Chapter 5

All night I lay on the couch listening for Shmuel. I went to the bathroom six times to check my pad, but there wasn’t much blood. My mother had warned me that if any got on my underpants I should wash them right away before the stain set. I forgot to ask her where to hang them. If they were on the line with the rest of the laundry, they wouldn’t draw attention, but one pair flapping in the wind would be an utter mortification. My mother never had to hang a lone pair of drawers for all to see. I’d have to be vigilant about changing my pad too, but I couldn’t be wasteful either. I never thought of us as poor, but I was willing to bet Tante Yetta’s cloth pads were made of silk.

The sun still wasn’t up when my parents came into the kitchen. I closed my eyes.

My mother’s voice dropped to a whisper. “If not the police, let’s at least go to one of his friends.”

“We do nothing until Shabbas is over,” Papa said.

“Not so loud, Avram. Dev is still asleep.”

“We should be too. And Shmuel as well, next to the stove.” My father threw in a piece of wood, although the room was already too warm, then groaned when he realized what he’d done. It was Shmuel’s job to load in a big pile before sundown on Friday because you’re not allowed to lift, only stir, on Shabbas. The laws about what the rabbis consider work can sound silly, but Papa is scrupulous about obeying them. He sank into a chair and buried his head in his hands.

“God will forgive you.” My mother touched his shoulder gently. “It’s an emergency. At such times, we’re permitted to make exceptions.”

“This is an emergency of Shmuel’s own making, not an act of God.”

“You don’t know that. Please, Avram, let’s ask for help. Or at least for information.”

“I will not commit another sin on account of our son’s transgression.”

“Then say something to my brother at shul this morning. Gershon knows people who can help find out where Shmuel is.” I hated the pleading in my mother’s voice. If it weren’t for the rule about men and women sitting separately, she could have asked Onkel Gershon herself.

“Today is for talking to God, not to relatives and friends.” Papa didn’t need Shabbas as an excuse not to talk to his brother-in-law. He was ashamed that Gershon was more successful than him. Shame made my father envious, envy made him feel guilty, guilt made him angry. At least, that was my theory. When I shared it with Shmuel, he said I was very sophisticated for my age. It made me proud. Later, when I learned the word “astute,” I decided I was that too. I wished I knew the words to say to make my father and uncle get along, but I wasn’t astute enough for that.

“As long as I’m up, I’ll go to shul early and start praying. Maybe God will tell me where our son is. I’ll see you and Dev after services.” My father spread honey on a slice of cold challah and shrugged into his coat. “And Rivka, don’t wear that skirt again this week. It’s immodest.”

My mother stared at the door after he left. For a radical thinker, she was a conservative dresser. She wouldn’t even show a bit of ankle like other women. Recently, however, she’d bought a skirt with a zippered waist, claiming it was easier to put on, but Papa said opening and closing zippers was work and thus verboten on Shabbas. I doubt the ancient rabbis decreed that. There weren’t any zippers three thousand years ago. If I were her, I’d have worn the skirt to defy him. When I grew breasts, I vowed, I wouldn’t even wear a corset. That showdown might happen soon, now that I’d become a woman. I hoped I’d be braver than my mother. She was more likely to go behind my father’s back than stand up to him face to face.

I decided to start with a small act that would upset my father—if he noticed. “I can’t go to shul,” I told my mother. “I have bad cramps.” I bent over and grimaced for effect.

She smiled and massaged my stomach. “God makes exceptions in matters of health.” She showed me how to make cramp bark tea and put the kettle on a back burner next to the cholent. “Sometimes God demands more of women than men, but He also allows us greater latitude.”

That was a new word and it came from Mama, not Mrs. O’Brien. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing me use it, but I was eager to try it with Shmuel, whenever he showed up.

I hadn’t counted on being bored at home. There’s nothing to do on Shabbas except read and walk. Even jigsaw puzzles are considered work. I was tempted to pull out my 500-piece picture of the Rocky Mountains from under the couch. It was a Chanukah present from my aunt and uncle. Fear of Papa, not God, stopped me. It galled him that Gershon gave me and my brother presents he couldn’t afford. He might also notice I’d finished another snowy peak and I didn’t want to get him angry after finally getting his blessing last night. I half-hoped he’d be annoyed about my missing services, but he’d been too distraught about Shmuel to make much ado about it. That’s from Shakespeare. Besides, going to synagogue was less important for women. Our duty was at home, keeping the family together. To rile Papa, I’d have to do something more obvious.

I wished that Leah were here and was a little sorry I hadn’t gone to shul so I could share my big news with her. I wondered if she’d be excited for me or jealous. I was ambivalent about getting my period, but I’d still be upset if she’d gotten hers first. She’d never use cramps, even real ones, as an excuse to stay home. Leah actually listens during Reb Stern’s D’var Torah and shushes me when I whisper to her about Bernie. She gives Ruchel an impatient look when my cousin disapproves of the rabbi’s old-fashioned ideas. I tease Leah that she’ll be a rabbi’s wife, maybe even marry Shmuel, when she grows up. I think she likes the idea of being a rebbetzin, but I’m not sure how she feels about Shmuel. Sometimes I think she has a crush on Bernie, like me.

