Free The Sisters Weiss by Naomi Ragen Page A

been able to take Him with her into exile, she would not have been so profoundly alone. She would have had her familiar companion and guide and protector. Without Him, she was lost, living in a foreign country.
    She tried hard to find her way back to Him, to come home, searching for hidden signposts. But the way offered by her new school and her family and especially the Honored Rav (who she had come to hold most responsible for her plight) was only leading her further away, she realized, deeper into the silence of a Godless wilderness. She, who had always taken her faith as a given, never realized until now how delicate a thing it was, like a tender, newly opened flower so easily trampled and destroyed. Lost and alone, what choice did she have but to become an explorer, to forge a new path, drawing her own map, with only her mind as compass? The only way to do that was to read.
    The stringent lectures against the evils of books, magazines, pamphlets, or anything else not specifically approved by the school only made her more determined to get her hands on some reading material not approved by her school. But high on the list of Bais Ruchel’s forbidden places—along with cinemas, theaters, and homes with television sets—was the public library. Being caught in one meant immediate expulsion.
    At her grandmother’s, she found some relief in immersing herself in simple, mindless chores, almost enjoying plunging her hands into hot, soapy water; getting down on her knees to scrub the linoleum; straining her elbow to scrape off the dried beans and potatoes from the Sabbath chulent pot.
    But as she scrubbed and polished, she thought of the phrase “dying of boredom.” Could it, she wondered, be taken literally? Could the restlessness ballooning inside her finally stretch her heart so thin it would burst? Was it then a matter of life or death, for which even God allowed one to commit transgressions in order that one might live to eventually perform good deeds?
    The day she decided it was, everything changed.
    “I have a cooking class after school today, Bubbee,” she said, telling the first lie in her life. She waited for her body to dissolve into putrid waste. But the only thing that happened was her heart began to beat faster. She felt faint.
    “Are you feeling all right, maideleh?”
    Rose touched her face, which was growing hot. She nodded, stuttering: “I … I … am in the woman’s way.”
    “Ah.” Her grandmother nodded, without further comment. This, like any subject to do with womanliness, intimacy, bodily needs or functions, was best obscured, the way Victorians covered table legs, referring to them as “limbs” so as not to arouse impure imaginings.
    That day after school, she walked quickly away from her fellow students and teachers. Not daring to wait for a bus or be seen riding the train, she walked and walked until her feet were blistered and sore. But there it was. The public library! The very shape of the building, with its large windows revealing the treasures inside, filled her with a joy that banished all her fears. Pulling open the large heavy doors, she hurried inside like a pilgrim seeking sanctuary.
    She sat on the comfortable chairs, a pile of Life and Look magazines on the table in front of her, leafing through them the way a sultan counts gold coins. Exploring the shelves, she discovered the National Geographic magazine and the Saturday Evening Post, which she added to the pile. Drinking her fill, she then roamed the room, finding the books on photography, studying the way the light fell, the way the people stood, the landscape and the composition. Finally, assessing the amount of time it would take her to walk home, she rose. But before leaving, she walked with determined steps over to the librarian’s desk.
    “Excuse me?”
    The woman with her large glasses and tight bun adjusted a plain pearl earring as she studied Rose. She wasn’t a St. Rose of Lima parochial-school girl. Those