Batya woke up feeling her head bursting like an overripe gourd. The light streaming through the porthole pierced her eyes. She lay still, counting the different pains that racked her body. Head, eyes, arms, stomach, her private parts, her legs. Her heart was lead. She was a debased, sullied human being. Not even that. A filthy animal. A creature undeserving to walk on God’s earth.

The maid who entered wasn’t the one from the previous night. This woman shook her head in pity, crossed herself, and clucked words in her language. Her hands were tender as she cleaned Batya and gently massaged her sore body. She put ointment on Batya’s opening, but it did little to soothe the pulsating pain inside her or the splitting headache. When Batya wept, the woman cradled her head in her lap and sang her a song in her strange language.

After a while she left, returning with a breakfast of salted herring, a soft-boiled egg, a slice of bread toasted and buttered on both sides, and a glass of milk. She tiptoed out, as if not to disturb Batya’s regained calm, but Batya could hear the key turning on the other side of the door. If only the key had protected her last night.

Nausea filled Batya at the smell of the food. She raised herself with difficulty and looked out the porthole. A vast lead-colored sea under an overcast sky stretched to the horizon. Low waves broke, their foaming tops receding, rolling the ship along with the rising and falling of her head and stomach.

How could this happen to her? Batya felt sick with no fever, her head as empty and brainless as a butter churn. Her future with Moskowitz was destroyed. It was one thing for him to give in to his desire for her and entirely another to have a wife who’d been despoiled by other men. She had failed her parents. She would never be able to bring them and Surale to America as a respectable wife of a man of importance and means.

For the rest of the day she stayed in bed, hovering between wakefulness and sleep. She tried eating the noontime meal to fortify herself, but fear and self-loathing clogged her throat. She was undeserving of God’s abundant good food.

And worse, facing three more weeks at sea, she was Grabovsky’s captive.

When dusk came, Batya rose and put on her gray pinafore, hoping to get out of the cabin. If she could escape, she would find some good soul to beg for help.

Outside the porthole, the sky darkened and blended with the sea into one impenetrable inky blotch. Instead of Grabovsky bringing her to the dining hall, a male servant carried in a tray. As he took out the previous barely touched meal, he smirked and winked at her.