The straw pallet was laid down in the front room, and there, in the presence of the Holy Society, Bluma’s father mumbled a rote blessing and tore his shirt and jacket in a ritual of mourning. This having been done, the somber company lifted Bluma’s bubbe again and carried her out of the house to the small funeral hut near the cemetery, where she would be washed and guarded until her burial.

As the door swung shut behind them, Zalman sank to the floor.

There he remained, leaning back against the stacked sacks of flour, all morning.

For a short time, Bluma and her mother remained with him. Before long, though, Feygush began again to murmur of necessities, and, rising to turn back to the ordering of the home, she beckoned for Bluma to follow.

Feygush climbed to her bedroom and gently tucked away the little looking glass that Bluma was sometimes permitted to use. With effort, she lifted her small, heavy mirror and turned it around to face the wall.

It was in the midst of this task that she spoke to Bluma.

“Blumaleh,” she said. “Go upstairs and turn your bubbe’s mirror around. Just like this.”

This was a horrifying prospect.

Bluma stood, staring blankly, until Feygush noticed her.

“Did you hear me, Bluma?”

Bluma had so much to say that it jammed up her throat: How could she possibly go up there? How could she enter that room? How could she violate her bubbe’s privacy? How could she move things that her bubbe had set in place? How, how, how?

Feygush sighed. “Today is not the day for this. Do as I say.”

And so Bluma’s feet carried her up to the third floor.

And what she saw was horrific.

Some well-meaning member of the Holy Society had tidied the room. Every possession was laid out in perfect parallel, every piece of linen folded, every edge straightened.

They had taken Bluma’s bubbe out of the house and cleared up after.

Bluma wanted desperately to get out, to get away from this violent tidiness, and so she moved swiftly to the mirror. Her reflection startled her—it seemed too quick, somehow, too prompt—and as she turned the glass to face the wall, she began to feel some stirring of memory.

Her reflection.

What had happened last night?

Bluma hurried back down to the second floor to find her mother struggling to move the water barrel toward the top of the stairs.

“Good,” she said. “Come help me.”

Feygush and Bluma collected all the water in the house, and once it had been arrayed by the door—bottles, buckets, barrels—they began to pour it out, little by little, into the street.