The water in the kettle was barely warm. I turned up the heat so the tea would brew more quickly. I didn’t much care for it, but it was a new taste and I drank it down before lowering the flame. As long as I’d broken one rule, I gave myself permission to break another. I went into the bedroom, my parents’ private sanctuary, and stood on the bed so I could see my whole body in the dresser mirror. I wondered if I looked different now that I was a woman.

First I studied myself straight on. Same sturdy body, not any frailer, but no new curves either. Then I turned sideways, peering over my shoulder and batting my eyelashes to mimic Theda Bara’s vamping pose on the poster outside the Sunshine Cinema. I licked my lips and half-opened my mouth. I’d tried to talk my father into letting me see Rose of Blood but he refused, even when I argued that Theda Bara was Jewish. The ads called her the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor, but she was born in Cincinnati and her real name was Theodosia Burr Goodman. Not even Jewish pride was enough to persuade Papa, however.

I was filled with angst at the thought I’d have to stop being a tomboy, but it might not be a tragedy if I could be the next Theda Bara. I’d shorten my name to Dev Lev or something sexy, like Violet Lace. My dresses would be more stylish than my cousins’ hand-me-downs, and I’d buy my parents a ten-bedroom house bigger than my uncle’s apartment. I’d be rich enough to hire a detective, and he wouldn’t have to be Jewish, so he could search for Shmuel on Shabbas.

When my parents came home, my mother went through the Havdalah ritual that marks the end of the Sabbath. I hoped she or my father would let me light the wicks on the braided candle or douse the flames in the kiddush cup, but neither looked toward me. Papa dipped his fingers in the wine and touched them to his eyelids as a final blessing while my mother’s hands stayed in her lap. We didn’t pass around the besamim. No one was in the mood to smell the cinnamon, cloves, and myrtle in the spice box, the sweet, tangy aroma meant to fortify us until next Friday night.

After picking at our food, my mother and I washed the dishes, including those soaking from last night. Cleaning was another type of work prohibited on the Sabbath, one of the few that gave women a rest. I was surprised the rabbis had included it.

My mother scrubbed at the baked-on cholent in the cast iron pot. “I don’t understand your objection to Pyrex,” she told Papa, repeating her regular Saturday night complaint. Usually it irritated me, but tonight its predictability was comforting. “It would be much easier to wash.”

“Please, Rivka, not again. That pot’s been in the family for generations.”

“Gershon bought Pyrex dishes for Yetta. It takes her half as long to clean up now. And since they’re made of glass, we wouldn’t need separate ones for milk and meat.” She eyed the chipped and mismatched china crammed into the paint-peeled cupboard. I don’t know what she planned to fill the shelves with instead. My aunt had four sets of dishes, everyday milk and meat, and a fancier set of patterns for holidays and company. Like us, the Mendels also kept dishes just for Passover, but they were displayed in a big hutch, not packed away in cartons in the basement.

“If we were meant to keep one set of cookware, Moses would have brought down Pyrex from Mt. Sinai along with the stone tablets.” Sometimes Papa could be funny.

“Then let me buy that new S.O.S. steel wool with the soap already in it.” She flung the Brillo pad into the sink, splashing greasy water in her eyes and making them tear.

My father sighed. “You can’t, Rivka. The soap is made with beef tallow.”

My mother knew this. Every Jew who kept kosher did. She handed me the garbage.

Taking the trash to the bin in the alleyway behind the building was my brother’s nightly job, except on Saturday. Then it fell to me because he and my father sat together at the table to begin studying the next week’s Torah portion. My mother hadn’t cleared away his unused setting.

“She can’t do that anymore.” My father snatched the bag out of my hand. “It’s not proper for her to be alone outside after dark.”

“I’ll do it.” My mother grabbed the garbage from my father.

“You don’t belong out there either.” They faced off, each holding one side of the wet, smelly bag.

“Who’s to know?” I asked. “Do I look any different than last week?”

My father relented. “But come right back.”

“Lickety split,” I promised. “Faster than a gassed-up hayburner.”

The street was as deserted as the night before, but the saloon’s raucous laughter rushed down the alley, echoing danger rather than glee. If being a vamp meant that men like those at Paddy’s would snort and leer at me, I was no longer sure that I wanted to emulate Theda Bara.

I lifted the lid of the trash bin, eager to throw my bundle inside and flee back upstairs. Hanging over the edge of the can was a familiar-looking fringe. In the glow of the street lamp, I unrolled Shmuel’s tzitzit. Two pale locks of hair, his payess, fell onto the cracked pavement, where they shone like the feathers of a fledgling fallen from the nest.