“My love, don’t,” he whispered, taking her into his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” she answered, snuggling against him. “Yaakov, I’m so frightened.”

“Of what?”

“That all this isn’t real. That Boro Park isn’t real. It’s like the theater, where people present some reality to an audience, trying to make people believe it’s true, when the storefronts are made of cardboard and the clothes are all costumes they put on and take off, along with the expressions on their faces.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You grew up here, Yaakov, but this is all new to me. I wanted … want … so much to believe that people here are different. That they practice what they preach. Otherwise, what am I doing here?”

He moved closer, holding her to him. “I understand, my Leah-le,” he murmured. “I really do.”

She held his face in her hands and kissed him. “I know this is hard for you, but you have to promise me you won’t send her back to him … not until you look into it.”

“Bli neder, you have my word.”

He felt her face next to his, the warm flesh of her arms in his hands. Her skin was like silk, he thought wonderingly, and her hair smelled of roses. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, he thought with passion. With her help, he slowly lifted her nightgown delicately over her head.

But even carried away, he needed to be careful, he told himself, to remember how different she was from him, where she had come from, her fragility. And before he was completely caught up in the joyous rhythm of their coming together, ending the isolation and maddening loneliness, while his mind was still capable of reason, he was overcome by a terrible thought. If what Shaindele says happened to her is true, I will have to ask myself the same question: What am I doing here?

27

WILL THEY BELIEVE HER?

“I don’t understand, maideleh. What is going on with you?” Fruma Esther asked her granddaughter Shaindele the next morning. “Explain to me again why Leah wanted you to spend the night with me?”

“I told you last night, Bubbee. I need a little time for myself. Away from the tummel.”

“What tummel? You mean the kinderlach? Your brother and sister? That you call a tummel? Like you’re not used to it?” She shook her head shrewdly. “Last night, I saw you were suffering, so I left you alone. But now I want to hear the truth.”

“Please, Bubbee. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ich farshtey. But want, don’t want, you’ll talk.”