For the rest of the evening, Batya was careful to serve that table from its other side. This kind stranger’s future bride would be a lucky woman to have a husband who was both rich and good-hearted. That bride, Batya imagined later, when she finally lay down beside her parents, would be beautiful and come with a sizable dowry, her trousseau packed in two, maybe three, huge trunks: bed linens made of soft cotton and embroidered in silk with her initials; furs, each with its own hand muff and hat—a short white fox cape and a chestnut-colored sable coat reaching down to her ankles; at least four dresses. And then there would be leather boots and gloves, silk shoes, lace-trimmed handkerchiefs, and silk underthings. That lucky bride would most likely be the daughter of the village’s rabbi or the butcher.

Batya’s hopes to stay in the barn one more day were dashed when the innkeeper showed up the next morning. His grim, knotted brows showed none of his earlier kindness.

“Koppel, my priest says that it is unchristian to shelter you,” he told Batya’s father.

“It’s Friday.” Her father held both hands in supplication. “May God be with you, but could we at least stay till the end of the day tomorrow?”

The innkeeper shook his head. “Speaking of God, the priest says you people deserve His just punishment. Who am I to defy His will?”

Batya’s father lowered his head. “We thank you for the kindness you have shown us until now. May blessings fall on your head like stardust.”

As they gathered their belongings, Batya’s mother cried into Batya’s shoulder. “How can we prepare for Shabbat, let alone welcome it with dignity?”

Batya wished they could have stayed in the home they’d been forced to flee. A thatched-roof hut of only one small room with a ceiling so low she could reach up to grab a dangling spider, it had a stove with a wide loft built over it where the family slept together to keep warm during the long winter nights. Next to the stove had sat their table, two chairs, and the backless bench—now abandoned broken on the roadside. On the opposite wall, her father had fixed shelves to hold her mother’s few cooking pots and utensils, and the pair of candlesticks—brass, not silver—that waited all week to be taken down on Friday, polished with sand until they shone, then placed on a white tablecloth. Theirs had been the most humble of houses, yet when her father returned from the prayers at the makeshift synagogue—a shtiebel lacking a rabbi or a cantor, and where the floor was porous clay—their home became richer with his warmth and cheer.

With a heavy heart, Batya returned the pretty brown dress with its white blouse and striped apron to the innkeeper’s wife and put on her frayed, dirty sarafan and stained canvas apron.