Something ran across Batya’s leg. She yelped. The creature circled and came back. She screamed and batted at her leg.

“Those are just rats,” Shayna said. “Are you wearing something to cover yourself? They bite.”

Batya tucked up her legs under the bottom of her slip and undid the rag-doll pillowcase. She slid it over her head and shoulders and breathed through the fabric. Merciful Father, have mercy on me. Don’t make me live in this filth and degradation.

The rat came again, sniffing her. She felt a sharp nip through her thin slip and screamed.

“Shhhhhhh. Let’s pray,” Shayna said. “God, we are here, Shayna and Batya, and we need You to rescue us. Save us from evil. Heal our wounds.”

What were Shayna’s wounds? Batya dared not ask. “Yes, let us out. Take us back home,” she cried. In her mind’s eye she saw her beautiful cabin upstairs and recalled how good it had felt for just a few hours to have been a rich woman. Silently, she asked God, Please bring Reb Moskowitz back to me. Even if he won’t take me for his wife, make his kind heart show benevolence toward me.

“How old are you?” Shayna asked.

“Fourteen. And you?”

“Almost sixteen.”

For a while, neither spoke. The ship’s engines droned. The swaying of the ship was unrelenting, unsettling Batya’s empty stomach. A cockroach climbed up her thigh, and she yelped, batting it away. She mulled over what Shayna had told her. Batya had advantages over this girl: she had caring parents; she was under the protection of a man who’d mistakenly trusted his business associate; she also had an uncle living near their destination. When she arrived in Buenos Aires in that country, Argentina, that was in America, in the southern part of it, Moskowitz’s sister would take her under her wing. Even if Batya could no longer be Moskowitz’s wife, she could still become a hardworking maid.

Her thumb felt the inside of her middle finger for the ring Moskowitz had given her, and she remembered: it had been abandoned in her cabin. Moskowitz would be cross that she couldn’t give it back.

Her bladder intruded on her thoughts. “I need to pee badly,” she told Shayna.

“Might as well just do it. If you need to poop, scoot to the corner of your cage.”

A new wave of incredulity contracted the hair on Batya’s scalp. “How long have you been down here?”

“Since right after we sailed. How long has it been?”

The ship began to rock widely, and the rumbling noise rose to a new pitch. The ocean roared close by, and Batya felt herself rising and falling. She was hurled upward, then dropped down, as though the ship were a giant swing. She propped herself against the sides of her cage as her empty stomach heaved and retched.