Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 14 of a new online serial novel, Nine A.M., by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
We are gratified to invite the members of the community to the engagement celebration of Mordechai, son of Reb Elimelech Kush, and Elka, daughter of Reb Shmelke Cohen, which will take place b’ezras Hashem after work hours, women in the sewing room, and men in the factory hall, second floor.
“That girl who’s engaged—she’s your friend who was here, right?” Katy asked Naomi as she swiped a rag over the floor of the kindergarten room. “She works in the offices, doesn’t she? Hey, why don’t you?”
Naomi looked at a few of the children who had gathered around them, excitedly singing “kallah-kallah-kallah-chasunah!” and replied, “What does that mean? I don’t work in the offices because I really love working with the children in the preschool!”
“Ha, ha!” Katy declared. “Everyone knows that it’s because you’re thin and pale and they didn’t find anyone else who agreed to work here besides you.”
“But I want to be working here!” Naomi was speaking loudly, looking at the children all around her. “They’re all so cute, Katy, don’t you think?”
“Not all of them.” The older girl wrinkled her nose. “For instance—”
“Naomi, when are you going to be a kallah?” five-year-old Dror Elkovitz, who had appeared suddenly, asked. He was holding his coloring paper. “Look, I drew a kallah on my paper for your friend who got engaged. She’s the one who brought us those sugar candies, right?”
“Yes!” another boy chimed in. “Maybe she got engaged because she did this mitzvah!”
“Right!” two other children affirmed. In their small community, an event like a wedding was always exciting; it broke up the routine. It was no wonder that even the tots in the preschool were excited about the news.
“Is that really the girl?” Dror asked again.
“Yes,” Naomi said, relieved that he’d moved on without insisting on an answer to his first question.
“So I want to write ‘mazel tov’ to her, in Hebrew. How do we write it? Is there an aleph there? I know how to write an aleph!”
“There is no aleph,” Naomi replied. “But I can write the letters for you with chalk on the board, and you can copy them, okay?”
“Yay!” His eyes sparkled as he followed her to the other half of the classroom. There, four tables were arranged across from a wooden rectangle painted dark green. Her brother Binyamin had obtained a large wooden board and had covered it in six coats of glossy paint, until it had become as close to a real blackboard as possible. Now it was empty, as the older children were busy doing free play with the little ones.
Naomi took a piece of chalk and wrote the words “mazel tov” in large, neat letters on the board. Dror sat down at one of the older kids’ desks, and very quickly a group gathered around him.
“I also want to write it!” another boy said breathlessly. He was another child whose parents would not be happy having Naomi let him practice writing the aleph-beis letters. “I’m also big!”
Just then Mila appeared. She took in the scene before her: the Hebrew words on the board, and little Dror sitting there, assiduously copying the letters from it onto his paper.
“I’m going to have a word with Suzy Elkovitz,” she said after a moment, her voice dangerously calm. “It isn’t right that you’re teaching her son whatever you want. She’s going to talk to her father, the general manager.”
“The boy asked me to show him, Mila. I did nothing of my own initiative.”
“Really!”
“Yes!” Dror said suddenly. “I told Naomi to show me. I wanted to know if there’s an aleph here!”
“And who taught you about aleph?”
“I’m not saying!” the boy crowed. “It’s a secret between me and my Mamme!”
Mila looked at him strangely before turning back to Naomi. “I know that the mothers like you very much,” she said to Naomi. “But I don’t believe his mother is really aware of everything that is happening here. And I’m sure his grandfather doesn’t know that he is learning Hebrew letters in your preschool!”
“You know, they named him Dror, and that’s a Hebrew word,” Naomi pointed out. “Even some of the irreligious people like the language.”
“Say what you want—but I’m sure his grandfather would be horrified if he knew about this!”
“Okay,” Naomi said resignedly. “So maybe they’ll fire me and appoint you in my place.”
“You know that I’m not interested in being the full-time teacher here,” Mila snapped. “I have a job waiting for me. But that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want.”
Katy suddenly appeared from behind her. “Naomi absolutely can do whatever she wants! Yes, that is correct! Anyone who doesn’t want to be the teacher here shouldn’t talk! I know better than anyone that she and I are getting the lowest wages from everyone else in the camp, so at least give her this—that she can teach what she wants. And don’t you interfere, Mila!”
“I’m going to talk to Suzy Elkovitz about this, too. Today.” Mila spoke quietly and tightly, hardly moving her lips. Her words were for Naomi’s ears only. “You knew what you were doing when you chose her, huh? But I won’t let this happen!”
But at six-thirty, when Suzy Elkovitz arrived, and her young son proudly showed her the paper with the mazel tov wishes he had prepared for Elky, the new kallah, she merely smiled weakly at it. Then she glanced furtively in every direction, before hurrying outside with him.
Mila watched them for a minute, and then dropped her broom and hurried after them.
“They won’t do anything to you,” Katy consoled Naomi compassionately. “In any case, no one wants to be the teacher instead of you; they don’t want to be a poor thing like Bilhah. They might scold you a bit, but that’s really it. Are you afraid?”
