Chapters IX and X Summary

She arrives at Bessie's to find Bessie and Zalmon haggling with customers. She slips into their sleeping quarters to find children asleep all over the floor. They live in squalor and Sara eventually falls asleep in a chair. Zalmon insists that she return to her father. Bessie says that Mashah has more room and that Sara might be better off there. Bessie hates her situation and says she cannot do anything to satisfy the children. She says she would leave except that she cannot bring herself to leave Benny, Zalmon's youngest son. Sara and Bessie sleep on the kitchen floor and are awakened the following morning by the four boys fighting over a place at the sink for their morning wash. Zalmon again insists that Sara return home but Sara refuses. Instead she goes to Mashah's.

Sara...