Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 36 of a new online serial novel, The Black Sheep, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
Ariella sat on a bench in the local park on Sunday morning. It was completely deserted at this early hour. Right opposite her was the wall that had already become familiar, to the point of it being boring; behind her was an inviting grassy lawn. She didn’t move toward it. Instead, she sat on the bench like every other mature woman her age, and wondered if Rabbi Reiness would bring his boys here this morning. It hadn’t been this mild and sunny in quite a while.
She fingered the green necklace she’d made with Aliza last week. She had no idea why she’d pushed it into her pocketbook a minute before she’d left, as if these stones could shed some light on the very cloudy picture named Aliza.
She’d spent her Shabbos closed in her room, eating the food that she’d bought. It was actually just fine, not any worse than it had been the previous Shabbos in the Abramov home. Yet she felt like the four walls were choking her. Aliza had hardly been home, neither on Friday afternoon nor on Shabbos, and when she was home, there was no way to discern that it was Shabbos. Which traditional woman did not light Shabbos candles? It was quite bizarre: the woman covered her hair but didn’t light Shabbos candles?