She shoved the paper right in front of Rachel’s face and there, on page one, was a news photo of a trolley accident in Chicago that the wire services picked up and printed across the country, and here it was on Seventy-­second Street in front of her eggcup. The trolley had hit a gas truck and the truck exploded. Rachel couldn’t stop reading. Flame engulfed the trolley, the driver’s head was burning, the conductor was dead, and only the passengers in the back lived long enough to try to get out. And that’s how the cameraman caught them, mashed together at the exit door where the sheet of flame got them. They looked like sticks, all black stalks and angles, except for their heads which were charred ovals. The heads were all touching—as if they were telling secrets at the end. Rachel pushed the paper away and took her egg to the garbage can. Her grandmother took the paper back and looked steadily at the picture over her bowl of groats. She read slowly, moving her lips. Finally she looked up and smiled at her granddaughter.

“There was a Gordon on the trolley,” she said. “Andrew Gordon. Sam Gordon or Nat Gordon might be Jewish, might be. Andrew Gordon, never.” She folded the paper, satisfied. “There were no Jews on that trolley,” she said.

4

Chapter 4

The Rosses’ house stood alone and forlorn already, the windows were dirty, the grass needed cutting. Golda and Rachel looked out through Golda’s kitchen window for a first glimpse of Sutter Lane’s only black family.

“Bet he wears white silk suits and sells numbers,” Golda said.

“He’s a doctor,” Rachel said.

“Who moonlights as a pimp. Imagine being a pimp in Laurel.” Golda poured coffee. “If he’s smart he’ll sell the men . . .” she looked up at Rachel, “for instance Allan. Plenty of broads around who would pay good money for Allan.”

“Stop it, Golda.”

“He’s waiting to set the date, Rachel . . .”

“Adam’s only been dead . . .”

“One year, six months, three days, seven hours. How long you gonna wait? Even the Talmud says eleven months is long enough.”

A moving van pulled into Sutter Lane behind a black Cadillac. Golda was going full steam and didn’t notice.

“Okay, you’re almost young and still pretty, but how long will that last? Jacob can’t live forever and what happens when he dies? You could be forty by then, Rachel . . .” She’d be forty in a few years anyway. “Forty, and broke, with a kid that someone’s gonna have to spend thirty thousand dollars to send to college, or twenty thousand to marry off. You’ll really be a bowl of shit then, Rachel . . .” Rachel expected Golda’s eyes to look cold and bitchy, the way Rachel’s mother did whenever she talked about men or money, but Golda’s eyes were soft, full of concern.