Something was missing.
The Jinni frowned, and pushed the thought away. He was kneeling beside a long, shallow iron trough that held a thin layer of blue-tinted glass, newly made. He eyed the pane carefully, watching for bubbles or imperfections that might cause a crack, but he saw none. Good. He’d lost three panes already that morning.
The entire glass-making process had proved much more delicate and difficult than he’d imagined. He wanted broad, thin swathes, but the slag was erratic and temperamental, and nothing he could make by hand was consistent enough. So he’d constructed the trough instead: a mold that he could heat evenly over the forge and then move to the floor, where the glass might cool and harden. On the worktable nearby were the stacks of finished panes, all polished to an even shine. He’d hunted through his supplies for something to place between the panes to keep them from scratching, and at last had found a stash of gold coins, bought in the Bowery and then forgotten. He’d intended to melt them down for gilding, but as spacers they worked perfectly.
He didn’t enjoy making the glass. It was dull and finicky work; it required paying attention while the glass cooled, so he might lift it from the mold at exactly the right moment. It stretched the seconds and minutes so that in his boredom he was tempted to let his mind wander, to reflect, consider, take stock.
Something was missing—but what?
The thought itself was ridiculous. As far as he knew, no one had ever attempted to build anything like this—so how could something be said to be missing? The Amherst’s new form was a vision born of his own mind, and correct in every detail. And yet something was missing, and it itched at him.
Finally the glass was ready. Carefully he prized the pane from the trough, lifted it away, and placed it with the rest atop the worktable. Then, released at last from the tyranny of waiting, he went to the forge and plunged his hands gratefully into the coals. His irritable mood receded in a wave of sharpened sensation, his nagging thoughts collapsing into an endless, perfect now. He smiled, without quite realizing. He’d earned a rest from the glass-making, he decided.
He spiraled up the central column to the topmost platform, stepped out onto the steel. There was a portion of the platform near the edge that had been unevenly smoothed; he’d noticed it the day before. He walked out to the rimless edge, following the curve, searching for the spot. Below him the forge was a glowing rectangle, a pool of fire he might dive into—
He staggered against her, they teetered together—
He shuddered as a wave of vertigo passed through him.
Stop that, he told himself sharply. He closed his eyes, held still until the last of it was gone. Then he found the spot and patched it over, his back turned to the view.
* * *
The Western Union branch at Canal and Broadway was little more than an overgrown vestibule that had been crammed into the lobby of the Columbia Bank. On most days there were at least three young boys waiting on the messengers’ bench when Toby arrived, all of them yawning and kicking their heels; but that morning the bench was empty, a bad sign. Behind the counter, Julius, the branch manager, was shuffling through the delivery sheets with an air of nervous dyspepsia. Toby glanced over at the bin that caught the overnight messages in their pneumatic tubes. Usually it was half full, but now it looked close to spilling over.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“Some genius from Public Works stuck his axe through our conduit,” Julius said. “Every branch south of here is out of commission. The rest of us are working double until it’s fixed.” He handed a sheet to Toby, pointed to a stack of envelopes on the counter. “Here’s your share.”
Alarmed, Toby glanced down the list. Sure enough, all of the messages were already hours late. Half of them were for the City Hall offices—and, even worse, the rest were overseas cables, destined for the Hudson shipping concerns. “Aw, hell! Why couldn’t you give this to one of the babies?”
Julius snorted. “Send a baby to the docks with a bag full of late cables? Might as well pour catsup on him first.”
“Well, why should I have to do it?”
“Because you’re man enough to take it, and they ain’t.”
Toby blew out a frustrated breath. He’d started as a bench-baby, too, and had prided himself on never letting the company down. Once again it seemed he was being punished for his loyalty. But there was nothing he could do about it, save for quitting. Scowling, he grabbed the sheet and the envelopes, and wasn’t too careful about shutting the door gently on his way out.
In the alley, he unlocked his bike and looked over the delivery sheet. He was supposed to start at the docklands and work his way back to City Hall—likely because, from Western Union’s point of view, a cable that halted a thousand dollars’ worth of cargo was more important than some bit of business from Albany. Toby, however, saw things differently. It was nine o’clock already, and once the morning barges were past Sandy Hook, it didn’t matter how late the cable was. On the other hand, the civil servants of New York were a highly distracted lot, and delayed messages often worked out in their favor. If Toby went to City Hall first, he might still make a few tips for himself.
