I found myself in a thick wood all alone. Suddenly there was a clearing, and then an orchard. Plum and pear and apple trees, with flowers and fruit at the same time. I started to pick the fruits, heaping them in my skirt. The plums were huge and ripe, the apples bright red and sweet smelling. Esther came. I could see the freckles on her cheeks. “You must not eat these,” she said. All the trees started to burn and the fruit flamed in my skirt. I had to drop everything. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move my legs. Esther disappeared.
“Chava! Chavele!” My mama shook my shoulder. “You’re just having a bad dream. Sha, stop crying.” I sat up and embraced her.
“Esther wouldn’t let me eat the apples, Mama.”
“It’s just a dream, little beanpole. I know you’re hungry. See, I brought you some kugl. You eat now. When you’re done you’ll help me with the washing and we’ll see about your toy.”
Mama had a special storeroom in our house. She sold everything that Jews needed to be Jews: Shabbes, yortsayt and havdale candles, talesim, tfilin, wine cups, everything. She even had a few books of prayer for women, techinot, because she led the women’s section in shul on Shabbes. Mama said only rabbis’ wives could have this special store. Good fortune smiled on us, she said, because she didn’t have to go to the marketplace or take in washing like other mothers, and she was usually home except when she took baskets around to the poor. Sometimes she let me go with her. What made someone poor and someone rich? When I asked Mama if we were rich, she laughed. She said the wheel of fortune was always turning and the only riches we could hold onto were our good feelings for each other.
I tried to count the good feelings I had but they weren’t that many. When I saw my cousins Rebkah and Aviva wearing Esther’s and my old dresses I didn’t feel good about having new clothes at Pesach. Esther always made a big fuss about getting a new dress but I didn’t see what was so great about it. They were scratchy and stiff and you had to try hard to keep them clean and you weren’t supposed to run because you might tear them. Mama said I should be more grateful. When she was a girl she never got new dresses of her own, only second hand. I tried to be grateful for Mama’s sake, but was it right to be grateful just because someone else wanted you to be? When I told Mama I didn’t care about the new dress, she should put it in her basket for another girl who really wanted it, she got angry. Papa was angry at me a lot but it hurt more when Mama was.
Most of the time she was too busy to stay angry long. There were always strangers in our house, her students and women dropping by to talk to Mama. When Papa was home, men came to see him—almost every meal some boy with a few whiskers was eating with us, getting embarrassed while Papa questioned him about Hillel or Rashi. They wanted the right answers so much. Sometimes they held their breath, waiting for a heavenly voice to guide them. Then they choked on their cucumbers.
“Let the boy eat,” Mama would say. “Really, Isaac, after dinner, when I clear the plates, then you talk Torah.”
“You see, even an educated woman like my Miriam, she doesn’t know Talmud from Torah,” he was compelled to say to the student. She glared at him.
“The soup is excellent, Mrs. Meyer. Even my own mother never made such a vegetable soup!” the student said.
I made a face at Esther, who of course just shrugged. Like a donkey, a donkey with a pretty saddle. She thought everything Papa did was wonderful, to her he was a god. Sometimes I teased her, reminding her we were taught “you shall have no other Gods before me” and that talking about Papa like he was God broke the law. This confused her. She told Mama I was mocking the Commandments. Esther was always so nice at the table it made me itch. At least when I made faces at Sarah she giggled and dropped her spoon.
When Papa was at shul, different strangers sometimes came to see Mama, not just for Shabbes things. Hatmakers, storytellers, beggars, sometimes even Moldavians. I thought she lent money to people as well as running the store. Papa didn’t have to worry about such things. Only God was above him and he always looked up. Naturally he never saw how filthy the street was, how hard it was to live there.
Papa said we were lucky to have such a wonderful mother who made us such a good Jewish home. Yet he didn’t really know where the money came from. He thought we managed to feed all the people he brought home on the couple of rubles and chickens the congregation paid him.
“Now you can try.”
Mama made one loaf out of two long tubes of dough. The loaf tapered at the ends and swelled in the middle. I loved to watch Mama’s hands, kneading, sewing, turning the pages of a book, always moving. She said my hands would look like hers when I grew up if I could stop biting my fingernails. At least my hands were finally big enough to pull all the dough for the second loaf onto the table.
