The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Pottstown celebrates Memorial Day with a parade. Gus Plitzka, chairman of the city council and the new owner of Pottstown’s largest dairy company, is distracted from the proceedings by a painfully swollen toe and asks Doc Roberts to take a look. Roberts has his own concerns. His nerves have been “frayed to pieces” since Chona’s death (258). Roberts absentmindedly took the mezuzah Chona was wearing. He anxiously wishes to dispose of the evidence, yet he insistently tells himself that he did nothing wrong. Plitzka and Roberts are political rivals who detest one another, and the councilman alludes to rumors he’s heard about the doctor and Chona. Not wanting to make an enemy of Plitzka, Roberts agrees to treat his toe and suggests that he purchase a specialty shoe from Marv Skrupskelis.

Dodo’s days at Pennhurst pass in a haze of drugs, sorrow, immobility, and stench. Monkey Pants shows him a blue marble and allows him to hold it. Dodo loves marbles because they remind him of gifts from Miss Chona, Nate, and Addie. The 12-year-old misses them so much that he is often moved to tears. His friendship with Monkey Pants is the only relief from his loneliness. Together, the two boys develop their own sign language.

Five weeks into Dodo’s time at Pennhurst, he sees a tall Black man with a scar on his forehead and “a muted wildness and thirst” in his eyes that terrifies Dodo (274). While the nurses’ station is empty, Son of Man strokes Dodo’s torso, looks at his backside, and calls him pretty. A frightened Monkey Pants warns his friend, “S.O.N.…O.F.…M.A.N. B.A.D. B.A.D. V.E.R.Y” (275).

Moshe decides to sell the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, and Addie and Nate help him clean out the basement. Addie told him what Doc Roberts did to Chona. However, the police and all of the papers accept Roberts’s version of events, which claims that Dodo attacked Chona. Moshe knows that Roberts is lying, but he’s hesitant to challenge him because doing so would bring unwanted attention and police involvement. Seeing the toys Chona collected to give to children reminds him how loving and kind his wife was, and he bursts into tears. He feels a pain in his chest that is more than his emotions and heads upstairs. Just then, Isaac arrives with Malachi in tow.

Malachi tells Moshe that he is going to stay in America because Poland has become dangerous for Jewish people. While the old friends catch up, Isaac goes to speak to Nate and Addie despite Moshe’s fretting that this will bring trouble. Isaac offers the Timblins “a thick roll of money” (283) in exchange for information about what happened with Doc Roberts, but they decline the cash and his offer to hire a lawyer to help secure Dodo’s release from Pennhurst. Nate suggests that Isaac give the money to Bernice.

Bernice comes to see Fatty at his jook joint. The siblings are not close, partly due to Fatty’s resentment that his sister inherited their parents’ house and partly because he disapproves of her having eight children with three different fathers. In addition, he finds her religious fervor sanctimonious. Bernice tells her brother that Reverend Spriggs confessed to accidentally telling the Black man from the state where Dodo was. However, the man was more interested in having an easy day at work than catching the child, so he tipped the reverend off each time he came to Chicken Hill.

The siblings’ conversation turns to Chona, and Bernice asks Fatty why he didn’t attend the funeral. She believes there is solidarity between Chicken Hill’s Black and Jewish communities, saying, “We was together on this Hill” (294). However, Fatty points out how many Jewish residents are leaving the neighborhood and says, “They wanna be in the big room with the white folks” (294). Bernice asks Fatty about the well their father dug for the shul. Fatty helped with its construction so he’d be able to locate it. Bernice gives him a Bible containing $900 and a note. In his excitement, Fatty misplaces the second page of the note.

Paper gathers Miggy, Fatty, Nate, Addie, and Rusty at her house with the promise of one of her famous sweet-potato pies. Miggy recognizes Nate because he used to live in Hemlock Row. She tells him, “[My father] always liked you. You done us a service over at the Row is how he felt about matters” (299). Miggy works as a cleaner at Pennhurst, which consists of 34 buildings over 200 acres and has its own railroad, clothing factory, and police force. She describes the terrible filth, cruelty, and neglect that the patients suffer at the hands of the attendants and doctors.

Miggy recounts how an attendant who calls himself Son of Man abused a 12-year-old white boy who quacked like a duck. When she confronted Son of Man, he threatened to kill her. The duck boy disappeared, and Miggy explains how he could have used the old tunnels beneath Pennhurst to escape. A Black man who delivers breakfast to Pennhurst’s employees knows his way around the tunnels and could have snuck the boy to the railroad in his egg cart. She carves a piece of pie into a map of Pennhurst and shows it to Nate. When he asks Miggy about Son of Man, she answers, “He knows you” (314).