The grocery store, owned by the small Jewish community’s rabbi, is largely run by his disabled daughter Chona. When recent arrival Moshe meets her, he falls in love and they marry. Her father dies, leaving Chona the store. Despite not making money, it serves as a community hub.
Pottstown has a Negro/ Jewish area called Chicken Hill. The store serves its residents, and Chona, a kind soul, lets its denizens shop on credit, hires a couple Black women to help run the store, and writes a pointed letter to the local paper about Doc Roberts, the town doctor, readily identifiable in a KKK march photo by his shoes. She doesn’t care whose sensibilities she offends with her call-out.
Her husband runs a theater which hosts many prominent jazz musicians, drawing audience from all over. Moshe’s right-hand man, Nate, is married to Chona’s employee Addie – the Black couple are fostering (after the death of his mother) a 12-year-old injured by the explosion of a faulty stove. The boy is called Dodo, but he’s no dummy. He quit school because he couldn’t hear, so the state keeps sending enforcers to place him in Pennhurst, a medieval fortress of an institution for the crippled, retarded, and insane. Chona helps hide him – Pennhurst has a deserved and dreadful reputation – and you’ll have to read the rest yourself.
A stove blew up in his mother’s kitchen when he was nine. Killed his eyes and ears. His eyes came back. His ears did not. But he could read lips. Nate held the lamp next to his face so Dodo could see them. “What you doing?” The boy’s eyes danced away, then he said, “Making a garden.” For what?” “To grow sunflowers.” “CJ and them said you was on a train this morning.” Dodo looked away. It was his way of ignoring conversation.
McBride visits the minds of these characters, and we spend time with individuals from Pottstown’s different communities, understanding their behavior, language differences, and gossip. He has an ear for it!
