Was bedeutet denn hier "hide", von dem hier alle Freundinnen ein Stück besitzen?

Aus dem Roman "Portnoy's Complaint":

"She sews, she knits, she darns—she irons better even than the shvartze, to whom, of all her friends who each possess a piece of this grinning childish black old lady's hide, she is alone good. "I'm the only one who is good to her""