He stuck the delivery sheet and the envelopes in his satchel, and pedaled away south.
* * *
Kreindel stood alone in the Asylum hallway while the other girls of her dormitory arrayed themselves before and behind her, two by two, for the walk up the street to P.S. 186. As usual, no one wanted to be Kreindel’s partner. The trips to and from school were precious opportunities to talk openly with a friend, to giggle and gossip out of the monitors’ hearing—so why stand next to Kreindel, who never did any such thing?
A few final girls straggled into place, and Rachel Winkelman at last came to stand next to Kreindel. Perpetually late to the line, Rachel was Kreindel’s partner more often than not. The girl glanced across at Kreindel, and took in her expression. “What’s got your bloomers in a twist?”
“It’s none of your business.” In Kreindel’s opinion, Rachel Winkelman was a fat-headed sort of girl, more interested in simpering at boys than doing anything useful. To make matters worse, Rachel was also one of the very few Asylum residents who gave no consideration to Kreindel’s status as a true orphan. She thought Kreindel was a condescending know-it-all, and was glad to say so to her face. Their walks together were rarely pleasant.
The monitors took their places at the front and rear of the columns. The bell rang, and the boys began the procession, oldest to youngest. Quickly Rachel pulled a lemon-yellow ribbon from her pocket and tied it into her hair. It was strictly against the uniform code, and Kreindel wondered where she’d found it. The boys marched by, Rachel making eyes at her favorites, until it was the next dormitory’s turn—at which point Rachel undid the ribbon and pocketed it again, before the monitors could notice. At last the youngest of the boys went past, and the girls were allowed into the sunshine, their double line spreading along the sidewalk.
“Heard you quit Hebrew,” said Rachel once they were out of their monitor’s hearing.
Kreindel’s frown deepened. “Who told you?”
“Harriet. She heard you in the office.” Rachel smirked. Harriet Loeb was her best friend; the two were thick as thieves. “So what’d they give you, more boot-shining?”
“No, cooking.”
“Hah! Well, don’t go ruining it like you always do.”
“I don’t intend to ruin anything,” Kreindel told her. “If they’d just give me an independent study—”
Rachel burst into cackles.
Kreindel’s face turned hot. “Well, why shouldn’t I get one? I just want to learn Hebrew the way it’s supposed to be learned! Why’d they have to go and change it, anyways?” She cringed as the word anyways escaped her mouth, with its crude and sibilant s. It was difficult to keep her English free of the Asylum vernacular, and she felt each anyways and nohow and ah, quit it as a small act of self-treachery.
“I thought Orthodox girls weren’t supposed to learn Hebrew,” Rachel said.
“It’s not a sin or anything. It’s just . . . not usual.”
“Yeah, not usual. Just like you.”
They turned the corner at 141st and approached the squat bulk of P.S. 186. “And besides, I don’t see why I should have to take cooking lessons,” Kreindel muttered. “It’s just food, anyone can do it. I cooked for my father when I was only—”
“Aw, my father, my father,” Rachel cut in, eyes rolling.
Another Asylum girl might’ve delivered a reply with her fists, monitors or no. But Kreindel said only, “He was a brilliant man, and you will show him respect.”
Rachel smirked. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll tell everyone what you and Harriet get up to in the toilets after lights-out,” she said, and climbed the steps to the school as Rachel stood stricken and red-faced at the bottom.
* * *
The Asylum’s weekly Girls’ Instructors meeting was held in the women’s staff room: a dispiriting place, perpetually stuffy and overheated, crammed with mismatched chairs. Charlotte Levy arrived early, found a seat in the back, and exchanged polite smiles with the others as they trickled in. At last the headmistress arrived and called for attention, and began her list of announcements. The ceiling in the sewing room had developed a wet spot, and would soon be repaired—but if the rains returned, would Miss Rothstein be willing to share her Stenography classroom? Miss Rothstein graciously agreed. A new instructor had been found to replace the girls’ choir director, who had departed recently . . .
So it went, a lulling litany. The radiator hissed; eyes drooped. The woman in front of Miss Levy began to snore lightly. Miss Levy coughed; the woman straightened in her chair.
“Which brings us to a new subject,” said the headmistress. “The last few years have seen a much-needed revitalization of the Asylum’s curricula, and I commend you all for it. But as a consequence, we have a small crisis on our hands—namely, the state of our storage rooms.”
