If only Keyla hurried up, in a few months, Batya could see them all again! A sudden urge to meet little Vida rose in her. She would adopt and raise her as the daughter that her scarred uterus could never produce. A wave of protectiveness came over Batya. She recalled two big cities where she had stayed with Moskowitz overnight. Had she sailed from Constantinople or Odessa? She’d been too awed and shy then to ask. By now she knew that both had ports from which ships sailed all the way to South America. They were safer from pogroms, but how could her father manage in such a place, waiting for weeks on end? The peasant Surale would be as overwhelmed as Batya had been at fourteen, too paralyzed with fear to even cross the street.

“How do they eat?” Batya asked. “Where do they live? Are they warm enough?”

“We house and feed them. Don’t worry.”

She sighed. “You know about my family’s whereabouts while I can’t even get a letter from my father for months. I want to hear from him directly.”

“I’ll ask that one is sent through our own courier.” Señor Rosenberg smiled at her. “Do you have more documents for me?”

Another month passed, another hot, sticky month in which she hated the string of men she had to please. She recalled Nettie’s argument: Did factory or sweatshop workers have it better, chained to their machines all their waking hours? Life was survival, and survival was hard work.

At least Batya’s time with Ulmann no longer felt like work. His conversation and neediness made her feel valuable, all the more so when he asked her opinion about his artistic designs. For her attention, he rewarded her with a measure of humanity and self-respect.

Moskowitz surprised her one day when he asked her to accompany him to lunch rather than an after-siesta outing. Unlike cafés that served only drinks and desserts, Calle Florida was a restaurant that roasted a whole cow on a rotating grille right in the street. The smoky smell welcomed Batya and made her mouth water. She sat down with great anticipation for the feast of succulent red meat.

“Remember your table manners,” Moskowitz told her, just before he was joined by two uniformed military officers and soon by Pedro in his colorful plaid jacket and two other pimps whose names Batya didn’t know. “Act like a French whore, not a polaca,” Moskowitz added, and she lengthened her neck to assume a queenly posture.