Free Modern Girls by Jennifer S. Brown Page B

with you?”
    “My mother never made it to America, and she, of blessed memory, departed this earth long ago.”
    She placed a hand on my arm. “Go ahead. Ask.”
    How to phrase it? “I was wondering . . .” I paused. “What Iwanted to know . . .” Mrs. Anscher looked at me patiently. A fierce longing for my mama pierced me. I thought a moment more and finally said, “When a woman . . . changes, is it sudden?” Mrs. Anscher scrunched her nose, confused, so I said, even more boldly, “Do the courses just stop?”
    Mrs. Anscher smiled. “No, no. They don’t just stop. They come late and early—they come a little more, a little less—but you will know when it happens. It happens slowly.” She patted my arm. “How old are you? Forty-three? Forty-four? You’re still young.”
    Indignant, I pulled my shoulders back and stood taller. “Thirty-nine!” It wasn’t
such
a lie.
    “My apologies. When you’re my age, it’s so hard to tell. But you have nothing to worry about for another ten years or so.”
    Forcing a smile, I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Anscher. I appreciate it greatly.”
    Holding the handrail, Mrs. Anscher resumed her walk to the first floor. “You may come to me anytime, dear.”
    I stood at our door before entering, letting her comments settle over me. There was no surprise. The suspicion had been growing in me. Apparently, it wasn’t the only thing growing in me.
    We didn’t deserve this.
    Friday nights, the start of
Shabbes
, were a special time for a man and his wife. Not a Friday night—except when Jewish law disallowed it—had gone by in all our twenty years of marriage that Ben hadn’t fulfilled his duties as a husband. The previous night, before we went to the roof, was no exception. I might be forty-two, but on Friday nights Ben made me giggle like a newlywed.
    When I was a young woman, sneaking out into the fields with Shmuel, lovemaking was a loud, boisterous affair. But with Ben . . . That first night of marriage, in his parents’ apartment, pretending to be a young virgin, I longed to cry out with desire, but I bit my lip, and admonished Ben to keep his voice down when it rose a touch too high. A parent in the next room, a lodger in the kitchen,a child at the foot of the bed—never have Ben and I truly been able to be free together.
    And now we’d wound the clock back to the start.
    I needed to prepare breakfast and lunch for Ben and hustle him out the door so he could make the early
Shabbes
minyan
before going to the garage.
    I opened the door, and quietly passing Dottie asleep on the sofa, I went to dress in the bedroom, fighting back a sob.
    What had I done?

Dottie

    Saturday, August 17
    THAT moment of waking on a Saturday morning was a luxury in which to revel. Not long ago, Ma would wake me early on
Shabbes
to help get
Tateh
out the door for
shul
and to take care of my brothers. But now that I worked in an office, Ma let me sleep in, even though the noise of the apartment made it difficult. I loved, in my sleepy haze, listening to her attempts to quietly shush the boys. “Dottala works hard,” she’d say. “Let her rest.” Her voice was always louder than the one she was shushing, but she tried. I could hear Ma at the table, not five feet from the sofa on which I slept, serving breakfast to the boys, who had bounded in loudly from the roof about a half hour earlier.
    A thin sheet covered me, and I snuggled into it, happy not to be rushing. My Saturdays were always spent with Eugene, taking him to the pictures or the playground at Tompkins Square Park or the library. Saturday evenings I painted my nails. Already I was thinking about what new color I would purchase—coral? Ruby?
    And then I remembered. My situation.
    The thought came over me like a chill, and I wrapped the sheet tightly around me, as if to hide my dilemma.
    And yet? Listening to Ma say the blessings before eating triggered a thought. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t
my
problem. Maybe I could