Everyone winced.
“The rooms have gone neglected for far too long—and with the recent addition of so many old textbooks and other materials, it’s become impossible to find so much as a pencil. I’ve decided the time has come for a good old-fashioned spring cleaning. Each of you will pick a responsibility,” she said, holding up a sheet of paper. “I’ll work with you to decide what ought to be kept and what thrown away. If we put our minds to it, it needn’t take more than a week. Two, at most.” She smiled at their resigned faces. “That will be all, thank you.”
The women all rose at once, maneuvering toward the paper. Each of them hoped they wouldn’t get stuck with the worst of the tasks, and more than one reflected that the male teachers would never be asked to do such work—
“Miss Levy, a moment, please.” The headmistress drew her to one side. “I’ve placed a new student in your third-period class, Miss Kreindel Altschul. She was the top Hebrew student, but she objects to the new curriculum and asked to be transferred out. Given her utter lack of domestics, I thought your class was her best option.”
Startled, Miss Levy said, “But we’re already quite far into the syllabus. If she has no cooking experience, wouldn’t it be better—”
“I understand your concern, but Miss Altschul is an intelligent girl.” Too intelligent for her own good, said the woman’s thoughts. “I have no doubt that she can master it, if she applies herself.”
“But—”
“I’m not asking for miracles, Charlotte,” the headmistress cut in, her voice firm. “Just do what you can with her.”
With some irritation Miss Levy joined the end of the dwindling line, wondering why Miss Altschul had been allowed to quit Hebrew in the first place. The headmistress had seemed to consider the girl a special case of some kind, one whose idiosyncrasies were tolerated, if grudgingly. She only hoped that Miss Altschul wouldn’t spoil what was promising to be a very rewarding semester.
At last the line cleared—and she saw that a name now accompanied every item on the sheet, with the exception of Large-Item Repository (Basement, South Wing). This, she realized, must be the very task that her colleagues had been trying to avoid. She’d never seen the room herself, only heard it described as a hopeless collection of clutter. Sighing at her poor luck, she took up the pen, and wrote Charlotte Levy on the line beside it.
* * *
Toby left City Hall at ten thirty, with six new nickels in his pocket and six fewer envelopes in his satchel. He felt a little better, his gamble having paid off—but now the prospect of the docklands loomed before him, and the inevitable tongue-lashings. He stopped at a cart on Broadway to fortify himself with a frankfurter and a seltzer; and then, unable to avoid it any longer, gritted his teeth and rode West Street from pier to pier, to stare red-faced at his shoes while stevedores bellowed at him in German, Swedish, and Portuguese. He left an hour later without a single tip, and reflected grudgingly that Julius was right: any of the babies would’ve run home in tears.
There was only one message left in his bag, a cable to a Washington Street address. He read its origin and winced: the S.S. Kansan. If he’d seen it earlier, he might’ve delivered it first, City Hall tips or no. A full-rate cable from a ship at sea usually meant news that couldn’t wait.
The address led to a five-story loft in Little Syria. The building looked strangely empty. Its windows were papered over on every floor, and there were no signs, no painted advertisements—only the word Amherst carved above the door.
He leaned his bicycle against the building, and rang the bell.
Reluctantly the Jinni had returned to his glass-making.
The latest pane was giving him trouble, refusing to lift free of the trough. He levered it up a hair’s-breadth at a time, first one side and then another, feeling his way around the edge. He must slow down, be patient—
Something’s missing—
A knock, at the door.
He clenched his teeth, ignored it, lifted another fraction of an inch.
The knock came again. Go away, he thought.
Retreating footsteps. Silence. Good.
Another gentle lift—and at last the pane came free.
There was no answer at the door.
Toby stepped back to examine the building again. Something about the papered windows gave it an eerie look, like it was hollow inside. He walked down Carlisle to see if there was a back entrance, and found an alley where a group of boys were crouched on their heels, playing jacks.
“’Scuse me,” he said. “I’m looking for”—he peered down at the envelope—“Ahmad al-Hadid?”
He said it haltingly, certain that they would snicker at his butchering of the name. Instead they all came alert in an instant. “He’s in there,” one of the boys said in a tone of frightened reverence, pointing at the building.
“I knocked, but no one answered.”
“He don’t ever come out,” the boy said.