“And what do you think you’re doing, hmm?”
“What you did, Mama.”
“Don’t you remember what we must do with the dough?”
“Take out a portion for the priests and throw it in the oven when the bread goes in,” I sighed.
“Then do it.”
Mama laughed at my handful of dough. “Our ‘priest’ is not that hungry, little one. This much will feed him.” She broke off a piece the size of a walnut. “You sin by wasting almost as much as by not doing at all.”
Abraham, who was reading at the little table beside the window where the light was best, turned his shaggy face towards us.
“Don’t look at me like that, Mister Scholar,” Mama said. “‘To each according to their ability to understand.’ We aren’t disturbing you, are we?”
Mama was only half-serious. Abraham lifted one eyebrow, the way he practiced for hours—he could almost do it like the old men in shul. He had big, thick eyebrows that ran together above his nose. “No, Mama, I just got distracted for a minute.”
“Then reapply yourself. You know we have work to do here.” He bobbed his head over the book and Mama put the priest’s portion aside. As I rolled and braided, she placed her hand over mine from time to time, directing, showing how to make the shape. Then she kissed the top of my head, which made me taste hot bread in my mouth. “Good, now rinse off your hands in the basin and bring me the bowl.”
She put the covered challah on top of the oven and the bowl beside it. “When the bread is ready to bake, I’ll call you and we’ll go over the prayers together, all right? I have special work to do before I make Shabbes dinner. Remind me we have to plan your costumes for the Purim play. Esther will measure you.”
“Mama—.” I knew I was supposed to let her finish her work, especially before Shabbes, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“What is it, Chavele?”
“Mama—.” Why was it so hard to ask? I bounced from foot to foot. Mama looked like she was going to laugh. I hated that look. “It’s not fair.”
“And exactly what is not fair this time?”
“Just because her name is Esther doesn’t mean she should get to play Queen Esther every year. I don’t want to be Vashti again. I don’t like her song.”
“And which song don’t you like?” Mama was already concentrating on threading her needle. Embroidering the edge of a talis was more important to her than me.
“You know, Mama,” I said as dramatically as I could, shouting and clutching my dress, so she’d look at me. “That pitiful one, ‘Help me, fields and help, stones. Help me, every feeling soul. Help me, help me, help me, every feeling soul!’”
“If you sing like that,” Mama said, laughing, “you’ll turn the whole play into a farce. But you miss the point, little one. Without her refusal to dance for the drunkard king, there’d be no play.”
“I don’t care. I’m old enough for a better part.” I scratched a line in the hard dirt floor with my shoe.
“You’re eight years old and you want to play Queen Esther this year? What will your sister do?”
“I don’t want to be Queen Esther either. I want to be Mordecai.” There, I said it. I didn’t care if she didn’t like it, if she swept me out of the room as if I were a pebble littering the floor.
“Mordecai! Your brother Abraham is always Mordecai.”
Abraham looked up again. “Let Chava be Mordecai if she wants to be. Maybe I won’t be in the play. I heard there was going to be a meeting—”
“A meeting? Every year your father has you put on the play for his students and the cousins. You know how he depends on you. He wants a dignified play, not like the purimshpil that goes on in the streets. Some other night you can go off to a meeting. And what kind of Jews have a meeting on Purim?”
“Purim isn’t the most holy day, Mama. It’s not my fault it comes Saturday night this year, after Shabbes, when everyone likes to have meetings. It’s only students, to talk about what’s happening in the north.”
“In the north?”
“You know, about the Zionist conference Theodore Herzl organized last year.”
“You want to go to this meeting?” She studied him.
“There’ll be other meetings,” he shrugged and pretended to go back to his reading.
“That’s right, there’ll be other meetings. On Purim, you’ll be here with your family. Before the play you have to go with your sisters and brother and distribute the food baskets. You can’t just shake off your duties and run off with your student friends whenever it suits you.”
“All right, all right. But I don’t care about the play. I’ll be Haman, even.”
“Daniel wants to be Haman, God in heaven knows why.” Mama frowned, but I couldn’t tell if it was about Daniel or because she had to pull out a stitch. Almost always her embroidery was perfect, even though the light by the stove wasn’t very good.
