Free Hush by Judy Brown, Eishes Chayil Page A

open the door, dropped her coat and briefcase near the closet, and bumped right into her mother standing angrily at the staircase, and I knew that she was in big trouble.
    “Gittel, please wait upstairs.” She glared at Devory. “And you”—she pointed a warning finger at her—“come into the kitchen right now.”
    I could hear her angry voice all the way at the top of the stairs.
    “I don’t understand you! What is wrong with you? Every week the principal has to call me with a new story. Not only do you eat in class, day dream, have the messiest desk, and not listen to anything—anything! The teacher says you also read non-Jewish books that you got who knows where! And now this! This! What is this supposed to be? Not only did you write the assignment on pink paper with red crayon and chocolate smudges in an illegible handwriting, you also write about Cratzmich ! Where do you think you come from? How dare you write such a thing? Who put these shtism into your head? How dare you embarrass your family like that? Answer me! Answer me right now!”
    There was a tense silence.
    “I don’t understand you! I just don’t understand you! Why are you behaving like this? Why are you doing this to me? What happened to you? How much trouble are you going to give me until you stop? Answer me!”
    Silence.
    “Take this assignment upstairs right now and write it over using only Chanukah! I never want to see that word— Cratzmich —again! You are a Yiddishe girl and there’s no such word in your language! Did you hear me?”
    “No!” Devory shrieked. “I’m not changing it to Chanukah. It doesn’t fit! It will ruin my story.”
    “Ruin your story? Ruin your story? Ruin your mind! That’s what it will ruin! Take this paper now! I want to see it in one hour on this table written with pencil, on a neat white paper, and written with the word Chanukah. Is that clear?”
    Devory stomped upstairs crying. I followed her into her room and she sobbed angrily that they were ruining her perfectly beautiful Christmas story. Chanukah would sound ridiculous; it just didn’t fit. Devory stamped her foot. “Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!”
    I stared at her in awe. Christmas. I never heard the whole word Christmas so many times in my entire life.
    Devory stomped around the room, sobbing that she would not write over a word of that story. But I told her that we would stay in the room for the rest of the day.
    “Just write it over, Devory, and then we can go out and play. You know what?” I jumped up and down. “Write ‘birthday’! Not Chanukah and not Chris-whatever! Just ‘birthday,’ Devory, just ‘birthday.’ ”
    Devory agreed somehow and, using my pointy sharpened pencil, painstakingly rewrote the story in angry, small lettering. We then ran downstairs, where she threw the paper on the kitchen table and ran out after me to the small backyard.
    We played until dark. I was the pirate Groondledu and wore a red-and-white-checkered kitchen towel on my head, and she was the pirate Foondledu and wore her mother’s kerchief tied tightly around her neck. We chased each other in circles and slashed at each other with fallen branches until one of us would fall down dead. We sat in cardboard boxes rowing our stolen boat through the great seas, fighting storms, flying dragons, and evil spirits. We even ate our supper outside. Mrs. Goldblatt usually had us sit inside around the kitchen table with the whole family, but this time she didn’t seem to care.
    I had just finished taking Foondledu into captivity when my mother arrived in her small blue car to pick me up. I was very proud of my mother’s blue car. Only three other girls in my class had mothers who drove, because driving was a modern thing to do. Our teacher once explained to us that Chassidish Rebbes didn’t allow women to drive because…of all sorts of reasons that I didn’t remember, except for the one that said that it wasn’t tzniesdig —modest—for a woman to