Toby sighed in annoyance. He’d delivered to plenty of elderly cranks and shut-ins; they always griped, and never tipped. “Well, someone sent him this.” He held up the envelope.
“Who’s it from?” asked a boy.
“We’re not allowed to peek.”
The boys only stared, their helpfulness run dry. “Guess I’ll try again,” Toby said, and went back around the building. The boys followed, as he’d hoped they might. If this Ahmad al-Hadid tried to beat Toby with his cane, at least there’d be witnesses.
He knocked again. “Mr. al-Hadid!” he called loudly. “It’s Western Union!” The boys watched from the spot where they’d gathered, clearly prepared to run if necessary. Toby glanced at them—and then, succumbing to a weary hilarity and the lure of an audience, crouched down, pushed open the letterbox, and shouted through it in Yiddish:
“Hey, old man, come and get this envelope, or I’ll shove it up your ancient ass!”
Silence—and then there came a cacophonous shattering, like a baseball thrown through a cathedral’s worth of windows.
Toby cringed. The alley boys clutched at one another.
Footsteps—and the door was yanked open. Toby stumbled backward as a wave of burning air rolled over him.
The man who stood in the doorway was tall and imposing, and far younger than the wizened crackpot Toby had imagined. He wore nothing but a scorched leather apron and a pair of ragged trousers. His dark eyes were thunderous with rage.
“What did you just—”
But then the man’s voice died away in surprise. He looked up, beyond Toby. Toby turned to see what he was staring at, but there was nothing—only the street, and the sunshine, and the Woolworth Building’s crown peeking above the tenements. The boys from the alley had vanished like smoke. Pedestrians on the sidewalk gawked at the open door, and the man in his apron.
The dark eyes focused again on Toby—and suddenly the boy was certain he’d seen this man before. He swallowed. “Western Union, sir. A cable for you.” He held out the envelope.
The man reached out to take it. There was a hiss, like a match being struck—
Toby yelped in surprise. The envelope fell to the concrete between them, flames curling along its edge. For a moment they both stared at it—and then Toby lunged forward and stomped on the envelope until the fire was out. He bent down, picked it up between thumb and forefinger. “Sorry, sir,” he said, panting a little. “Dunno how that happened—”
But the man was retreating through the half-open door. “I don’t want it,” he said sharply.
“But it’s yours, sir!” There was something in the depths of the building behind the man, a silver shape of some kind . . .
“I don’t want it,” the man said again—and then, as though to ward boy and envelope away, he dug into his apron pocket and thrust a coin at Toby. The boy took it, then nearly dropped it: it was burning hot. Liberty’s profile filled its front. Three Dollars, said the reverse.
Giddily Toby looked up from the coin—just as the door slammed shut and the bolt slid home, leaving him alone on the stoop, a singed cable in one hand and half a week’s pay in the other.
In a daze he walked back to his bicycle. What had just happened? The man, the heat, the flames, the coin: it had all taken less than a minute. He’d have thought it all some kind of vaudeville illusion, except that the man had seemed just as confused as Toby.
He slipped the coin into his pocket, then considered the envelope. Had it been doused with kerosene somehow, at the docks? He brought it to his nose, but smelled only burnt paper. One entire side of the rectangle was gone. He squeezed the envelope a bit—and it gaped open, revealing paper that was darkened at its edge but otherwise whole.
We’re not allowed to peek.
He looked around, but the spectators had all moved on. Carefully he pulled the message free—and the words Chava Levy leapt at him from the paper.
He took a startled breath, then read it from the beginning:
MY NAME HAS CHANGED BUT I TRUST YOU REMEMBER THE FOUNTAIN IN CENTRAL PARK AND THE FIREPLACE ON FIFTH AVE RETURNING TO NYC THURSDAY PM MUST SEE YOU SEND REPLY HOTEL EARLE URGENT CHAVA LEVY MUST NOT KNOW.
SOPHIA WILLIAMS
He remembered, then, where he’d seen the man before. The morning after Triangle; his mother on the sofa, burning with fever. The tall man talking to Missus Chava in front of her boardinghouse, falling silent at Toby’s approach.
He stared up at the Amherst’s facade. Then he slid the cable back into its envelope and wheeled his bike around the corner, into the alley.
Only one of the boys had stayed behind, the smallest of the bunch. He was perhaps seven, and wore what looked to be an older brother’s cast-offs: a too-large shirt tucked into baggy short pants, with a rope belt to cinch it all together. The boy glanced up at Toby, then turned his attention back to the ground, where he was using a stick to poke at a dark, irregular patch that had been set into the concrete.
