Read Online The Sisters Weiss by Naomi Ragen - Free Book Online Page A

Bais Yaakov is too free for someone like you. Only because he helped us, Bais Ruchel agreed to take you. Say thank you; otherwise, you’d be home and finished with school.”
    She would not be finishing her sophomore year at Bais Yaakov. She would not be saying good-bye to her friends, or to Michelle. The idea was like a large avalanche that buried her in darkness. It was unimaginable, a plunge and hurtle down a deep pit that seemed bottomless. She wiped her tears. “Do I have to wear them outside of school, too?”
    Her mother hesitated. No one in their family wore such stockings, but Rose—by her own choosing—was now a special case.
    “You would not want to be thrown out of Bais Ruchel, too. You know what that would mean for your shidduch, when the time comes? The matchmakers will never be able to find anyone for a girl who had to leave Bais Yaakov and then was thrown also out of Bais Ruchel…”
    Matchmakers? She was just a few years older than Pearl, she thought, shocked. “I don’t want a shidduch!”
    “Then think of Mordechai, Shlomie Yosef, your older brothers, their shidduchim! Think of Pearl and Duvid! Who will want to marry into a family with such a stain on its reputation? And think of your father! Do you think he will be able to continue working in yeshiva with such a daughter? Stop being so selfish!”
    She went to her room, rolling down her beige panty hose and pulling on the new stockings. They were dark, flesh-colored tights with awful seams going up her calves and thighs. She felt like a freak. Then, she slipped on ugly laced-up Oxfords that completely covered her lower foot. They were a perfect match with the stockings, she thought with dark humor. She sat down heavily on her bed. What strange and evil alchemy had transformed looking at beautiful pictures into this ugliness? she wondered, appalled.
    On that first night away from home, she sobbed quietly into her bed pillow on the hard bed in the strange bedroom with its ugly drapes, a room that smelled of mothballs and the paraphernalia of the old. Her shelf of books was gone, her toys and games and stuffed animals, and her pretty Shabbos dresses. All of her hair bands and barrettes, except for the plainest ones, had also been left behind. She’d been allowed to take her school bag and some long blue pleated skirts and long-sleeved blouses. She was stranded, like Robinson Crusoe, on a bare desert island with no inkling when the rescue ship would be coming for her.
    Without knocking, her bubbee opened the door, sitting down beside her.
    “Nisht fun kein nacha lebt men, un nisht fun tzores shtarbt men.” One doesn’t live for pleasure or die from aggravation!
    “A yung beimelech beigt zich; a alts brecht zich.” A young tree bends; an old tree breaks.
    “Sha … sha. It’s time to stop crying. Tomorrow is also a day.”
    She handed her granddaughter a worn, clean handkerchief, and a rugelach, hot from the oven.
    Rose sat up in bed, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose with one hand as the cookie melted in the other, filling the room with the tantalizing scent of warm cinnamon and chocolate.
    “Come into the kitchen, maideleh. I’ll make you a glass of tea.”
    She followed her bubbee into the old kitchen with its ancient stove and icebox, sitting down on a chipped wooden chair by the rickety wooden table covered with an old oilcloth. She cupped her hands around the hot glass of amber liquid, dropping in cubes of sugar.
    “In Russia, ve put a cube in our mout, den sipped de tea trouh it. Dat vay, you don’t need so many.”
    She popped a cube into her mouth also, filtering the tea through it. It was very, very sweet. She chewed silently on the warm cookie.
    “So, you vant to talk about it, maideleh?”
    “I didn’t do anything wrong, Bubbee!” Rose burst out. “I just wanted to look at some pictures in a book!”
    “I heard vat kind of pictures.”
    “But I didn’t know … I only saw the first pages when I took it home …