Naomi pondered the question for a moment and discovered that no, she was not afraid. She didn’t care if she’d be fired—because then she’d have a chance at a better job. In fact, that’s what her mother wished would happen. But on the other hand, she liked the children and the classroom…
It’s rather sad when a person doesn’t know exactly what he wants, she mused.
“But it’s very normal!” her aunt Chani said, when she met her outside a few minutes later and told her her thoughts. Chani, like Naomi, did not have the rigorous and structured work hours that the other workers had. Her schedule revolved around mealtimes at the manor house. “If there are arguments in favor of both sides, then there’s what to deliberate about. And then yes, you don’t always know exactly what you want. That’s normal!”
“It happens to you, too?” Naomi asked with a sour smile.
“Yes, of course! Look, just today I was seriously not sure about two different things, one more important than the other.”
“Really? Can you share with me what happened?”
“Well, I’ll tell you about one of the things—the one that was less significant. Your friend Elky’s mother asked me to prepare the food for the vort. On the one hand, I really wanted to, because it would mean some extra income. On the other hand, I feel like these private cooking jobs come at the expense of other important things.”
“Like what, for example?”
“The few hours that I have with the children at home.”
Naomi thought about that. “I hear you,” she said. “So what did you decide to do?”
“To accept the private job—and to schmooze with my kids while I’d work on it.”
“Which is something you do a lot, as it is,” Naomi complimented her. “And what was the second thing?”
“I’m not telling.” Chani smiled, but her eyes were somber. “I’m still unsure about it.”
“So you’re going home now to start cooking for the vort?”
“To start cooking for it? What’s with you?! Of course not; I started before dawn this morning! Now I have to continue, until I finish. I’m running, Naomi.”
“Okay, good luck! And…thanks.”
“What for?”
“For letting me unload what’s on my heart.”
***
Above the crystal-encrusted mirror hung a long shelf on which rested clear flasks of various sizes, filled with spices in all kinds of colors and textures. The mirror was huge, and Dena, glancing at it from a distance of four meters away, saw herself looking small and hapless, drowning in the overstuffed white couch. Was this for real? Was she actually sitting here in Vienna with her mother-in-law, in front of elegant platters of cake, chatting about the difficulty of the move? They had come to help Bentzy’s father in his spice-import business, and though the decision had been made a while ago, she was still having a hard time coming to terms with it. The whole thing still seemed surreal.
“I hardly had what to deliberate about; it was so clear to Bentzy that this is what we needed to do…” she said quietly.
Her mother-in-law beamed. “You’re an amazing wife—I’ve told you that, haven’t I?” She nudged a plate of fudgy brownies toward her daughter-in-law. “But take my word for it: You’ll be here a few more days, and then you’ll forget that it was ever even hard for you to come to Europe. And who knows? It might even be strange for you to go back to Israel, when the time comes!” She chuckled at the idea.
Dena nodded politely.
“So, what did your sisters have to say about it?”
They felt very bad for me. “They tried to help as best they could. Yael, who lives on my block, took my kids over to her while I packed.”
“They weren’t jealous of you?”
“I hope not.” Me?! The quietest, most mediocre of them all?! What is there to be envious about?! That I married a rich boy from abroad?! It was clear to all of them that he was not in the top tier of his yeshivah, and not even in the second or third tier. And still, I allowed myself to weave dreams. Lots of great women started out very slowly.
So what is there for them to be jealous about? That I flew to Vienna for some time? It only distances me from my dreams, and leaves me feeling even smaller and more mediocre than I already was, compared to the rest of my family…
But this, of course, is not something I can tell Bentzy’s mother.
She picked up the little, two-tined fork in front of her, and saw her double in the mirror doing the same. She couldn’t stand it; all these trappings were not for her. How could someone eat calmly with this mirror right here, showing yourself chewing all the time?
Her mother-in-law did not seem to be suffering from the same difficulty. She glanced at herself in the mirror, brushed an invisible speck off of her collar, and took a forkful of cake from her own plate. “Excellent cake,” she said to Dena. “Why aren’t you eating it? It’s a recipe from my mother; Bentzy always liked it. I made it for every one of his birthdays.”
“You’ll teach me how to make it,” Dena said, thinking about the strange kitchen that she’d have to start getting used to alone—and with a new and unfamiliar recipe, which appeared to be rather complicated, no less. She’d never baked a cake that hadn’t come recommended by one of her sisters, along with detailed tips from them.
“It’s a complicated recipe,” her shvigger said, confirming her daughter-in-law’s hesitations. “For instance, if you heat the chocolate cream for ten seconds too long, you’ll have to throw the whole mixture into the garbage, because it’ll get this horrible taste. If you want, the first few times you make the cake, we can do it together, step by step.”
“Thanks,” Dena said, not knowing if she should breathe a sigh of relief or the opposite. Baking with her shvigger at her side? She wasn’t all that good at baking in the first place.
She wasn’t that good at anything, actually. It had been that way since she’d been a little girl, and it was still true today.
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