Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life by Yehoshue Perle Page A

forbid, is something wrong?”
    Hodl didn’t answer. Shortly after we finished eating, she went out and stayed away the entire Sabbath day, and didn’t return until late that night, when Father was already sitting on the bed, pulling off his boots.
    I made up my mind to keep my distance from Hodl. I now knew full well what all those pieces of cake and chunks of halvah meant. On Sabbath mornings I no longer dawdled in bed. In fact, I was often up even before Father himself.
    Ever since that fateful Sabbath, Hodl stopped speaking not only to me, but to everyone else in the house. She pretended not to know anyone, she never asked anyone anything. For the better part of the day, she walked about the house, openly, in a sleeveless blouse, her arms bare. Again and again she would open her trunk and then bang it shut. She cooked for herself in Mother’s pots and pans, and would often break a glass. She seemed to have gone mad. Mother looked on, but kept silent.
    Father, who left the house early in the mornings, never saw Hodl in this state. No sooner than he shut the door behind him, Hodl turned over in bed. By the time he returned, late in the evening, she had already tired herself out from carrying the burden of her anger all day long.
    One day, when Mother—it should never happen again—was laid up in bed, Father stayed home, and that’s when he saw what was going on.
    Hodl kept wandering around the house, from the kitchen to the big room, from the big room to the kitchen, dressed in her sleeveless blouse. That day she was very busy with her trunk, putting things in and taking them out, locking the lid and unlocking it, over and over again. Father was standing in a corner, in his prayer shawl and phylacteries, quietly saying his morning prayers. It was hard to know whether his eyes lingered on Hodl, but suddenly he began to pray louder and faster.
    Mother was lying in bed, too weak to say anything. But when she got better and was able, with God’s help, to get out of bed, the next time she saw Hodl walking around in her sleeveless blouse, she asked her, “Aren’t you cold, Hodl?”
    Hodl stuck her large head into a small saucepan that was bubbling on the stove, and answered back with questions of her own.
    “Why should I be cold? Isn’t the stove on full blast?”
    “But how can you go around like that all day long?”
    “How am I going around? How?”
    “Well, maybe you should put something on … it’s not proper.”
    “Proper you say! What have I got to be ashamed of? Aren’t these my own clothes?”
    “But Hodlshi, at your age … after all, there’s a young boy in the house.”
    “Look who’s worried about that little boy of hers!” Hodl pointed her chin in the direction of the other room. “That little boy of yours, that little sissy, he knows more than you and I put together.”
    The blood curdled in my veins. Now it would happen! Hodl was finally going to tell everything. Where could I hide? What could I say?
    “Nu, hush …” Mother suddenly drew back and raised her two hands to fend off Hodl’s bitter words.
    “Tell me, Frimet,” Hodl planted herself smack in the middle of the room and put her hands on her hips, “since when have you become so pious?”
    Mother’s face seemed at that moment twice longer than usual. She looked alarmed, as if she’d lost her way.
    “It’s not that I’ve become more pious,” she said, “but there are men in the house.”
    “You don’t say … such men!” Hodl scoffed. “I bet your own Leyzer likes the same things other men do … ha, ha … !”
    She said it with such a smug, victorious smile on her face, with such haughty malevolence, that Mother’s lips suddenly closed, as if she were swallowing not a mouthful of air but a mouthful of blood.
    Mother’s distress nagged at me. I might have forgiven myself for my sinning, but Mother’s pain just tore me apart. If only I could have jumped up and given Hodl a punch in the stomach, I would have been