“Mommy’s fine. She’s turning ninety-two soon, she went through a lot in her life, She’s entitled to forget things every now and then”
And she thought of Mommy’s plaintive voice, her dearest wish, so many decades ago. I want you should be beautiful.
Mommy had no mother. Already at age 14, when she went into hiding, she had no mother. When she was a kallah she figured everything out alone — she didn’t have a mother finding her a wedding gown or sending her into marriage with a kiss, a hug, a prayer.
“Shaindy, I have an errand I need to take care of,” she told her kallah, the girl who knew how to focus on the feelings behind the confusion.
Shaindy was bent over her siddur, outlined by the pale morning light. She’d be davening for at least another forty minutes, Malky knew, and then she would get started on Tehillim.
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