The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“The Hasid was a wonder of twisted elbows, a rhythmic gyroscope of elastic grace and wild dexterity. He danced with any woman who came close, and there were plenty. Moshe later decided the guy must be some kind of wizard.”

This marks the chronologically first appearance of Malachi. Although his name is not given in this chapter, the praise for Malachi’s dancing skills gives clues about the Hasidic man’s identity. Moshe likens Malachi to “some kind of wizard,” and similar comparisons are made throughout the novel. Both Malachi and Miggy Fludd, who appears in Part 3, are presented as having mystical, divinely granted powers, such as the ability to predict the future and comfort the afflicted. These potential powers add another layer of mystery and meaning to the historical fiction novel.

“‘But the Jews are leaving Chicken Hill.’ ‘Ten blocks from here is leaving?’ ‘You know what I mean. Let’s go where they are. They’re our people.’ ‘Moshe, I like it here. I grew up in this house. The postman knows where I live.’ Exasperated, Moshe pointed out the kitchen window toward Pottstown below. ‘Down the hill is America!’ But Chona was adamant. ‘America is here.’”

Chona and Moshe’s argument about whether to stay in Chicken Hill develops the theme of Building Community Across Cultures. Chona understands the grocery store’s vital importance to the community. It feeds people who might otherwise be food-insecure and offers a place for people from different backgrounds to connect. Chona’s emphatic statement that “America is here” develops her character by showing her wisdom and commitment to inclusion.

“The tall man leaned down and tapped the boy’s chest gently. ‘God opened up your heart when He closed your ears, boy. You got a whole country in there. Don’t fret about no paper. That paper don’t mean nothing.’”

Nate’s reassuring words to Dodo show his love for and understanding of his nephew. As the novel continues, protecting Dodo becomes Nate’s primary motivation and forces him to face his past. This scene also offers foreshadowing because the paper is the first sign that the state is trying to take Dodo away from his family and institutionalize him.

“‘We heard something pop on the Hill. We saw black smoke. You said it was a bad sign.’ ‘That was a bad time,’ Malachi said, stepping into the store and reaching out a hand to help Moshe to his feet. ‘Those times have ended.’”

Malachi returns to Chicken Hill immediately before Chona’s health improves. His fortuitous timing and his assurance that the bad “times have ended” is another indicator that Malachi may possess some sort of mystical power. Additionally, Moshe references the explosion that caused Dodo’s hearing loss, another indication of how closely the characters’ lives are intertwined although they come from different cultural backgrounds.

“He gave his new friend a mezuzah pendant—a mezuzah normally adorns the doorway of a Jewish home. But this pendant could be worn around the neck, and it bore a special inscription on the back that read ‘Home of the Greatest Dancer in the World.’ That way, Moshe explained, Malachi would feel at home and welcome everywhere he went. But Malachi, normally amused by kind gestures and small gifts, returned the mezuzah and politely begged Moshe to give it to Chona, which he did, to her delight.”

Chronologically, this is the first appearance of the mezuzah that ends up in the well. McBride adds to the intrigue by explaining the pendant’s origins, but it’s still a mystery how it ends up in a well with a dead man. Malachi’s insistence that Moshe give the mezuzah to Chona may indicate a sort of magical prescience on his part because the mezuzah is an important factor in Doc Roberts’s demise.

“‘It’s trouble, Chona. The government wants him.’ ‘For what?’ ‘To put him in a special place.’ ‘What kind of place?’ ‘A place for children like him.’ He could see, and almost feel, the back of her neck redden. She was silent a moment, then said, ‘Children like him.’ She said it in Yiddish, which meant she was mad.”

The disturbing ableism behind the government’s actions angers Chona, not only because of her deep convictions in mercy and justice but because she also has a disability. Her righteous anger foreshadows her decision to take Dodo in, a decision that has major effects on the rest of the plot.

“Isn’t that what Judaism should do, bring light and reflection between cultures? All that high-handed talk of Judaism had seemed increasingly useless and distant as she grew older until it folded neatly into the sunshine reality that had arrived in the form of Dodo. The boy brought his own kind of light.”

