Glikel didn’t reach to take them, and the papers fell to the ground. “I’ve changed my mind.” She snickered with an air of superiority and sauntered away.

Seething, Batya picked up the newspapers. She began to climb the stairs.

“Wait!” Glikel called. “Wait!”

Batya allowed herself half a turn. She let out a low breath to keep her temper in check. “What now?”

Glikel’s gaze traveled over Batya’s black dress, as if noticing it for the first time. “Sorry about your mother. May her soul rest in peace.”

“Thank you.” Batya set her foot on the next step.

“Would you do me a favor? Please?”

“What kind?”

“Ask your mother to send my regards to my parents, they, too, should rest in peace. Their names are Sigmund and Hilda Gottstein.”

“My mother is really busy sending regards to a lot of parents,” Batya said, and added with emphasis, “Parents of my friends.”

“Please. Just two more. Sigmund and Hilda Gottstein.”

There seemed no end to Glikel’s audacity. Batya looked down at the pleading face. “You’ll have to pay for it.” She pointed at Glikel’s opal ring, gleaming in blues and greens. “With this.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The eight days of Chanukah filled the week following Batya’s shiva for her mother, with their late spring afternoons in which Freda presided over the candle lighting. For fifteen minutes each evening at dusk, Batya stood with the sisters and peered into the menorah and its flickering candles. She sang the Chanukah songs she remembered from home, ate jelly-filled punchkes sprinkled with powdered sugar, and felt the bond of shared traditions with these girls who had replaced her family and whose closeness had sustained her in the days of mourning.

The first Friday evening after Chanukah presented no chance to try to visit a synagogue. The brothel was busy. Now that a gas line had been snaked to the street corner to illuminate the lampposts, Moskowitz had installed colorful lights on the house’s outside wall facing the street. The klezmers stationed by the window played as much for the clients inside as for the men roaming the street, deciding which house to enter. Some Jewish men arrived early in the afternoon, allowing themselves time with the impure kurves before cleansing from the mundane in the mikveh so they could properly receive the holy Shabbat. Many others snuck out of their homes after the family’s festive dinner and welcomed Shabbat not by doing the mitzvah of satisfying their wives as ordained by the Talmud but by attending to their favorite prostitutes.