WEBVTT

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My mother's family was
made up of loving women.

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They were on the whole bearers.

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Though, Esther, the rich
sister, had only one,

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she was the exception.

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Sarah, the oldest, had five
with her first husband, that

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was still in Poland, was
widowed and came here

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where she married a man
with four of his own.

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And together they
had another five.

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All of whom she raised
feeding them in relays,

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except little Tilly,
who sat in the kitchen

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and ate with everyone
leaning all the time.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Resulting in a fact figure
that made her despair

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of ever finding a husband.

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But miraculously, she did.

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For God has decreed, there
is someone for everyone,

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if you're desperate enough.

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[LAUGHTER]

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If you're desperate enough and
will take what you can get.

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And Rachel had 12
raising them in a stable.

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She was married to
a junk dealer who

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kept horses to hold the wagons.

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He was famous for
his stinginess,

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so they lived in a shack
surrounded by bales of hay.

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That was in America in a
slum called Bronzeville

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that the Black people have
now inherited from the Jews,

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God help them.

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Then is now plenty of
kids turned out bad,

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going to work for that
Jewish firm, Murder Inc.,

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or becoming junkies, like
one of my cousins did.

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My mother only at six,
but that's not counting.

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I'll say no more than
she was always pregnant

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with a fatalistic,
what can you do?

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"Plenty," her friend, Blanche,
replied, she was liberated.

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You don't have to
breed like a rabbit.

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Like, her mother who had a baby
a year in Poland, until grandpa

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left for America
giving her a rest.

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They were women who
kept bearing, even then,

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mysteriously, as some habit.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Women were always tired in
those days and no wonder with

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the broken down bodies they
had and their guts collapsed. ,

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But with every child,
they got a dragging down.

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My mother finally had hers
tied back up in the hospital.

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And at the same
time, they tied those

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over fertile tubes, which freed
her from God's terrible curse

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on women.

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And not just the
bearing, but the work,

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the pots couldn't be big
enough for those hungry broods.

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Sarah used hospital
pots for hers.

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And then the problem
of filling the pots,

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getting up at dawn to go to
the fishing boats for huge fish

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carcasses cheap, buying bushels
of half spoiled vegetables

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for pennies, begging
the butcher for bones,

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and then lugging it all
home on their bad legs.

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They didn't think of
their looks for a minute.

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And better, they didn't,
shapeless as that life

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made them.

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And yet, they remained
attractive to their men

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by the evidence of their
repeated pregnancies.

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They just went around wrecks.

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Always depressed,
unable to cope,

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or hiding in bed while
the children screamed.

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Escape, escape,
there must be escape,

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was my mother's theme song.

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Until at last, her
children escaped

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from her and her
misery, having wrecked

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her life that endless
sacrifice, for what?

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I see the proletarian women
like them on the streets.

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Cows with others to the
waist, lugging black oil cloth

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shopping bags.

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The mamalus, the Mama
Sita's, the mammies,

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the breeders of the
world with loving eyes.

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They sit around
the kitchen table

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with full hearts telling
each other their troubles.

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Never enough money.

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The beasts, their
men, were to them.

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How Leo hit Esther in
the face on the street,

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the sorrow life was
for a woman, a mother

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the children
turning out no good.

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And fed each other
pieces of leftover meat

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from the icebox to make up
a little for life's pain.

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And sighing drank tea, and
ate good bread and butter.

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