Chona sees Building Community Across Cultures as intrinsically important to her Jewish identity. She puts theory into practice when she shelters Dodo. However, what began as an act of mercy and justice evolves into something more, and she comes to see Dodo as her child. Although Chona and Dodo’s time together lasts only a few months, it’s monumentally important to the characters, plot, and the story's overall meaning.

“Where was America in all this? Pottstown was for Americans. God had predestined it. The Constitution guaranteed it. The Bible had said it. Jesus! Where was Jesus in all this? Doc felt his world was falling apart.”

This passage gives insight into the antagonist’s narrow-minded mindset. Doc Roberts is a white Presbyterian man who despises immigrants and believes America is only for people who think, look, and worship like him. Roberts is not alone in his attempts to use religion to justify bigotry. The absurdity of his claim that the Christian Bible mentions America, let alone Pottstown, Pennsylvania, points to his towering but hollow hubris.

“He instinctively struck back twice, hard in the face, and Doc’s mouth ceased moving for a moment and blood burst from his lips, and at that moment, the boy realized he was in deep trouble.”

In a major turning point, Dodo comes out of hiding to protect Chona from Doc Roberts. The boy is so focused on doing what is right that it’s only after he strikes a white man that he realizes the “deep trouble” and danger he now faces. As a result of Dodo’s courageous deed, the boy is taken to Pennhurst, which drives the plot for the rest of the story.

“But now, as the idea that Reverend Spriggs may have revealed Dodo to the state, given away the one good secret that Nate had for the price of a coffee cake or a down payment on a car or some small amount of acknowledgment from white folks, it was as if a caterpillar had cracked loose from its cocoon and an evil butterfly was emerging.”

This passage develops the theme of recovering from the past by hinting at Nate’s dark secrets and violent history. In addition, the image of “an evil butterfly [...] emerging” suspensefully foreshadows that Nate will once again turn to violence to rescue his nephew.

“She felt rent in two by guilt, for not once in all their years together had he muttered a word of grievance or protest about her store, which never made a dime, and her unwillingness to move off the Hill or that she’d been unable to give him a son or daughter. He was a true Jew, a man of ideas and wit who understood the meaning of celebration and music and that the blend of those things meant life itself.”

Chona awakens from her weeklong coma and looks at her exhausted husband with love, guilt, and new understanding. In her final moments, she possesses great wisdom about her loved ones, her community, and life as a whole. Chona’s death profoundly impacts the novel’s characters and intensifies the need for justice.

“They moved slowly, like fusgeyers, wanderers seeking a home in Europe, or erú West African tribesmen herded off a ship on a Virginia shore to peer back across the Atlantic in the direction of their homeland one last time, moving toward a common destiny, all of them—Isaac, Nate, and the rest—into a future of American nothing. It was a future they couldn’t quite see, where the richness of all they had brought to the great land of promise would one day be zapped into nothing, the glorious tapestry of their history boiled down to a series of ten-second TV commercials, empty holidays, and sports games filled with the patriotic fluff of red, white, and blue, the celebrants celebrants cheering the accompanying dazzle without any idea of the horrible struggles and proud pasts of their forebears who had made their lives so easy.”

This passage develops the theme of Building Community Across Cultures by identifying commonalities in Jewish and Black people’s experiences. McBride describes assimilation as cultural erasure through striking phrases, such as “a future of American nothing” and “patriotic fluff.” The Black and Jewish characters in this scene are also united in their shared grief over Chona, who did much to foster community between them. This sense of community persists after her death and drives the characters’ efforts to secure justice for Dodo and Chona.

“Only the marble kept him hopeful, for despite his guilt, a tiny part of him believed that the kind woman who doled out so many of those precious marbles to him would forgive him. So each day Dodo asked Monkey Pants to produce the marble from beneath his pillow, and inquired as to where he got it.”

Marbles symbolize generosity in the novel, and this particular marble is especially important because it reminds Dodo of Chona and gives him hope during his time in Pennhurst. Monkey Pants’ marble is the spark that catalyzes the boys’ friendship and inspires them to create their own sign language. Monkey Pants eventually sacrifices himself to protect Dodo, much as Chona did.

