The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

The narrative moves 47 years into the past. Twenty-one-year-old Moshe Ludlow manages Pottstown’s All-American Dance Hall and Theater and lives in Chicken Hill, “a tiny area of ramshackle houses and dirt roads where the town’s blacks, Jews, and immigrant whites who couldn’t afford any better lived” (8). Hundreds of Jewish people brave snowstorms to see Mickey Katz, a brilliant clarinet player, perform at Moshe’s theater. The diverse crowd includes Reformed Jews, Hasidic Jews, coal miners, well-dressed urbanites, and people speaking German, Polish, and Yiddish. A handsome Hasidic man declares that he won’t dance with women, but he is so moved by the music that he dances with several partners all night, “a wonder of twisted elbows, a rhythmic gyroscope of elastic grace and wild dexterity” (10). After Katz’s performance, Moshe and the young Hasidic man witness an explosion in one of Chicken Hill’s houses. The man comments that this is a bad sign and hurries off before Moshe can learn his name.

The narrative moves back five weeks before Katz’s performance. Moshe fears the event will be a financial disaster due to advertising problems. Rabbi Yakov Flohr, who owns the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, invites the theater manager to seek consolation in the books of scripture he keeps in the store’s back room. Rabbi Flohr’s youngest daughter, Chona, is a polio survivor with a limp and works in the back room. She teaches Moshe about Moses, and he falls in love with the 17-year-old’s spirited sense of humor, warmth, and beauty. He proposes to Chona, and she agrees to marry him. Her parents happily approve of the match because they feared that no one would want to marry their daughter due to her disability.

Chona is a Pottstown native born and bred, and she is friends with many of her Black neighbors. With her encouragement, Moshe decides to open his theater to Black patrons even though he knows this will anger white people. Four weeks later, an apprehensive Black audience gathers to see Chick Webb perform. The joyous music transforms the crowd, who dance “as if they were birds enjoying flight for the first time” (20). Moshe begins having dreams about Moses and the number 12. He keeps his visions a secret from his wife, believing that they are a superstitious remnant of his Romanian background. Inspired by these visions, he invests in 12 stocks and brings 12 Black bands to perform at the theater, and these financial moves cause his fortunes to grow. Jealousy, racism, and antisemitism motivate backlash against Moshe, but he and his wealthy cousin, Isaac, pay off their detractors.

As the years pass and Moshe’s wealth continues to increase, he buys the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store with the intention of selling it and joining the growing numbers of Jewish people moving out of Chicken Hill. However, Chona refuses to move from their apartment over the grocery store. In the ensuing conversation, he refers to Chick Webb as “a cripple” (28), and his wife asks if that is how he sees her. She refuses to speak to him for several days, but he makes amends by giving her a book of Jewish law.

In 1936, 12 years into their marriage, Chona develops a persistent cough, stomach pain, and fainting spells. She refuses to see the local physician, Doc Roberts, because he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. None of the doctors they consult are able to identify her condition, and she becomes bedridden. The Black community cherishes Chona because her childhood best friend was a Black girl and because of the generous credit she extends to the grocery store’s customers, and they rally to share their company, food, and stories with Chona to keep her spirits up. When her condition continues to deteriorate, Isaac suggests that Moshe place her in a Jewish home for the sick in Philadelphia. Isaac has been Moshe’s protector since they were boys making the dangerous journey across the Carpathian Mountains in the hope of a better life together. Moshe angrily rejects the idea, insisting that his wife will live.

Addie Timblin, an elderly Black woman who works at the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, waits anxiously for her husband, Nate, to return from his job at Moshe’s theater. The Pottstown Association of Negro Men are meeting at her house. The group’s official purpose is to discuss ways to increase opportunities and utilities for Chicken Hill’s Black community, such as running water to replace “the outhouses, cesspools, and wells that dotted the neighborhood like blisters” (36). In actuality, the members mostly play cards and gossip. The men’s conversation turns to Chona, and Addie confronts Reverend “Snooks” Spriggs for claiming to have sympathy for the dying woman while harboring antisemitic ideas.

When Nate returns home, Addie informs him that their nephew, Dodo, was spotted hanging onto the side of a train headed for Philadelphia. However, when Nate prepares to go after the boy, he finds the 12-year-old playing with rocks in the creek behind his house. Dodo is deaf because his mother’s stove exploded when he was nine. The boy produces a piece of paper, which says that he has to leave because his mother is dead. Nate tells him not to worry.

Before dawn one morning, the grocery store is visited by “a small, stout Jewish man, in his thirties, with sparkling eyes, a thin mustache, and wide corners at his mouth, giving him an impish look” (51). The stranger has recently bought a bakery and needs kosher flour to make challah. Moshe tries to shut the door on him, but the man proves too strong for the weary and careworn theater manager. The man informs the bewildered Moshe that he has found a wife, and Moshe at last recognizes him as the Hasidic man who danced so wonderfully to Mickey Katz’s music. The stranger introduces himself as Malachi. Feeling like a young man again, Moshe recalls the explosion that they witnessed together. Malachi answers, “That was a bad time [...]. Those times have ended” (58).