The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

A month after Malachi’s sudden disappearance, Moshe is still troubled by his friend’s criticism of America, which strikes the theater manager as ungrateful. He’s drawn from these troubled thoughts by Nate, who asks if he can hide his nephew, Dodo, at the theater for a few days. A man from the state government is threatening to take the boy to a special school in Spring City, and neither Dodo nor his family want him to be institutionalized. The idea of interfering in a government matter terrifies Moshe, but he is grateful for the way Addie cared for Chona throughout her illness. That evening, Moshe explains the situation to his wife, and she’s irate that he thought leaving a child alone in a cold, dark basement with a lit stove was sufficient. She tells him, “Go put that fire out and bring him home” (81).

Every Saturday, Chicken Hill’s “colored maids, housekeepers, saloon cleaners, factory workers, and bellhops” gather at the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store to hear the latest gossip from Patty “Paper” Million (82). Everyone already knows Chona is hiding Dodo so that the state government won’t take him to a sanatorium, and Paper makes no mention of this development. Instead, she regales her audience with an account of how Enzo “Big Soap” Carissimi knocked out the gold tooth of his best friend, Fatty Davis, “a clever, stout, two-fisted, gregarious hustler who owned the Hill’s only jook joint” (85).

Paper notices an unfamiliar Black man among her audience and warns Addie. The women suspect the man was sent by the state after Chona repeatedly told the white government official that Dodo had left Chicken Hill. Addie decides not to tell Chona about the newcomer because she doesn’t want her to get into more trouble with the white residents of Pottstown, who are “as fond of her round here as they are of peanut shells” (92). Paper volunteers to find out whose loose lips informed the state government that Dodo is still in the neighborhood.

Bernice Davis lives next door to the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. She and Chona used to be best friends, but they haven’t spoken in years. Bernice’s father, Shad, and Chona’s father, Yakov, also were close. Yakov was a Bulgarian immigrant and one of the first Jewish people to arrive in Pottstown. By working many different jobs, he saved enough money to build a grocery store and a shul. After 17 Jewish families moved to Pottstown, the town fathers prevented the settlement of more Jewish people through a combination of “intimidation, clever laws, and outright thievery” (97). These 17 families did not get along with one another, largely due to judgments regarding one another’s home countries. Yakov hired Shad to build the grocery store and the apartment above it. The other Jewish families initially objected to letting Shad build the shul, but they later allowed Yakov to hire him after their chosen architect skipped town with the majority of their building fund and the half-finished structure collapsed.

Shad died soon after the shul’s construction was completed, and his life savings were stolen by an unscrupulous financial advisor. Chona’s mother ensured that Shad’s widow had enough food for her family. Chona and Bernice became fast friends after they started first grade together. Their friendship lasted until one of their high school teachers unfairly singled Bernice out for using a sewing method Chona taught her. After that, Bernice left school and shut Chona out of her life.

Dodo has been staying with Chona and Moshe for four months now, and she sees him as the child she’s spent years praying for. Dodo is quiet and morose when he first moves in with the Ludlows, but his bright, lively personality soon emerges. The boy is fond of chocolate, and he and Chona play a game in which he trades marbles for sweets. The state government knows that Dodo is staying with Chona, and she fears what will happen. She explains the situation to Bernice, who tells Chona to put Dodo in her yard when the man from the government comes because Bernice has eight children and the man won’t be able to tell them apart. Bernice closes the door before Chona can thank her.

Earl “Doc” Roberts survived polio when he was a child and developed a limp as a result. When he was in high school, he started purchasing custom shoes made by Norman Skrupskelis, a Jewish Lithuanian man. Although the shoes relieved Roberts’s pain, he resented the shoemaker, whom he believed should show him deference. Chona was a year behind Roberts in school, and he recognized Skrupskelis’s handiwork in her footwear. During his senior year of high school, Roberts developed a crush on her and invited her to join the debate club. She turned down his offer, and his bruised ego caused his antisemitism to intensify. Roberts studied medicine at Penn State and was alarmed to find that his beloved Pottstown had become “a town of immigrants” (123) when he returned. He married a respectable farm girl and had four children with her, but he fell out of love with her only a few years into his marriage. He joined the Ku Klux Klan and claims that his motive is “to spread good Christian values” (124).

Roberts learns that Chona is sheltering Dodo from his cousin, Carl Boydkins, who works for the state government. Carl also tells Roberts that the state will pay him to examine the boy because they need a doctor to sign off on his transfer to the dreadful Pennhurst State School and Hospital. Remembering Chona’s beauty, Roberts agrees to investigate and tells Carl not to involve the police yet.

Dodo lives in the basement beneath the grocery store and often comes up to work in the store or play with Bernice’s children. One day, while Dodo is standing in the trapdoor to the basement hidden behind the butcher’s counter, he sees Doc Roberts enter the store. Chona and Roberts’s conversation soon turns into a blistering argument. By reading their lips, Dodo catches fragments of the dispute, such as Chona’s emphatic statement, “I’m American, too” (134).

Chona has a seizure. Dodo sees her fall, terrified that “he would never see her the same again, if ever” (136). After Chona faints, Roberts assaults her. Dodo launches himself over the counter, hurls the doctor into a shelf, and strikes him in the face. Addie enters the grocery store and helps Chona, who is having a second seizure. Doc exits the store and returns with three police officers. Dodo climbs onto the roof, and one of the officers grabs at the boy just as he jumps off. He falls and lands with a terrible crash.