Jerusalem Maiden by Talia Carner Page A

asked as her fingers sealed a triangular pocket of dough.
    â€œWhat a tongue! He hears your insolent questions,” said Tova, her tone warning.
    â€œI ask Him the same thing directly,” Esther replied. “Anyway, doesn’t He see the truth in each of us? He even remembers the dreams we forget by the time we wake up.”
    â€œWhat are you, a rabbi?” Tova turned to Ima. “You’d better tame that impertinent daughter of yours. That brazen Greenwald girl who ran away with a goy ? Tfoo, tfoo, tfoo. One brother was stung to death by a swarm of bees, the other kidnapped by pirates, her father walked into an Arab’s knife, her sisters got leprosy, and her mother died of sorrow. It all started with her first doubting Hashem!”
    â€œ Tfoo, tfoo, tfoo, ” came the wet refrain all around.
    â€œI don’t doubt Hashem,” Esther said. “And my Aba says that asking Him questions is the first step to learning—”
    Ima elbowed her to shut up.
    â€œDvora, it’s that school of hers,” a neighbor told Ima. “Religious it may be, but it gives your daughters profane ideas. No one sends good girls to school.”
    Esther’s arm swept the worktables around the yard. “Why doesn’t Hashem let girls study and give the hard tasks to boys?” she asked.
    â€œYou want to change His order? Like a Zionist?” one woman said, and the other shook a finger at Esther. “Hashem didn’t give girls the brain and diligence for studying, or He would have made them boys.”
    â€œIf my grandmother had you-know-what”—Ima laughed in what Esther knew was an attempt to diffuse Esther’s outrageous words—“she would have been my grandfather.”
    â€œHow much do you pay to corrupt your girls’ souls?” a woman with a huge belly asked Ima.
    â€œMiss Landau sells Esther’s lace and crochet aprons in overseas markets. It pays both girls’ tuitions,” Ima said, for once meekly, and Esther cringed for her sake. “The school teaches cleanliness, loyalty, obedience, and the reverence of Hashem—”
    â€œObedience? Didn’t you just hear this daughter of yours?” Tova cut her off, and the others giggled.
    A t dusk, as the women collected their pots and utensils, Asher came by to fetch his mother, who didn’t need “fetching” as much as showing off. Spotting him, Esther announced, “Here comes ‘My Asher,’ ” and even Ima giggled. Asher’s eyes gleamed in amusement as he glanced at Esther, until his mother’s scowling stopped him. As Esther scrubbed the long wooden tables before dismantling them, she thought that if she had ever envied Avram’s or even Moishe’s spots at the feet of God, she wouldn’t have traded places with Asher. She had yet to decide what to do about the danger to this sorry, frail boy, whose soul goyim lay in wait to rob.
    Exhausted, she helped Ima pack the food into the tin cans ordered from the tinsmith and arrange the delicacies in the front room into cages of metal mesh hung from the high ceiling out of the reach of mice. As she examined the display, for a fleeting second, she understood the satisfaction that enticed Ruthi. Yet, the day among the neighborhood women made it clear that she had been carved from a different Adam’s rib.
    The sweet aroma of almonds nestled in the embrace of pitted dates, and sesame candies coated in caramel sugar teased Esther’s nostrils as silence fell on the house. The only sound was the creaking of the bed behind the curtain. Ima was probably giving herself an enema; constipation was the curse of the Jews, she had told Esther. As the bed rocked in a soft rhythm, Ima groaned, and even Aba grunted.
    Sleep pulled Esther into its deep well as she wondered why God had placed so many curses on the Chosen People.
    E sther dawdled until everyone was outside, heading for Friday-night services at