“No sooner had the man turned away than Monkey Pants was rattling his crib with his strong hand, his left, his fingers gesturing wildly, his eyes wide with fright. ‘Who is he?’ Dodo asked. Monkey Pants spelled it out slowly. S.O.N.…O.F.…M.A.N. B.A.D. B.A.D. V.E.R.Y.”

Son of Man’s first appearance adds to the novel’s suspense and danger, lending a greater urgency to rescuing Dodo from Pennhurst. Monkey Pants’ warning foreshadows the abuse Son of Man inflicts on Dodo and Monkey Pants’ brave but deadly intervention in defense of his friend.

“His wife had not been afraid to hug Addie or grab a reluctant Nate by the hand to show him something or hug Dodo or cuff a female customer playfully on the face or arm or place an arm around a woman’s shoulder or pick up a Negro child who was wailing. Those things were almost forbidden in this country, he realized. Chona had never been one to play by the rules of American society. She did not experience the world as most people did. To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don’t touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkun olam, to improve the world. The tiny woman with the bad foot was all soul.”

Moshe reflects on his late wife’s great gift for Building Community Across Cultures. Her warmth and love showed in the way she wasn’t afraid to embrace Black people both physically and emotionally, even though touch between people of different ethnicities was “almost forbidden in this country” at the time. The memory of Chona’s kindness later inspires Moshe and his cousin to create a camp for children with disabilities.

“‘How will you get home?’ ‘I am home,’ Malachi said. ‘But you don’t like it here. You said that many times.’ Malachi was silent a moment, then replied: ‘I like to live. There is trouble back home, friend. Do you not read the Jewish papers?’”

The joy of Moshe and Malachi’s reunion is shadowed by a historical backdrop of escalating danger for Jewish Europeans. Malachi moves from Poland to Pottstown in 1936, and Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939. While Malachi struggles with America’s treatment of Blacks, he is safer there than in Poland, where antisemitism will soon give birth to genocide.

“The law in this land is what the white man says it is, mister. Plain and simple. So you’d be wasting your dollars on us.”

Nate’s words to Isaac develop the theme of mercy and justice. Nate believes that the nation’s laws are designed to protect white privilege and power rather than justice. This explains why he turns down Isaac’s offer to hire a lawyer and instead seeks justice for his nephew outside the legal system.

“‘What do we owe each other on this Hill, Bernice? We got nothing. Ain’t never gonna have nothing. Everything good in this town is off this Hill. Miss Cho—Chona, I looked in on her from time to time. But she had her own people to look after her. We don’t owe them. They don’t owe us.’ ‘It wasn’t no them and us. It was we. We was together on this Hill,’ Bernice said. ‘Stop tricking yourself, sis. Them days is gone. The Jews round here now, they wanna be in the big room with the white folks. All they gotta do is walk in the room and hang their hat on the rack. Let me and you try that. See what happens.’”

The Davis siblings’ debate about intercultural relationships develops the theme of community. Bernice, Chona’s childhood best friend, sees solidarity between the Black and Jewish communities of Chicken Hill: “We was together on this Hill.” However, Fatty argues that the Hill’s Jewish residents are eager to leave them and the Hill behind to gain social mobility and acceptance from white people. This serves as a reminder of white privilege's impact on the relationships between the novel’s Jewish and Black characters and their comparative positions in society.

“Now I heard—it’s been said—that my little quacking friend got abused by Son of Man so bad that somebody felt sorry for him and put him onto the man who runs them eggs in his egg cart, who took him through one of them tunnels right under Ward C-1 where Son of Man lurks, and got him to that railroad yard. And from there, some of them railroad fellas, them union Jews who likes to raise hell, put him on one of them freight trains to New York with a paper sack full of food and twenty dollars, and they say that boy’s been in New York City quacking like a duck ever since.”

