Free Murder At The Mikvah by Sarah Segal Page A

suddenly he felt different—like those sick kids at Disney World—like he was missing a limb.
    After school each day, their grandpop met them at the bus stop two blocks away. “The walk is good for my heart,” Harvey would say. On the way home, he’d ask how their day was. Yehuda’s responses were grunts of two or three words, while Sunny could be counted on to engage him with longer and more engrossing stories. But Harvey wouldn't give up on Yehuda. In time, he was able to coax his grandson out of his shell. Although he could be loud at times (mostly because his hearing was poor and he refused to wear a hearing aid), Harvey Orenstein was generous and kind, and shared Ira’s love of history.
    One afternoon Harvey lugged out a big box of albums, and naturally, Yehuda assumed they were more family photos. Ever since they moved in, Harvey had spent a good deal of time showing off his massive photo collection. But this time, Harvey winked at him while making a dramatic show of opening the first one. About twenty individual stamps were set into tiny paper edges on each page. Yehuda leaned in to take a closer look. France 1851, Poland, 1910… Yehuda turned the pages quickly now, saying things like “Look at this one grandpop!” and “I never heard of this country!” Yehuda stopped at a gold page, which stood out from the others.
    “Why is the paper different?” he asked.
    Harvey grazed the page gently with his fingertips. “Those are from 1948, the year the State of Israel was born. Your great grandfather—my father—was the first in our family to actually touch the Western Wall…”
    “What’s the Western Wall?” Yehuda asked innocently.
    Later that night, Yehuda overheard an argument between his grandpop and his mom.
    “How could you not give them a religious identity?” his grandpop demanded. “How could they not even know they are Jews!”
     
     
     

 Ten
    Yehuda pressed his face against the pane of dark glass, peering out to a winding cement sidewalk in front of the hospital. The coolness on his cheek felt nice, the next best thing to actually stepping outside for some fresh air. The room where he now stood was at one end of a long stretched out horseshoe. At the other end, was the entrance to the Senecca hospital emergency room and the automatic doors through which he had entered just a little while ago.
    How much time had actually passed?
    The sliding doors opened and closed dutifully as people hustled in—varying degrees of concern and panic in their eyes—and hospital staff in scrubs and white clogs snuck out for a quick cigarette break. A white haired man hobbled in, favoring one leg while being supported by a much younger man. His son ? Yehuda would never know what it was like to help an ailing father. He had given up the fantasy of his own father being a part of his life years ago.
    Now the full moon caught Yehuda’s attention. There it was, still shining brightly as it had all night. Yehuda felt offended at its boldness, that it could be so unaffected by the tragedy unfolding in his life. How was it possible for the sun to rise tomorrow, as it most certainly would, as if nothing had changed? Yehuda stepped back and gazed at his shadowed reflection in the window. The image reminded him of overnight camp, when his counselor, Herschel Gold held a flashlight against his chin and shone the light up his face. His distorted appearance was perfect for telling scary legends of “Cropsy” the lunatic farmer who roamed the campgrounds after midnight. Herschel Gold was a third year yeshiva student when Yehuda met him, and well on his way to becoming a rabbi like his father and grandfather before him. It was Herschel who became something of a big brother and mentor to Yehuda, ultimately encouraging him to become a rabbi himself. Yehuda wondered what Herschel would say now. He always had a knack for finding the right words, even for the most horrendous of situations. Always compassionate, yet never