Thirteen

Do you have a photograph of your brother Mischa?” Sarah asked. She had stopped in the butcher shop after school and was watching her father cut brisket.

“So you’ve been thinking about my brother?” he asked.

“It helps me to stop thinking of…Goosie.”

Jacob put his knife aside, wiped his hands on a towel, and pulled a chair to the rear of the shop. “Sit, Sarahla,” he said.

“You sit, Papa.”

He lowered himself into the chair and held his knees together so she could sit on them.

“Papa, I’m too old. A customer might come in.”

“So? What will they see? A daughter sitting on her father’s lap.”

There was no use explaining that she would burn up with embarrassment if a customer walked in and there she was, fifteen years old, sitting on her father’s lap. Especially if the customer was a kid. Like Charley who shopped for his mother sometimes. She’d die!

“So, Sarahla, a week’s gone by and you still suffer, blaming yourself for Goosie dying?”

Sarah reached for her father’s hand and turned his silver wedding band back and forth. “Papa, if you tell someone a nightmare does that help it go away?”

“Tell it to me.”

“It’s…awful…”

“I’m listening.”

What had felt so real during the night seemed more like a made-up horror story as she told her father about lifting a devil baby out of Mrs. Mahoney’s laundry basket. He listened, his eyes never leaving her face.

“So, Sarahla. You still think of yourself as a devil baby. That’s what the nightmare tells me.”

Sarah concentrated on turning the ring back and forth.

“And it’s the devil baby’s fault that Goosie fell off the roof.”

The door to the shop opened and a woman in a gray coat and matching hat entered. Jacob precipitously dumped Sarah off his lap and smiled at the woman. “What can I help you with today?”

Sarah ached for him. How many times had he forced himself to smile and sound cheerful when his heart was sore? He was good at it because he had so much practice.

§

Her mother looked up from the stocking she was darning as Sarah walked into the apartment with the blank look of a sleep walker.

“Still such a long face, Sarah?”

Sarah shrugged as she stepped around Sammy playing on the floor with horses that Jacob had whittled out of an old broom handle. She hung up her coat and walked into the kitchen where potatoes were rinsing in a bowl of water. She picked one up and started peeling.

“I brought Mrs. Mahoney soup today, Sarah.”

Sarah could feel her mother looking at her but she didn’t turn around.

“The poor woman has not even one photograph of her little boy to look at.”

The knife slipped and pricked Sarah’s finger. A thin thread of blood reddened the potato water. Why was her mother telling her this?

Rifke walked into the kitchen and stooped to get a pitcher out of the lower cabinet.

“Maybe you can paint a picture of Goosie and give it to her.”

“I’m…not good at drawing people. It…it’s too soon, Mama.” Her voice broke and she swatted tears from her eyes.

Rifke stood very still for a moment. Her voice softened and she ran her fingers lightly over Sarah’s hair. “When you’re ready, Sarah. It would be a mitzvah.”

Sarah couldn’t remember when her mother had last touched her.