Toby leaned his bicycle against the alley wall. “So, that’s Ahmad al-Hadid,” he said.
“He’s just Mister Ahmad,” the boy said.
“Do you know him?”
The boy shook his head. “No one does. He’s—” And then a word that sounded like biddoo.
Toby frowned. “What’s that mean?”
“Means he ain’t Christian.”
“Huh.” Toby wondered how to proceed. “So, you aren’t allowed to talk to him?”
“Naw, we’re allowed, he just don’t. He never comes out, not since Mister Arbeely died.”
“Who’s that?”
“His friend. They bought the Amherst together. Now it’s just Mister Ahmad’s.”
Toby whistled low. “He must be rich,” he said, feeling the weight of the coin in his pocket.
The boy shrugged again, but his expression suggested that he shared this theory.
Toby considered a moment, then said, “You ever heard the name Chava Levy?”
The boy looked up. “I seen her once,” he said.
Toby’s heart leapt. “You did? Where?”
The boy gestured heavenward with the stick, and Toby realized he meant the rooftops. “With Mister Ahmad. They usedta walk up there, and talk in different languages, all twisted together. My brother said they’d done that since before I was born. They’d walk around all night and then go to Mister Ahmad’s apartment, and in the morning she’d come out again.”
Toby’s eyebrows rose. Missus Chava had kept a secret love-nest in Little Syria? “But this was all before Mister . . . before the other fella died.”
The boy nodded. “She never came around, after that. And all the people who worked in the Amherst left, too.”
“When was that? Do you remember?”
The boy thought. “Ma was pregnant. And Hanna’s almost three.”
“So he’s been in there all alone for three years?”
“Guess so.”
“Huh.” He would’ve liked to show the boy the cable, and ask what he made of it, but held back. Peeking at a message was bad enough; showing it around was worse. Still, the boy had been a surprising help. Toby reached into his pocket, past the golden coin, and fished out one of the City Hall nickels. “Here,” he said, handing it to the boy. “Take yourself to the pictures.”
The boy grinned his thanks, and ran off.
Toby frowned down at the envelope. He couldn’t just keep it; it belonged to the man in the building, even if he didn’t want it. For all Toby’s disappointment in Western Union, he still believed in the job itself. A message must reach its destination.
He wheeled his bicycle back to the front door, slipped the cable through the letterbox slot as quick as he could, and then pedaled away, thinking hard.
The Jinni stood among the shards of his work, cursing himself.
He never should have opened the door. He should’ve had the sense to ignore it. But the incongruity of the boy’s taunt—Was that Yiddish?—had wrested his attention away. He’d joggled the pane upon the stack, and they’d all shattered, four days’ worth of glass gone in an instant, and before he could stop himself he’d opened the door—
And the world had come rushing in.
Sunlight, near to blinding. A messenger-boy in a uniform, a badge on his cap. Children running away in fright. A chemist’s across the street that should’ve been a grocer’s. The Woolworth’s crown, the new copper already tinged with green. The shock on the boy’s face as the envelope burst into flame.
He wiped a shaking hand across his eyes and looked down at the fragments, then up at the Amherst, his private, perfect world.
Something’s missing.
No. Nothing was missing. It was merely unfinished. He would melt down the shards and begin again.
He swept up the fragments, heated himself at the forge, lost himself in his work. It was some time before he passed by the front door, and saw the singed envelope. Without missing a step, without allowing himself a moment’s thought, he grabbed it and turned it to ash.
* * *
“Hollandaise,” said Charlotte Levy, “is the most difficult to master of the five basic sauces.”
The girls of the third-period Culinary Science class listened in rapt attention.
“In fact, given the delicate chemistry of the sauce, it would not be out of place to cook it in a laboratory. But since this would be inconvenient for our purposes, we must make do with our classroom instead.”
This was as close to joking as Miss Levy ever came. She smiled at them, and they smiled back—all except for the new girl, Kreindel Altschul, who stood crammed into a corner of the island like an extra hour added to a clock. Had there been more warning, Miss Levy might’ve created a separate lesson for Kreindel, to smooth her way into the class. Then again, perhaps the girl would relish the challenge. At the moment she mainly seemed resentful of having to wear the cook’s whites.
