“Hedi?” Batya stopped dancing. “She betrayed us—and all our people. She permitted the Jew-hating priest to marry her!” Batya squeezed Surale’s hands until her sister winced. “The most important mitzvah you and I can ever do is honoring our parents. Be loyal and obedient. Two daughters have already disobeyed them. We’re never to do that, too. Do you understand?”

“Sorry,” Surale mumbled.

Batya softened. “We’re too poor and have no remarkable lineage to appeal to a good match. But even without yichus, when the time comes, Papa will find each of us a good man.”

“Mama says that Papa is a dreamer.”

“He’s survived many pogroms. He speaks directly to God and can read the Bible. Didn’t the neighbors come to him to read their letters for them? Papa knows what’s good for us.” Batya looked at her feet. “For now, all I want is a new pair of socks.” Buried in the cart was a stained child’s sweater her mother had bought from a peddler with the intention of unraveling the wool to reuse. Batya had no time now to dig under the heap of the family’s possessions for the yarn and the knitting needles.

Ten minutes later, she stopped at the tavern door and examined her reflection in the window. The uneven pane of glass distorted it, but not enough to hide the green of her large eyes and the pink of her too-full lips.

“I’ll be worthy of Your name,” she whispered. Her name, Batya, meant God’s daughter, and as such she was destined for great things. Her first mission was to help her family survive.

Her hand on the door handle, a new understanding washed over her of an internal shift: since their escape, her parents could no longer protect and provide for her. She had grown up.

Chapter Two

Work in the tavern’s dining hall proved more grueling than the labor in the hot kitchen. Batya had to rush among tables squeezed together, forced to brush against male guests no matter how much she tried to minimize herself. At their urgent calls for food and drink, she struggled to carry heavy trays, refill tin cups without spilling, haul pitchers of beer and vodka, collect dirty dishes and run them to the kitchen, only to bring more plates, bowls, and cups, all without dropping anything. Her muscles burned, and the blisters on her feet from the rough wooden clogs reopened. But her family was safe. Tonight they had a roof over their heads. They had been fed. If she focused on the tasks, performed them to perfection, then tomorrow her mother would be able to rest again.

Once Batya caught the crinkle of a smile on the face of the innkeeper when he handed her a tray of filled vodka glasses. She lowered her eyes in shyness, encouraged that he was pleased with her work.