“I-I think there’s something wrong with us, Hinda,” he said softly. “Something wrong with every one of us here in this family. We’re like plants someone forgot to water; ugly, dried out, and broken. Most of all broken.”
And so, after the gentle young man in the store fitted Hinda’s feet for the navy-and-gold loafers she’d chosen, Mommy commanded him in that authoritative, executive voice that brooked no argument to fetch her a pair in one size bigger. Hinda put them on and looked down at feet that suddenly looked so small and wobbly in one-size-too-big shoes, and felt her throat grow hot and dry. All the way home, she held the crisp white box that aired the scent of new leather and stared silently out the window, remembering how the shoes had looked when they’d fit her feet properly; shining, smug, neat, and trim, and untellingly lovely.
She didn’t sulk and cry the way Bryna would have, nor did she rant and rave the way Benjy would have done. Hinda bowed her head before her mother’s will, weak and helpless as grass beneath a raging gale.
Even she, Hinda, with her thick and foggy mind, knew that business executives like Mommy made lots of money, and so she never could understand why Mommy always had to pinch and save on their clothes and shoes. It was Benjy, who was older and knew everything, who explained.
“It’s because of you and me being special ed,” he said, squinting down at the shoes lying at odd angles in the box. “Mommy and Tatty pay a ton of money for us to be in special schools. And also to pay all the people who have to help out because Mommy is at work so much and Tatty is always away: Maria who cleans for us, and Mrs. Peretz who cooks for us, and Sandra who babysits for Nosson and Chaim after school, and” — he paused for breath — “to pay my tutor, and your tutor, and Shira Marcus who does homework with the younger kids. And all the expensive equipment Mommy has to have, like her crutches and the chair-lift.”
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