“You can’t be sure of that.” Was she inventing this crisis, letting her fright run away with her?
“I can, though. It’s like when a woman hides a pregnancy. First one person knows, and the next day a dozen, though no one’s said a word. I don’t know how they do it, but they do.” She sighed. “I can’t work at another bakery, everyone knows me from Radzin’s. But to learn another trade all over again . . .”
He held her hand, lightly. “Well, what else do you like to do, besides baking?”
“I have no idea.” She said it with defensive embarrassment. “I suppose I could be a seamstress, if I had to. But I already spend half my nights sewing.”
“What about nursing?”
She thought. “Perhaps. But all those people in pain, all that need . . . I think I’d have a hard time not giving myself away. Especially in winter.”
“It’s a pity,” he said, “that women can’t be smiths, or I’d hire you as an apprentice.”
He felt her smile. “You would not.”
“Of course I would. Then you could tell me what Arbeely thinks about all day long.”
She chuckled. “Oh, I see.”
He remembered Arbeely’s letter then, and his own accidental culpability in the man’s failed love-affair. He knew he ought to tell her—but he felt himself shy away from the topic. Likely she’d insist that he raise the subject with Arbeely; she might even tell him that he, too, must find employment elsewhere, so the man might have his marriage. Already he could feel himself growing angry at the thought. “What about teaching?” he said, reaching blindly for a suggestion.
He’d expected her to dismiss it as she had the others. Instead she flinched in his arms.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just—my hip, where you’re touching it.”
“Oh.” He moved his hand to a safer spot.
After a moment she said, “Do you think that I look like a schoolteacher?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.” Something pricked the back of his memory—a conversation about schoolteachers? But he felt disinclined to search it out.
The silence went on. Then she said, “I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I’m already a teacher of sorts, if you count the new hires at Radzin’s.”
“That’s true. Did you enjoy teaching them?”
“I did, actually. And they learned more quickly than any of Thea’s trainees ever did.” Then, doubt creeping into her voice: “But wouldn’t I have to earn a degree first? I’ve never been to school a day in my life, how would I—”
“Chava, don’t worry about that yet. You’ll talk yourself out of an idea before you’ve considered it properly.”
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s a good idea. It’s only daunting to think about.”
“I know.” He pulled her closer and kissed her, his hand avoiding her hip.
* * *
There’s a new girl in quarantine. Older, not a baby.
I heard she’s a true orphan.
Like most institutions of its kind, the Asylum for Orphaned Hebrews wasn’t an orphanage in the strictest sense of the word. The vast majority of its residents could name at least one living parent, a mother or father who’d made the terrible trip uptown and left a wailing child behind them. But every so often a true orphan passed through the Asylum gates—and with this distinction came a fearsome prestige. Rooms went quiet when a true orphan entered. They were chosen first for every team, and given the pick of the dining hall. To steal from a true orphan, or bully or wallop them, was unthinkable.
This hushed deference had its advantages—but it also placed them outside the Asylum’s natural order. To be a true orphan was to endure a subtle yet permanent ostracism. They must put more effort into making friends; they must be cheerful and amusing and kind-hearted, and cast off as much of their status as possible—or else they would spend their Asylum years alone.
Kreindel knew none of this, only that she’d ended up in the very place that her father had feared for her, among people he’d despised.
On the first night of quarantine they stripped her and sat her in a metal bathtub, then filled it with water so hot she nearly screamed. A nurse searched inch by inch through her long, dark hair; a dentist peered into her mouth, extracted two molars, and pronounced the remainder sound. Eight years old, the nurses muttered, looking over Kreindel’s chart. A good height for eight, but so thin! We’ll fix that soon enough.
Kreindel, eleven, said nothing. It seemed useful to have a secret in this terrible place, something she might turn to her advantage.
They fed her soft white bread soaked in broth, but her grieving body rebelled, and everything came up again. The nurses held the bowl for her, and patted her back. At night she fell asleep listening to the distant cries of the newly surrendered babies in the nursery—but she herself did not cry, not once. If the nurses were concerned by this, as Kreindel secretly was, they said not a word. They sighed in relief that she could write her Yiddish letters—at least she wasn’t entirely illiterate—and gave her an English primer, decorated with apples, bells, and cows. She leafed through it without interest, then went to the window and gazed out at the immense building across the lawn: two stories of brick and granite, a gabled Gothic fortress topped by a squat, open-sided bell tower. The peal of the bell marked every station of the day, from rising to sleeping and everything in between: when to line up for the synagogue and when to exit the dining hall, when to muster for classes, when to disperse to chore duties, when to gather for inspection or extracurriculars or lectures or field trips. To Kreindel it seemed to ring incessantly. Sometimes she could see an answering commotion in a hallway, or a spilling of children from an open door. At other times, its effect was invisible.
You’ll get used to the bell, the nurses assured her. Soon you won’t even notice it.
Her appetite returned slowly, and before long the broth and bread stayed
