Read Online What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories by Nathan Englander - Free Book Online Page A

stand in judgment today.”
    “All right,” Yehudit said. “If Aheret is willing, I will let her stay until Rena rises from mourning.”
     
    · · ·
     
    The period of shiva was not like it was for Mati, and not like it was for Yermiyahu. It better resembled how it had been when she’d lost her husband, Hanan. The new people of the city did not know Rena. And the staunch Mizrahi religious had forgotten her son when she herself had cut him off. Many others in town, though they did not say it, felt the boy had been punished for his evil ways, and they worried that, in visiting his mother, such a thought might show up in their eyes. So they made themselves busy with other things, and they told themselves they would visit on another day, until all the days were done.
    Once again, the minyan at Rena’s shack was comprised of volunteer boys sent from a yeshiva down the hill. The main difference was that the girls were sent along with them to try to cheer her, and, of course, there was Aheret, taking care.
    When Rena addressed Aheret, she’d say, “Daughter, some tea,” or “Daughter, a biscuit.” And those bright student girls who sat with Rena could not understand why this woman grieved for her son but her daughter did not cry over her brother. To them, Rena would say, “A very long story, how I alone sit shiva and the sister does not mourn.”
    For Aheret, sleeping on a cot in that one-room shack, her only peace was on her nightly walk to the outdoor bathroom. Plumbed though it was, it was separate from the house. Onher way, Aheret would sneak over to the boulder on which the memorial obelisk stood. She would read the names of the town’s fallen by flashlight and understand that her sacrifice was small.
    Yehudit came every day to pay her respects, and to see that the girl who had been her daughter was well. She took it upon herself to bake a simple cake for the final service of the shiva, so that she would be there when the bereaved stood up from mourning and first exited the house.
    Poised in the sun with Aheret at her side, Yehudit watched in silence as Rena circled the top of the hill, enacting the traditional walk that marked the week’s close. When Rena arrived at the door once again, Yehudit wished her a long and healthy life, then took Aheret’s hand and said, “Come, my child, let’s go.”
    Rena tilted her head, quizzical, just as Yehudit had when Rena came around the house, dragging Aheret her way. “Where do you take my daughter?” Rena said. “The end of the week does not end the bond.”
    Yehudit had planned for this moment, rehearsing it ceaselessly in her head. She pulled from her pocket the original bill with which Rena had paid her. She’d saved it as a keepsake all these years.
    Rena laughed. “ Lirot ?” she said. “Not even valid currency anymore.”
    “Then I’ll pay in shekels, or dollars. You name your price.”
    “A price on a girl like this?” Rena said. “What kind of mother would sell her daughter?”
    “You know why I did it,” Yehudit said. “To save her.”
    “I also know when you did it. And I know what has changed.” Rena signaled all that was around them. “What did we pay for these hills so many years before? Now think of what it would cost to buy the city that sits atop them. Understand, Yehudit—I’m alone in the world but for my daughter. For allthe riches this world contains, I wouldn’t sell her away. She is my peace, and my comfort”—and here Rena stepped over and put a delicate touch on Aheret’s cheek, “my life.”
    Then Rena’s touch changed, and she circled that hand around Aheret’s wrist, holding tight.
    “Mother,” Aheret called, now truly frightened.
    And again, it was Rena who answered the call.
     
    · · ·
     
    Three rabbis sat under the shade of the giant olive tree. They were perched on molded plastic chairs, a plastic table before them. Rena had defied their order to appear in their court, on the grounds that a case so obvious