It might still be all right, she comforted herself, still buoyed by the wedding in which her grandmother’s power and influence had been displayed in all its glory, bringing together the top echelon of the community’s Torah scholars to lend an aura of respectability to what would otherwise have been a disgraceful debacle that would have muddied the family’s name and ruined her chances of finding a good husband. As it was, despite the mother of the bride dressed like a harem dancing girl toting along her gentile boyfriend in his Aladdin headdress, no one had dared to boycott or even breathe a bad word. That is, at least not to their faces. To do so would have been to openly challenge the stamp of approval given the occasion by the community’s éminences grises of Torah scholarship and piety. And no one would, she thought, unless something happened that set the pot to boiling once more. Shaindele found herself obsessing over what that something could be.

There were so many things.

First, Leah could make a mistake—an innocent mistake—that would set the whole neighborhood wagging their tongues. She could, for example, wear socks and athletic shoes. After all, she had friends who went Rollerblading, and even skiing down the streets in Boro Park! Or she could buy the wrong clothes for Chasya, something red, or forget to dress her in long tights when the weather got warm. But that was the least of it.

What if down the line her father and Leah argued and the neighbors heard? She remembered that terrible time between her parents before her mother … Oh, how awful that had been! What if it happened again? What if her father realized how different Leah was? What if Leah realized what it was to live such a strict, difficult life? What if they fell out of love, separated? The whole burden of caring for her family would once again fall upon her shoulders.

It was all horribly plausible. More than once, she had pondered the strangeness of a young, secular woman choosing to live among them despite all their niggling rules and annoying restrictions. Why would you take that on yourself if you didn’t have to? Surely, it must have been fun to be secular, to go to movies and plays, and go ice-skating in Rockefeller Center in the winter, and swimming at Coney Island in the summer, all things forbidden to haredi women by virtue of the endless strictures concerning modest dress and deportment? Until Leah entered their lives, she had seldom, if ever, given such possibilities a moment’s thought.