Free Enchanted Islands by Allison Amend

up a skirt that didn’t fit and her assuming the position of Rodin’s
Thinker
. Rosalie didn’t know why I was laughing, but she joined in until we were both on the floor rolling around.
    Such an extremity of emotions. I now understand that it was a response to anxiety, but then it just was the way things were, tragic and funny all at the same time.
    *
    It was Rosalie who, the following day, hit upon the idea to go to a synagogue in the morning to see if perhaps our co-religionists could help us.
    “Rosalie, you’re brilliant.”
    “At the very least maybe they’ll have some clothes for you so you don’t have to walk around holding your waist all the time.”
    But how to find a synagogue? Our hotel clerk wouldn’t know, that was obvious. I suggested we look for a directory, and that we would probably find one in the library.
    The main library in Chicago was a grand thing, on a much bigger scale than our little house of learning in Duluth. I tried to walk softly. Rosalie asked the librarian where we could find a directory.
    “You’ll have to speak up, dear,” she said.
    “A directory,” she repeated. Another librarian shushed her.
    The deaf librarian brought over an enormous volume. “Here you go. You can look at it on that table there, then bring it back here.”
    We spread it on the table. The type was tiny. Rosalie looked under “Synagogues.” There was no listing.
    “Try ‘Houses of Worship.’ Or ‘Worship,’ ” I offered. But there was nothing there either.
    “Temples,” Rosalie said. And there was a list, of all the synagogues in the world, well over fifty. I could hear Rosalie gasp too. There were four synagogues in Duluth, and everyone knew which one everyone attended (or didn’t attend, as the case often was).
    We split up the copying, and I started from the bottom. “I’m tempted,” Rosalie said after a while, “to take the page.”
    “How?” I asked.
    “You make a coughing noise and that masks the sound of the page ripping.”
    “Rosalie!” I was shocked.
    “I just said I was tempted,” she said. “Don’t be so censorious.”
    I made a note on my piece of paper to look up the word.
    Finally we finished our list. Rosalie turned the pages of the directory to the listings of residents.
    “What are you looking for?” I asked.
    “Nothing.” Rosalie had become more secretive since we got to Chicago, seeming to draw her own conclusions and neglecting to share them with me. I didn’t want to say anything to her for fear of upsetting her further.
    We went straightaway to the closest synagogue on the list, but it was a run-down building and two men sitting on its steps glared at us. The next one looked like a school. It was plain and nondescript, hardly an inspiration for worshipping the Almighty. But by that point I wanted to use the toilet, so we went inside.
    The receptionist looked us over and was obviously unimpressed. Rosalie explained our presence patiently, saying that we were cousins, recently orphaned, who were looking for work and to finish school. When she stopped talking, the woman didn’t respond.
    “May we speak with the rabbi?” Rosalie asked.
    The woman shook her head slowly. “I don’t think we can bother him with this.”
    “May I at least use your toilet?” I asked.
    The woman pointed down the hall behind her, as if words were too expensive to waste on directions. I left Rosalie to work her charms and proceeded down a tiled hallway with unmarked windowed doors. The rooms were all dark. Finally I found a door marked “Girls,” cementing my suspicion that this had once been a school. I used the toilet and was washing my hands when the door opened and a woman about my mother’s age walked in.
    “Oh!” she said. “You startled me. I thought I was the only one here.”
    I smiled in apology.
    “I’ve just come in to loosen my girdle a bit. For some reason I can’t breathe today. It might be that the reason is the cookies I had yesterday.”
    I smiled