Part Nine
Dev, 1917
Chapter 23

It was strange to come home from school all week to find my father sitting shiva in the darkened front room. Disconcerting was a good word to describe the sight of him, wrapped in my great-grandfather’s tallit, perched on a stool, and praying feverishly for what, I didn’t know. Nor did I know what to do with myself. With the covered windows blocking the light, and my father’s stool blocking the steamer trunk where I usually worked, I couldn’t do my homework. What excuse could I give my teachers? My brother is missing but my father acts like he’s already dead?

By Wednesday, when my assignments were piling up, I waited for Papa to take a breath and bent down to ask if I could do my lessons. “My biology teacher throws an ing-bing if we turn in our assignments late,” I said, holding out my textbook. There was a microscope on the cover, but to my father I was invisible. He simply readjusted his prayer shawl and davened back and forth faster. Mama motioned me to the kitchen and cleared a space at the table. Perhaps my father didn’t consider what I was doing studying, reserving that term for what he and Shmuel did—used to do—when they read and discussed Torah.

I wondered if Papa missed those sessions as much as I missed talking to my brother about what I was learning in biology. After the gloom and silence in the apartment, I would even have welcomed Shmuel teasing me that my diagram of the digestive system was “all balled up.” In the last few days, I’d also heard a passel of new slang words I was dying to ask him about. What did it mean when Bridget told Frankie, “Sorry, buster, the bank is closed.” I thought it had something to do with her not wanting to kiss him, but Frankie often mooched money so maybe she meant just what she said. Jews always looked for deeper meanings instead of taking things at face value, unlike Bridget and her Catholic friends. I envied their less complicated lives.

At first, Mama tried to convince Papa to stop sitting shiva. “Our son is still alive,” she insisted. “Acting like he’s dead is tempting the evil eye.”

“You’re a modern woman,” my father said. “Since when do you believe in spirits?”

My mother tried a different tack. “At least wait while Gershon tries to find him.”

Hearing Gershon’s name only fuelled Papa’s resistance. He acted like he didn’t even want Shmuel back if my uncle was the one who delivered him, and mentioning Gershon’s efforts made him pray and daven harder. I thought my father would rock himself off the stool, but this was real life, not a slapstick movie. In our house, the shortest word or smallest gesture was deadly serious.

The only time Papa left his stool was for supper. In our religion, not even death interferes with eating. People bring food by the armload to families sitting shiva. Because of my uncle’s ban, however, no one came to our house. Well, Ruchel came once, but since my cousin can’t cook, she arrived empty handed. Mama ended up feeding her.

Then late on Friday afternoon, as I climbed up the stoop, Tante Yetta walked out of our building. She was holding a big bag and I could feel waves of heat and smell heavenly aromas emanating from it as she leaned over to plant a wet kiss on my cheek. My aunt sighed. “Your father won’t let me in the door, so you take this to your mother.” She gave me the bag and another kiss.

My father didn’t look up when I walked in but the smell must have given me away. “Take the food back.”

“It’ll be dark by the time she gets there,” my mother said. “You don’t have to eat it, but why can’t Dev? She’s a woman now; she has to grow up strong and healthy.”

It was a good thing Papa couldn’t see me blush. I wanted to make my mother shush, but I also wanted to eat Tante Yetta’s food. If my changed biology was the excuse, Amen.

“There’s nothing wrong with the food my money buys, Rivka. Throw Yetta’s food out!” My father shot up, tore the bag from my hands, and thrust it at my mother. She froze, holding it in front of her, then walked mechanically toward the trash can.

I intercepted and snatched the bag. I drew out a tin of cookies and put it next to the sink, followed by a large pan covered in a dish towel. Not chicken, but roast beef. I got a serving platter and set it on the table. I was going for the noodle pudding when Papa grabbed the roast in his hand and dumped it back in the bag. Warm juice ran down my arm and leaked through the sack.

“Don’t you know wasting food is a sin?” I screamed.

Papa folded his arms and glared. Sidestepping around him, I marched to the sink, yanked the lid off the tin, and crammed a handful of cookies into my mouth. Papa took me by the scruff of the neck and bent my head over the sink. He pried my mouth open and stuck his fingers inside, scooping out dough. I tried to hold onto the sweetness before my father could steal it from me, but I couldn’t swallow with my head down. Instead I clenched my teeth. He tried to cram the slimy bar of kosher dish soap between them. I wanted to curse him and his stupid prayers. Papa, not the enemy, would kill Shmuel and life would never taste good again. The fear of gagging on the soap kept my lips closed, but all the swear words I heard on the playground raged in my head.

Mama yelled at Papa to stop and pulled us apart. Terror blazed in her eyes. My father and I faced each other, trembling and panting. Tears ran down my cheeks. His were dry. After rinsing his hands, he returned to his stool, closed his eyes, and resumed praying. My mother wiped my face and told me to go into their bedroom and lie down. She’d never done that before. The rare times I entered my parents’ room, I’d snuck in when no one else was home. I would have preferred to run out of the house, but now it really was dark and I was afraid to walk past Paddy’s saloon where a lounge lizard, blotto on hooch, might pop out the door and try to open my bank.

At first, lying on my parents’ bed, I thought about Mama more than Papa. Had she sent me to the bedroom to protect me from my father, save him from himself, or restore sholem bayess in the house for her own sake? She was justified in wanting peace, given how distraught she was about Shmuel, but I wanted her to be thinking of me and taking my side. Admitting this was unlikely, I then nursed my grievance against Papa. I didn’t care that it was wrong to defy him. Acting like Shmuel was dead was defying God’s right to make that decision, and that was worse.

An hour later, when my mother called that supper was ready, resignation about Mama and righteousness toward Papa had calmed me down. I was cocooned in self-pity. I’d decided to go to Leah’s house the next morning, when my parents were at shul, so she could cluck and joke and do whatever else friends do to make each other feel better. Meanwhile, I’d enjoy a good wallow. When I walked into the kitchen, the Shabbas candles were burned halfway down. Mama must have kindled them right after sending me to the bedroom because you’re not allowed to strike a match after dark. I remembered the joy I’d felt lighting and reciting the blessing over the candles a week ago. It seemed like a year. Would Papa ever give me permission to light them again? Would I have to apologize to him first? Or would he hand me the matches as a way of apologizing to me?

I took my seat on Papa’s left, opposite my brother’s empty seat. There’d been only three place settings at the table since Sunday, when Onkel Gershon came over. Sometimes, when I got home from school and my father’s eyes were closed in prayer, I caught Mama sitting in Shmuel’s chair. She never said anything when I looked at her, just stood and went back to chopping onions. Once I sat down after she got up, pretending the warmth of the seat came from my brother’s body, not hers. She let me sit without saying anything either.

Mama dished out soup and chicken, the usual Shabbas meal. Papa ate; she and I picked. The bag with Tante Yetta’s roast beef was nowhere in sight. Nor could I smell it. While I was in the bedroom, Papa or Mama had carried it to the trash bin in the alley, where seven days ago I’d found my brother’s tallit and payess. Whichever of them did it had broken a rule by carrying on the Sabbath, but I sensed Papa wouldn’t care. Tomorrow in shul he’d say Kaddish for Shmuel, alone, in front of the whole congregation. That too, as Onkel Gershon had said, violated Jewish law, which required at least ten men. It would be another rare instance of my father not observing community rules, but since my brother’s disappearance, Papa had lived in a world of his own.