?”

“Sure, you’re ten now. A big girl old enough to make some money instead of doing nothing but read all the time.”

Four dollars a week all my own.

So I went to work for Miss Bottome. It was more out of curiosity than out of any desire to make money. I was curious to see how other people lived. I did not think th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Underdog Bohemia A Biography of Pauline Leader
• Part One: The Market-Place
• Part Two: The Gnome
• Part Three: Stand Up! Stand Up!
• Part Four: Poetry
• Part Five: The Human Being
• Part Six: The Cafeteria
• Part Seven: “Home for Girls”
• Afterword Pauline Leader’s Disability Modernism
• Appendix