Miss Levy launched into her lecture: the process of emulsification, the role of the egg-yolk and the binding properties of lecithin, the need to hold the sauce at a low and constant heat to keep it from curdling. From there she reminded them of the dangers of bacterial growth, and the symptoms of salmonella. When at last the girls began to light the burners and crack the eggs, the room was so charged with trepidation that they might’ve been stirring up batches of gelignite.
She began her circular patrol, watching their progress. Four of the girls’ sauces had curdled immediately; they stood over pans of thin, lumpy liquid, desperately whisking. “If the sauce has merely separated, an extra egg-yolk may be whisked in to improve the emulsion,” she told them. “But a curdled sauce can only be rid of its lumps.” The girls sighed, and fetched their strainers.
She came around to the corner where Kreindel stood beside Sarah Rosen, her reluctant partner. Kreindel was whisking their pan, her face a portrait of frustration.
“It’s gonna curdle,” Miss Rosen hissed.
“No, it won’t.” Kreindel whisked harder.
“Girls,” Miss Levy said—and then Kreindel’s head came up to glare at her, and she nearly gasped as the girl’s anger struck her with shocking force, near to a physical blow.
She took a step backward. “Excuse me,” she heard herself say. And then she was walking out the door, down the hall to the teachers’ lavatory, as time slowed down and the world pulled away.
The lavatory door closed behind her with a calm and faraway sound. She went to the sink, gripped its sides, and stared at herself in the mirror, her sharpened vision showing her the minuscule particles of clay that made up her face, the rouge smeared atop them like paint on a wooden doll. There was a crack beneath her fingers. She released the sink, saw the new fracture that webbed through the porcelain—like the cracks in the concrete, the crater in the alley where—
No, she told herself. You are not her. You are Charlotte Levy.
She stretched her fingers out, pulled them in. Slowly, the world in the mirror returned to normal. Time resumed its usual pace.
She frowned down at the crack in the sink, and left the lavatory.
The class was quiet when she reentered. Inevitably, a few of the girls were wondering if she’d fallen pregnant, and had left to vomit in secret. Kreindel had abandoned her whisking and now stood with folded arms, staring at her saucepan and its mess of curdled yolks.
“I told you,” Sarah said.
“It doesn’t matter anyway, it’s just a sauce,” muttered Kreindel, a touch too loudly.
The room stilled in shock. Didn’t matter? Only Kreindel would dare say such a thing—an insult to their teacher, not to mention their own accomplishments! And yet she’d said it with such offhanded certainty that they were suddenly unsure of their convictions. Was Kreindel right? Did a sauce matter, like other things mattered?
Miss Levy took a steadying breath. “It’s true,” she said, “an individual sauce may not ‘really matter,’ as you say.” She turned to address the class as a whole. “But tell me, if you would. Above all else, what is every resident’s complaint about the Asylum?”
“The food,” the girls groaned in chorus.
She smiled. “Exactly. And this is not to disparage our kitchen-workers, by any means. In fact, one might argue that theirs is the most difficult task in the entire Asylum. They must plan nutritious meals for over a thousand children, on a closely monitored budget, using ingredients that can be purchased in large quantities and held in storage for days—and on top of all that, they must also follow our dietary laws. Given so many restrictions, it’s a wonder there’s any variety to your meals at all. But—let us imagine that, one day, the kitchen staff forgoes all the rules. You arrive at your breakfast, and find that on every table is a bowl of brandied vanilla sauce, to pour over your usual eggs and toast. Or, at supper, a béchamel with grated nutmeg, for your boiled vegetables. What would the general reaction be, do you think? Would it be memorable?”
Their wide eyes assured her that it would be memorable indeed.
“An unfair example, perhaps, but you see my point. Any individual dish may not make a great difference in itself—but well-prepared food, in variety and abundance, matters greatly in the aggregate.”
The girls nodded with her, their certainty restored. Kreindel stood sullen and alone, arms still folded against them.
The bell sounded then, and in a rush the girls peeled off their white coats and caps and began to file toward the door. “Thank you, ladies,” Miss Levy called. And then, “Miss Altschul?”
The young woman paused, longing to leave. Her teacher waited until the others were out of hearing, and then said, “I’m told that you joined my class under protest. I can understand your frustration—but please do give it an honest try.”
“Yes, Miss Levy,” Kreindel said; but her voice was dull with resentment.