“Such a letter will be sent to the family of any girl who tries to pull that stunt,” Freda informed the sisters. “And if your parents are deceased, it will be sent to the elders of your home shtetl or to relatives, shaming your mother’s and father’s memories.” Her glance took in the entire crowd and stopped on Moskowitz, who stood silently, his arms folded. When he nodded, she went on. “Who would say kaddish on the yahrzeit of people whose daughter veered so far from the righteous way befitting a Jewish woman?”

Before noon, Dora was sold to a brothel located far away, near a coal mine, where prostitutes were not even permitted to get up as they served, for a pittance, hordes of poor, dirty miners and even poorer, foul-smelling farmhands. Clients there weren’t protected. Before long, she would be infected by the French disease.

Batya’s ache for Dora mixed with guilt over her own failure to convince the girl of her one better option. She hoped that Dora would be able to commit suicide, although Nettie’s experience—and her own in her early days—had shown that dying could be as hard to accomplish as living.

As distraught as Batya was for Dora’s fate, she was also distressed by the fact that for the next year or two she must repay Moskowitz the cost of buying Dora. So much for saving more money for her family’s rescue.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Winter 1894

On Batya’s way to Efram’s house she passed a house with a large patio. Two dozen unkempt laborers congregated out front, no doubt waiting for their turn with the prostitutes. They passed around a jug of what Batya assumed was cheap cachaça, sugarcane alcohol. Someone played a mandolin, and the men passed the time by tangoing with each other. Their aggressive gyrating and strong hips bumping revealed their anticipation of what was ahead.

The cloud that had hovered over Batya since Dora’s episode two months earlier tightened around her like a cold blanket of air.

Before she had given Rafael her letter, Batya had to wait for Efram yet again so he could pencil on the back in Spanish, Postmaster: Please add your return address. It had been three months since Rafael had said he’d mailed her letter, and Batya hoped that the postmaster in his village had indeed complied with her request. She would know only if and when her father’s reply arrived, perhaps in a few more months.