“He says he wants to understand how the evil one feels, so he can know how to fight him. He may be no scholar but he’s always thinking,” Abraham said, as if Daniel’s ideas were silly to him. “It doesn’t matter, Mama. So I’ll be the king. It’s part of Purim for Chava to be able to play Mordecai if she wants.”
Abe hardly ever paid any attention to what I did. Usually it seemed his idea of our family stopped at Daniel. It was about time he stuck up for me. “See, Abe thinks it’s all right. I never get a chance to be the hero.”
“A hero you want to be! You and Daniel, you’re cut from the same cloth, think you know everything there is to know. But you don’t know that Mordecai’s not the hero. We just tell that to your brothers.” She looked at Abraham and he tilted his head, half closing his eyes, smiling. “For Purim, it’s Queen Esther who’s the hero.”
I banged my hands against my legs. “But Mama, Esther will never let me play the Queen and I want to be Mordecai.”
Abraham stood up, stretching. He would sit reading for so many hours that it amazed me he could move anything besides his hand to turn the pages. “You know, Chava, they say on Purim you’re supposed to get so drunk you can’t tell Haman from Mordecai anyway, or boys from girls.”
“Drunk!” Mama said. “Just because you’re not getting to go to your meeting, you’re not getting drunk. And I don’t like you putting all these ideas into Chava’s head.” She turned to me. “Abraham will play Mordecai.”
“Oh, please Mama! Abe said he didn’t care and I want a real part this year. I’m old enough. Sarah can be Vashti and Abe would make a great Akhashverus. I’ll do extra work—I’ll make up all the food baskets.”
“You will, will you?”
“I’ll do whatever you tell me. I know I’ll be a great Mordecai. I already know his lines—,” I found my deepest voice by pushing my chin into my chest, “—‘Think not that thou shalt escape in the king’s house, more than any Jew.’”
“You remember that?” She looked over my head, out the window where there was nothing to see. “Well, maybe it will be all right. It’s true what your brother says. Once I even had to play Haman myself.”
“You?”
“Why not? You think your mother never had any fun in her life, she was just put on this earth to take care of all you children and teach little girls their grammar? My mother had three girls first and then four boys—I was just the opposite. So anyway, when we were young, my mother, blessed be her name, made us the most wonderful costumes. It was a good time for the Jews then, not like now.” She stopped and bit off the end of the thread. “We could afford to spare golden thread like this for the sleeves of our costumes. Can you imagine?”
“What kind of costume will you make me?” Once Mama started to talk about the old days, I knew she’d give in. I hopped around the table to her side so I could examine the embroidery.
“For you, sackcloth and ashes.”
“Mama!”
Mama laughed and ran her palm over my head. She went beneath the hair, checking for lice. “Well, doesn’t Mordecai wear sackcloth and ashes at the king’s gate after Haman decides to kill the Jews?” She looked to Abraham for verification. He closed his eyes again and nodded, to show how weary of us he was.
“Abraham never had to wear sackcloth and ashes.”
“Because he could read the whole story. Can you do that?”
“If you’d teach me, I could.”
“Oy, an answer for everything. You think you could learn the whole Megile in two weeks?”
“Mordecai is very brave. Mordecai can do anything!” I stood as straight as I could so she’d know how serious I was. If she let me be Mordecai, I’d show her how smart I could be, too.
“Enough of this nonsense. Go find your sister Esther. I want her to start doing this embroidery herself. You can watch Sarah until it’s time to put the bread in the oven and make dinner. Go on.”
Papa and Daniel fought so long about Daniel going to apprentice with the printer Simeon Wolowitz I thought God himself would have to intervene. Who was right? Daniel tried to plead his case at dinner, pressing and clenching his fists against the table top, as if only that motion would keep him from flying out of the room. Papa’s face got dark red splotches under his beard. Mama would make them stop, saying they’d ruin our digestion. Daniel took it up again on the way to shul, following six inches behind Papa, but Papa would cut him short and Daniel knew better than to show disrespect in front of others. But when he and Papa returned home they would start again.
They didn’t know I listened, maybe they didn’t care. I was in the kitchen dipping Shabbes candles. Their words bounced off the stone walls of Mama and Papa’s room. I could hear each one.