In an important plot development, a plan to save Dodo begins to take shape as Miggy explains to the Timblins, Paper, and Fatty how another young patient escaped Pennhurst. Another unfortunate parallel between Dodo and Miggy’s “little quacking friend” is that they both caught the attention of the twisted Son of Man.

“When he emerged from prison and met Addie, who dipped her hand into the pool of injury and hurt that was his heart and drained it of every evil and refilled it with love and purpose, he became sure of it. She cleansed him. And he’d lose it all now. He didn’t want to lose it, but he knew it was gone. ‘It ain’t your fault,’ Nate said to Son of Man. And with that, he plunged the kitchen knife he held behind him in his right hand deep into Son of Man’s heart.”

In a major plot development, Nate kills Son of Man. This event connects to the themes of recovering from the past and of justice and mercy: Addie mercifully filled her husband’s heart “with love and purpose” after his release from prison. Nate fears that his efforts to escape the past and subdue the evil he sees within himself are doomed now that he has killed again, even though this killing was committed to give Dodo justice.

“The mezuzah pendant. The one that had somehow made it into his hand during the…the event…at the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. He’d brought it to the Antes House to discard it on the Hill. Perfect. He’d toss it in the lot when he was out of sight of the Antes House. He withdrew the fist clasping the mezuzah and marched forward. Up the Hill he went. Up, up, up, to Chicken Hill.”

The mezuzah serves as a motif for the theme of justice. When Roberts makes the fateful decision to go to the lot to dispose of the pendant, he is attacked by Henry Lit and falls into the open well. The presence of the mezuzah, which Roberts took from Chona during the assault, helps to establish that this seemingly random course of events is in fact an act of karmic or divine justice.

“All the myths he believed in would crystallize into even greater mythology in future years and become weapons of war used by politicians and evildoers to kill defenseless schoolchildren by the dozens so that a few rich men spouting the same mythology that Doc spouted could buy islands that held more riches than the town of Pottstown had or would ever have. Gigantic yachts that would sail the world and pollute the waters and skies, owned by men creating great companies that made weapons of great power in factories that employed the poor, weapons that were sold cheaply enough so that the poor could purchase them and kill one another. Any man could buy one and walk into schools and bring death to dozens of children and teachers and anyone else stupid enough to believe in all that American mythology of hope, freedom, equality, and justice.”

Immediately after Doc Roberts falls into the well, McBride connects Roberts’s bigoted ideology to problems that still afflict America, including school shootings, pollution, and the exploitation of the poor. This is a sobering reminder that, although the novel’s antagonist meets his end, the damaging “myths he believed,” such as racism and antisemitism, are still alive and well.

He had his own sound now. It was sound sung to him as the sight, smell, and feel of the beautiful Low Country. And as the years passed on his South Carolina farm—bought with three hundred dollars, care of a Philadelphia Jewish theater owner named Isaac, who would one day with his cousin Moshe and several other Jewish theater owners create a camp in the Pennsylvania mountains for disabled children like him called Camp Chona, a camp that lasted long after every one of those Jewish immigrants had died—the boy became a man who raised crops and milked cows and attended church three times a week; a man who learned how to ‘shout dance’ without crossing his legs; a man who taught his children how to patch a roof, and cane a chair, and boil meat in iron pots, and wander through Spanish moss in summer; a man who watched his children learn from their great-uncle Nate how to build a horse-drawn mill to grind sugar cane, and from their great-aunt Addie how to thresh rice and grind meal, and from his beloved wife how to grow azaleas and his favorite, sunflowers—sunflowers of all colors and sizes.”

The novel gives Dodo a happy ending filled with freedom and family. Chona also receives justice and is honored in a way she would love. This connects to the theme of Building Community Across Cultures because members of Chicken Hill’s Black and Jewish communities work together to rescue the boy and honor the woman who loved him as her son. Connecting to the theme of recovery from the past, Nate finds peace after all that he has survived, and his family name lives on through Dodo and his many descendants. McBride’s novel often reads like a story passed between neighbors and friends. This passage exemplifies his style with its lively and conversational tone, rich details, vibrant verbs, and a sentence that is 174 words long.